“MOSTLY PEACEFUL” MEANS “PARTLY VIOLENT”: Here Are The Four Portland Teenagers Facing Federal Charges Related To Violent Protests.

MOSTLY PEACEFUL: ‘I Was Stabbed For Being A Conservative Journalist’: Videographer Injured At Portland Protests.

IT WAS A “MOSTLY PEACEFUL” SHOOTING: Young mom, 24, shot dead ‘after telling Black Lives Matter protesters “all lives matter” during argument about movement.’

IF THIS KIND OF VIOLENCE WERE HAPPENING AT RIGHT-WING PROTESTS, IT WOULD BE ALL OVER THE PRESS, INSTEAD OF — DELIBERATELY — BURIED: Gunman shot driver, then hid weapon and continued to protest, Provo police say.

The victim was driving a white SUV on University Avenue and was attempting to turn onto Center Street when a group of protestors began “crowding around the vehicle. A male protester ran to the SUV on the passenger side, pointed a handgun at (the) driver and shot one round through the window,” according to a a synopsis of the incident by Provo Deputy Police Chief John Guyerman.

The driver, who was struck by a bullet, “hit the gas trying to leave the situation,” Guyerman said.

CNN headline, probably: Right Wing Extremist Runs Over Crowd of Mostly Peaceful Protesters.

Plus:

As the SUV is speeding away, the gunman ran after the vehicle and fired a second round that went through the rear passenger window, according to police.

After the shooting, video shows the gunman then “conceals the firearm and continues to protest,” Guyerman said. “This same protester later approached another vehicle at 500 North and University Avenue, striking and breaking the window with the handgun.”

Like I said.

UPDATE: From an updated version of the story: “Salt Lake police confirmed Tuesday night the suspected shooter had been arrested, and Provo police would pick him up. No additional details were released.”

KURT SCHLICHTER: If The Left Wins Their Soft Coup, Everyone Loses – But Mostly Them.

If Trump doesn’t can him, Mueller and his team of committed Never Trumpers will claim the President obstructed “justice” for not hanging his head in shame over the Democrat lies. And that will go nowhere. Trump will never be impeached. And Trump will pardon any of his associates Mueller and his pack of cynical leakers tries to indict on whatever puffed-up, bogus charges they invent in order to justify this exercise in investigatory onanism.

And we should hope that’s how it ends.

Because what happens if the voice of half of America is effectively silenced by the DC swamp and its media guardians? The Tea Party was the first manifestation of the anger out there at the establishment. It was polite – it even cleaned up its own messes after its peaceful protests. The media, and the same alleged conservatives who saw the Tea Party as a threat to their own position because it caused donors to start asking for results instead of simply writing checks, attacked the Tea Party. Well, then we got Trump, who was not nearly as polite, and who took the White House fair and square from the designated establishment candidate. And now they want to use non-ballot means to make sure the normals’ choice is again ignored.

What do they think comes after Trump? Someone nice?

Do you want President Duterte? Because this is how you get President Duterte.

VIOLENCE REPORTED at the Dallas immigration protests. “I have to say that this incident was a small thing in the whole of the protest, which was, as the papers say, largely peaceful; but had this been a mostly white anti-illegal-immigrant rally and I were a Latino covering it, it would have been in the headlines of the [Dallas Morning News] the following day on page one.”

UPDATE: Area reader George Bednekoff emails:

I didn’t see the latest Dallas immigration protest on Sunday in person, but the local TV news coverage gave the impression that this was a large crowd with somewhat reasonable concerns that had arguments with a relatively small crowd of reasonable counter-protesters. Unlike earlier protests, this one started at a church, not a school. The main points I noticed follows.

1) The largely Latino crowd protesting the House immigration bill were mostly carrying American flags instead of Mexican flags. They seemed to want to be Americans, not just visiting Mexicans.

2) The counter-protesters were anti-illegal immigration, not anti-immigrant. They were most concerned that illegal immigrants were jumping ahead in line. Legal immigrants from Mexico would be welcome if they follow the same laws and practice of assimilation as other immigrants follow.

3) The protesters were most concerned about illegal immigrants being labeled “felons”.

4) Neither side really wants a guest worker program. Both sides want permanent legal immigration with disagreements about numbers of immigrants, fees, etc.

