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?]

Some encouraging news from Minnesota

The New Neo Posted on by

Six Democratic mayors in Minnesota endorse Trump:

“Today, we don’t recognize the Democratic Party. It has been moved so far to the left it can no longer claim to be advocates of the working class,” wrote the mayors. “Lifelong politicians like Joe Biden are out of touch with the working class, out of touch with what the country needs, and out of touch with those of us here on the Iron Range and in small towns like ours across the nation.”

Their letter also thanked Trump for bringing prosperity and hope back to their citizens and the country overall.

Of course, there’s also this from a few days ago:

As the Republican National Convention kicks off in Charlotte, N.C., three Minnesota Republican politicians are rejecting their party nominee President Donald Trump and are endorsing his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden.

According to a Monday news release from Biden’s campaign, former Minnesota Gov. Arne Carlson, former U.S. Sen. Dave Durenberger and 2010 gubernatorial candidate Tom Horner have joined a list of “Republicans for Biden” across the country favoring the former vice president.

In a joint statement, the three Republicans said Biden is “a leader that can unite Minnesotans” with “the knowledge, experience, and fundamental decency to unite our state and our country.”

Knowledge? These days, Biden displays a fundamental lack of knowledge. As for experience, most of what he has is bad. Decency? Plagiarism, inappropriate touching, getting lucrative contracts for his ne’er-do-well son?

Note also in that second paragraph of the quote, the word “former” is used for the first two Biden endorsers. The third, Horner, doesn’t seem to ever have held office in the state. The oldstyle GOP. Former governor Carlson, for example, endorsed Obama in 2008. Republicans, sure.

The birth of the Mediterranean

The New Neo Posted on by

About twenty years ago, the first time I heard about how the modern Mediterranean had formed, I was gobsmacked. Here’s a video that tells the tale, with some visuals. In recent years, geologists have added that the filling of the Mediterranean actually happened much much more quickly than originally thought, and more quickly than this video says. At around 4:44, it states that the filling took thousands of years – but in fact, research completed just a little while after the video was made indicated that the filling apparently took less than two years.

The pattern: in the Floyd case and others, early propaganda vs. later evidence

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s striking how often it happens. First there’s the inflammatory incident – hyped to the skies, completely dominating the MSM and the national discourse, sparking accusations and breast-beating and mea culpas, firings, arrests and charges, and of course demonstrations and riots.

And then slowly the truth comes out. It doesn’t usually reach most people who already have become convinced of the truth of the original story (or who wish to use that original story for their own purposes even if they know it’s false). But it reaches quite a few.

I’ve said these things before. But the reason I’m writing still another post on the subject is this: most of these cases reveal the truth quite early on. And yet it’s only people on the right who notice this and write about it. I’m certainly not the only one, but for example, when the Floyd case first happened, I never called it murder and from the start I knew that Floyd might have died of something like a heart attack. See this for my very first post about the death of George Floyd, written on May 28:

At this point, quite a bit of video has surfaced in the death of George Floyd, and the police’s actions look bad. It’s mostly one officer with his knee on Floyd’s neck for many minutes; they rest stand by. The four involved have been fired. My guess is that they are guilty of, at the very least, gross negligence. But I know from previous experience that it’s always best to wait for autopsies and more information before coming to firmer conclusions. But even if Floyd died of a heart attack or something of that sort, the police can be held responsible if they were acting wrongly.

In the ensuing weeks, I was amazed and astounded at how many people on the right rushed to judgment, calling the death of Floyd a murder, calling Chauvin a heartless coldblooded psychopathic murderer, saying that no one who wasn’t incredibly stupid or evil could watch that video or hear about the events on it and believe Chauvin and the police not guilty, and on and on and on. Even people I respected hopped right on that bandwagon.

But it was untrue. The autopsy was the first bit of doubt that surfaced, and the drug reports came next. On this blog, there were plenty of early comments about the strong possibility of a fentanyl OD; for example, see this by “expat”, which also points out that Scott Adams did a podcast on the topic of a possible (or even probable) overdose. And that was written on June 5.

