Thursday, April 12, 2012
Fresh Pond Public Meeting Tonight at 6:30pm
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Has George Zimmerman Offered to Plead Guilty?
I have just seen the most bizarre interview on CNN by Anderson Cooper with the now former lawyers of George Zimmerman. I see only two possibilities:
(1) Zimmerman had the two worst lawyers in America, who have called their client unbalanced and suggested he was a flight risk in resigning his case.
(2) Zimmerman has without consulting his lawyers called the special prosecutor and offered to surrender and plead guilty.
Special prosecutor Angela Corey promises a press conference within 72 hours. I guess we'll find out then.
The lawyers' press conference this afternoon:
The Anderson Cooper interview with the Zimmerman lawyers:
CNN has an "Oh My God" moment:
I don't disagree but ask a different question:
Q: Why would any two lawyers with an eye to their professional responsibilities say what these two lawyers are saying?
A: If the lawyers thought it the only way to protect their client from jail, in the face of their client offering prosecutors a plea deal.
The tell is that the lawyers say they got a call from the special prosecutor's office telling them about a conversation with their client to which they were not originally privy. Presumably the special prosecutor filled them in.
Another tell, the Trayvon Martin family and their lawyers have been on TV saying they don't believe this is capital case that would need to go to the grand jury, as if pleading out the case for a lesser charge has been discussed with them.
If I am right, Anderson Cooper completely blew his interview with the Zimmerman lawyers by failing to ask the key question.
Update 4/11/2012: George Zimmerman was arrested today and charged with murder in the second degree. Here are the different degrees of unlawful killings under Florida law:
George Zimmerman's new lawyer seems quite deferential in reference to the special prosecutor and spoke not merely of representing his client at trial but also at pretrial conferences. That's consistent with a client desiring to plead guilty to a lesser offense. Of course, no such offer may be on the table.
(1) Zimmerman had the two worst lawyers in America, who have called their client unbalanced and suggested he was a flight risk in resigning his case.
(2) Zimmerman has without consulting his lawyers called the special prosecutor and offered to surrender and plead guilty.
Special prosecutor Angela Corey promises a press conference within 72 hours. I guess we'll find out then.
The lawyers' press conference this afternoon:
The Anderson Cooper interview with the Zimmerman lawyers:
CNN has an "Oh My God" moment:
I don't disagree but ask a different question:
Q: Why would any two lawyers with an eye to their professional responsibilities say what these two lawyers are saying?
A: If the lawyers thought it the only way to protect their client from jail, in the face of their client offering prosecutors a plea deal.
The tell is that the lawyers say they got a call from the special prosecutor's office telling them about a conversation with their client to which they were not originally privy. Presumably the special prosecutor filled them in.
Another tell, the Trayvon Martin family and their lawyers have been on TV saying they don't believe this is capital case that would need to go to the grand jury, as if pleading out the case for a lesser charge has been discussed with them.
If I am right, Anderson Cooper completely blew his interview with the Zimmerman lawyers by failing to ask the key question.
Update 4/11/2012: George Zimmerman was arrested today and charged with murder in the second degree. Here are the different degrees of unlawful killings under Florida law:
| Degree | Elements of offense | Maximum penalty |
|---|---|---|
| First degree murder | Premeditated design to effect the death of the person killed or any human being. | Death or life w/o parole |
| Second degree murder | Act imminently dangerous to another and evincing a depraved mind regardless of human life. | 30 years or life |
| Third degree murder | Perpetrated without any design to effect death, by a person engaged a felony or attempted felony (other than those for 1st or 2nd degree). | 15 years |
| Manslaughter | Killing by the act, procurement, or culpable negligence of another. | 15 years |
George Zimmerman's new lawyer seems quite deferential in reference to the special prosecutor and spoke not merely of representing his client at trial but also at pretrial conferences. That's consistent with a client desiring to plead guilty to a lesser offense. Of course, no such offer may be on the table.
Rick Santorum Takes a Bow
Rick Santorum suspended his campaign today. Newt Gingrich all but conceded over the weekend. Ron Paul has been in remission for several weeks. That leaves Mitt Romney as the last man standing in the Republican race.
The scoreboard:
Does this mean Rick Santorum is out of politics?
On the one hand, by finishing second Rick Santorum has a good claim to be next in line, along with Sarah Palin and whoever Mitt Romney picks as his running mate for VP.
On the other hand, if Santorum succeeds in delivering his voting base, he could be in the running for Secretary of Labor, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, or Secretary of Veterans Affairs in a Romney administration.
