“…Mitch, why do you keep saying that media attention to ‘white supremacy’ is just a diversion tactic, a political cudgel with which to beat down, bully and shame dissent, with otherwise no substance whatsoever?”, I respond “because that’s exactly how your side treats it“.
There are so many reasons to flush the Biden administration like a bad tequila and gas station burrito bender the next morning.
This story is merely one of them. But it’s a big one:
Veterans that chose not to get a COVID-19 vaccine and are dismissed from their posts will not receive any special protections or preferential evaluations for veterans’ benefits eligibility, with the decision being ultimately determined by their discharge status.
The decision of whether to give these veterans other-than-honorable discharges will be left to their local commanders.
I don’t care what Betty McCollum and Ilhan Omar have to say about this – it’s perfectly predictable.
Now Dean Phillips and Angie Craig? That’s an opinion I’d like to get.
During testimony yesterday in the Kyle Rittenhoue trial, Gaige Grosskreuz – the “medic” with the illegally-concealed who was shot while chasing Rittenhouse with an illegally-concealed Glock – this happened:
In this, Grosskreutz admits – after a half-hour of cross-examination by defense attorney Chirifisi – that his actions justified Rittenhouse’s claim of self-defense against him, and likely Huber as well. The admission above takes place at 3:23 of the video below; the preceding several minutes of the defense cross-examination is fascinating….
…as Chirifisi slowly backs Grosskreutz into telling the truth, is fascinating to watch.
As was the prosecutor’s classic facepalm.
Defense attorney Andrew Branca blogged about the day’s events. He’s scathing to ADA Binger.
As I stepped through the cross-examination of Grosskreutz today, I identified no fewer than 19 substantive portions, nearly 50% of the total time spent on cross by Attorney Chirafisi, that were substantively destructive to the State’s narrative of guilt, and helpful to the defense narrative of self-defense. It was harder to identify the parts to leave out of today’s end-of-day post than it was to select the parts to keep in.
“Directed verdict” – a judge telling a jury that the facts leave only one possible choice – is what the lawyers in the windows on the left of the screen start yelling. I suspect that’s unlikely, although less so than the belief in some quarters that the judge should toss the whole trial, which just isn’t going to happen; someone would gin that into grounds for an appeal, and then you’re one judge away from having to go through the whole thing again.
In the course of this trial, I’ve learned one important thing; the big lesson I took away from carry permit class 16 years ago has changed. The defense no longer has to prove the major elements of their case; they have the burden of providing evidence of self-defense; the prosecution then has to prove that any one of the following five standards for self-defense wasn’t met:
1. Innocence – the defendant didn’t start the altercation
2. Proportionality – they used only the force necessary to stop the threat
3. Imminence – the lethal force was used in response to something going on at that moment; not the day before, not some future threat.
4. Reasonableness – the defendant reasonably believed they were going to die.
5. Avoidance – the defendant tried to avoid the episode. Note – even in a Stand your Ground or Castle situation, judges will often advise juries it’s best to try to avoid the use of lethal force.
It seems obvious that the prosecution’s case in the Huber and Grosskreutz shootings fell apart yesterday. The Rosenbaum shooting may be a little closer fought, but I think there’s at least reasonable doubt so far…
…and the defense still hasn’t presented its case.
Just to be clear – killing is a tragedy, and it’s best not to be where one expects violence to happen. The law – and, in places like Minneapolis and Kenosha, politics – aren’t fond of citizens defending their property. Be aware of this.
But hopefully this past two years, and a good mid-term at the state and federal level, start changing that.
…when I would have looked at an event like today’s 83rd anniversary of Kristallnacht and nodded and thought “good thing our society is smarter than that these days”.
Because November 9 is the anniversary of the largest pogrom in ihistory:
In a statement to representatives of the foreign press, Goebbels responded to the outrage at Germany’ assault on its half-million Jewish citizens by challenging the Western democracies: “If there is any country that believes it has not enough Jews, I shall gladly turn over to it all our Jews.” But not one country said they would take the Jews of Germany.
