Bill Flynn

He wants us to know that he was speaking at an academic conference and "off the cuff," when he said:

This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. If [Congressional Budget Office] scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. Okay, so it’s written to do that. In terms of risk-rated subsidies, if you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in -– you made explicit that healthy people pay in and sick people get money — it would not have passed… Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter, or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass. And it’s the second-best argument. Look, I wish Mark was right that we could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not.

He wants his old lack of transparency back. He revealed what he liked so much about it. Now, why can't he have it back? Well, Professor Gruber, it just doesn't work that way. Once you've let us see that you mean to deceive us, we won't get fooled again. Oh... unless you're right, and we really are stupid.

From the Telegraph:

Andy Keher’s twin babies [Meghan and Molly] were in their respective cots in their nursery at bedtime, supposedly tucked up asleep.

However, when he went to check on the two little rascals it seems they were far too busy chatting to contemplate sleep.

The two were engaged in deep conversation about something very important, and it appeared sleep was the furthest thing from their minds.

Here's the video.




All together now:  Awwwww!

Peter

From Foreign Policy comes this bright idea to isolate the Ebola outbreak:

First, arapid point-of-care diagnostic that can find Ebola virus in a single droplet ofblood must be developed. A point-of-care test avoids the need to ship samplesto a laboratory and then wait for days to learn the results. In the early daysof the HIV epidemic, firm diagnosis could mean a terrified week for worriedpatients -- today there are home test kits sold in drugstores across Americathat can reveal HIV results in an hour. And, of course, today women can learnwhether they are pregnant almost instantly with kits that they can purchasefrom neighborhood shops. Such Ebola-specific tests are in development now, modeled on diagnosticsalready used to rapidly find everything from abnormal cholesterol levels toblood glucose levels that are dangerous for diabetics to common infections.Some major donors have already provided funding to accelerate the developmentand testing of such devices, and it is well within the realm of realisticpossibilities that reliable exams will be ready for commercial development andapproval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in less than one month's time. 

See, travel restrictions wouldn't be a hundred percent effective, and plus they could be (and I quote) "viewed as discriminatory against people of color and/or Africans," so instead of enacting any travel bans now, we should wait until we spend enough grant money to invent unicorn diagnostic kits. After all, what are a few extra people vomiting blood when other people's feeeelings are at risk?
.

AS THE SERFS OF DISTRICT TWELVE LABOR TO MEET COAL MINING QUOTAS, even the pets of Capital City luxuriate at a "Ritz Carlton" for dogs and cats.

Prices start at $30 for cats and $60 for dogs per night, but luxury suites begin at $105 a night and come with webcams and TVs. (“Animal Planet is always a favorite,” Eng says. “But I’ve got a few addicted to soap operas.”)

There are Pawlates for Pooches classes, limo rides and “cuddle dates,” during which a human spends 20 minutes petting and whispering sweet nothings to a dog or cat. Clients can also spring for personal shopping sprees, allowing their dog or cat to pick out toys from the gift shop.

“People will spend whatever it takes to make their pets happy — and we understand that,” Eng says.

I recently spent six dollars on a Squeaky Fox for the Popehat Dog. It seemed an extravagance, but that's life out here in the Districts.

 

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So the old custom of eating dog is running into problems with the city-dwelling Chinese equivalent of SWPLs. Emulating the culinary habits of admired foreigners does have a long tradition in most places, although I'll note that as much as your average American NPR listener may reflexively leg-hump anything European like a love-starved Cocker Spaniel, you never see them calling for Secretariat and California Chrome on the menu at Maison d'Locavore.

Somewhere there's a remote mountain village where cows are beloved family pets and the people think I'm a monster.
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(Submitted by Anonymiss of Nuking Politics [High Praise!])

[WA Porter Talent Show 2014] (Viewer #4,364)

NORFOLK — The Navy Uniform Review Board announced they would go an unprecedented six months before making sailors buy a new set of uniforms, sources confirmed today. “After careful review, we’ve decided to find other ways to anger our sailors,” Admiral Joseph Davies said after the announcement. “But after six months we will be sure […]

Today is Throwback Thursday, which means I get to just post an old picture and not write anything, but I never do it right because I can’t follow directions properly.

