untethered

Ted Wheeler’s mad as hell and he’s not going to take this any more. The Daily Mail:

Portland‘s mayor turned on a left-wing activist who hijacked a council meeting to air her own views, telling her in exasperation: ‘Nobody really cares what you think.’

Ted Wheeler, a 60-year-old Democrat who took over the famously liberal city in 2017, was chairing a council meeting on March 1 when Keeley Higgins took the floor – and the two engaged in a terse verbal back-and-forth. 

Higgins started her ill-timed rant by saying: ‘Ted, I believe the last time I saw you in this kind of setting was when I gave testimony demanding that you end the use of poisonous gas on humans in this city.’

https://t.co/VmKuE4EAxc

— Dennis Dale (@eladsinned) March 15, 2023

It’s been a long hard road for the heir of a lumber fortune and former state treasurer. He appears to be a progressive technocrat who thought it would be fun to run one of the most progressive cities in the nation in a time of increasing tax revenue. He took office in 2016. By early 2018, after having been introduced to the regular commandeering of city hall by protesters and other features of Portland politics, he was caught in public saying he “couldn’t wait” for his term to end.

Nonetheless he weathered Covid and the riots to become the first Portland mayor to win reelection since 2000, when a spoiler in the race allowed him to beat radical Sara Iannaronne, who had promised to turn the police bureau over to police abolitionist leader Jo Ann Hardesty.

Iannarone supporters launched a recall effort against Wheeler in 2021 that failed to muster the necessary signatures, identifying him with the hated police and their “excessive” response to rioters. Later they sought an extension in court, citing Covid.

The Hail Mary maneuver came hours after the campaign disclosed Monday that it had collected only 40% of the signatures it needs by Wednesday to place a recall of Wheeler on the ballot.

Late last month, an elections official in the Portland City Auditor’s Office, Louise Hansen, denied a request by the recall campaign for a 90-day deadline extension. The campaign’s lawsuit names Hansen and City Auditor Mary Hull Caballero as defendants.

Not all recall attempts or other signature-gathering drives have struggled to gain traction during the COVID-19 pandemic. Oregon City residents upset with their city’s mayor easily gathered more signatures than needed last summer to put a recall on the fall ballot, and voters ousted former Mayor Dan Holladay from office.

Wheeler’s capitulation in 2020 to rioters under the BLM banner, his abandonment of the police, even his ritual humiliation and tear-gassing did nothing to endear him to the radical left and this surrender looks like alliance to average Portlanders. Wheeler, as a progressive liberal, is adjacent to the radical left, and, with the special disdain the radical left has always held for liberals, there be dragons. Big, ugly rainbow-attired, gender-fluid dragons.

The recall effort only collected about 20, 000 votes despite Wheeler’s broad unpopularity; it’s hard to imagine an effort coming from the other side, one seeking to recall him for losing the city to antifa and Jo Ann Hardesty, doing worse.

Now the man who said he couldn’t wait for his time to end says his time has come.

Seven years ago, Ted Wheeler ran to become mayor of Portland and led with one audacious pledge: He would eliminate unsheltered homelessness in Oregon’s largest city by the end of 2018.

He utterly failed to deliver, however, and today an estimated 3,000 individuals reside in hundreds of encampments all around the city.

The pandemic not only magnified the misery of those living on the streets but also hollowed out the city’s once-vibrant downtown. Last year, Portland experienced record homicides, a slaughter more than twice the per-capita level as Seattle.

Yet Wheeler remains bullish, not only on Portland’s prospects but also on his own leadership capabilities.

“I actually believe that I was made for this moment,” he told The Oregonian/OregonLive.

We’ve only just begun…

A new gay disease has arrived via a “drug-resistant strain” of a bacteria that is spread through the ingestion of fecal matter, and newsreader gals are giggling when explaining rimming and other current gay-to-straight fads to le bourgeois. The white lady is courting trouble here calling the practice “very gross.” Yo, Karen, love is love.

The “Shigella” virus, discovered in Japan in 1899, calls to mind the Monkey Pox virus that a tourist brought back to the UK from Nigeria in May of 2022 setting up a June “Pride Month” of gay super spreader (unfortunate phrase here) events. Despite having condemed public gatherings in the service of Covid hysteria, not a peep could be heard in the national media suggesting gay men maybe take it easy just this one summer.

Needless to say there’s even less of a hint that gay men should responsibly consider the broader straight world and what their exotic practices might unleash upon it. But we are living in the post-AIDS world and that doesn’t mean–as it once did to quietly hopeful boomer liberals–that we became more conservative about sexual relations, but rather that we must approve of any and all homosexual behavior, epidemiological and moral consequences be damned, lest gays be compelled to keep it in their pants once in a while.

Dishonest AIDS propaganda beginning in the eighties telling people “everyone” was at risk preempted any discussion of responsibility, as intended. Though we’ve long known it’s virtually impossible to get AIDS from heterosexual practice, the residual impression remains among the ill-informed mass that one heterosexual coupling with an infected partner is a death sentence.

Michael Fumento wrote in 1987:

The reason AIDS is not “exploding” is that, contrary to public belief, it is a disease that is extraordinarily difficult to transmit or contract, even by the standards of other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Whereas mere juxtaposition of genitalia is enough to transmit syphilis, gonorrhea, herpes simplex II, and chlamydia, all of which require only direct contact with the mucous membrane, HIV (like hepatitis B) is bloodborne, the most inefficient mode of transmission an STD can enjoy. A sore, even an undetectably small one such as often accompanies herpes, might offer a passageway for these viruses, but some sort of passageway is needed and in the case of most Americans such passageways do not exist…

The reason anal as opposed to vaginal sex is so dangerous has to do with the difference in tissue construction between the male urethra and rectum and the female vagina. While the vagina is constructed of tough platelike cells that resist rupture and infectious agents, and are designed to withstand the motions of intercourse and childbirth, the urethra and rectum are constructed primarily of columnar cells which tear or rupture easily. This allows semen to enter the more readily accessible blood vessels of the rectum or, conversely but much more rarely, allows blood from a ruptured rectum to seep into the urethra of the active partner. (The April 1987 AJPH study found that men who reported rectal bleeding were far more likely to become HIV-positive than those who did not.)

