I guess that is one way of describing it.
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.
The “burn-it-down” people are good with that until they become part of the kindling.
Also, are you sure you want people to rate your comments?
Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”
The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.
Trumpflation is an intolerable hardship for every American, and it’s Trump’s fault.
A tremendous foreign policy asset… to all of our adversaries.
Every decision we make has lots of baggage with it, known or unknown.
But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.
Live so that if you miss a day of work people aren’t hoping you’re dead.
Everything is totally normal and fine!!!
It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.
This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.
Their shamelessness is their super power.
Beware of advice from anyone for whom Democrats are “they” and not “we.”
Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.
There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.
Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.
Let’s not be the monsters we hate.
I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.
This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.
Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.
Our messy unity will be our strength.
The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.
You are here: Home / Impossibly Stupid
Svensker
Did you frigging see who is quoted by the moron in the article? OMFG.
shortstop
@Svensker: I did, and laughed. But it was a crying-on-the-inside kind of laugh.
John Cole
@Svensker: I know, right? Good old racist myiq.
Yutsano
@Svensker: I wasn’t sure whether to die a little or die laughing. I just know a bit of me died right at that moment.
Marc
Today we have watched a young troll become a man.
porter
Cole still trying to milk it. I suspect all you clowns will move on to the next shiny object this week. 2 weeks seems to be about the limit. Meanwhile the tragedy remains after the angry mob has moved on.
Gex
Listen. Everyone knows that unless a white man submits in writing his intent is to murder a black man, every benefit of the doubt, reasonable or not, should be given to him until we finally come to our predetermined conclusion of “the hoodie had it coming”.
dr. bloor
And yet, there he is.
BGinCHI
This case, even beyond the tragedy of Trayvon’s murder, is a microcosm of how the right and its media operative work in this country in 2012.
Reflexive defensiveness of the majority’s right to perpetrate injustices on the minority, defense of guns and violence despite context, inability to read complex narrative and understand facts, eschewing of scientific methods, racism, and racism.
It won’t matter what evidence comes to light for these people. Black men deserve whatever happens to them, regardless of facts.
Karl The Crap Blog Detective
Thing which calls itself “Tom Maguire” can not possibly be a human being.
Warren Terra
Funny, and nostalgia-inducing, to see a shout-out to the utter idiocy of “myiq2xu” – I can remember when he was a fairly run-of-the-mill Hillary supporter, and seemingly a fairly positive one, before the 2008 campaign apparently drove him stark raving mad. And now he’s hanging out on winger blogs spinning insupportable half-assed theories to make the habitues of the site feel better about their racism. There’s a thesis in what’s happened to that guy …
dr. bloor
@efgoldman:
When every claim that Zimmerman and his reps make is subsequently dismantled by physical evidence, the obfuscation approach falls into the category “you use what you have.”
Steve
Tom Maguire is one of the few bloggers on the right who actually traffics in facts and evidence. You have to give him that. Mind you, the things he does with those facts often bear no resemblance to any kind of rational analytical process, but hey, when reason fails he’s pretty good with snark too.
Amir Khalid
The more you examine George Zimmerman’s story, the weaker it gets. This is just the latest instance. At some point he has to become too much trouble to defend, right? Then the right-wing partisans will have to abandon him.
On second thought, that sounded rather optimistic.
JWL
That 911 tape is something I hope to never hear.
Helen
From the comments at the Maguire link
Wonderful.
beltane
Just wait until Veritas/RC makes it to the major leagues of trolldom. He’s never been quite as hateful as myiq2xu though so maybe he doesn’t stand a chance.
beltane
@Amir Khalid: They will just dig in deeper and start proclaiming that it’s every white man’s birthright to kill as many black people as he likes. USA! USA! USA!
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@beltane:
This is already happening. You’re seeing it with every little bit that damns Zimmerman more: twisting and turning to insist that the evidence actually EXONERATES ZImmerman to a ridiculous degree and/or damns Trayvon Martin as the super-vicious thug that got what was coming to him.
The issue has become politicized and made partisan…but only because the right has decided to latch on to Zimmerman in order to protect both racial animus as well as overly broad, gun-friendly laws that let people get away with murder.
The depressing thing is that even with all this, they still might fucking win. And that’s not even getting into the further tragedy of a family who lost a child finding an entire political wing vested in making him out to be the thuggiest of violent thugs who deserved his fate.
Heliopause
Thing is, even when I accept Zimmerman’s story for the sake of argument I still find myself concluding that he’s guilty of some degree of homicide. Seriously, what do you expect if you stalk somebody with your car? You’d deserve to be jumped from behind and have your head bashed on the ground a few times. At least. And that’s assuming Zimmerman’s story.
