Category Archives: Current News

This is about stuff in the mass media that generally has a short interest life span. Speculation about an election outcome a few days before the election is an example.

Shortages create a market for fraud

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The verdict is in:

A verdict was reached in the Jussie Smollett criminal trial Thursday, nearly three years after he told police two Trump-loving bigots beat him up, tied a noose around his neck and doused him in bleach on a blistering night in January 2019.

…

The hate crime Smollett claimed he suffered sparked international outrage, and then disgust, when police said he made the whole thing up.

This isn’t the only fake hate crime in recent years.

This is to be expected. Whenever the market demand is greater than the supply there will be criminals taking advantage of the situation and supplying fake goods.

Quote of the day—Jed Babbin

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The liberals’ insistence that the law, the trial, and its outcome are tainted by racism is risible. But, to them, it has to be true because they have only two frames of reference, racism, and gun control. The accusation of racism was a major theme in the 2020 election and will be in the future — probably with less success — because that’s one of only two issues that the Democrats and the media care about.

Jed Babbin
November 21, 2021
Rittenhouse, Racism, and Gun Control
Dems don’t have too many cards left to play these days, just their two obsessions.
[The last sentence is overstating things a little bit. They also seem to care about increasing restrictions on carbon emissions, forced vaccinations, forced mask usage, and reduced restrictions on abortions.

But the sentiment of the first part of the quote resonates well with my understanding of the issue.—Joe]

Zeeshan Aleem is a liar

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The article starts out with an elephant sized clue:

Kyle Rittenhouse’s self-defense case was solid. That’s the problem.

It’s a problem the Rittenhouse had a sold defense? Aleem would have us believe in some bizarre world view where it would be better that Rittenhouse had killed two people and seriously injured a third without being legally justified? That’s crazy talk—unless the objective is to denigrate the use of a firearms for self defense.

If you read the article you can see that is his clear intent. And he doesn’t let little things like facts get in the way of his fevered rant:

For many the verdict is an outrage and a brazen miscarriage of justice. Rittenhouse is a Blue Lives Matter enthusiast who went to protests against a police shooting with a military-style rifle that he obtained illegally,

No. It was legal for him to possess the rifle. This was made clear in the trail and Aleem even mentions this later in his article:

…the judge dismissed the illegal possession of a firearm charge since under Wisconsin law 17-year-olds are allowed to possess long-barreled guns.

Apparently Aleem doesn’t realize reality is immutable. He can’t claim it was illegal and simultaneously admit it legal for Rittenhouse to posses it.

It’s apparently all about the narrative so facts and clear thinking are not the important part. Here’s the important part, in Aleem’s words:

While a gun ostensibly gives an advantage to the gun-wielder, it also heightens their fear of escalation, since losing the gun or misfiring it could result in their own harm. In other words, openly carrying a firearm introduces a perverse logic whereby it makes other people feel less safe and simultaneously increases the chance of violence against those people.

…

Rittenhouse’s behavior that fateful night is a powerful symbol of the danger of these movements, and the way they intensify social unrest: right-wing militias increase the likelihood of serious violence while purporting to try to put an end to it.

Given the direction of politics in this country, it seems inevitable that these kinds of armed groups will continue to cause chaos, and the Rittenhouse verdict may embolden them even more.

Ultimately I do believe that Rittenhouse behaved irresponsibly and endangered people recklessly, and that the tragic outcome of his behavior merits some kind of punishment. I can’t say exactly what I think that punishment should look like

It seems obvious Aleem believes, “There ought to be a law! I don’t know what that law might be but we can’t let people with his politics defending themselves with a gun.” This reminds me of something pulled from Robert F Williams book “Negros With Guns”:

When the blacks armed themselves, and without firing a shot, defended themselves an old white man in the crowd that was previously chanting, “Kill the niggers!” started screaming and crying like a baby (page 10). He then said, “God damn, God damn, what is this God damn country coming to that the niggers have got guns, the niggers are armed and the police can’t even arrest them!”

Prejudice is an ugly thing.

Quote of the day—John Hinderaker

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I am not sure how liberals expected the Kyle Rittenhouse murder trial to go. Anyone who had seen the videos of Rittenhouse’s interactions with the men who were chasing him, striking him and trying to kill him knew that he had a strong case of self-defense. But apparently the fact that Rittenhouse has a defense–and is so bold as to assert it!–came as a surprise to the Left.