5) Both sides seemed to be frustrated with federal government incompetence.

Our federal government — a uniter, not a divider!

MORE: Photos from Rochester. A report from San Diego.

MORE STILL: Virginia Postrel, who hasn’t been blogging on the subject much at all, does send a link to the D Magazine blog from Dallas, which reports that the march there was “more celebration than protest, and it was a decidedly family affair: babies in strollers, grandmothers carrying flags, teenagers slurping popsicles. U.S. flags outnumbered Mexican flags 15 to 1, and signs like ‘Brown is Beautiful’ captured a sense of pride that was refreshing and inspiring.”

We also learn that Jessica Simpson is a dinosaur. This proves controversial, and then some.

Plus, here are some pictures from New York.

Still more New York pictures here.

STILL MORE: David Hogberg has photos from D.C.

And Byron York reports from DC’s rally. Excerpt:

Another unmissable aspect of the rally was the heavy labor union presence. There were lots of signs for the Service Employees International Union, the Laborers Union, UNITE Here, and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees. The various coalitions listed as organizers of the event, like the National Capital Immigration Coalition, appeared to have a lot of union involvement. At the rally, I ran into Harold Meyerson, the liberal, pro-union writer and columnist, and asked him why organized labor was so active in this cause, given many American workers’ fear that the presence of illegal immigrants drives down wages. “During the mid- and late 1990s, the unions that were actually still organizing people were realizing that increasingly they were organizing immigrants, many of them illegal, many of them undocumented,” Meyerson told me.

Read the whole thing. Meanwhile, Eric Scheie reports from Philadelphia, with photos. Excerpt:

Much as I hate to sound biased, the fact is, my photographs today seem to favor white yanqui leftists, even though they were in the minority. Perhaps this is because I’m homesick for Berkeley; who knows? . . .

In all fairness, however, I don’t think too many members of the crowd were into socialismo. They know it didn’t work all that well in Mexico, and who knows? it may be a reason why so many of them came here.

Read the whole thing.

JUST REMEMBER, DEMS ALWAYS FACE THE NEW RULES THEMSELVES AND NEVER LIKE IT: MTG nailed it: Majority call ‘harsh’ Jan. 6 sentences a Biden warning to foes.

They have been met with cheers from the media and White House allies, but the long prison sentences given to many of the Jan. 6 Capitol rioters are viewed as “too harsh” by large groups of voters.

And despite the Washington-based news coverage portraying the 2021 protest of President Joe Biden’s election as an insurrection, more of America’s voters than not believe it was a “mostly peaceful protest that got out of control.”

It was a mostly peaceful protest in general, not just in light of the absurd “mostly peaceful” standard deployed in defense of the 2020 Democratic-constituent riots.

WELL, OF COURSE: Democrats are campaigning on Jan. 6 hypocrisy.

As BLM-Antifa thugs ramp up activities ahead of the midterms, the hypocrisy and mammoth overreach of the Justice Department’s investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, riot is coming into focus.

The first acquittal of a Jan. 6 defendant who was “waved” into the Capitol by cops is the latest sign that the so-called “armed insurrection” is not living up to the Democrats’ hype.

After the biggest probe in FBI history, not one charge of insurrection has been brought against any Trump supporter at the Capitol.

We are reminded with sickening regularity of the double standard of justice applied to BLM–Antifa’s insurrectionists, who tore up cities and attacked cops and federal property in the run-up to the 2020 election and have suffered few consequences.

In fact, they are more likely to be rewarded. Last week, the DOJ settled a lawsuit brought by civil-rights activists over the violent riots outside the White House from May 29 through June 3, 2020.

These “mostly peaceful protests,” as The Washington Post describes them, were so violent that then-President Donald Trump and his family had to be rushed to an underground bunker after the historic St John’s Church was set ablaze.

Dozens of federal officers were injured when they were pelted with bricks, rocks, caustic liquids, frozen water bottles, Molotov cocktails, rental scooters, fireworks and bottles of urine by rioters operating under the banner of Black Lives Matter — or, as BLM is now called by anyone who knows where the money went, “Buy Large Mansions.”