Martin
Just for the record: your ability to recognize your spouse, your kids, your parents, your friends on the phone or from another room – yeah that’s impossible. You’re just talking to strangers without realizing it.
BGinCHI
The Zimmerman story is the Supply Side Economics of self-defense narratives. The more you think about it and the more facts emerge, the stupider and less believable it seems.
sharl
Yeah, seeing meatprod4u over there made me wish I’d stayed in the boat.
Svensker
I hate that this case is being tried on the intertubes like this. Based on everything I’ve heard, I have no doubt that Trayvon was an innocent kid who was killed by a nutjob. But I (and we, none of us) am not hearing all the facts as we would in a trial. And I hate trying and passing judgment on Zimmerman without all the evidence. If, for some reason, what we’re hearing is wrong, then Zimmerman is being turned into an object of scorn and disgust unfairly. I don’t think so, but I don’t really know.
This is such an awful tragedy. It just shouldn’t be politicized at all. A kid is dead who shouldn’t be and the fugging cops and prosecutors in Florida did not do their jobs to see justice done. Now it’s a circus. Trayvon’s parents don’t even have a quiet place to mourn their son. The whole thing makes me weep.
freelancer
Amazing that a portion of the right has found that Zimmerman’s “innocence” is an appropriate hill to die on. Soldier on, wingnuts.
Martin
@Svensker:
Well, that’s why we have a legal system. When it works, we needn’t resort to this crap.
Svensker
@The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik:
This. It’s not enough that their hearts are broken?
debg
@efgoldman: Exactly my thoughts, on both counts.
GregB
The latest wingnut FaceBook outrage is the Michael Savage pushed story about some young and attractive white couple who were attacked and horribly tortured, raped and murdered by a group of four Black men.
That the suspects are in jail and being prosecuted seems to elude them.
They want to know why there isn’t the exact same amount of publicity between the two crimes.
So the rightosphere is now under the impression that crimes perpetrated by Blacks are being swept under the rug.
Tell that to the producers of COPS.
Martin
@freelancer: And yet the wingnuts haven’t tried to show how Zimmerman was defending his community’s religious freedom on contraception. They could have wrapped it all up in one nice little knot.
porter
Any other site and I would think it was an April Fools joke.
Arianna Huffington spent a bunch of money on a series of anti-Obama videos. Anyone still believe she is a ‘liberal’….or EVER was?!
huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/president-obama-candidate-obama_b_1340036.html
Some Guy
Among other lies, if Zimmerman had had a broken nose and injuries to his head from concrete, a) it would still be detectable, so why not show somebody? And b) anyone who was ever a victim in a high profile case shows their injuries to reporters early. Zimmerman? No.
Fucking liar and that is all there is to this.
But, let us take the pulse on capital offenses* for black teens in today’s America:
1. Being in a neighborhood where someone doesn’t want you to be.
2. Wearing a hoodie.
3. Smoking pot.
4. Being suspended from school.
5. Being involved in petty theft.
6. Getting into an altercation with an armed man stalking you.
And if you add them all together, well, you have a pretty clear case for putting that kid down, especially when the shooter has no idea about 3-5.
At least he did not whistle at a white woman or pull out his wallet that would have called for more extreme measures.
* Based on media speculation, not posited as final facts.
PS: Will Fox go all-in and become the pro-child murder channel? Has an event that should in no way be a left-right chew toy fallen into the giant maw of politicized journalism such that Fox deems it necessary to make justifying Martin’s killing a Republican brand?
debg
@Svensker: Every time I read the racist crap surrounding the case, I want to cry. Sometimes I do. If only the legal system hadn’t failed Martin. If only the Sanford police and prosecutors had done their jobs after this tragedy. If I’ve been a wreck all week–no skin in this game, white middle-aged female who’s unlikely to face vigilante justice and even less likely to watch the police cover it up–I can’t even begin to imagine the pain of every African American family, for whom Trayvon’s fate has always been a real possibility. And Trayvon’s family …words fail me. How can anybody zip right past the horror of any teenager dying senselessly to push their partisan politics?
BGinCHI
@GregB: Or maybe just look at some prison stats. They are astonishingly and clearly heavy on black representation.
catclub
@BGinCHI: “Black men deserve whatever happens to them, regardless of facts.”
With the notable exception being elected president.
BGinCHI
@catclub: Win.
__
That disparity probably sums things up. I think we’re done here.
Tonal Crow
I’m very skeptical of criminal forensics generally. The field is filled with hocus-pocus like this, and desperately needs a scientific power-washing.
Anyone know what the science (if any) says about the ability claimed by the cited audio forensics “expert”?
Maude
@GregB:
The UK did right thing in not letting Savage into their country.
He is a hater. A very loud one.
