"It begins with one — one frog...."

 

I found the Portland Frog Brigade via this NY Post column, "Dems ditched American heroes for adults in frog suits and tiresome De Niro — all we can do is pity them."

The frog suits made me think of Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals," #6: "A good tactic is one your people enjoy." 

But the column says we should pity these people. It quotes Rep. Maxine Dexter of Oregon:

"Tonight I defy Trump and his authoritarian project by standing in joyful, radical, peaceful resistance with the Portland Frog Brigade. We answered with frog costumes, dancing, singing and joy when Trump wanted us to cower in fear."

I did think frogs were a right-wing mascot — I'm thinking Pepe the Frog — but it's 10 years since Pepe's heyday and people of all persuasions are entitled to a frog of their own. I think the hippie vibe is a good move — costumes, dancing, singing, joy. 

"Trump’s brand of politics feeds on the lie that multicultural cities are frightening and chaotic. If he follows through on his threats to deploy National Guard troops..."

"... to Portland, it won’t be for the benefit of the people who call the city home. The intent will be to incite a spectacle of chaos, manufacturing a crisis to retroactively justify the belief that Democrat-run cities are in need of forceful takeover. The provocation will be the point. Don’t fall for it. The Portland of right-wing imagination is a city engulfed by flames and violence, a vivid warning of what will befall other places if they vote for Democrats. 'Unimaginably bad things would happen to America' if Biden were elected, Trump posted in 2020, specifically citing the 'anarchy' of Portland.... The reality is that the problems facing Portland and other cities are nothing that can’t be addressed through normal governance, and that these are on the whole vibrant and quite pleasant places to live. 'Real America' can mean things like biking to get a vegan ube latte from a purple-haired barista, and if you’d like a taste of what makes America truly great, you can find it in a coffee shop—in Portland, certainly, and probably a short ride from where you live."

Writes Jacob Grier, in "100 Cups of Coffee in a City on Fire/President Trump keeps saying Portland is an anarchic hellscape in need of the National Guard. With the help of my bike and a serious caffeine addiction, I set out to discover the truth" (Slate).

It's nice to hear progressives paying respect to the virtues of federalism.

And what's ube? It's just hair-colored yam, I mean, purple yam. I take it you just buy the yam extract — commission earned — and mix it into your milky — vegan milky — coffee.

"Therapy llamas patrol Portland airport to relieve passenger stress."

 WaPo reports.

Airports around the globe use a variety of methods to inject some Zen into one of the busiest travel periods of the year. They decorate their halls in holiday lights, host carolers and concerts, and bring in therapy dogs for group canine counseling.

Portland does all of the above. True to the city’s quirky spirit, it also invites local camelids to the airport to canoodle with passengers....

Canoodle!!

Wikipedia etymology:

"Fifty times as powerful as heroin, fentanyl sets off a high that 'human brains have never seen before.'"

From "Fighting for Anthony: The Struggle to Save Portland, Oregon/The city has long grappled with street homelessness and a shortage of housing. Now fentanyl has turned a perennial problem into a deadly crisis and a challenge to the city’s progressive identity" (NYT).

The search for answers points in many directions — to city and county officials who allowed tents on the streets because the government had little to offer in the way of housing, to Oregon voters who backed decriminalizing hard drugs and to the unrest that rocked Portland in 2020 and left raw scars. But what has turbocharged the city’s troubles in recent years is fentanyl, the deadly synthetic drug, which has transformed long standing problems into a profound test of the Portland ethos....

"But some Portlanders came to see the demonstrations as a threat to the city’s appeal to tourists and investors."

"'Lenders and purchasers have for all intents and purposes blacklisted Portland,' said John Russell, a longtime Portland real estate developer. Dramatic clashes between protesters and law enforcement provided the opportunity for right-wing politicians and media to depict the city as besieged by violent anarchists and, as Donald Trump claimed, 'ablaze all the time.'... Far-right groups had turned the city into a culture war battleground.... 'I just have no sympathy for people who speak with visceral disgust about the city. It’s human people who are really struggling, and you haven’t even actually seen them,' said Lisa Bates, associate professor of urban studies at Portland State University, which is located downtown.... There has been genuine debate among Black organizers and community leaders about protest tactics and the extent to which activists with an antiestablishment agenda and a penchant for property destruction undermined a more focused racial justice movement.... 'The conversation about the city’s major issues is, in my view, reprehensibly putting the blame on poor people, Black people, and allies of Black civil rights for essentially every ill that’s happening in the city right now,' Bates continued. The result is a narrative that insists 'the only way we can save us is more cops; get out of the way of my development; juice at the top so high-income tourists come back.' To acknowledge that Portland’s greatest challenges have little to do with anarchists would mean having a more difficult conversation about the city’s future. It would mean asking, 'Who is this city for?'"

