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Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!

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Ann Telnaes: Call force feeding what it is.

Thom: The Good, The Bad, and The Very, Very Ugly.

Young Turks: Is Michelle Malkin a Jihadist for Fascism?

ONN: Week in Review.

This Week in the GOP War on the Poor™:

Thom: Wisconsin has discovered something very creepy in their woods.

Red State Update: Podcast episode 34.

Young Turks: Do-nothing GOP Congress admits to being American Taliban.

Thom: Why 30,000 prisoners strike.

Rand Paul’s Friends:

White House White Board: Why Immigration Reform Is Good For Our Economy:

PitTV: School of Social Media Arts.

Young Turks: Sarah Palin threatens to run for Senate.

Mark Fiore: Coup, or not a coup.

Thom: More Good, Bad, and Very, Very Ugly.

This Week in the Republican War on Women™:

White House: West Wing Week.

Mental Floss: 50 Science Misconceptions.

Sam Seder and Cliff Schecter: Republicans are political arsonists.

Liberal Viewer: Impeach Obama for NSA spying?

Zina Saunders: The Republican Party gets its wish:

Virginia Gov. Bob “Ultrasound” McDonnell gets probed:

Kimmel: This Week In Unnecessary Censorship.

Thom: Even more Good, Bad, and Very, Very Ugly.

Ann Telnaes: An American Sickness.

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

Comments

  1. 1

    With McDonnell, I wonder why he should resign or be impeached, he only has a few moths left on the one term he is allowed. Although it seems to be spreading to the guy who is running for his office.

  3. 3

    2)That could be the best reason. I am not sure if the legislature in Richmond would have the votes to remove him from office.

  6. 6

    The National Transportation Safety Board has fired a summer intern it says “acted outside the scope of his authority” when he confirmed “racially offensive fake names” of the Asianic Airlines flight deck crew to a TV station.

    http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_new.....ilots?lite

    NBC News didn’t specify the fake names in their story, which apparently were aired by the TV station, but according to another source they were: “Sum Ting Wong, Ho Lee Fuk, Bang Ding Ow, and We Tu Lo.”

    You’d think even an intern would spot that as a joke (and a sick racist joke at that). I mean, it’s obvious these aren’t real names of real people. What was he thinking? I’ll bet he’s a member of College Republicans, too.

  7. 7

    The jury in the Florida vigilante killer trial, in their second day of deliberations, asked the judge to clarify her instructions on manslaughter. I don’t think they’ll convict the defendant of murder, but he won’t walk either. Manslaughter is usually the appropriate verdict for someone who brings a gun to a fistfight assuming the dead guy participated in the fight. Ordinarily you can’t shoot someone for wrestling with you or punching you. Under no circumstances are you entitled to a self-defense acquittal if you initiated the confrontation, even if the guy you shot threw the first punch. George Zimmerman will serve five years, then spend the rest of his life as an ex-felon who can’t have a gun. I’m pretty sure his gun-totin’ days are over, and I think he knows it, too.

  8. 8

    Some more info on the one-man crew aspect of the Quebec oil train disaster.
    http://mobile.bloomberg.com/ne.....aster.html

    The railroad is union, reptesented by a Quebec local of the United Steel Workers. They have argued against one man crews in the past, and blame the Canadian Federal government for allowing one man crews.

  10. 10

    is this Country (and the World) fucked.

    We’re blessed in the NW.. No shale deposits..

    Just the potential for massive earthquakes that kill anything that moves.. Nothing to fear really..

    Until it finally happens..

  12. 12

    @11 I’m surprised. What was the jury thinking? I doubt Zimmerman will face federal charges, but he’ll be sued by the Martin family. This is an O.J. case all over again.

  13. 13

    12)Good point. I just hope everybody stays calm. I don’t like pre-trial publicity, but this case would not have gone to trial without it. It looked as if the police were going to hide behind the stand your ground.

  14. 14

    @10 but the effects of fracking don’t just impact the immediate surroundings. And besides when the rest if the country runs out of water or clean water to drink they will be competing with the NW for water. We are all doomed.

  15. 15

    @13 CNN has posted an analysis saying this case wasn’t about guilt or innocence, but people’s biases and public opinion splitting along fault lines of race, gun rights, and southern history.

    Conservatives see Zimmerman as pilloried by the liberal media. Blacks see echoes of Emmett Till in the case. To me, it just looks like clever defense lawyers succeeded in creating a reasonable doubt in the minds of pliable jurors, in what really is an open-and-shut case of vigilante violence.

  16. 16

    @14 Fracking is a juggernaut, but economics is a limiting factor. Fracked oil and gas is costly to produce, making it uneconomic in weak market pricing conditions. Many frackers shut in gas wells when prices fell below production costs, which has led to a recent doubling of gas prices, prompting some utilities to switch back to coal.

