The above graphic is an actual thing someone created for Rep. Steve Crisafulli, who will be Speaker of the House in the Florida legislature next year. The future speaker commemorated the upcoming birthday of Baby Jeebus by bragging on Twitter that the state’s wingnut-supermajority legislature retained the law infamous for allowing a deranged serial domestic abuser to stroll out of a Florida courtroom a free man after shooting an unarmed teenager dead.
The “stand your ground” issue here in Florida is inextricably connected with the Trayvon Martin case; it’s just not possible to bring one up without implicitly broaching the subject of the other, at least not now, and certainly not in the context of the recent legislative review Crisafulli references. While I think SYG is a terrible law and the outcome of that trial was a grave injustice, I get that there are other ways of looking at it, in a “gosh, it’s a shame that happened, but we still need the law” sense.
But to slap that slogan on a Christmas ornament image and push it out there as a celebratory message for the people of this state? Including the Martin family? That’s just plain sociopathic.
Cacti
In other news from the Sunshine State, the Duval County School Board has decided to give Nathan Bedford Forrest High School a name change.
The name dates back to 1959. Not sure what was going on then that would make them want to name a school after the KKK’s founder.
/snark
Zifnab25
Feature, not a bug. “The state of Florida wants you to know that your irrational fear of minorities and foreigners has the full backing of all three branches of government. Please feel free to indulge your paranoia in quiet confidence, knowing that your state representatives will defend your right to kill people that scare you.”
waspuppet
Remember right after George Zimmerman murdered Trayvon Martin and all the sponsors of the Stand Your Ground law ran to the cameras saying “Hey wait a minute, we never intended the law to permit something like THIS!”
I was one of the people who said “Well, you know, the law is the law, and if you don’t like what it says don’t pass it.” But I have to admit, it never occurred to me that they were just plain lying.
Obviously they were. They want their state to be this way. Well, they can have it.
Well, with any luck and justice, 10 years from now there will be no one left in their state except bitter, clinging (yeah I said it) 70-year-old white people. And they’ll wonder why their state sucks worse than ever. And some of them really won’t know.
boatboy_srq
And thus it is part and parcel of what we should expect from the Teahad.
some guy
He’s a citrus farmer representing Merritt Island. wealthy white people get the stupid they deserve.
KG
@Cacti: speaking of, I’m confused by something I’ve seen recently, in Long Beach, California – the land of Snoop… there is an elementary school here named for Robert E Lee. I just don’t get that, in a rather diverse city, that was a Union State.
COB
Sociopathic is what they do best.
Roger Moore
@waspuppet:
Then you need to pay more careful attention. It was obvious from the beginning that a major point of SYG was that it would allow Real Americans® to shoot Those People® without fear of consequences. It isn’t exactly legalizing lynching, but it’s in the same general spirit.
different-church-lady
@Cacti: Not that I’m in any way inclined to defend anyone even remotely connected to the KKK, but (a) he was not the founder of the KKK and (b) had a change of heart about race relations at the end of his life. (This should also not be taken as a defense of the school’s former name.)
Facts, people — either you use ’em right or you give the enemy all kinds of openings.
Amir Khalid
@Cacti:
It’s a pity the new names being offered for students to vote on — Westside High and Firestone High — sound so bland. If it’s not too soon, Trayvon Martin Memorial High might be a better choice.
Botsplainer
@Roger Moore:
It does tend to remove the only hostile witness to the act of the shooter.
“Moral Hazard”, anyone?
Cacti
@KG:
Until more recent times, Southern California had been pretty reliably Republican and was the part of the state that introduced Nixon and Reagan to the national political scene. From 1952-1988 California also went R in 9 of 10 Presidential elections. Demographics turned the tide in the early 1990s.
Feebog
@Roger Moore:
Actually, it is just like legalized lynching. You just eliminate the tree, the rope, and the white hoods. More efficient that way.