John Hinderaker
November 12, 2021
RITTENHOUSE TRIAL BRINGS OUT THE CRAZY
[I don’t think it’s “surprise”. I think it’s indignation. It’s all about political currency. Violence is the political currency of the left. Non-leftists should stay in their lane and rely on the police. And since they had essentially neutered the police during this “summer of love” they expected, nay, they deserved an open field of operation. Someone dares to put out a fire they started? That is intolerable and must be punished. That Rittenhouse didn’t accept his well deserved beating was a gross violation of their expected rules of engagement. He had to guilty of something. He shouldn’t have even been there.—Joe]

James D. Zirin of The Hill is a liar

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It starts with the headline and continues nearly non-stop with the lies:

A miscarriage of justice in Kenosha

The unimaginable has occurred. Kyle Rittenhouse, the admitted killer of two men and maimer of a third, has been acquitted on all counts.

It certainly was imaginable to me and millions of others. After the videos came out it was crystal clear to anyone who had a glimmer of knowledge about the use of lethal force in self defense. The author is a former federal prosecutor and cannot possibly claim ignorance of the law.

On Aug. 25, 2020, Rittenhouse armed himself with a borrowed AR-15-style assault rifle loaded with full metal jacket armor-penetrating ammunition and marched into downtown Kenosha, Wis.

FMJ bullets are not “armor-penetrating”.

An AR-15 is the same kind of gun, in design and function, that our troops carry in the field. But Rittenhouse from the evidence had never undergone any training, military or otherwise, in the use and operation of the deadly weapon, which was illegally purchased and given to him by a friend.

It is not the same kind of gun and does not function the same as any rifle used by any military in at least the last 60 years.

As a (formerly) certified firearms instructor I can say with 100% certainty this was not the first time Rittenhouse had used a firearm. Some people, and I agree with this, say:

Based on the videos I’ve seen Rittenhouse is one of the best weapons handlers under pressure I’ve ever seen.

This was not an untrained person.

The gun was not illegal purchased. There was nothing illegal in any of the transfers of that firearm.

One shot might have qualified as self-defense, but four shots, it would appear, doth a murder make.

False. This was drilled into my General Defensive Handgun classmates and I back in ‘97:

If it ever becomes times to shoot someone, do they need to be shot a little? Or a lot?  If that time comes you should shoot early and often — until the threat is over.  If you shoot a “set”, such as a double tap, you may stop shooting too soon.

Zirin is a former attorney. Having watched the trial we can conclude his education must have been suitably refreshed. That he still claims such falsehoods is evidence of deliberate lies.

Although his second victim, Anthony Huber, was “armed” only with a skateboard, Rittenhouse claimed he shot him dead because he believed Huber was threatening his life.

Rittenhouse was on the ground and Huber hit him in the head with the skateboard. This is clearly lethal force. You are legally allowed, and I would say morally obligated, to defend innocent life using lethal force when confronted with lethal force by your attackers. Zirin learned this in the trial as well because he quoted the judge saying essentially the same thing. The only question here is, “What is the objective of these lies by Zirin?”

The trial was highlighted by emotional and illuminating testimony from Rittenhouse himself, who wept as he protested that he had acted in self-defense when he fatally shot Rosenbaum not once but four times. Rosenbaum had thrown a plastic bag at him and chased him.

Lying by omission. Zirin left out the part about Rosenbaum threating to kill him, then chasing him, and finally attempting to take Rittenhouse’s rifle.

I find it interesting and someone comforting that the poll taken at the end of the article shows I’m not the only one taking issue with this liar:

image

The next stop is SCOTUS

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Via Tom Gresham @Guntalk and CNN:

A federal appeals court in California on Tuesday upheld the state’s ban on high-capacity magazines, reversing a lower-court ruling in which a federal judge in San Diego compared an AR-15 rifle to a Swiss Army knife.

The 7-4 decision by the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit says that the state’s restriction on the size of magazines that may be used with firearms only minimally interferes with the right to self-defense, and there is no evidence that anyone was unable to defend their home and family due to the lack of high-capacity magazines.

As Gresham said, “Time to appeal to SCOTUS.”

GoFundMe says Rittenhouse fundraisers are now okay

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This is good news:

Since Rittenhouse was found not guilty on all charges against him on Friday, GoFundMe will allow any future fundraisers started to raise money for his legal fees.

I wonder as to the reason why those accused of violent crimes are not allowed to fundraise. My guess is they are concerned some people might commit violent crimes just for the money. They could get a cheap lawyer or even plead guilty, spend a few years in prison then have hundreds of thousands of dollars waiting for them when they get out.

Are there any other hypotheses? Or does anyone know for certain?

