"Protesters in Berkeley aren’t sure why they are protesting"

Via Instapundit:  I wasn’t really familiar with Arthur Fletcher, who goes by the name Fleccas on You Tube, until I saw this video he made in Berkeley this week. Fletcher’s approach is pretty simple. He has a microphone and a small digital recorder (taped to a wooden spoon as a handle) and he walks around and talks to protesters. What he finds, surprisingly often, is that protesters who are very agitated don’t have a firm grasp on why they are so upset. Most people have a line of argument that is about an inch deep. Asked one question about details or presented with contrary information, they seem stunned. Some just slink away from the microphone with nothing else to say."

So the setup for this clip is that Fletcher is in Berkeley where people turned up to protest despite the fact that “Free Speech Week” was canceled. The highlight here is when Fletcher approaches a throng of white protesters chanting “Nazi scum” at someone. He asks who the crowd is directing the chant toward and no one answers. The target turns out to be a Trump supporter of Indian descent. “Are you a Nazi?” Fletcher asks. “No, I’m not,” the man replies, bewildered. He adds that he has also been labeled a “white supremacist” apparently because of his Trump hat.

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Pepper Balls

A Phoenix protester brought everything he thought he might need to survive the uprising -- except for...

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Kudos to police marksmanship!

Next time wear a cup!

Meaningful

I'm old enough to remember when football players kneeling on the sidelines made people upset. pic.twitter.com/9b5waLxkR3

— neontaster (@neontaster) September 9, 2016

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"Colin Kaepernick: I'm not anti-American, will donate $1 million"

"After hearing loud and sustained boos directed at him during the San Francisco 49ers’ preseason game against the San Diego Chargers on Thursday night, Colin Kaepernick called the crowd’s negative reaction a “misunderstanding.”"

Kaepernick, the 49ers quarterback, said the reason he refuses to stand for the national anthem has been distorted. He also said he will donate $1 million to groups that help people affected by the issues he is trying to spotlight — such as racial inequality and police brutality — with his continued protest.

“The media painted this as I’m anti-American, anti-men-and-women of the military and that’s not the case at all,’’ Kaepernick said after playing the first half of the 49ers’ 31-21 victory over the Chargers. “I realize that men and women of the military go out and sacrifice their lives and put themselves in harm’s way for my freedom of speech and my freedoms in this country and my freedom to take a seat or take a knee so I have the utmost respect for them.

“I think what I did was taken out of context and spun a different way.’’

After the game...

Abdisahman Bool of San Diego squeezed his way to the front of the pack, close enough to tell Kaepernick, “You’re the voice for all of us.’’

Yet moments later, as a 49ers team official pulled Kaepernick away from the fans and into the tunnel, a man snidely insinuated Thursday night’s game would be Kaepernick’s last. He suggested the 49ers will cut Kaepernick and free up the quarterback to focus all his attention on drawing attention to himself.

Kaepernick frowned.

“It’s not for me,’’ he said before ducking into the tunnel and heading to the locker room.

Should this protest continue and perhaps even grow, will the NFL consider dropping the anthem all together?

NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick explains why he sat during national anthem

"I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color," Kaepernick told NFL Media in an exclusive interview after the game. "To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder."

The 49ers issued a statement about Kaepernick's decision: "The national anthem is and always will be a special part of the pre-game ceremony. It is an opportunity to honor our country and reflect on the great liberties we are afforded as its citizens. In respecting such American principles as freedom of religion and freedom of expression, we recognize the right of an individual to choose and participate, or not, in our celebration of the national anthem."

Is he using protest to deflect from his performance on the field? A way of possibly coercing his team into not releasing him, perhaps? Me thinks thou are insincere.

A Kaepernick Instagram

"Communist group members go to Milwaukee to help 'revolution'"

AP: A Chicago-based communist revolutionary group blamed by Milwaukee's police chief for stoking a second day of violence said that some of its members did go there to "support a revolution" but didn't set out to cause trouble.

"The (communist group) showed up, and actually they're the ones who started to cause problems," (Police chief) Flynn said at a news conference Monday...

That group released a statement later Monday referring to the protests as a "righteous rebellion." Reached by phone, party co-founder Carl Dix said he wasn't in Milwaukee but confirmed several party supporters from Chicago traveled the 90 miles north to protest against police, who he blamed for both Smith's death and the subsequent violent protests. It is not clear how many of the group went to Milwaukee.