Roger Moore
@Botsplainer:
There’s a reason people say that the law is more accurately described as “Last Man Standing” rather than “Stand Your Ground”.
shelly
Parody is dead
Cacti
@different-church-lady:
Oh, pardon me. The guy who lended his stature as a former confederate general and became the first leader of the organization.
How nice of him to have a change of heart about race relations after making his living as a slave trader, the Fort Pillow massacre, serving a general in a war to preserve slave labor, and leading a marauding terrorist organization dedicated to preserving post-slavery white supremacy.
And might I add…whoopdee fucking doo!
Betty Cracker
@some guy: You know who else gets the stupid they deserve? Asshole Democrats who sit out non presidential-year elections. It’s true on the national level, and it’s true in Florida.
Linnaeus
@KG:
Is it an older school, built before, say, the 1960s? For much of the 20th century, U.S. history regarding Reconstruction was strongly influenced by the Dunning School of historiography, which held among other things, that Reconstruction was bad for the South, African Americans were not capable of participating in self-government, segregation was necessary, etc. One of the effects of this was a softening of attitudes toward Confederate leaders and a tendency to make some of them, like Lee, part of the pantheon of “great Americans”. So the school’s name might be an artifact of that influence.
Cacti
@different-church-lady:
Also too, pitiful attempt to try and immunize yourself before proceeding to do exactly what you’re not “in any way inclined to do.”
different-church-lady
@Cacti: I’m not saying he was a fine fellow: I’m saying that if you claim he was the founder of the KKK you give racist idiots an opening to distract from an otherwise sound argument. Guy was plenty shithead enough without that, so no need to be factually wrong about it.
different-church-lady
@Cacti: Nice chatting with you.
Cacti
@different-church-lady:
Do you often find yourself saying “I’m not racist, but…” right before saying something incredibly racist?
Citizen_X
@KG: Well, it could be named after the car that belonged to the Dukes of Hazzard, which is sometimes confused with Starsky and Hutch, which was remade with Snoop as Huggy Bear…
Yeah, I got nothing.
ranchandsyrup
They misspelled “Shoot the Browns”.
Cassidy
@Cacti: Still won’t send my kids there. Duval County schools are remote islands of amazing in a sea of shit.
@Amir Khalid: Forrest is the high school here on the west side of Jacksonville. Jacksonville is huge. IIRC, it’s the single largest city in America land-wise. It’s not a small city surrounded by a bunch of burbs like more prominently big cities. The school itself is on Firestone Rd.
ETA: Forgot where I was going re: west side. Jacksonville is so huge that people identify by the side of town. Northside, Westside, Southside, Beaches, Mandarin, Regency, Argyle, etc. What part you’re from and live in is generally one of the first things Jax residents ask about you. It’s an identifier.
Roger Moore
@Feebog:
Except that lynching is traditionally undertaken by a mob and frequently targets people who are already in custody, while standing one’s ground is very much an individual thing. It would be hard to demand that the police turn somebody over for mob “justice” and then claim he was so threatening that the mob had to gun him down.
jl
Amazing that anyone would still be defending that horrible stand your ground law in Florida. I’m not sure it was only white ‘race insecurity’ that produced the law, but hard to deny it is a big element.
Lot’s of silly white ‘race insecurity’ on display. Too bad the sad scared people that are into that cannot limit themselves to nonlethal forms, like White Santagate. And I read that O’Reilly has jumped onto the ‘Santa’s White’ band wagon. Idiots.
NotMax
re: public school names –
Somewhat surprised that a state or locality has not yet (to my knowledge) set up a bidding process for corporations to purchase naming rights.
(I don’t support such a scheme, BTW.)
some guy
even when he’s called out for being wrong, Thread Deputy Cacti can’t admit he was wrong and instead throws his weight around and accuses his critic of racism.
way to go, Deputy Cacti.
