The Most Perfect Crime

A 'must read' by The Rude Pundit.

But the verdict in the case of George Zimmerman, accused of murdering Trayvon Martin, proves that everyone from Agatha Christie to James Patterson has been thinking small. The perfect crime is not just the one you get away with. The perfect crime is the one for which you are acquitted in a court of law. In fact, the most perfect crime of all is the one where, no matter what your true intent, the law supports and sanctions your right to murder in cold blood.
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So he'll just say this: On that night last February, when he got out of his car, George Zimmerman became the judge and jury of Trayvon Martin, accused of the crime of being a black male teenager walking in a neighborhood. Zimmerman then became Martin's executioner because, like so many oppressed people before him, Martin resisted Zimmerman's judgment. So Zimmerman did what scared people in power do all the time. He used overwhelming force to stop Martin's resistance. It is the same kind of force that has killed people and movements in America and all over the world.

George Zimmerman wanted Trayvon Martin to submit to his power, to be what Zimmerman had adjudicated him to be. Trayvon Martin refused. Trayvon Martin resisted. And that's why Trayvon Martin, like so many resisters before him, had to be killed.

There was no way George Zimmerman was going to be found guilty because his guilt would have made Trayvon Martin innocent and said that the law was wrong. Even worse, it would have made Trayvon Martin, the black male teenager, right in his resistance, and the state of Florida, if not the entire nation, would not allow that to happen.

I have nothing to add.

Anonymous no more

Excellent article in the LATimes. A few of The Other get a little recognition as human beings at last. California's wealth was built largely on the backs of people like these.

In 1948, a plane chartered by U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service fell from the sky near Coalinga, Calif. Nameless for decades, the Mexican citizens who died are finally receiving recognition.
...

Over farms and ranches on the edge of the Diablo Range, 20 miles west of Coalinga, the World War II surplus DC-3 trailed black smoke. An engine exploded. A wing broke off, floating left and right. More than 100 witnesses watched bodies and luggage thrown from the fireball. There were no survivors.

News accounts named only the pilot, first officer, stewardess — who was also the pilot's wife — and an immigration officer. The others were listed simply as "deportees."

Guthrie read about the crash and wrote a poem protesting the anonymity of the workers. Schoolteacher Martin Hoffman later set the words to music.

The song lived on. A string of artists including Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash and Bruce Springsteen sang the chorus of imagined names: Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita, Adios mis amigos Jesus y Maria.

Through the efforts of two men, they're getting a small monument.

In 2009, Hernandez was at the Fresno County Library scrolling through old newspapers, researching a book about Bea Franco, the inspiration behind the Mexican girlfriend character in Jack Kerouac's "On the Road." He'd immersed himself in the era's music, especially that of Guthrie, who sang about migrant workers and Central Valley fields.

It was a life Hernandez, 39, knew well. The poet and novelist now lived in Colorado, but grew up in farm towns across the Central Valley. He traced his love of storytelling to long road trips with his family picking crops. His mother, Lydia, would read books aloud; his father, Felix, would jump in and say "That's not what really happened" and spin his own endings.

A 1948 headline about a fireball plunging to earth caught his eye. He thought of Guthrie's song about the deportees. For the first time, Hernandez realized that Guthrie wasn't referring to the city of Los Gatos, near San Jose, but to the juniper-scented hills and canyons above the oil pumps in western Fresno County.

"Who were the people on that plane?" he wondered. "Did anyone ever tell their loved ones why they didn't come home?"

The monument will be unveiled on Labor Day.

"They're answering Woody's prayer," Nora Guthrie said. "If you keep the questions — the ideas — alive, then someday, someone will come along to answer. My father sang, 'All they will call you will be deportees.' This is a back-atch'ya. A resounding 'No, we all have names.' "

The stone will be etched with 32 falling leaves, four of them bearing the initials of the Americans who died on the flight. In the center will be 28 names:

Miguel Negrete Álvarez. Tomás Aviña de Gracia. Francisco Llamas Durán. Santiago García Elizondo. Rosalio Padilla Estrada. Tomás Padilla Márquez. Bernabé López Garcia. Salvador Sandoval Hernández. Severo Medina Lára. Elías Trujillo Macias. José Rodriguez Macias. Luis López Medina. Manuel Calderón Merino. Luis Cuevas Miranda. Martin Razo Navarro. Ignacio Pérez Navarro. Román Ochoa Ochoa. Ramón Paredes Gonzalez. Guadalupe Ramírez Lára. Apolonio Ramírez Placencia. Alberto Carlos Raygoza. Guadalupe Hernández Rodríguez. Maria Santana Rodríguez. Juan Valenzuela Ruiz. Wenceslao Flores Ruiz. José Valdívia Sánchez. Jesús Meza Santos. Baldomero Marcas Torres.