The scoreboard:
| # of delegates secured so far | NYT | WSJ | CNN | CBS | MSNBC | RCP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mitt Romney | 661 | 661 | 659 | 645 | 573 | 656 |
| Rick Santorum | 285 | 285 | 275 | 252 | 212 | 272 |
| Newt Gingrich | 136 | 136 | 140 | 128 | 137 | 140 |
| Ron Paul | 51 | 51 | 71 | 45 | 34 | 67 |
| | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| Total | 1134 | 1134 | 1145 | 1072 | 956 | 1135 |
| % of delegates secured so far | ||||||
| Mitt Romney | 58% | 58% | 58% | 60% | 60% | 58% |
| Rick Santorum | 25% | 25% | 24% | 24% | 22% | 24% |
| Newt Gingrich | 12% | 12% | 12% | 12% | 14% | 12% |
| Ron Paul | 4% | 4% | 6% | 4% | 4% | 6% |
| % of remaining needed to clinch: | ||||||
| Mitt Romney | 42% | 42% | 43% | 41% | 43% | 42% |
| Rick Santorum | 75% | 75% | 76% | 73% | 70% | 76% |
| Newt Gingrich | 88% | 88% | 88% | 84% | 76% | 87% |
| Ron Paul | 95% | 95% | 94% | 91% | 83% | 94% |
Does this mean Rick Santorum is out of politics?
On the one hand, by finishing second Rick Santorum has a good claim to be next in line, along with Sarah Palin and whoever Mitt Romney picks as his running mate for VP.
On the other hand, if Santorum succeeds in delivering his voting base, he could be in the running for Secretary of Labor, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, or Secretary of Veterans Affairs in a Romney administration.
How They Used to Do Bipartisanship in Washington
Jerry Ford has gotten a bad rap by history. If you're waiting for the current Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to praise John Boehner and Eric Cantor, don't hold your breath.
Here's Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter setting up his campaign for President by bragging about his state's pro-business climate and cutting 300 government departments down to 15.
Monday, April 9, 2012
Hollywood Still Wins the Stereotype Derby
John Derbyshire got himself dropped as a contributor to the conservative National Review magazine by publishing in another online journal some politically incorrect attitudes on how whites should relate towards blacks in the United States.
A great irony is that the same stereotypes that are being universally condemned in Derbyshire are the stock in trade of Hollywood. Indeed, one can go down Derbyshire's list and find Hollywood movies made by some of Hollywood's brightest and most progressive stars with the same themes.
It is perhaps unfair to include Zulu Dawn, The Last King of Scotland, and Hotel Rwanda as they are about Africa and not black Americans. But it should be observed that 66-year-old John Derbyshire is every bit the English twit his last name suggests.
He attended the Northampton School for Boys, a school most notable for its production of rugby players, and graduated from University College London, a third-rate British university (it rates behind Cambridge and Oxford). What informs the Derbyshire psyche is undoubtedly not so much American experience as growing up during the unravelling of Britain's colonial empire, White Man's Burden and all that.
Take 10a, I'm sure that I could with perfect safety walk into a NBA locker room or a Black Chamber of Commerce Meeting. For 10b in Boston, I can think of some white neighborhoods like Southie and Eastie that are good to stay out of at certain times of day. On 10f, the city I've settled in has had a black mayor 3 times while I've lived here to no ill effect. We did have one mayor who had to spend some time in prison, he was not black.
10i is good advice, I use it in everyday encounters with the largely white street people in my city. I did stop Sunday and give assistance to a young black couple and their two young kids. They wanted help interpreting our byzantine parking signs, directions to the Harvard University campus (apparently wanting, if I were to apply Derbyshire stereotypes, to indoctrinate their kids against privileged whites and Asians while still in the stroller), and directions to the nearest good Thai restaurant.
Derbyshire makes something of the fact that there are "no black Fields Medal winners" saying that "this is civilizationally consequential." There have been only 52 recipients of the Fields Medal mathematics prize. That is not a very large sample size from a world population of 7 trillion. Derbyshire's assertion suffers from the black swan problem. For all we know, Jesse Douglas, one of the first two winners in 1936, was part black. Or perhaps the first black Fields Medal winner is now in grade school.
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, referred to in 14b above, was released on December 12, 1967. In it Katherine Hepburn and Sidney Poitier sought to warm up America to interracial marriage. But one product of a short-lived interracial marriage was already 6 years old, future President of the United States Barack Obama.
