Saturday: Hili dialogue

November 20, 2021 • 6:30 am

Welcome to Caturday, November 20,  2021: National Peanut Butter Fudge Day, a respectable comestible, but not as good as chocolate or maple fudge. It’s also National Absurdity Day, Universal Children’s Day, and Transgender Day of Remembrance. 

There’s a new Google Doodle today (click on screenshot), celebrating the life and work of Edmund Dédé, born on this day in 1827 (d. 1901). Dédé was a black, free-born Creole who became a well known musician and conductor, composing art songs and longer compositions in the classical style. I’ve put his photo below the Doodle:

 

Dédé:

A treat from my friend Simon, who’s visiting friends and relatives in the UK. I told him to have a pint of Landlord for me and send the photo, and here it is! Twice named CAMRA’s Beer of the Year, and my favorite session tipple.  Just the thing to wash down a Ploughman’s.

Wine of the Day: This 2016 V. D. Vajra Barolo Alma cost me $30 a while back (cheap for a decent Barolo!), and I bought it because it was recommended by my wine store and was also highly rated. I drank a third of a bottle with a batch of turkey chili I made, which will last for three days. Verdict: an excellent wine, not heavy or gutsy but racy and elegant. I detected fresh road tar, cherries, and eucalyptus in the nose, but I’m not good at detecting and analogizing odors. I wish I could drink more Barolo, but the really good stuff is still beyond out of my ever-expanding price range.

News of the Day:

*The big news is of course the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse on all charges connected with killing of two men and wounding another in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

After about 26 hours of deliberation, a jury appeared to accept Mr. Rittenhouse’s explanation that he had acted reasonably to defend himself in an unruly and turbulent scene in August 2020, days after a white police officer shot Jacob Blake, a Black resident, during a summer of unrest following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.

I thought the long deliberations meant they finally settled on a guilty verdict (the case was complicated) or a hung jury. I was wrong. It’s curious that the liberal press all but convicted him in their columns, with the narrative being that he was a white supremacist to Kenosha to kill white people supporting the protests of Black Lives Matter. Much of what the press passed on was wrong, and I find it interesting that Substack writers like Bari Weiss and Jesse Singal (as well as legal scholars; see below) did a much better job of analyzing the case than the MSM.

So far there appears to be no violence or rioting in Kenosha, which is great, but I’ve already heard many people, both black and white, say that justice was not done—people who weren’t on the jury. For a good take on the results, see Jesse Singal’s Persuasion article, “The Rittenhouse Verdict Should Not Have Been a Surprise.” (h/t cesar)

To these observers, Rittenhouse’s acquittal on all charges confirms what they already knew about our justice system: It is a grotesque machine that will forever forgive white supremacist violence. From their perspective, Rittenhouse clearly killed two people illegally, and it’s baffling that he got away with it.

But for those who have watched this case closely since that terrible night in Kenosha, this isn’t a surprising result. The large amount of video footage available since almost the very start of this controversy revealed that Rittenhouse always had at least a decent self-defense claim, and potentially quite a strong one. The fact that so many people were so confused about the facts of this case—not only on the self-defense question but on basic matters like whether the people he shot were black or white, whether he took his rifle “across state lines,” and whether he had preexisting family or social ties to Kenosha—suggests that, despite all the understandable talk of the right’s “fake news” problem, partisan news coverage and punditry on the left is becoming a serious problem in its own right.

Finally, an explanation from the NYT: “Legal scholars weren’t surprised by the verdict. Here’s why.” (Note the patronizing and annoying “here’s why”, which started in HuffPost and is infesting all newspapers for reasons unknown.) Apparently once a defendant claims self-defense, the prosecution has a high bar to prove otherwise, as you are allowed to use deadly force if you believe your life is in danger or you may incur great bodily harm.” Rittenhouse had a credible assertion that he felt that way, and prosecutors couldn’t prove otherwise.

