Fugitive Slave Mentality

NYTimes

Before he temporarily stepped down from his position last week as chief of the Sanford, Fla., police department, Bill Lee Jr., gave an explanation of his decision not to arrest George Zimmerman for killing Trayvon Martin. Lee said he had no reason to doubt Zimmerman’s claim of self-defense. Though Lee is no longer in the spotlight, his words linger for at least one compelling reason: his explanation bears an eerie resemblance to cases brought under the Fugitive Slave Law during the Antebellum period. Today, a legal standard that allowed the police chief to take Zimmerman at his word recalls the dark past of slave-owners claiming their property. The writings of Martin Delany, the African American political philosopher and activist, shed light on the uncanny resemblance.
...

On Delany’s account, the effect of the Fugitive Slave Law, at least as Judge McClean interprets it, is to subject all unowned black persons to the domination of all white persons. For by requiring that the self-proclaimed slave catcher be taken at his word, the law leaves unconstrained the ability of any white person to arrest and seize any black person. In effect, it renders all titularly free blacks vulnerable to the power available to all whites in exactly the way that, according to Frederick Douglass, a black slave is vulnerable to the power exercised by his or her white master.
...

In short, it appears that whites (or other non-blacks) may hunt down blacks with immunity from arrest so long as they leave behind no clue that they were not acting to defend themselves; or, to echo Martin Delany, that Florida’s Stand Your Ground law threatens to render some citizens subject to the arbitrary wills of others.

If it seems a stretch, finally, to paint Zimmerman in the image of the slave catchers of yesteryear, recall that he himself invited the comparison when, while stalking the African-American teenager against the advice of a 911 dispatcher, he complained, using an expletive to refer to Trayvon, that they “always get away.”

Zimmerman is one asshole that won't get away. Not this time. If we as a nation and human beings have progressed far enough.

Quote of the Day II

The Rude Pundit in a post about the possible/probable demise of the Affordable Care Act which, by the way, Fat Tony doesn't think he needs to read because his mind has been made up for a long time.

These are days where, in the name of freedom of the individual, the individual is crushed.

Deep down, conservatives are scared to death of freedom as more than a talking point. George Hanson was right those many years ago.

Thanks to delosss.

On Military Suicides

There's a good article in this month's VFW magazine on the Army and Marine Corps trying to get to the bottom of what's behind the rash of military suicides in the last few years so they can be prevented. It's in PDF form so I can't c&p quotes but if you're interested, please go read it. You can enlarge the print.

What I think is a good point - one of the doctors interviewed wants to change the term "PTSD" to "PTS" because he feels the word "disorder" implies weakness, which is shameful to male service personnel and is a factor in not seeking help. PTS is not a weakness. He may be on to something. The services are working to change this perception.

I learned from the article, and am proud of the way my Marine Corps is trying to handle teaching and counselling with more or less a squad-level personal approach as opposed to impersonal Powerpoint presentations in an auditorium.

That's the problem ...

He actually believes his own bullshit:

...

One of the things it has always been easy to admire (yes, admire) about Santorum is that the motherfucker may be crazy as a shit fight in a monkey house, but he believes what he's saying. He's all-in. If you're gonna base your candidacy on your belief that Satan wins if you don't, own that shit. And nothing says nutzoid like Santorum's latest video from his campaign, not a Super PAC, wherein he imagines the color-drained hellscape that America will become if Barack Obama wins a second term. Because apparently you can put anything after the President's last name, it's called, "Obamaville":

...

Yeah, I want his finger on the nuclear button.

You'll get health insurance ...

If we decide you're worthy:

...

“We’ll look at a circumstance where someone is ill and hasn’t been insured so far,” Romney said, “but people who have the chance to be insured — if you are working in the auto business, for instance, the companies carry insurance, they insure their employees, you look at the circumstances that exist — but people who have done their best to get insured are going to be able to be covered.”

...

Now, I don't know what the Mittster knows about the auto industry but having been on the business end of it for 40 years, I can tell you this. If you're not working for a dealership, odds are you ain't getting health insurance through your boss. Most independent shops with a handful of employees can't even afford the most basic insurance plans.

...

“If they are 45 years old and they show up and say, ‘I want insurance because I have heart disease,’ it’s like, ‘Hey guys. We can’t play the game like that. You’ve got to get insurance when you are well and then if you get ill, you are going to be covered,’” Romney said.

...

So, some poor schmuck who's been working for minimum wage for all his life, maybe two or three jobs at a time, who's never been offered health benefits through his employer and who certainly can't afford to get it on his own, is just shit out of luck? Is that right, Mitt? Is that what you're telling 30 million people? That they can just up and die because well ... fuck them, they should have been born into money?

