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April 22, 2022

Biden holds up Portland as model for America, foresees expanded Senate majority

By Monica Showalter

Is Joe Biden, or whoever is handling him today, aware of his latest "optics"?

Get a load of what he's been up to:

President Joe Biden stopped in Portland for a few hours Thursday afternoon to drum up excitement for his administration's trillion-dollar effort to revamp the nation's roads, bridges, airports and railways.

Biden's speech was part pep talk, part explainer.

"Oregon and America have gone from being on the mend to being on the move," Biden said. "We just gotta get the hell out of our own way."

Oregon? Portland? Seriously? That's like touting Flint, or Detroit as the great model upon which to build back all of America. Do his handlers think these things through -- or is Portland the only place out there that will step up to serve as his model?

Portland is a disastrous antifa-infested mess, a pit of drugs, crime, and homelessness, with corporations and citizens pulling up stakes to flee the city. Its infrastructure is a mess in no small part because city officials are so busy handing out the city coffers to the homeless instead of repairing the roads, and antifa is busy trashing and burning it. Any city like that would have infrastruture problems. Joe says he's coming to transfer money from other taxpayers to fix Portland up -- so antifa can burn it down again. Neither Biden, nor Portland Democrats talk about getting rid of antifa.

According to a video last year described by GatewayPundit:

Despite city leaders and their enablers in the leftist dominated media continually make excuses for Portland’s rapid descent into third-world status, going so far as to post puff pieces claiming it’s not as bad as what some say and launching a “Be Here For Portland” PR blitz, the reality of Portland’s demise has now been preserved in a video showing just how downtown really looks in 2021. Homeless tents line the sidewalks, streets are full of trash and debris, blocks upon blocks of boarded up and abandoned buildings, and endless rows of graffiti greet visitors.

The video starts off juxtaposing a billboard for Rolex watches at Ben Bridge jewelers, then the camera pans down to show what appears to be an abandoned building, taken over by homeless, and tagged with various different bits of graffiti. Rows upon rows of tents of “houseless urban campers” adorn the sidewalks. Some are left with no tent and are just napping in sleeping bags in doorways and beneath overhangs. Like something akin to Orwellian newspeak propaganda, one such person is sleeping out front of a happy looking little state run thing called Care Oregon with the words “That’s The Care Oregon Effect” right above him. Another shot ironically shows the evidently closed Employment Access Center with many homeless camped out around it.

Note that many of these tents look brand new, likely handed out by the do-gooders of the “non profit” organizations that purport to want to help the homeless.

Then come the city-of-plywood shots, as building after building are boarded up. Some trying to operate in the face of routine riots, others vandalized by robbers, still some broken into by people who just want to keep warm at night. Several of these buildings and businesses have simply been abandoned. Sure some government officials try to blame Covid for the transformation into Boardlandia, but last I checked the virus isn’t powerful enough to shatter windows.

After touting Portland as the model for his big spending plans, Biden then backslapped with Portland's finest, local luminaries like these:

 

 

Obviously, she likes the money. And there's probably a reason why. Reading through the lines from a report from Axios, emphasis mine:

Unless they appoint infrastructure coordinators — or czars — state and local governments risk squandering their shares of the trillions in public works money coming their way under the landmark Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, a new report from McKinsey & Co. warns.

Why it matters: Because of the historic opportunity to make huge and lasting improvements, the Biden administration has urged each state to name a point person and task force to administer the law, passed in November, which targets everything from clean water and high-speed internet access to bridge and road repair and public transportation.

  • But so far only a handful of states, like Delaware, Arkansas and New Mexico, have done anything of the sort.

In other words, the money is likely to be misused if not stolen by Oregon's ruling Democrats, same as happened in previous porkulus bills. Note that Oregon hasn't bothered to send a 'czar' to police the money-shoveling that Joe's got coming for Portland.

Meanwhile, the local talent that made Portland famous have reactions of their own:

 

 

These violent thugs are still flourishing in Portland, having spent much of 2020 trashing, looting, and burning down huge parts of the center of the city. They attacked and tried to burn down the federal courthouse. Most of those who were apprehended were let out without consequences or else saw their charges dropped. Businesses fled. School enrollment fell. Nobody was alarmed. Had Portland been a normal city, people like these would be breaking rocks in the hot sun.

This looks like the thinking of one of the saner locals, or maybe an ex-Portlandian:

 

 

Now Biden's off to Seattle, land of the antifa CHOP zone, which turned that fair city into another den of lawlessness, this time to tout "Earth Day." Here's a recent tweet depicting the state of that Democrat-run city:

 

 

What a model for America in that one, too.

If Biden had any sense, he'd get as far away from these leftist ratholes as he possibly could, but no, he goes there to tout his spending blitz there.

Amazingly, he also imagined that this was a plus, not a minus, in winning back the support of the American people. He told this to Portland's local burghers on the rubber chicken circuit:

PORTLAND, Ore. (Reuters) -President Joe Biden on Thursday predicted that his fellow Democrats could win two more U.S. Senate seats in November's midterms, strengthening the party's majority to pass his agenda despite sagging approval ratings.

Speaking at a political fundraiser in Portland during his first trip to the Pacific Northwest since taking office, Biden said he was increasing his travel schedule to make the case around the country about his administration's accomplishments.

"I'm determined to make sure we keep the House and the Senate," Biden told the donors. He offered no prediction for the party's prospects in the House.

And going to Portland will fix this? Most Americans will be asking why he's not going to the border so long as he's all in for traveling around now, same as Kamala Harris. It's nonsense. Biden's belief that he will expand his Senate majority is just another part of the strange delusions of this optics-challenged trip. Republicans around the country seeking to unseat Democrats will have plenty of material to work with from this Biden trip.

It's pathetic.

Image: Twitter screen shot

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