*And the House of Representatives passed the “Build Back Better” social safety-net bill, but it was a squeaker: Democrats 220 yeas, I nay (Jared Golden, Maine), and Republicans with 212 nays, and 1 not voting. The tab is a bit over two trillion dollars.  It now goes to the Senate, where Democrats need every single one of their Senators to vote “aye”, including Manchin and Sinema, and then a tie-breaking “yes” vote of Kamala Harris. The cost of the bill will undoubtedly go down during “reconciliation”—if the bill passes at all. One renegade Democrat who breaks ranks can sink the bill.

*If you’re “fully vaccinated” but haven’t had a booster, you’re really not “fully” vaccinated in terms of protection. Yesterday the CDC recommended booster shots for Covid-19 for all adults, so long as those boosters are from Pfizer or Moderna. The FDA previously approved them as safe. It remains to be seen whether stores, governments, and so on will require a booster as indicative of being “fully vaccinated.”

*This is a shock: late yesterday accused wire fraudster Elizabeth Holmes took the stand in her own defense in the Theranos deception case. I think this is a serious mistake given the strong evidence presented in the three-month case of the prosecution. Does she think that her vaunted charisma will change the minds of jurors?:

That combination of compelling testimony and documentary evidence may apparently proved effective at convincing Holmes to tell her side of the story in court. Listening will be 10 men and four women on the jury that will ultimately decide her fate in the criminal trial. If convicted, Holmes — now 37 and now a mother to a recently born son — could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison.

My prediction? A verdict of “guilty” accompanied by jail time.

*Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 769,310, an increase of 1,134 deaths over yesterday’s figure. The reported world death toll is now 5,158,436, an increase of about 8,100 over yesterday’s total.

Stuff that happened on November 20 includes:

It was grim:

The men suffered severe dehydration, starvation, and exposure on the open ocean, and the survivors eventually resorted to eating the bodies of the crewmen who had died. When that proved insufficient, members of the crew drew lots to determine whom they would sacrifice so that the others could live. [They were shot.]A total of seven crew members were cannibalized before the last of the eight survivors were rescued, more than three months after the sinking of the Essex. First mate Owen Chase and cabin boy Thomas Nickerson later wrote accounts of the ordeal. The tragedy attracted international attention, and inspired Herman Melville to write his famous 1851 novel Moby-Dick.

A sketch of the encounter:

A whale striking Essex on November 20, 1820 (sketched by Thomas Nickerson)

Here’s a 12-minute vieo of the trial also showing films made by the Allies documenting Nazi atrocities:

Here’s the paper showing some of the photos, and one in color, all taken by an Army photographer Ronald Haeberle.

A color photo taken with Haeberle’s personal camera:

  • 1985 – Microsoft Windows 1.0, the first graphical personal computer operating environment developed by Microsoft, is released.
  • 1990 – Andrei Chikatilo, one of the Soviet Union‘s most prolific serial killers, is arrested; he eventually confesses to 56 killings.

Here’s Chikatiolo, a true sociopath. He was hanged:

Notables born on this day include:

von Frisch was most famous for his studies of bees, including the “waggle dance” they do to tell hivemates where the flowers are. Here he is in Lederhosen, traditional Bavarian dress, studying his bees:

  • 1889 – Edwin Hubble, American astronomer and cosmologist (d. 1953)
  • 1908 – Alistair Cooke, British-American journalist and author (d. 2004)
  • 1923 – Nadine Gordimer, South African novelist, short story writer, and activist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2014)

She was also an anti-apartheid activist. I must confess that I’ve never read anything by Gordimer, though I must. Here’s her photo:

  • 1925 – Robert F. Kennedy, US Navy officer, lawyer, and politician, 64th United States Attorney General (d. 1968)
  • 1939 – Dick Smothers, American actor and comedian
  • 1941 – Dr. John, American singer and songwriter (d. 2019)
  • 1942 – Joe Biden, American politician, 46th President of the United States

Uncle Joe is 79 today!

