And speaking of the press and retractions…

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s an interesting video that was brought to my attention by commenter “DNW”:

I wasn’t previously familiar with Ana Kasparian, the woman speaking in the video, but apparently she’s a fairly prominent leftist “journalist”:

Anahit Misak “Ana” Kasparian; born July 7, 1986, is an American progressive political commentator, media host, university instructor, and journalist. She is the main host and a producer of the online news show The Young Turks, having begun working as a fill-in producer for the show in 2007. She also appeared on the television version of the show that aired on Current TV. She formerly hosted The Point on the TYT Network and currently co-hosts a Jacobin YouTube show, Weekends with Ana Kasparian and Nando Vila.

The clip is noteworthy for a couple of reasons. The first is that she is admitting that until now – which is well over a year after the events in question, events that have been discussed and analyzed incessantly and for which much accessible video has existed almost from the start – she didn’t know one of the most basic facts of the case, which is that Rosenbaum (who was killed by Rittenhouse) was chasing Rittenhouse and not the other way around.

So we see that this journalist and journalism teacher either did not bother to learn a thing about the high-profile case, or perhaps she is lying and knew it all the time. Take your pick.

Do I give her points for admitting it now? I suppose I could, because in the current climate that’s actually unusual for a leftist journalist even when the truth is staring that person right in the eye. I don’t know whether she went on to indicate she’s re-thinking the entire case, but it’s only if her recantation was sincere that I will give her any credit at all, and then only a smidge. That is because of a phenomenon nicely wrapped up by a commenter to that YouTube video:

They knew all along they are just scared of a civil lawsuit.

A la Nick Sandmann, who successfully sued the media for defamation and got a hefty settlement.

Kyle Rittenhouse takes the stand in his own defense

The New Neo Posted on by

I was shocked when I read that Rittenhouse was taking the stand in his own defense. That’s highly unusual, as most of you know, because it opens up even otherwise-sympathetic defendants to cross-examination. It’s usually not done, and when it is done it’s usually in the form of a hail-Mary pass. In the Rittenhouse trial, the prosecution has been doing so poorly so far that most people – including me – couldn’t see any reason it should even be considered.

Kyle Rittenhouse apparently differed and wanted to take the stand to clear his name by telling his side of the story. And as things developed, perhaps he was right to do so because it may have been the only way to get facts like this in evidence:

Rittenhouse, detailing the moments before he fired on Rosenbaum recalled Rosenbaum yelling “burn in hell” to him before Rittenhouse yelled “friendly, friendly, friendly!” in an attempt to calm Rosenbaum. But he was chased…

Earlier during his testimony, Rittenhouse revealed that Rosenbaum threatened to kill him two times prior to the fatal incident, on August 25, 2020.

“If I catch any of you f***ers alone I’m going to f***ing kill you,” Rosenbaum said to Rittenhouse and a friend, the teen testified.

On another occasion, he told the two males, “I’m going to cut your f***ing hearts out and kill you N-words,” Rittenhouse said, noting that Rosenbaum did not use the term “N-word” but used the real racial slur.

Just as a reminder, both Rittenhouse and Rosenbaum are white.

Rittenhouse broke down into sobs on the stand while telling – re-living, really – the story of how he was chased and surrounded by a murderous mob. The judge called a 10-minute recess after that., and then:

After the break ended and Rittenhouse returned to the stand, the teen said Ziminski told Rosenbaum, “Get him and kill him,” referring to Rittenhouse.

Rittenhouse was chased down and despite pointing his gun at Rosenbaum, the man did not stop, but lunged for his gun. “I remember his hand on the barrel of my gun,” he told the jury.

The forensic evidence presented yesterday was in line with that assertion of how close Rosenbaum’s hand was to the weapon.

The cross-examination of Rittenhouse by the prosecution appears to be ongoing. You can find discussion and a live feed at Legal Insurrection, and articles about the developments today here, here, and here (all from RedState). They include discussions of the prosecutor’s behavior on cross-examination and the reaction of the judge.

I will add one additional reason that I think the defense may have been okay with Kyle taking the stand: although trials often are decided on the fact situation and this fact situation already almost completely favored his exoneration, this trial is a political trial and Rittenhouse has been thoroughly demonized in the press for over a year. The jury had to have been tainted by that, as well as by threats to their own safety and the safety of their town. Perhaps letting him take the stand was necessary to present the real, very human and very young Kyle Rittenhouse, in order to convince the jury of his essential goodness.

The war against Rittenhouse and Sandmann

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: Take a look at yesterday’s Rittenhouse trial summary by Andrew Branca at Legal Insurrection. It’s quite something.]

