53percenter's Blog

Vox is confused by the actions of Antifa this weekend. The site was all over the Unite the Right 2 rally and one piece, in particular, concludes Antifa seem to be behaving rather badly, even by their own low standards. Naturally, this comes as a bit of a shock:

Sunday’s counterprotests against the white nationalist “Unite the Right 2” rally in Washington, DC, were largely peaceful. Thousands of people held multiple rallies across the city to celebrate diversity and push back against the hateful views the white nationalists espouse.

But a few left-wing “antifa” (short for “anti-fascist”) counterprotesters did engage in violence, throwing eggs and water bottles and shooting fireworks at police officers and some journalists who were covering the demonstrations.

The story highlights some of the Antifa violence in Charlottesville and in Washington, DC, which Jazz covered already. Vox does point out that Antifa has been violent before, including last August in Berkeley, but that violence was justified at the time (by Antifa) as necessary to de-platform white nationalists and prevent their message from spreading.

But as Vox itself reports, the Unite the Right 2 rally was a “pathetic failure.” No one showed up and the handful who did left early. Antifa could have packed it in and gone home too but instead, they went after an alternative target: the police. This turn is confusing to Vox:

This weekend in Charlottesville and DC, though, it wasn’t neo-Nazis and white supremacists the antifa attacked. It was police who were there to help keep the peace among all the demonstrators and journalists who were there to cover the events.

How that factors into antifa’s ideology is anyone’s guess.

It’s a mystery!

Let me see if I can offer a little help here. Antifa are pro-violence and wear masks to avoid being identified by police. So, yes, they don’t care for the police in general.

But it goes beyond that. The far left in this country hates the police and always has. Six years ago when Occupy Wall Street was a thing, one of the most consistent features of the protests was the constant antipathy for cops. Here’s a reminder from Portland:

Remember this from Ferguson protests a few years ago?

Remember this Black Lives Matter chant:

How about this one from 2014?

I’m not even scratching the surface here. “Hands up, don’t shoot” was based on the idea that Mike Brown was surrendering when he was murdered by a white police officer. Chants like “Pigs in a blanket…” and “Cops and Klan go hand in hand” have been used at plenty of other far left marches and rallies.

Last month I wrote about Occupy ICE protesters in Portland who got angry when federal cops stepped in to clear out part of their protest. The far left protesters started directing streams of racist abuse at the black officers on the scene. Just last week, Antifa went after Candace Owens and when police stepped in, the mob started berating them instead.

The real question is this: Why is this remotely a surprise to Vox? Of course the far left hates the police. That should be obvious to anyone paying attention. The far left has a long history, going back to the 1960s, of thinking its moral superiority puts it above the law. Since police don’t usually buy into that, they become the enemy as traitors to the cause. This is nothing new but it’s nice to see that Vox is finally catching on.

In what is believed to be one of the most damning text exchange between the FBI lovebirds was a discussion about an “insurance policy” to keep Trump out of office.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has some very big fans, but few if any are quite as fanatical as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez herself.

The newly minted nominee for New York’s 14th Congressional District managed to defeat a powerful incumbent, strike an important blow for democratic socialism and the proletariat, and turned “I am not the expert on geopolitics on this issue” into an acceptable answer for her frequent talk of the “occupation of Palestine.”

If you’re a liberal visiting us because you want to induce a blood pressure spike or something, you probably think that we’re absolutely green with envy that a 28-year-old nominee is getting more attention than almost any GOP House candidate.

To which I respond: Are you kidding?

Ocasio-Cortez has been the feel-good comedy of the summer. It’s sort of like watching a Pauly Shore flick except one where Shore thinks he’s the most brilliant comedian since Richard Pryor. You can’t make up something that good.

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It’s been a hilarious, gaffe-prone OTT mistake-fest on par with “Road House.” Almost anyone with a humorous molecule in their body can’t help but laugh.

Well, except for Kaniela Ing.

For all I know, Ing is a fellow with a goodly dollop of humor added to his constitution. He’s a state rep and democratic socialist who was vying for the seat in Hawaii’s 1st District this fall.

Ocasio-Cortez, of course, has been big about lending a helping hand to democratic socialist candidates across the fruited plain, including outside of the contiguous United States. With Hawaii’s primaries fast approaching, she visited our nation’s 50th state Thursday to give a boost to Ing.

One problem — she forgot to introduce him.

Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks, walks off stage in Hawaii, forgetting to introduce endorsee Kaniela Ing — at his own rally.pic.twitter.com/l1KWJYBC2t

— Ryan Saavedra 🇺🇸 (@RealSaavedra) August 12, 2018

As you can see, she was so wrapped up in her own address that she didn’t even introduce the man who she was supposedly there for. To paraphrase the inimitable Terrell Owens, she loves her some her. The entire world revolves around her campaign — including someone else’s campaign.

