Rittenhouse post-verdict roundup
There’s an almost endless supply of topics related to the Rittenhouse trial and verdict. Impossible to cover them all, but here are a few that I find of special interest:
(1) The Rittenhouse case in a nutshell:
Incredible that we’re waiting to see if riots break out because of media lies about a case from a riot that happened because of media lies.
— Billy Gribbin (@BillyGribbin) November 16, 2021
Of course, it wasn’t just the media that lied. It was lawyers such as Ben Crump and politicians such as Wisonsin’s Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes and Joe Biden. But the press is supposed to act as a check on those lies, not to spread and amplify them.
(2) Here’s how the defense attorneys prepared Rittenhouse for the verdict:
(3) Why Rittenhouse took the stand in his own defense:
(4) The ACLU has issued some statements on the verdict that are still more indications (in a long line of indications) that the organization has become an Orwellian mirror-image of its former self. Almost every word issued by the group is a lie, including the popular “traveled across state lines on a vigilante mission.” I’m not going to bother to fisk the whole thing; you can easily do it yourself.
(5) Joseph Rosenbaum was not only a criminal pedophile, but he had a history of mental illness and extremely recent suicide attempts:
[Rosenbaum] had spent most of his adult life in prison for sexual conduct with children when he was 18 and struggled with bipolar disorder. That day, Aug. 25, Rosenbaum was discharged from a Milwaukee hospital following his second suicide attempt in as many months and dumped on the streets of Kenosha.
It occurs to me that Rosenbaum’s behavior the night he died wasn’t just aggressive towards others, but possibly a quest to die himself. His threats and his asking people to shoot him, as well as his behavior in chasing a man armed with a long gun and trying to seize it, seems self-destructive. In a suicidal person, there can be aggressive impulses that simultaneously go outward towards others and inwards towards the self. Was this the case for Rosenbaum?:
Prior to the shootings, Lackowski said Rosenbaum had taunted him and other armed men close by to shoot him and also “false-stepped” in their direction – a motion of stepping toward someone and then quickly stepping back.
I doubt we’ll ever know whether this theory of mine is correct, but I think it’s at least plausible, based on Rosenbaum’s behavior and history.
The deranged, hysterical, and irrational reaction from leftists (both famous and not) on social media has been (alas!) all too predictable, yet still dispiriting, from Biden and Kamala to the loathsome de Blasio to the even more odious Nadler (who suggested that the DOJ might become involved since the verdict was obviously “incorrect”). Yesterday’s MSNBC panel (five blacks, including Joyless Reid) provided a stark example of how utterly delusional and completely detached from reality are these pampered and privileged creatures of the media, inveighing maliciously and mendaciously against an innocent young man whose life has hardly been easy or enviable. It has been well said by many (including VDH) that our current Cultural Revolution is being waged from the top by powerful and wealthy elites against ordinary (and sane) middle-class and working-class citizens. None of this augurs well for the future of the republic.
I wonder what the reaction would have been if Rittenhouse were black. Would he be portrayed as another case of the black face of white supremacy?
The Babylon Bee’s post-verdict potshot at the MSM: “ATLANTA, GA—With Rittenhouse found ‘not guilty,’ media outlets across the country are preparing for costly defamation lawsuits after a year of calling him a white supremacist.
With CNN already half-owned by Nick Sandmann, the famous fake news organization will soon be giving the other half of its ownership over to Kyle Rittenhouse. The two have agreed to share joint custody. . . . Neither party has decided what to do with Brian Stelter, who may have to be put up for adoption.”
https://babylonbee.com/news/rittenhouse-sandmann-agree-to-share-joint-custody-of-cnn
ACLU and SPLC went batshit crazy decades ago and do not merit any support whatsoever. They are simply in league with the lying leftist mainstream media tearing this nation down. As far as I am concerned, they are tools of China and Russia, and enemies of this nation and its people.
“ACLU and SPLC went batshit crazy decades ago …”
For the SPLC at least, I think it’s more “became completely cynical grifters” than “went batshit crazy,” but I wouldn’t want to fight with Edward about it. We could both be right!
I did a case study of the SPLC’s modus operandi that others here might find informative: https://www.thesocialcontract.com/pdf/twentynine-three/tsc_29_3_nachman.pdf It’s approximately 1,300 words.
ACLU and SPLC went batshit crazy decades ago and do not merit any support
Metropolitan newspapers in Alabama had exposed the $PLC as a skeevy direct-mail mill as long ago as 1995. Intelligent donors to the $PLC were driven by a desire to contribute funds toward enhancing Mrs. Morris Dees’ collection of knicknacks. Harper’s distributed some of their work to its audience in 2000. I’m not sure the screens used by Charity Navigator and the like ever picked up on the crooked-in-essence nature of the outfit.