Heterosexual transmission of AIDS turned out to be a deliberate lie, necessitated by the need to obscure the inherently unhealthy nature of anal sex and gay promiscuity.

Discussing the sexual transmission of AIDS without mentioning homosexual behavior in general and anal sex in particular is like discussing syphilis without mentioning intercourse. But this is precisely what the media and other responsible authorities do. Most articles and wire-service stories on AIDS do not so much as mention the words anal sex, much less indicate that it is the overwhelming risk factor. Similarly, one AIDS book designed for use by elementary-school students refers to heterosexual sex while making no reference to homosexuality, and one sex-education text formerly distributed in Seattle took the final step by stating that “AIDS is not a sexually transmitted disease.”

The untold story of AIDS is how it acts as the gay holocaust. What was the worst public relations problem in history was turned into a triumph, replete with religious mythology and quasi-Christian suffering, placing gays at their present spot atop the hierarchy of grievance which lords over us.

Should we be surprised? They had all the talent for just this sort of thing. AIDS was when all that gay genius that had been making cinema for straights started telling its own story. And it’s killing us.

Robert Kennedy Jr’s book The Real Anthony Fauci contains a remarkable chapter alleging the AIDS virus as we understand it is a hoax. There’s not time (or expertise) here to go into that, but Kennedy’s account of Anthony Fauci losing his battle with gay activists and adopting their propaganda-centric approach, scaring the straights into thinking they were at equal risk–to keep the blame off the gays and to keep the money for treatment coming in–is notable here.

Randy Shilts, who has rationalized the spread of the heterosexual-AIDS myth, is also frank to concede the irresponsibility of this approach: “ In two or three years heterosexuals are going to wake up and see that they’re not getting the disease. Then what?” Then what, indeed?

He need not have worried. We learned a lot of things from AIDS. One is that there is no accountability, for some people. Here’s Shilts quoting Fauci spreading the misconception that casual contact could transmit the blood-borne AIDS virus:

“The finding of AIDS in infants and children who are household contacts of patients with AIDS or persons with risks for AIDS has enormous implications with regard to ultimate transmissibility of this syndrome,” Fauci says. “If routine close contact can spread the disease, AIDS takes on an entirely new dimension,” he adds.”

Shilts eventually became a hero for his book And the Band Played On (and then dying of AIDS) but he was reviled by activists during his life for advocating for things like shutting down San Francisco’s gay bathhouses and for speaking honestly about the nature of gay promiscuity.

Another remarkable feature of the AIDS (cultural) debacle is that straights were exposed to the hyper-sexuality of gay culture, just as it introduced a harrowing disease we all (supposedly) had to fear, and the eventual effect was not condemnation but normalization of that culture.

The trouble was that, by definition, you had a gay male subculture in which there was nothing to moderate the utterly male values that were being adulated more religiously than any macho heterosexual could imagine…Promiscuity was rampant because in an all-male subculture there was nobody to say ‘no’ – no moderating role like that a woman plays in the heterosexual milieu. Some heterosexual males privately confided that they were enthralled with the idea of the immediate, available, even anonymous, sex a bathhouse offered, if they could only find women who would agree. Gay men, of course, agreed, quite frequently.

Fauci gave in to the gays’ demands to keep the bathhouses open and the orgy going, in the same way he gave in to demands to push masks and other Covid measures he knew to be ineffective or worse. If you want to know who rules over you, take a look at–no, don’t look. It’s very gross.

Feds’ antifa fantasy league.

This article is paywalled, but the left is out to make hay over the feds even thinking about compiling dossiers on antifa rioters during the national George Floyd riots of 2020:

Homeland Security’s top leaders initially wanted federal agents to compile intelligence reports — dubbed “baseball cards” — on “everyone participating” in Portland’s racial justice protests in 2020, according to new information made public Thursday.

That would be Trump’s DHS, which was aroused in Portland when antifa turned their attention from the downtown police station they had been besieging all summer to the federal courthouse next door, in the process reinvigorating their campaign which had lapsed into low-level nightly mayhem in the occupied park blocks across from both buildings.

With Trump’s executive order of June 26 sending federal law enforcement to rioting cities to protect “monuments, memorials and statues” state and city politicians, including the embattled Ted Wheeler, joined with antifa in denouncing their presence and tactics. Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum filed suit to prohibit the feds from making arrests in the city after antifa complained feds wearing generic “police” patches were “kidnapping” people in unmarked vans before questioning and releasing them. The suit was denied.

It wasn’t as if antifa had been ignoring the federal courthouse up until that point and had already broken in and set small fires early on, prompting the barricading of the building which remains to this day (when they tried reopening it in March of 2021 it was attacked by antifa within hours; one news story claimed the barricades were on trucks headed for Washington DC and the January 6 insurrectionist peril, only to be called back).

Antifa upped the ante in late July when they started trying to set the building on fire with people barricaded inside. A no-man’s land developed between the tall chain link and concrete barriers and the boarded-up building where federal cops would occasionally emerge to put out the fires antifa set there to draw them out.

Federal presence included the Federal Protective Service tasked with protecting federal building, who could be seen about town in their marked cars, a tactical unit form Immigration and Customs Enforcment (ICE), US Marshals, and the Border Patrol’s Tactical Unit (BORTAC), last seen neutralizing the Uvalde school shooter.

Antifa’s curious silence shortly after Biden’s inauguration and their alliance with many of his federal law enforcement initiatives targeting “white supremacy” means it’s a very different environment now.

Walmart abandons Portland

PORTLAND, Ore. (NewsNation) — Walmart is pulling completely out of Oregon’s largest city.

The final two Walmart locations in Portland are set to close at the end of March, at least partly due to crime.

According to a Walmart spokesperson, the stores, which will close March 24, weren’t meeting financial expectations but the decision to close both were based on “several factors.”

The city has been struggling with a relentless wave of shoplifting that the corporate giant says is hammering revenues.

Formerly the loneliest professor at PSU, libertarian woke-raker Peter Bogohsian, is following the retailer out of town. Whether in search of bargains or just tired, like Walmart, of the abuse, I don’t know.

Rando Crazy or antifa or does it matter?