Ever since the drug report on Floyd came out, it was clear that an OD was a very real possibility. And yet the media ignored it, and we don’t even have to ask why. It’s obvious why. In that way, they are partly complicit in the violence because their withholding of the facts encouraged the riots. It is a disgusting but not unfamiliar purposeful dereliction of duty on their part.

The Floyd transcript came out in early July, and it was almost universally ignored. I analyzed it here on July 18. The transcript made it more and more clear that the police actions were consistent with Minneapolis police protocol at the time for subduing a person under the influence of drugs, that they were concerned for his health and were actually trying to protect him and others while they waited for the ambulance to arrive, and that he probably died of a heart attack secondary to the drugs he had taken.

This was not a difficult call, either. It was obvious – or should have been – to anyone studying the record. And yet the myth goes on.

Now we learn something else that is quite disturbing, as if the rest wasn’t already disturbing enough:

But video that came out later showed that Floyd had been complaining of inability to breathe when he was standing up and walking around, long before he was on the street. And it emerged that the toxicology report associated with his autopsy found that he had at least double the dose of fentanyl in his blood that is normally considered lethal, along with other drugs. And shortness of breath is notoriously a symptom of fentanyl poisoning…

But now there is a new bombshell: on Tuesday, prosecutors who have charged Derek Chauvin with murder released a document that suggests that he had nothing to do with Floyd’s death, which in all likelihood resulted from a drug overdose. Not only that, prosecutors have known that fact for months. Former state and federal prosecutor George Parry has the story.

This is from the Parry article:

At 7:30 p.m. on May 31, 2020, prosecutors “met” online with Dr. Andrew Baker, Chief Medical Examiner of Hennepin County, to discuss Floyd’s toxicology report.

So there they were, staring at the just-received and damning toxicology report that blew to smithereens the whole prosecution theory that the police had killed Floyd. To their undoubted dismay, Dr. Baker, the chief medical examiner, had to concede that at 11 ng/mL, Floyd had “a fatal level of fentanyl under normal circumstances.” He also conceded that the fentanyl overdose “can cause pulmonary edema,” a frothy fluid build-up in the lungs that was evidenced by the finding at autopsy that Floyd’s lungs weighed two to three times normal weight.

This is consistent with Officer Kueng’s observation at the scene that Floyd was foaming at the mouth and, as found at autopsy, that his lungs were “diffusely congested and edematous.”

In other words, like a drowned man, Floyd’s lungs were filled with fluid. And that was the obvious and inescapable reason why Floyd kept shouting over and over again that he couldn’t breathe even when he was upright and mobile.

The memorandum ends with Dr. Baker’s devastating conclusion that “if Floyd had been found dead in his home (or anywhere else) and there were no other contributing factors he [Dr. Baker] would conclude that it was an overdose death.”

Parry goes on to ask the questions that probably occurred to you, as well: why did the prosecutor wait to release this information, when it might have helped quell the riots? Would it have even mattered to the mobs of protestors? And why didn’t prosecutors drop the charges? The answers to the first and last question probably boil down to a combination of fear and corruption. The answer to the second is probably “no.”

John Hinderaker doesn’t think Chauvin can get a fair trial. That’s my feeling, too, but I wonder. I thought the same for Darren Wilson, and a grand jury refused to indict him. I thought the same for George Zimmerman, and he was acquitted. Of course, those cases occurred in 2014 and 2013, which seems like ancient history now. The country feel a lot more damaged these days. But maybe, just maybe, more people have actually gotten fed up with propaganda and lies.

The Republican Party reinvents itself

The New Neo Posted on by

I don’t know how many people watch conventions. But I do know that, if a lot of undecideds watched the RNC this year, a large percentage would have to be impressed.

I don’t usually watch more than a minute or two of these boring and formulaic events, and I don’t think the GOP has been known for ground-breaking innovation in that regard; au contraire. But for whatever reason – being forced to break the mold because of COVID and/or civil unrest, the input of Trump, or something else – the meta-message of this convention was that this was not your father’s GOP. This was a party of energy and fresh ideas, a party that’s actually inclusive rather than merely rhetorically so, and one that embraces the American dream that most people here still share.