 
From "The Past 2 Years Have Left Portland Reeling. What Kind of Recovery Comes Next?/Will efforts to rehabilitate Portland’s brand eclipse the tentative steps taken toward real reform?" by Zoë Carpenter (The Nation).

But if you go wearing pictures of Chairman Mao.... you are going to make it with Portland people anyhow.

 Look at the skirt!

"A group of protesters toppled statues of former presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln and shattered the entrance to the Oregon Historical Society in Portland’s South Park Blocks..."

"... late Sunday before moving into other areas of downtown, smashing storefronts and engaging in other acts of destruction. Police declared the event a riot and ordered people rampaging through the city’s streets to disperse but did not directly intervene until nearly an hour after the first statue fell. The crowd scattered when police cruisers flooded the area, and officers in tactical gear appeared to make several arrests. Protest organizers had promoted the event on social media as an 'Indigenous Peoples Day of Rage.'...  The organizers had signaled their aggressive stance for the night, calling for 'direct action' and demanding that the video live-streamers and photographers who had become staples of such events stay away.... The group, about 200 strong, marched through downtown Portland, at one point occupying all four lanes of West Burnside Street. Most dressed head-to-toe in black. Many wore body armor, carried shields or wielded night sticks and other weapons. As the crowd reached the South Park Blocks, some threw chains on ropes on the Roosevelt statue, a bronze sculpture officially titled 'Theodore Roosevelt, Rough Rider,' as others took a blowtorch to its base and splattered it with red paint. They began to pull until the statue rocked from side to side before falling down at 8:51 p.m. The crowd erupted in cheers as dance music played on a large portable speaker....  The group then turned to the nearby Abraham Lincoln statue, pulling it to the ground at 8:59 p.m.... After toppling the statues, some protesters began smashing windows at the Oregon Historical Society, unfurling a banner that read, 'Stop honoring racist colonizer murderers.' A mural on the attached Sovereign Hotel building depicting the Lewis & Clark expedition was splattered with red paint...."

From "Portland protesters topple statues of Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln in ‘Day of Rage’; police declare riot" (The Oregonian).

"The building block of antifa is what's called an affinity group, people you live and work with and trust and know in real life...."

"All the planning is done within that closed bloc, and they don't let everyone know [what they're going to do]. I didn't know that they were going to burn the Portland Police Association when I joined. What they did was put a call out that said, 'Anyone show up in black that night at this place, and you can join the action.' That's called a semi-open bloc.... Basically they're baiting the police into overreacting.... They come in, they attack the cops, they get out. Antifa goes for a certain type of violence, a mid-level violence. Most people aren't practiced in violence, and what they'll do is, they'll either back down or they'll overreact. Antifa basically as a group does the equivalent of just pushing someone on the shoulder, and again, and again.... But a big thing for them is they have convinced themselves that they're doing something good. They're very big about trying to maintain, at least in their eyes, the moral high ground. Part of that is not killing people. They want that moral high ground and they construct it. And that's kind of what they do by using that mid-level of violence. They want you to overreact because not being extremely violent is how they convince themselves they're better. And it's also great propaganda...."

From "The Conservative Trans Woman Who Went Undercover With Antifa in Portland/Confessions of a black bloc mole" (Reason)(a 10-day-old article I'm just getting around to reading).

Organizers of the Proud Boys rally in Portland said they'd have 20,000 people, the sheriff thought there'd be 1,000 or 2,000, but in reality, there were only 200.

NBC News reports.

The Proud Boys, a group of self-declared Western chauvinists, were denied a permit for the planned gathering due to coronavirus social-distancing concerns, but rallied anyway in what they had said would be a free speech event to support Trump and the police and condemn anti-fascists....

The governor used her emergency powers to give the Oregon State Police superintendent and the local sheriff the power to take charge of public safety in Portland for the weekend, a move that would restore the ability of law enforcement to use tear gas as a crowd-control measure.