The question will be, is there any evidence? Was any collected?
Warren Terra
@Svensker:
Sure, a lot of nasty things are being said about Zimmerman. He seems likely to deserve most of them. But it isn’t really Zimmerman that’s being tried on the internet; it’s Sanford, FL. It’s a legal system that had on day one pretty much everything we’ve been piecing together over the last fortnight online and doesn’t seem to have taken the unnecessary death of a young Black male to be anything worthy of serious consideration. That “justice” system in that Florida town has been tried on the Internet – and found wanting.
Ben Cisco
@Warren Terra:
More like there’s a thesis in what that election brought out in the guy.
Key point being, it was ever thus. So long as we kept our “place”, all good. But one of us gets a wee bit uppity…he is who we thought he was.
Ben Cisco
@Warren Terra:
Look for one of the NeoConfederates to launch his/her campaign from there four years hence. Book that shit right now.
Mike in NC
When you’ve lost Joe Scarborough…
gene108
@Svensker:
Maybe the did do their jobs and because of the Stand Your Ground Law, this is what is now considered justice as per Florida law.
asiangrrlMN
@JWL: I listened to it three times before writing my post about the case. I hope Zimmerman rots in jail for a good long time, but I’m not holding my breath. Tom Maguire can rot in hell. I have no patience at all for Zimmerman apologists. At all.
@Heliopause: This. So much this. “Stand Your Ground” applies to Trayvon as well. If I were him, I would have been scared as hell that this big, burly guy was stalking me. As my lawyers* tell me, if someone makes a citizen’s arrest (essentially what Zimmerman wanted to do) and the person in question is not committing a crime, then the one making the arrest is breaking the law.
*people I know who are lawyers.
Anya
I don’t understand why can’t the wingnuts see that this crazy law gives every gunnut neighbor to shoot their neighbor and claim self defense. What makes wingnuts amune from being shot by a crazy neighbor or a zimmerman type neighborhood watch zealot I just don’t get these people.
gwangung
@porter:
Waddya mean “you”, white guy?
Amir Khalid
@Warren Terra:
I agree. What made Trayvon Martin’s killing a cause celebre isn’t that he was black, or that George Zimmerman is white; but that for some reason Sanford PD chose to sweep this case under the rug.
First, someone needs to carry out the thorough investigation of the case that Sanford PD shirked, so that the Martins can have justice. Just as importantly, someone then has to figure out why and how Sanford PD shirked its duty, and address that cause. It might bring to light issues — such as undue influence, racism, lack of professionalism — which I suspect are not unique to Sanford PD.
Anya
@porter: I never bought her holier than liberal con. I think the wingnut welfare circuit became elusive when her status as a beard became public
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@BGinCHI:
As well as the thinner the evidence gets, the more insistent and dogmatic the defenders become.
@Anya:
Feature, not bug. If this happens, this just means the gubment is sufficiently hands off for all our freedums to come true.
cathyx
I’m sure this is simply an April Fools Day joke by McGuire. It has to be.
lamh35
@JWL: I’ve heard it and it is heartbreaking. I cannot imagine Trayvon’s mother hearing that for the first time.
Yutsano
@gwangung: It’s amazing how eight years in a country gives Derf all the expertise he needs to be an American social critic.
lamh35
@Mike in NC: I missed it, what did Joe Scar say?
MattR
@asiangrrlMN: That is the real problem with the “stand your ground” law. It turns the state into the Wild West when both people invovled in an incident have the right to whip out a gun, shoot the other and then claim self defense.
James E. Powell
I, too, have been thinking about why the right-wing media machine has chosen to defend Zimmerman. I am guessing that it is because they feel the need to attack the legitimacy of every claim of racism in order to protect themselves. The right-wing engages in a great deal of racist messaging, some coded, some not. They need to protect their space, their relative immunity from criticism, by preventing any incident of racism from becoming fixed in American minds.
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@MattR:
It’s not JUST Stand You Ground in this case either. It’s also Florida case law that asserts that self-defense is not an affirmative defense, meaning unless it’s punctured beyond reasonable doubt, the person claiming self-defense is actually extended immunity from charges or prosecution.
Stand Your Grounds simply makes the legal definition of what is self-defense so absurdly broad that despite it all, the state legal system may STILL find it legally valid self-defense.
@James E. Powell:
Sadly, there’s another, simple aspect of the case as to why it’s become a cause celebre amongst the right-wing: Obama made a statement on it. That’s it.
Whatever Obama stands for, by necessity, all good, god-fearing right-wingers must stand as hard against it no matter what.
scav
@James E. Powell: Rallying for Racism, but also for the use of a gun I’m thinking. If he’d slammed the kid’s head with a rock, even in purported and flimsy self-defense, I think the mob supporting Zimmerman’s action would be smaller.