The word “refreshing” keeps coming to mind, and that is not a word I usually think of when I think about the Republican Party as a political entity. The other word is “sincerity,” which is what all the personal testimonials of the non-politicians conveyed. The convention was heavy with them; they formed a high proportion of the speakers, and they were uniformly moving, inspiring, and eloquent.

I didn’t plan to watch more than a few minutes on the first night. But when I tuned in, I found to my surprise that I was also drawn in. I probably watched at least half of all four nights, and that is exceptionally unusual for me. I can’t imagine that anyone with an open mind who happened to watch wouldn’t be pleasantly surprised at what he or she saw and heard.

NOTE: And here’s an interesting piece by a former NeverTrumper:

Thursday night… President Trump did what he does best; he spoke to a crowd. There was joy and optimism and patriotism. Instead of fear there was pride. For me, he was no longer the lesser of two evils but a man I dearly hope will remain our president.

It is fashionable these days for former Republicans to gang up and sling dirt at Trump. This is supposed to be meaningful because supposedly they are conservatives. Well, two can play at that game. If their abandonment of Trump is meaningful then so is my embrace. And the difference? They represent a tiny, dying breed of think tank technocrats; I represent a vast constituency of Americans who have come to see the power of his leadership.

I believe that Donald Trump will win reelection, though I warn you, as I said above, I’m wrong a lot. But it doesn’t matter. Even if he should lose he has changed the GOP, he has changed conservatism, and he has changed me. We will not play defense anymore. Those of us who love America will fight for its values and ideals. I thank Donald Trump for helping me find the courage to be a part of that fight. Here’s to four more years.

Not just a mob, but an ignorant one

The New Neo Posted on by

Why were the “protestors” (aka mob) allowed to get anywhere near the site of the convention speeches? Were there just too many of them to stop? Or was it a failure of police planning?

At any rate:

And then there’s the virtual Twitter mob:

Protestors harassing Paul and his wife screamed about Breonna Taylor, demanding that he “say her name,” all while ignoring the fact that it was Paul himself who introduced the “Justice for Breonna Taylor Act,” which prohibits law enforcement from using no-knock warrants.

While the mob was clamoring for Paul, who later said in an interview on Fox News that it was “horrific” and that he feared for his life, he expressed his gratitude to the DC Police Department for protecting him and his wife for “literally saving our lives from a crazed mob.”

You can click on the link and see scads of tweets saying no big deal because he wasn’t physically harmed. They have no idea of the dangers to themselves of what they’re shrugging at, or what it can lead to, or how it represents a break with the civil order Americans rely on.

David Axelrod – remember him? – seems like a dinosaur among that crowd, pointing out the possibility of the optics backfiring:

The RNC: Day 4

The New Neo Posted on by

10:20 PM:

I’ve never enjoyed a convention before, but I’m enjoying every bit of this one, and I’ve watched at least a portion of all four nights. Kudos once again to the producers: great pace, setting, and speakers. I caught three who were extremely moving: Ann Dorn, widow of David Dorn, whose speech was so raw it was hard to watch; Alice Johnson, who was given clemency by Trump after 22 years of prison; and the parents of Kayla Mueller. The balance between the political speakers and the personal testimony has been so effective and unusual.

Washington has not changed Donald Trump – Donald Trump has changed Washington! says Ivanka. Well, he’s certainly changed the Republican Convention.

Jacob Blake unarmed – except for that knife under on his car floorboard on the driver’s side

The New Neo Posted on by

[Please see ADDENDUM below for clarification.]

I’ve read several articles about Blake’s knife, and the reporting doesn’t make the situation at all clear. Earlier reports said that eyewitnesses had stated that police were yelling at Blake to drop the knife [see ADDENDUM below], and I even saw some screenshots of him allegedly with a knife in his hand. That sort of thing is absent from current stories and I have no idea whether the initial reports were correct or not.