The national media lapped up the Dems’ fake narrative of protesters brutally ejected from the park so that Trump could pose for a photo.

That lie lingers, despite a detailed report by the Inspector General of the Department of the Interior, which found that Park Police did not use tear gas and only cleared the square to allow a contractor “to safely install anti-scale fencing in response to destruction of property and injury to officers.”

Like most lies, it lingers because the press wants it to linger.

SHE’S AN URBAN LEFTY DEMOCRAT, THAT’S WHAT THEY DO: Howie Carr: Michelle Wu, you’re making Boston a dumpster fire!

Is it officially against the law to criticize Mayor Michelle Wu yet?

Maybe not, but I’m sure City Hall is working on it. Because … diversity, or something.

So now the Boston City Council has by a 9-4 vote basically shooed away the early-morning protesters from her home in Roslindale.

Granted, these demonstrations — I’m surprised the alt-left media aren’t calling them insurrections — must be frustrating if you’re one of her neighbors.

But in the past, there have been much more exasperating demonstrations by Michelle Wu’s card-carrying fellow travelers, and no punishment has ever been meted out to any of the wokesters.

In 2019, then-City Councilor Wu was in the mob of layabouts who blocked the Congress Street bridge for global whatever.

And did anything ever happen to the thugs who vandalized the homes of eight Boston city councilors in 2020 after the pols were found to be insufficiently committed to defunding the police?

What about that crew of trust-funded hippies who shut down the Expressway in 2015 both in Somerville and Milton during rush hour? Ambulances were prevented from taking patients into hospitals but nothing happened to those pampered puke perps either.

Remember the antifa riots outside City Hall in the summer of 2019? The goateed soi bois with their little pot bellies and their butch black fannie packs couldn’t be identified because they were wearing masks. So a city councilor filed an ordinance to prohibit the use of masks while hurling frozen bottles of urine at the BPD during a riot.

That was voted down because … First Amendment, dude!

And of course the most memorable moment of recent Boston protest — the post-George Floyd orgy of looting and arson that engulfed the Back Bay in 2020, highlighted by the torching of a BPD patrol car and a thug on Tremont Street firing 12 rounds at the cops, some of which went through the windows of occupied apartments.

Gov. Charlie Baker, the next day, described that rampant violence, and the millions of dollars in damages as … mostly peaceful protests.

But protesting outside Mayor Wu’s house? Now that’s some really bad stuff. Call the FBI!

Approved grievance groups working hand-in-glove with the establishment operate under different rules than those actually confronting the establishment.

Plus:

My favorite comment, though, was another one from Richard, including a photo of one of Mayor Wu’s biggest supporters, Monica Cannon-Grant, who until very recently had the Boston franchise for the Black Lives Matter racket.

Monica and her husband were indicted two weeks ago by a federal grand jury on charges of wire fraud, mail fraud, welfare fraud, all the traditional poverty grifts.

“Racist @MayorWU when are we going to get comments on the arrest of your friend on 18 federal charges?”

When the phone don’t ring, Richard, you’ll know it’s the mayor commenting on Monica Cannon-Grant.

Heh.

GOODER AND HARDER, CALIFORNIA: L.A.’s Arms Race of the Affluent.

In Beverly Hills, even the purchase of a firearm comes with certain…expectations. The city’s only gun store, Beverly Hills Guns, is a “concierge service” by appointment only, for a largely affluent clientele. And business is booming.

Since opening in July 2020, the store has seen upscale residents from Santa Monica to the Hollywood Hills increasingly in a panic following several high-profile smash-and-grab and violent home invasion robberies. The apparent siege has brought in a daily stream of anxious business owners and prominent actors, real estate moguls and film execs, says owner Russell Stuart. Most are arming themselves for the first time.

“This morning I sold six shotguns in about an hour to people that say, ‘I want a home defense shotgun,’” says Stuart, whose store is discreetly located in a Beverly Hills office building, with no sign on the doors, down the hall from a diamond dealer. “Everyone has a general sense of constant fear,  which is very sad. We’re used to this being like Mayberry.”

That fear has the wealthiest of local gentry contemplating every more elaborate security measures: armored luxury cars, safe rooms and bullet-proof glass in their homes. One client asked about creating the “Tony Stark-level” security of a half-dozen automated drones to hover over his house, says Stuart, whose gun store is part of his larger security company, Force Protective Agency. “If you want the Gucci package, it’s going to cost money.”