After this last couple of years, I’m really not so sure.
Antisemitism is back on the rise…:
It’s incredible how little has changed in eighty-three years. Children’s textbooks are filled with anti-Jewish hatred in the Palestinian territories while others call Abbas and his underlings “moderates. “Islamic Clerics throughout the world call for the death of Jews, and a recent AJC study reported that Antisemitism runs rampant in France.
And given our crippling tribalism, and the dehumanization of other ‘tribes” that runs rampant in tribalist societies (Rwanda, Bosnia, Burma and India for some modern examples), I’m not exactly sanguine about everyone else either.
SCENE: It’s the studio at Minnesota Public Radio. MyLyssa SILBERMAN, reporter for National Public Radio’s Saint Paul bureau, covering the “Fake News” and “Diversity” beats, is guest-ghosting “MInnesota Insights”, a program of insights about Minnesota,. She is interviewing Gretel STROMBERG, Executive Director of “Minnesotans United for All Progressive Causes”.
SILBERMAN: So, big news in Los Angeles. The city is banning gasoline-powered leaf blowers. What’s your take on that, Gretel?
STROMBERG: (sounding audibly giddy). I could hardly be happier! That noise every fall just drives me crazy. And sturdies show that a leaf blower creates a biggest carbon footprint in an afternoon than a car driving from Minneapolis to Fresno.
SILBERMAN: Hmmm.
STROMBERG: But it’s also the fact that it’s just a horrible sound.
SILBERMAN: Oh, same for me!
STROMBERG (sounding like she’s trying to head off a faux pas), let me say that what I’m saying is from the perspective of a white woman of privilege…
SILBERMAN: Of course…
STROMBERG: Because white woman privilege is huge and powerful.
(Scene cuts to a community clinic in Coleraine, Minnesota, where Angela PULJUU, an LPN, is driving home from a 12 hour shift in an assisted living center)
PULJUU: Huh.
(Scene cuts to a tony home in Deephaven, facing Lake Minnetonka. Karen BERHEIM-WOLD, part-time realtor, ex-wife of a successful entrepreneur and current trophy wife of a bank CEO, is having a cup of Nespresson in her three season porch overlooking the lake)
BERHEIM-WOLD: That is so true.
(Scene cuts to a small farm in Goodhue County, where Janelle HELMBACHER is looking at price hikes in the meat aisle at the local grocery store)
HELMBACHER: What, now?
(Scene cuts to an opulent mansion in Chicago, where for whatever reason Oprah Winfrey is listening to the live stream)
WINFREY: Testify!
(Scene cuts to a school bus in South Saint Paul, where teachers aid Pauline SCZEPANSKI is wrangling a bunch of junior high kids who have gotten un-used to being around kids or following rules).
SCZEPANSKI: Huh.
And SCENE
Read the rest of this entry »I’ve had a few commenters point out that the site has gotten rather slow.
The site was recently moved to a different server at my hosting service. That likely means your IP path to this site has changed; if your browser has the old IP address cached, that might cause a problem.
Trying from a different browser, or an incognito browser, or perhaps flushing your cookies, might help.
If it doesn’t, I’ll talk with my hosting company and see if it’s something on their end.
When your dumbass Karen of a sister-in-law asks for just one bit of “scentific” proof that acquired immunity isn’t in fact “nonexistent”, but is for sake of argument at least as important as vaccination in dealing with Covid?
Give them 64 bits, and counting.
And then 96 more, although some may overlap.
I authorize the use of extreme force to force them to listen to every one.
You’re welcome.
“Anti”-Fa / BLM “proteszters”, led by a man who is putatively George Floyd’s nephew, mostly-peacefully break into the home of the judge in the judge in the Kim Potter case, live stream the whole thing:
Among the many problems, here?
Worst part of all? If Mike Freeman does something about this (which seems unlikely to this cynic; what, arrest George Floyd’s nephew?), that’ll be the good news – since whoever replaces him (Ryan Winkler?) will be even worse.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Conservatives have been warning Liberals for years that if cops won’t arrest thieves and carjackers, citizens will take the law into their own hands.
