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Police State in Denver

I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means

By: Caleb Howe (Diary)  |  August 25th, 2008 at 11:32 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

Protests in Denver

Recreate 68 is convinced they live in a state of opression. Since the government now prevents them from exercising their free speech, they held a huge protest march where they were given free reign on half the streets of Denver and international press coverage, wherein they said any despicable thing they wanted. So yeah, they’re totally being oppressed.

I spent some quality time with these rocket scientists yesterday. One thing they were sure of is that we live in a police state. “This is what a police state looks like!” was one of the more popular chants. Incidentally, they often added “This is what Democracy looks like, this is what anarchy looks like, this is what totalinarianism looks like!” I guess they weren’t really sure WHAT it looked like. Then I figured it was sort of a Sesame Street thing, so I held up my camera and said “This is what a camera looks like” and began pointing at things “This is what a tree looks like, this is what a hippie looks like.” They didn’t think that was very funny.

Yesterday I posted the video of Fox News being attacked by these peace-lovers. Today the news has gotten around. The press seem to think the police or security intervened. Not so.

The police were exceptionally hands-off yesterday. That the crowd desperately wanted to be sprayed with hoses was apparent. The name of the group is, after all, Recreate 68. They smoked marijuana outside of the Pepsi center, despite hundreds of cops being around. They pushed. They wanted it.

But as you can see from my video, where cops and security stood by while Fox News was attacked, they didn’t get it. In fact, the cops were so hands-off that when I asked another officer farther down the route whether he’d heard about the assault, I found it hadn’t even been called in. The police and security on the scene didn’t even get on their radios and report it. Some police state huh?

That didn’t stop the protesters from claiming it, though. Remember the chanting, “This is what a police state looks like!” I asked one of the men leading this chant a few questions:

“They’re so quick to violence!” Ummmm, but there hasn’t been any. Interesting.

This was at about the halfway point in the event. It was only twenty minutes later his friends and compatriots attacked Griff Jenkins. The cops didn’t intervene. Some police state. “The peaceful” protesters were the source of the only violence.

The chant about a police state carried on through the day. Despite the obvious hands-off approach by the cops, the MSM is already reporting that they intervened in the Fox News incident. I wonder how long before the protesters get their media to complete their message. “Protesters Clash With Police.” Well there was no clash, no matter how much the rabble-rousers tried to get one, they simply couldn’t recreate 1968. Just remember that when you watch the news.

POLICE_State

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COMMENTS

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  • aaronbg

    n/t

  • bk

    The info about “Troops Out Now” has Ramsey Clark as the first person listed. That list of orgs reads like a who’s who of freaks.

    Similar info for “Stop War on Iran” is not listed, but their goals seem to be to shut down the US (and other western) military entirely:
    * Stop War on Iran!
    * U.S. Out of Iraq & Afghanistan
    * No U.S. attack on Iran through Israel
    * No to all U.S./NATO war threats
    * Money for human needs, not war!

    • aaronbg

      n/t

  • simpson316

    because I think you would find someone uttering “quick to violence” and “I haven’t seen any yet” in a definition of the word.

    • Rod_Patrick

      pretending like regular Democrats. But truth tells us that they are actually members of an international socialist network who hates America.

  • Thunder_Pig

    These idiots are so funny. They should be on their knees thanking God they don’t live in a police state.

    Keep on bringing us the good stuff.

    • CVN_76

      If they truly lived in a Police State, they wouldn’t have the courage to protest and suffer the consequences.

  • Joe_Schmo

    Stop The U.S. War On The World! Support liberation for all peoples

    They obviously gave this one a great deal of thought. /snark

    Yeah, let’s stop liberating oppressed people and… you know… start liberating oppressed people.

  • nicfit

    ROFLAO! Thanks for taking the time to go down with the wingnuts and tease them. Interestingly, our local paper reported how well-behaved everyone was and how wonderful the march was. I was like, did you watch the guy from Fox News get manhandled by the throngs of rude people?!?!

    Thanks for the giggle in the face of such ridiculousness.

    • nicfit

      These idiots were actually calling for the end of the occupation of Hawaii. As in the 50th state that VOTED to become a state. That Hawaii.

      Yeah! And while they’re at it– let’s get out of Maryland, too!

      If my eyes could roll any further back into my head I”d be able to see my optic nerve.