See Wm. Donohue’s work on the ACLU, published > 30 years ago. His take was that it had never been devoted to civil liberties. Civil liberties was a hook for leftoid lawfare; Donohue’s take was that by 1987, civil liberties were no more consequential to the ACLU mission than telegraph service was to AT & T. Around the same time, Alan Dershowitz was offering the view in his column that the ACLU was ‘a coalition of civil libertarians and political leftists’, with the latter often carrying the day. Nat Hentoff was reporting in his regular column how local chapters of the ACLU were allowing unconscionable treatment of anti-abortion protesters by police and lawfare artists alike.
Bad people skimming money from dupes.
As j e above details, these are people so “deranged, hysterical, and irrational” as to be “utterly delusional and completely detached from reality”.
Ultimately, a delusional detachment from reality is suicidal.
What can’t go on, won’t go on
This afternoon I experienced the country I thought we were moving towards. I attended the funeral of a friend, a black lady, who had attended our church for several years while undergoing cancer treatment and living with her daughter nearby. The congregation who prayed together were white and black, and the people who stayed to eat sandwiches and talk about our friend, a really wonderful person, were white and black. It was a heartwarming experience, both in religious and personal terms.
I simply don’t recognize the hate-filled world these leftists appear to prefer, and I don’t want anything to do with it.
My prediction: the Feds will arrest Kyle Rittenhouse for violating Rosenbaum’s civil rights.
The idea of Rosenbaum essentially committing suicide by attacking an armed teen is plausible. We’ll never know, because he didn’t survive his behavior.
My prediction: the Feds will arrest Kyle Rittenhouse for violating Rosenbaum’s civil rights.
Again, Kyle is not a public employee and cannot reasonably interpreted as acting at the behest of public employees. (And, heretofore, rioting has not been considered an exercise of a civil right). For that reason, I think a civil rights charge would be…creative. Wouldn’t put it past them.
I was wondering how the Episcopal Church handled the verdict. As I expected, it was blind boilerplate anti-racism, gun control Left, more in sorrow than in anger. No prayers for Kyle. From Grace Cathedral in San Francisco:
___________________________________________
We decry both the systemic racism that still grips our country so tightly, and our unholy fascination with guns and a culture of violence. More particularly, our hearts go out to the families of Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber who were slain by Kyle Rittenhouse and to Gaige Grosskreuz who was seriously injured by him. We also pray for Jacob Blake whose shooting at the hands of a police officer precipitated the protests that night.
We have to decide whether we are going to be a country that condones vigilante violence or whether we are a people who value equal justice for all, order and reasonable laws that limit the destructiveness of guns.
https://gracecathedral.org/message-after-the-kyle-rittenhouse-verdict/
___________________________________________
At times I miss the Episcopal Church. It was a good place for me for a while. However, it became impossible then and remains impossible now.
Of course I’m not the only person to leave the Episcopal Church:
_____________________________
The Episcopal News Service offered these blunt words from the Rev. Dwight Zscheile, an expert on church renewal and decline: “The overall picture is dire – not one of decline as much as demise within the next generation. … At this rate, there will be no one in worship by around 2050 in the entire denomination.”
Episcopal Church membership peaked at 3.4 million in the 1960s, a pattern seen in other mainline Protestant bodies. This decline has accelerated, with membership falling 17.4% in the past 10 years.
https://www.knoxnews.com/story/entertainment/columnists/terry-mattingly/2020/12/17/episcopal-leaders-ponder-churchs-declining-attendance-terry-mattingly/6534905002/
_____________________________
Perhaps making leftist political positions, which alienate half of Americans, into church policy isn’t the best way to serve God or “Welcome All” as they claim.
Nothing you didn’t already know here:
https://vdare.com/articles/kenn-gividen-woke-justice-blacks-allowed-to-murder-whites-now
But a pretty good long litany of cases.
This one is a bit interesting:
https://vdare.com/posts/blacks-commit-73-per-cent-of-all-justified-self-defense-killings-mostly-of-other-blacks
All very entertaining… but ultimately none of the above really matters. Who Rules decides all.
Am I mistaken or did Robert Barnes drop off the defense team at the outset of the trial? Has there been any explanation?
Older and Wheezier:
About Barnes – he has said that he was going to help with jury selection. Then there were disagreements with the defense team about the way that jury selection should be handled, so he was dropped. I also heard an interview with the person who ended up being the main jury selection consultant that the judge severely limited the number and type of questions they were allowed to ask potential jurors, which hampered the defense team from doing all that much regarding jury selection.
Kate, that sounds wonderful about your afternoon.
“…to the even more odious Nadler…”
Indeed, the competition is stiff.
One thing that His Odiousness doesn’t seem to “get” is, if Antifa and/or BLM are considered “myth” (as he so forthrightly expressed on a previous occasion), then how is it possible for them to “demonstrate” in Kenosha (or other places)? Or to commit acts of violence? Or threaten? Or attack? Or be shot?