But if Derbyshire is out at the National Review due to his propensity to stereotype, there may still be room for him in Hollywood. He does have an IMDB entry as an uncredited thug in the 1972 Bruce Lee movie Way of the Dragon. More likely he'll retire on his acquired American citizenship and draw social security on the earnings of his racist thuggery like a good leech.
A great irony is that the same stereotypes that are being universally condemned in Derbyshire are the stock in trade of Hollywood. Indeed, one can go down Derbyshire's list and find Hollywood movies made by some of Hollywood's brightest and most progressive stars with the same themes.
| White Man's Burden | (9a) | A small cohort of blacks - around five percent - is ferociously hostile to whites and will go to great lengths to inconvenience or harm us. |
| Do the Right Thing | (9b) | A much larger cohort of blacks - around half - will go along passively if the five percent take leadership in some event. |
| Animal House | (10a) | Avoid concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally. |
| Training Day | (10b) | Stay out of heavily black neighborhoods. |
| The Warriors | (10c) | If planning a trip to a beach or amusement park at some date, find out whether it is likely to be swamped with blacks on that date. |
| 8 Mile | (10d) | Do not attend events likely to draw a lot of blacks. |
| Zulu Dawn | (10e) | If you are at some public event at which the number of blacks suddenly swells, leave as quickly as possible. |
| Hotel Rwanda | (10f) | Do not settle in a district or municipality run by black politicians. |
| The Last King of Scotland | (10g) | Before voting for a black politician, scrutinize his/her character much more carefully than you would a white. |
| Fort Apache, The Bronx | (10h) | Do not act the Good Samaritan to blacks in apparent distress, e.g., on the highway. |
| Trading Places | (10i) | If accosted by a strange black in the street, smile and say something polite but keep moving. |
| Dangerous Minds | (11) | The mean intelligence of blacks is much lower than for whites. |
| Gone with the Wind | (12) | In a pure meritocracy there would be very low proportions of blacks in cognitively demanding jobs. |
| Brewster's Millions | (13) | In that pool of forty million, there are nonetheless many intelligent and well-socialized blacks (IWSBs). You should consciously seek opportunities to make friends with IWSBs. |
| White Men Can't Jump | (14a) | There is an issue of supply and demand here. Demand comes from organizations and businesses keen to display racial propriety by employing IWSBs. |
| Guess Who's Coming to Dinner | (14b) | There is also strong private demand from middle- and upper-class whites for personal bonds with IWSBs. |
| Soul Man | (15) | Unfortunately the demand is greater than the supply, so IWSBs are something of a luxury good, like antique furniture or corporate jets: boasted of by upper-class whites and wealthy organizations, coveted by the less prosperous. |
It is perhaps unfair to include Zulu Dawn, The Last King of Scotland, and Hotel Rwanda as they are about Africa and not black Americans. But it should be observed that 66-year-old John Derbyshire is every bit the English twit his last name suggests.
He attended the Northampton School for Boys, a school most notable for its production of rugby players, and graduated from University College London, a third-rate British university (it rates behind Cambridge and Oxford). What informs the Derbyshire psyche is undoubtedly not so much American experience as growing up during the unravelling of Britain's colonial empire, White Man's Burden and all that.
Take 10a, I'm sure that I could with perfect safety walk into a NBA locker room or a Black Chamber of Commerce Meeting. For 10b in Boston, I can think of some white neighborhoods like Southie and Eastie that are good to stay out of at certain times of day. On 10f, the city I've settled in has had a black mayor 3 times while I've lived here to no ill effect. We did have one mayor who had to spend some time in prison, he was not black.
10i is good advice, I use it in everyday encounters with the largely white street people in my city. I did stop Sunday and give assistance to a young black couple and their two young kids. They wanted help interpreting our byzantine parking signs, directions to the Harvard University campus (apparently wanting, if I were to apply Derbyshire stereotypes, to indoctrinate their kids against privileged whites and Asians while still in the stroller), and directions to the nearest good Thai restaurant.
Derbyshire makes something of the fact that there are "no black Fields Medal winners" saying that "this is civilizationally consequential." There have been only 52 recipients of the Fields Medal mathematics prize. That is not a very large sample size from a world population of 7 trillion. Derbyshire's assertion suffers from the black swan problem. For all we know, Jesse Douglas, one of the first two winners in 1936, was part black. Or perhaps the first black Fields Medal winner is now in grade school.
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, referred to in 14b above, was released on December 12, 1967. In it Katherine Hepburn and Sidney Poitier sought to warm up America to interracial marriage. But one product of a short-lived interracial marriage was already 6 years old, future President of the United States Barack Obama.