This is me with a sheep:

I think I’m about 6.  It’s not my sheep because we could afford sheep until I was much older, but I’m assuming it was a neighbors since I’m barefoot and obviously walked there.  You can see a small bald spot on my head from when I discovered the awesome noise that scissors make when they cut hair.  I’m wearing a dress that I think my mom sewed out of an old sheet and it was my favorite dress ever.  It was like I was already in bed when I was wearing it.

The shitty thing about bottle-feeding a sheep is that they try to rip the bottle out of your hand because they’re super selfish and want ALL OF THE MILK ALL OF THE TIME, but then if they pull the bottle out of your hands and you drop it they just look at you like it’s your fault even though they were yanking on it like they were furious you even had it.  And now I’m wondering if they do that in real life with their mother’s nipples.  Like, do they grab hold and just yank hard like they’re trying to rip off her boob and run away with it?  If the sheep mom has two babies do they try to rip her in half?  Is this why my neighbors were always letting me feed sheep babies?  Was it because all of the sheep moms were recovering from dangerous boob injuries?  Or do lambs just get that grabby with milk bottles because they assume that you must have ripped off a boobie yourself and they want to hurry up and get away from you as quickly as possible because you’re obviously a dangerous nipple-ripper?

These are the questions that will never be answered.

My husband says they’re questions that should never be asked.

I’m not quite sure which of us is right.

Here's to Nog, the Slightly Bemused.

About 36,000 years ago -- more or less -- ol' Nog was out on a hunting trip, stumbled across an orphaned litter of those four-legged barky things and thought: "Huh. Wonder of the kids would like to play with a couple of these?"

... And things were Never The Same Again.

Hoist a pint to the memory of Nog -- who never knew that dropping a couple of puppies into his pockets for the kids would literally change the world -- and give any doggies in your cave a good belly-scritching.

LawDog

The following is a transcript of outgoing company commander Capt. Vince Miller’s change of command speech: Good morning everyone. I’d normally begin with our unit motto, but after two and

[High Praise! to Freedom Is Just Another Word]

THE PENTAGON — A Sergeant Major was found unconscious in a Washington brothel Sunday morning, after an all-night marathon session of sex with multiple prostitutes, fueled by large amounts of

This is a useful training video. It has applicability to an SHTF or Resistance scenario if you are operating in a small team. It is made with the participation of some genuine SAS veterans, old school style (Mac was the first man into the Iranian Embassy in 1982 and died in 2011 since making this TV Series). There are various tips and lessons you can take out of this. Take some, leave some as they are applicable to your situation.

HERE

Just bear in mind that the equipment and technology is somewhat dated and some current capabilities are either not used or mentioned i.e. night vision equipment, FLIR/TI etc. The basics are however very good and would be amended by factoring in the modern capabilities with the relevant impacts on your operating SOPs.

The basic principles never change, just the specifics and the technology. Basics, Basics, Basics.

Disclaimer; I skipped through the medical parts and did not fully watch them. Current TC3 (Tactical Combat Casualty Care) protocols are a good place to start for your combat lifesaver training.


Live Hard, Die Free.

MV

I’ve written about the 55 MPH speed limit before.  It, like the AMC Gremlin and possible annihilation by Soviet missiles, was an experience.  It made an indelible mark on my psyche.  So much stupidity.  So much misery.  And that’s just the Gremlin!  Frankly you could make an argument in favor of the Gremlin.  It was, after all, better than walking (or death by fire).  Speaking of fire, there’s a point to mutually assured destruction too.  The point being we didn’t do it.  The 55 MPH limit, therefore stands alone.  It was so pointless, so universally ignored, so immensely loathed, so without redeeming qualities… that I can’t fully communicate its inherent pathos.  Ironically, the hate was so complete that there aren’t many references to it.  It’s as if America just wants to forget the whole ugly episode and move on to better things; like going bankrupt on a grand scale.