Quote of the Day

The Rude Pundit

Yes, Republicans continue to be motherfucking, obstructionist, traitor dickheads. And we could easily add "delusional" in there, too.

Never an argument from me on that point.

Goin' Ridin'

Off today to ride the Hard Rock Trial. See yas.

Headline of the Day

Redhook Announces Hemp Beer to Celebrate Cannabis Legalization in Washington

Sounds like a great idea! I hope it doesn't taste like rope...

A tip o' the Brain to David Aquarius.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

An old favorite.

Published on Jul 12, 2013
Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell along with the Road Dogs perform a live version of "Pancho and Lefty" from a show in July 2013.

Thanks to TakenAlsoAlso, UK.

Lends a whole new meaning to "motorcycle mama"...

I've got things to do today, one of which is a little repair to my...motorcycle, so I'll just leave yas wid dis...

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The GOP Is Terrified Obamacare Could Be a Success

The Daily Beast

Why are Republicans so scared of Obamacare? Because, says Jon Favreau, they’re frightened that it might actually work.

But here’s my question: if Republicans are so confident Obamacare will end badly, why not just shut up about it? It’s not like they have the votes to repeal the law—a math problem they still haven’t solved after 37 different tries. Their appeal to the Supreme Court ended in defeat at the hands of a conservative chief justice. And now the bulk of the plan will begin to take effect in just a few months.

At this point, why not sit back and wait for this crazy experiment to self-destruct? Why not let President Obama and the Democrats reckon with the millions of angry Americans who will undoubtedly hate their new insurance or their new insurance protections?

I sure hate mine. California implemented the laws that were to take effect nationwide in October early, as of July 1. Our premium went from $800 per month to $288 for our Medicare supplement for the same coverage. We have to pay additional for prescription coverage which we did not before, but that's $48 per month. So, from $800 to $326 per month. I hate that. Wouldn't you? Heh.

But today, the antigovernment zealots who have taken over the once-proud Republican Party feel they must burn our village to save it. They are actively trying to prevent Americans who have been too poor or sick to get health insurance from knowing that all three branches of their democratically elected government have passed and upheld a law that will finally allow them to see a doctor without going broke.
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But there is now plenty of evidence that if we as a nation want Obamacare to work, it will work; that if we can extract ourselves from the trench warfare that preceded the passage of the law, we can all start focusing on fixing and improving it over the next year. Out in America, I know there are not only plenty of Democrats and Independents who feel this way, but Republicans as well. What these Americans need to do now is speak up and be heard, because the antics of their frightened representatives in Washington are endangering the health care of millions and embarrassing their party in the process.

Basically, the Repugs have gone on for so long that government doesn't work that they will do whatever it takes to make sure it doesn't work lest their entire ideology be shown as the scam that deep down even they know it is.

Please proceed, Repugs...

Good post at HuffPo on everything the Repug pols are doing wrong, which is everything if they wish to continue as a party of other than scared old southern white people and the Dead End Quarter. Nothing new, but tamped into a nice neat brick.

On issue after issue, the GOP has veered far from the mainstream of the American electorate. Worse, they are swimming upstream against a tide of changing demographics -- and an electorate with ever-increasing numbers of young voters from the "millennial generation" that polls show is the most progressive generation in half a century.

So far, at least, efforts to "rebrand" the GOP have simply collapsed. And even though most Americans are primarily concerned with jobs and the future of the economy, the GOP leadership in Congress insists on focusing on cultural issues that pander to a narrow segment of the electorate -- and are downright unpopular.

They seem to be practicing the politics of "subtraction" -- which is not a good plan if you want to achieve an electoral majority.

A quick look at the issue landscape tells the tale.

Jobs, jobs, jobs, by which I mean abortion. - Rachel Maddow.

With every one of these major issues, the GOP is on the politically losing side.

The Alamo comes to mind. Heh.

We'll see what Boehner, Cantor and the rest of the GOP leadership do in the months ahead. But right now they are riding fast in to a political box canyon from which there is very little opportunity for escape.

Reminds me of one definition of "military intelligence" (an oxymoron, I know) - "I see many hoofprints going in. I see none coming out."

Hopefully this will turn into a box canyon full of skeletons. And soon. This country has work to do to fix the damage they have done over the past thirty-three years.