It struck me last night that Kyle Rittenhouse reminds me somewhat of Nick Sandmann.

Not physically, although they were similar in age when they first came to public attention. Not in the fact situation that led to their notoriety, either. Their linkage in my mind lies in the fact that both have engendered incredible rage from the left and liberals, despite their youth and what I think is their obvious innocence (Sandmann of a supposed offense that was relatively minor even if true, which it was not, and Rittenhouse of the charge of murder).

Even the word “innocence” doesn’t quite cover it. Each of them, despite their youth – or maybe in some ways because of it – behaved under great duress with tremendous composure and in the case of Rittenhouse surprising restraint, given the attack he was under and the terror he probably felt. As pointed out in the trial yesterday, he only shot when under extreme provocation and justified fear for his life, when he was being actively threatened by armed people (or in the case of Rosenbaum someone who was trying to take his gun, was cursing at him, and who had previously threatened to kill him).

But both were subjected to a concentrated smear campaign from the MSM that cemented the narrative of their wrongdoing and stirred up a cauldron of hatred against them. With Sandmann, a lot of it centered on his supposedly “smirking” face, and was remarkable in the vitriol mustered against a 16-year-old who wasn’t doing much of anything while being actively harassed by an activist. Rittenhouse is perceived as an evil white supremacist vigilante, which is just how the left wants it. And the reality of what’s being revealed at the trial isn’t being reported on much if at all, which is the way previous political trials have been handled as well.

After all, most people on the left aren’t reading Andrew Branca, and most people aren’t watching much if any of the actual trial. Who has time? Besides, we have the MSM to tell us what’s going on.

The other thing that Rittenhouse and Sandmann brought to mind for me was a piece of fiction I read in high school: Melville’s “Billy Budd.” It’s been a long time – I haven’t read it since then, and my memory of it is pretty shaky – but the thing that struck me is that Billy was a case of an innocent young man meeting a legal judgment that ruled that he must die for his actions.

You may think it’s a poor comparison. I agree that the parallels are not especially strong, but there is something there that chimes a bit with what I see happening to Rittenhouse. Now, it’s certainly possible that Rittenhouse will be acquitted, and he certainly should be acquitted. But it really depends on whether the jurors’ opinions have already been so tainted even prior to the trial that they cannot fairly evaluate the evidence. And even if acquitted, it’s hard to see Rittenhouse not being affected for the rest of his life, although I hope he can draw strength from it.

But if he’s found guilty of murder, the state will have destroyed the life of an innocent young man who was actually trying to do good that night. I mean “innocent” in several senses of the word: not guilty of the charges against him, but also idealistic in the ways of many young people everywhere.

Will the MSM ever retract their old Russiagate stories, in light of the Durham revelations?

The New Neo Posted on by

The answer to that question asked here is: “no.” I suppose it’s within the realm of possibility that one or two might, although I doubt, it, but there’s virtually no chance of any substantial number of news outlets ever doing such a thing.

Long ago I assumed that sort of meaningful retraction would of course happen when media outlets had been wrong – but, I’m talking long long ago. It was also long ago that I reluctantly realized this wouldn’t be the case, and furthermore that most of the original reporting errors weren’t errors at all, but were actually part of a campaign by “journalists” to further a certain “narrative” that hurt the right and helped the left, offered with either regardless disregard for the issue of truth or actual knowledge of their falsehood (in other words, by fools or knaves).

For me the biggest turning point was Rathergate and the doubling down in the media and among Democrats after the hoax was revealed. The egregious nature of the error/falsehood involved in the entire story was easily proven, and yet they couldn’t or wouldn’t back off. Instead they doubled down and even made a mendacious movie about it in which they were the heroes.

That’s when I knew that this was more than an ordinary error by biased people. This was either an error by people so biased that they could not admit the truth if it hit them in the face, or a purposeful lie for propaganda purposes. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference, and in practical terms it hardly mattered although it did in moral terms.

Over time I have come to think that the latter group – the conscious liars – is bigger than the former group, the mistaken partisans. There are a lot of ways they justify themselves, but justify themselves they do.

So, to get back to the Durham investigation, here’s an article whose author Charles Lipson writes this:

Last week, John Durham’s grand jury issued its third criminal indictment in the Trump-Russia collusion hoax. The person who was arrested may be obscure; the news may have been buried after Virginia’s bombshell election results; but Durham’s move is a big deal. It shows that the special counsel’s probe is methodically unraveling a huge conspiracy, seemingly engineered by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and implicating James Comey’s FBI, either as a willing participant or as utterly incompetent boobs.

Note the ubiquity of the “knave or fool” question.

