RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2021/11/19/kyle-rittenhouse-verdict-not-guilty-trial-media-bias/8686176002/

In our age of rage, Rittenhouse had to be convicted to fulfill the narrative. Acquittal has to be evidence of a racist justice system.

The full acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse is now in. The result was hardly a surprise to many of us who watched the trial rather than the media coverage. The jury spent days carefully considering the evidence and could not find a single count that was supported beyond a reasonable doubt.

In rendering its verdict, the jury fulfilled its core function in our legal system. The jury was designed to protect an individual from becoming the grist of a criminal justice system. As the Supreme Court noted in Duncan v. Louisiana (1968): 

“Providing an accused with the right to be tried by a jury of his peers gave him an inestimable safeguard against the corrupt or overzealous prosecutor and against the compliant, biased, or eccentric judge.”

The American jury is designed to stand between the mob and a defendant; between the government and the accused. The thin line of a dozen citizens can prove the most unassailable wall for justice in our system.

The media’s guilty verdict

https://mailchi.mp/3130fb5a8dda/35b-from-us-taxpayers-funded-world-health-organization-58617?e=0c8ccf8e98

In 2019, the California controller rejected our freedom of information request for the state’s line-by-line expenditures saying they couldn’t “locate” any of the 50 million bills they paid the previous year.

So, we sued them. (California is the only state not to produce their state spending subject to our open records request.)

Yesterday, California Controller Betty Yee’s lawyers closed oral argument in the superior court, by effectively re-treading that most implausible argument:

We can’t locate anything.
 
Not. One. Single. Transaction. A checkbook doesn’t exist. 

It’s offensive to taxpayers across America. It’s offensive to the American experiment that’s premised upon individual freedom and liberty. It’s offensive to every citizen in California who deserves to be able to follow the money.

It’s offensive to all of us.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/11/the_democrat_coalition_is_starting_to_implode.html

Politico published a delightful story the other day about the fact that an entity called the College Democrats of America, which is the official Democrat party body on American college and university campuses, is imploding so quickly that the Democrat National Committee is thinking about disassociating itself from that body. The problem is that the left’s much-vaunted “intersectionality” and “diversity” are unsustainable in a party that views the world as a small pie, with every victim group vying for top victim status and the biggest slice.

The article’s title and subtitle spell out the problem:

Allegations of bigotry and calls for impeachment rock College Democrats: The situation is so bad that the DNC is considering disaffiliation with the national organization.

Honestly, when you read something like that, you just can’t stop yourself from smiling. And the beauty of the whole thing is that the facts adduced in the article live up to the promise given in the title:

The College Democrats of America — the Democratic Party’s national organization presiding over 500 chapters on campuses across the country — is in turmoil.

The group’s leaders are publicly firing off accusations of anti-Blackness, Islamaphobia and anti-Semitism at each other. Impeachment proceedings are now in the works against the organization’s new vice president, Nourhan Mesbah, who is Muslim. College Democrats say that screenshots of tweets that their peers sent in adolescence spread rapidly through group texts, which already caused a student running for president of the group to withdraw their candidacy in September. And national advocacy groups for Muslim and Jewish Americans are now weighing in with criticism.

The conflict has gotten so messy that the Democratic National Committee is considering disaffiliating with the national collegiate organization altogether and creating a partnership with the state groups underneath the national umbrella, according to a Democrat familiar with the discussions. The DNC declined to comment.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/11/vaxxocalypse_now.html

My first encounter with vaxxport tyranny took place last week at a Los Angeles gym, where I have been a member for two years.  Abiding by an edict from the governor of California, the reception staff asked to see my vaccination card or a QR code before allowing me access to the facilities.  I told the newly anointed gatekeepers that whether or not to partake of the vaccine was a personal medical decision, as in “my body, my choice.”  I made clear my resentment of  the tyrannical invasion of my privacy — especially for the COVID “virus” that has demonstrated a 99.5+% survival rate for healthy, fit people under 70.