Except if this guy gets convicted, everyone else will learn a lesson from it. It’ll end differently next time. The next guy won’t call the cops. He’ll finish the job, leave the body in the street, and drive his van home.
Because that’s what happens if cops won’t arrest thieves and carjackers, but Will arrest citizens who had no alternative to taking the law into their own hands.
And the next step after that? If honest citizens are forced to conclude the cops are as much a problem as the crooks? Who gets shot then?
Joe Doakes
Even the mob knew enough to keep hands off of cops.
But it is not a big stretch for civilians to figure out “never talk“.
Get on the list to come to the SD39 debate on 11/16 – SD39Republicans@gmail.com
Or go to precinctstrategy.com and click Minnesota.
Want to get docked a letter grade on your argument?
Call it “evidence-based”.
Seriouslly.
We are seeing this phrase from an awful lot of groups, especially media, to try and market themselves as authoritative, objective, and “not fake“.
(Dishonorable mention to Minnesota and National Public Radio who’ve been leading with the equally-dumb “fact-based”).
The phrase isn’t “meaningless”, per se – but it does prey on the gullibility of the audience.
Virtually every argument that goes past the level of the thesis statement is based on some kind of “evidence“ or another, including every single conspiracy theory that more than three people share.
The flat earth theory is “evidence-based“: the evidence is too narrow in scope, obsolete or just plain wrong, but it is in fact evidence.
Phrenology – the practice of medicine based around measuring bumps on peoples heads – what evidence-based. It turned out the evidence led to a faulty conclusion.
Hair strand analysis -= the story of the structure of hair – was considered as infallible as DNA is today, for purposes of evidence in criminal proceedings. The “evidence-based” study of hair strands was considered so authoritative it sent many people to death row over the years.
But it turned out that the interpretation of the evidence, as knowledge of other ividence grew, meant that hair strand analysis turned out to be completely useless for establishing identity, and is today not a whole not more respected than phrenology or the flat earth theroy.
Evidence is not a conclusioni. It’s not distilled truth, in and of itself.
Evidence is the “table stakes” in a rational, informed debate that gets us, eventually, to the truth.
Anyone who treats that phrase otherwise deserves a sound mocking.
…I worry that today’s Democrats will re-assess their addiction to gaining and consolidating power and stop overreaching, to say nothing of gaslighting all of society…
…actual Democrat reality steps in.
To midterms!
SCENE: Mitch BERG is eating a skewer of souvlaki at a local greek joint when Avery LIBRELLE walks in. BERG tries to hide behind a menu, but LIBRELLE sees him, walks over.
LIBRELLE: Merg!
BERG: Oh, hey, Avery…
LIBRELLE: You people are so paranoid!
BERG: OK, I”ll bite. How, this time?
LIBRELLE: They’re not teaching Critical Race Theory in schools.
BERG: Do tell.
LIBRELLE: Critical race theory is taught in law schools and sociology programs.
BERG: Y’know, this reminds me of the conversation I have with anti-gunners, condescendingly cooing “nobody’s coming for your guns.
LIBRELLE: More paranoia. Nobody’s coming for your guns
BERG: Right. So I point out that politicians say that that’s exactly what they’re going to do – Joe Biden said it himself on is campaign website…
LIBRELLE: That’s just talk, not policy…
BERG: Right. That’s the inevitable next line. So I point to gun control legislation jammed down in New York, Colorado and Virginia in the past few years, and they say…(motions toward LIBRELLE)
LIBRELLE: They’re not coming for your guns right this moment.
BERG: Right. According to you all, I can’t be concerned about gun control until there’s a BATFE agent beating down my door with a photocopied warrant.
But let’s get back on subject. CRT…
LIBRELLE: Isn’t being taught.
BERG: The VIrginia Department of Education says it is.
LIBRELLE: But you can’t prove that it’s being taught in classrooms!