"This system sees police wantonly murdering people as part of the normal order of things," Dix said. But he added that people take issue with protests in response to those killings. His group advocates dismantling the police.

More...

CURFEW: CALMER NIGHT FOLLOWS UNREST...

BURN DOWN 'THEIR' SUBURBS!
Reporter Flees: Too Hostile For Whites...

Walker blames Clinton for 'inflaming situation'...

Finally, a protest I can get behind

Via Imgur.com

Bernie supporters claim responsibility for disrupting a Trump Chicago rally.

"I’m an Oregon rancher"

"Here’s what you don’t understand about the Bundy standoff. The Obama administration has pushed our livelihood to the brink." (excerpts)

Most days, I’m up before the sun rises. I spend my mornings tending to my horses, dogs and livestock. In the winter, when it’s bitter cold, I’m outside with my cattle, making sure their water isn’t frozen and that they’re properly fed. In the summer, I often work 15-hour days, cultivating my crops and tending to the animals. In the afternoons, I’m in my office, reaching out to customers and handling the ranch’s business side. Over the course of a given day, I act as a vet, a mechanic, an agronomist and accountant.

I love the work, but it’s grueling. As a rancher, I’m always one bad year away from financial disaster. Every purchase I make — from new cows ($2,000 each) to a new piece of equipment worth hundreds of thousands of dollars — is a major investment. And my ranch operates on very slim margins, so I have to be savvy to make ends meet.

Money isn’t the only challenge. Raising cattle requires a lot of land, much more than most ranchers can afford to own outright. I lease about a third of the space I use from private owners. But most ranchers aren’t so lucky. The federal government controls a huge amount of land in the west (more than 50 percent in some states, like Oregon), and many ranchers must lease that space to create a sustainable operation.

Utilizing federal land requires ranchers to follow an unfair, complicated and constantly evolving set of rules. For example, a federal government agency might decide that it wants to limit the number of days a rancher can graze their cattle to protect a certain endangered plant or animal species, or they might unilaterally decide that ranchers can’t use as much water as they need because of a fight over water rights. Or they might take over land that once belonged to the state or private individuals, imposing an entirely new set of restrictions.

I saw this play out firsthand when the federal government considered listing the sage grouse, a chicken-like bird, as endangered. That regulation would have shrunk the amount of land where ranchers could graze cattle, putting many out of business and decimating the industry. To avoid this, ranchers like myself and local officials spent months meeting with federal officials looking for compromise. We ultimately found middle ground. But we already have an enormous workload in our daily lives. The pressure of having to drop everything to lobby against a rule (which happens more often than you’d think) is a tremendous burden.

Most of the time, those regulations are written by people with no agriculture experience, and little understanding of what it takes to produce our nation’s food.

Ranching is a billion-dollar industry in Oregon. Overall, agriculture accounts for 15 percent of the state’s economic activity and 12 percent of the state’s employment. The income of a local farm generates double the money for the local economy as a supermarket’s income in the same area, according to the London-based New Economics Foundation.

The siege on our industry has only increased under the Obama administration. Officials are effectively regulating us out of business by enforcing a string of unprecedented environmental restrictions. In Malhuer county (next to Harney county, where the current standoff is taking place), the Obama administration is considering a measure that will turn 2.5 million acres of federal land into a “national monument,” a move that would severely restrict grazing. These restrictions would cause a huge economic downturn for those communities.

These decisions are being made by people who are four to five generations removed from food production. The rule-makers don’t quite understand our industry, and are being spurred on by extreme environmentalist groups asking for unreasonable policy changes.

"In Oregon, frustration over federal land rights has been building for years"

Washington Post: The federal government owns more than half the land in the state, as it does across much of the West. It used to be routine for ranchers to get permits to graze cattle or cut timber or work mines — a way to make a living from the land.

Then came increasing environmental regulations, and the federal land became more for owls and sage grouse than for local people trying to feed their families, said Soper, 39, who lives 100 miles up the road in Bend.

“What people in Western states are dealing with is the destruction of their way of life,” said Soper, a father of four who was once a professional rodeo rider. “When frustration builds up, people lash out.”