To be able to exercise that day, I later succumbed to the pressure, but not before snidely remarking that no one asks for the results of my TB test or hepatitis titer.  After all, those diseases are more infectious and lethal than COVID.

My gym story does not end there.  It took a pleasant twist, and yet drove home a cautionary tale tinged with irony.  But I’ll save that for the end.  The bigger concern is that, across the world, countries are imposing severe restrictions on the unvaxxed.  The unjabbed are denied access to places they should be rightfully free to use.  In some places, such as Australia and Austria, interstate travel is proscribed, and they are mistreated and shamed for refusing vaccines cleared under dubious standards of emergency use approval (EUA).  Their reasonable suspicion that Big Pharma is orchestrating a con game is scorned and derided.  Any fear of vaccine despotism is ridiculed, and protests are ruthlessly put down, minimized, or ignored.

In America, such interdictions — ridiculous as they are — come from the very top.  Recently, President Joe Biden addressed the American people with a paternalistic admonishment: “We have been patient, but our patience is wearing thin.  And your refusal has cost us all.  So please do the right thing.”  Noam Chomsky, the controversial professor emeritus at MIT, provided the most outlandish example of left-leaning academia’s deep, hate-driven need to punish those who differ with their viewpoint.  He proposed that the unvaccinated be segregated and told to arrange for their own food supply without coming into contact with others.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/11/19/kamalas-collapse/

“It’s hard to miss the specific energy that the White House brings to defend a white man, knowing that Kamala Harris has spent almost a year taking a lot of the hits that the West Wing didn’t want to take themselves.” That was a former aide to Kamala Harris speaking to Edward-Isaac Dovere and Jasmine Wright of CNN. The nearly 5,000-word story, headlined “Exasperation and Dysfunction: Inside Kamala Harris’ Frustrating Start As Vice President,” tapped many anonymous sources, but California Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis was willing to go on the record.

“It is natural that those of us who know [Harris], know how much more helpful she can be than she is currently being asked to be,” Kounalakis said. So the real problem is not Harris but Joe Biden. As Sir Bedivere (Terry Jones) of “Holy Grail” fame might say, who is this who is so wise in the ways of politics? 

Eleni Kounalakis is the daughter of Angelo Tsakopoulos, a real-estate tycoon with a net worth of $600 million. According to Greek USA Reporter, Angelo is a “top political donor to the Clintons as well as the Democratic Party,” whose “donations to former President Bill Clinton were rewarded with a night in the prestigious Lincoln Bedroom.” In 2013 Tsakopoulos, “confirmed that Hillary Clinton will seek the Democratic nomination in the next presidential election.”

 Eleni, a protégé of Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Boxer, raised more than $1 million for Hillary Clinton in 2008, and that money found its reward. On January 7, 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton swore in Kounalakis as U.S. Ambassador to Hungary. Kounalakis served until 2013, and in 2015 authored Madam Ambassador: Three Years of Diplomacy, Dinner Parties and Democracy in Budapest.

 In 2016, Kounalakis did her best to beat back a presidential run by Joe Biden, with strategic assistance from husband Markos Kounalakis, a columnist for McClatchy Newspapers, publishers of the Sacramento Bee.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/philip-carl-salzman/2021/11/19/the-diversity-road-to-mediocrity-n1534777

When you are looking for a scientist, an engineer, a designer, or an artist, if the most brilliant, accomplished, and talented candidate is a white male, reject him! White males are not “diverse,” are “privileged oppressors,” and “overrepresented,” so instead hire a member of a “marginalized. underserved minority,” such as a person of color, a female, an LGBTQ++ individual, a poor or disabled person. Never mind if the person hired is weaker at the job; “social justice” will have been served. The examples are staggering.