But if Derbyshire is out at the National Review due to his propensity to stereotype, there may still be room for him in Hollywood. He does have an IMDB entry as an uncredited thug in the 1972 Bruce Lee movie Way of the Dragon. More likely he'll retire on his acquired American citizenship and draw social security on the earnings of his racist thuggery like a good leech.
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
CNN Gave, and CNN Hath Taken Away, Blessed Be the Name of CNN
CNN's handling of the Trayvon Martin case has taken a turn straight out of Job 1:21:
In all of this, however, it should be remembered that, unlike Job, Trayvon Martin is not going to get his life back. Whether George Zimmerman should get his life back still needs to be tried in a court of law.
For CNN and other media outlets who insist on trying this case in the court of public opnion. You've just proved yourselves naked.
Update: This is worse than decoding the Zimmerman telegram. According to CNN, yet another audio enhancer says the words were "fucking punks."
"Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord."CNN fed the flames of racial tension in Sanford, Florida by creating and airing an enhanced audio of George Zimmerman where he seemed to be uttering the racial slur "fucking coons." Well, now CNN has another enhancement of that same audio where George is muttering "its fucking cold."
In all of this, however, it should be remembered that, unlike Job, Trayvon Martin is not going to get his life back. Whether George Zimmerman should get his life back still needs to be tried in a court of law.
For CNN and other media outlets who insist on trying this case in the court of public opnion. You've just proved yourselves naked.
Update: This is worse than decoding the Zimmerman telegram. According to CNN, yet another audio enhancer says the words were "fucking punks."
Romney! Romney! Romney!
Mitt Romney picked up all the Easter candy on Tuesday with wins in Wisconsin, Maryland, and Washington, DC. Were the three wins decisive? You be the judge:
Here's the delegate scoreboard:
Mitt Romney is now on the downhill slope with more than half the delegates he needs to clinch the nomination. Ron Paul is close to mathematical elimination with Newt Gingrich not far behind. Romney will just roll on over them if they go winless when the next set of five states vote on April 24.
It's going to be a long three weeks for Rick Santorum. He needs a win on April 24 in his home state of Pennsylvania to have any credibility. He now needs 73% of the remaining delegates to actually win the nomination. That's a big mountain to climb.
| Candidate | Wisconsin | Maryland | DC |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mitt Romney | 43% | 49% | 70% |
| Rick Santorum | 38% | 29% | - |
| Ron Paul | 12% | 10% | 12% |
| Newt Gingrich | 6% | 11% | 11% |
| Jon Hunstman | 1% | 1% | 7% |
| Michele Bachmann | 1% | - | - |
Here's the delegate scoreboard:
| # of delegates secured so far | NYT | WSJ | CNN | CBS | MSNBC | RCP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mitt Romney | 655 | 655 | 654 | 642 | 573 | 652 |
| Rick Santorum | 278 | 278 | 270 | 252 | 212 | 269 |
| Newt Gingrich | 135 | 135 | 137 | 128 | 137 | 140 |
| Ron Paul | 51 | 51 | 71 | 45 | 34 | 67 |
| | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| Total | 1120 | 1120 | 1132 | 1069 | 956 | 1128 |
| % of delegates secured so far | ||||||
| Mitt Romney | 58% | 58% | 58% | 60% | 60% | 58% |
| Rick Santorum | 25% | 25% | 24% | 24% | 22% | 24% |
| Newt Gingrich | 12% | 12% | 12% | 12% | 14% | 12% |
| Ron Paul | 5% | 5% | 6% | 4% | 4% | 6% |
| % of remaining needed to clinch: | ||||||
| Mitt Romney | 42% | 42% | 42% | 41% | 43% | 42% |
| Rick Santorum | 74% | 74% | 76% | 73% | 70% | 76% |
| Newt Gingrich | 87% | 87% | 87% | 83% | 76% | 87% |
| Ron Paul | 94% | 94% | 93% | 90% | 83% | 93% |
Mitt Romney is now on the downhill slope with more than half the delegates he needs to clinch the nomination. Ron Paul is close to mathematical elimination with Newt Gingrich not far behind. Romney will just roll on over them if they go winless when the next set of five states vote on April 24.
It's going to be a long three weeks for Rick Santorum. He needs a win on April 24 in his home state of Pennsylvania to have any credibility. He now needs 73% of the remaining delegates to actually win the nomination. That's a big mountain to climb.
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