    Fracking won’t go away, but it’s not a new source of cheap oil and gas; it’s an expensive source of new oil and gas, and the fracking industry is viable only if prices stay high for fossil fuels. A dramatic fall in the cost of solar power would put them out of business.

  17. 17

    Coal remains the world’s cheapest energy source, and a new coal plant goes online somewhere in the world every 3 days. China and India are building them by the thousands. And 3 billion humans still don’t have electricity, so it’s a sure thing that the world is gong to burn more, not less, coal in the future. And that doesn’t even count the expected 2 billion growth in human population in coming decades. In short, electricity consumption will double, and demand from emerging middle classes across the globe will be satisfied with the cheapest available fuel sources.

  18. 18

    We’d better hope that innovative technology makes coal okay, or at least better, for the environment. Or that someone actually comes up with fusion in a jar.

  19. 19

    The NAACP is calling on the Justice Department tonight to bring federal civil rights charges against Zimmerman, but I don’t see that happening. This case isn’t comparable to the “southern justice” of the ’50s and ’60s. This case is really about guns, not racism, or more precisely what civil rights (if any) unarmed people have against trigger-happy paranoiacs.

    On second thought … southern state … white shooter, black victim … white jury … I dunno. Anyone who thinks racism doesn’t still exist in our country, and especially in the south, is living under a rock.

  20. 20

    The real worry is every yahoo in the country may conclude he’s just been given a license to shoot first and ask questions later.

  21. 21

    I fear that jury may have opened the floodgates to more violence in our society. There are more George Zimmermans out there, and now it’s just a matter of time before they’ll be shooting each other, with the rest of us caught in their crossfire.

    Think about it a second. With more people carrying guns, and believing they have a right to use them, if gun-toting strangers meet and one of them pulls a gun what’s the other going to do?

    It’s going to be the Old West all over again.

  24. 24

    @22 First of all, that’s not a dispassionate and objective analysis of the case; it’s impassioned advocacy for Zimmerman’s innocence, using selective facts and theories that bolster his argument.

    I don’t doubt that Martin jumped a guy he thought was hassling him for no good reason. Being in Florida, what probably went through Martin’s mind was, “this white guy’s hassling me because I’m black,” and it pissed him off.

    What’s completely undisputed is that Zimmerman shot a guy who had no weapon except his fists. Zimmerman’s best excuse for this is that Martin might have shot him with his own gun, but that sounds like an argument against people carrying guns.

    Zimmerman shot Martin through the heart at a range of a few inches. At that range you can’t miss a 6-foot-tall person, so Zimmerman clearly intended to kill. Why didn’t he wound him? If he had to shoot Martin, why didn’t he wound him? Why did he take his life? This raises a profound social policy question of whether we, as a society, want to authorize our citizens to kill people for assault and battery. In other words, make it legal to bring a gun to a fistfight. That’s what this jury did.

    All across this nation, not just in Florida, the verdict in this case is planting the idea in many people’s heads that if they provoke a confrontation with a stranger, and he responds by pushing or hitting them, they can pull a gun and kill the guy and not go to prison for it. That is certain to increase the amount of violence in our society.

    Or course, people who are approached and hassled by strangers will also think this way, so when some stranger hassles them for no apparent good reason, they won’t hit the guy, they’ll pull a gun and shoot him figuring they’d better do it to him before he does it to them. That, too, will increase the amount of violence in our society.

    Despite what the NRA says, an armed society isn’t a polite society, it’s a lethal society. With the Zimmerman acquittal, the deterrence of the law is suddenly gone, and many people will now believe they now live in a Wild West society in which there is no rule of law and the fastest draw is everything.

  26. 26

    @ 25

    There is NO legitimate claim of self-defense if that claim comes from the instigator of the altercation. The only person that could legitimately make that claim is dead, and his killer walks free simply because dead men tell no tales.

  27. 27

    26 – Well the State couldn’t present credible enough evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Zimmerman did NOT act in self defense.

    Martin’s family and many others have claimed that it was inexcusable that this kid was dead over a month and nothing was being done.. I agreed with this.

    Well Trayvon Martin and his family got their day in court and the State of Florida couldn’t hold up their end.. In fact there’s VERY STRONG evidence of a completely botched and craven prosecution.