A man who worked in a supermarket in Portland has been arrested in connection with a series of knife attacks on women and was connected to antifa by Andy Ngo, who cited putative ties to a legal defense outfit called Civil Liberties Defense Center, or just another random psycho espousing antifa views, if it makes a difference:

CORRECTION, Feb. 21, 2023: An earlier version of this story referenced a report that the suspect, Christopher Luchini, was linked to the Civil Liberties Defense Center and also reported that the suspect was linked to antifa. While the suspect does appear to support leftist ideas (link here), and while CLDC appears to openly support the “anti-fascist” movement (links here, here and here), it is unknown whether Luchini and CLDC are linked. In a retraction demand sent to The Western Journal, CLDC denies the link, though an aspiring journalist covering a CLDC fundraiser appears to have captured a photo of the suspect at the CLDC event. At this time, however, The Western Journal cannot confirm the authenticity of that photo. The article and its headline have been revised accordingly.

Police in Portland, Oregon, have arrested a man with reported links to antifa in connection with several assaults on women.

Christopher Luchini was arrested Tuesday at a grocery store where he works, according to a news release from Portland police.

Police said the arrest capped an investigation into at least four assaults on young women that took place between Jan. 12 and Feb. 7. Police believed all the attacks were conducted by the same person.

Three women were injured and required hospitalization, while the fourth escaped without injury.

Ngo’s reporting appears hasty, but a student journalist from a West Linn high school posted a photo Luchini at a CLDC fundraiser.

Forcing on a people a morality at direct odds with their reality is a form of humiliation. When that reality is already a humiliation–here I speak of the routine violence Blacks! inflict on non-Blacks! and the attendant “morality” holding that whites and their culture routinely inflict violence on Black! people–it’s not too dramatic to think of it as a sort of slavery.

The reality is Blacks! are the bullies of America, in its schoolyards, on its streets, in politics and culture; the image of the defiantly slack-jawed Black! thug taunts us against the backdrop of hoary civil rights kitsch that is our present hell.

You aren’t allowed even to laugh at the outright absurdity of that. To force on a people a morality at direct odds with a reality at once violent, impoverishing, humiliating and absurd suppresses a variety of valid and necessary human emotions: one is not allowed to laugh, to disdain, to fear, to discern, to hate. One is not allowed to be human. That most will call this racist hyperbole just shows how far gone we are.

We have to be able to say it, and we must ridicule and disdain all who humor it. That’s a long list. There are eminent people, good people, accomplished people there; but, God help me, silence is violence.

St. Louis:

This was on Monday. pic.twitter.com/zKWob0qKH9

— 🔥⭐️Edwin⭐️🔥 (@Edwin07011) February 28, 2023

I don’t blame Blacks! for any of it; the most racist thing I can say about them is that they’re incredibly impressionable. The culture assigns no moral agency to Blacks! and neither do they. We indulge this our most impulsive and impressionable class and it’s literally killing us.

Embarrassing trends can’t help but reveal themselves despite the media’s best efforts, largely due to the U.K.’s Daily Mail making a good business out of picking up the money the US media leaves on the sidewalk, lurid true tales that draw readers but contradict official media propaganda. In our perverse time the apolitical tabloid mentality is is one our last tethers to reality. In America “if it bleeds it leads” still–but not if Blacks! draw the blood. The Mail didn’t get the memo. I suspect some day they will, and the loss will be felt.

Despite the image of the Mail as red meat for Middle English bumpkins, its point of view is above all conventional, politically correct and neoliberal–currently acting as a propaganda mouthpiece for Western involvement in Ukraine, for instance. The paper continues to infuriate the elite by covering things like (and probably above all) Black! violence. But the Mail still observes the first rule of Black! violence: one shall not name it. It’s comic watching the paper studiously observe this while showing us the thing, over and over, as if trolling. Sometimes I detect a smirk there, like when their right-hand celebrity news column tantalizes you with photo galleries of “Lizzo Slaying in a Two Piece!”.

Then there’s Tucker Carlson, who has indeed named the thing at least once. Despite the hate he inspires in the media he is actually a champion of the quaint, outdated approach to race relations. He’s the sort to quote Martin Luther King on “the content of character”–but never to acknowledge that, yes, we have by now had a good hard look at the content of Black! America’s character, and the sight is chilling.

Update: The City of Springfield, Ohio has released surveillance footage of the elementary school incident from Feb. 10 where white students were held hostage & assaulted on the playground by black students who wanted to force them to pledge allegiance to #BLM. pic.twitter.com/MFTrneH12G

— Andy Ngô 🏳️‍🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) March 3, 2023

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Scott Adams has of course caused a stir by pulling a Trump (as a longtime student of Trump perhaps it’s deliberate) by outraging conventional pieties stating crudely something that isn’t supposed to be said when he drew attention to Black! malice. A regime of censorship is a permanent state of crisis for those who wield it, and the more suppression they effect the more conspicuous are these truths that escape out into the wild of public consciousness; exposing not only the truth but the suppression of it. Truth, no matter how obvious, comes like a horn blast when escaping the constriction of censorship.

This is the absolute truth what @ScottAdamsSays is saying here. He had to have known that all the coward newspapers would drop his Dilbert comic strip. I admire Scott Adams for doing it anyway. pic.twitter.com/sy0vhHutV2

— Jesse Lee Peterson (@JLPtalk) February 25, 2023

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

It’s been a slow Black History Month.

It comes as DEI jobs are getting hardest hit in the present round of tech layoffs and new openings are drying up:

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) teams are being cut as tech leaders commit to massive layoffs.

Twitter’s layoffs are a dramatic example in which the DEI team has been reduced from 30 to just two people this year according to Bloomberg.

The business news site also reports that many DEI departments are not being set goals or having recruitment frozen altogether with responsibilities being shared between other staff.

And, according to Textio data, listings for DEI roles are also down 19% from last year.

“Go woke go broke” triumphal rightists will say, with their eternal hope corporations will right themselves or go away, but a lot of this is companies dumping the excess excess baggage they acquired courtesy of George Floyd’s Racial Reckoning Tour of 2020.