Rotolo was the best friend of a friend of mine, but I never met her. She is most famous for being Bob Dylan’s girlfriend who appeared on the cover of this album:

  • 1946 – Duane Allman, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1971)

A 12-minute video of the life of Duane Allman:

  • 1956 – Bo Derek, American actress and producer

Those who joined the Choir Invisible on November 20 include:

Goldbach posed one of the greatest unsolved mathematical problems of all: Goldbach’s conjecture, stating and every even integer greater than two can be expressed as the sum of two prime numbers.

The great writer at age 20:

  • 1973 – Allan Sherman, American actor, comedian, and producer (b. 1924)

“Seltzer Boy” is my favorite Allen Sherman song. It’s hilarious, and a Jewish parody of Odetta’s “Water Boy” (see it here).

  • 1976 – Trofim Lysenko, Ukrainian-Russian biologist and agronomist (b. 1898)
  • 2006 – Robert Altman, American director, producer, and screenwriter (b. 1925)
  • 2018 – Aaron Klug, Lithuanian-English chemist and biophysicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1926)
  • 2020 – Jan Morris, Welsh historian, author and travel writer (b. 1926)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s kvetching about her food. As the Queen, she occasionally gets cream.

Hili: Milk is good but cream is better.
A: I don’t have cream.
Hili: Shame on you.
In Polish:
Hili: Mleko jest dobre, ale śmietanka jest lepsza.
Ja: Nie mam śmietanki.
Hili: Wstydź się.

From Athayde:

From Bruce:

From Nicole:

An assistant principal in a Chicago elementary school sent out a tweet I find a bit disturbing:

A tweet from Barry. Can you tell the moons of Jupiter from the stars?

A great cat tweet unearthed by Ginger K.

From the Auschwitz Memorial: A roll call of the murdered:

 

Tweets from Matthew. The first one discusses (and mocks) a Sci-Am op-ed piece we’ve discussed before:

The Q-Anon Shaman would have missed the boat!

The unluckiest person ever, but without him we wouldn’t have had Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Stan Getz, John Coltrane, Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Stan Getz, etc. etc. Do read the bit below.

A good one, though it won’t amuse the Woke:

71 thoughts on “Saturday: Hili dialogue”

  1. The case in Wisconsin is evidence of how far down our legal system has fallen and our society with it. A perversion of the second amendment has caused abandonment of part of the first.

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  2. Biden should not have said that he was “angry” at the verdict, it’s the sort of thing that only appeals to his supporters but could well perturb a neutral.

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    2. It would have been a nice time for him to say something like, “My opinion is no more important than that of any other American citizen on this matter. We are a nation with rule of law and trial by jury, and with a presumption of innocence for the accused, and this is the way this case has been determined by those whose duty it was to determine it. Those who feel justice was not done should work to change the relevant laws, but should be very careful about presuming to know better than the jury in a given case or to ‘convict’ someone based solely on accounts in the media.”

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    3. Even worse is the American Humanist Association’s statement, which says that they are “outraged” and asserts that Rittenhouse was a “white supremacist” who went to “seek out violence”, and that the verdict demonstrates “the hold white supremacy has”. (Though they have a fair point when they deplore the laxity of gun-control laws.)

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      1. The AHA are of course the woke-captured organisation that rescinded an award to Dawkins purely because he had suggested a discussion about why one can (supposedly) change sex but not change race.

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    5. I noticed that. He’s in fellow company. A sitting Prime Minister said, “We can do better!” after a jury acquittal a few years back. I believe this is why Crowns have been appealing jury acquittals, rare as they are, in similar circumstances. Yes, Hitchens’s Razor applies.

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  3. Biden’s Build Back Better bill has many great things in it that will help lower income people and fight climate change. However, as a liberal, there is one provision in it that I find repulsive and hypocritical. It deals with the allowed amount of itemized deduction on federal income tax forms for state and local taxes paid (SALT). One of the few good things that Trump did was to limit this amount to $10,000. Under this bill, should it become law, the amount will be raised to $80,000 as a sop to the rich.

