Zimmerman Fees

Trying to show a visual of the non-payments on George Michael Zimmerman's criminal cases. These cases came out of an arrest in July, 2005, in which George Michael Zimmerman was arrested for felony Resisting Officer with Violence and felony Battery on a Law Enforcement Officer in Case #: 2005-CR-009525-A-0 (State of Florida vs. George Michael Zimmerman - inset red box). These charges were later transferred to Case #: 2005-MM-010436-A-0 in Orange County Courthouse as a misdemeanor Resisting Officer Without Violence. Both cases accumulated fees that went unpaid until just recently (several years later). Click on the graphic and it comes up in another window where you can see the information clearly. 

What We Have Here Is A Failure To Communicate

I'm speechless. The two cartooons linked to the last paragraph of this Washington Monthly piece are absolutely awful, but newspapers didn't have any problem running them. WTH? 

(Note: I just researched both cartoons, one comes from Mike Lester at Rome News-Tribune (Rome, GA) and the other comes from Gary McCoy of Cagle Cartoons - a Cartoon service that syndicates to 850 newspapers). 

So, these are appropriate for publication but Doonesbury is not? Why NOT? Doonesbury has faced controversial subjects before and was still run during those times. Now a bunch of newspapers say they won't run the Doonesbury cartoon, but why not? Is it because it is Pro-Woman? Hmmmm!  I'm going to post these ugly examples  in all their horrendous glory. I hope the artists of these two pieces are proud of themselves. I am aware of them now and will continue to keep an eye on them. 

                                       

I Can Vote for My Candidate?

I was really miffed that certain people in this state wanted to remove my choice for president from the ballot here in Arizona (especially since he's an incumbent President), but thankfully the courts AGAIN ruled against these birther idiots and set things right. :)

Most importantly, Arizona courts are bound by United States Supreme Court precedent, and this precedent fully supports that President Obama is a natural born citizen under the Constitution and thus qualified to hold the office of President. See United States v. Wong Kim Ark (addressing U. S. Const. amend. XIV) ;  Ankeny v. Governor of the State of Indiana(addressing the precise issue). Contrary to Plaintiff’s assertion, Minor v. Happersett does not hold otherwise.

Well, thank goodness THAT is over! I'll bet Orly Taitz is getting more and more frustrated by the minute.

Let's see, that means the Dismissals to Non-Dismissals ratio is now at...uhhh.... too numerous to count. Here, you can try it: (Hot Pink is Dismissed, Light Pink is Appeals or Writs Pending, Green is Active Cases, Blue is a prosecuted case (Obama's Birth Certificate is deemed fake.... oh wait, THERE AREN'T ANY BLUE!): SEE? CHECK THIS OUT!  

LOL Birther Crazy is the BEST and Most Entertaining Crazy!

Ronald Reagan, That REAL Conservative

I just love putting Reagan Conservatives in their place. A friend of a friend (same one from a previous post) mentioned on a post that Reagan was a "True Conservative". Oh REALLY?

First I posted the Think Progress article "10 Things Conservatives Don't Want You To Know About Ronald Reagan", the list looks like this:

• Serial Tax Raiser
• Tripled the Federal Budget
• Soaring Unemployment After Reagan Tax Cuts
• Iran Contra Program Furnished Weapons to Iran.... and so much more!

I just love the Google Newspaper Archives feature. I've started to use this recently when talking about Reagan and it's pretty hard to argue against the printed word.

Check out these links (I'm going to leave them as is so you can see the search terms I used, which are embedded in the URL):

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=LOwwAAAAIBAJ&sjid=898FAAAAIBAJ&pg=2510%2C1662809&dq=president+reagan+tax+hike&hl=en

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=i1kiAAAAIBAJ&sjid=VKgFAAAAIBAJ&pg=983,4046802&dq=president+reagan+iran+contra&hl=en

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=FjNcAAAAIBAJ&sjid=nVUNAAAAIBAJ&pg=2585,3229682&dq=president+reagan+debt&hl=en


http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=naErAAAAIBAJ&sjid=hfwFAAAAIBAJ&pg=5185,1294805&dq=president+reagan+unemployment&hl=en

There are a gazillion of these online, and I never see anyone source them. We need to do better and use these materials. ARCHIVED NEWSPAPERS DON'T LIE!

Bibi Gets His Nut Off

News from AntiWar.com:

Airstrikes in Gaza kill at least fifteen.  It seems Bibi didn't get a chance to act out his military might, so he decided to have a temper tantrum instead:

Israeli military officials have been predicting a massive invasion of the Gaza Strip would be launched within the next few months, though today’s escalation does not necessarily mean that such an invasion is imminent, it raises the prospect that Israel, perhaps dissuaded from attacking Iran for the time being, will feel the need to start an alternative war in Gaza.

So mature, NOT! Would these people still be alive if Obama had said yes to an Iran campaign? Something tells me they probably would. Hmmmm.

Some links I want to track

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=213  - Historical Top Income Tax Rates from 1912 - present. 

http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/ - Birther News 

http://www.balloon-juice.com/  - John Cole's Balloon Juice

http://www.antiwar.com/ - AntiWar

More to be added as I get around to it. 

Republicans who have left the party

For the longest time I was aware of John Cole (site owner of Balloon Juice) having decided he could no longer stomach the Republican party, as I was a frequent commentor there after his epiphany was announced. I met my guy on that site and I admired John's honesty in assessing the lockstep backwardness that was occurring inside his political world.