  • soup

    The Rocky Mountain news and Denver post both had similar headlines yesterday about this. I can’t find them now though. I did find one headline on a video.

    http://www.rockymountainnews.com/videos/detail/protesters-collide-police/

  • theoneandonlyfinn

    Its +2 Obama right now, but if enough press is given to this and people see this and subconsciously associate the wingnuts outside with the more powerful nuts inside the convention, bye bye 9 electoral votes…

    • soup

      Well I can tell you right now. There are a lot more people (within my circle of friends/coworkers) that are upset about this DNC than are excited about it. It is a huge pain in the butt with all of the street closures and the fawning by the media. They aren’t even trying to hide the bias now. They are more excited than a puppy getting set loose in a rabbit sanctuary.

      I would have to say that this is most certainly going to come back and bite them out here.

  • Maggie_in_Indiana

    of this protest was pretty much the same. Their guy could have easily gotten slammed. Other than alot of noise they didn’t really have a message.

    Too bad Right To Life protested Saturday (I think) it would have good to have them on the first day of the convention instead of so many other wackos with nothing much to say.

    • Jaded

      nt

  • inothetruth4real

    Michael Staton is a secret Muslim!

    • Achance

      is an interesting story. They just don’t do imperialism like they used to! ‘Course, if we hadn’t snatched them, the Brits would have. Those were the days!

      • blooch

        “Real Stories of the Police State Patrol”

        • Next93

          There was a time in my life (though not in my memory) when the Democratic candidate for the presidency ran on a platform that the Republicans hadn’t done enough to protect the country from the international socialists movement.

          These days, that movement is considered a key demographic.

  • Next93

    I live about 12 miles from the edge of St. Paul, and I volunteered to help at the RNC in St. Paul. So far I haven’t heard back, so I’m thinking I might just grab my video camera and go walkabout in Lowertown.

    I’m not very fast on my feet; these days, I need to use a cane for any serious walking, so I’m going to have to be thinking ahead if I want to be where the action is.

    Any suggestions you might be able to offer, as far as spotting the potential problem areas or getting on-camera interviews, would be greatly appreciated.

    • Darin_H

      No RussiaoutofGeorgiaNow.org? I’m shocked that all of their opposition is to American actions and not those in the world who don’t play nice with others…

      This is a tree. Hilarious! Next time bring a bar of soap for show & tell, Caleb :)

      Do they not seriously understand that if this were an actual police state that their dead bodies would have been dumped in a mass grave already?

  • kyle8

    Trying to recapture a mythical youth of a previous generation.

    These are people who have never grown up, they are the political equivalent of Star Wars nerds who dress up like a wookie.

  • Darin_H

    It’d be great to have all the cops eating donuts…

    Alternatively, this is what a police state really looks like…

    Cops

  • CJB68

       It sounds to me like they want to outdo Chicago ’68.  I’ll be keeping my eyes and ears open for any reports of the first Molotov being lobbed, then.

       The thing about gangs like the ones we’re being pointed to in this thread is that they’re basically anarchists.  However, as such, they were quite useful for the communists in Russia when they were in the process of overthrowing the old Czarist regime.  We could see something similar begin to happen over here, thanks to generations of our kids being raised by intellectuals and media figures who glorify such insanity.

       The scariest thing about this generation of nitwits is what would happen if they were to get what they want, i.e., the United States effectively reduced to isolation again while the world starts to burn.  Which is what I suspect that they want to happen.  It’s been said by someone out there that these are the type of people who “like to watch the world burn.”

       In the age of Al Qaeda and Islamofacism, do they really want to trade out our “police state” for something akin to the real thing?  If so, it confirms my theory on “collective insanity” in the Left.

  • kyle8

    you say: “The scariest thing about this generation of nitwits is what would happen if they were to get what they want, i.e., the United States effectively reduced to isolation again while the world starts to burn. Which is what I suspect that they want to happen. It’s been said by someone out there that these are the type of people who “like to watch the world burn.”

    I have a few questions. Just what would constitute Isolationism? Total withdrawal from the rest of the world, or would simply limiting our foreign commitments be isolationism to you?

    Do you really believe the world would go to hell if we limited our presence? Do you ever think that maybe, just maybe there are times when our presence leads to more rather than less trouble?

    I am sure you have been told many times that only the USA can bear all the burdens and shoulder all the responsibility for civilization. But have you ever really analyzed that belief? Did you ever think that absent some big, threatening ideology like Nazism or Communism that maybe we are doing more than we have to? Did it never occur that maybe other nations don’t do much to help because, well they don’t have to?

    Just asking questions.

  • Mord

    I can count the number of times I have had a “Citizen/police officer” moment in my 31 years on one hand. And I live in Massachucets, no less. I guess shock value is eqivalent to truth with these people who are so desperate to have a purpose in life. REAL poilice states such as china and north korea routinely shoot or “re-educate” protesters.