The security business is experiencing a rebound after a couple of diminished years because of the pandemic. Some firms had their on-site security guards sent home for health and social distancing reasons. Not anymore. In Beverly Hills, the craving for additional security dates to the riot that followed an otherwise peaceful Black Lives Matter protest* in May 2020, with unprecedented looting along Rodeo Drive that left broken boutique windows  beneath beloved luxury brands: Chanel, Dior, Gucci, Michael Kors, MCM, Ermenegildo Zegna. Last March, a $500,000 Richard Mille watch was stolen at gunpoint from a diner at the Il Pastaio restaurant.  The Dec. 1 home-invasion robbery and shooting death of philanthropist Jacqueline Avant, 81, in her Trousdale Estates home, only accelerated the arms race among the affluent.

Just a reminder that the people who want you unarmed aren’t practicing what they preach. As to why, curiously, CTRL-F “George Gascon” brings up zero returns.

* Nice variation on the DNC-MSM’s “mostly peaceful protest” leitmotif.

CAN LIBERALS SURVIVE PROGRESSIVISM?

In Waukesha, Wis., six people were killed and at least 60 injured when Darrell Brooks drove his Ford Escape through a Christmas parade, according to the police. Brooks already had a lengthy rap sheet and had reportedly run over a woman with the same S.U.V. early this month. But, as The Times reported, he had been “quickly freed from jail on bond after prosecutors requested what they now say was an inappropriately low bail.”

What happened in Waukesha on Sunday is among the consequences of easy bail. And bail reform — that is, reducing or eliminating cash bail for a variety of offenses — has been a cause of the left for years. . . .

This is not social science. It’s common sense. It’s the basis on which the United States was able to make its streets far safer from around 1995 to 2015, when crime rates kept going down — above all to the benefit of the very minority communities that progressives claim to champion.

The Democratic Party has since thrown that legacy away. Joe Biden disavowed his 1994 crime bill. Last year’s protests often devolved into naked criminality, to which many progressives, including those in the news media, closed their eyes, notoriously including those “fiery but mostly peaceful protests” in Kenosha, Wis. Opportunities for thoughtful police and justice-system reform were squandered in the rush to defame, defund, diminish or abolish.

Yep. Right after George Floyd’s death, we looked like we had a national consensus on the need for criminal justice reform. The left immediately proceeded to do things that — predictably — made sure that wouldn’t happen. If you assume that people usually intend the natural and predictable consequences of their actions, what does that tell us about the left’s commitment to criminal justice reform?

Flashback: House Dems Unanimously Block Resolution Condemning Violence and Rioting. “House Democrats unanimously blocked a resolution condemning acts of violence and rioting—including the ‘deliberate targeting of law enforcement officers’—in the wake of George Floyd’s death.”

WILLIAM A. JACOBSON: The media framed Kyle Rittenhouse — and won’t come clean even after the prosecution’s case falls apart.

Media malpractice has come full circle in Kenosha, Wis.

Kyle Rittenhouse’s trial for the shooting deaths of two people and the wounding of another is nearing its end, with the jury expected to get the case soon. The shootings took place as riots, arson and looting shook Kenosha after police shot Jacob Blake on August 23, 2020. The violence fed off the nationwide riots and looting that followed the May death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody.

From the start, the media misrepresented the Blake case and ensuing riots. They portrayed Blake as an unarmed man who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, subjected to police brutality due to racism.

The truth was far different.

After an intensive investigation, prosecutors declared Blake’s shooting a justifiable use of force. The federal Justice Department reached the same conclusion. Contrary to media portraits, Blake was armed with a knife and was shot when he turned in a slashing motion at a policeman within arm’s reach.

While it wouldn’t be fair to say the media coverage caused the Kenosha riots, the press downplayed the mayhem and ramped up the hysteria. As with the Black Lives Matter riots in Minneapolis and beyond, the mainstream media incessantly focused away from the violence, despite almost 20 related deaths and more than $1 billion in damage.