The lack of references is often the way fate of things that are both everywhere and without logic.  Here’s an example from today; nobody writes operas about TSA gropings.  Why?  Because everyone knows they suck, everyone puts up with it, and nobody but the fully and deliberately obtuse try to pretend that it’s not bullshit.  Who writes about bullshit while you’re swimming in it?

Perhaps someday we’ll get our collective heads out of our asses about the TSA.  If that happens we’ll probably forget about the blue gloved idiot wonders as much as we forgot about Carter’s brilliant innovation in transportation.

Would that mean future people simply wouldn’t be able to comprehend the futility of the TSA.  How do you explain a mall cop feeling up grandma and seizing a kid’s juice box?  How do you explain the 55 MPH speed limit to those who haven’t  experienced it?  How do you explain Leukemia to a hummingbird?

Never Yet Melted warmed my heart when they unearthed an old comic from the era:

Never Yet Melted, like me, recalls 55 MPH as a law that nobody obeyed and compares it to modern fallacies.  Hat tip to them for the image and reference.

Asks TalkLeft.

I hope not because our laws do not allow such conduct. It is not illegal for a private citizen to follow someone. It is illegal to physically assault another person who has not threatened him with the imminent use of force.

I am very disappointed that the President has chosen to endorse those who have turned a case of assault and self-defense into a referendum on race and civil rights. And that he is using it to support those with an agenda of restricting gun rights.

Do you know that if you’re white (or whitish), there is apparently a pretty large segment who thinks it’s plausible you’d just grab a gun and say, “I’m going to go shoot me a black kid!” They don’t think of you as fellow human being with normal motivations they can relate to; they think of you as this inhuman, sociopathic monster. It’s insane.

For some reason, people are still stuck looking for the racist villains of 1960s and thus completely missing all the brand spanking new racist idiocy we have going on today. And since that racist idiocy is being ignored, it’s able to grow. The racism we’re dealing with today isn’t the racism of when the KKK walked around unopposed; it’s the racism of a country where a large majority elected an incompetent black man thinking that would solve everything. It’s a brand new stupidity that we haven’t quite categorized or understand yet.

Anyway, the motivations of Zimmerman were quite easy to understand if you cared to. He lived in a neighborhood with a lot of break ins and the police were ineffective to stop it. So he tried to help out, and when he saw a teenager he didn’t recognize, he confronted the kid and talked to the police. Now, you can question whether Zimmerman’s actions were sensible, but his motivations are very easy to comprehend if you’re interested in treating him like a fellow human being.

But no. A lot of people want to see him as this inhuman monster who just decided to murder a minority. They are bigots, and bigotry keeps them from seeing others as a human being. And these same bigots questioned everything about Zimmerman’s story while being really unconcerned about what led Trayvon to bashing a man’s head into the pavement. Because, again, they’re bigots; they’re not operating with rational minds.

But it’s not like I’m worried about getting discriminated at by these bigots; that’s not the big problem. Bigots hurt themselves more than anyone else. They’re locked into a cycle of hate and scared of the good people around them. They’re dysfunctional. And we are going to continue to have racist problems in this country until we take on not just the bigotry of decades ago but the new and rising bigotry we have today.

The election of Obama didn’t help race relations because the electing of him was racist. Someone like him would not have been elected in a colorblind society. One of these days we’re going to have to confront that.

If you live in Chicago, New York or Los Angeles, you know that it's only a matter of time until an incident between a law enforcement officer, or more rarely a civilian defending himself, and a member of a minority group flares up into citywide grievance theater complete with angry reverends on the steps of City Hall, women with stony faces holding up banners calling for justice and a media driven debate about police tactics and racism.

This sort of thing happens with depressing regularity in cities where even the most liberal residents have to choose between police overreach and being murdered. It never leads to meaningful debate or a resolution, instead it peters out with the best actors in the grievance theater picking up money and influence, the media selling a few more papers or ads for allergy relief on the drive time news and everything going back to the way it was.

The grievance theater is never really about the specific case, the specific shooting, it's about the links between the social problems of the black community, the compromises of civil liberties necessary to keep entire cities from turning into Detroit and the inability of the media to address the sources of crime as anything but the phantoms of white racism. It's about a black leadership that is more interested in posturing as angry activists and shaking loose some money than in healing the problems of their own communities.