    • Achance

      At the end of WWII, the greatest justification for the US assuming the role of World policeman was to keep anyone else from doing it. The World created by the “old” Great Powers had given us unrelenting warfare from the Crimean War through WWII, interrupted only by timeouts for rearmament.

      For all its dangers, the bipolar World of the Soviet sphere v. the US sphere was a much safer and more stable World than the multi-polar World that preceded it and, in many ways, has replaced it. Had we not “done it for them,” and limited their ability to do it themselves, there can be no doubt that Britain, France, Germany, Japan, and perhaps even The Netherlands, Belgium, and Italy would have tried to restore their former military and colonial glory. It is an open question whether we should have, but we had a tough time getting them to divest themselves of their empires as it was, and I’m not at all sure that they would have done so had it not been for the largely Soviet inspired and financed “liberation movements” in those colonies.

      Today’s World looks entirely too much like the World of 1913 for my comfort. Former Great Powers wanting to be Great Powers again, revanchist pressures around the World, all sorts of Imperial irredenta still lying about loose. And only one truly Great Power trying mightily to keep it all in some sort of order, using our mighty military in part to keep the peace and in part to protect our investments – and our creditors. We’ve bet the homestead on this hand, we can’t exactly pick up our chips and head home to mama.

      • mikeleader

        your tour de force breakdown of America’s assumption of world power and its committment to that awesome but essential responsibility was both historically accurate, and extraordinarily explained.

        My sincere thanks for sharing your perspective… ML

        • furious

          …letting Hitler have Europe, and standing by while England fell and U-boats patrolled our Atlantic coast. Lindbergh, the Bund, and AmericaFirsters (and now Pat Buchanan) actually countenanced that. Pretending that what the Imperial Japanese did to the Russians in 1905 they didn’t have planned for us, the Brits, Dutch and Aussies.

          Would the world have gone to h*ll? Ask the members of NATO and SEATO, say, circa 1961 and 1974, respectively. Or the Gulf Emirates circa 1991, or post-Tsunami Thailand and Indonesia. Or Taiwan or Israel or South Korea, for all their respective faults infinitely preferable to their immediate neighbors.

          More rather than less trouble? Yes, for us, when we try to keep the peace ala’ Beirut 1981 protect aid workers and food deliveries ala’ Somalia 1993. Nothing worse for the World’s Policeman than having to respond to a domestic disturbance in a bad neighborhood.

          But, seriously, you think the Euro ‘Rapid Reaction Force’giggle is up to it? The Blue Helmets? The sticky-fingered Russian liberators of South Ossetia?

          The Euros, for the most part, can’t even police their own immigrant slums, and have acquiesced to the imposition of shari’a law and the presence of hate-festering mosques in their growing, utterly alien, unassimilable immigrant populations. It’s not so much the Euros “don’t have to” defend Western Civ because the US does, it’s that they no longer believe in it and have long since surrendered the capability and willigness to defend themselves. They’ve even given up replacing themselves, if you’ve seen the latest Eurabian demographic trends.

          • Achance

            nt

          • Vegas_Rick

            n/t

          • BigAl3111

            I didn’t see him get manhandled. I saw him get shouted at. Do you have a reference for that?

          • BigAl3111

            I think the world would be better off, of course.

          • nicfit

            Maybe it wasn’t the reporter, it was the cameraman. And no, I don’t have the video. Sorry. I just happened to catch it live on Fox. Honestly, I kept wondering why that reporter was walking around with a Fox microphone, advertising for a station that all those people clearly hate. Sort of instigating them, I thought, but still, those marchers did take the bait.

          • nicfit

            “Trying to recapture a mythical youth of a previous generation.”

            Well put. I almost can’t help but feel sorry for them.

          • nicfit

            Yeah, let’s stop liberating oppressed people and… you know… start liberating oppressed people.

            Makes me think of the good ol’ days back at CU Boulder…

          • speciallist

            n/p

          • nicfit

            is that it is always hard for me to detect sarcasm. I’m hoping that your remark wasn’t sarcastic, and I’m going to just go with it. (I do see the irony, considering how often I employ my own sarcastic tendencies)

            That said, and as peace offering for past slights, I do hope you understand that a highly developed snark reflex is essential to survive my alma mater in the political science department if one hopes to get out with one’s conservatism alive.

