The Trayvon Hoax

The New Neo Posted on by

I missed some news that came out in late 2019, something I’m just coming across now. In the not-too-distant future, I hope to post a longer piece or two connected with it. It concerns allegations that are not only mind-blowing but could end up being important, if they ever get a proper airing and proper coverage. I’m talking about The Trayvon Hoax, which refers to the claim that the prosecution’s case against George Zimmerman was built almost entirely on a fraud in which they substituted a fake witness for the real one.

That seems preposterous, I know. It seems it should be impossible to get away with such a thing, especially with all the scrutiny the case received. The story is complicated and takes a while to set out and digest. The man who’s promoting this is a documentary filmmaker named Joel Gilbert, who’s been connected previously with some iffy theories. So he’s easily dismissed by the left, and hard to take all that seriously.

Until you watch the documentary or read his book, that is.

I haven’t done the latter, but I’ve done the former. The video is two hours long, and some of it could easily have been cut to tighten it up, which I think would be an improvement. Nevertheless, by the time I was finished watching, I felt that Gilbert had presented a remarkably compelling and comprehensive case, which was not my initial expectation at all.

Nor has anyone refuted it, although he started this tack in the fall so they’ve had plenty of time. Oh, they’ve excoriated him (and Zimmerman) plenty. But I could find nothing that dealt with the heart of the actual research he’s done and the allegations he’s making.

As I’ve said, I plan to write more about this. But I decided to put this post up rather quickly, to give you an idea of what I’m talking about, as well as an opportunity to watch the video if you’re not already familiar with it.

So here’s the documentary itself. Please be patient, and I think your patience will be rewarded. The importance of the Zimmerman/Martin case cannot be overemphasized. It’s the event that was the kickstarter for the organization BLM and the spreading of the leftist narrative about innocent blacks being killed in droves by cops. That’s a bit ironic, because Zimmerman wasn’t a cop. But he was considered a quasi-cop (and a quasi-white, since he’s half Hispanic).

If you’re interested in reading the document filed by Zimmerman’s lawyers in his suit, see this. And there’s also Gilbert’s book, which you can find here.

It’s very possible there’s a whole counter-story which has yet to be told, one that debunks the documentary and the book. But so far I haven’t seen it, and I can’t figure out what it would be.

Antifa: on sociopaths and riots

The New Neo Posted on by

On the white guilt thread yesterday, I wrote about various ways in which people can react to feelings of guilt and then want to join movements such as BLM or especially Antifa. Then I added:

in addition, I believe that quite a few of the rioters and especially the most aggressive ones are sociopaths, people who “just want to watch the world burn.” These people don’t feel guilt at all. They don’t even get the concept.

In the comments, I also wrote, of the presence of sociopaths in violent and tyrannical groups:

It is standard operating procedure. Nazis and Communists, for example, made use of the sociopaths among them.

Last night I found this video by two lawyers whose work I usually like. The one speaking here is named Robert Barnes. The whole video is worth watching, but here’s the part that’s especially relevant to this discussion:

Which brings us full circle today, to this earlier post on Biden and how the Democrats have incited violence while pretending that Trump’s the one who’s been doing it.

Leftist Finance 101

The New Neo Posted on by

Mayor de Blasio says:

“Help me tax the wealthy. Help me redistribute wealth. Help me build affordable housing in white communities if you want desegregation,” de Blasio said on WNYC’s “The Brian Lehrer” show after a caller asked about integrating public schools.

So I wonder – how can you redistribute wealth if you’ve driven away your tax base?

I think the answer is simple for the left: it doesn’t matter how low the standard of living goes as long as the wealth is more equally distributed. “Socialism is the equal sharing of misery,” and de Blasio is determined to bring it about in New York.

De Blasio can’t run for mayor of New York again. But I almost wish he could, to see if the people of that city would re-elect him. As it is, I suppose it’s possible that his successor will be in the same mold or even worse. After all, one of the many things that’s happening there is that a lot of people inclined to vote otherwise are leaving the city.

In related news, many business owners of Minneapolis have had enough.

And there’s no way any of this can be a surprise to the leftist leaders of such cities. It is a choice, the choice the left always makes:

The Biden camp’s strategy

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: I’m going to start referring to Joe Biden as “the Biden camp.” For quite a while I’ve been writing “Joe Biden and/or his handlers” to refer to said group, but “the Biden camp” is shorter and it essentially means the same thing. We don’t really know who’s calling the shots right now, or to what extent Biden himself can come up with something one might call a strategy.]