Anger at the federal government boiled over this past weekend, when a small group of people took over a remote federal wildlife refuge east of here. Their specific aim was to support two local ranchers sentenced to prison over arson charges. But the larger issue is a decades-long struggle over federal land rights in the West that often flies under the radar in much of the country.

“A little girl is dead” – Frustrated mom’s #BlackLivesMatter Facebook rant goes viral

"An African-American mother in St. Louis posted an epic rant on Facebook over more protesting in the city after a young black man was shot and killed Wednesday when he pointed a stolen gun at police."

Noting the death of a 9-year-old girl who was killed by an unknown assailant the day before while doing homework on her mother’s bed, Peggy Hubbard expressed her frustration over #BlackLivesMatter protesters standing up for “the thug” while ignoring innocent victims.

“Last night, who do you think they protested for?” Hubbard asked. “The thug, the criminal, because they’re howling ‘police brutality.’ Are you kidding me? Police brutality? How about black brutality?”

Link to video

The Ferguson bargain

"The largely peaceful protests began Sunday morning with a silent march, but by night they had been overtaken by what appeared to be random violence and opportunistic looting. The man shot by police, Tyrone Harris Jr., had been with two friends who were trying to sell a looted flat-screen television, according to his girlfriend and relatives. They said an argument with a buyer over the TV’s price escalated into a gunfight, during which police said Harris opened fire on a carload of undercover officers."

Harris, 18, remained in critical condition Monday. Police charged him with 10 counts of assaulting law enforcement, shooting at a motor vehicle and armed criminal action...

St. Louis Alderman Antonio French, who was just a few feet away when the night’s first round of gunfire broke out, said he ran toward the office of a nonprofit group he founded called Heal STL. There he saw a young man who looked equally horrified by the shooting, so French invited him in.

Moments later, as French turned his back, the boy dashed out the door with six of the nonprofit’s iPads, a laptop and a camera bag.

“For a small group of people, the anniversary of Michael Brown’s death might as well have been Looting Day,” French said.

What did the mayor of Baltimore mean by "space to destroy"?

 

Is this a new riot handling doctrine?

What's wrong with this picture?

This woman is writing a number on kids' arms that she told them they can call in case they get arrested #FreddieGray pic.twitter.com/tqXrx6gfb3
— Kevin Rector (@RectorSun) April 25, 2015

More "Black Brunch" attacks, this time in Atlanta

Yesssss!!!! “@AUCShutItDown: White man says were scaring her children. Ours are scared too. #BlackBrunchATL pic.twitter.com/tf1m2vUISK”"
— Traelyn Miller (@YouLoveTrae) March 29, 2015

"Hong Kong leader tells people to act like ‘sheep’"

“Last year was no easy ride for Hong Kong. Our society was rife with differences and conflicts,” the chief executive of the former British colony said.

“In the coming year, I hope that all people in Hong Kong will take inspiration from the sheep's character and pull together in an accommodating manner to work for Hong Kong's future.”



Sheep and goats get their vaccination

"It's Too Cold To Protest Global Warming At Yale"

"Yale anti-fossil fuel campaigners have indefinitely postponed a protest that was set for this weekend due to “unfavorable weather conditions and other logistical issues.”"

"Fossil Free Yale, a group pushing the university to divest itself from fossil fuels, told the Yale Daily News that frigid, snowy weather set for this weekend will mean their global warming protest will have to be postponed."

Protesters in NYC target small business with "#BlackBrunchNYC"

Berkley train protest

Riverside County Supervisor Jeff Stone: "lack of political will to protect our borders"

"At a raucous town hall meeting in Murrieta Wednesday night, city officials had a message for residents who a day earlier successfully blocked immigrant detainees from entering a local Border Patrol processing facility: Blame the federal government."

At the meeting, during which roughly 750 area residents peppered local representatives and law enforcement personnel with their concerns over plans to move detained immigrants through the facility, Murrieta Mayor Alan Long reiterated the need for the federal government to do more to address the influx of undocumented immigrants.

Citizens, he said, should direct their complaints not to local representatives but rather to Congress and the White House, which is using “frightened women and children” to score political points in the immigration debate.

A sharp increase in immigration on the Rio Grande border -- 77% from countries other than Mexico so far in 2014 -- has overwhelmed Border Patrol facilities in Texas, leading facilities in other areas such as Southern California to take up the overflow, according to Paul Beeson, chief patrol agent with the Border Patrol’s San Diego division. (read more)