IT’S AS IF THESE RIOTS HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM, BUT ARE JUST OUTLETS FOR HATE:

UPDATE: So are the people who chased Rand Paul the people that Facebook is promoting here?

Probably, since Facebook is prominently featuring Al Sharpton in its promotion.

Sharpton, of course, has a history of inciting deadly racial violence, but is treated as a legitimate black leader by the corporate media, which includes Facebook these days. Disgraceful.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Sen. Rand Paul thanks DC cops for saving him from ‘crazed mob’ after RNC.

THE WAR ON LAW ENFORCEMENT: Virginia Senate passes bill allowing assaulting a police officer to be a misdemeanor.

SEDITIOUS CONSPIRACY: Kenosha police find helmets, gas masks, more in out-of-state vehicles; arrest 9.

However, a group out of Seattle that was founded to provide free food to protesters and activists, RiotKitchen206, claims it was their members who were arrested and that they were in Kenosha only to serve meals to people at the demonstrations.

According to a statement posted on KPD’s Facebook page, the tipster told them the vehicles were in a remote lot near State Highway 50 and Green Bay Road. Officers soon found the vehicles – a black school bus, a bread truck, and a tan minivan – and, with the help of U.S. Marshals, staked out the position.

When the vehicles headed to a gas station on Washington Road and 30th Ave., law enforcement was close behind, the statement continued. The officers reported seeing people from the black bus try to fill multiple fuel cans. Seeing that and suspecting they were planning something illegal, the officers approached the vehicles and identified themselves. KPD reported that the suspects in the bus and bread truck all surrendered, while those in the minivan tried driving off.

According to KPD, officers were able to stop the minivan and force their way into it, arresting everyone in the vehicle. With all of the suspects in custody, officers searched the vehicles and discovered helmets, gas masks, protective vests, illegal fireworks, and suspected controlled substances, the statement noted.

Hmm.

#JOURNALISM: FAKE NEWS: Axios Defiles Truth, Promotes Deceptive Anti-Trump Image.

CHINA IS ASSHOLE: National security law: arrested Hong Kong activist among group caught by China’s coastguard while fleeing to Taiwan, sources confirm. “Andy Li, who was arrested for alleged collusion with foreign forces and money laundering in a police swoop on August 10, was detained in mainland China on suspicion of ‘unlawfully crossing the border,’ along with others caught on the boat.”

Li has been speaking up against Beijing for years, but this new “national security” law allows for Hong Kongers to be tried in Beijing’s kangaroo courts, rather than in front of Hong Kong juries. No wonder he tried to flee.

FIVE THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT NIGHT FOUR OF THE REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION: Trump’s Powerful Speech.

IF YOU PROTECT YOUR BUSINESSES FROM THE RIOTERS WE’VE SET LOOSE, YOU’LL MAKE US LOOK BAD! Minneapolis businesses fight ban on exterior shutters owners wanting to protect their windows after riots face obstacle. “In a report justifying the rule change, Minneapolis officials argued that external shutters ’cause visual blight’ and create the impression that an area is ‘unsafe’ and ‘troublesome.'”

THE DEMS HAD OVERPLAYED THEIR HAND AFTER A WEEK OR TWO, AND WE’RE THREE MONTHS IN: Support for Protests Dropped in Wisconsin Even Before Kenosha Riots.

DAVID DORN’S WIDOW EVISCERATES THE BLACK LIVES MATTER NARRATIVE AT THE RNC.

SHOT: How Chaos in Kenosha Is Already Swaying Some Voters in Wisconsin: As residents see fires and looting, some worry that local Democratic leaders are failing to keep control of the situation.

John Geraghty, a 41-year-old worker in a tractor factory, has barely paid attention to the presidential race or the conventions. Every day he focuses on survival: getting his son to sports practice, working at his job where he now wears a mask, and getting home to sleep, only to start over again the next day.

But when he woke up on Monday morning to images of his hometown, Kenosha, Wis., in flames, he could not stop watching. The unrest in faraway places like Portland, Ore., and Minneapolis had arrived at his doorstep, after a white police officer on Sunday shot a Black man in the back multiple times. And after feeling “100 percent on the fence” about which candidates he will vote for in November, he is increasingly nervous that Democratic state leaders seem unable to contain the spiraling crisis.

“It’s crazy that it’s now happening in my home city,” he said. “We have to have a serious conversation about what are we going to do about it. It doesn’t seem like the powers that be want to do much.” . . .

Don Biehn, 62, owner of a flooring company, was standing in line at a gun store on Tuesday afternoon. He said that he had never bought a pistol before, but that he had a business to protect. A former county board supervisor, Mr. Biehn said he had been calling county and state officials for days, trying to explain how grave the situation was.