Alexandra Hutzler of Newsweek is a liar

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The headline sets the tone with Black Lives Matter Says System Is Upholding ‘White Supremacy’ After Rittenhouse Acquittal. Technically that is true. @Blklivesmatter did tweet that on November 19th. That claim is absurd on the face of it but the author doesn’t even hint there is anything wrong with such a claim. She quotes numerous other falsehoods told by various people and then tells one of her own:

Rittenhouse, then 17, was illegally armed with a semiautomatic rifle and said he traveled from Illinois to help protect businesses during the protests.

False. The judge threw out that charge because it was false. The law is confusing and it would be easy for the average person to believe that claim but numerous lawyers and many ordinary people were able to build the flow diagram to conclude, as did Rittenhouse before carrying the gun, that it was legal. Hutzler even mentions the judge threw out the charge. Why didn’t she get the clue? I suspect she did get the clue but the truth didn’t matter to her. She is a liar and may even be proud that she can (mostly) get away with it.

Stephanie Willis is a liar

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Stephanie Willis rambles on about “privilege” and but never gives us any “meat” to back up her claims:

Kyle Rittenhouse being found not guilty on all counts after more than 24 hours of deliberations can be summed up with one simple phrase: White privilege. It’s an all too familiar theme we witness when White defendants are on trial for killing us.

…

I dare say Kyle Rittenhouse was cloaked with a privilege you cannot find in any legal precedent – The Rittenhouse Privilege. Throughout the trial there were instances in which it was quite apparent that the scales of justice tipped in favor of Kyle Rittenhouse.

Let’s start with the jury makeup. After the jury process, 18 individuals were selected to listen to the trial. Of these 18 individuals, 12 were selected at random by the defendant, Kyle Rittenhouse, to deliberate. These individuals consisted of seven women and five men – only one was a person of color.

The next thing to consider is the venue. The case was tried in Kenosha, which according to Census data is over 75% White. In the past, Kenosha country voted Democratic but went for Donald Trump in the 2016 election. It is also particularly important to consider the fact that Wisconsin is a gun friendly state. But we must also ask ourselves Gun Friendly toward whom?

How is the described jury makeup tipping the scales in favor of Rittenhouse? What, in her mind, would create a balanced trial? What should the composition of the jury be? Where would she think a venue be found? What does the predominate Democrat bias of the county with the outlier of 2016 going to Trump have to do with anything? She says these things as if these were obvious, unquestionable, evidence of bias. Absent a lot more explanation I can only conclude these are the ravings of a paranoid.

Nevertheless, she asserts her conclusion:

The Rittenhouse Privilege has set a precedent. There is now legal precedent which permits individuals to claim self-defense in the most outrageous of cases. Be forewarned – this precedent will only extend to individuals who can claim the Rittenhouse privilege.

With video and still pictures from multiple angles for nearly all the shootings and witnesses testimony consistent with the digital evidence the facts of the case could not be more clear. Rittenhouse met the requirements of the law and was justified in using deadly force against his attackers. That Willis claims to be an attorney, yet asserts this was an “outrageous” because Rittenhouse was found not guilty, only eliminates the defense she is ignorant, and not malicious, in her assertions.

Willis is a liar.

Headline writer is a liar

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The headline reads Kyle Rittenhouse verdict violates these 5 standards for claiming self-defense. But if you read the actual article you will not find any such claim.

You can find errors in the article, such as in the Zimmerman/Martin case it is claimed the Florida Stand Your Ground law was an issue. But the writer doesn’t make the false claim the headline writer does.

I have to believe someone was making a deliberate effort to deceive the public and liable Rittenhouse.

Quote of the day—Ryan Chittum

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On balance, the press has been a destructive force on this story, from its beginnings in the coverage of the Jacob Blake shooting that set the whole thing off and which we know was justified, to the downplaying of the $50 million in destruction done by rioters in Kenosha, to the libelous portrayal of Rittenhouse and the particulars of what happened. There have been innumerable journalistic disasters in the Trump era, but this is the most blatantly reckless one of them all.

Ryan Chittum
Media critic with the Columbia Journalism Review,
November 21, 2021
Misinformation About Kyle Rittenhouse Case Floods Social Media, TV Networks
[I think Chittum is giving the media too much credit with the claim of “reckless”. With the videos so easily available, with the jury verdict known to everyone, with the claims they make so absurd, I don’t believe they are “reckless”. They are malicious liars.—Joe]

The USA Today editorial board are liars

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The USA Today editorial board is incoherent and/or has a reading comprehension problem and/or is lying. And they tell the lie that they believe an inanimate object can be guilty:

Kyle Rittenhouse may be innocent, but not the assault-style rifles are (once again) guilty in deadly shooting

He said the weapon was a key reason he shot and killed Joseph Rosenbaum during the mayhem. “If I would have let Mr. Rosenbaum take my firearm from me, he would have used it and killed me with it,” Rittenhouse testified during the trial.