This is a stark contrast from 2020 when, after George Floyd’s murder, when according to Indeed data DEI job postings rose by 123%.

Working the DEI grift works a bit like aerospace or autos here with mass layoffs following mass hirings. George Floyd came to the industry like a Boeing contract to build hundreds of new planes for somebody.

There’s a seasonal market for Black! speakers during Black! History Month, and it looks like they typically book months in advance. There’s a high end:

I mean, these are the big leagues of Black! grief:

There are more thrifty options if you can’t afford the ordeal of Angela:

Perhaps in an attempt to set this Black! History bitch off, an Oregon lawmaker is complaining about getting pulled over by state troopers three times, in February. How can that be a coincidence?

“That Tweet came on the first day of Black History Month and it was on a Wednesday. That Monday, I had a stop that I didn’t Tweet about. And then Tuesday I took to the floor of the House of Representatives to speak out against what happened with Tyre Nichols and really reflected on how I could have been Tyre Nichols. And so, for me to be pulled over the day after that really just had me going like, ‘What the heck, man?’” Nelson told KOIN 6 News.

“What the heck man” needs to find its place in the canon of Black! slogans. What the heck indeed, my brother.

Well there’s still a week left to fix racism. But imagine the relief you would feel at one of these large companies in learning there will be no big Black! History Month speech this year. There’s a cancellation we can all get behind.

Doomicile

Multnomah County publishes something called the Domicile Unknown Report to record homeless deaths, just released for the year 2021, counting at least 196 deaths on the street, not including homeless who die in hospital or other care. That number is up from 126 in 2020.

Meth and Fentanyl related overdoses accounted for 129, or sixty-five percent, of those deaths. Only two cases of Covid fatalities were recorded through 2020 and 2021.

Two of the individuals identified in Domicile Unknown in 2021 succumbed to COVID-19. A third death due to complications from chronic alcohol abuse also listed a positive test for COVID-19 at the time of death. No COVID-19 deaths were identified by the Medical Examiner in 2020, the year the pandemic arrived.

Methamphetamine, an illicit stimulant drug that can overstress the brain and heart, remains a significant factor. Meth contributed to 93 deaths — nearly half of all deaths, and 82% of all deaths involving unknown substances — the highest total number and highest percentage of total cases since Domicile Unknown was first published.

Fentanyl, a potent opiate increasingly sold as cheap pills on the street, was a primary or contributing factor in 36 deaths (32%), a dramatic increase from four deaths the previous year, and one to two deaths a year since it was first recorded as a factor in 2017.

Four people died of overheating during the devastating “heat dome” event that took place from June 25 to June 30, 2021, and hypothermia contributed to one additional death among people experiencing homelessness. However, more people experiencing homelessness died of cold in 2021 than heat. There were eight deaths in which hypothermia, or low body temperature, contributed — up from three deaths in 2020.

Police defunding likely contributes to increasing homicides among the homeless just as it does among the criminal and knucklehead classes:

In 2021, more people experiencing homelessness died of homicides than at any time since 2011, more than doubling from eight in 2020 to 18. That mirrors an 83% increase in overall homicides documented by the Portland Police Bureau, which reported 90 homicides.

Perhaps related, the state is cutting back on criminal pathologists:

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Oregon State Police confirmed to KOIN 6 that a staffing crisis in the State Medical Examiner’s Office means services to counties could be suspended as soon as July.

Of Oregon’s 36 counties, 14 currently rely on the SMEO which means if services are cut, counties will be responsible for signing death certificates in routine cases. This will allow the SMEO to prioritize infant deaths and deaths suspected to be homicide.

According to an email obtained by KOIN 6, the SMEO has been understaffed for more than three decades, but its workload has more than doubled in the last five or so years, thanks to COVID, the opioid epidemic, increasing homicide rates and struggling county systems.

It would be helpful to see those numbers broken down. Meanwhile if this was 2020 we’d be hearing breathless stories about how the new morgues being built for the bodies piling up around the state must be due to Covid:

In the meantime, the SMEO is working to increase workspace and cold storage at the Clackamas morgue, along with building new morgue facilities in both Eugene and Central Point, which aren’t expected to be complete until 2026.

We expect to catch more bodies. Oregon experienced 20,374 excess deaths against a five-year average in 2022 according to the Oregon Health Authority, ascribing 9,033 of those to Covid. Fentanyl, which is said to be so cheap now you can get high for a couple of dollars, is blowing up in use and attendant overdoses and combines with meth to account for the vast majority of drug overdoses. Still reduced policing and Measure 110, legalizing drug possession, go unmentioned in the OHA report:

Unintentional or undetermined fentanyl overdose deaths jumped more than 600% between 2019 and 2021, from 71 to 509. Of unintentional or undetermined drug overdose deaths in 2021, 47.5% were due to fentanyl. 

“While exact reasons for the overdose increases are unknown, public health officials have long suspected that disruptions to daily life due to the COVID-19 pandemic have been a factor,” OHA wrote in a press release. “Those with substance use disorder have been hit particularly hard by job losses, school closures and social isolation resulting from restrictions put in place to limit exposure and transmission of the virus.” 

People are despairing, and not over Covid. Oregon had 893 suicides in 2021; I don’t know if that includes medically assisted suicides, for which the state is becoming a suicide destination.

In 2021, the most recent year for which data are available, doctors prescribed 383 fatal drug doses and 238 people ended their lives — mostly white people aged 65 and above suffering from cancer or diseases of the brain or heart.

Oregon’s groundbreaking Measure 110, passed by voters in 2020, legalized drug possession, diverting tax revenues from marijuana sales and police budgets to treatment and newly created “Addiction Recovery Centers”. An Oregon Secretary of State audit found in the two years since nobody knows where the money is going, inadequate records are being kept and addicts are showing up for treatment referrals–issued in lieu of arrest–at a rate of about one percent. Administration of the treatment program falls to twenty people, the Measure 11 Oversight and Accountability Council of mostly former addicts, who in an embarrassing (apparent) oversight all serve terms scheduled to end on the same day, requiring bringing in a whole new crew; of course with their performance that may be a good thing. This Willamette Week article suggests the Oregon Health Authority is handing out cash with little oversight

Although much of the information in the audit has been previously reported, audits director Kip Memmott said he found most surprising the “hands-off” stance the Oregon Health Authority took in getting treatment dollars out the door. “That was a little disappointing,” Memmott said.