The latest indictment also damages the mainstream media, which is why so many news outlets have ignored or underplayed it. After all, they broadcast a false story for years and are none too eager to revisit it. Other losers are the prosecutors assembled by Robert Mueller, most of them Democrats, who had reams of this damaging information and ignored it.

What Durham and a few intrepid reporters are uncovering may well be the most ambitious dirty trick pulled in an American election and its aftermath. The question now is whether Durham can expose the full extent of this malfeasance and charge those who planned and executed it.

Yes, they indeed are burying it because if they didn’t it would indeed damage them. But I don’t think that’s the main reason they are burying it. The main reason is the furtherance of the ideology they embrace and their mission as they see it, which is to advance that ideology. The issue of truth does not concern them, in their post-modernist thinking.

[HOTE: The Lipson article is worth reading. It even may be worth sending to people you know who are unaware of the facts in it. Will it change any minds? Almost certainly not, especially in isolation. However, it depends where on the spectrum the reader might fall. Not everyone who votes Democratic is a true believer or a leftist. Some are merely misinformed and retain an open mind. The trick is figuring out who those people are, but you can usually tell from the way your previous conversations with them have gone.]

[NOTE II: If you want to see a good example of the continuing Rathergate spin, take a look at this Salon piece from 2015 entitled, “Rathergate and the dark magic of 2004: When the GOP learned how to subvert truth and alter political reality” and subtitled, “Long before Benghazi and Planned Parenthood, Karl Rove toppled Dan Rather, gutted CBS and proclaimed lies as truth.”]

Today’s Rittenhouse trial drama

The New Neo Posted on by

[Hat tip: commenter Barry Meislin.]

Here’s an article about what’s transpired today in the Rittenhouse trial. Pretty dramatic.

This witness is the third person shot by Rittenhouse, the one who survived:

My goodness. Apparently this is their last witness, and what Frei is referring to is that the judge should grant a directed verdict when the prosecution rests. I predict there is an extremely low possibility that will happen, although I think it should happen.

This really goes to show how hard it is to prosecute a case – even a political case – when the fact situation goes against you. You can prep a witness as much as you want, but now and then he’ll tell the truth.

Of course, the jury is free to disregard that truth, which they certainly seemed to do in the Chauvin trial.

Just to highlight the reaction of the prosecution today:

A more optimistic view of the infrastructure bill passage

The New Neo Posted on by

You can find it here, and I’ve read it elsewhere, too. I don’t think I subscribe to it – the cynic in me believes there will be some other surprises of the negative sort. But I’d like it to be true:

Whatever leverage the House side had over Manchin — and that other Democrat holdout, Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema — is basically gone now that the infrastructure bill is ready for Biden’s signature.

Manchin wanted (and got) the infrastructure bill. He doesn’t want the bigger bill, even after his fellow Senate Dems trimmed it down (not really*) to a “measly” $1.8 trillion.

Democrats leaned hard on Manchin, figuring that between him and Sinema, Manchin would be the first one to fold. Then they could go to work on Sinema as the lone holdout threatening to destroy Biden’s presidency.

Instead, House Democrats might just have done the job themselves…

So the Democrats scored an infrastructure bill victory on Friday night, but the casualties might just include the bulk of Biden’s agenda.

But if this makes Biden and the Democrats look more moderate than they really are, and if they therefore do much better than expected in 2022 (that’s a big “if”), then they will enact their leftist agenda after that. That’s the pessimist in me speaking.

The polls, for what they’re worth

The New Neo Posted on by

Down they go for the Democrats:

A year before the 2022 midterm elections, Republicans hold a clear lead on the congressional ballot as President Joe Biden’s approval rating sinks to a new low of 38%.

A USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll, taken Wednesday through Friday, found that Biden’s support cratered among the independent voters who delivered his margin of victory over President Donald Trump one year ago…

Among the findings:

Nearly half of those surveyed, 46%, say Biden has done a worse job as president than they expected, including 16% of those who voted for him. Independents, by 7-1 (44%-6%), say he’s done worse, not better, than they expected.
Nearly two-thirds of Americans, 64%, say they don’t want Biden to run for a second term in 2024. That includes 28% of Democrats. Opposition to Trump running for another term in 2024 stands at 58%, including 24% of Republicans.
Vice President Kamala Harris’ approval rating is 28% – even worse than Biden’s. The poll shows that 51% disapprove of the job she’s doing. One in 5, 21%, are undecided.
Americans overwhelmingly support the infrastructure bill Biden is about to sign, but they are split on the more expensive and further-reaching “Build Back Better” act being debated in Congress. Only 1 in 4 say the bill’s provisions would help them and their families.