The state police superintendent said there would be a “massive influx” of troopers in the city beginning Saturday morning. Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, a Democrat, said on Twitter this week, “Violence has no home in Portland.”

"We are preparing for a mass fatality incident based on what we know and the numbers of structures that have been lost."

Said Andrew Phelps, director of the Oregon Office of Emergency Management, quoted in "A Line of Fire South of Portland and a Yearslong Recovery Ahead/Firefighters continued to battle blazes along the West Coast that have now charred nearly five million acres. At least 17 people are dead, with dozens still missing" (NYT).

Hundreds, if not thousands, of homes have been lost, most of them in Oregon, where an estimated 40,000 people have been evacuated and as many as 500,000 live in evacuation alert zones, poised to flee with a change in the winds. Tens of thousands of people have sought refuge in shelters, with friends and in parking lots up and down Interstate 5 — with emergency responders struggling to create safe shelter for all of them in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. On the outskirts of Portland, a site set up to shelter evacuees had to be evacuated itself as the fire line continued expanding toward suburban towns south of the city. State fire officials said winds had pressed a 36-mile-wide wildfire front toward those outlying Portland suburbs on Thursday, with fire jumping over the community of Estacada and threatening others around the foothills of the Cascade Mountains.... As residents flee fire-ravaged communities, officials have struggled to manage a series of migrations reminiscent of a war zone, with distraught families showing up with little in hand beyond an overwhelming fear that their homes have been lost for good. Emergency responders have only begun to get a sense of how many victims they have and the grueling effort to rebuild that will lie ahead.... On Thursday night, about 2,300 people slept in emergency accommodations provided by the American Red Cross and its partners — 520 of them in traditional mass shelters. Tens of thousands more were crashing with friends or family members. Others were pitching tents in high school football fields or sleeping in shopping mall parking lots — many of them unsure whether they would be displaced for days, or weeks, or more.

A new dimension of Portland woe: "The mayor of Portland declared a state of emergency as fires burned toward the city."

NYT reports.

The wildfire crisis on the West Coast grew to a staggering scale on Friday, as huge fires merged and bore down on towns and suburbs, state leaders pleaded for firefighting help from neighbors, and hundreds of thousands of people were told to evacuate, including about one of every 10 Oregon residents....

“We have never seen this amount of uncontained fire across our state,” said Gov. Kate Brown of Oregon, where the Beachie Creek and Riverside fires threatened to merge near Portland’s suburbs. Mayor Ted Wheeler of Portland declared a state of emergency on Thursday night, and residents of Molalla, about 30 miles to the south, packed highways as they fled from the approaching fires....

Several law enforcement agencies in Oregon said they had been flooded with inquiries about rumors that activists were responsible.

"Honestly, I hate to say it but I see a civil war right around the corner. That shot felt like the beginning of a war."

Said Michael Forest Reinoehl yesterday, quoted in "Suspect in fatal Portland protest shooting killed by feds during arrest attempt" (NY Post).

Reinoehl in the interview insisted he acted in self-defense and “had no choice” when he shot Aaron “Jay” Danielson, 39, after an evening of clashing protests in Portland on Aug. 29....

The ex-military man said he headed out into Portland that night to provide security for Black Lives Matter protesters, who had rallied against a pro-Trump caravan that was making its way through the city.

He did not state why he felt his life was in danger and strayed away from discussing specifics of the shooting. “Well honestly, those are…details that I probably don’t want to get into other than just simply saying I realized what happened,” Reinoehl said when asked about the immediate aftermath of the shooting. “I was confident that I did not hit anyone innocent and I made my exit.”...

Reinoehl..., had often posted about Black Lives Matter and related protests on his social media accounts, where he described himself as “100 % ANTIFA.”... “If you just look at the basic definition of it, it’s just antifascist – and I’m 100 percent antifascist,” he said. “I’m not a member of Antifa. I’m not a member of anything.... I used to really love this country and I respected the flag and everything that it represented,” he added. “But because of all this, every time I see a big truck, especially with the flag on it, I immediately think they’re out to get me.”

We don't yet have details on how Reinoehl died in his encounter with federal agents. The interview is evidence of his paranoia. He imagined a "civil war." There's no civil war, but there does seem to be some kind of national nervous breakdown.

At Wheeler's place.