Demonstrators saw the shooting and chased after Rittenhouse in an apparent effort to disarm him. One of them was Anthony Huber armed only with a skateboard. Huber grabbed the barrel of the AR-15, and Rittenhouse shot him to death.

“The irony of the case is that Mr. Rittenhouse has become a cause célèbre among gun-rights advocates, even though, according to his own defense, it was his carrying of the rifle that put him in danger in the first place,” the Economist noted.

Rittenhouse said no such thing. And they quoted the testimony which refutes their claim! The key reason for all legal use of lethal force is the reasonable fear of imminent severe injury or death. Rittenhouse articulated this well, repeatedly, and the video supports his claims. Without the rifle Rosenbaum would still have been outraged at his dumpster fire, being pushed into a gas station, being put out with the fire extinguisher. And that outrage led to Rittenhouse being chased by Rosenbaum and others. And when they cornered him without the rifle they almost certainly would have caused him severe injury or death. Hence, the rifle cannot be the “key reason” justifying the use of deadly force.

They are also liars:

Such weapons were expressly designed for the battlefield, and that may be a good part of their appeal.

Wrong. Such weapons are expressly designed to be easy to shoot, maintain, carry, economical, and accurate. They are the most common rifle sold in the United States and no AR-15 style rifle has ever been issued to a military for battlefield use (the AR-15 is semi-auto, militaries all use select fire rifles).

The primacy of assault-style rifles in American society is not a Second Amendment issue. When the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia authored a Supreme Court ruling in 2008 underscoring the Second Amendment’s right to possess firearms, he said the freedom is “not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever.”

This must be a deliberate lie. Here is the complete quote from the 2008 Heller decision (emphasis added):

Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose. See, e.g., Sheldon, in 5 Blume 346; Rawle 123; Pomeroy 152–153; Abbott333. For example, the majority of the 19th-century courts to consider the question held that prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons were lawful under the Second Amendment or state analogues. See, e.g., State v. Chandler, 5 La. Ann., at 489–490; Nunn v. State, 1 Ga., at 251; see generally 2 Kent *340, n. 2; The American Students’ Blackstone 84, n. 11 (G. Chase ed. 1884). Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment , nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.26

We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms. Miller said, as we have explained, that the sorts of weapons protected were those “in common use at the time.”

I cannot imagine having read to middle of page 54 to pluck the “not unlimited” quote they did not read to the top of page 55 and see the sorts of weapons protected were those “in common use at the time.”

Being the most popular rifle style sold in the United States the AR-15 qualifies as “in common use”. Hence, the AR-15 is protected by the Second Amendment.

David S. Cohen of Rolling Stone is a liar

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The mention of Rolling Stone and anything to do with guns and then bring up lies is probably being entirely redundant, but it doesn’t hurt to make it explicitly clear.

Lies:

While patrolling the streets, there was gunfire that resulted in some of the Black Lives Matter protesters thinking Rittenhouse was attacking them. They charged Rittenhouse, and he opened fire, killing Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber and injuring Gaige Grosskreutz.

That’s not how it happened. You can watch the video of every shot fired and see for yourself. The gunfire was as the “protestors” had boxed Rittenhouse in between some cars and were closing in on him. One of those attackers fired the gun into the air a few dozen feet from Rittenhouse. The shooting of Huber and Grosskreutz were a minute or so later as Rittenhouse was attempting to reach the safety of the police and the attackers caught up to him after he fell. They struck him with a skateboard, kicked him in the head, and pointed a gun at him. Each person shot was an imminent threat of permanent injury or death to Rittenhouse.

New blog post category

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When Brother Doug and I get together we frequently have long talks about our country’s political state. The illegal gun laws, the U.S. debt, the out of control printing of money, etc..

One of the things Doug frequently points out is that the average person doesn’t get outraged because the legacy media gives the political left cover through, at best, selective reporting of the facts and implications of things that are not true. And frequently outright lies.

So how do we combat these lies? Doug and I get frustrated at this point. Politely pointing out their errors doesn’t work. After all, as Lyle frequently points out a good case can be made they actually pride themselves on there ability to lie and get away with it.

I finally came up with decent response. I have created a new blog post category, Legacy Media Liars. This category will be used to call out individuals (when available) as liars. I don’t know that my blog has enough Google Page Rank to bring searches for the liars names into the top ten on Google but it’s better than doing nothing.