Big R
@Cacti: Pause. I think it’s important to try and read our fellow commenters charitably. I think it is fair to say that Forrest was complex, like every other historical figure. His virtuous acts and change of heart don’t extinguish his prior sins, and nor should they; but we can only weigh Forrest’s impact on the world by knowing the whole story of his life, good and bad. Gandhi was convinced that resistance to the Nazis was immoral; Martin Luther King had affairs; George Washington used teeth pulled from his slaves’ mouths to build his dentures. NO person was or is perfect (although as near as I can tell, Abraham Lincoln came really, really close). So, when we look at the COMPLETE picture of Forrest’s life, what is the net weight that he had on the world?
I happen to agree with you: he was, on net, a scumbucket. But d-c-l, rather than jumping to his defense, as you assume they want to do, could have been simply rounding out the picture so that we can judge Forrest fairly. And given that there are real people on either side of these keyboards, that sort of charity to one another is…oh, who am I kidding? It’s the BJ commentariat.
FLAME ON!
ruemara
@KG: I thought it was named after the Dukes of Hazzard car.
@Cacti: That’s not racist. It’s fairly logical and equivocal, but not racist. Punching at ghosts, here.
Roger Moore
@Cassidy:
Apparently not; it looks as if there are a few cities in Alaska that are even larger. All of the biggest cities by land area appear to come from amalgamation of city and county/parish/borough governments; Oklahoma City has the largest area of a city that has not been merged with a county-equivalent government.
some guy
@Betty Cracker:
true that. in Brevard County turnout was 55.8% in 2010.
Patricia Kayden
“But to slap that slogan on a Christmas ornament image and push it out there as a celebratory message for the people of this state? Including the Martin family? That’s just plain sociopathic.”
No, that’s typical Republican racism. Part and package of what it means to be a part of the modern GOP. Not even shocking anymore. So much for minority outreach.
PaulW
Kinda surprised for Jacksonville not to rename the school after one of the Lynyrd Skynyrd band members.
As for the “feature not bug” about the future Speaker of the House, it’s only that way because due to term limits of leadership positions the state GOP designates their future leaders (so they can get bribed now before they leave office too soon) on the expectation they’ll stay in power. Voting Democrats into the majority for the state lege would stop that. Might not be able to vote that jerk out of office, but if the DEMOCRATS GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT THIS NOV. 2014 they might make his Never-Speaker life a lot more miserable.
Roger Moore
@Patricia Kayden:
You say tomayto, I say tomahto.
Cacti
@some guy:
I admit that I was incorrect about Forrest as the founder of the KKK. But then, the commenter decided to go further and give him a character reference.
And in pops one of the resident dudebros to chime in, in defense of white privilege.
How utterly predictable for this blog.
Brian R.
@Cacti:
That’s a willful misreading. That post was facually correct.
MikeJ
@Amir Khalid:
Transfer to Washington. Transfer to Jefferson. No one at Westerberg is going to let you play their reindeer games.
Mike G
Geroge Zimmerman is now painting pictures and selling them on EBay.
And yes, it’s as bombastically Stalinist as you might imagine a painting by Geroge Zimmerman would be —
http://www.ebay.com/itm/George-Zimmerman-original-painting-/111239922810?pt=Art_Paintings&hash=item19e66a847a#shpCntId
Yours for only $99,000.
scav
I knew I could wait for a thread for these (started after the last CO event.
♪ ♫ ♪ ♬
On the twelfth day of Christmas
my Gun Nut sent to me:
12 Kiddies Bleeding
11 Students Sniping
10 Lobbyists a Lobbing
9 Publicists Dancing
8 Drive-by Murders
7 Shooting Doorbells
6 Bodies a Lying
5 NRA Lies!
4 bandoliers
3 dead men
2 ass-ass-ins
and a Strange Fruit in a Pear Tree!
