Archive for the 'Politics' Category

Saddle River Range (via Ken).

The Saddle River Range in Conroe sent a text message to customers about the “Pre-Black Friday clearance sale” which started Saturday and will last through Thanksgiving.

“We would like to clear up some confusion, the post states. “We are celebrating the life that Kyle Rittenhouse now gets to live because he was able to defend himself without being penalized for it. This is a big win for the Second Amendment and cause for celebration. For those of you who think we are celebrating “the death of innocent people”, we apologize that you didn’t take the time to gather and evaluate the actual facts from the case.”

Black Rifle Coffee.

The veteran-founded coffee company had distanced itself from Rittenhouse after the teenager took a post-bail photo wearing a Black Rifle Coffee T-shirt and BlazeTV host Elijah Schaffer posted the photo along with the caption, “Kyle Rittenhouse drinks the best coffee in America.”

Schaffer, whose podcast was sponsored by Black Rifle Coffee, deleted his tweet, and a company spokeswoman said to the Salt Lake Tribune, “We did have a conversation with Schaffer, and he understands that the post was a mistake.”

The company’s CEO Evan Hafer also issued a statement disavowing any relationship with Rittenhouse that said, “We do not sponsor nor do we have a relationship with the 17-year-old facing charges in Kenosha, WI.”

Breitbart News reached out to Black Rifle Coffee on Friday for comment but received no response.

While Black Rifle Coffee remained silent, conservatives torched the company on social media.

Since its disavowal of Rittenhouse, the company has been under fire from the right, which comprises a large portion of its consumer base.

The company has tried to do damage control, only further antagonizing the right.

After its initial statement, Hafer released a video statement saying that the company believed in the Constitution, the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms, and that a person is innocent until provided guilty, but reiterated that the company did not sponsor Rittenhouse.

The company then dug itself into a hole further after Hafer and the company’s Executive Vice President Mat Best granted in-depth interviews to the New York Times in July, where they disparaged the right.

Best compared January 6 Capitol protesters wearing Black Rifle Coffee products to “terrorist organizations that wear American brands when they go behead Americans.”

Black Rifle Coffee chose poorly.

First off, remember that he suborned perjury among at least one witness.  He failed to turn over proper evidence, and he hid the identity of the so-called jump-kick man who attacked Kyle that night.  Now we learn that Gaige Grosskreutz had charges dropped by the same prosecutor.

Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger was well aware of this when he paraded Gaige Grosskreutz, 28, the third man shot on the night of August 25, 2020, as a paragon of selfless virtue. He was a paramedic, the court heard, just there that evening to provide medical aid, as he claimed to have done at countless other protests across the country.

In fact, DailyMail.com has learned, he is a violent career criminal with a laundry list of prior offenses and convictions stretching back more than a decade.

These include domestic abuse, prowling, trespass, two DUIs, felony burglary and two charges of carrying a firearm while intoxicated – one of which took place when he was banned as a felon from carrying a firearm.

He also has a history of showing disdain for the law by lying to, and failing to co-operate with, police.

But the Rittenhouse jury heard none of this.

Because just six days before he took the stand, Grosskreutz was before a judge himself at a hearing at which a pending DUI charge – a second offense that saw him three times over the legal limit – was dismissed on a technicality.

To no one’s surprise, he is also a gun controller.

The issue is whether you can drive with a loaded handgun within reach, even without having a concealed carry permit.

Guy A. Smith, a 52-year-old commercial truck driver from Merrill, believes, as does a gun rights organization, that you can. That’s why he said he made no effort to hide his revolver when inspectors entered his big rig at a weigh station in Pleasant Prairie in June 2016.

Inspectors saw it on the floor of his cab via an overhead camera, then approached Smith and cited him for carrying a concealed weapon, a misdemeanor, and seized his gun.

Smith was represented by John Monroe, a Georgia-based attorney who has successfully defended many gun rights advocates, including those charged with openly carrying guns before Wisconsin’s passage of Act 35, which first allowed for concealed carry with a license.

The organization Wisconsin Carry Inc. was paying for Smith’s defense because it thought it might eliminate some law enforcement confusion about the statutes.

“The charge should never have been filed because in 2011 the Legislature changed the law to allow handguns in cars to be unencased and loaded,” Monroe said in an email Monday. “Carrying a concealed weapon is no longer a crime applicable to handguns in vehicles.