The Democrats are banking on the idea that no one ever went broke underestimating the America public. So after denying the violence going on in American cities – “who are you going to believe, us our your lying eyes?” – they’re now applying their all-purpose remedy, the Big Lie of blaming it on Trump.

Yesterday Joe Biden went to Pittsburgh, which is in itself news – that he went somewhere. He gave a speech there to an audience of a few newspeople, which makes one wonder why he had to go anywhere at all. This was apparently the setting:

And then there was his inability to deliver the speech in a coherent fashion. Some of this may be eye problems with reading from the teleprompter, but he shows no ability whatsoever to recover from such errors and ad lib in anything resembling a coherent fashion:

Even when Joe manages to speak in normal sentences, now that it’s been decided he must condemn the violence what he says is of this nature:

Trump “long ago forfeited any moral leadership,” and was incapable of stopping violence “because for years he had fomented it.”

In Biden’s vision, Trump “may believe mouthing the words ‘law and order’ makes him strong, but his failure to call on his own supporters to stop acting as an armed militia in this country shows you how weak he is.” And “does anyone believe there will be less violence in America if Donald Trump is re-elected?”

That’s Orwellian nonsense. And yet, it’s the exact nonsense the MSM has been spouting for quite some time. It goes like this: Trump is dark, divisive, and evil, as are his supporters. The riots don’t exist and are a product of Trump’s imagination. At the same time, where they do exist, the perpetrators consist of right-wing militias, white supremacists, and Nazis who support Trump. He could call them off but refuses to do so, while the brave mayors of the blue cities they are attacking fight them off, with the help of the brave anfi-fascist volunteers of Antifa.

A lot of people think that the Biden camp is using this strategy now because Trump’s poll numbers have been going up. Maybe. But I also read the other day (in this blog’s comments or elsewhere, but I don’t recall the location or the author) that the real motivator is that finally in Kyle Rittenhouse they have a person they believe can be successfully labeled as a cold-blooded right-wing murderer. Anyone who studies the videos (or Rittenhouse’s activities that day) knows that this could not be further from the truth, but when did being far from the truth stop the Democrats from blaming Trump or Republicans?

Meanwhile, Kayleigh McEnany said this:

So, now, all of a sudden, 90 days later, I, from this podium, have talked about law and order. The President has talked about law and order repeatedly, but because the polling has shifted, now it’s time for the Democrats to deny what they said previously and, all of a sudden, focus on law and order.

I’ll leave you with this: That’s like the arsonist blaming the firefighter.

And here’s an effective ad (hat tip: Legal Insurrection):

The Democrats are used to getting away with flagrant lies and ridiculous reversals. Even if the lies are blatant and obvious, they are counting on several things to help them pull this off. First and foremost, they have the MSM in their pocket, protecting them from criticism but also engaged in spreading the very same lies, preparing the way and then bolstering the message and covering up for the flaws of the messengers. Next, you have four years of constant Trump-hatred which has been effective in getting a huge number of people to the point where they are willing to vote for literally anything – a yellow dog, a limp washcloth, Joe Biden – rather than Trump. And lastly, you have the all-purpose wild card which can be used for almost anything at all, race.

Sanders and Biden and the left: together again

The New Neo Posted on by

Prior to his election in 2008, Obama concealed how far to the left he was, and the American people bought it. He had a calm and soothing voice and demeanor, as well as what people thought of as a great intellect. In 2012, he managed to pull it off again, and it was after that election in particular that he felt free to enact his more radical policies without the fear of having to answer to the American electorate once more.

Since Obama left office, the Democratic Party has become more openly radical in word and deed. But faced with the 2020 election, the Democratic powers-that-be (and that still includes Obama) decided that Bernie Sanders – who was beginning to look like he was going to win the primaries and become the party’s nominee – was too radical a face to win the general election. And so they pressured all the candidates except Biden to drop out and unite behind Joe as the blander candidate, the one who wouldn’t do it in the street and frighten the horses.

Biden also had the advantage of being vacant enough that others would be able to control him once he took office. One of those people might indeed be Sanders, who probably saw the benefits of working behind the scenes to effect leftist policies he couldn’t put in place while trying up-front. Now Sanders is campaigning for Joe and saying this sort of thing:

The day after Joe is elected president — we’re going to be mobilizing people all across this country to make sure that he becomes the most progressive president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

And even that is an understatement, a deception designed to compare Biden and the policies that Democrats will instigate under him to a leader of the past, FDR. Many Americans still don’t understand the word “progressive,” either, which is a screen as well. Biden – or those behind him, who will “make sure” that he becomes what they want – is on track to have by far the most leftist administration America has ever known.