BERG: Teachers are most definitely teaching students that America is inseparably and irredeemably rooted in racism, that “whiteness” and racism are inseparable, that the police were originally an extension of Slave Patrols, and that the Second Amendment was framed to defend slavery and nothing more. All of which are part and parcel of CRT.
LIBRELLE: Again, CRT is taught in law schools and post-secondary education.
BERG: So none of those things are taught in schools.
LIBRELLE: Of course they are.
BERG: And they are all inseparable from CRT.
LIBRELLE: No. Its not CRT.
BERG: What is it, then?
LIBRELLE: It’s a theory about race, that criticizes.
BERG: But not CRT?
LIBRELLE: Of course not.
BERG: (looks down at menu). Look at how the price of pita has gone up…
LIBRELLE: (Looks down) Huh?
But BERG has slipped away.
And SCENE
I more or less figured that the “Defund” initiative in Minneapolis was going to be a white progressive thing (along with “people of color” who work in the non-profit/industrial complex).
It’s been a long-time narrative-busting truism that people who actually live in crime-ridden neighborhoods want more police presence.
They’d like that presence to act fairly, to treat the locals with the respect due taxpayers in a free society, and to not get treated like criminals until proven otherwise – but they want law and order. Becuase while they may or may not put it in as many words, they understand something I razz libertarians for not getting; without some sense of order, prosperity is impossible; without prosperity, liberty is academic. (And, of course, order without liberty is onerous and tyrannical; that part, they get).
With that in mind, here are the result from Tuesday on the Defund the Police initiative:
I’m not in the least surprised of the intensity of support in the tony, boho Southeast (perversely, the darkest-green blob on the Northeast of the map), or hipster-plagued Northeast (again, perversely, the north central part of the map, and least of all Longfellow and the near South Side and the Wedge (the green splotches around the middle of the city); this is the home of the non-profiteers, the recent college grads and the like.
I’m a little shocked that the far Southwest, and the western border, were such strong “no” votes, though. Ward 11 – along the south dentral border – ejected Councilman Schroeder over this initiative. Democrats with money apparently believe they have something to lose after all.
Not surprising in the least? The North Side (actually the Northwest qjuadrant of the map) where the actual crime is curbstomped the initiative, taking down Philippe Cunningham (the far northwest part of the city) and almost Jeremiah Ellison in the process (just south of him).
When Don Samuels came out sounding like a Montana state legislator on the law-and-order subjects, I knew something was up. I had no idea it’d be this decisive.
“So, why are Minneapolis and Saint Paul simultaneously gentrified to the hilt, plagued with blight, and devoid of “affordable housing” in 2041?”
Do you suppose anyone will make the connection?
I mean, the odds of people getting smarter between now and then don’t look great…
When President Brandon talked about the rising price of fuel and the hob that’s playing on the world economy at the big “climate” summit in Scotland…
…I asked myself – has he forgotten that his administration canceled Keystone XL and revoked exploration permits on federal land?
Or is he just assuming that Democrat voters aren’t bright enough to remember it?
To: Democrat Strategists
From: Mitch Berg, Obstreporous Peasant
Re: Election results
Dear Dem Strategists:
How to rebuild? Here’s a thought:
And more riot talk. Lots more talk about riots.
Keep up the good work.
That is all.
Virginia is so racist, it just elected its first black woman as Lieutenant Governor.
Jamaican-born Winsome Sears, a former Marine and assemblywoman…
…is the new black face of white supremacy, I guess:
Not sure this was foreshadowing the evening’s vote in Minneapolis, but when Angela Conley, a Hennepin County commissioner who favors banning the police reported a carjacking…maybe…
…it may not have ended well.
No worse than the evening ended up for Philippe Cunningham and Jeremy Schroeder , two city council bots who had strongly favored defunding the MPD.
Minneapolis rejected the “public safety” amendment. Which prompted a bit of pique:
While some white progressives were upset, it was interesting reading the results of the police question broken down by precinct. In the upset wards – Cunningham’s Ward Four, far north Minneapolis, where the people who actually need to worry about crime live, and Schroder’s Ward 11, the far south, where people who have something to lose live, the charter amendment got clobbered.