15 things Apple won’t let you see

If it's Wednesday it must be Morford kvetching about Apple's app-approval funhouse of hoops. Eh.

It is, in turns, a fascinating and infuriating process, getting an innocuous little iOS app approved by Apple’s overburdened team of App Store approvers, people who, since no one knows for sure, we can hereby imagine as an exhausted squad of overworked groaners perpetually terrified of getting the company sued and/or earning it any sort of negative media attention by signing off on an app that’s even slightly salacious, pornographic, offensive to Mormons, racist, sexist, repulsively violent (hi, NRA!), or invented by lonely Harvard frat boys drunk on Coors Light and pimpled sighs (Hi, Zuck!)
...

Long story short: I’m not really all that proud to say Apple rejected my little app six times in a row, and each time I’d strip out more of MOAN’s content, trying to find the line, trying to figure out just how Puritanical Apple really is, and how seemingly random, and how silly. The entire time, we never had a clear idea. All we had were a stack of brief email rejections, telling us we’d violated the guidelines, but not exactly sure how.
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By the time we finally launched the app in March, my team was exhausted. After all, it’s just a shrewd little vanity app. From a freelance columnist/yoga teacher, just trying to stay afloat in a heartless media world. This ain’t exactly Instagram. I’m not the NYT.
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(P.S.S. to Apple: I still love you madly, fruit people. I understand your plight; I know even you understand the anti-smut rules are sort of ridiculous. And it’s true that Android’s app store is total chaos. You’re keeping iOS at least passably functional, clean and healthy. But come now. Readers need a live link to the best articles on oral sex ever written [see the app]. And you made me point them to Google instead! Tragic, is what it is).

If you say so. Yawn.

Quote of the Day

From a piece on the Repugs' "rebranding" "effort" at Maddowblog.

Meet the new Republican Party; it looks an awful lot like the old Republican Party. Rebranding isn't a failure; it's a punch-line to an unfortunate joke.

Not sure if "joke" is the right word. Jokes are supposed to be funny. The Repugs are anything but funny. On the other hand, I will laugh my ass off at their funeral.

Related QotD El Segundo:

Also from Maddow, with video.

“Should the Republican Party be just the party of aggrieved white people, even to the extent that it may stray occasionally into Confederate territory in order to do that?” Maddow wondered. “Do you want that in order to maximize every possible white vote you can get out of an electorate that is less and less white all the time?”

The other option was to become a multi-racial party. But Maddow observed that the conservative media appeared to be unanimous in its opinion: Stick with white voters.

I happily say, with a shit-eatin' grin, ¡Adios, Repuglicanos! Heh.

The American Taliban

A tip o' the Brain to Seniors for a Democratic Society.

Zip. Zilch. Bupkis.

Nothing's poppin' my cork today. Sorry. Maybe that'll change...

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

From the crawl at the top:

Too soon for "Dancing With The Stars", says Morsi

Heh.

U.S. Adds 195,000 Jobs in June
You want fries with that?

Washington State Farmers Feeding Pot to Pigs
And then smoking the bacon.

Like, oinnnnk, duuuude...

Tape of Rupert Murdoch Admitting Bribing Officials Goes Viral
Now he's frantically trying to contact each of the estimated 15 million who've listened to it and buy their silence.

I hope he gets to go to a very nice prison.

Paris Distributes Manual: How to Not Be Rude to Tourists
City said to be littered with torn, discarded copies.

Oakland A's Want to Move to San Jose
From no there there to somewhere no one knows the way to.

Beating-head-on-keyboard Headline of the Day

Fox News host: Not using God to sell beer means ‘the terrorists have won’

The stupid, it burns...

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Uploaded on Aug 22, 2011
"In My Hour of Darkness" written and performed by Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris with harmony vocal by Linda Ronstadt is from Grievous Angel, Gram Parsons' second solo album, recorded in 1973 and released the following year on the Reprise label. The personnel on the album included Glen D. Hardin on piano, James Burton on lead guitar, and Bernie Leadon on dobro guitar. The album is available on CD combined with his first album GP.

Thanks to catman916.

Are conservatives winning the battle but losing the war?

Let's hope. The Week, links at site.

Their short-term political victories may bring them long-term electoral pain.

It had better, or else the American people are truly brain-dead and deserve whatever they get and thanks a great steaming pile if we do.

Recall that when conservatives did not have a clear court majority, they railed against '"judicial activism." Now that they have the capacity to impose their will, many of the same conservatives defend extreme acts of judicial activism by claiming they involve legitimate interpretations of the true meaning of the Constitution. It is an inconsistency that tells us all we need to know. This is not an argument about what the Constitution says. It is a battle for power. And, despite scattered liberal triumphs, it is a battle that conservatives are winning. [Washington Post]

...