  28. 28

    I wonder if the FOX crowd trying to race-bait Sharpton and Jackson calling for calm, as a call for riots, just an outgrowth of the aftermath of the Oscar Grant riots in Oakland? That was the clincher of the move out of Alameda County. The conviction was on manslaughter, and the judge declined the firearms enhancement. That case was not a wannabe cop, but an actual commissioned police force. The taser used, looked too much like a pistol.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B.....scar_Grant

  29. 29

    While the focus on Texas and North Carolina abortion battle, a vote was happening in Ireland, to go the other way. Party discipline was enforced by the whips, especially for the ruling Fine Gail party. It passed, and the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill, is only a minor change, but the battle was just as fierce. Some of the opponents did not vote no just because the church said so, but because they thought the bill went to far, or not enough. An example, a now former cabinet member, objected to the suicide loophole.
    http://www.irishcentral.com/ne.....l?mob-ua=Y

  30. 30

    @25 Under Washington law, two elements must be present to support justifiable homicide by way of self-defense: First, there must exist an immediate threat of death or grave bodily harm to the defender or another person; and, second, the defender must not have instigated or initiated the confrontation. Zimmerman’s defense case would fail on the second ground even if it passed the first.

    In the Seattle case, you have a mentally ill person coming up to a stranger, telling the stranger he’s going to kill him, and then pummeling him. The police, not a jury, decided not to charge but according to ST the prosecutor is still reviewing the case; also, the victim of the assault shot the assailant in the abdomen, which isn’t necessarily a killing shot, not the heart. In the Seattle case, it appears the assault victim with the gun tried to stop the attack, not kill the attacker. Zimmerman, who shot Martin in the heart at point-blank range, can’t make the same claim.

    As for the broader question of whether you can shoot someone who attacks with bare hands, that would depend on the nature of the attack; if someone simply punches you, that doesn’t justify shooting; if he has his hands around your neck and is trying to strangle you or break your neck, your life is in danger and you can use deadly force to defend yourself.

    Florida law may be different, but I doubt it, I think this is a case of a highly skillful defense team successfully swaying a carefully picked jury. Yes, they do use jury consultants in high-profile criminal cases like this; and, no, you or I would never get on a Zimmerman jury because we’re too good at thinking and nowhere near pliable enough.

    It’s also possible, as Mrs. Rabbit argued, that the jury came back with a “not guilty” verdict because they were fearful for their personal safety if they convicted him. However, I don’t think that’s what happened.

  31. 31

    if he has his hands around your neck and is trying to strangle you or break your neck, your life is in danger and you can use deadly force to defend yourself.

    A witness testified that Martin was on top of Zimmerman and Martin’s arms were working in a downward motion, i.e. the witness didn’t have the clearest view but combined with the photos of Zimmerman’s injuries it was enough to convince the jury that Zimmerman acted in self defense.

    Maybe this evidence wasn’t all that strong but it was apparently stronger than any evidence the prosecution presented to support the accusation that Zimmerman acted with a “depraved mind without regard for human life”..

  34. 34

    “You pass a farm bill in the House that gives billions of dollars, much of it to large corporations that own farms,” Schieffer noted. “It’s almost like welfare for the wealthy.”

    “But you don’t include a dollar for hungry people for food stamps. What kind of message is that?” the CBS host asked…

    But I have talked to people that said the system’s broken, and when we look at what’s going on we’re wasting — wasting billions on a program doesn’t seem to be lifting people out of poverty, but keep them in a state of poverty. That’s not right.

    http://www.rawstory.com/rs/201.....e-wealthy/

    What a freaking tool.. Aid to hungry people is “wasting billions” – yet more subsidies to rich corporations who farm is apparently “sustainable”.

    No wonder this krackpot kaukus is less popular than cockroaches.

  35. 35

    Fed Prosecutors To Review Zimmerman Case

    The Justice Department says it will review the Zimmerman case to determine whether he can be prosecuted under federal civil rights laws.

  36. 36

    Hey, don’t worry, you still can’t fire warning shots in Florida — that is, if you’re black:

    “Saying he had no discretion under state law, a judge sentenced a Jacksonville, Florida, woman to 20 years in prison Friday for firing a warning shot in an effort to scare off her abusive husband.

    “Marissa Alexander unsuccessfully tried to use Florida’s controversial ‘stand your ground’ law to derail the prosecution, but a jury in March convicted her of aggravated assault after just 12 minutes of deliberation.

    “The case, which was prosecuted by the same state attorney who is handling the Trayvon Martin case, has gained the attention of civil rights leaders who say the African-American woman was persecuted because of her race. …

    “The law mandates increased penalties for some felonies, including aggravated assault, in which a gun is carried or used.”

    http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/11/.....sentencing

    Roger Rabbit Commentary: Let’s review. In Florida courts, a (mostly) white guy kills an unarmed black teenager and goes scot free. A black woman fires a warning shot that doesn’t hurt anyone to scare off her abusive husband and gets 20 years. Yep, that looks like a racist legal system to me. Maybe it’s not, but comparing these two cases, Florida justice sure smells like a stinking shitpile.

  37. 37

    Hundreds of black men are killed every month by other black men across this nation. There are no marches in the street calling for justice and change. That’s how I know the people who claim to be outraged over this case are full of it.

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