Jacob Frey appears on his way to re-election once IRV wends its mysterious ways – Kate Knuth and Sheila Nezhad were unable to play the IRV game well enough to trick enough votes into their various columns.
Now, to settle in and see what’s happening in Virginia and New Jersey…
So Ibram X. Kendo has built an entire (lucrative) career out of claiming “whiteness” is an innate advantage in our society.
And to prove it, he shows white applicants…
…renouncing their race?
I write a blog, and do a talk show, that covers a fair amount of politics.
People jump from that to assuming I looooove politics.
It’s not true. Truth be told, I hate ’em.
But just because you’re not interested in politics doesn’t mean they’re not interested in you.
Charles Cook lays it out as well as anyone in this bit here.
Pullquote:
If, like me, you believe without irony, exaggeration, or caveat, that the United States of America remains the last, great hope of mankind, then you have no choice but to fight those who would “transform” it. If, like me, you believe that America was exceptional before its Founding, was exceptional at the time of its Founding, has been exceptional throughout its 250-year history, and remains exceptional to this day, then you have no choice but to resist the entreaties of those who consider its run thus far to have been a pernicious lie. If, like me, you believe that the world benefits enormously from American leadership — and that, if and when we reach the point at which another nation is in the driving seat, we will regret it enormously — then you have no choice but to try to keep it on top. And if, like me, you believe that the American system of government — which represents the only remaining ossification of core Anglo-American ideals in the world — is a work of astonishing genius that must not be tinkered with for temporary political gain, then you have no choice but to defend it to the hilt. I cannot prove this, but I suspect somewhere in my bones that we will get just one shot at America — one — and that if it goes, then so does the classically liberal order that has done wonders for the world.
And in my little, D-lister way, I feel the same. .
This was seen on the outskirts of Brandon, MN.
It was, perhaps, inevitable. And hilarious.
But watching central Minnesota “progressives” react has been fascinating. They want the BCA on the case, tracking down the miscreants!
Civility suddenly matters, I guess.
Last Friday, heading into the closing weekend of the Virginia Gubernatorial contest, a group of ‘white supremacists” showed up “in support” of GOP challenger Glenn Younkin, in full Charlottesville regalia, lest anyone miss the reference. .
There was something a little fishy, though:
After they were thoroughly busted, the “Lincoln Project” – the group of “never-Trump” “republicans” that seems to always work toward Democrat Party interests [1] – admitted they were behind the stunt:
“But wait! Macauliffe and/or his staff weren’t involved!”
Ben Shapiro noted last week that Macauliffe’s campaign has boiled down to “Trump!”, which is odd considering Trump isn’t in the race.
Is it a stupid, desperate stunt, intended to deflect attention away from Macauliffe’s catastrophic performance this past few weeks, along with the fact that he’s tied to the coverup of sexual abuse claims in Loudon County?
Sure.
But it’s worse than that.
This is a less-polished episode from a campaign that’s been going on since 2009 at the very least, from Obama and Biden’s cabinets (ptr) all the way down to failed “fact-checker” Dog Gone, who used to promise in this comment section that there was a wave of white supremacist terror that’d dwarf 9/11 coming up, any day now.
Tne notion that, notwithstanding the fact that actual “white supremacist” groups have been shrinking by roughly an order of magnitude roughly every generation, that white American society is building a militant arm that is just acheing to go out and take over. Every event of recent history, and even distant history, is bent to support that narrative – from the very founding of this nation to the Minneapolis riots to Emmanuel Goldstein…
…schwoops. I skipped narratives, there.
I mean, not like the narrative was ever subtle, but how stupid do you have to be to miss it?
This is just another chapter in the left’s attempt to slander half of our nation.
The fact is was.a flailing and incompetent attempt doesn’t make things better.
[1] Perhaps it should be called the Tom Horner Project?
Two bad guys run into a good guy with a gun, while attempting a workplace shooting.
Well, that and a bunch of innocent bystanders. Can’t forget them.
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