But, it had been years since I had heard of anything going on at Little Green Footballs, a site I vehemently loathed because of the mudpit atmosphere the normal commentariat partook in. I let it roll off my list of things to acknowledge and for years it stayed away, far away, in the deep recesses of my mind, complete with a signpost that said "Dead End". I thought nothing of Little Green Footballs until this morning when a Facebook friend of mine posted a link to a very sensible post and I thought: "What's going on here? This is not the Little Green Footballs I remember!"


Well, suffice it to say, LGF has gone through a vast transformation from the bullfighting arena I remember. I did some research and as it turns out, I was completely unaware that site owner Charles Johnson had gone through his own John Cole-type Epiphany listing the numerous greivances he had with the Republican Party in 2009:

1. Support for fascists, both in America (see: Pat Buchanan, Robert Stacy McCain, etc.) and in Europe (see: Vlaams Belang, BNP, SIOE, Pat Buchanan, etc.)

2. Support for bigotry, hatred, and white supremacism (see: Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter, Robert Stacy McCain, Lew Rockwell, etc.)

3. Support for throwing women back into the Dark Ages, and general religious fanaticism (see: Operation Rescue, anti-abortion groups, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Tony Perkins, the entire religious right, etc.)

4. Support for anti-science bad craziness (see: creationism, climate change denialism, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, James Inhofe, etc.)

5. Support for homophobic bigotry (see: Sarah Palin, Dobson, the entire religious right, etc.)

6. Support for anti-government lunacy (see: tea parties, militias, Fox News, Glenn Beck, etc.)

7. Support for conspiracy theories and hate speech (see: Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Birthers, creationists, climate deniers, etc.)

8. A right-wing blogosphere that is almost universally dominated by raging hate speech (see: Hot Air, Free Republic, Ace of Spades, etc.)

9. Anti-Islamic bigotry that goes far beyond simply criticizing radical Islam, into support for fascism, violence, and genocide (see: Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, etc.)

10. Hatred for President Obama that goes far beyond simply criticizing his policies, into racism, hate speech, and bizarre conspiracy theories (see: witch doctor pictures, tea parties, Birthers, Michelle Malkin, Fox News, World Net Daily, Newsmax, and every other right wing source)

I am very glad to see this. I am going to keep this list and make it useful. There are far too many people who seem to want to give the "conservative party" a pass when the party isn't conservative at all. These folks spout "less government" and then set out on a witch hunt to force women to give up control of their reproductive health. That's not smaller government. Charles Johnson (and John Cole, whom we'll get to in a moment) are right. This crap needs to end.

After posting the list above, I decided that I wanted to pair it with John Cole's conversion and went looking for it online. I not only found one of his original posts from 2005 where he stated he was leaving the Republican party, but I also found some wonderful comments he made on Crooked Timber.  as well:

• 
  

  I’m mad. Plain and simple.

  
  

  I am mad my party has descended into a swirling vortex of madness in which no one is accountable for anything, everyone is a hypocrite, and that no one cares if a policy or position is good or beneficial to the country, but whether or not there is some short term political advantage.

  
  

  I am mad that the good aspects of the Republican party (respect for individual liberty, the belief in balanced budgets and sensible tax policy, free trade, etc.- you may not agree with those being good aspects, but I thought they were there) have been drowned out and been discredited for the next half century by the ramblings of mad men and religious nuts.

  
  

  I am mad at myself for not listening to people prior to the war and instead followed this administration and the pigheaded cheerleaders in the press and the blogosphere. I should have known better. Read some of my old posts(pre-2004)- they are truly atrocious and really embarrassing.

  
  

  I am mad that I defended the indefensible for too long.

  I am mad that the Republican party now stands for torture, domestic surveillance, government secrecy, permanent detention, and the imperial presidency.

  I am mad that political debate in the Republican party now amounts to little more than calling your opposition traitors and accusing them of treason.

  I am mad that for the GOP, admitting a mistake and dealing with it is seen as weak, or cowardly, and that fixing mistakes are less of a priority than winning short-term political victories.

  I am mad at a whole host of things, but most of all I am mad at myself. When I look at these folks, the right blogosphere in general, the Hewitts, the Malkins, the Powerline, the NRO, the Weekly Standard in particular, what I see are people who either have not learned a damned thing in the past few years or whose loyalty to a political party is so great that they don’t care.

  I think a little shrill is warranted, and I think anything less than shrill is not adequate attonement for my past transgressions. These folks need to be stopped. They need to be discredited, the Republican Party needs to be completely and wholly destroyed and built back up from the bottom up.

  My only concern regarding the complete destruction of the Republican Party is the chance that the Democrats might become just as arrogant and corrupt as the Republicans are currently. The only thing that assuages these concerns are the historical record of the Democratic Party being the biggest enemy the Democratic party has, and that I have a hard time believing the Democrats can become as bad as the Republicans. They will turn on themselves before it gets to that point.

  I know this little rant does not explain the underlying question you were asking, but it might help to explain where I am now politically. I am mad at myself and the GOP, and I think I have every right to be.

No sooner did I post these bits on my Facebook this morning than a friend of a friend made a statement about how Republicans are no more egregious than Democrats (the Both Sides Do It argument) and I had these quotes at the ready. Furthermore, this wasn't words from a Democrat observing Republicans' bad behavior, these were quotes from those who once were THEM! I think the posts are very effective and I plan to keep them close at hand and use them again, and again, and again... until, perhaps we can open their eyes, one person at a time. I'm not going to count on this happening, but, it's worth a try at least, isn't it?