In addition, many of the most recent articles articles reporting on the presence of the knife first state that the knife was found “on the scene” – which could mean a lot of different things – and later add that it was found under [correction: “on”] the floorboard of the driver’s side of the car. I’ve yet to see an article in the MSM that clearly states the possible significance of the floorboard finding – which is that, when shot, Blake had just opened the driver’s side door and was bending over and reaching down.

In other words, one can conclude it was highly possible that he was going for the knife. Knives can be very very deadly, and he had already shown his willingness to fight with police. In addition, it’s possible and even probable that by that point the police were well aware of Blake’s arrest record – which is alleged to have included “one felony count of resisting arrest causing a soft tissue injury to a police officer and one misdemeanor count each of carrying a concealed weapon, carrying a firearm while intoxicated, endangering safety-use of a dangerous weapon, and disorderly conduct.”

Another thing the articles don’t make clear is what was going on to cause the police to be called in the first place. The Blake family lawyer – the seemingly ubiquitous Ben Crump – has reported that Blake was shot “after he tried to break up an argument between two women.” But that part of the story seems to have evaporated as though it had never been uttered. Now what we see is this sort of thing:

DOJ officials said Kenosha police were dispatched to a residence near 28th Street and 40th Avenue after a female caller reported that her boyfriend was present and was not supposed to be on the premises.

During the incident, officers attempted to arrest Blake, 29.

Dots, unconnected. It seems reasonable to come to the preliminary conclusion that Jacob Blake may indeed have been the boyfriend in question. I will add that my guess is that the woman making the call was the same person who had been involved in reporting the incident or incidents for which there was a warrant out for Blake’s arrest, and that this is why police attempted to arrest him after the recent call – either that, or because he was acting aggressively, or at the very least violating a restraining order.

I could be wrong, of course. But such speculations are certainly not a stretch.

More from the article about the knife:

During the investigation following the initial incident, Blake “admitted that he had a knife in his possession,” officials said.

DCI agents recovered a knife from the driver’s side floorboard of Blake’s vehicle. A search of the vehicle located no additional weapons.

The part about Blake’s admission concerning the knife is a curious passage. When did he admit he had a knife? What does “in his possession” mean? Did he tell the police there was a knife in the car? Is that considered “possession”? Is that why they were trying to tase him and then to wrestle him down? Did he say he was going to get it anyway? Did he threaten to harm them with it?

Not only is that article murky, but I’ve read several others that are even more unclear. I believe that this is apparently because the Wisconsin DOJ statement itself was vague on these points. But what about some reporters doing some independent investigation? Surely there are ways to find out a few more things?

Not many people seem to understand the danger posed by a person who gets hold of a knife and acts quickly, especially when close:

Most inexperienced people do not have appropriate respect for knives and other edged weapons because they are surrounded by them,” said Grissom, who has been in law enforcement for 28 years and a police trainer for nearly 25. “A firearm is only deadly in one direction: wherever the muzzle is pointed. If I can keep the muzzle off of me, it can’t hurt me. Once in close quarters, a knife is a far more efficient weapon than a firearm.”

Beyond that, he said, most people are experienced in the use of a knife.

“Anyone who has ever cut a steak, chopped ice or opened a box with a sharp object is completely proficient in killing another human being with a knife,” Grissom said. “Age and training are almost irrelevant with a close-quarter edged weapon attack.”

Because of the threat posed by a knife, it is classified by law as a deadly weapon just like a firearm. And, Grissom said, there is no hard and fast rule for the distance at which a knife is dangerous.

“There is no ‘magic distance’ that a knife-wielding assailant becomes less of a threat,” he said. “A knife is obviously a contact weapon, so in order for it to be effective an assailant must close within the weapon’s effective range. Many officers were/are taught a very general ’21-foot rule’ based on some research attributed to Dennis Tueller from Salt Lake City.”

That rule says it takes between 1.5 and 2 seconds for an officer with a duty-style holster to draw and present a gun. Meanwhile, it takes an aggressive assailant armed with a contact weapon – knife or club – the same length of time to cover 21 feet and use it on the officer.