Especially that last. How does one shoot a myth? Or kill it?
And how can one be put on trial for doing so?
(No doubt I’m probably missing something here, but what…?)
@ huxley
Powerline’s John Hinderaker has much the same observation about his Evangelical Lutheran church.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/11/get-woke-empty-the-pews.php
Read it and weep.
The comment thread offers a host of other examples of pastors forgetting that their mission is to preach the gospel of salvation, not social justice.
@ Kate > “I simply don’t recognize the hate-filled world these leftists appear to prefer, and I don’t want anything to do with it.”
Same here.
I think we are seeing that reaction among the Domestic Terrorists aka Concerned Parents, black and white, objecting to the indoctrination of their children with Racism via CRT, especially since we’ve reached a point in most places in America where kids have no natural dislike of other children because they are a different color (speaking from personal observation; that was clear back when my kids were in school in the 1990s, and got better).
Okay, I have to give you a story:
I take a couple of Liberian (legal) immigrant kids to church activities, and in 2019, at the Christmas party, one of them told me happily that she and one of the other girls she had just met were exactly alike: they both were wearing the same sweater!
The other girl, of course, is white.
Neither of them even noticed.
They still are best buddies.
@ OlderandWheezier > “Am I mistaken or did Robert Barnes drop off the defense team at the outset of the trial? Has there been any explanation?”
He explained on an episode with Viva Frei, last week IIRC. He had some disputes with the guy handling the defense funds, for one thing, and then after Kyle’s family dismissed their first couple of attorneys and went with Richards, his services were “no longer required” by the new team right before the trial started.
But, after the verdict, he said, essentially, no hard feelings, they got the right outcome, and more power to them.
I’ll segue from there to a post I was going to add to the round-up, mic drop portion:
https://www.westernjournal.com/watch-rittenhouse-lawyer-destroys-chris-cuomo-live-tv-15-seconds/
Cuomo: “It’s hard to believe that somebody chasing you is going to beat you to death,”
Richards: “Why else was he chasing him, Chris?”
More rounding up.
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/megan-fox/2021/11/19/kenosha-crowd-reacts-to-rittenhouse-verdict-and-its-not-what-the-lying-media-told-you-would-happen-n1534562?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=onsite&utm_campaign=-1
Betcha can’t guess.
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2021/11/19/how-unethical-were-the-prosecutors-trying-to-put-kyle-rittenhouse-in-prison-let-us-count-the-ways-n1533326
Excellent summary, all in one place.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/11/unsurprising-outcome-rittenhouse-trial/620742/
I’ve seen tops spin slower.
Valuable for its eye-opening view of how the media-arm of the left projects their own behavior onto the right, among other things.
Almost a text book case.
And demonstrates why Bari Weiss and Glenn Greenwald and Jonathan Turley and few others are so rare in actually looking at evidence rather than ideology and emotion (even if belatedly, in Bari’s case this time).
Still, this is what the high-class left reads, and believes.
Cross-reference with Neo’s list of psychological excuses in the “crossing state lines” post.
The Democratic Party’s “mythic” (pace Nadler) shock troops swing into action in multiple cities:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/rittenhouse-acquitted-all-charges
Another reason why I really like this guy.
https://twitter.com/RichardGrenell/status/1462055867658821641
Richard Grenell @RichardGrenell
You are not the judge and jury.
Your policy directly contradicts the American principle of Innocent until Proven Guilty.
Quote Tweet
GoFundMe @gofundme
· Nov 19
GoFundMe’s Terms of Service prohibit raising money for the legal defense of an alleged violent crime. In light of the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, we want to clarify when and why we have removed certain fundraisers in the past:
I don’t like linking Twitter (why give them the clicks?), but there are a couple more really good zingers above and below this one if you scroll around.
I don’t want this comment to look like it came directly from Twitchy, but this one should be seen – it explains why Tulsi Gabbard is not Vice President instead of Kamala Harris.
She’s sane.
https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/1462004154281259013
(This all started with Neo’s Billy Gribbin link.)
Regarding Barnes’s being asked to leave the defense team, the Defense Attorney (Richards) mentioned something about certain people wanting to turn the trial into a “crusade” for the right to self-defense whereas Richards believed that the focus should be placed—ONLY—on defending the accused successfully.
Richards didn’t name any names, however.
Make of it what you will….
Am very gratified/relieved at the outcome, knowing full well, however, that this thing isn’t over.
– – – – – –
And yes, Grenell is superb—a fighter who refuses to be intimidated by the Democratic Party mob.