Grievance theater has been going national. It's no longer just extraordinary cases like Bernie Goetz's Death Wish moment on the number 2 train that briefly catch hold of the national conversation. The obsessive coverage of the so-called Jena 6 case, an incident of so little internal meaning, signaled that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton would no longer just be able to drive a local controversy, they now had the freedom to drive national controversies any time they wanted to.

Trayvon Martin was their big moment with grievance theater being used as part of a presidential campaign on a national level.

The fortunes of too many black politicians have been tied to white guilt and black rage. The worst sort of black politician channels black rage to score points with black supporters while playing on the guilt of white voters promising to heal the social conditions that bring out that rage and protect them from its ravages. But never before has that game been played out of the White House.

The current occupant of the White House is a veteran of the corrupt urban political machine where there are only two games in town and when the money runs out, this is the one you play. The money is running out and accordingly we have been treated to an episode of grievance theater, with the man in the White House playing the familiar Sharptonesque role of healer and inciter.

What does it say about America that what was once a form of political theater rising out of the grimy urban blocks of failed cities is now a national art form? A local dysfunction has become a national dysfunction, not because every city has become New York and Chicago, but because the people at the center of power know urban politics, community organizing and racial consciousness theories and little else. Like some Third World communist backwater, we are being governed by men and women with no understanding of anything practical, but a thorough grounding in Marxism-Leninism.

Our national government has begun to look like our urban governments. America is starting to look like Chicago and Detroit.

Detroit is dangling at the edge of bankruptcy. Chicago nearly went bankrupt in 1930. New York nearly went bankrupt in 1975. States have bailed out cities and the federal government has bailed out states. When there isn't enough money to keep the dysfunctional political machine built on corruption and subsidies going, there's always some larger entity to foot the bill.

The problem with this current government is that it's operating at the federal level and there is no longer any larger entity to foot the bill. All the shopworn radicalism, the cries about making the rich pay their fair share, are old hat. The rich and the upper middle-class can pay more, but there's no amount of money that will cover a government that spends money as if there is no tomorrow.

That is the lesson that has yet to be learned from the cities whose dysfunctional politics have been transplanted to the national government. Along with the politics has come the grievance mob, the outrage machine, the outpourings of self-righteousness, the class warfare fought by corrupt pols and the rest of the bread and circuses show that has blighted the American city.

Grievance theater isn't about race, it's not about slavery, police brutality or separate lunch counters, it's about power and money. Black politicians are not fundamentally different from white ones. They have more in common with their white colleagues than they do with their own communities. The only difference is that they are playing with the race cards they have been dealt.

The ghetto didn't evolve naturally, it was created through a web of national and local government regulations that played with real estate, social welfare, voting districts and the manufacturing sector to achieve the desired results. We don't have to have ghettos, we have them because at one point they were convenient for a number of political interests and because they were the unintended side-effect of a number of government policies. 

The ghetto farms black communities for votes and more importantly for subsidies. For every dollar that is taken to help minorities, a penny goes to the problem and ninety-nine cents goes to the hucksters, the administrators, the bureaucrats, the wives of influential pols hired on massive salaries to oversee some aspect of the program, the experts who monitor compliance, the affirmative action contractors who charge four times as much to build a school or provide meals, the unions who have the exclusive right to service the program, the slumlords who administer affordable housing and finally the politicians who have the money kicked back to them by all of the above.

When you look closely at where the school property tax money goes, why health care is so expensive and why so much money has to be spent on housing, a big chunk of it goes here. It's the hole in our budget ozone layer and it can never be filled, because it is designed never to be filled. For a sizable number of influential people, both black and white, the black community's social problems are a cash cow. The grievance theater is their way of collecting protection money and making sure that no one pays too much attention to what's really wrong.