    In its explanation of the bill’s various provisions, the NYT explains:
    ————————-
    The bill raises the cap on how much residents, particularly in high-tax states like New York, California and New Jersey, can deduct in state and local taxes. Undoing the so-called SALT cap, which is currently set to expire after 2025, has been a key priority for lawmakers from those states since it was imposed as part of the 2017 Republican tax law.

    The cap would rise from its current $10,000 limit to $80,000, and be extended through 2030 before reducing it back to $10,000 in 2031. The cap would then expire permanently in 2032. But it is likely to be changed in the Senate, where two key players, Senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Bob Menendez of New Jersey, are discussing a separate agreement to eliminate the cap for families making up to at least $550,000 and impose it permanently for higher-income homeowners.

    https://www.nytimes.com/article/explaining-social-policy-climate-bill.html
    ———————-

    The Democrats made a big mistake in adding this provision, although perhaps politically it was necessary to get the votes of a few Democratic House members representing rich districts. I hope the provision is stripped totally out of the Senate version of the bill or at least this benefit is greatly reduced should it be passed. The House would then be compelled to accept the Senate version or have no bill passed into law at all.

    In my view, itemized deductions should be eliminated from the federal tax code. Due to provisions in the Trump tax bill, now current law, the number of people that can take advantage of itemized deductions was vastly reduced. Itemized deductions now benefit primarily the rich. Many more people than previously benefit most from taking the standard deduction. The termination of the itemized deduction is unlikely to happen, but we can dream about a fairer tax system.

    Reply

    1. The salt deductions are far from a “sop to the rich”. For many of us middle class folks living in states like New Jersey, the deduction has saved us a great deal of hard earned cash. In many states, property taxes can be as high as $4,000 per year. In states such as New Jersey, property taxes can run $3-4,000 per quarter even for a small (1,500 square foot) home. Yes, it may help the wealthy, but it primarily helps middle and lower middle class homeowners to maintain a reasonable lifestyle.

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      1. Why should other middle and lower middle class people, such as renters, subsidize your choice to live in New Jersey? I do not know about you in particular, but I wonder how many people clamoring for the subsidy complain about government programs that directly help the poor. To put it another way, the former SALT deduction (pre-$10,000 limit) was just another form of government welfare disguised as a tax break. It should not be restored.

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        1. You may not be aware of this, but there are 8 states that contribute more to the federal government than they take in. New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, California, and Massachusetts make the largest contribution. Virtually every other state in the country goes to Washington for a handout, or as you might say welfare. Why should New Jersey, and the other states with negative balances, support the rest of the country? I would suggest that the other 42 states should start carrying their own weight, maybe by raising taxes on their citizens. Then my exorbitant tax burden might be reduced.

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          1. The tax subsidies that benefit residents of states other than the ones you mention is a longstanding issue of concern, but it is a diversion from the topic at hand. The American Enterprise Institute issued a study in September as to the effects of what would happen if the cap were listed. The study assumes that there would be no cap. The House bill sets an $80,000 cap. However, I don’t think the AEI’s study would basically change its findings if it took into account the $80,000 cap. One of its main findings is that “At the national level, nearly 90 percent of the tax reduction would benefit taxpayers with adjusted gross incomes of $200,000 or more, and almost half of the tax reduction would go to taxpayers with incomes above $1 million.” So, the lifting of the cap is a sop to the rich, including those living in New Jersey. A better solution is to raise the standard deduction and eliminate itemized deductions. In that way all people could share in the largesse, not just homeowners. Our concern should not be the aggregate effect on states, but on individuals.

            https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/repealing-the-salt-cap-state-by-state-impact/

      2. This is how I understood it as well; SALT helped a lot more lower/middle class families than it did the rich. But I also agree with the cap for families making more than $550.000.