They have tried to hide that, but only intermittently, because they must also reassure their sizeable left flank that they will satisfy their needs and wishes. And what’s been happening now in our cities has revealed their goals to more people than ever realized it before. Democrats can keep shouting that it’s all Trump’s fault, and that will fool some of the people. But the question is the same as always in politics: how many of the people can you fool, how much of the time, and what might they be able to do about it?

Portland, Oregon: if you wink at bad behavior you will get more of it

The New Neo Posted on by

The man who is allegedly the Portland shooter had been arrested before and released without consequences:

A 48-year-old man who was accused of carrying a loaded gun at an earlier downtown Portland protest is under investigation in the fatal shooting Saturday night of a right-wing demonstrator after a pro-Trump rally.

Michael Forest Reinoehl calls himself an anti-fascist and has posted videos and photos of demonstrations he attended since late June, accompanied by the hashtags #blacklivesmatter, #anewnation and #breonnataylor…

Aaron Danielson, a supporter of the conservative group Patriot Prayer, was shot in the chest and died in the street. It was soon after most cars in a caravan of supporters of President Donald Trump had left the city’s downtown streets.

…On July 5 at one of the demonstrations, Reinoehl was cited at 2:10 a.m. in the 700 block of Southwest Main Street on allegations of possessing a loaded gun in a public place, resisting arrest and interfering with police

He was given a date to appear in court later that month, but the allegations were dropped on July 30 with a “no complaint,” according to court records. The documents don’t indicate why prosecutors decided not to pursue the accusations. Reinoehl spent no time behind bars.

Brent Weisberg, a spokesman for Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt, said the office is still reviewing that July case involving Reinoehl.

Schmidt earlier Sunday decried the deadly violence. He took office on Aug. 1 and quickly announced that he wouldn’t pursue low-level charges against demonstrators, such as interfering with police or resisting arrest. He wasn’t district attorney when the office handled Reinoehl’s gun case.

Michael Reinoehl has been estranged from [his] family – including [his sister], their parents and a younger brother – for at least three years, his sister said.

“On the one hand, this whole thing surprises the daylights out of us, because we always thought he is a lot of bark, not a lot of bite,” she said. “But he’s also been very impulsive and irrational.”

Reinoehl has stolen their mother’s seizure medication and owes a lot of debt, often giving his relatives’ addresses as his own to avoid responsibility, she said.

He has a son and daughter and is split from their mother, she said…

Reinoehl is also wanted on a failure to appear warrant in a June 8 speed racing case in Baker County in eastern Oregon. He and his 17-year-old son were racing in two different cars at speeds of up to 111 mph heading east on Interstate 84 after midnight near North Powder, according to state police.

Michael Reinoehl faces allegations including driving under the influence of a controlled substance, recklessly endangering another, unlawful possession of a gun and driving while suspended and uninsured.

He was stopped driving a 2005 Cadillac STS with his 11-year-old daughter as a passenger, police said. Inside the car, police said they found marijuana, “unidentified prescription pills” and a loaded Glock pistol for which Reinoehl didn’t have a concealed handgun license.

I included a lot of that information because I think it paints a portrait that is not atypical of the kind of person who finds a cause with Antifa: a drifting loser who has had many brushes with the law and keeps pushing the envelope, but who has not seemed to suffer any real punishment or consequences for his actions. I also am not surprised that drugs have been involved in his life.

As for the article itself, I like this phrase: “calls himself an anti-fascist.” That’s true of Antifa as a whole, and it’s one of those Orwellian self-descriptions of which the left is so fond.

The city of Portland voted for this catastrophe when they elected a DA such as Schmidt, and they got it.

On white guilt and the white rioters

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “Art Deco” writes (the first paragraph is a quote from a previous commenter}:

“The point is that Leftist[s] are motivated by guilt towards blacks. And they demand other whites share in their guilt by mongering.”

Rubbish. People who actually feel guilty do practical things or they sit in a chair depressed or they try to distract themselves. People who feel ashamed hide. They don’t recriminate against others. These people are aggressive and self-aggrandizing. They don’t hate themselves, they hate you.

Actually, people who feel guilty can do a lot of different things. As Art Deco indicates, some do practical things in an attempt to expiate their guilt, some are immobilized by depression, and some try to change the subject (including drowning themselves in drink or drugs).

But the claim that people feeling guilty “don’t recriminate against others” simply doesn’t fit what I’ve observed of human nature. Many don’t do that, but some do. Some use projection, for example, which is “projecting undesirable feelings or emotions onto someone else, rather than admitting to or dealing with the unwanted feelings.” People can get very nasty and aggressive when they do that.

Now, we can nitpick and say that someone doing this is doing it in order to not feel guilty, and that is at least somewhat true. It is a way of deflecting and casting off a feeling of guilt (or shame, which is not exactly the same), before it becomes too painful or sometimes even before it reaches full consciousness. But it’s usually in there somewhere, and the behavior described can be a reaction to it, one that can be very effective in protecting the person from unpleasant feelings and gaining a feeling of self-righteousness.

But in addition, I believe that quite a few of the rioters and especially the most aggressive ones are sociopaths, people who “just want to watch the world burn.” These people don’t feel guilt at all. They don’t even get the concept.

Since some time in the 1980s and/or 1990s, depending on where they grew up, many young people today have been raised with the idea that whites are inherently guilty. That sort of teaching has only been accelerating and spreading during the 21st Century. So most young white people deal with that indoctrination, and have various ways of processing it and reacting to it. But the effort to instill guilt is there, and deal with it they must.

[NOTE: I haven’t read this article yet; it’s long. But it was mentioned in the comments to a previous post, and it seems as though it might be relevant.]

In a move that should surprise absolutely no one, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals allows Judge “Ahab” Sullivan to have another go at General “Moby” Flynn

The New Neo Posted on by

Predictable, considering the makeup of the court, and yet awful:

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, ruling en banc (full court), has ruled against Michael Flynn’s attempt to force District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan to grant the government’s motion to dismiss criminal charges.

In the Opinion (pdf.) the Court held, among other things, that it was premature to force Sullivan to rule a particular way…

Here, Petitioner and the Government have an adequate alternate means of relief with respect to both the Rule 48(a) motion and the appointment of amicus: the District Court could grant the motion, reject amicus’s arguments, and dismiss the case. At oral argument, the District Judge’s Attorney effectively represented that all these things may happen…

This was easily predictable because of the Democrat-appointed makeup of the court. It also represents – at least, in my quick appraisal, not having read the full document – a kind of kicking the can down the road, and a pretense that this entire episode has been business-as-usual.

It has not.

I’ve already felt so much outrage about this case that this ruling is more or less an anticlimax, in my opinion. But I don’t see the fight as over. It will be interesting to see what Judge Sullivan does next, now that the ball – I mean, the harpoon – is back in his court (boat).

[NOTE: And yes, I know that the Pequod was a ship and not a boat. But in the last chapter of Moby Dick, Captain Ahab was in a smaller boat, and it was from there that he launched his final harpoon.

I saw the movie “Moby Dick” in a movie theater on a large screen when I was a very young child, too young to understand much of anything about the movie except that it frightened me. I spent a significant amount of time there with my eyes closed, so I’m not sure whether I ever saw this scene – which doesn’t track precisely to the novel but is close enough. It’s special effects are still impressive considering it was made in 1956:

When I grew up I read Moby Dick many times. I understand it better now than I understood the movie all those years ago, but I can’t say I totally understand it. I think those who profess to do so are fooling themselves. At the heart of the book lies a mystery bigger than the whale, and it’s the mystery of life and the existence of good and evil, and the human heart.]

How to pose in photos

The New Neo Posted on by

On the lighter side. But practical, too.

I find this video quite fascinating, although I think most people might find the instructions confusing. Easier for dancers or ex-dancers, though, who are used to doing this with one part of their bodies and that with another and something else with still another, and thinking about having that imaginary vertical string through the middle. I have a feeling that the woman doing the video, who’s a professional photographer, has had quite a bit of dance training:

The changing Kyle Rittenhouse story

The New Neo Posted on by

Earlier today I wrote about Jacob Blake and the changing story about him, and now I’m going to update the news on Kyle Rittenhouse.

You know, Rittenhouse – that “white supremacist” 17-year-old who crossed state lines to roam around Kenosha looking for some peaceful demonstrators to shoot down in cold blood? That Kyle Rittenhouse, who was almost instantaneously charged with murder by the stalwart Kenosha DA?