Perhaps the most notorious example is CNN reporter Omar Jimenez standing in front of burning buildings in Kenosha with the on-air chyron reading, “Fiery but mostly peaceful protests after police shooting.” The phrase “mostly peaceful” is now a popular internet meme used to mock distorted mainstream media coverage.

It’s happening again with the Rittenhouse case, which was born in the Kenosha riots. From the media coverage leading up to the trial, one would think Rittenhouse was a white supremacist militia member who traveled to Kenosha to shoot up peaceful protesters.

But as has been widely documented, the case is going poorly for the prosecution. While I’m not predicting an outcome, having followed the case carefully, I can say that Rittenhouse has a strong case for self-defense.

Read the whole thing.

Related: Looks like ‘sole survivor of Rittenhouse shooting’ Gaige Grosskreutz either lied to Anderson Cooper last night or committed perjury (video).

THE DEMOCRATS SHOULD INVESTIGATE THEMSELVES FOR INSURRECTION:

For nearly a month last summer a violent insurrection claimed control of Capitol Hill — in Seattle, that is, not Washington DC. The insurrectionists were leftists who proclaimed the six or so city blocks under their power to be a new state-within-a-state, the ‘Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone’, or CHAZ. Multiple shootings, murders and acts of arson took place before police finally restored legal authority on July 1.

This insurrection, and the many other lethal incursions against the rule of law that took place last summer, have not occasioned much soul-searching or anger from progressives and liberals in the commentariat. The contrast with their fury over the riot at the US Capitol on January 6 of this year could not be more striking. Only one person died violently in that shameful episode, and she, Ashli Babbitt, was shot by law enforcement. Yet this time, for reasons that readers will have to deduce for themselves, the police are not being criticized for the use of force against unarmed lawbreakers. Instead, Democrats, and Liz Cheney, are treating this mostly peaceful protest — many thousands protested, a few hundred broke into the Capitol — as the new 9/11. Why?

2020 was supposed to be the American left’s Year Zero, and yet, the events of January 6^th, 2021, requires the left to memory hole many of the events of the previous year. The rest of us should not forget.

VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: Biden’s Radical Agenda Might Just Be DOA.

Insanity Wrap needs to know: What’s better than reading a CNN progressive tacitly admit that Biden can’t get much of anything through the Senate?

Answer: Reading it with your feet up and a cocktail.

Before we get to the sordid details, a quick preview of today’s Wrap.

• “Death to Jews” is Twitter policy, apparently
• Masks are the new awareness ribbons
• Mostly peaceful protesting expanded to include coolers full of poop

Bonus Sanity: For only the third time ever, it’s right there in the headline.

And so much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.

KURT SCHLICHTER: No Thanks, I’ll Be Skipping the Inauguration. “The Establishment converted Washington, DC, into a fortress guarded by troops strewn about on cold marble floors because that looked more compelling than showing them in cots and sleeping bags on sleeping mats that every one of them was issued. This is supposed to send a message of strength and resolution in response to a small riot that would barely have made the papers last summer but is now three of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse because it happened at the Establishment’s house instead of at Sen. Josh Hawley’s house, or your house. When it was your business on fire, it was a mostly peaceful protest, and you needed to get over it. When it happened to the people who let last summer fester, well, then it was an insurrection/coup/sedition for totally real.”

JIM TREACHER: Seattle Councilwoman Calls Cops She Wants to Defund.

Whenever I see somebody condoning or actually cheering on rioting and other crime, I ask for their home address. Not because I want an answer — I’m not a doxer — but because I want them to think about what they’re saying. It’s easy to cheer on “uprisings” and “mostly peaceful protests” when it doesn’t affect you personally. It’s easy to shrug when people are watching their businesses and lives go up in smoke, because you don’t know those people. They’re just abstractions. Too bad about their misery, but at least you’re still okay, right?

Until violent crime comes to your doorstep. Then what do you do? You call the cops, of course. The same guys you want to defund. The same guys you’ve spent your whole life demonizing. And they’ll show up to do the job you didn’t want them to do, right up until the minute you needed help.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The only thing worse than cops is no cops. I know firsthand what it’s like to deal with bad cops (GFY, DC Police!), and I’m absolutely in favor of police reform. But abolishing the police isn’t the answer. Bad cops suck, but not as much as a complete breakdown of civil society. The only people who don’t realize that yet are the ones whose living room windows haven’t been smashed in.