The competition for the 2021 Australian National Jazz Awards for piano was carried out via blind auditions using audio recordings, with the names, faces, and voices of the competitors not disclosed. The ten short-list candidates were all men. Female jazz performers went ballistic, denouncing the results as sexist and unfair. They demanded that blind auditions be done away with and that a quota for female winners be implemented. In other words, the female critics demanded that merit be rejected in favor of enforced parity of the sexes.

An even more egregious case is the competition for the prestigious fellow status for the American Geophysical Union. One committee was appointed to nominate candidates in the cryosphere (Earth’s snow and ice) section. Some of the candidates were described by the female member of the committee as “truly, amazingly deserving.” But the nominees, suggested by peers in the Union, were all men. This was too much for the diversicrats on the committee, who felt that “social justice” demanded the nomination of more females, more blacks, and more non-Americans. So the Committee refused to nominate a winner.

The claim made by diversicrats was that there is “implicit bias” against outgroup members, i.e. people who are not white males. It is alleged that members of oppressed victim groups, such as females and people of color, are not recognized for their accomplishments. A study in Scientific Social Studies concluded that prizes in 141 of the world’s top scientific competitions between 2001-2020 went to 2011 men and 262 women. This is a disparity that violates the “equity” argument that all census categories of race, sex, sexuality, etc., must have equal outcomes.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/thoughts-on-the-rittenhouse-not-guilty-verdicts/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=hero&utm_content=related&utm_term=second

I could not be more delighted to be wrong. I was increasingly convinced with each passing hour that the Rittenhouse trial was headed to a hung jury. It was a very straightforward case, with a single question about self-defense to be resolved. The jurors seemed to be taking way too long to resolve it.

The one thing that cut against that was the absence of a deadlock note. Usually, if the jury reaches the point when they realize they are hopelessly divided, they send a note to the judge reporting that situation. That never happened here.

I continue to believe that the jury should have been sequestered — that is obvious, to my mind. With the kind of intense publicity, threats, violence on the courthouse steps, the MSNBC incident, and overall atmosphere in which the case ended, Judge Bruce Schroeder was running a huge risk of jury tampering and intimidation that could have caused a mistrial. The fact that foreseeably disastrous consequences thankfully did not occur should be taken as good fortune, not a template for future trials.

Because the jury took so long to reach its verdicts, there can be no credible claim that the case was not carefully weighed. The jurors gave a weak prosecution case very respectful and diligent attention — more than it deserved, but the jury’s duty nonetheless. Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted because that was the only just verdict — i.e., the only faithful application of the controlling law to the facts proved.

There is always a letdown at the conclusion of a trial, even when the proper result has been reached.

There is a dissonance between what we invest in a trial and what it resolves. We rely on the criminal-justice process for the airing of important aspects and arguments around many public controversies that deeply divide us. The trial and its attendant litigation become our historical record. But in the end, a criminal proceeding settles only a very narrow point: Did the state present proof beyond a reasonable doubt to support the charges it alleged?

In the Rittenhouse trial — in what I continue to believe is a case that should never have been a criminal prosecution — the state did not meet its burden. That narrow finding is critical, and the jury made it.

https://newcriterion.com/issues/2021/12/unprecedented

The theme is “Western civilization at the crossroads.” Far be it from me to doubt that the West is on the precipice of something enormous. But “crossroads” implies a map. Do we have one? Is a piece of paper showing the way forward—whether predictive or hopeful—even possible?

I’ve noticed that a lot of people more or less “on my side,” or who see things basically as I do, are extremely confident that they know what is going to happen next. Their certainty is entirely independent of what they think they know.

Some believe that the end—the collapse of present ruling arrangements—is imminent, if not tomorrow or next week, then soon, within a year or five. Others assert that the present regime is stable and not only can but will last for decades or even centuries. Some insist that the regime will fall of its own incompetence, others that its end will require an external push—which some are certain will come, and others are equally sure will not.