Antifa rioters set off fireworks at @tedwheeler’s NW Portland condo. They’ve also started a large fire on the street. #PortlandRiots pic.twitter.com/A3KnDvCBCv

— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) September 1, 2020

Using bats, antifa black bloc rioters are smashing up property around @tedwheeler’s Portland condo. There have been no police at all tonight per Wheeler’s directive of “deescalation.” #PortlandRiots #antifa pic.twitter.com/D0RtQtGL6j

— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) September 1, 2020

And there's this from The Oregonian: "Man under investigation in fatal shooting of right-wing demonstrator in Portland was outside mayor’s condo night before with daughter": "Michael Forest Reinoehl, the 48-year-old man under investigation in the fatal shooting Saturday night of a right-wing demonstrator in downtown Portland, attended a Black Lives Matter protest the night before outside the mayor’s home. Reinoehl brought his daughter, who was carrying a baseball bat.... The Friday night protest had the feeling of an evening block party with a DJ and other musicians playing in the street as people danced, while about a dozen demonstrators sat inside the lobby of Wheeler’s residence in the Pearl District, locking arms with a list of demands for the city to address systemic police violence and racism..... Reinoehl calls himself an anti-fascist and wrote in mid-June on his Instagram page, 'I am 100 % ANTIFA all the way! I am willing to fight for my brothers and sisters!'"

The Portland mayor blames Trump for the violence and murder in his town.

Watch: Mayor @tedwheeler blames Portland violence and homicide on the president. pic.twitter.com/U77eifuU2h

— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) August 30, 2020

ADDED: An occasion for Trump to say "Tone down the language":

Tone down the language, but TRUE! https://t.co/CcdNwlLsb3

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 30, 2020

ALSO: "I got white-people shit to do in there!"

The chickens are coming home to roost in Portland as anti-police activists rally at mayor Ted Wheeler’s residence and plan to occupy it until he is forced to quit. pic.twitter.com/6Twy2kERQp

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) August 29, 2020

PLUS: "Some kind of musical gathering":

These are the zombies that are calling for a revolution to move into power in the USA

Imagine these people becoming your government officials someday

I guess there was some kind of musical gathering in front of Ted Wheeler’s condo in Portland tonight

pic.twitter.com/pINXMkDYuZ

— Drew Hernandez (@livesmattershow) August 29, 2020

Can you guess from this NYT headline whether a person of the right shot a person of the left or a person of the left shot a person of the right?

Here's the headline this morning: "Deadly Shooting in Portland After Pro-Trump Ralliers Clash With Protesters/A caravan of supporters of President Trump drove through downtown Portland, which has seen nightly protests against police violence and racial injustice. One person was shot and killed in the conflicts that erupted."

First sentence of the article: "A man was shot and killed Saturday as a large group of supporters of President Trump traveled in a caravan through downtown Portland, Ore., which has seen nightly protests for three consecutive months." No answer yet.

Next 2 paragraphs:

The pro-Trump rally drew hundreds of trucks full of supporters into the city. At times, Trump supporters and counterprotesters clashed on the streets, with people shooting paintball guns from the beds of pickup trucks and protesters throwing objects back at them.

A video that purports to be of the shooting, taken from the far side of the street, showed a small group of people in the road outside what appears to be a parking garage. Gunfire erupts, and a man collapses in the street.

There isn't even a person holding a gun — just "Gunfire erupts." A classic example of portraying violence as if it is a disembodied entity.

Finally, in paragraph 4, we find out about the man:

The man who was shot and killed was wearing a hat with the insignia of Patriot Prayer, a far-right group based in Portland that has clashed with protesters in the past.

ADDED: Via Instapundit, you can hear in this video "Hey! Hey, we got one right here! We got a Trumper right here!" — spoken right before the 2 gunshots:

Listen closely. This was the instant of the murder in Portland.

A: "Hey! Hey, we got one right here! We got a Trumper right here!"
B: "Right here?"
<Two gunshots>pic.twitter.com/UxUGdKZ1tJ

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) August 30, 2020

"As the mob dispersed to watch another fight, the main offender circled back around — kicking the defenseless driver in the face from behind, instantly knocking him out with his head cracking on the road."