And it gets better! Seattle politician who defunded the police called 911 to protect her from a crime she wants to legalize.

All the best socialists assured me earlier this year that dialing 911 was the height of white privilege.

VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: Suppose They Stole an Election and Nobody Noticed.

Insanity Wrap needs to know: What does it take to get the press to notice an election being stolen in broad daylight?

Answer: A new press.

Before we get to the sordid details, a quick preview of today’s Wrap.

• By their own rules, Democrats are a superspreader event.
• Progresive Oregon goes all fascist on the mostly peaceful protestors.
• Twitter: Where the truth goes to get murdered.

And so much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.

“WE’RE GONNA TURN TEXAS BLUE, YOU GUYS!” Democrats cancel Texas event after Trump supporters surround, follow Biden bus.

Note the angry terms used in the story, like “ambush.” Heck, it was a mostly peaceful protest of Biden’s candidacy. Protest is patriotic, right?

VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: McCabe Turns McChicken, Gives Unbelievable Excuse for Not Testifying.

Insanity Wrap needs to know: What’s a good excuse for refusing to testify before Congress, even remotely?

Answer: Pretty much any excuse but the one former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe just gave.

Before we get to the sordid details, a quick preview of today’s Wrap.

• The Wuhan Flu death rate is dropping faster than Ted Kennedy’s pants.
• Finally, a mostly peaceful protest.
• ABC News wants a non-practicing doctor to practice on Trump, because reasons.

And so much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.

A PLAN SO CRAZY IT MIGHT JUST WORK: Governor DeSantis Has an Amazing Plan to Deal With Rioters and Mostly Peaceful Protesters™: Prosecute Them.

IT’S AN IDEA SO CRAZY, IT JUST MIGHT WORK: Governor DeSantis Has an Amazing Plan to Deal With Rioters and Mostly Peaceful Protesters™: Prosecute Them.

VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: Antifa/BLM Launch ‘Bring Your Daughter to Riot Day.’

Insanity Wrap needs to know: What kind of parent brings their small children to a riot?

Answer: One who thinks indoctrination is more important than their child’s safety and wellbeing.

Before we get to the sordid details, a quick preview of today’s Wrap.

Is Portland finally getting serious about prosecuting rioters?

ABC News says mostly peaceful protests are still mostly peaceful even when they’re somewhat murderous riots.

Joe Biden has been sniffing the gaslight.

And so much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.

MEGAN MCARDLE: When it comes to denouncing violence, the issue isn’t lives vs. property.

Now of course Black lives matter, and more than any building. But it’s not as if there is some obvious trade-off between Black lives and buildings that leaves us no choice but to accept looting. The truth is closer to the opposite: Rioting is a political, moral and economic disaster for everyone, and especially for communities of color. While some politicians, including Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and Joe Biden, have made this point, much of the commentariat maintained a decorous silence about what was going on, or retreated to euphemisms about mostly peaceful protests. And the longer both the disorder and the denial have gone on in places such as Portland, Ore., the greater the danger that the riots would, in fact, become the point — for some participants and for an electoral majority.

As this has become clear to commentators, this has opened up political space on the left to say what everyone should have boldly proclaimed all along: Riots damage lives as well as buildings.

For when businesses burn, what is destroyed is not merely a collection of cinder blocks and linoleum. Someone’s patient daily labor ensured that shelves were stocked and toilets cleaned, floors scrubbed and invoices paid, that fretful bank managers were reassured and peevish customers sent away happy. All those years of peoples’ lives, embodied in a physical location, should never be dismissed as mere inanimate “property.” Especially if those doing the dismissing have never staked their own life on some similarly unglamorous enterprise tied to a humdrum physical location — and, most particularly, if what was lost can’t really be replaced.

“Oh, but insurance will pay for the damage!” Well, owners of low-margin businesses don’t always carry generous commercial policies. Some let their coverage lapse when the pandemic closed their shops, and some discovered that insurance wouldn’t pay even the cost of demolishing the burned-out hulk of their store. And if insurance does pay enough to rebuild, there is still no guarantee their business will recover, because commercial zones are a whole much greater than the sum of their parts.