Immediately after the Supreme Court's Voting Rights Act ruling, six southern states moved with breathtaking speed to put in place measures effectively aimed at suppressing voters who favor Democrats. But it's a double-edged sword. As The New York Times' Ross Douthat notes, the ruling is a "gift from the Roberts court for Democrats" because it will help them mobilize the party base, provide a rallying point, and be a potent fundraising tool.

So a lengthy battle over voting rules and voting rights seems almost precision-designed to help the Obama-era Democratic majority endure once President Obama has left the Oval Office... Liberal demagogy notwithstanding, voter ID laws aren't a way for Republicans to turn the clock back and make sure that it's always 1965. But they are a good way for Republicans to ensure that African-Americans keep voting like it's always 2008. [New York Times]

...

The stage seems set for the party's nearly-complete takeover by the hard-right. Conservative court victories will likely continue dismantling key pieces of New Deal-New Frontier-Great Society programs — and traditional political assumptions. Republicans will cement their hold on conservative, southern, and mostly white districts with continued hyper-partisan rhetoric and gerrymandering that pushes the party further right — and will continue to hold the House.

.
I'm hoping against hope that folks will get the message that these throwback obstructionist congressmen are what we get if we blow off mid-term elections as happened in 2010. Gerrymandering or not, the only reason these clowns get in is because the Tea Party knows they can prevail if they show up. That has got to change or we're permanently screwed.

Headline of the Day

Edward Snowden Joins Goldman Sachs, Receives Full Pardon

Figures.

Conservatives don’t dance

If it's Wednesday it must be Morford on all the new gay equality.

Is it like this across conservative America, too? Are there any smart, shimmering towns full of hardcore Republicans that frequently erupt in spontaneous outpourings of joy and wild bliss after some major sociocultural upheaval lands in its favor?

Here is my guess: Probably not.

Hey, I might be wrong. Do you know if tens of thousands of ecstatic citizens overflow the wine bars and buy up all the champagne in Utah and South Carolina whenever America, say, brutally invades some developing nation for its oil, or builds a new razor-wire fence against them damnable Mexicans, or when some duplicitous cardinal from the Catholic Church works like a demon to shield millions of church dollars from sex abuse victims?
...

What about spontaneous, screaming hugs and rampant tongue kisses in the street in Alabama and Mississippi when SCOTUS gutted the Voting Rights Act, or when North Dakota passed the most hateful anti-choice laws in America, or when Kansas and Texas dumbed down their school textbooks to lobotomy/troglodyte levels?

Hey, there might’ve been; I admit I don’t live anywhere near America’s legendary sinkholes of regression and conservative panic. But I’ll just come right and suggest that there’s just no way ultraconservatives enjoy anything like the street-rattling, confetti-strewn, life-exploding celebrations of newfound liberation similar to what San Francisco – and nearly every other major educated, forward-thinking city and college town nationwide – enjoyed this past week.
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Look at it this way: When Prop 8 passed the first time, there were no parades, no scowling crowds of Mormons stripping off their strange underwear and waving banners of joy in the streets, celebrating this new and nasty constraint on love. Oh sure, maybe some relief flooded the nation’s terrified fundamentalist megachurches, a slap or three was heard in Bill O’ Reilly’s fetish dungeon, maybe a few thousands Fox News homophobes tweeted their gay porn to each other, but that’s about it.

But when DOMA and Prop 8 died last week? Joy immeasurable. Joy unmistakable.
...

But to my mind, there are few more accurate indicators of constructive change than that wild, palpable buzz you find out in the streets after a major decision like Prop. 8; that intense, unmistakable lick and slap of upheaval that only comes when some hoary old roadblock has finally been blasted aside, when some rancid plug of conservative phlegm has been cleared from the collective throat. You know? Did you feel it, too?

I’m sure they didn’t feel it much in Texas. Or Alabama. Or Utah. Or Fox News. Or over in the dank dungeons of the Catholic Church, now even less relevant and compassionate, and even more hateful and antagonistic to all that is light and happy and free in the world, than ever before. Amazing, but true.

I'm happy for all the gay folks, of course, but I may be even happier that a very conservative SCOTUS managed to poke the finger of justice in the haters' eyes.

I hope Fat Tony's blood pressure blows the top of his head right off too. Heh.

Uppity Brown Guy Talks Back

A tip o' the Brain to Seniors for a Democratic Society.

The only possible response is "Hey, pissant, might makes right."