@ Kate : a follow-up to my previous comment.
https://notthebee.com/article/why-are-we-fighting-to-undo-all-our-racial-progress
And add this one to the round-up – it’s scathing, and rightfully so.
https://notthebee.com/article/the-nba-makes-official-statement-condemning-kyle-rittenhouse
This is the Bari Weiss post, for anyone who missed it.
https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/the-medias-verdict-on-kyle-rittenhouse
Note those pesky state lines again.
But, it’s a good start in pushing some teetering moderate progressives back from the edge, at least on some issues.
Siegel and Singal (sounds like Cheech and Chong) didn’t say any more in their posts than I read at Red State, PJM. Instapundit, Powerline, and Neo’s, but they are Approved Left Wing writers, so that’s who she cited.
Neo
Choosing sites is important. If Fox reports something, forget it. But if some other outfit, or perhaps half a dozen local sources, go with them. Sometimes, just for fun, lead with Fox, let the harrumphing begin and then bring in the other sources.
Might be true about Rosenbaum. Can’t have been much fun being him. Suicide is when, as somebody said, you’re sick and tired of being sick and tired. If he retained enough reality to foresee himself doing crazy stuff, looking from his rational interlude to the times when it seemed somebody else was in control, maybe ending it. But his crimes were so bad that it’s hard to sympathize. How nuts do you have to be not to know you shouldn’t…?
Talked to a shrink decades ago who was talking about the psychotropic meds and how bringing somebody back to reality isn’t …kind, sometimes. “I did WHAT?”
Going to sleep might seem like a good idea.
Re Tulsi Gabbard, she’s been on fire for quite a while now.
That being said, she has a history of being a bit on the quirky side —on all kinds of topics. Or has been. (Maybe she’s seen the light?….)
Nonetheless, when she’s right she’s right. (And she’s been absolutely heroic.)
Pretty sure she wasn’t picked for the VPOTUS spot because of three reasons:
– The color of her skin (with apologies to MLK)
– She excoriated Hillary Clinton (no apology required)
– Too much of an independent thinking “maverick” and therefore not “reliable” (IOW, too intelligent)
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“Episcopal Church membership peaked at 3.4 million in the 1960s, a pattern seen in other mainline Protestant bodies. This decline has accelerated, with membership falling 17.4% in the past 10 years.”
Gamaliel, the religious community organizing counterpart to the secular ACORN, has been much more successful at its mission of infiltrating and subverting to leftist goals the Protestant churches.
I first discovered them back shortly after 9/11 when a group came to the Episcopal church my wife attended at the time and spoke about the church joining them in their “local” group. Their pitch was very like the ones done by the SDS at my college back in the late 60s. Lots of internet searching from the “local” group’s name finally revealed the far left organization that was behind them and then the huge number of other “local” groups, all with religious sounding acronyms. And all doing the work of the left but hiding their true purpose from the unwitting locals.
I’ve been a little surprised that the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church has allowed himself to be upstaged by the Presiding Bishop of the ELCA in issuing ignorant statements.
Gringo: My prediction: the Feds will arrest Kyle Rittenhouse for violating Rosenbaum’s civil rights.
Art Deco in reply:
My comment was tongue-in-cheek, but very often parody of the left turns out to be reality. If one deliberately says something so absurd about the left that it is obviously satire, wait a minute and the lefties will go right ahead and do it. For that reason, like you, I wouldn’t put it past them.
The Episcopal church in the US has been in decline for over 200 years. In 1776, 15% of Americans were Episcopalians. Today, one percent or so. (“1790 percent of americans who were episcopalians” into search engine.)
Gringo:
I recall articles way back when to the effect that Episcopalians were the church of the elite. Here’s one from 1981:
_______________________________
Although Episcopalians constitute less than 2 percent of the country’s population – official church membership is set at 3.1 million members – their social and economic impact is rivaled by few other groups, if any.
Whether or not the bishops and archbishops care to acknowledge this matter, this has been the case since the settlement of Jamestown, which was, of course, basically an Anglican undertaking. Perhaps more to the point, it has been even more the case over the last century, with little evidence of slippage despite some falloffs in church membership in recent years and generally homogenization of the American people.
Episcopalians are represented disproportionately in America’s social aristocracy, and their mores and ways, even their religion, are frequently adopted by non-Episcopalians. More significantly, and more quantifiably, Episcopalians tend to be considerably wealthier and better educated than most other religious groups in Americans – Jews are a major exception -and are disproportionately represented in the upper reaches of American business, law and politics, especially the Republican Party.
https://www.nytimes.com/1981/04/28/us/the-episcopalians-an-american-elite-with-roots-going-back-to-jamestown.html
_______________________________
The Episcopal church I attended in San Francisco was founded by two Yale Divinity grads. One or both came from money. Many professionals were in the congregation.
I had some friends, a couple, who volunteered and became parents, but never got traction in the church because, as far as I could see, they were just middle-class Americans.