The problem isn't limited to the black community. The same phenomenon crosses over different minority communities and some white ones as well, but the race card is still the best card in the deck. It carries too many emotional triggers, too much guilt and too much hope not to use it over and over again. The moral power of the civil rights movement still isn't exhausted as long as hopeful white people smile at the sight of a black man in the White House as if his political power testified to their innocence.

But the power can only be retained through constant indoctrination in the rituals of guilt, through repetitions of the grievance theater which reminds us that national bankruptcy is a small price to pay for peace and that we are a better people and a better nation when we vote for Obama against our own economic interests. Grievance theater takes many forms, but its elemental form is the street production that the Trayvon Martin case has brought us.

The local productions of grievance theater have gone national and we are all compelled to watch them play out. The country has been turned into unwilling participants in a national drama that places a distorted idea of race at the center of our identity for the benefit of the same hucksters and politicians who have destroyed the city and are hard at work destroying the country.

In Lancaster, Pennsylvania yesterday, 5-year-old Jocelyn Rojas’s playtime in her yard was interrupted when she was snatched by a perv. Her mother immediately called police who launched an “Amber Alert”. Teens Temar Boggs and his friend, Chris, heard about the alert and set out to find the little girl and her abductor, according to ABC27 [...]

The NYT frontpages this execrable article by Lizette Alvarez, titled "Zimmerman Case Has Race as a Backdrop, but You Won’t Hear It in Court." She begins with the assumption that the case is supposed to be about race. After all, that's the way it looked in the press when it was first reported.

But in the courtroom where George Zimmerman is on trial for second-degree murder, race lingers awkwardly on the sidelines, scarcely mentioned but impossible to ignore.

What does that look like — race lingering awkwardly and impossible to ignore?

It's a trial! There are rules of evidence, and there's the whole concept of criminal justice, which involves an accusation, based on specific law, about a specific incident and exactly what this particular defendant did.

It's not about larger narratives and how this might fit into a template that we think explains some larger social scheme. To suggest that it should and that something's wrong with the trial if it does not is to get it exactly backwards.

For African-Americans here and across the country, the killing of Mr. Martin, 17, black and unarmed, was resonant with a back story steeped in layers of American history and the abiding conviction that justice serves only some of the people.

Seeing one event steeping in layers of history and within the context of abiding convictions is the very mechanism of prejudice. But the NYT is, apparently, sorry the trial isn't a festival of prejudicial thinking! How to write that up into an article? Call in the sociologist:

“For members of the African-American community, it’s a here-we-go-again moment,” said JeffriAnne Wilder, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of North Florida. “We want to get away from these things, but this did not happen in a vacuum. It happened against the backdrop of all the other things that have happened before.”

It's not awkward to shunt the backdrop of all the other things that have happened before to the sidelines during a trial. Rather, it's precisely what the judge and lawyers and jurors are required to do.

Yet inside a Seminole County courtroom, with the prosecution’s case against Mr. Zimmerman now over, race only occasionally punctuated the proceedings. 

Yet?! No! Race should not be put where it isn't relevant under the rules of evidence. Punctuation like that would violate the norms of a criminal trial. The backdrop of all the other things that have happened before is reason for Americans — especially black Americans — to care about these norms.

For supporters of the Martin family, Mr. Martin’s death was part of a more complex tale of profiling and injustice. 

But trials are not to be transformed into a "more complex tale." They are to be kept focused on the specific incident under consideration. And those who care about the more complex tale ought see the connection between their concern and the law's insistence on that focus.

... The charge is second-degree murder, inflicting death with spite, hatred or ill will. But no one in the courtroom is saying outright that race or racial hatred entered into the shooting.

They're not saying it outright because witnesses have to testify about what they actually heard and saw on this occasion. It's not as if something is being suppressed and hidden. Talking only about the evidence is the way to shed light and bring clarity to the task of deciding what happened.

In the cocoon of the courthouse, even Mr. Martin’s bullet-scarred hooded sweatshirt, positioned for jurors in a clear plastic frame, appeared less a poignant symbol for the thousands who marched in his name than a lamentable but necessary piece of evidence.

For the NYT, the courtroom is a "cocoon," and somehow reality resides in the minds of the throngs who feel the poignancy.