Neither John Antaramian, the mayor of Kenosha, nor Jim Kreuser, the county executive, responded to requests for comment. (The positions are nonpartisan, but both men previously served in the State Assembly as Democrats.)

“There’s people running all over with guns — it’s like some Wild West town,” Mr. Biehn said. “We are just waiting here like sitting ducks waiting to get picked off.”

He added: “It’s chaos — everybody is afraid.”

Mr. Trump, he said, “was not my man,” but now he is grateful he is president.

He said he seemed to understand in a way that other politicians did not. . . .

Mr. Haight, 59, said he was a “lifelong Democrat” but had decided not to vote this year.

“It’s not worth it,” he said. “One’s as bad as the other.”

Priscella Gazda, a waitress at a pizza restaurant in Kenosha, was having the opposite reaction. She said she had voted only once in her life — for Mr. Obama in 2008. Her son has Type 1 diabetes and was hoping for health insurance.

“I’m not the one who would ever vote,” she said.

But after the chaos in her town, this year is different.

“I am going to vote for Trump,” she said. “He seems to be more about the American people and what we need.”

Chaser: Remember When a Democratic Polling Firm Fired the Guy Who Thought Violent Protests Could Backfire Politically? “Shor had publicized research from the social scientist Omar Wasow showing that violent protests tend to backfire on progressive goals—tipping the 1968 election in favor of the law-and-order candidate, Richard Nixon, for instance—whereas peaceful protests often succeed. In response, Shor was widely derided by the left. On Twitter, the progressive activist Ari Trujillo Wesler accused him of using his ‘anxiety and ‘intellect’ as a vehicle for anti-blackness. Employees and clients of Civis Analytics said Shor’s statement—which, to be clear, was merely an endorsement of well-grounded social science research that says nonviolent protest is strategically superior—had threatened their very safety, according to New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait. As a result, Shor was terminated. The exact reason for the firing was never specified, but it spoke to concerns among many liberal thinkers—Chait, Vox’s Matt Yglesias, and others—that certain sects of the left are unwilling to have difficult conversations about tactics. This is a concern shared by many libertarians, and supporters of free speech culture more broadly.”

THUG: Andrew Cuomo’s Mafia Tactics Continue: Golf Club Loses Liquor License After Suing New York State.

INDEED:

FIVE THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT NIGHT FOUR OF THE REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION: Trump’s Powerful Speech.

UH OH … NOT SURE EVERYBODY WANTS TO KNOW THE ANSWER TO THIS QUESTION:  Who killed George Floyd?

IMPEACHMENT? WHAT IMPEACHMENT?

If you strike at a king and all that, you know, the thing.

THEY’RE BEYOND SMART POLITICS; THEY’RE DRUNK ON STREET POWER:

WHY ARE DEMOCRATS SO RACIST?

WORST. NAZI. EVER*: Effigy of President Trump ‘executed’ with a guillotine outside the White House.

* And nothing of consequence will happen to them, very unlike if Trump actually were a Nazi.

AT AMAZON, Clore Automotive Jump-N-Carry JNC550A 1100 Peak Amp Jump Starter with Air Compressor.

HEH:

THIS IS IT: Night 4: Liveblogging the 2020 Republican National Convention.

UPDATE: A friend on Facebook comments:

Faced with the need for a dispersed convention, the Democrats chose to visually and rhetorically emphasize the situationally coerced quality of it all. Grainy Zoom conference calls, staged shots emphasizing cavernous emptiness, apologetic second-tier celebrity emcees, virtue-signaling mask wearing, et cetera. It was all grim, threatening atmospherics, and the celebratory culmination — the masked nominees strolling to receive the accolades of a large and darkened parking lot — displayed as bathos rather than triumph.

The party of Hollywood was handed what should have been its most natural task — excel on television! — and fumbled it.

This week, we are at the close of four days of Republican conventioneering. Set aside what you think of the substance of it, or that of its counterpart. Look at production values and aesthetic. The RNC nailed it. Against the mystifying Democratic decision to consciously present its own second-best, a televised would-be convention, the Republicans discarded the old form altogether — and embraced the new one.

The DNC production was deliberately despite the medium. The RNC production was deliberately of the medium.

On the one hand, Trump produced a hugely successful reality TV show, so yeah. On the other hand, the Democrats are a subsidiary of Hollywood (or maybe vice versa) so you’d think they could have done as well.

MORE:

MORE STILL:

SAYUNCLE ON FACEBOOK: “Kyle Rittenhouse used more restraint than the police. Change my mind. I mean except for that whole going to a riot thing.” Yeah, the cops have been staying away from those lately.