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      3. But maybe the deductibility allows the municipality to keep property taxes artificially high, knowing that residents are paying them with before-(income) tax dollars. (“Hey, they’re a write-off…”). If the town council had to deal with residents who were paying them with their after-tax dollars, as ours do, there would be more push toward value for money, especially from the property-tax-paying set.

        Speaking as a foreigner, allowing a taxpayer to deduct one type of tax from that due under another seems to create opportunities to game the tax system. It also makes it hard to determine just what the tax consequences of a certain economic choice will be. As you indicate from your examples the amounts are not small even if only municipal taxes are considered. At the state level, a state ought not to able to use the federal treasury to subsidize its own tax-and-spend proclivities. I recognize there are equalization issues between states, as there are between our provinces, but deductibility of state taxes against federal just makes it hard to figure out who is carrying whom. Maybe that’s the goal. It seems that way with us.

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  4. Outside of the USA it is obvious to anyone that if you bring a semi automatic rifle to a protest or violent situation and two unarmed people end up dead at your feet, you’re not acting in self defense. You are inviting violence. A legal system that defends that, a jury of his peers who accept it and a right wing political/media culture that celebrates it do not bode well for the future of democracy in America. The left is not prepared to fight fascism if they keep both sideing this.

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      1. That’s the point. If you deliberately go armed into a situation that you know to be violent and two people end up dead because of your actions, you aren’t going to get away with pleading self defence anywhere in the civilised world.

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    3. You are forgetting the fact that many of our various state and local governments have established laws that, while they may not mention vigilantism by name, they support it in principle. If anyone’s to blame, it’s “the people”. The legal system mostly worked just fine.

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  5. I think you overlook one important aspect of the itemized deduction. This is the only place I am aware of where a person can deduct charitable gifts. Without it you get no deduction and it kills charities.

    Perhaps they should have limited deduction of state taxes to 20 or 25 thousand. To set it all the way up to 80 thousand is crazy. That is too rich.

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    2. I have come across an article in Politico that discusses what an awful mess the Democrats have gotten themselves into with this tax break for the rich. They will pay a steep political price if that provision is retained.

      By the way, a tax break for charitable contributions need not be part of itemized deductions. It can be given through a direct subtraction (up to a certain amount) from gross income or a certain percentage of the contribution can be directly subtracted from the final tax owed amount. I believe something like this was done for a few years in the past.

      https://www.politico.com/news/2021/11/18/democrats-agonize-tax-cuts-rich-522859

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      2. Look, I understand the tax deduction of state taxes well enough and do not need more articles that say the same. Yes they screwed up by going much to0 high. I do not see that your suggestion on charity is anything but a suggestion – in other words it is not law.

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  6. I ceased to be surprised at any gun-related atrocities in the United States when the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre didn’t result in any changes in gun ownership laws.

    It’s easy enough to tell the moons of Jupiter from the background stars, by the way. You just have to remember that the four largest moons orbit pretty much in the equatorial plane of the planet, so you draw a line through the centre of the planet, parallel to the bands, and extend it either side of the disk. Anything that’s not on or very near that line is a star. The dot just to the right of Jupiter is most likely a moon, and so is the left-most dot.

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    1. “I ceased to be surprised at any gun-related atrocities in the United States when the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre didn’t result in any changes in gun ownership laws.”

      It’s not so easy to change gun ownership laws when you have the right to gun ownership specifically protected by the national Constitution. And public opinion is nowhere even close to the size of the majorities needed to change that Constitution.

      What amazes me is the opposition (in my personal experience, the opposition is only from the Left) against hardening our schools against gun attacks, especially considering this hardening is standard operating procedure for nearly all government buildings and large corporations.

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      1. Viewed from outside the United States, the idea that the answer to school shootings is to turn schools into fortifications is grotesque beyond words. I suspect that many Americans would agree.

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      2. Gingerbaker,

        Looking for confirmation but Isn’t it nothing to do with the ‘size of any majority’ vis-a-vis the entire nation but a formal process involving a majority of states (perhaps a super-majority) or am I being too literal in interpreting your words?