Twitter users, as always, had fun with it:

Not even September yet she has completed volume 2 of her mini series “I’m an idiot the complete bloopers and stumbles” 😂

— Tony Joe (@Hesaiddat) August 12, 2018

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She was distracted by the catcalls.🙄

— Jak Addison (@JakAddison) August 12, 2018

The catcalls, for those of you who missed the news cycle last week, involved her decision to call an invitation to debate with Ben Shapiro a “catcall.” Shapiro quickly found a post showing her demanding a debate with Rep. Joe Crowley.

Her Hawaiian walk-off may not be quite as bad as her quote about flipping Kansas red or literally anything out of her disastrous PBS interview with Margaret Hoover, but it certainly doesn’t look good. As for Ing, meanwhile, he finished a distant fourth in Saturday’s primary with 6.3 percent of the vote, losing to Ed Case with 40 percent.

Ocasio-Cortez strikes again. As for myself, I don’t see any way this could possibly get funnier — unless, of course, Pauly Shore is a democratic socialist.

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For those of you blaming the Trump administration for the mess down in Puerto Rico in the 11 months since Hurricane Maria made landfall on the island and caused unspeakable havoc, 10 trailers full of supplies would like to have a word with you.

“Donated food sent to Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria were left to rot in a parking lot of a government facility,” CBS News correspondent David Begnaud reported on Friday.

“Additionally, about 10 containers filled with non-perishable supplies sat at the government facility for 11 months.

“Video of supplies covered in rodent droppings was first posted by a Puerto Rican radio station Radio Isla on Thursday. When Begnaud visited, the trailers with the containers were locked Friday.”

The video seemed to highlight some of the issues surrounding the government inefficiency in Puerto Rico during the hurricane relief effort, although officials swore that wasn’t the case. If the CBS report is correct, and the supplies have been sitting unused for 11 months, that means the unused material has been there since virtually the hurricane passed.

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“Nicolás Gautier, an official at the facility, told CBS News one of of the containers had ‘food for dogs, and apparently several of the boxes were broken. After the placement in the van, that brings a lot of rats and it infected everything,’” CBS reported.

“The goods were at Puerto Rico’s elections commission, which has been serving as a collection site for donations.”

The discovery of the trucks opened old wounds for residents of the island territory, where a fierce battle raged between local politicians, who blamed Washington (and very specifically President Donald Trump), and Washington officials who blamed a Puerto Rican political infrastructure long past repair, where boxes of supplies sat rotting in warehouses while public officials preened for the cameras.

Yes. Because Trump is a racist, he literally FORCED the Puerto Rican government to leave food rotting in warehouses for eleven months.

Honestly. You people are clowns. https://t.co/NoZIgt44EV

— Ian McKelvey (@ian_mckelvey) August 11, 2018

In case you were still wondering which side “won” this sordid dispute, consider San Juan Mayor Yulín Cruz, who earned the briefest 15 minutes of fame I’ve ever witnessed with her anti-Trump diatribes.

Fast-forward to this summer and several high-ranking officials from Ms. Cruz’s party — the Popular Democratic Party, a Puerto Rican party linked to the Democrats — are facing charges of siphoning off millions in federal funds for their own personal use. But the fact that Puerto Rico remains ravaged is still Trump’s fault.

The real losers in this, sadly, are the Puerto Rican people.

It would be profoundly unkind to say that these are voters who got the government they deserved.

No one deserves this — not even followers of Yulín Cruz, who famously stated that “what is really nasty is that anyone would turn their back on the Puerto Rican people,” and said (with a straight face) that her people “are dying, and you (Trump) are killing us with the inefficiency and the bureaucracy.”

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Those trailers full of supplies are waiting, Mayor Cruz. They tell a story of greed, incompetence and ego that likely cost lives.

The truck may not be able to hear your answer, but your city and your island will.

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Gallup reported Monday morning that “Democrats have a more positive image of socialism than they do of capitalism” for the first time since the company began polling that question over the past decade.

The major shift, Gallup says, has been that Democrats have lost faith in capitalism — even as the economy has exceeded 4.1% growth and unemployment has hit all-time lows:

Attitudes toward socialism among Democrats have not changed materially since 2010, with 57% today having a positive view. The major change among Democrats has been a less upbeat attitude toward capitalism, dropping to 47% positive this year — lower than in any of the three previous measures. Republicans remain much more positive about capitalism [71%] than about socialism [16%], with little sustained change in their views of either since 2010.

The poll mentions Democratic congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has become a national figure since defeating incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley in a primary race in New York while running as an unabashed “democratic socialist.”

Gallup notes that there has been “12-point decline in young adults’ positive views of capitalism in just the past two years and a marked shift since 2010, when 68% viewed it positively.” That result comes in spite of growing opportunity for young people in the growing economy.

It would appear that Democrats, and young people, may have a view on capitalism that is not driven by economic reality but by politics and aesthetics.

A Reason-Rupe poll in 2014 found that two-thirds of millennials distrusted government — but that a similar proportion also wanted government to provide more necessities like health care.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.