Quote of the day—Cal Thomas

If confronted by someone seeking to loot, destroy your business, or kill you, would you see your armed self as the best defense, or would you call 911, hoping the police will show up in time, if at all? Or would you be glad that a Kyle Rittenhouse is patrolling your streets like a neighborhood watchman, doing the job the police are unable, or reluctant to do?

Cal Thomas
November 27, 2021
Cal Thomas: The Rittenhouse verdict
[I think a bit more context is necessary to correctly answer these questions. I would be inclined to give the police a couple of free passes until it was clear they weren’t going to do their job. I would then reevaluate the situation.

There could be situations, much later in the timeline, where I would give people a pass for taking the action to the derelict and/or malicious politicians failing to do their job.—Joe]

Quote of the day—John Hinderaker

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]

Quote of the day—Hugo Gurdon

Righting the listing ship of state requires that we once again recognize that process, tedious though it may be to political hotheads, is more important than temporary victories and defeats on policy. The idea that results alone are important is the same as saying might makes right. It is the maxim of bullies and tyrants. It is not the political philosophy on which America long stood and should still stand.

Hugo Gurdon
November 17, 2021
Damn the evidence, convict the white supremacist
[+1.—Joe]

James D. Zirin of The Hill is a liar

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

Quote of the day—Kevin Baker

“Democracy Dies in Darkness” is not a warning, but a mission statement to the Left.

Kevin Baker
November 13, 2021
Comment on Facebook.
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Michael Snyder

Sooner or later, this is what socialist regimes always do.

They tell us to study hard, get a good job and work as hard as we can.

And then they give our money to people that haven’t done any of those things.

Eventually they run out of other people’s money, and so then they just start wildly creating more.

Unfortunately, every time that this has been tried throughout history it has always ended in disaster, and now it is our turn.

Michael Snyder
November 14, 2021
This Is How They Intend To Get Us To “You Will Own Nothing And Be Happy”
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Noam Shpancer

Mature people use their fire to warm the house rather than burn it down, refrain from assaulting flight attendants, help old ladies cross the street, pack a sandwich for the long road trip, and can take a joke.

Our current cultural climate trends in the opposite direction. Instead of constructive sublimation, we celebrate raw destructive aggression; instead of suppressing dark emotions, we revel in them; instead of preparing for the future, we’re busy destroying it; instead of laughing at ourselves and our shared humanity, we either laugh at the weak or foreswear humor altogether.

In America today, the delicate and complex machinery of democracy is placed in infantile hands. You don’t need a child’s imagination to foresee trouble ahead.

Noam Shpancer, Ph.D.
November 13, 2021

Psychological Immaturity Threatens Our Democracy
Democracy requires psychological maturity, which appears to be in short supply.

[The article does a good job of describing the problem from the viewpoint of a psychologist. I wish he had some suggestions for a solution.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Clif High

Let’s say the ultimate paranoid understanding is this is a collapse of civilization to some degree.  In order to understand this, we should extract ourselves from as many of these failing systems as possible.  If you can extract yourself from the money system as much as possible, the school system and any of these systems because they are all going to fail, and you don’t want to be dragged down by them.  Here’s how bad it’s going to get…

Members of Congress will be rushing out of meetings, heaving their guts out and vomiting all over the hallways because of the emotional shock because of the death of the dollar.  The death of the dollar is not going to be a slow thing.  It will come to the point, probably fairly rapidly, and it might even be in just a couple of weeks because we have this drop dead date on December 3rd.  Anyway … This is the thing to imagine, and that is we are coming to the end of a civilization.

Clif High
November 16, 2021
Collapse of Civilization Coming
[Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet.

While I can believe there is a very good chance of economic collapse of the U.S. within the next few years, and I can believe it will be “rapid”, my best guess is that “rapid” will be on the scale of months or possibly weeks.

My “prediction” is based on the time scales seen in other hyper inflation situations.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Ryan Chittum

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]

Quote of the day—Colin Wright @SwipeWright

The Left-wing media narrative on the Rittenhouse case is extreme, malicious, and untethered to reality. It is well beyond insane. It would be laughable if it weren’t so utterly frightening.

Colin Wright @SwipeWright
Tweeted on November 20, 2021
[It was my independent conclusion of this (although not articulated nearly as well) that led me to create a new blog category dedicated to exposing their lies.—Joe]

Never give up your guns

Via Rolf.

Australia: Army Forcibly Throws Covid-Exposed Citizens in Quarantine Camps

Two Northern Territory communities in Australia, Binjari and Rockhole, have imposed strict lockdowns after nine new positive coronavirus cases were registered. The military has been called in to bring positive cases and close contacts to a quarantine center.

We live in interesting times.

New blog post category

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.

Good neighbors

Via email from Rolf:

image

Idaho has the fastest growing population in the U.S. in 2021:

Idaho had a population growth of 2.12%, growing from 1,789,060 to 1,826,913. People from all over the U.S. are being drawn to Idaho for its affordability and the strong job market. Additionally, Boise has a rapidly growing tech sector. Many people migrating to Idaho are from California, most likely due to its affordability (especially compared to California) and a much lower population density. Despite the state’s rapid growth, it is the 12th-smallest state in the U.S.

Idaho residents would prefer people, especially refuges colonizers from the socialist states, stay where they are and continue to provide a bad example for the rest of the country.

Quote of the day—bumbletron @citizenobscure

Stop granting these people the intellectual charity that they are arguing in good faith. They despise you. And they are at war with you. Rules of engagement are a disadvantage when your opponents have none.

bumbletron @citizenobscure
Tweeted on November 13, 2021
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Paul Johnson

The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which seem to us novel and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false.

Paul Johnson
1980
The Recovery of Freedom by Paul Johnson
[Via Thomas Sowell.

My web wanderings for the original source resulted in stumbling across this web page. I now have Intellectuals in my Audible library.—Joe]

The political currency of the left

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.

Quote of the day—Jacob Sullum

Before he was elected mayor of New York City last week, Eric Adams raised some eyebrows by saying he would carry a handgun to protect himself and any houses of worship he might visit. While those remarks were controversial, the real scandal is that ordinary New Yorkers cannot legally carry guns for self-defense — a privilege that Adams takes for granted as a former police officer.

Jacob Sullum
November 10, 2021
Supreme Court should reject law that keeps ordinary people from carrying guns for self-defense
[Of course. The most foolish mistake they could possibly make would be to allow their subjects to posses arms.

See also here for more context and commentary.—Joe]

Vigilantes in Rittenhouse case (@anniewebb64, @hammeredsicko, @MckinnisAnthony)

For months there has been claims made about a vigilante in Kenosha WI. I wasn’t able to see valid case for it until today.

I now see there are actually several.

Via Andy Ngô

RittenhouseVigilante1

RittenhouseVigilante2

Via Andy Ngô

RittenhouseJackRubyRittenhouseJackRuby2

Via Andy Ngô:

KenoshaArson

Link for:

image

Prepare appropriately.

He seems nice

Via Jonathan Sullivan on Facebook in November of 2016:

CharlesWalz

This must have been someone from the political party that celebrates diversity.

Prepare and respond appropriately.

Highest paid

Via “Donaldo Seamus Baldwinski” on Facebook:

SandmannRittenhouseMedia

There is more than a little truth to this. And this is part of the reason the courts are so important to regaining some sanity in our political environment.