As such, officers are taught to keep distance, he said. A suspect charging with a knife, then, presents a real threat.

“Officers are generally trained to create distance and/or put obstacles between themselves and an assailant they know possesses a contact weapon,” Grissom said. “Many officers receive training in knife defense tactics, but these tactics are designed to be used to protect oneself from a spontaneous attack with a previously undetected weapon.”

I believe that in Blake’s case the officer already had his weapon unholstered. I’m not sure whether that matters at all. And yes, it’s legal to possess a knife in a car or even on one’s person. But it’s not okay to go for one when you’re resisting arrest.

The police had always used a taser, to no avail. They had also physically grappled with him, and failed to restrain him. Now he was defying their verbal orders and walking purposefully toward the car and reaching in and bending down. Not only that, but there were children in the car. A split-second decision had to be reached. It’s so very easy to be a Monday-morning quarterback, but most of the people opining have no idea what it’s like to be in the position of these police officers. I certainly don’t, and I’m glad of it.

ADDENDUM: Several commenters have pointed out something that adds another dimension to my speculation about what happened with the knife. I initially had read in some article or other that the knife was found under the floorboard (or maybe under the floormat?), which indicated to me that Blake had hidden it somewhere for emergencies and was reaching for it when he was shot. That made it confusing when I also read that initially people had reported that the cops were shouting for him to drop the knife. But then I realized that the DOJ had actually indicated that the knife was found on the floorboard (“recovered a knife from the driver’s side floorboard”), which suddenly made a great deal more sense. It also – as several commenters pointed out – made it possible to imagine that Blake had been carrying the knife all along and dropped it on the floorboard when shot. I believe the latter is the proper interpretation.

The game plan of the MSM in not showing the evidence that would tend to support a self-defense argument for Rittenhouse

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “Edward” writes:

From what I saw in these videos, there is an excellent self-defense argument for Rittenhouse. I hope that ALL the videos are played IN THEIR ENTIRETY to the jury when it goes to trial. The fake news is trying to “Covington” him with selected partial clips (their favorite technique).

And commenter Richard Aubrey responds:

Other than having a corrupt judge, I can’t see how the videos can be kept out of the trial, presuming there is one.

I agree that they would have to show the videos in a trial. But a trial happens long after the fact, and there’s propaganda value in showing carefully-edited clips now.

Here’s the game plan: keep from the public those parts of the videos that might tend to exonerate Rittenhouse, controlling the narrative and setting a widespread public perception that he’s a murderer. That might cause even more riots, which the left seems to want, as well as discouraging bona fide self-defense on the part of the rioters’ targets.

Then, once the whole “narrative” is set in stone in the minds of most of the public, the following reactions often occur: DAs (even ones that are not Soros-funded) feel they must throw the book at the culprit in order to calm things down, jury pools have become biased and/or may be frightened about the possible repercussions of any “not guilty” verdict, and if said not guilty verdict is nevertheless rendered the resulting riots are even more extreme because much of the public feels that justice has not been done. That also adds to the general disgust for the court system, and the left believes that can only aid them as well.

So the left calculates that it’s win/win/win for them – except for the possibility of backlash against the riots, which they don’t seem to have originally factored in.

De Blasio’s war on the elitest institution of indoor dining in restaurants

The New Neo Posted on by

Only kulaks and worse dine in restaurants, don’t you know? At least, according to Commissar de Blasio:

At his daily press briefing, De Blasio was asked why public school students who return to classrooms this fall will eat their lunch inside while restaurants can’t reopen indoor dining.

“I don’t think there’s a similarity at all,” de Blasio said.

“We have an imperative — a legal imperative, a moral imperative, an educational imperative– to give kids the best education we can. We know that means having at least some time in person,” he said.

“Versus indoor dining, which is obviously a very optional activity, which some people do a lot who have the resources and others can’t do at all because they don’t have the resources,” he said.