When looting and arson leave some owners unable to rebuild, and others reluctant to try, even those who want to rebuild will often worry about attracting customers to locations surrounded by burned-out hulks. This ultimately carries us beyond the suffering of petit-bourgeois store owners and into the ocean of trouble that afflicts communities when the businesses they depend upon disappear.

Five years after the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown, there were still boarded-up stores in Ferguson, Mo. Yet Ferguson had comparatively good conditions for recovery: The damage was isolated to one city, the broader national economy was strong and getting stronger, and there was plenty of state, federal and private money to assist with rebuilding.

When external conditions aren’t good, recovery can take much longer. The riots that followed the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. occurred in cities that were already hollowed out by suburban exodus. Many well-insured businesses used their insurance payments to move to suburban shopping malls; underinsured businesses closed. As late as 2007, when I first moved to D.C., there were still major retail districts that were just recovering from the 1968 riots.

The people who suffer when retail strips shut down aren’t the affluent, the class of people who can assume that insurance solves all problems. Those people move. It’s the ones who depend on the social capital of a neighborhood, rather than the financial capital of a market, who ultimately are hurt the worst. A disproportionate number of those people are Black and brown. Research suggests the 1960s riots decreased Black employment rates well into the 1970s, with the effect growing larger over time. And so, instead of expressing righteous rage at collective injustice, rioting ultimately becomes an instrument of suffering and systemic inequality.

The fearful-yet-hateful intelligentsia and commentariat get a lot of catharsis out of other people’s violence, affecting other people’s lives. And rioting — like most leftist politics in general — is more about making the intelligentsia and commentariat feel better about themselves than about making anyone else’s lives better.

A friend on Facebook adds that riots drive people into, and back into, poverty — and poverty itself kills. So the riots are in fact a threat to life as well as property, it’s just lives we don’t see.

RULES ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: Pelosi used shuttered San Francisco hair salon for blow-out, owner calls it ‘slap in the face.’

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited a San Francisco hair salon on Monday afternoon for a wash and blow-out, despite local ordinances keeping salons closed amid the coronavirus pandemic, Fox News had learned.

In security footage obtained by Fox News, and timestamped Monday at 3:08 p.m. Pacific Time, the California powerhouse is seen walking through eSalon in San Francisco with wet hair, and without a mask over her mouth or nose.

The stylist doing her hair can be seen following her wearing a black face mask.

Salons in San Francisco had been closed since March and were only notified they could reopen on Sept. 1 for outdoor hairstyling services only.

As Bryan Preston wrote in April: Here’s One Thing Officials Can Do to Make Lockdown Life Better: Stop Being Hypocritical Tyrants.

It’s very hard on free people who are used to being able to do what they want when they want, who had a job one day and thanks to a government decree they don’t have a job the next day. They didn’t ask for any of this, nor did they cause it. When we see Chicago’s mayor ban haircuts, and then get one herself because she’s privileged and you’re not and she imposes a curfew on others for no evident reason, and when we see a Texas county judge apparently violate his own stay at home order, it sends the entirely wrong signal in a republic where the people are supposed to be the government.

It also hints at something a whole lot darker that our dear leaders had better not let fester. And the best thing they can do to prevent that is to stop acting like petty little tyrants.

And then the “mostly peaceful protestors” arrived shortly thereafter, to illustrate just how uber-woke Covid itself is, and how rioting for the right cause creates an immunity to the pathogen otherwise not found in local shops and salons.

UPDATE: For sheer chutzpah, it’s tough to top this: “Nancy Pelosi’s office has confirmed the speaker got her hair cut indoors in a San Francisco salon, but released a statement claiming she didn’t know she’d done anything wrong.”

(Updated and bumped.)

VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: Obama’s Painful Endorsement, and Introducing Fraud-by-Mail.

Insanity Wrap needs to know: When is an endorsement an act of cruelty?

Answer: When it comes from Barack Obama.

Before we get to the sordid details, a quick preview of today’s Wrap.

• Cue the World’s Smallest Violin™ for journalists.

• Vote-by-mail isn’t just corrupt — it’s corrupting.

• A triple dose of mostly peaceful protest violence.

And so much more, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.