And we thought Dick Cheney didn't have a heart.

Quote of the Day

Fez, in toto:

The man has a large subterranean lair, a car elevator, his own lobbyist, and proclaims the Russkies our No. 1 enemy.

Give Mitt a lap cat and he's a Bond-Villain.

Must be gay ...

Heaven forbid, at a campaign stop where the Frothy Mixture showed off his bowling skills, a young boy used a pink bowling ball:

But when Frothy Santorum stopped to perform in an alley in La Crosse, he suddenly got controlling. According to Reuters reporter Sam Youngman, Santorum said to a young man bowling with him:

You’re not gonna use that pink ball. We’re not gonna let you do that. Not on camera.

Wait, what exactly is wrong with a pink bowling ball? And what if that bowling ball was the one closest in weight for the guy’s playing needs? Is this what we have to look forward to if Frothy Santorum is elected–the government telling us what color balls we can play with? That men can’t stick their fingers into something pink?

That's right, I want a President who acts like a fifth grader. I mean, that's the last time I worried about something pink being a threat to my masculinity. If a grown man is infantile enough to have apprehensions about a color, he's not fit to be President, period.

I wonder if there's an echo?

Gleefully gleeped from my Facebook page after I gleefully gleeped it from someone else's.

Photo of the Republican National Committee searching for presidential candidates.

House of hemp

Cool! Let's fire up the living room! No, not in the living room, silly!

LATimes

Woody Harrelson championed the environmental benefits of hemp. Giorgio Armani and Calvin Klein incorporated it into their collections. Now a company promoting hemp as the eco-building material of the moment said it wants to build California's first hemp house.

Lends a whole new meaning to "brick house". Heh.

My first act as EOTUS will be to get rid of the puritanical, anti-fun, anti-Mexican, pro-prison and -liquor industry, and anti-quated regressive (but profitable) cannabis-related laws and bring this country into the 21st century. If the Secret Service calls me "Duuuude", so be it!

Besides, a new Hempcrete addition to the White House will be a nice place to relax. I'm sure the, er, outgassing from the new construction, particularly from out the window, will be more beneficial than from previous construction materials.

10 things you need not worry about

If it's Wednesday, it must be Morford easing our minds about various things.

There are plenty of things to concern yourself with. There are far too many things that wish to stress you out, slap you asunder and make you feel heavy, sad, lost. These should not be among them. Starting with:

1) Rick Santorum. Isn't he just the skeeviest little disruption, like fingernails on the chalkboard of human delight? Is he not the weirdest, bitchiest little dog whose cute scruffiness belies the fact that, when he opens his mouth, the strangest, most hideous sounds come out?

Good news: Rick is about as much of a threat to the attuned way of life as flea is to a pack of wolves. You only worry about him the way you worry about an errant wart on your elbow, the one you only notice when you lean in to watch "True Blood" on your laptop and you go, "Oh right, I need to get that dry little nub excised, pronto," and then you go back to enjoying all the other good things in life -- which, when compared to Rick Santorum, is pretty much everything.

9) Massive, unstoppable global socioeconomic meltdown. Look, 53 percent of the world claims they're "happy." Which seems utterly impossible, given how they can't all have unlimited access to iPads and iPhones and free porn and bacon-flavored vodka and Leonard Cohen records and Burning Man and Ducati motorcycles and sweaty yoga and artisan whisky and leather, like you do. What is wrong with them? Might they be onto something? What do they know that you don't?

Dey gots nuttin', honey. Eight more plus this jewel:

Instead, spend your energy on figuring out how to adapt, evolve, and fight the zombies.

Enjoy.

DNT*

Just one before I head out. Seems it costs me and the Mrs. a couple grand a year to pay for everybody's healthcare who isn't insured. I think they should carry this if they don't want to be in the system.

Stolen from the Being Liberal FB page.

*Do Not Treat

Thanks ...

Thanks for all the kind words regarding my father-in-law's passing. We buried him on Sunday morning and sat Shiva until yesterday. I should be back in form tomorrow after getting caught back up with the rest of the world. Now the fun stuff starts, namely cleaning out the house so we can put it on the market before summer. Thankfully, with dad-in-law's Alzheimer's, the Mrs. was granted power of attorney over the estate when her mom died 4 years ago and had everything organized so the paperwork end of it will be relatively easy.

Thanks again for your good wishes.

Avram Ishmael "Irv" Brickman
1921 - 2012

Wrecking Ball

While we were out on the coast we picked up The Boss's new CD, "Wrecking Ball". No review, just get it, and pay the extra two bucks for the deluxe version with two bonus tracks which includes the song in the video below. This song played (at pretty high volume for old farts like us) while we were strafing the Salinas Valley at 70 per on the way home yesterday and it was a good backdrop for the sentiment expressed. Sounds like the "E Street Irish Regimental Band" and is probably my favorite number on an album of memorable, and more than a little angry, songs.