[ … ]

The first time Smith was set for trial, last fall, Kenosha County prosecutors asked for more time after learning Smith planned to argue that a different Wisconsin statute specifically approves of carrying a loaded handgun in a vehicle.

The statute on transport of weapons reads, ” … no person may place, possess, or transport a firearm, bow, or crossbow in or on a vehicle, unless one of the following applies: 1. The firearm is unloaded or is a handgun.”

Monroe had prepared a second defense as well: Wisconsin’s so-called castle doctrine that lets people use a gun — without a permit — to protect themselves in their home, car or business. For a truck driver like Smith, his cab is at times all three.

The assistant district attorney at November’s hearing, Thomas Binger, suggested Smith could easily have gotten a concealed carry permit.

After that hearing, Smith said he didn’t get one because he didn’t need to.

“I’m just a trucker trying to stay alive,” he said.  “I want my gun back, and I don’t want a record, and I’m not paying a fine. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

Doing something wrong or violating the law has nothing to do with it when Thomas Binger is involved.  He’s on a mission.

Via Bill Quick, this from the loathsome David French.

1. The acquittal was proper–Rittenhouse presented evidence that he was chased and attacked at every turn.

2. He's no hero. He never should have been there. The effort on the right to turn him into a model of citizen action is dangerous: https://t.co/mUz8aJHp75

— David French (@DavidAFrench) November 19, 2021

Repeating myself.

In the battle of King’s Mountain, the British forces were essentially all loyalist fighters with the exception of the commander.  This was to be General Cornwallis’ going-forward strategy for winning the campaign in the South.

Upon learning of the coming destruction, the “over-mountain men” left their homes in the area and also neighboring states to travel overnight, many nights, on horseback, to gather and fight the loyalists.

At the time of the battle, crops were being harvested and families couldn’t send the fathers.  Men had to be in the fields in order to prepare for the coming winter.  They did the only thing they could do, and entire families gathered in streets and sang hymns to their young fighters as they sent their sons riding off to war.

They won a decisive victory, destroying Cornwallis’ strategic plan.  What most people do not know about the “over-mountain men” is that the vast majority of them were under the age of 18.  You too can learn this if you study history, or perhaps come to the King’s Mountain military park and tour it, read the placards, and study the area.

But rather than hold older men accountable for their actions, like politicians and police, pundits are satisfied with turning on Kyle for being young and deciding to make a stand.

Kyle Rittenhouse did what French was too foppish and cowardly to do.

Enough said.  I don’t want to hear any more about that.

A deer.  With a hollow point.

There’s a difference between a pointed soft point and a hollow point.  But don’t leave it to soy boy to understand that.

Actually, I’m sure he did.  He was just trying to scare the women on the jury.  Maybe some “men” too.  Never mind that he had FMJ loaded into his mags.

This trial is such a clown show that the judge had to LITERALLY CORRECT the prosecutor on his understanding of ammunition types pic.twitter.com/cELfUElgrR

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) November 10, 2021

Somehow, in spite of the circus show this turned out to be, in spite of juror #54 potentially going rogue, justice has been served and Kyle Rittenhouse has been found not guilty on all counts.

The charges should never have been filed to begin with.

Fill in with comments as you see fit.

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds observes, “This is a big deal not only because of the merits of the individual case, which manifestly shouldn’t have been brought, but because all the effort around it by the left was aimed at establishing the principle that their thugs could riot in the streets, but that normals don’t dare resist. This is a huge setback for that effort.”

UPDATE #2: Now it’s time to hold the prosecution accountable for their malfeasance.  They knew who one of Kyle’s attackers was (the so-called jump-kick man), and didn’t tell the defense.  Then there is the little issue of the compressed video.  Send them up before the BAR, and then put them in jail.

UPDATE #3: Zero Hedge.

“Prosecutors were visibly crestfallen after the verdict was read.”

UPDATE #4:

Seen in the comments at Legal Insurrection.

Pleasantly surprised. Good that the National Guard is standing by. They will be needed.

Well, not unless they’re under arming orders.  I’ve brought this up many, many times before, especially when the NG was deployed to the border.  They’re deployed without weapons, or without ammunition, and with no ROE/RUF.  Someone has to sign arming orders for them even to be able to effect self defense.