♪ ♫
It’s beginning to sound a lot like Christmas
In Ah-mer-rica;
Take a look at the Wesson-Smith, glistening in the grip,
With silencer and silver-plate ammo.
It’s beginning to sound a lot like Christmas,
Guns in ev’ry school,
But the prettiest sight to see’s the Uzi that soon will be
pointing out your own front door.
A pair of hopalong boots and a pistol that shoots
Is the wish of Barney and Ben;
Targets that talk and go down in a drop
Is the hope of Janice and Jen;
And Mom and Dad can hardly wait for school to start again.
It’s beginning to sound a lot like Christmas
In Ah-mer-rica;
Take a look at the AR-15, stunning in its matte sheen,
With extra-clips of jingle-bell ammo.
♪ ♫
Fill the Halls with Sounds of Gunfire
Bang-Bang-Bang-Bang-Bang
Bang.
Bang.
Bang-Bang!
Tis the season to be ‘Mercan
Bang-Bang-Bang-Bang-Bang
Bang.
Bang.
Bang-Bang!
Don we now our Body Armor!
Bang-Bang-Bang
Bang-Bang-Bang
Bang.
Bang.
Bang!
Heedless of collateral damage!
Bang-Bang-Bang-Bang-Bang
Bang.
Bang.
Bang-Bang!
♪ ♫
MikeJ
@Roger Moore: Saturday’s NYT xword had the clue, “US City that’s almost as large in area as Delaware”.
ranchandsyrup
@MikeJ: Heathers has been on TV a lot lately. CORN NUTS!
some guy
@Cacti:
you really are an idiot, aren’t you? white privilege? huh? why not throw alien autopsies or banana peel smoking into the mix as well.
Thread Deputy Cacti, Now with More Word Salad!
GregB
@Mike G:
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
-Samuel Johnson
Cacti
@Big R:
From Forrest’s “reconciliation” speech, when he allegedly changed his ways.
Poor old, picked on, NBF. He was just misunderstood, as were all of the confederates “with very few exceptions”.
Cacti
@some guy:
How long have you admired the butcher of Fort Pillow? Long time, or only since 2008?
Cassidy
@PaulW: It’s kind of odd. My generation’s parents physically went to school with Lynyrd Skynyrd. My younger brother used to hang out with one of Billy Powell’s (I think) daughter. Jacksonville is divided between those who’ve moved here and the bastions of redneck who were born and raised. Outside of the latter, LS is kind of a joke.
Betty Cracker
@Cacti: Babbling non sequiturs, butthurt and groundless accusations again? Please switch sides. You’re a natural-born wingnut; they don’t do nuance, facts or reading comprehension either.
Cacti
@Betty Cracker:
Still angry at me for being right about Syria I see.
some guy
@Betty Cracker:
I had just always assumed he was one of the resident wingnuts who had been here from the time Cole was on Team GOP.
Amir Khalid
@Mike G:
I am reminded of a Balloon Juice commenter we haven’t seen in a while — Fred and Mellon? Telescopy? Ladle? I’m not sure of the exact nym, but it might have been one of those — who used to flog his flea-market portraits in the threads here.
Cheap Jim
How can we even see this? The fourth day isn’t until the 29th.
Mike in NC
@Mike G:
This is a joke, right? Or is the fact that it claims 98 bids is a joke?
Then again, people were willing to pay for clown pictures made by John Wayne Gacy.
Mark B.
If they could make that ornament constantly drip blood, it would be even cooler.
Mark B.
@Mike G: I thought it was illegal to profit from murdering someone. I hope the Martin family can sue him and divert the proceeds away from him. I don’t care if they go to charity, but he shouldn’t be financially rewarded for the notoriety of being a murderer who got away with it.
sparrow
@boatboy_srq: I have an aunt who I love dearly and in day-to-day life is a sweet, caring person. But she is a full on wingnut with abortion signs in the windows of her house. Yeah THAT kind of crazy. After the Newtown shooting I brought up what a tragedy it was and her IMMEDIATE response was ” I support my son in law having guns”. I was like what the f***k? You can’t even pause 5 seconds to say you’re sorry those kids DIED first? After that I just lost all hope of reaching her or people like her. I’m just hoping they die out.