Still, black pastors, sociologists and community leaders said in interviews that they feared that Mr. Martin’s death would be a story of justice denied, an all-too common insult that to them places Trayvon Martin’s name next to those of Rodney King, Amadou Diallo and other black men who were abused, beaten or killed by police officers.

This suggests that Zimmerman should be convicted because of the poignant feelings about all these other people.

“[Rachel Jeantel] was mammyfied,” said Ms. Wilder, the sociology professor, expressing disappointment over the reaction. “She has this riveting testimony, then she became, overnight, the teenage mammy: for not being smart and using these racial slurs and not being the best witness. A lot of people in the African-American community came out against her.”

I guess I need to look up the race-studies technical term "mammyfied." I don't remember Mammy — in "Gone With The Wind," for example — being dumb.* Interesting that it's the sociology professor promoting the use of stereotypes. We should be rising above the stereotypes and treating people as individuals, and trials are designed to do that. This resistance to the workings of the criminal trial are truly deplorable, and it almost seems intended to exacerbate the terribly sad feelings of grievance that come from the larger historical context. Fair trials should be understood as a remedy for all the other things that have happened before. To present the fair trial as additional wounding is truly execrable.
______________________________

* "[T]he mammy was often illiterate though intelligent in her own sense. Among many of the slaves, there could have been a mammy who possessed the abilities to read and write, often taught to her by the children of the family for whom she worked.... [M]ost of her intelligence was a result of past experiences and conflicts. In particular, a mammy of an aristocratic family could be identified by her air of refinement."

Ron Paul points out that no matter who wins in Egypt, Americans will be the losers:

Looking at the banners in the massive Egyptian protests last week, we saw many anti-American slogans. Likewise, the Muslim Brotherhood-led government that was deposed by the military last week was very critical of what it saw as US support for the coup. Why is it that all sides in this Egyptian civil war seem so angry with the United States? Because the United States has at one point or another supported each side, which means also that at some point the US has also opposed each side. It is the constant meddling in Egyptian affairs that has turned Egyptians against us, as we would resent foreign intervention in our own affairs.

For more than 30 years, since the US-brokered Camp David Accord between Israel and Egypt, the US supported Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak. Over that period the US sent more than $60 billion to prop up Mubarak and, importantly, to train and seek control over the Egyptian military. Those who opposed Mubarak’s unelected reign became more and more resentful of the US, which they rightly saw as aiding and abetting a dictator and denying them their political aspirations.

Then the US began providing assistance to groups seeking to overthrow Mubarak, which they did in 2011. The US continued funding the Egyptian military at that time, arguing that US aid was more critical than ever if we are to maintain influence. The US Administration demanded an election in Egypt after Mubarak’s overthrow and an election was held. Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood won a narrow victory. The US supported Morsi but kept funding the Egyptian military.

After a year of Morsi’s rule, Egyptians who did not approve of his government took to the streets to demand his removal from power. The US signaled to the Egyptian military that it would not oppose the removal of Morsi from power, and he was removed on July 3rd. With the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood-led government came the arrest of many politicians and the closure of many media outlets sympathetic to them. Then the US government warned the same Egyptian military that undermined democracy that it needed to restore democracy! Is it any wonder why Egyptians from all walks of life are united in their irritation with the United States?

Despite the Egyptian government being overthrown by a military coup, the Obama Administration will not utter the word “coup” because acknowledging reality would mean an end to US assistance to the Egyptian government and military. That cannot be allowed.... So, successive US administrations over the decades have supported all sides in Egypt, from dictator to demonstrator to military. There is only one side that the US government has never supported: our side. The American side. It has never supported the side of the US taxpayers who resent being forced to fund a foreign dictatorship, a foreign military, and foreign protestors.

And remember, this is the man that Republicans refused to nominate because they claimed that his foreign policy was crazy....

One wonders what it will take for the West to realize that while it is at war with terror, the global jihad is at war with it? Apparently beheadings on the street in London are not enough.  I tend to doubt this sort of thing will convince anyone either:

Islamic militants attacked a boarding school before dawn Saturday, dousing a dormitory in fuel and lighting it ablaze as students slept, survivors said. At least 30 people were killed in the deadliest attack yet on schools in Nigeria's embattled northeast.