            – Proud Survivor of attempted Liberal Indoctrination, Class of ’98

          • speciallist

            n/p

          • speciallist

            n/p

          • kyle8

            So then what you are saying is, ONLY the American Taxpayer, and ONLY the American people must forever, (yes I said forever because that is the thrust of your argument) give away their fortunes, and sometimes their blood for the pursuit of a chimera, World peace, or I guess more accurately world stability.

            All for the sake of a bunch of ingrates who hate our guts and are using their comparative advantage (after all they don’t have to pay the cost of a military) to compete against us.

            Funny but I see another way. I see a way in which we say to the grown up nations of Europe that it is time they begin to bear their own burdens, and when something happens in their backyard it is up to them. You might be surprised what people will do when they are forced to do it.

          • kyle8

            I suppose what you are saying is that any pull back of commitments, no matter how small is exactly equivalent of pre-WW2 isolationism.

            I disagree.

            As for your low opinion of the Euro’s and their ability to defend themselves, Of course they don’t do any of the heavy lifting, They don’t have to. Uncle Sapp is always there to bail them out. Maybe it is time to kick the bird out of the nest. If they fail a few times, I am sure they will learn. Did you know that Europe has much more wealth, and population than the United states. And if they are so feckless and miserable, the way you say then why do we care what they do?

            Somehow I do not see anywhere in the constitution where it says that the government has the right to tax it’s own citizens to pay for the continual protection of an entire overseas continent.

            Or did you ever even stop and think about it in that way?

          • Achance

            Likewise, even the Cold War. We basically wound up with all of the economic benefits of the old empires and very little of the cost of administering them; that self-determination stuff is cheap if nothing else.

            We tried that leave it to them stuff in both World Wars. We wound up getting in anyway and much later and at much greater cost. Taking Germany and Japan off the board in the late Thirties would have been a lot cheaper and easier than it was in 44-45.

          • kyle8

            the Europeans are silly children who can never be counted on for anything and yet it is our sacred duty to protect them forever, and of course the world situation is exactly analogous now to august 1914 and or September 1938. Got it.

          • BrianH

            of totalitarian regimes before they oppress people in other countries is a good reason to use our armed forces? Is it not a good thing to help small democracies stay free? Is it not a good thing to help democracy spread to other countries?

            Just asking…..

            (The bit about Europeans being silly children is good one. Way off, but a good one.)

          • Joe_Schmo

            N/T

          • Achance

            It is in our interest to keep things in order so as to protect our markets and our security. We could have sat out WWII as Germany and Japan arranged their empires, neither wanted to deal with us. We were deliberately provocative towards both of them which resulted in our entering the War. Had we sat it out, we would have in a few years found ourselves facing two hungry wolves, at least one of which would certainly have had nuclear arms. That would certainly have been the price of the kind of isolationism that Buchanan and others are preaching.

          • kyle8

            you think the current situation is analgous to world war two. That is an opinion I do not share. Brian mentioned a totalitarian regime, but I don’t see any totalitarian regimes in the area, I see a very demgraphicaly weak Russia trying to influence their neighbors by intimidation.

            The Europeans could easily stand up to Russia without our help whatsoever. It is like a lion being bullied by a badger.

            In all this talk I have still to see any sort of realism in what our limits are. Or if any of you believe that we have any limits.

            If being involved perpetually in eastern Europe is in our best interests then so be it, but at least we ought to then rethink some of our other commitments. And at the very least we should insist on the Europeans bearing a bigger part of the burden. If we don’t insist, then they never will.

          • Achance

            I never said anything about the current situation being analogous to WWII. It certainly is a multipolar World much like the first decade of the Twentieth Century though.

            If I were looking for an analogy, the best would be any of the German or Italian attempts to reassert control over their irredenta in the 20s and 30s. If the West had had the will to stop them at relatively low cost then, it wouldn’t have had to stop them at great cost later. Clearly, Russia is going to push the West as far as it can to try to reclaim its irredenta. Do we stop them now or do we look around in a few years and see a reconstituted Soviet Union that has moved to State Capitalism rather than Communism. BTW, that State Capitalism stuff is what the Nazis and the Fascists were into. Historian Paul Johnson described the old Soviet Union as the last of the Empires; nothing’s changed.

  • whizkid

    I love how they were complaining that they couldn’t “escape” because there were police on “two” or “three” sides. There’s FOUR sides which they could use.

    Bottom line: Don’t break the rules (by leaving the designated area and trying to get to the convention center) and you won’t get pepper sprayed or bothered.

    As far as America being a “police state”, don’t make me laugh. In police states, rioters get shot and beaten. Not escorted away.