        If every person in the five most populous states and 40% of the remaining voters favored a revised 2nd amendment it might amount to a majority of citizens but wouldn’t it mean bugger-all in terms of states?

        I can’t help feeling that, in too many states, too many USA citizens think cowboy movies should be how a modern state functions

        Ross

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  9. The Noah cartoon reminded me of another one. After a couple of days, Noah returns to the ark, finding two snakes. “I thought I told you to go forth and multiply.” “We can’t; we’re adders.”

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  10. 1805 – Beethoven’s only opera, Fidelio, premieres in Vienna.

    “Fidelio” is also the “outside” password for admittance to the grounds of the aristocrats’ costume orgy in Mr. Kubrick’s final film Eyes Wide Shut. [Spoiler alert: there is no “inside” password for admittance to the mansion.]

    Reply

      1. I was disappointed, too, when I first saw it in its original release at the theater. Then, I saw an interview about a year later with Marty Scorsese in which he named it one of the top five films of the 1990s. It so happened that the film was then in rotation on one of the premium cable channels (HBO, Cinemax, one of those), so I decided to give it another chance and watched it a few more times. It gets better with every viewing.

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        1. Do the dubbed-in black-robed figures that obscure all the good parts fade into transparency with repeated viewing?

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  11. 1820 – An 80-ton sperm whale attacks and sinks the Essex (a whaling ship from Nantucket, Massachusetts) 2,000 miles from the western coast of South America. (Herman Melville‘s 1851 novel Moby-Dick is in part inspired by this story.)

    There’s an excellent non-fiction book about the Essex‘s final voyage, and the travails endured by her sinking’s survivors, In the Heart of the Sea.

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    2. I’ll take your word for it. Not sure I could watch it again. Zero chemistry between Tom and Nicole. Nicole is a wonderful actor who’s had some really interesting parts, not all highlighting her gorgeous looks.

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  12. I suppose Biden will change his mandate affecting contractors and government workers to include n-number of booster shots. I suspect companies will wait until he does it before adopting that standard for their workers. My question is, at what rate of boosters do just admit that the vaccine isn’t really that effective?

    In other news the FDA asks for 55 years to release data on Pfizer’s COVID vaccine. That’s not suspicious at all. It’s not clear whether they have to cross state lines to do it.

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  13. Nadine Gordimer is well worth reading. Just finished My Son’s Story, but Burger’s Daughter is my favorite of the five or so I’ve read.

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  14. I take issue with the suggestion that the MSM portrayed Rittenhouse as a white supremacist who ought to go to jail. Some did perhaps but the MSM channels I listened to (mostly CNN, NBC, and the LA Times) often had legal analysts telling the audience that Rittenhouse would most likely walk. They may have gotten some facts wrong early in the case. I did remember them saying that Rittenhouse brought the gun across state lines but they later corrected that. I’m sure some of the people they interviewed hinted at a white supremacist angle but that doesn’t surprise me, nor does it reflect on the MSM unless they present it as fact.

    Most of the Left’s hope that Rittenhouse would go to jail was not based on careful legal analysis of the case but the understanding that the murders wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t gone to Kenosha. Sure, they probably attributed motives to him that he didn’t actually have. They were making a moral point using Rittenhouse’s case as an example demonstrating a real problem: too many guns and people that own them willing to take the “law” into their own hands. That the details of the Rittenhouse case didn’t fit the general case precisely wasn’t all that important to them. They were hoping for jail time in order to send a message to other would-be Rittenhouses that will now be given a boost by his acquittal. They knew that Rittenhouse’s actual case would be dealt with by the judge and jury assigned to it.

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      1. You’re right but isn’t that how it usually is? People make assumptions. Interviewers talk to people who claim to have facts but are later proven to be wrong or have lied. They also present opinions of various actors involved that have their own axes to grind. The standard we should hold MSM to is not to require that they always get it right or that they stand behind every opinion they present but that they always try to get it right and, when they don’t, to fix it.