Authorities blamed the violence on Boko Haram, a radical group whose name means "Western education is sacrilege." The militants have been behind a series of recent attacks on schools in the region, including one in which gunmen opened fire on children taking exams in a classroom.

Perhaps once dozens of American or British children are murdered in a public school by vibrantly anti-scholastic immigrants, a leader will be found who is willing to openly admit that the problem isn't a few bad apples ruining diversity, but excess diversity.

Considering the wonderful job Andrew Branca has done covering the George Zimmerman trial, I’ve been relegated to something approaching potted plant status here.

It ain’t broke, so I ain’t gonna fix that. But I will weigh in with my own thoughts on the case and the trial.

As you know, I covered the case from the inception, focusing on the racial narratives and media mishandling of “evidence” leaked or revealed in court filings.

I’ve also listened to almost all of the trial, and those parts I missed because of my relocation I’ve accounted for through Andrew’s coverage.

My overall impression of the trial doesn’t really deviate from my overall impression of the pre-trial phase:  This is a case which never should have been brought, and would not have been brought except for racial politics.

Florida prosecutors made an initial decision not to prosecute after the police investigation.  Those prosecutors did what prosecutors should do, take a disinterested and dispassionate view of the evidence in determining whether the state could prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt.

The facts known at that time of the initial decision not to prosecute do not materially differ from the facts known now that the prosecution has rested its case.

What changed along the way was that the Martin family through the Parks and Crump law firm, assisted by agitators like Al Sharpton, launched a campaign to portray the decision not to prosecute in racial terms.  The media was an all-too-willing accomplice in stirring up public protests alleging that this was a racially motivated killing.

NBC published an edited tape purporting to show that Zimmerman considered that Martin was suspicious because black; in reality the full tape showed that Zimmerman identified Martin as black only in response to a later police question.  Allegations were made that Zimmerman used the word “coon” to describe Martin, when even the prosecution now acknowledges that the word used was “punk.”

The “hoodie” was mentioned only when the 911 operator asked Zimmerman to describe Martin’s clothing, yet the “hoodie” has become the image most associated with the case and is used to put a racial context on Zimmerman’s concern.  That did not stop college and law students from holding rallies in which students wore hoodies in solidarity with Martin, as if that were the reason a shot was fired.

The false racial narrative of the case created such public pressure and threats of ongoing protests and potential violence that Special Prosecutor Angela Corey was appointed, and the inevitable decision to file the case was made.  Corey has shown herself to be particularly thin-skinned as to criticism of her decision to prosecute.

The prosecution never let go of its desire to inject racial politics into the case.  Only by virtue of a judicial ruling barring the use of the term “racial profiling” was the prosecution stopped.  Once it became clear that the racial angle could not be worn on its sleeve, the prosecution acted as if it never really intended to go there anyway.

But the prosecution has gone there the best it could, seeking to introduce evidence of prior 911 calls from Zimmerman in which the suspicious person was black.

The prosecution also serially struck whites from the jury, leading the Judge to overrule two of the strikes.

The prosecution also is obsessed with showing that Zimmerman “followed” Martin as part of “profiling” even though that has no legal significance under the law as Zimmerman was permitted to follow whomever he wanted.  The legal question is who commenced the physical altercation and what the status of that physical altercation was at the time of the use of deadly force.

On that point, the evidence in the form of physical injuries and eyewitness testimony points to Trayvon Martin as the aggressor under the law and Zimmerman having a plausible case of self-defense.

The prosecution case has not shaken the prime factual basis for a finding of not guilty — Trayvon Martin was on top of George Zimmerman punching him at the time of the shot.  At best for the prosecution, there is somewhat conflicting eyewitness testimony on this point, which itself raises reasonable doubt.

I kept hoping that the prosecution would come forward with evidence to change my mind and justify the prosecution — perhaps bullet trajectory showing Zimmerman was on top when Martin was shot.  But that evidence never came.