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@James E. Powell:
Sadly, there’s another, simple aspect of the case as to why it’s become a cause celebre amongst the right-wing: Obama made a statement on it. That’s it.
Whatever Obama stands for, by necessity, all good, god-fearing right-wingers must stand as hard against it no matter what.
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
Erf…yeah, there’s something screwy going on. It didn’t seem like my post edit would take, so I tried to make a separate post for it…and THAT didn’t seem to take either. ANd now…both the edit and extra post are here. Whaaa…
scav
@James E. Powell: Rallying for racism, but also because he used a gun to my mind. If he’d slammed the kid’s head with a rock, even in purported and flimsy self-defense, I think the mob supporting Zimmerman’s action would be smaller.
Steve
Mostly I think the thing that spurred the wider right wing into action is the presence of those notorious race-baiters like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and of course Barack Obama. Still, you have to admit there’s comedy value in watching the author of “In Defense of Internment” pioneer the hashtag #teamdueprocess!
sharl
It’s possible, as suggested upthread, that McGuire’s post is an April Fool’s Day punking. Inclusion of an invented quote from meatprod (assuming the post is a prank) would certainly provide some irresistable chum for those of us in this community. However, the sentiments in that post really exist out there.
At this point I think Zimmerman is a proxy for the way justice is distributed in this country, including standards of police behavior. There is no way to throw Zimmerman under the bus without doing so to the Sanford police as well; that’s the problem the wingnut “intelligensia” face. So they’re stuck with having to defend this Rambo wannabe as well, in their effort to defend the way police often operate.
The long time and (for the moment) dominant culture in this country* – economically comfortable and (overwhelmingly) white folk (fwiw, my tribe) – consider the police to be THEIR security force, and the police understand this; those who wear the blue who inconveniently point out that the law doesn’t say this are likely to be weeded out as the troublemakers they are (assuming they weren’t screened out during their cadet years). This isn’t just true in Sanford FL, but in NYC (e.g., the Sean Bell case, and a bunch of others). Ask Rudy Giuliani, he’ll ‘splain it to ya!
[*I think it is true world-wide that the police favor the socioeconomically dominant culture, actually, but we’re talking about the U.S. here.]
Furthermore, the unlegislated but clearly understood instructions for our Security Force is to take whatever measures are necessary to prevent the commission of crimes against Us. There will be much hollerin’ and rantin’ at City Council meetings, and in phone calls to the Mayor’s office, and opposition to reelecting such failures, if crimes against Us are “allowed” to happen. Better to not take chances – go ahead and take out the dude/kid with the “suspicious” profile. Based on a lot of historical precedent, chances are you can sweep any oopsies under the carpet. Sure, it might take a no-disclosure settlement with a cash payout, but time, cash, and – if needed – unambiguous (and unrecorded) get-with-the-script-or-else messages to the newly bereaved next-of-kin will make the unwanted attention go away.
Unfortunately for TPTB in this case, the young man was the son of people with means, knowledge of their rights, and connections with folks who could fight for those rights.
In return for the police doing their thing, Our Tribe needs to have their collective backs when they screw up. We sure don’t want to mess up a longstanding good thing, amirite? Better to complain about Al Sharpton than ask why the police cannot serve and protect those who don’t look like you and make the coin you make; that latter option would require risk and sacrifice.
asiangrrlMN
@MattR: Agreed. I’m starting to have thoughts about minorities arming ourselves and shooting on sight out of fear, and I hate that this is starting to seem at all reasonable to me.
AxelFoley
@Martin:
Bingo.
AxelFoley
@asiangrrlMN:
Kill The White People
video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4402897013051860643
FlipYrWhig
Did Zimmerman ever explain to Martin that he was doing some kind of neighborhood watch? Because when I replay what I think I know happened, I keep getting that there was a kid doing nothing wrong who was confronted by a cryptic, threatening, armed man. From Zimmerman’s perspective, he’s acting in lieu of the cops. From Martin’s perspective, there’s a white dude with a gun looking to start a problem.
FlipYrWhig
@efgoldman: I think it’s less that they want to defend the cops and more that they don’t want political black men and the liberal media to “win.”
liberal
@Steve:
Perhaps, but he has this annoying habit of phrasing things so that, when it turns out he was completely wrong about something, he can point to some weasel words he included that gives him enough wiggle room to claim that he never fully committed to that position.
He’s a douche.
liberal
@Warren Terra:
No, not really; it’s FL overall.
Sure, there are examples with the races reversed and a prosecution is ongoing; and sure, the town and its cops really look awful. But its the crazy, idiotic state leg that passed this crazy, idiot “shoot first” law.
liberal
@gene108:
Exactly.