        Something similar happened with COVID. When it first arrived on the scene, various players (CDC, Fauci, WHO, etc.) presented what they knew and gave advice based on that knowledge. That it turned out not to be 100% should not be held against them. Sure, they should learn from the experience. They should also explain where they went wrong. But, unless they can be shown to have actually lied, they should be lauded for their work.

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        1. Call me old-fashioned, but isn’t the prime task of the MSM to report factual news? If the facts are not clear then they should be cautious.

          They shouldn’t confuse facts with tribally motivated opinion and then excuse themselves by saying that it was an early take made when the truth was not clear.

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          1. Do you really think they should just throw in a cautious “that might be wrong” every 30 seconds? What evidence do you have that they aren’t cautious? There is also the competitive need to get news out as soon as possible. If a news outlet takes a day to research each point, while other outlets bring it out in hours, they’ll soon be out of business. They do the best they can. If one outlet does better, then watch that one.

            The viewer also has to accept some responsibility to not assume that every “fact” will hold up over time. News organizations have to give you the buzz as soon as it happens but you can choose to wait to see if it holds up before believing it or acting on it.

          2. What evidence do you have that they aren’t cautious?

            Well, there’s the fact that MSM commentators labelled Rittenhouse a “domestic terrorist” who was actively seeking to kill people, when it turns out that the jury has unanimously accepted that he fired only in self-defence.

            That’s quite a difference, and could well result in Rittenhouse now getting huge damages in libel actions. And it’s part of a pattern of the MSM getting things badly wrong (the Covington kids being another example).

            They do the best they can.

            No they don’t, they don’t do their best to be accurate, they do their best to boost audience figures, and that means generating clickbait. And that means “what take will most outrage our core audience?”, because outrage is clickbait.

            So you have the left-wing media trying to ensure that their left-wing viewers are in a state of continual outrage, and the right-wing media trying to ensure that their right-wing viewers are in a state of outrage. And it’s tearing America apart.

            We are in a situation where one cannot trust any of the major media sources in the US, because they are putting out tribal clickbait, rather than attempting to be factually accurate.

          3. The MSM often get into trouble, at least as you see it, because they report on the controversy. They love presenting the opinions of witnesses, people in charge, etc. whose motives are often not pure. I think the kind of news reporting that would make you happier is where they only interview responsible, sane people and, even then, filter out those with an agenda.

            That might make me happier too but I think that’s not what most people want. What you call “clickbait” is what the MSM would call giving people what they want. My advice to discerning, intelligent consumers of news like yourself is to take that into account and do the best you can to get the truth.

            I don’t believe what the MSM is doing is deliberately malicious, as you seem to think, but simply giving the customers what they demand. As many have pointed out, the news used to be much better before it became a profit center for the networks. Capitalism is responsible for a lot of good in the world but it does produce distortions that must be recognized and, perhaps, regulated by government. Of course, educating the people would be good but that’s not going to happen in my lifetime.

    2. Yes, I did not see it on CNN or especially MSNBC. I realize that station is too radical for many here but I learn much more from MSNBC at night during the week than any other place. Do not have my head stuck on the video screen 12 hours a day like most do here. The only thing you get from the nightly news on any of the regular channels is brief headlines. Mostly a half hour of buff.

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      1. I watch the NBC Nightly News (or whatever they call it) and it is a lot of fluff. Last night they ended with what appeared to be a minute-long commercial for the singer Adele. I told my wife, “What the hell did we just watch? How was that news?”

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    3. There were no murders committed. It’s interesting that you place the onus on Rittenhouse not to be present and not to provide the means to protect himself and none on the violent mentally disturbed child rapists, domestic abusers and extremist anarchists who tried to kill him for the sin of putting out the fires they started. It wasn’t Kyle’s job to protect them from their own criminal urges. Make no mistake, the first attack by Rosenbaum at least was part of a planned move to corner and ambush KR and from that point on he was left in no doubt by the shouts from the crowd chasing him that he would die if he lost control of his gun. The media have downplayed the true viciousness of the violence in Kenosha. The “mostly peaceful” violence involved burning down of apartments despite pleas that there were children inside, severe life-threatening beatings and wanton destruction.