In response to the overarching question of whether Measure 110 is working, Memmott said, “It’s too early to tell.”

His team’s summary, however, made it clear things have not gone well.

“There is a significant risk that policy makers and the public will be unable to gauge the impacts and effectiveness of M110 due to existing grant management and data collection efforts,” auditors wrote.

and the newly created Oversight and Accountability Council is providing little of either:

They added that the Measure 110 Oversight and Accountabilty Council, which brought together about 20 people, most of whom had experienced substance use disorder, to award grants to treatment providers, struggled to fulfill its duties, and the OHA “failed to provide enough support to ensure implementation of M110 was successful.”

The audit describes a sometimes chaotic past two years. Counties decriminalized drugs soon after the measure passed, but because of a lack of planning and a complex grant-making process, the OAC didn’t allocate $300 million in new funding for treatment and services…

During the initial implementation of M110, OHA awarded $33 million in Access to Care grants. Little to no data was collected by OHA for these awards, and auditors were unable to determine the effectiveness of the Access to Care grants. OHA could not provide data that showed how these funds were spent or how these grants improved access to substance use disorder treatment and services.

The de-criminalization takes place literally overnight but the imagined boon in successful treatment (I say) won’t materialize. The “treatment not imprisonment” movement, part of the broader “racial justice” movement, will not be swayed by mere failure. Addiction advocates are clearly more concerned with de-criminalization than treatment, and will take the former without the latter. But if anyone was paying attention, Oregon is putting the treatment over incarceration model to the test right now.

The state is also experiencing a shortage of public defenders that’s resulted in hundreds of dismissed cases, some violent felonies, so far.

A Thousand Points of Blight

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) – City Commissioner Rene Gonzalez announced an immediate temporary suspension of tent and tarp distribution Tuesday following a series of tent-related fires in public spaces.

Gonzalez, who is also the Public Safety commissioner, halted distribution within his bureaus after a fire Tuesday morning under the Morrison Bridge at Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard led to the death of a mother dog and six puppies.

No human injuries were reported, but authorities said the investigation is still ongoing.

In a public press release, Gonzalez called the tent and tarp-related fires “a dire public safety emergency,” that puts first responders, homeless individuals and neighborhoods at risk.

“I am taking immediate action to save lives and protect Portlanders from life-shattering injuries,” Gonzalez said. “To Portland’s houseless community members: I implore you to seek shelter in public warming shelters during cold weather events.”

Fire Marshal Kari Schimel said Portland Fire Department has been called upon 1,015 times for tent and tarp-related fires within the past two years, adding that each incident put the first responder’s lives at risk. 

“Given the heat sources generating these fires and the flammable nature of the materials in question…there is no such thing as a safe, unsanctioned fire in a tent,” Schimel said.

Despite Tuesday’s decision, tents are unlikely to disappear any time soon: The county has purchased over 22,000 over the past two years.

City Commissioner Rene Gonzalez is new, having won election over police abolitionist hellion Jo Ann Hardesty last November. Hardesty, a life-long opponent of policing and a local NAACP leader, was elected in 2018 when the city was firmly in the grips of anti-Trump hysteria and electing its “first black woman” to the council seemed the least it could do; political neophyte, lawyer and businessman Gonzalez displaced her in 2022’s regretful hangover following Hardesty’s successful 2020 police reforms.

According to a new “advisory report”from the office of Oregon Secretary of State Shemia Fagan Oregon is awash in violent extremism and “paramilitary activity”. Shemia was last seen sounding the klaxons over a dubious crisis in Oregon elections. The report’s purpose is to kick off a proposed law expanding the definition of violent extremism, making it easier to prosecute and increasing the Attorney General’s ability to sue political dissidents.

Needless to say they aren’t talking about antifa. The report relies entirely on recent FBI and DOJ propaganda declaring the threat of white nationalism (as it pivots from “global jihad” to “domestic terrorism” to keep the funding flowing), transferring recent FBI pronouncements on its new focus on the white right wing and protecting abortion access verbatim, such as this recent public testimony from the FBI:

The FBI classifies domestic terrorism into four main categories: racially motivated violent extremism, anti-government/anti-authority extremism, animal rights/environmental extremism, and abortion extremism.

Following the War on Terror model, feds warn darkly of individuals being radicalized online, “homegrown” lone wolf terrorists sprouting from the soil of internet “radicalization”. The “Islamic terror” template is applied, with basic rules and structure, like a sitcom, swapping out a bearded Jihadi with a white racist and inserting “white supremacy” in place of “Islamic terror”. No need to re-invent the wheel, or the spiel.

The report begins:

This advisory report suggests actions the Legislature, Oregon Department of Justice (DOJ), and Oregon State Police (OSP) can take to mitigate the risks posed by domestic, violent extremism statewide. Over the past decade, Oregon witnessed the sixth-highest number of domestic violent extremism incidents in the nation. That alarming trend manifest itself dramatically in 2020 both nationally and within Oregon, culminating in violent attacks on the State Capitol Building on December 21, 2020 (see photo on the cover page), and the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021.

For this advisory report, the Oregon Audits Division reviewed data and information from research and interviews pertaining to domestic violent extremism and threat management to identify gaps in Oregon’s statutes, rules, and practices. Addressing these gaps could help the state mitigate the risk of future domestic violent extremism incidents. We focused on five areas of review: state governance, insider threat, critical infrastructure, Urban Area Securities Initiative grants, and public awareness.

Women and minorities hardest hit, of course:

The impact of domestic terrorism and violent extremism extends to all Oregonians and can affect communities and individuals alike. The trauma caused by these incidents can have lasting effects and may have a greater impact on communities already suffering from the COVID-19 pandemic, economic loss, or racial bias in the case of racially or ethnically motivated extremism. Depending on the nature of the incident, the continued trauma may impede the ability of individuals and communities to enjoy their economic, social, and cultural rights.