De Blasio’s suggestion that eating inside a restaurant is only for people with thick billfolds ignores the thousands of cheap diners, fast-food eateries and pizza joints across the five boroughs catering to cost-conscious New Yorkers…

De Blasio reiterated Tuesday that he has no concrete plan to resume indoor dining because it’s too high-risk an activity in the age of coronavirus…

New York City is the only state region that still does not permit some indoor dining, while it is allowed in neighboring suburban counties like Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester.

Dr. Jay Varma, the mayor’s senior adviser for public health, also weighed in…

“We know through experience everywhere around the world and also from the United States that indoor dining is a very high-risk activity and there’s reasons for that,” Varma said, pointing to the lack of masks while eating, proximity to other people and duration spent indoors.

Where to begin? I suppose the first thing to state is that indoor dining is New York’s lifeblood, that it’s hardly confined to the wealthy, and that colder weather is coming soon. I can only conclude something that’s already been clear for quite some time, which is that destroying the economy of NYC is one of de Blasio’s goals as mayor. Although that sounds like a nonsensical sentence, it’s typical of leftist thinking, in which the idea is the equality of misery. As Churchill said (no wonder they deface his statue):

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

That’s it in a nutshell – and de Blasio and our other resident socialists and Communists, Marxists and leftists, call them whichever name you favor – clearly prefer the equality of misery and are willing to do everything in their power to bring it about. COVID has given them a lot of power, and they are making sure they use it as fully as possible.

I will also point out that people who live in Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester, where indoor dining is allowed, travel to NYC regularly. Therefore, even if an indoor dining ban worked, they could be carrying illness to NYC anyway.

And lastly, to Dr. Varma: oh really? “We know through experience everywhere around the world and also from the United States that indoor dining is a very high-risk activity”? Where is the research on that? This sort of thing (from June) is all I could find, and it’s weak correlative sauce at best.

The three men who were shot in Kenosha

The New Neo Posted on by

A few facts about the men, and a few more about the presentation of those facts.

First we have Andy Ngo, who lists their names, photos, and a bit about their lives. I have no idea whether the information at the link is completely correct, but Ngo has been reporting on Antifa-related riots for many years and generally knows what he’s talking about.

Then we have the official word in a Milwaukee paper, which unlike Ngo doesn’t mention anything about possible criminal histories but does agree with his report that the man shot in the arm was with “the Milwaukee-based social justice group the People’s Revolution Movement.”

And the NY Post adds that the “People’s Revolution Movement” is “a radical Black Lives Matter faction.” BLM has many affiliated factions that are hyper-radical for which BLM acts as a more politically acceptable front, something I previously discussed in this post.

All three men and Rittenhouse are white, as far as I can tell.

And here’s an interesting analysis from Newsbusters on the coverage of the Kenosha shootings so far, and how the MSM tends to omit mention of the self-defense aspects.

If you’re watching night 3 of the RNC…

The New Neo Posted on by

…here’s a thread for you.

I have to say I’ve been impressed by whoever organized this thing. The challenge was immense, but the pace has been crisp. Most of the speeches are mercifully short, too, which I appreciate. The format – in which you don’t usually know who the speaker is at the outset or what he or she is going to focus on – makes for a guessing game that keeps your interest, and there’s a surprising lack of repetition because most of them focus on a single topic. Without a huge crowd in a big hall interrupting and cheering constantly, the evening moves quickly yet smoothly, and the outdoor setting gives it a certain romantic elegance. Fort McHenry was an inspired choice, too, allowing Mike Pence to say, “Our flag is still here.”

For now.

One surprise for me was Kayleigh McEnany’s speech. She stepped up to the podium, looking beautiful as ever, and instead of talking about politics she told the story of how she was diagnosed with the BRCA gene and chose to have a preventive mastectomy at a very early age. The other speakers were too numerous to mention, but the one who particularly stood out for me was Clarence Henderson, a man whose name I’d never heard before, but whose photo I’d seen long ago:

Henderson knocked it out of the park as far as I’m concerned, because he highlighted the history of the Republican Party in terms of civil rights for black Americans. My favorite part was this: