Open thread 11/20/21
I’ve known for a long time that much of an iceberg is underwater. But I didn’t know they sometimes turn over:
On the Rittenhouse case: a personal note
For me, it started with the reporting on the Jacob Blake shooting. As a blogger, I have to cover these things in depth, and that means that I have to read a lot about each case right from the start and think about it deeply enough to write coherently and logically on it. I don’t like to be wrong, and so I try my best to get it as correct as I can early on.
With the Jacob Blake shooting, it seemed obvious fairly quickly that – as so often happens – “spokespeople” such as Ben Crump were lying and the MSM was lying and the left as a whole was lying about what transpired. I wrote this post just six days after the story broke, and in it I describe what we already knew about the case (which was almost everything) and how the left had lied about it, step by step, trying to stir up anger against the police. This prominently included the state of Wisconsin’s lieutenant governor, Mandela Barnes (see the post for some quotes).
It was already clear that the police had probable cause to shoot Blake, but the Blake-positive and anti-police narrative was already hardened and set.
The same occurred with Rittenhouse. The truth was obvious even earlier in that case, in part due to the fact that there was a great deal of video record available almost immediately. I wrote this post about the case the day after the story broke, and if you read it now you’ll see that almost all the relevant details of the case were already known and the high probability of valid self-defense on Rittenhouse’s part was already clear.
And yet we all had to watch the slow torment of Rittenhouse, first by being precipitously charged with murder and detained in prison and defamed repeatedly, then released and defamed repeatedly while so much of the public branded him a cold-blooded killer. This escalated for me as the trial continued, and the utterly corrupted unscrupulous nature of the prosecution became clear, the relative incompetence of the judge and the defense were demonstrated, and then the jury took so long that it seemed as though it might be hung or even would render a guilty verdict on at least some of the charges.
This seemed unconscionable to me. As the trial had gone on it had seemed ever clearer to me how innocent Rittenhouse was, and how the prosecution was trying to railroad him or at least to get a mistrial declared so that they could try him again and continue the sadistic game. I became more stressed and agitated myself, with mounting frustration and anger.
On Tuesday I traveled cross-country and it was somewhat of a relief to be out of internet touch for a while. But when I arrived and saw that the jury had spent a second day deliberating without issuing a verdict, I started to lose hope of an acquittal.
I kept imagining Rittenhouse’s family and what they were going through, and my imaginings were very bleak. It got worse and worse until last night (Thursday), when for some reason I became hopeful. I’m not sure why that happened, although I think it was because I read rumors that there was only one last holdout keeping the “not guilty” verdict from coming in. I usually don’t believe rumors and pay them no attention, but for whatever reason the rumor last night buoyed me up. I went to bed with more peace than I’d had since the trial began.
Because I’m on Pacific time, I heard about the “not guilty” verdict in the morning. My reaction was huge relief, but by the time I read it I wasn’t really surprised. So there were no big explosions of tears on my part, just a very very deep but quiet satisfaction that the jury did the right thing, and a hope that this is part of a more generalized turning away from the vicious and destructive lies and policies of the left.
The left will never rest, and those who oppose the left should never rest, either. But we can raise a toast to justice, and to the preservation of our liberties.
The left reacts to the Rittenhouse verdict with its usual grace, class, and style
Mary Chastain at Legal Insurrection wades through the cesspool of the left’s reaction to the Rittenhouse verdict so you don’t have to.
Their reaction is what you might have suspected. They also have a personal dog in this race, since they are now exposed to the possibility of defamation lawsuits from Rittenhouse, who could not have sued had he been found guilty. So they’re doubly unhappy.
In other responses, previous Defamer-in-Chief Joe Biden has yet to issue an apology, and I wouldn’t recommend sitting on a hot stove till he does.
In contrast, here’s a look back at what President Trump said not long after the August 2020 incident in which Rittenhouse shot three people, killing two. Turns out that, as usual, Trump was correct:
I also think that Judge Schroeder should be especially relieved at the verdict. He let the prosecution do a lot of things in this trial that should not have been allowed – certain evidence entered, for example – and if the verdict had been guilty or a hung jury he would have had some tough decisions to make about his next step. The jury took that burden off him.
I am hoping that at least one of the jurors – while preserving anonymity – gives an interview explaining what took so long. I am assuming there were a couple of holdouts for a while, but they were won over by something in the end – exhaustion? Logic? Some combination of the two?
Another hope I have is that Kyle Rittenhouse wins enough money in defamation lawsuits that he can easily hire excellent security for the rest of his life.
ADDENDUM:
Apparently Biden added that the verdict made him feel “angry and concerned.” I’d expect nothing less of him; it is almost impossible for Biden to take the correct position on anything.
Rittenhouse verdict: relief
The photos and video tell the tale of Kyle Rittenhouse’s relief, and the extraordinary stress under which he’s been struggling for over a year:
The jackals won’t give up.
But it’s time to celebrate and be thankful that justice prevailed, in the narrow but very important sense of an acquittal.
In the larger sense, it shouldn’t have had to come to this.
–The media lies told about the shooting should not have occurred.
–The Kenosha and Wisconsin authorities should have controlled the riots and never have let them go on for long enough that a young man like Kyle Rittenhouse felt he had to step up to protect the city, its people, and its businesses from marauding mobs.
–Politicians such as Joe Biden should never have defamed Rittenhouse and called him a white supremacist or in any other way commented on the case except to offer hopes for healing and that justice would prevail.
–The judge should have taken better control of the trial.
–The prosecutors should not have been allowed to get away with their lies, tricks on the defense, or inappropriate evidence.
–The defense should have been better prepared. But at least they were good enough.
Kyle Rittenhouse has been through the crucible, and he’s been changed by it. I wish him and his family strength and healing, and hope that their suffering has at least had the effect of persuading a lot of people that the riots have to stop and the media lying has to stop.
And self-defense lives to fight another day.
KYLE RITTENHOUSE FOUND NOT GUILTY ON ALL COUNTS
I don’t usually write all-caps headlines, but this news deserves it. The relief I feel is tremendous that the jury did the right thing.
And that relief that I feel is very small in comparison to how Kyle and his family must feel. He is an extraordinarily brave and strong young man who reluctantly did what he had to do that awful night in Kenosha, and then had to suffer persecution by the left and the state until today.
I hope he sues the pants off the press and all public figures who defamed him, and wins.
I hope he sits down some day with Nick Sandmann over a beer.
I hope ADA Binger gets disbarred, at the very least.
I hope this has opened the eyes of all thinking people who believed the MSM lies and later saw the reality revealed in the courtroom, and now doubt that what they read from the MSM is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
[NOTE: I will be posting much more today about this, but I wanted to get something out quickly.]
Open thread 11/19/21
Will the Times and the WaPo return their Pulitzers for Russiagate?
That’s the question Roger L. Simon asks here.
The question is rhetorical, of course. They should, but they won’t.
There’s the old “fools vs. knaves” question, too:
[T]o what degree [did] these people knew they were lying at the time? Were they merely victims of extreme Trump Derangement Syndrome? Did they believe the ends, in this instance, justify the means?
They allowed themselves to be conduits for lies. Did they ask serious questions? “Informants, almost always anonymous,” were telling them things. (Collecting those anonymous informants has been the stock and trade of establishment journalists since Watergate.)
The most obvious conclusion is they wanted to believe the lies they were hearing, so they did not question them. To be blunt, they were lousy reporters and remain so because. most of them, all to my knowledge on the linked [Pulitzer] list, have not publicly acknowledged their faults.
I believe most knew and didn’t care, because the particular facts don’t matter in the service of a Higher Truth. Plus, I doubt they ever thought they’d be found out, because once the MSM unites on a false story, it can be difficult for the rest of us to discover and prove the truth. They never expected Hillary Clinton to lose in the first place, and the Russiagate story was initially concocted to hurt Trump in the 2016 election, and so they never expected (I believe) to have to continue it for all those years of the Trump administration, because they didn’t think there would be a Trump administration.
But they rose (sank) to the occasion after his election, didn’t they? Give them points for dogged persistence.
Hiding Biden’s decline
I find it hard to believe that a lot of people were actually fooled during the 2020 campaign into thinking that Joe Biden was not sliding towards dementia. But apparently they were. I suppose it could be the result of a combination of wishful thinking, desire to get rid of Trump and the paucity of alternatives, and a resultant lack of close attention to Biden’s actual few and far-between appearances. Another factor may have been nostalgia for the Obama years (I find that inexplicable, too, but I do believe it occurred).
Now a lot of those people are catching onto Joe’s awfulness, because there’s only so much you can hide even from those who would like it to be otherwise.
What were the operatives behind Biden’s candidacy thinking would happen, once he was elected? Perhaps they thought his unraveling would proceed at a more stately pace. Perhaps they thought external events would go better, and so people wouldn’t care that much about the condition of Biden himself. Perhaps those operatives thought they’d be able to commit fraud in the next election, and the next, and so it wouldn’t matter. Perhaps they thought that once Biden undid – by executive order, if need be – Trump’s changes, that would accomplish many of their goals. Perhaps they thought that Congress would be able to pass HR1 (remember that?) in order to change all state voting laws in their favor. Perhaps they thought Puerto Rico and DC would become states, giving Democrats a permanent majority.
And perhaps they thought that, if all else failed, they could remove Biden for health reasons and Kamala Harris would become president.
They didn’t bargain on Manchin and Sinema obstructing their plans – so far, anyway. But what they especially didn’t bargain for (IMHO) was that Harris would be perceived as so repellent so quickly by so many people.
That’s the main bind they’re in right now. They can’t go with the “replace Joe with Kamala” plan because the public might perceive the cure as worse than the disease.
Rittenhouse was (and is) the designated prey of psychopathic wolves
I was in transit yesterday out west, so I’m still catching up with yesterday’s news in the Rittenhouse case. Fortunately, others have done excellent work summing things up.
If you haven’t seen these yet, I highly recommend them: Andrew Branca at Legal Insurrection discusses the legal wrangling over the different video versions submitted by the prosecution as well as other legal issues, anti-Rittenhouse demonstrators are arrested for attacking pro-Rittenhouse demonstrators outside the courtroom (a courtroom which should have been cordoned off but was not) as the jury deliberates inside; MSNBC has been barred from the courtroom for having a producer follow the jury bus (see also this), and we learn more about the previously elusive “jump kick man.”
But if you read or watch only one thing about the trial, it should be this from Frei and especially Barnes. I haven’t watched the whole thing yet (it’s long) but it’s well worth your time. You can change the setting to 125% speed if you want to make it quicker.
Please watch for however long you care to. Barnes comes on around 7:27, so I suggest you begin there if you’ve got the time. Barnes describes quite well, I think, how the initial mindset of the judge and the defense played into what we’re seeing now and how out of control this trial has become.
But in particular, and especially if you’re pressed for time, I recomment this part that I’ve cued up. In it, Barnes lays out the events of the evening the shooting occurred, giving us the big picture of the way in which a pack of criminal psychopaths selected the naive Rittenhouse to set him up and if possible kill him, and how the prosecution (and the MSM) is putting forward the version of reality the violent psychopaths created (and if you’re in a very very special hurry, just watch from about 45:30 to 51:49):
What Barnes is saying there is something I’ve thought about in recent days, although he says it with a great deal more knowledge of the facts and details of the killings and especially the prelude to the killings.
The point is that violent psychopaths are very savvy about choosing their prey, and if society winks at their violence they will escalate and escalate until they are stopped.
Politics sets the stage, pscyhopaths take advantage of the situation, and then politicians use the psychopaths to further their own ends, in a macabre dance. This is the mark of many totalitarian regimes, by the way (perhaps another post for another day): the use of psychopaths and/or sociopaths to meet certain nefarious ends.
Open thread 11/18/21
Better late than never.
I was exhausted yesterday from my trip and forgot to schedule an open thread. So here it is.
Dancing and singing and drumming and bass playing in the rain: Part II
[nOTE: Part I can be found here.]
Singing while doing much dancing is rare for several reasons. The first is that unless the dance is very simple and slow, the dancer gets out of breath (that also can be a problem for drummers, by the way, according to what I’ve read). In a dance you can hide being out of breath somewhat, but if you have to sing you can’t hide it. What’s more, though, there is a similar problem to that which some drummers face, especially when learning: it can be hard to do both simultaneously. You won’t see it much except for very simple dancing.
As far as Gene Kelly and “Dancin’ in the Rain” goes, his singing occurs when he is basically walking slowly down the street. There’s a little singing as the dance picks up, and then there’s a long pure dance part with no singing at all, which constitutes the bulk of the number. A person’s memory – and the lyrics “I’m singin and dancin in the rain” – might make it seem as though he’s doing both quite furiously at the same time, but he is not.
Plus I’m almost positive that at that point musical numbers like that were pre-recorded and lip-synced.
Astaire used to sing – and then he would dance. He could do both, but I don’t recall him doing them together. Here’s a typical dance number. Fred starts singing while they dance very very slowly and sedately (akin to Gene Kelly’s walking at the beginning of “Dancin’ in the Rain”). Then he stops and then they really start to dance. But no more singing.
Cagney could sing and dance, too. But again, not much together. Watch him in “Yankee Doodle Dandy”:
So much fun.
But Astaire could dance and drum at the same time. And what he does with both here doesn’t seem very simple to me at all. But hey, he’s not singing at the same time:
Remarkable.