It’s curious Islamic or foreign terrorism doesn’t merit a category. The “anti-government/anti-authority” category implicitly includes leftwing anarchists and antifa, but the rest of the document is committed to isolating “right wing extremism” to fill that role. It displays a good deal of confidence on the part of elites that the laws such as this cracking down on dissent could easily be wielded against left wing “domestic violent extremists” by any future right wing government. They are proceeding as if any future conservative government turning these laws around on them isn’t a realistic threat.

Islamic terrorism is not a major threat inside the United States if it ever was (though still producing its occasional lone-wolf headcase), and it’s getting harder for federal law enforcement to justify budgeting for it. Add to this the near-revolutionary wokism infecting our government and society and the caricature of a “brown” person upon which the War on Terror depended is simply untenable. Conversely the caricature of the white racist is now all but compulsory.

The Secretary of State’s report, while fretting about “paramilitary organizations”, can’t bring itself to mention the antifa campaign that brought the city to its knees during the BLM riots of 2020. Much use is made of tropes like “white supremacy”, while there is only one somewhat obscured mention of “far left” violence, the murder of Proud Boy Aaron Daniels.

Portland saw a high number of protests during the summer months of 2020. During one clash between ideologically opposed groups, a far-left extremist shot and killed a member of the opposing group.

The “clash” occurred when antifa turned out to attack a rightwing car caravan through downtown; afterward Daniels was shot in the chest at close-range after being stalked by a member of “antifa security”.

No; the FBI and Shemia want to be clear who the enemy is (bold added throughout):

During the first half of 2021, the U.S. Department of Justice issued public reports noting DVEs, primarily those advocating for white supremacy, likely would continue to be the most lethal DVE threat to the United States. This conclusion was reinforced by the FBI director in Congressional testimony on September 21, 2021. DVEs are likely to continue to engage in non-lethal violence and other criminal activity in the future and their reactions to socio-political events and conditions could increase attacks.
The U.S. Department of Justice report noted 2019 represented the most lethal year for DVE attacks since 1995, with five separate attacks resulting in 32 deaths; 24 of these occurred during attacks conducted by racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists advocating for white supremacy

Whether or not authorities are overstating the threat of domestic terrorism, they are openly anticipating violence in reaction to future outrages:

The threat of domestic terrorism posed by lone actors and white supremacist groups is a high national security priority for the U.S. Departments of Justice and Homeland Security.

During the first half of 2021, the U.S. Department of Justice issued public reports noting DVEs, primarily those advocating for white supremacy, likely would continue to be the most lethal DVE threat to the United States. This conclusion was reinforced by the FBI director in Congressional testimony on
September 21, 2021. DVEs are likely to continue to engage in non-lethal violence and other criminal activity in the future and their reactions to socio-political events and conditions could increase attacks. The U.S. Department of Justice report noted 2019 represented the most lethal year for DVE attacks
since 1995, with five separate attacks resulting in 32 deaths; 24 of these occurred during attacks conducted by racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists advocating for white supremacy

So just be ready, good citizen, for the extremist reaction to compulsory sodomy in middle school, when that comes.

Ironically the FBI propaganda the Secretary of State is sharing warns of dissidents’ ability to “share propaganda” in “online forums” and “encrypted chat applications” where unrestrained dissidents “reference accelerationism…[that] the current system of society is irreparable and violent action is necessary to start a race war.”

Federal authorities also warn “gamification” and “accelerationism” inspired some of the attacks in 2019 and likely will continue to inspire future plots. Gamification is the notion that violent extremists may consider fatality counts in attacks as “scores” and desire to accomplish high kill counts. Additionally, the ability to easily share propaganda through online forums and encrypted chat applications may inspire future attackers. The same online forums and encrypted chat applications also reference accelerationism, a term used to describe the belief of some DVEs that the current system of society is irreparable and violent action is necessary to start a race war.

Feds warn accelerationism is accelerating.

Another way to bias the law is to invoke the progressive conceit that some people’s suffering is more pitiable than the suffering of some others:

As a result, domestic terrorism’s cascading effects may have a greater impact on communities already suffering economic distress, such as low-income and immigrant populations. As the threat from DVEs advocating for white supremacy continues to be the most lethal DVE threat to the U.S., it is critical the traumatic, negative effects from terrorist and extremist attacks be understood, mitigated, and, for victims of racially or ethnically motivated violence, responded to with adequate services and supports

“Queer” firefighter Representative Dacia Grayber, elected in 2020 after riding the “heroes of Covid” narrative, produced the bill to codify the Secretary of State’s recommendations:

SALEM, Ore. — According to a recent Secretary of State Audit, Oregon ranks sixth in the nation for the highest rate of violent extremist incidents over the past decade.

A bill looks to give Oregon law more teeth when it comes to preventing incidents involving paramilitary groups or organized groups that use “dangerous weapons” in acts of civil disobedience.

“Like many others, I grappled with the question, how do we work to bring the temperature down without infringing on civil liberties?” said the bill’s sponsor Rep. Dacia Grayber, D-Tigard. “After researching and working with a variety of legal and constitutional experts, we have landed on a policy that I believe is the most constitutionally sound and focused approach to preventing the most egregious cases of political intimidation and violence.

HB 2572 would expand the definition of illegal paramilitary activity in Oregon and would allow the attorney general to petition a judge to halt the actions of a group if the AG “has reasonable cause to believe that any person or group of persons has engaged in or is about to engage in paramilitary activity.” The bill would also allow a private citizen to sue a member or all members of a paramilitary group that has infringed upon his or her constitutional right by means of intimidation.

The bill’s prospects aren’t yet clear.

Scooter Shooter

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — A man riding a scooter opened fire in Downtown Portland on Sunday morning, shooting and injuring another man who had attempted to escape.

Witness Greg Podolec said he ventured downtown for brunch when he saw the shooting at Southwest Second and Morrison Street.

“It was like ‘pow, pow pow,’” Podolec said. “As soon as we turned around the corner, instantly I saw a guy on a scooter chasing another guy holding a four-foot metal pole.”

Podolec said the man running away with the pole vigorously shook the door of a building, trying to get inside.

“I could tell by the look on his face that he was running for his life,” Podolec said.

The man with the scooter caught up to the door, where he allegedly shot the man attempting to escape.