Putting aside for the sake of discussion the usual caveat about polls and believing they are correct, there’s a lot to ponder there. I’m often astounded that any “Independent” voter in 2020 would have thought Biden would be anything but some strange combination of addled, pugnacious, mendacious, and way to the left, based on both his history and his performance during the 2020 campaign. Apparently wishful thinking is strong.

I also am rather stunned (although not really surprised, if that makes sense, given the media coverage) at the continuing animosity towards Trump. I would have thought more people would now be able to look back and see that mean tweets aren’t all that bad and that he actually accomplished a lot of good, plus that things like the Russian collusion hoax were pure garbage. But I realize that the anti-Trump propaganda was and remains strong, and then there’s his own abrasive personality that a lot of “nice” people just can’t get past.

Somehow many of them got past Biden’s nasty personality, however. But I digress.

I saw that poll yesterday and wondered why people would disapprove more of Harris than of Biden. To me, someone who does bad stuff (Biden) is worse than someone who does nothing at all except make vapid speeches and giggle inappropriately (Harris). I guess the difference is that leftists approve of Biden more than they approve of Harris, because he’s doing what they want and she’s more passive and uninvolved than they expected.

There also is a hint there of why some Republicans in Congress supported the infrastructure bill. Americans “overwhelmingly” favor it (2 to 1). Of course, it might be good to know whether many of those people know what’s in it in addition to infrastructure funds, how much it will cost, and what the consequences will be.

My guess is that the Democrats don’t plan to run either Biden or Kamala in 2024. Who they will run isn’t at all clear to me, but I don’t think it will be either of those two unless there’s a big upswing in the polls or unless their voting fraud apparatus becomes even better than before.

Gas prices going up? Winter coming on? Joe Biden has a brilliant idea

The New Neo Posted on by

Or some person or persons in the administration have a brilliant idea – let’s shut down a pipeline!:

The Biden administration is reportedly weighing the potential market consequences of shutting down an oil pipeline in Michigan, drawing criticism from opponents…

The administration has yet to decide on what to do with Line 5 and officials were gathering information only to present a clear picture of the situation, according to sources who spoke to Politico…

Jason Hayes, the director of environmental policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, blasted the Biden administration for its energy policies, telling Fox News that their work on Line 5 is “just one more example of being divorced from reality.”

“They’re planning to power an industrial nation like the United States on solar panels and wind turbines,” Hayes said, while noting that even the solar panels and wind turbines require “oil, natural gas, nuclear and even coal” to be produced.

Hayes presented a dire picture of what shutting Line 5 could mean if people are unable to get natural gas or the electricity it provides as the nation heads into winter.

Biden may be somewhat gaga, but I don’t think any of them are necessarily “divorced from reality,” at least not in the sense in which I believe Hayes means it. In other words, I think they know the consequences for ordinary Americans will be bad. Their motivation is connected to The Great Reset, not to making Americans’ lives better. And what they are “pondering” is how bad the political backlash might be if they make this particular move at this time.

All that jazz

The New Neo Posted on by

In Wednesday’s open thread this week I alluded to the fact that I don’t like jazz. I’ve tried; I’ve really tried, but it just doesn’t work for me. To my ear and brain it sounds like formless chaos, music dissolving into a wet puddle of glop.

Please don’t hate me for it, you jazz aficionados. I have nothing but respect for jazz musicians, and I know they’re highly skilled and just amazing, but I don’t want to listen to them.

When I thought about writing this post and tried to come up with some jazz that I enjoy, I remembered that years ago I owned the Miles Davis record “Sketches of Spain” and really liked it. However – as I suspected – when I looked the piece up, it says that it’s not really considered jazz by a lot of people:

The opening piece, taking up almost half the record, is an arrangement by Evans and Davis of the adagio movement of Concierto de Aranjuez, a concerto for guitar by the contemporary Spanish composer Joaquín Rodrigo. Following the faithful introduction of the concerto’s guitar melody on flugelhorn, Evans’ arrangement turns into a “quasi-symphonic, quasi-jazz world of sound”, according to his biographer.[

Hmmm – quasi jazz. Do I get half credit for that?

Probably not:

According to Davis’ biographer Chambers, the contemporary critical response to the arrangement was not surprising, especially given the scarcity of anything resembling a jazz rhythm in most of the piece. Martin Williams wrote that “the recording is something of a curiosity and a failure, as I think a comparison with any good performance of the movement by a classical guitarist would confirm”.

Davis had an answer for his critics:

Replying to suggestions that Sketches of Spain was something other than jazz, Davis said “it’s music, and I like it”.

Indeed. Me too.