As you probably are aware, what I’ve written in the above paragraph was the general narrative in the MSM and leftist social media at the outset, despite the evidence from multiple videos and eye-witnesses that Rittenhouse was acting in self-defense. However, strangely and uncharacteristically, the New York Times has given an indication, through study of the videos and a timeline, that self-defense was really what was going on that night in Kenosha. That’s how clear it must be.

Now we have a statement by Rittenhouse’s lawyers, and quite a statement it is. The facts they describe further change the story. Some excerpts:

After Kyle finished his work that day as a community lifeguard in Kenosha, he wanted to help clean up some of the damage, so he and a friend went to the local public high school to remove graffiti by rioters. Later in the day, they received information about a call for help from a local business owner, whose downtown Kenosha auto dealership was largely destroyed by mob violence. The business owner needed help to protect what he had left of his life’s work, including two nearby mechanic’s shops. Kyle and a friend armed themselves with rifles due to the deadly violence gripping Kenosha and many other American cities, and headed to the business premises. The weapons were in Wisconsin and never crossed state lines.

That is new information: that Rittenhouse worked in Kenosha, the request from the business owner, and the fact that the weapon didn’t cross state lines.

More:

Later that night, substantially after the city’s 8:00 p.m. curfew expired without consequence, the police finally started to attempt to disperse a group of rioters. In doing so, they maneuvered a mass of individuals down the street towards the auto shops. Kyle and others on the premises were verbally threatened and taunted multiple times as the rioters passed by, but Kyle never reacted. His intent was not to incite violence, but simply to deter property damage and use his training to provide first aid to injured community members.

After the crowd passed the premises and Kyle believed the threat of further destruction had passed, he became increasingly concerned with the injured protestors and bystanders congregating at a nearby gas station with no immediate access to medical assistance or help from law enforcement. Kyle headed in that direction with a first aid kit. He sought out injured persons, rendered aid, and tried to guide people to others who could assist to the extent he could do so amid the chaos.

So he was medically assisting injured people – I assume with the knowledge based on his lifeguard training.

Next, how he got separated and attacked by the mob:

By the final time Kyle returned to the gas station and confirmed there were no more injured individuals who needed assistance, police had advanced their formation and blocked what would have been his path back to the mechanic’s shop. Kyle then complied with the police instructions not to go back there. Kyle returned to the gas station until he learned of a need to help protect the second mechanic’s shop further down the street where property destruction was imminent with no police were nearby.

As Kyle proceeded towards the second mechanic’s shop, he was accosted by multiple rioters who recognized that he had been attempting to protect a business the mob wanted to destroy. This outraged the rioters and created a mob now determined to hurt Kyle. They began chasing him down…

The rest is as we already learned, and supports a legal self-defense argument. The following statement describes the first incident, the one that was not fully caught on video but for which there were eyewitnesses who described the same thing (I can’t find a link right now to the eyewitness, but I saw him interviewed recently on Tucker Carlson):

Kyle attempted to get away, but he could not do so quickly enough. Upon the sound of a gunshot behind him, Kyle turned and was immediately faced with an attacker lunging towards him and reaching for his rifle. He reacted instantaneously and justifiably with his weapon to protect himself, firing and striking the attacker.

Don’t try to take a rifle away from someone. Especially if you’ve been chasing and threatening the person, who might just come to the conclusion that you are about to grab his rifle and kill him with it.

The endgame:

Kyle stopped to ensure care for the wounded attacker but faced a growing mob gesturing towards him. He realized he needed to flee for his safety and his survival. Another attacker struck Kyle from behind as he fled down the street. Kyle turned as the mob pressed in on him and he fell to the ground. One attacker kicked Kyle on the ground while he was on the ground. Yet another bashed him over the head with a skateboard. Several rioters tried to disarm Kyle. In fear for his life and concerned the crowd would either continue to shoot at him or even use his own weapon against him, Kyle had no choice but to fire multiple rounds towards his immediate attackers, striking two, including one armed attacker. The rest of the mob began to disperse upon hearing the additional gunshots.

All of this conforms both to the available video and to the eyewitness descriptions I’ve read, and so it’s very credible. And of course, it goes completely against most of the initial reports and the story the left told around them on social media.

There’s much more to the lawyers’ statement and it’s well worth reading. I’ll just excerpt a short bit:

Kyle did nothing wrong. He exercised his God-given, Constitutional, common law and statutory law right to self-defense.