Podolec said he and two other bystanders wrapped a leather belt around the wound while using Podolec’s knife to cut the man’s pants for better access to the wound until medical authorities arrived.

The Running Goats of Capitalism

Anarchists cut a hole in the chainlink fencing in “Portland’s non-profit resident herd”, the Belmont Goats, and a few briefly wandered out before being corralled. The vandals, who left a note, were not freeing the goats mind you, but see them as cloven-hoofed accomplices of capitalism, whose “comfort” is the reason a neighboring homeless camp is scheduled to be cleared out to make room for one of the city’s “Safe Rest Villages“, a fenced-in complex of sheds, to house other homeless people.

“In what reality is the comfort of five goats valued over the shelter of more than fifteen people,” said the letter, signed by “some anarchists. So, it’s time for the Belmont Goats to enjoy a little walk in the park.”

The goats (fourteen, not five) the anarchists attempted to render homeless in defense of the homeless have moved a lot in their 12 year history, and are also being displaced by the Safe Rest Village. It was homeless people from the camp who wrangled the goats and notified their owners before they, say, got hit by a car on their “little walk”.

A news crew that came out to cover the story witnessed and recorded a fight and shooting at the camp:

PORTLAND, Ore. — A fight at a north Portland homeless camp led to a shooting late Tuesday morning. A KGW team was at the camp for a separate story and witnessed what happened. 

KGW reporter Blair Best and Photojournalist Ken McCormick saw a fight breakout between two men. One was hitting the other with what appeared to be a large, ax-like weapon when a gunshot was fired. One of the men fell to the ground and then hobbled off into the woods.

The KGW crew tried calling 911, but no one picked up right away. Another neighbor got through to dispatch and police arrived about 10 minutes later. None of the people living in the camp would speak with police about what they saw and the victim and suspect ran off before police arrived.

Police said they heard one person was shot in a leg, but weren’t able to find a victim or a suspect by the time they arrived. 

The homeless camp is located in the St. John’s neighborhood off the Peninsula Crossing Trail. It has slowly grown into what Portland Police called a “hot spot” they patrol daily. The city posted a notice last week that stated it would clear the camp.

Around the Northwest

Raceless assailant with medium build on the loose in Vancouver

VANCOUVER, Wash. (KOIN) — A Ridgefield High School student sustained serious injuries after being assaulted shortly after school got out on Wednesday, officals said.

The student was assaulted just after 3:15 p.m. while walking across the parking lot at the Ridgefield Outdoor Recreation Complex, according to police. The student was taken to a local hospital and is expected to make a full recovery.

Police say the suspect is described as a male in his early 20s, with medium build. The suspect’s car is believed to be an older four-door silver sedan. There was a second person with an unknown description who was a passenger in the car during the assault, authorities said.

The assault is believed to be an isolated, targeted incident and police say there is no threat to the community. The investigation is ongoing.

Just cool it with the anti-medium build remarks!

Safe Haven for Teens’ Mutilation

Washington state legislators have introduced a bill (SB 5599) to amend laws requiring youth shelters to notify parents of runaways in their care if the child is “seeking or receiving protected health care services”. Not only can parental rights be lost, but parents can find themselves facing charges of abuse coming from their state-estranged children: “if there are compelling reasons not to notify the parent, the shelter or organization must instead notify the department”. Shelters and the like have always been required to report abuse; the new law cuts out the parents, not the state, which is encouraged to get involved by allying with progressive organizations against parents.

Despite a friendly media the measure is facing vigorous public opposition. NPR (“Bill would protect runaway youth seeking gender-affirming care”):

If a teenager runs away from home and ends up in a shelter, are shelter staff required to inform parents? In Washington state, the answer is yes.

But a bill now before the state Legislature would make a few exceptions to this rule, including if the child has run away to seek gender-affirming care.

RELATED: Trans patients often travel out of state, pay more for gender-affirming care, study finds

State Sen. Marko Liias (D-Everett) is one sponsor of SB 5599, which is currently working its way through the Senate Committee on Human Services. He says the measure would allow transgender kids who are not being supported at home to find safe accommodation.

“We know when people don’t have access to gender affirming care it leads to life-long challenges in terms of mental health,” Liias said.

The bill has prompted considerable pushback as it is being discussed in Olympia this session. More than 4,500 people weighed in on the matter online, mostly in opposition, including parent Eric Pratt.

“I can imagine children running from another state to Washington with this idea that they are going to be cared for outside the parental guidance that is necessary for their own health care,” Pratt argued.

It appears trans surgery tourism is already a thing (see NPR’s “related” link above). The law would include abortion services as well.

Under the bill, parents would not be required to be informed of their runaway kids’ whereabouts if there is a “compelling reason.” That includes the possibility of abuse, or if the minor is seeking “protected health services” including reproductive services or gender affirming care.

Sponsor Mark Liias speaks of creating a “network” of “safe places”:

I've been proud to stand in support of LGBTQ+ kids across Washington for years now, and this session is no different. It's crucial that we allow trans kids to express themselves in safe, supportive communities. #SB5599 is a step towards that goal. #BornPerfect #WALeg pic.twitter.com/8hCMWovSqF

— Sen. Marko Liias (@SenMarkoLiias) February 6, 2023

The Mystery Science Theatre 3000 guys on identity (Space Mutiny episode, 1997).

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Danny twisted the burning coal from the cigarette butt. Out of habit he reached for the pill bottle in his pocket in which he saved them: he recoiled a little at the unpleasant feel of the patchy, nylon fake fur of the raccoon coat he’d forgotten he was wearing. Disgusted, he slung the butt away. Lifting his gaze from it on the ground he saw them.

From the rise where he stood they approached from about the same angle and distance on his right as the big tent, the focus of their attention, on his left: a few dozen of them with stragglers still coming up over a hillock. One of them was carrying a bullhorn and wearing on their head what looked like a columnar bearskin hat.

He started walking slowly with unconscious wariness toward them. He had not yet seen these protesters in real life. He joined a group of performers standing nearby.

“Hey Danny.” He almost didn’t recognize Sheila the Slut out of makeup; she looked matronly in a housecoat, wearing old-fashioned curlers under a bonnet.