Instead we had a pathetic prosecution attempt (rejected by the Judge) to introduce dubious audio “expert” testimony.  We have been subjected to the spectacle of the prosecution repeatedly attacking the police witnesses called on the prosecution’s case because the police found Zimmerman’s various accounts of the night essentially consistent.

Yet nothing has changed the basic equation:  Regardless of who you think has the better argument at this stage, it’s hard to see how a finding of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt could emerge from a dispassionate view of the evidence.

Yet a finding of guilt remains a possibility given how the prosecution is handling the case and its willingness to spin the facts to convince the jury to convict.

I think Andrew had it right when he described the prosecutors’ argument  on the motion for acquittal.  While that argument was before the Judge only, it is a preview of closing arguments:

Mantei provided the State’s counter to the motion for a directed verdict in a manner that cannot readily be described in language suitable for a family-accessible blog. To say it was histrionic, lacking in factual evidence, and rife with abject fabrications, would be to put the matter too kindly.

The spin spun by the prosecution could result in a finding of guilt, but what does that tell you?

It tells you that this is a prosecution which has to build conjecture upon conjecture, argumentative hyperbole upon hyperbole, just to get to the jury.  It is a prosecution devoid of dispassionate prosecutorial discretion and on a mission to convict rather than to see justice done.

Reasonable people can differ on whether George Zimmerman committed a crime under the law.  Reasonable people cannot differ on whether there is evidence of that crime beyond a reasonable doubt.  That’s why prosecutorial discretion is so important, and that’s why this case is a travesty.

The original prosecutors were not so invested in the case.  Only the false racial narrative put this case in the hands of those who want to win at all costs.

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[Note: A few wording changes and additions were made to this post after initial publication, mostly to add additional source material.]

I have promised myself to not be cynical on patriotic holidays, but pedaling back from Kroger with a bicycle basket brim-lippin' full of BATFE-compliant Class C Consumer Grade fireworks, my otherwise-unoccupied frontal lobes got to lyricizing...

Oh, beautiful for drone-filled skies
A tax code so arcane!
A voting class on their fat ass
From Houston to Fort Wayne!
America! America!
You voted stuff for free
You made your bed, ye overfed
Go watch some more TV!

There. I got that out of my system, and now I can be all festive and happy tomorrow.

TWEET OF THE DAY: Obamacare was so popular it had to be passed in the dead of night and delayed until after two elections.

GREEN DEATH: 14,000 Abandoned Wind Turbines in the USA.

The wanton ignorance and depravity of NPR's coverage of the George Zimmerman trial knows no bounds.

4:34 pm eastern time. The drunken blockhead National Public Radio has assigned to cover the trial announces that because of Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law, George Zimmerman does not need to prove that he did not murder Trayvon Martin. This journalistic excrescence cannot go unaddressed.

First, George Zimmerman is not invoking Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law. He is invoking the ancient and time-honored doctrine of self-defense, that a man confronted by deadly force is entitled to use deadly force in return for the preservation of his life.

Second, and more importantly, the reason George Zimmerman does not need to prove that he did not murder Trayvon Martin is because ALL CIVILIZED JUSTICE SYSTEMS FROM AT LEAST THE TIME OF ROME have placed the burden of proof on the prosecution. In the archaic and outdated "English common law" from which our justice system derives, this was the first principle.

What this wine-soaked oaf could have said, and he'd still have been wrong though not nearly by as much, is that self-defense is an affirmative defense, with the burden on the defendant. In actuality, all a defendant needs to do in Florida is to introduce competent evidence that he was confronted by force sufficient to make a reasonable man fear for his safety. Then the burden shifts to the prosecution to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant did not act in self-defense.

It is no wonder that the average American is so confused by the laws that govern him. We lawyers bear much of the blame, and the courts and the legislatures bear more, but the average American is so ill-served by the press, even the serious press like NPR, that he might as well turn to television entertainment programs for understanding.

NPR could have dug up a retired Soviet judge from the Brezhnev era to cover this trial, and given him an undergraduate Russian major as a translator, and their listeners would be better informed than they are today.

Truly miserable.

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