MikeJ
@Mark B.:
Son of Sam laws only apply if you’re convicted. Legally he is a killer, but not a murderer.
Roger Moore
@Mike G:
That’s a new way for wingnuts to give him money. I hope Mr. Zimmerman will remember to pay appropriate taxes on his income from the painting; it would be horrible for him to get in trouble with the IRS after all his other problems.
Cacti
@MikeJ:
If his parents prevailed in a wrongful death suit, they could attach the proceeds of his art sales, much like the families of Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman did with O.J.’s book sales.
MikeJ
@Cacti: That’s a civil matter, not a legal issue.
Cacti
@MikeJ:
They’re both legal issues, just different sets of law.
chopper
@Betty Cracker:
I’d make a non-controversial point here about gun control in America, but I’m sure my good faith would be questioned because cacti is a dick sometimes.
Paul in KY
@waspuppet: You were a bit naive in that situation you wrote about up above.
Paul in KY
@KG: Is it the same Robert E. Lee? Could be someone else (local politician from back when) who had same name?
If their mascot is Johnny Reb, I guess not…
Paul in KY
@different-church-lady: He was a war criminal who murdered surrendered Union soldiers at Fort Pillow.
The soldiers happened to be blah.
Paul in KY
@Cassidy: The city starts at the county line. I know you knew that.
Trollhattan
@Roger Moore:
In perfectly Zimmerman-like fashion, he evidently lent his name to a lightly edited stock image. That must have taken minutes.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/12/george-zimmerman-painting-100000-ebay.html#comments
George Zimmerman is to art as he is to women’s rights, ammo sales and high school class sizes.
Trollhattan
@Paul in KY:
Bobby Eddie Lee, inventor of the baby moon hubcap.
danielx
Doth mine ears detect a note of surprise? Sociopathy is what wingnuts do. It’s what they are. And they like it.
Every time I see something like this and think there are no deeper depths of moral depravity for them to plumb, they prove me wrong.
El Cid
I love the mental image of these people trying to explain this to any somewhat texturally-realistic incarnation of Jesus.
“Okay, you see, we figure it’s what you wouldlve support because…”
Betty Cracker
@chopper:
Now you’ve done it: Welcome to DudebroLand!
different-church-lady
@Paul in KY: I was only trying to make a factual correction, not rehabilitate the guy. He sucked, and I apologize for leaving any other impression.
Patrick
@Betty Cracker:
You are exactly right. When you don’t vote, you don’t have a right to complain. And to people who think SYG law is a good thing; people think it is until it happens to them.
Omnes Omnibus
@MikeJ: Heathers?
slippy
@Mike G:
I’m simply gobsmacked that somewhere out there some fucking idiot is willing to pay more than I make in a year for that piece of shit.
Zimmy must be getting ready to flee the country.
slippy
@Mike G:
I’m simply gobsmacked that somewhere out there some fucking idiot is willing to pay more than I make in a year for that piece of shit.
Zimmy must be getting ready to flee the country.
MikeJ
@Cacti:
Torts are not things that are illegal. A “legal matter” refers to things that are against the law.
Legal matter: did you break the law?
Civil matter: did you do wrong to somebody?
They are related concepts, but are not the same thing.
Trollhattan
@slippy:
If that’s to be the outcome, I’ma bidding.
Mandalay
@Cacti:
Well if a late change of heart is what we’re looking for, I think the school should be named “Lee Atwater Willie Horton Memorial High”. It’s got the bi-racial thing going for it.
Omnes Omnibus
@MikeJ: No. Both are legal matters. One is criminal and one is civil.
bemused
@Trollhattan:
At least the other George (shrub) also a new budding artist, paints his own original stuff….that we know of.