I have gone back to a few previous posts and categorized them as well to kind of jump start the category. This is as if I actually will be short on material. The Rittenhouse verdict probably gave me 100 articles to blog about in the first 12 hours after the verdict was announced.

This is going to be a busy category.

Skynet smiles

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I sometimes joke about the Skynet of the Terminator movies. And occasionally I get serious about it. But this is the first time I ever had a strong Skynet inspired chill engulf me when read about a new technology:

The 2.6 trillion transistors in the WSE-2 are organized into 850,000 cores. According to Cerebras Systems, the chip’s cores are optimized for the specific types of mathematical operations that neural networks use to turn raw data into insights. The WSE-2 stores the data being processed by a neural network using 40 gigabytes of speedy onboard memory.

Cerebras Systems says that the WSE-2 has 123 times more cores and 1,000 times more on-chip memory than the closest GPU.

I’m not sure why that emotional response occurred. It was as if some threshold had not just been crossed, but leaped over by such a huge margin. The potential threat became, not just real, but something much greater than that. I can’t say that I know or even really suspect that is true. It was just an emotional reaction.

However, see also what Elon Musk has to say about AI:

Never forget that a computer’s attention span is no longer than its power cord.

Prepare appropriately.

The political currency of the left

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I’ve written about this before but the Rittenhouse trial provides us another data point.

One could assume, and rightly so, that from all the arson, looting, and thuggery involved in the “mostly peaceful” protest Rittenhouse attended the participants were no strangers to criminal activity. Usually the participants are masked and the general public doesn’t get to know their identities or criminal histories.

Because Rittenhouse ended up shooting three out of the four participants he had the closest contact with we learned much more about them that we normally learn.

Four is a small sample but that 100% of them had a serious criminal history tells us the odds of the majority of the complete set being non-criminals is very low. In fact, if we assume the sample was random (agreed, it is not true and it is biased in favor of my hypothesis) we can actually compute those odds. Given the assumption, the odds of 50% or more of them not being convicted criminals are 0.5 x 0.5 x 0.5 x 05 => 0.0625. That is one chance out of 16.

The political currency of the left is violence. It is part of their nature. That is why there are twice as many people in prison who identify as Democrats as all other political affiliations combined. Rittenhouse inadvertently helped us verify that.

As Larry Correia pointed out:

Mob based political violence has been a tool of dirtbags since mankind invented politics. Quit pretending that the left doesn’t do it now.

It’s the same reason when after a summer of their continual fiery rampages with billions of dollars in damage and many lives lost, when the right got a little uppity on January 6th, the left absolutely lost their shit. That’s their game. That’s their tool. The left don’t share. So their rioters are heroic champions.

That Rittenhouse didn’t take a beating and discouraged their continued criminal activities is intolerable to them and is why he must be punished.

Alan Dershowitz says Rittenhouse should sue

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The best legal minds seem to be in agreement. Rittenhouse is not guilty and should be acquitted. Alan Dershowitz even agrees he should sue media outlets for their claims he murdered people:

Harvard law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz says Kyle Rittenhouse “should be acquitted” of killing two men and wounding a third during riots and protests last year in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and he should file defamation lawsuits against media outlets for claiming that he’s guilty of murder.

“If I were a juror, I would vote that there was reasonable doubt [and] that he did act in self-defense,” Dershowitz told Newsmax on Nov. 13.

Rittenhouse, if acquitted, should then “bring lawsuits” against corporate news outlets for articles claiming the teen engaged in “vigilante justice,” Dershowitz said.

“It’s CNN who is involved in vigilante justice. It’s The New Yorker that’s guilty of vigilante justice,” he said.

At a minimum I would add ABC and USA Today to the list of contributors to Rittenhouse’s yachts..

A little slow to catch up

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Back in September of 2020 I noted the following:

The only potential charge that kept nagging at me until late today was the one about possession of a dangerous weapon by a person under 18 (a misdemeanor).

WI law is somewhat confusing here…

941.28 is about the possession of a short-barreled shotgun or short-barreled rifle. Hence, it does not apply to Rittenhouse.

29.304 is about restrictions on hunting and use of firearms by persons under 16 years of age. While some people might claim he was hunting I can’t imagine his activities met the legal definition of hunting. Hence, this section does not apply to Rittenhouse.

29.593 is about requirements for certificate of accomplishment to obtain hunting approval. I’m certain hunting licenses are not being issued by WI fish and game for the state terrorists. Hence, there cannot be issue with any failure to acquire a certificate to get approval for a license.

Hence, the “possession of a dangerous weapon by a person under 18” charge is bogus.

I find it amazing the opinion writers, lawyers, and the judge are only recently deciphering the actual wording of the law.