"'What the f–k is you talkin’ about n—er!' the attacker — wearing a shirt with 'SECURITY' on the front and back — screamed after the thud of his victim’s head hitting the ground. The victim was then shown bleeding from a large wound in the back of his head as he appeared unconscious throughout another almost 2½-minute clip. The woman was shown sobbing nearby as the mob held her back and appeared to rifle through his truck. 'Black live matter, n—er!' one man continually ranted as other people checked the victim was still alive. Even as he remained unconscious, a woman was heard taunting him, 'Get your b-tch ass up!' Police in riot gear had to assist ambulance crews helping him as they were confronted by 'a hostile crowd,' Portland police said in a release. The victim was taken to a local hospital with serious injuries, police said. 'The incident is under investigation and no arrests have been made,' the force said. It was unclear what sparked the confrontation, but some witnesses tweeted that he had tried to intervene in an altercation between the mob and another person. Police said that 'protesters were chasing the truck before it crashed, and they assaulted the driver after the crash.'"

From "BLM mob beats white man unconscious after making him crash truck: video" (NY Post).

"When you commit arson with an accelerant in an attempt to burn down a building that is occupied by people who you have intentionally trapped inside..."

"... you are not demonstrating, you are attempting to commit murder. I believe that city staff could have died last night. I cannot and I will not tolerate that.... Don’t think for a moment that if you are participating in this activity, you are not being a prop for the re-election campaign of Donald Trump — because you absolutely are. If you don’t want to be part of that, then don’t show up."

Said Ted Wheeler, quoted in "Portland mayor rips into rioters for ‘attempting to commit murder" (NY Post).

"The deputy director of the Department of Homeland Security says federal officers in Portland suffered 113 eye injuries while guarding a courthouse from activists armed with powerful lasers."

"The usually green beams produce uncomfortable heat, unlike common small red pointers, Ken Cuccinelli said Tuesday at a Senate subcommittee hearing on the clashes in Oregon. 'We’ve had a number of officers who have days-long blindness. So far they’ve all kind of come back, if you will,' Cuccinelli said. 'But you also get what’s called flash blindness. Think of it as the old Kodak cameras where you get that blue spot and you can’t quite see your entire field of vision for a period.'... Although Cuccinelli said all officers recovered their sight, he said activists appear to be aiming to maximize damage.... Cuccinelli said lasers create problems for officers, who cannot look toward the beams to identify suspects.... Cuccinelli said some protesters are indeed peaceful, but others aren’t. 'This is sort of the Portland formula: there’s peaceful protesting until 10 or 11 o’clock, and then they go away. And maybe some of them come back, but the group that comes back is A.) much bigger, but also they come back for violence,' Cuccinelli said."

The New York Post reports.

"I’ve been on the front lines of the protests here, searching for the 'radical-left anarchists' who President Trump says are on Portland streets each evening."

"I thought I’d found one: a man who for weeks leapt into the fray and has been shot four times with impact munitions yet keeps coming back. I figured he must be a crazed anarchist. But no, he turned out to be Dr. Bryan Wolf, a radiologist who wears his white doctor’s jacket and carries a sign with a red cross and the words 'humanitarian aid.' He pleads with federal forces not to shoot or gas protesters.... Maybe the rioting anarchists were in front of the crowd, where there are discussions about Black Lives Matter? I found musicians and activists and technicians, who were projecting a huge sign on the wall of a nearby building — 'Fed Goons Out of PDX' — that seemed a bit geeky for anarchists.... Sure there are anarchists and antifa activists in the Portland protests, just as there are radiologists and electricians, lawyers and mechanics. Report on the ground here and any single narrative feels too simplistic. The protesters aren’t all peaceful, nor are they primarily violent. They’re a complicated weave, differing by time of day....  [W]hile there’s violence from both sides, what I’ve seen firsthand is that the most violent behavior overwhelmingly comes from the federal agents, and indeed the most serious injuries have been suffered by protesters."

Writes Nicholas Kristof in "Help Me Find Trump’s ‘Anarchists’ in Portland/The president has his politically driven narrative. And then there’s reality" (NYT).

“In the wake of George Floyd’s death, violent rioters and anarchists have hijacked legitimate protests to wreak senseless havoc and destruction on innocent victims.“

“The current situation in Portland is a telling example. Every night for the past two months, a mob of hundreds of rioters has laid siege to the federal courthouse and other nearby federal property. The rioters arrive equipped for a fight, armed with powerful slingshots, tasers, sledgehammers, saws, knives, rifles, and explosive devices. Inside the courthouse are a relatively small number of federal law enforcement personnel charged with a defensive mission: to protect the courthouse, home to Article III federal judges, from being overrun and destroyed.