When I have thought about this, I have been in some part inclined to the opinion that present arrangements are unstable and may be approaching their end. Yet in thinking it through further, I am forced to admit that our times are marked by so many unprecedented trends and events that making predictions seems foolhardy.

Both Rome and America were founded by kings—or, in our case, under the auspices of a king.

But before going into those differences, let’s first consider the one historical parallel that all sides of this debate draw on for precedent: the rise, peak, decline, and fall of Rome. At first glance, the two cases seem to have a lot in common. Not only was the United States founded by men educated in the classics who took Roman pseudonyms and named the government’s top legislative body after Rome’s, and not only did those founders revive republicanism after centuries of abeyance following the transformation of the Roman republic into an empire, but our country’s history itself seems to have tracked Rome’s, if not precisely then certainly thematically.

https://rumble.com/vphnor-the-rittenhouse-veredict.html

The 18-year-old defendant Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted by a jury of his peers on all charges on Friday afternoon. Rittenhouse, accused of various counts of murders stemming from his shooting of three people at a protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on August 25, 2020, insisted that he acted in legitimate self defense. A unanimous jury appeared to agree, and Rittenhouse is now a free man.

I will have much more to say on this verdict and the reaction to it, but immediately after the verdict was delivered, I went live on Rumble to provide my views of why, after having watched the entire trial, I believed this verdict was just, and why the media narrative was particularly deceitful and morally repellent. The video is 45-minutes long and can be watched here, at this link.

https://www.newsweek.com/how-panic-spread-early-days-covid-19-opinion-1649809

This essay is adapted from A Plague Upon Our House by Scott Atlas, due out from Bombardier Books December 7.

It was February 2020, and news accounts had been describing increasingly alarming information about a deadly new virus emanating from Wuhan, China. Apart from my general concern about the spread of the infection, I was confused about some of the basic numbers being aired. The overall message coming from the World Health Organization (WHO) seemed to have obvious flaws. The extremely high risk estimates seemed very misleading. Even worst—the reported fatality rates were based only on patients who were sick enough to seek medical care rather than on the undoubtedly much larger population of infected individuals. I was stunned that this basic methodological flaw was being overlooked by almost everyone, while the resulting fatality rate of 3.4 percent was highlighted throughout the media. Every legitimate medical scientist should have called that out. Their silence was puzzling.

In the United States and throughout the world, a naive discussion about statistical models ensued. To an extraordinary and unprecedented extent, these epidemiological models were featured front and center in news coverage, with no perspective on the models’ usefulness. Reminiscent of other legendary frenzies in history, like the tulip bulb mania or the tech stock bubble, hypothetical extreme-risk scenarios went seemingly unchallenged and were given absolute credence.

At the same time, common sense and well-established principles of medicine were being ignored. Every second-year medical student knew that the elderly were almost certainly the most vulnerable group of people, since they were virtually always at highest risk of death and serious consequences from respiratory infections. Yet this was not stressed. To the contrary, the implication of reports and the public faces of official expertise implied that everyone was equally in danger. Even the initial evidence showed that elderly, frail people with preexisting comorbidities—conditions that weakened their natural immunological defenses—were the ones at highest risk of death. This was a feature shared by other respiratory viruses, including seasonal influenza. The one unusual feature of this virus was the fact that children had an extraordinarily low risk. Yet this positive and reassuring news was never emphasized. Instead, with total disregard of the evidence of selective risk consistent with other respiratory viruses, public health officials recommended draconian isolation of everyone.

The architects of the American lockdown strategy were Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx. With Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the CDC, they were the most influential medical members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force.

The task force quickly expanded to include a new chairman, Vice President Mike Pence. The White House also announced that Birx would be the task force’s coordinator. She had worked in the State Department as the U.S. AIDS coordinator under the Obama and Trump administrations—hence she was often addressed by the honorific “ambassador.” The task force ultimately included representation from numerous federal agencies concerned with health, science, national emergencies and logistics, the economy and many other relevant concerns.