“Hi. Almost thought you were Alice, for a second there.” He grinned. Alice the Housewife was not among them at the moment. Sheila chuckled.

“I’ll take her gig any day.”

“What’s the big deal?” Danny asked, nodding at the demonstrators.

“They want us out of town.” Hank the Handyman interjected. For his part he looked little different from his character in costume or out; over time he had taken to wearing the same flannel and jeans from his act. His facial expression too had adapted gradually to his character, Danny thought, looking at him. Why he mused on it now he didn’t know, it could just be his perception, but at the moment it occurred to him that all the Show’s veterans seemed to take on physical traits and characteristics of their characters. He as well, no doubt; he cringed imperceptibly.

“They say we’re committing normalization. They filed against us with the local dice this morning.”

“The what?”

“Come on Danny, the Diversity Inclusion and Equity Committee. Haven’t you been paying attention?”

“I try to avoid it.”

“Anyway, if the Committee deems us normalizers we’re eighty-sixed from town in per-pe-too-ah-tee.” He drew the last syllables out comically, mimicking the grandiose speaking style of the colorful and combative director of DIEC.

“Good. I hate Cleveland.”

The protesters collected outside the temporary gate and chain-link fencing around the camp about thirty yards from Danny and the others, paying them no attention. Danny wondered, just short of worry, if the demonstrators might realize they’re performers. Would that enrage them? The protesters were directing their attention to the big tent, which was about fifty yards away, where work had stopped and the anonymous figures of the laborers stood or sat by in small clusters, watching.

As they drew nearer Danny saw the one with a bullhorn was a woman, and appeared to be their leader–there were no other clues as to who was in charge. Her hair–not a bearskin hat–was a cylindrical, impossibly tall afro that could not keep erect; it tilted in surrender to gravity and swayed limply away from the slightest turn of her head. He smiled, amused, as it bent gracefully in response to a light breeze.

Her skin was creme-colored with a tint of grey. Her features were sharp, a narrow head with pointed chin and nose; no hint of African ancestry there. He couldn’t help thinking she would be perfectly cast in as a colonial American Puritan in a skit the show used to perform, a failed routine, what with her sharp, severe Anglo features. Her windswept African locks–her pride, he could see–wouldn’t even necessarily have to go. He smiled again thinking how she might force a pointy puritan hat over her totemic pride, how it would emerge after formed into a point; they would tease her gently and she would tease her hair back into proper form. Under stage lights the skin tone would pass off just fine, and he was sure she was at the moment using a “darkening foundation”–he hated his acquired expertise in makeup–to veil the extent of her white parentage, as was common. But those features–permanently cast in a pained expression of which they were partly to blame–would not be escaped.

She attempted speaking through the bullhorn to no avail and, exasperated, called to someone in the midst of the now thickening crowd–Danny figured now there were around a hundred of them. Someone emerged, a white man it appeared, short and round; he took the bullhorn from her extended hand and began fiddling with it. The white man handed the bullhorn back to the Princess and slunk back into the mass.

She put the bullhorn to her lips and spoke, stopped, lowered it and turned it on, then began:

“Whitism is No Joke” she said, a little timidly.
 The crowd responded:
“Whitism is No Joke”

Then, with a little more confidence:
“Whitism will not be revived here”
“Whitism will not be revived here”

Then, the anger growing with the confidence in her tone:
“Normalization is Death”
“Normalization is Death”

Danny noticed a pattern, he thought: the darkest among them took up the front rows but didn’t seem to lead; a few pale Blacks–such as the Puritan Princess–seemed to be directing their actions. After them making up the bulk of the group were people of the brown eggshell color that constituted a plurality of Americans at the time. Then came the white people, or mostly white, chanting louder than the rest, out of greater enthusiasm or the necessity of being heard–they collected in the back. Ironically they were the more colorful section, as the darker ones all dressed in black red and grey while the whiter ones wore bright colored, slogan-bearing clothes or costumes. Just as Danny recognized a clown costume among them Hank said:

“Hey look that guy’s here for your job Danny!” The group laughed.

“Fuck you.” He responded good-naturedly.

They went on chanting for five minutes before lapsing into an enthusiastic cacophony of jeers and slogans, still not taking notice of Danny and the group of performers. They might as well be invisible there, he thought with a bit of relief.

Then the crowd parted up front. Through the breach came the protesters from the back, the whites, and they set to work on a section of the fence to topple it by rocking it back and forth, struggling to set a steady rhythm.

“Oh no, don’t do that.” Danny said in concern.

“Here come the drones.” Hank said dryly. “That was fast. They must have been waiting nearby.”

They appeared from over the hill, a diamond-formation of four on either flank of the crowd of protesters. Seeing the drones most of the group backed away from the fence, individually taking up “the posture”–the standard down-on-one knee posture, identifying oneself as harmless and compliant to a law enforcement drone, which everyone knew.
Those at the gate did not stop; they kept up their assault.

One of the drones broadcast over a loudspeaker:

“Desist. You are engaged in unlawful activity. Assume a non-confrontational posture. Desist, you are–“

Someone among the rabid dozen assailing the fence turned and threw something at the nearest drone. The group of performers groaned a little together, as if watching a bad turn in a sporting event.

“Oh no, don’t do that.” Danny said again.

The drones deployed their anti-riot lightweight percussion grenades, which weren’t seen until they flashed around the feet of the defiant protesters; they all collapsed in the rising smoke. The rest of the group, maintaining the posture, hissed and wailed. More drones appeared and laid down a red, pulsing laser grid pattern, the “shock fence”, all about them.

“Peaceful protest!” Someone shouted, and they took up the chant.

By the time the robotic paddy wagon arrived and opened its rollup garage-door of a maw, they had run out of energy. The protesters lined up to get on board as if ending a work shift. Those knocked out by the percussion grenades were lolling about and coming around, a few sitting up, a few still lifeless on the ground.

Danny saw the Puritan Princess, lining up to board the wagon. She looked back in his direction. She appeared to look him in the eye across the distance.

The robot paramedics, the “medicals”, appeared, two of them, attending to the remaining incapacitated protesters, moving them into the wagon one at a time.The event had taken little more than an hour, Danny figured.

“Well shit.” He said.