However, in a reactionary rush to appease the divisive, destructive forces currently roiling this country, prosecutors in Kenosha did not engage in any meaningful analysis of the facts, or any in-depth review of available video footage…[T]hey immediately saw him as a convenient target who they could use as a scapegoat to distract from the Jacob Blake shooting and the government’s abject failure to ensure basic law and order to citizens. Within 24-36 hours, he was charged with multiple homicide counts…

Pierce Bainbridge founder John Pierce praised Kyle’s strength and resilience. “A 17-year old child should not have to take up arms in America to protect life and property. That is the job of state and local governments. However, those governments have failed, and law-abiding citizens have no choice but to protect their own communities as their forefathers did at Lexington and Concord in 1775. Kyle is not a racist or a white supremacist. He is a brave, patriotic, compassionate law-abiding American who loves his country and his community. He did nothing wrong. He defended himself, which is a fundamental right of all Americans given by God and protected by law. He is now in the crosshairs of institutional forces that are much more powerful than him. But he will stand up to them and fight not only for himself, but for all Americans and their beloved Constitution. We will never leave his side until he is victorious in that fight.”

That is quite a statement. But I think the facts back up what has been said there.

[NOTE: At the link to the lawyers’ statement, there’s also information about how to donate to Rittenhouse’s defense.

Here’s some information about the DA who charged Rittenhouse. He has a history of prosecuting self-defense cases.]

The Jacob Blake narrative: on getting the story straight

The New Neo Posted on by

Remember the initial story about Jacob Blake and what he was doing at the location where he was shot? If you don’t, I’ll refresh your memory. Very shortly after Blake’s shooting, his family retained the same lawyer who keeps turning up in these cases, Ben Crump. Crump stated that [emphasis mine]:

…Blake “was helping to deescalate a domestic incident when police drew their weapons and tasered him. As he was walking away to check on his children, police fired their weapons several times into his back at point blank range.”

This was widely reported and seemingly accepted by the MSM. And yet Blake’s rap sheet was rather easily and quickly obtained (by heavy.com, for one, as you can see by this post I wrote on the day after Blake’s shooting) and it said he was wanted for felony third-degree sexual assault.

And a person doesn’t need to do any research to know that no one walks away from a group of police, weapons drawn and screaming to stop (not to mention the civilian onlookers screaming for Blake to stop), and walks towards a car to check on children who are merely sitting in the car. It doesn’t pass the smell test, even as a concept. Not only that, but the children were in the back seat, and Blake opened the driver’s front door and bent down.

One day after Blake’s shooting, Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes of Wisconsin said, according to CNN [emphasis mine]:

Jacob Blake was shot in the back seven times in front of his children. And let me be clear, this was not an accident. This was not bad police work. This felt like some sort of vendetta being taking out on a member of our community.

Let me repeat: this was the Lieutenant Governor of the state speaking. Was he deliberately lying and defaming the police, hoping to stir up trouble? Or did he just speaking about how it felt to him? Either way, unacceptable and unconscionable as well as irresponsible.

But that wasn’t enough for 33-year-old Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes. He felt the need to add [emphasis added]:

“The officers’ daily actions attempted to take a person’s life in broad daylight…

“The irony is not lost on me that as Jacob Blake was actually trying to deescalate a situation in his community, but the responding officer didn’t feel the need to do the same…

Well, we know one person who wasn’t trying to deescalate a situation in his community: Mandela Barnes.

So to Crump and Barnes, Blake was a heroic victim. I understand that, as Blake’s family’s lawyer, Crump would present him that way. But Barnes? Pure identity politics and leftism (that’s redundant, I know). And I’m not going to sit on a hot stove till Barnes issues an apology or a retraction. In fact, it turns out that as recently as Thursday, this was Barnes’s stated position:

Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes has come out against due process, saying during a press conference Thursday that “we don’t need an investigation” to know that the police shooting of Jacob Blake was a racially motivated hate crime.

“We don’t need an investigation to know that (Jacob) Blake’s shooting falls in a long and painful pattern of violence. And this is a pattern of violence that happens against Black lives too often across this country,” Barnes, a black man himself, said during the presser.

I seem to remember that in the state of Wisconsin the people can recall a governor; there was an effort to do that with Scott Walker. So, how about recalling a lieutenant governor (not that Evers, their present governor, is any better)? How can the public respect due process when the elected officials show such contempt for it and/or ignorance of it? [Please see first ADDENDUM below.]