Cacti
@MikeJ:
You have a narrower definition of legal than I do. Civil and criminal matters are both adjudicated in courts of law, and it’s the authority of the court that gives weight to any award for damages between private party litigants.
chopper
@Betty Cracker:
See, those guys don’t bother me. Just use the troll filter. Or pie them. Then you can actually pay attention to what other people have to say.
Gen
@Cacti: in other words, different church lady was right?
LongHairedWeirdo
@Botsplainer: There’s another issue. It semi-criminalizes non-lethal, but effective defense.
According to numerous analyses of SYG that I saw, if someone attacks me and I manage to knock him down and pin him and am ready to do some minor, non-fatal damage to make sure he doesn’t think “as soon as this pansy let’s me up, I’ll attack him again”, he is now legally allowed to kill me. (Yes, I learned self defense in schoolyard brawls. And yes, if you were attacked, and if you pinned a kid, and let him back up, he would attack when your back was turned. It’s a good thing that kids in Bridesburg didn’t pack heat and have a SYG law back then. I was a fat young kid, but heavy enough to pin most kids my age and a couple years older.)
See, he can’t retreat, and he is in reasonable fear of grave bodily injury.
If he *could* retreat, he would have to, and he would have to establish that he is not going to hurt me any more, before he could defend himself. But because he can’t retreat, and feels there’s imminent danger, he’s allowed to use lethal force to defend himself.
There was a proposal raised to clarify that if your initial actions were unlawful, you don’t have this right. It was rejected.
It’s a really fucked up law. It makes self defense a dangerous thing (unless you kill someone quickly.
Moreover, honestly, people who kill in self defense should reasonably fear a manslaughter verdict. They should hold fire until they think “I’d rather go to jail than die here.” And if it was legitimate self defense, they should *not* go to jail – but they should be *afraid* of it, enough that they won’t draw and fire unless the threat seems real and imminent.
Paul in KY
@PaulW: There ought to be a Ronnie VanZant high.
Paul in KY
@different-church-lady: No prob on that. I understand what you thought you were doing. I know you know he was an evil POS.
Glocksman
@LongHairedWeirdo:
IANAL, so take this with a shaker of salt.
Most SYG laws I’ve read include provisions that the person asserting SYG as a defense has to be acting in a lawful manner and in a place where they can lawfully be.
IOW, a burglar can’t assert SYG if he shoots the homeowner that’s pointing a shotgun at him.
The scenario you describe would seem to preclude SYG defense, but again IANAL.
Cacti
@Gen:
Right about what?
That he wasn’t the founder of the Klan? Yes.
Mnemosyne
@Glocksman:
Not in Florida. The database at the Tampa Bay Times is pretty horrifying. Gang members have been immunized from prosecution based on SYG because they shot a rival gang member and claimed to have been in fear for their lives. In one case, an estranged husband went to his wife’s house with a gun, shot her new boyfriend, and successfully claimed immunity under SYG.
Fax Paladin
@LongHairedWeirdo: Case in point: Marissa Alexander, denied an SYG defense and sentenced to 20 years in part because she fired a warning shot rather than a killing one…
Grondo
There’s only one reason to do such a thing – to wit, the best, highest and only *real* reason for a real ‘Murrcan – to drive the liberals crazy.
Mnemosyne
@Fax Paladin:
She has at least been granted a retrial and is currently on house arrest (she had a prior misdemeanor conviction relating to another fight with her ex-husband where she gave him a black eye, so the judge was unwilling to release her unconditionally).
SiubhanDuinne
@bemused:
And yet another George (Rodrigue), he of “Blue Dog” fame, died the other day. RIP.
Long Tooth
You couldn’t pay me to visit Florida.
RonzoniRigatoni
@Long Tooth: “You couldn’t pay me to visit Florida.”
Me neither. No, wait… I LIVE here