The McNicholas, the Posalskis, the Smiths, Zerillis too
The Blacks, the Irish, Italians, the Germans and the Jews
They come across the water a thousand miles from home
With nothing in their bellies but the fire down below

They died building the railroads, they worked to bones and skin
They died in the fields and factories, names scattered in the wind
They died to get here a hundred years ago, they're still dying now
Their hands that built the country we're always trying to keep out

Thanks to TomoSpringsteen.

Cheaper than Weight Watchers...

Gingrich campaign charges $50 for photos

Mrs. G said the only reason to be in a photo with Neutie is to appear slender by comparison. Heh.

Murder made legal will not stand

Toon from Slate.

The Rude Pundit on "The Niggering of Trayvon Martin":

We see this again and again. A black male who captures the imagination of the nation must be degraded by the right. He must be turned into something else, some Other. President Obama can't simply be an educated black man from a lower middle-class background with whom they disagree ideologically. No, he's got to be an enemy, a foreigner, a nigger. It's hard to denigrate someone who might be like you, conservatives. But it's easy to attack a nigger because he's just a nigger. Or a coon.

You're allowed to defend yourself against a REAL threat everywhere, "duty to retreat" laws notwithstanding, but apparently, the "stand your ground" laws in 24 states allow you to START a confrontation and then get scared halfway through the proceedings when it's apparent you're going to lose and shoot the guy you started the confrontation with. If he's black.

Zimmerman knows by now that he fucked up BAD. That's why he's hiding under a rock somewhere and not becoming a big celebrity like Kim Kardashian's ass by bragging on FOXNoise about how he saved the Republic by blowing a kid armed with pogey bait to kingdom come. I've got news for him that he already knows: he's going to go to prison. As he should.

The Sanford cops fucked this deal up enough, probably knowing full well what they were doing, that the racist cretin punk Zimmerman will never be charged with 1st degree murder, but I hope the punk gets 20 to life for 2nd degree murder. We'll see how well he "stands his ground" in a Florida prison full of black men when the NRA and racist cops and pols and gasbags drop that wannabe real man like a hot rock and aren't there to back him up. Street justice - the same "justice" given young Mr. Martin under that stupid right-wing law - is liable to get him first. Fine with me.

Update:

Can We Trust the Cops’ New Account of Trayvon Martin’s Killing?

No. I've read the police reports on my own arrests enough times to know that cops are skilled liars with a criminal justice system that's on their side.

The Sanford cops handled this about like innumerable "white man kills black man" cases in the South and elsewhere, figuring no one would ever notice. Once the rocks were turned over and the sunlight shone on this incident and the story made the big time, they realized how badly they had screwed up and are trying, in vain it will turn out, to save their own asses. Even as professional liars, they're not that skilled. They had best STFU and leave the subsequent skilled professional lying on their behalf to their lawyers, who will get paid even if the Sanford PD is no more after this.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

CHENEY UNDERGOES HEART TRANSPLANT
Gets heart of young Chinese dissident.

U.S. Can Still Win in Afghanistan, Says Top Commander
Iraq and Vietnam, too.

Employers Expect to Hire 9.5% More Graduates This Year Than Last
Do you want fries with that?

??? - News Quiz - ???

Oil prices are rising and are expected to continue rising through the spring, summer and fall because:

A ) supply is tight.

B ) the invisible hand of the free market system is moving in mysterious ways.

C ) UFOs are using alien technology to siphon off our reserves for Mars.

D ) there's a Presidential election coming up, and Wall Street, Big Oil, and the banksters would really love to have a Republican in the White House.

Hint: supply isn’t tight, the hand ain’t invisible, and Mars doesn’t run on oil.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Sorry about my lack of blogging yesterday. The motel wifi was down. This thing turned into a fancy Freecell machine. Heh.

Thanks to kejiaquin.

Headin' out...

We're going out to the coast today so blogging will be etch-a-sketchy for a few days. Sorry, couldn't resist. See yas.

Scarce ...

I'l be scarce around here for the foreseeable future. They took dad-in-law to the hospital this early morning. According to them he suffered a massive stroke during the night. He's been unresponsive since. The doctors say it could be "minutes, hours, or days". The merciful conclusion for a 90-odd year old man with Alzheimer's would be sooner rather than later. See yas when I see yas ...

Update:

Dad-in-law passed at 1840 this evening. He's in a far better place.

The 4 Horsemen of Republican Failure

Gleefully gleeped in toto from our pal montag!