We have learned more and more about Blake in the six days since his shooting – not just his criminal record, but the fact that he had a knife in his car or hand (most likely in his hand during the police encounter, since witnesses report the police were yelling at him to drop the knife [please see ADDENDUM II below]), and also we now learn this description of the sexual assault for which Blake was wanted at the time. It makes for fairly revolting reading.

And we also learn that, when the shooting happened about three months after the assault described in that link, Blake was at the house of the same woman, who is the mother of three of his children. Were these perhaps the same children in the car? We’ve heard next to nothing about why they were in the car, as well, but it makes sense to wonder. I’ve read that Barnes was a father of six, so it’s possible these are three other children, but if they were this woman’s children, I wonder whether he had legal access to them or not. If not, that adds still another terrible dimension to the story and might help further explain the police shooting him.

At any rate, this is why the police originally came to the scene last Sunday:

Blake was shot in front of his girlfriend’s home on Sunday by Kenosha police after resisting arrest.

Officials have said that the mother of three of Blake’s children had called 911 and reported that he was at her house and had taken her keys.

Blake was already wanted on charges in connection with the rape and domestic abuse of the same woman in May.

Car keys? House keys?

And you know what? It’s not rocket science to have figured out that it was the same woman. I guessed as much two days ago, in this post. Law of parsimony, that’s all.

Here we learn what should also be no surprise whatsoever, which is that there was a restraining order against Blake, and that the police who came to the scene knew about his history against this woman and about the order:

Blake, 29, was forbidden from going to the Kenosha home of his alleged victim from the May 3 incident, and police were dispatched Sunday following a 911 call saying he was there.

The responding officers were aware he had an open warrant for felony sexual assault, according to dispatch records and the Kenosha Professional Police Association, which released a statement on the incident on Friday.

That police union statement also claimed that Blake was armed with a knife at the time of the shooting — and had put one cop in a headlock and shrugged off two Taser attempts while resisting arrest.

The headlock information is new, although we knew there had been a struggle. Also, we had been told about one failed taser attempt, but apparently there had been two. So for all the people asking why they didn’t taser him instead of shooting him, that’s the answer.

How many people who have heard about the nefarious police shooting of Jacob Blake, peacemaker, know any of these further facts? I doubt very many.

Oh, and brilliant Mark Zuckerberg had this to say:

The juxtaposition of seeing Jacob Blake kind of facing away from police and being shot, next to images of this white kid [Rittenhouse] with a long gun strapped to his body, walking by the police with nothing happening, I think just kind of symbolizes what we all feel is wrong and unjust and just how much progress still needs to be made.

Actually, Mark, what it “just kind of symbolizes” is how little you care about either facts or due process. It’s all “images” to you.

And if I sound angry, it’s because I am. All of these people are in the business either of profiting off racial anger and violence, and/or of trying to virtue-signal while stoking racial anger and violence. They are not in the business of discovering the truth if it doesn’t further their preferred narrative. And if the truth hits them in the face, they turn their backs and walk away so they don’t have to look.

[ADDENDUM: Commenter “Gerry” has called my attention to the fact that a petition has been started to recall both Governor Evers and Lieutenant Governor Barnes. Good.]

[ADDENDUM II: To expand a bit on the question of whether the knife was in Blake’s hand during his encounter with the police, I’ve heard there are photos of it but the photos are somewhat indistinct and it’s hard to say definitively what was in his hand. However, there’s also this statement from the Kenosha Professional Police Association. I assume that’s different than the Kenosha police department, which as far as I know has declined to say whether the knife was in his hand. Anyway, here’s the relevant part of the police association statement:

Mr. Blake was not unarmed. He was armed with a knife. The officers did not see the knife initially. The officers first saw him holding the knife while they were on the passenger side of the vehicle. The “main” video circulating on the internet shows Mr.Blake with the knife in his left hand when he rounds the front of the car. The officers issued repeated commands for Mr. Blake to drop the knife. He did not comply.

Please read the whole thing. You will also note it states another fact I’m been wondering about – whether the car involved was Blake’s car. The statement says that it was not. If that’s true, it raises the question of whose car it was – probably the girlfriend’s, if he took the keys? – and why the children were in it. The plot thickens and thickens.

And where was the girlfriend? Was she one of the people screaming in the video? Was she on the lawn, watching it all?]