      The trial was not the least bit complicated. It was an open and shut case of self defence and the reason it was brought was entirely political. There is a reason nobody else in the DA’s office would touch it and shunted it to Laurel and Hardy.

      The real lesson that should be learned is about the cynicism and recklessness of the political left. They’ve been screaming out an utterly distorted view of race relations and the prevalence of “white supremacy” in America and deliberately inflaming violence by repeating lies about every police shooting that hits the news. Obama indulged in it and his heirs have ramped it up significantly. America is now being reprogrammed and gaslit by a media and government feeding it inversions of reality and they no longer even hide their intention to use the law or violence to crush opposition.

      The MSNBC apologetics is staggering. The usual pundits are still repeating the same lies and demented, hate-filled ideologues like Joy Reid are in overdrive.

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        1. Nice deliberately missed point. Very droll.

          People on the left need to start thinking very carefully about the route they are taking. Political violence and the excusing of it is now the favoured modus operandi and god forbid that anyone should even look sideways at the perpetrators because that’s provocation. America is now going down a very dark path and it’s about time that people pulled their heads out of their asses. How many instances of violence and destruction do the media and Democrat politicians have to inflame with lies before people wake up to the hollowness of the cries of “racist” and “white supremacist” used in justification as the lives of inner city minorities are destroyed.

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  15. By the way, Rittenhouse will be interviewed by Fox News’ Tucker Carlson on Monday night. It will be interesting to see if Carlson tries to turn Rittenhouse into some kind of hero and if Rittenhouse accepts that role. Not interesting enough to make me watch Fox News, however.

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    1. Fox won’t just try to make Rittenhouse some kind of a hero. They’ll present him with the medal of honor, and he, I suspect, will accept it without much modesty.

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  16. So, I’ve been thinking a lot about the verdict. I think the jury made a sound decision based on the law and what they were presented with. I think the prosecution did less than a stellar job and maybe even was a bit shady. I don’t think the remedy for his actions is to go to jail. He is a child after all.
    –
    I just finished listening to a really interesting podcast about violence in Portland and the death of one anti-fascist protester. I keep thinking about the parallels. Both were young men who inserted themselves into violent protests. Both, rightly or wrongly, believed they were doing something for their community. One of them is dead and one of them is not. (Fault line: Dying for a Fight).
    –
    I think the true blame here lies with the parents and the police. This child would not have ended up killing anyone if either his parents or the police had taken the steps to protect him. It’s messed up. The judge would have had the power to mandate some kind of counseling for him, because I think he will need it.

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    1. There is no equivalence. Kyle Rittenhouse was not there to use violence to impose his political beliefs on anyone, he was there to provide first aid to anyone requesting it and to try to protect a business as he was asked to by a friend. Don’t believe the lies from the car dealership that they never asked for protection because video has now surfaced showing KR and his fellows standing at the dealership in the presence of the owners. Rosenbaum and friends were criminals there to cause as much mayhem as they could and perhaps people should stop to think of the consequences if they had managed to push the burning dumpster into the petrol station.

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  17. Why hasn’t the fact that he’s a minor been waived about? My only source of info regarding this issue is from this site. I don’t watch tv.

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  18. In the spring of 2013, the U.S. Senate debated gun control legislation. A strict bill introduced by Senator Feinstein of CA was defeated by a vote of 60 against to 40 for. A bipartisan compromise measure, which would have increased background checks, was offered by Senators Manchin and Toomey. It too was defeated: 54 votes for it and 46 against. The U.S. Senate is the only deliberative body on earth in which 54 is a minority defeated by a majority of 46. No wonder, perhaps, that on another part of the US political spectrum, the rule that 2 + 2 = 4 is subject to ideological criticism.

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