Arming orders.  Remember those two words.  Find the orders, send them to me and I’ll post them.  If they aren’t under arming orders, they’re just window dressing.

Seen at Ann’s place.

📝READ: One of first actions taken by new Oklahoma National Guard Adjutant Gen. Thomas Mancino: rescind the #COVID19 vaccine requirement for Guardsmen.

According to memo, however, if they are federally mobilized, members will have to be vaccinated. @OKCFOX pic.twitter.com/cHozZx7zqE

— Dan Snyder (@DanSnyderFOX25) November 12, 2021

Uh oh.  This is weak tea, and very disappointing.  It might be time to find a new general to lead the guard.

If they are to become militia, they should keep their Class 3 weaponry, embrace the new life, work to ensure liberty and freedom, and refuse to be “federally mobilized.”

Have some balls, fellows.

Here is some of the high resolution video they didn’t turn over to the defense.  I don’t know if there’s more than this.  It clearly shows that Kyle’s life was in danger.  He would have been entirely within his rights to have shot earlier than he did.

Here’s the HD drone footage of Kyle Rittenhouse, with visual guides to show what happened during the Joseph Rosenbaum shooting. pic.twitter.com/aSCUbmrfNg

— Ian Miles Cheong @ stillgray.substack.com (@stillgray) November 17, 2021

But frankly, it doesn’t show any more than the previous analysis we’ve done, which was also conclusive.  Here is a much more comprehensive video.

I watched the proceedings today for about 30 minutes of the stupidest stuff I’ve ever seen.  The prosecution explained that they tried to airdrop the video to the defense, but since her phone was an Android rather than an iPhone, it must have compressed the data.  The clerk for the defense tried to explain that she had nothing to do with airdropping anything, but she received a video in an email (an email!) and that’s what she submitted into evidence.  It consumes about a third of the memory that the uncompressed video does.

She tried to explain file size, and help calling it millibyte rather than Megabyte, and then talked about metadata in terms only of file date and time stamp.  The prosecution responded, she responded, the judge was confused by it all and said that there will be a recompense over this but not now.

I was flabbergasted.  I was just floored.  The entire gaggle of them are either ignorant or pretending.  What on earth is so hard about this?  Even for the technically challenged?  A man’s life is at stake.

You don’t treat evidence that way.  You ensure a chain of custody, from person to person, with a signature from everyone who touched it, witnessed by a Notary.  If it’s electronic evidence, it must be put on a drive with nothing else, date and time stamp published on the drive, and a checksum generated on the file and put on different media so that the user can verify authenticity of the files.  If every letter and number of the checksum doesn’t agree in the right order, the evidence is tainted and must be rejected without further consideration.

What … is … so … hard … about … this?

Just to pile on (because it’s so easy), you can add these to your list of reasons to despise men like this.

They claim that Kyle lost his right of self defense by bringing a firearm.  So the actual thing to be used as a means of self defense obviates in perpetuity the exercise of the action for which the implement was carried to begin with.

What. The. Actual. Fuck

Binger: “You lose the right to self-defense when you’re the one who brought the gun.” pic.twitter.com/2pu7lehnBx

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) November 15, 2021

Next, they will claim (and have), that Kyle shouldn’t have been there.  Here is a reddit/Firearms thread where that is discussed.  They’re right.

Same argument as “she was asking for it”

Yep. “You shouldn’t have been at that bar if you didn’t want to get raped”, “you shouldntve (sic) been out after dark if you didn’t want to be raped”.

“She shouldn’t have gone out dressed like that” is directly comparable

Yes, this kind of thinking can only lead to, ‘why did you live in that neighborhood, it’s clearly a bad part of town, just look at these crime rates’ and ‘why are you wearing that, you’re just asking for it’.

The prosecution is a bunch of bigots.

GP.

Researchers at the University of California were awarded a $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation developing technology that infuses experimental mRNA Covid-19 vaccines into spinach, lettuce and other edible plants.

The researchers are tasked with demonstrating the genetically modified plants can produce enough mRNA to replace Covid jabs and infuse the plants with the right dosage required to eat to replace vaccines.

[ … ]

Genetically modifying edible plants with experimental vaccines for public consumption is the culmination of a dream, the associate professor explained.

Allow me to translate.  “God didn’t do a good enough job when he gave us edible plants.  We can do better, and thus we’ve become God.”

What a putz.

Well, buy seeds, I guess.