Yup….you guessed it, they are all racist:

That President Obama lost roughly 40 percent of the vote in Democratic primaries in Arkansas, Kentucky and West Virginia over the last two weeks has drawn massive national headlines.

Those headlines have drawn a collective eyeroll from Democrats — and many others who closely follow national politics — who ascribe the underperformance by the incumbent to a very simple thing: racism.

No, none of these Democrats are willing to put their name to that allegation — either generally or for this story. But, it is, without question the prevalent viewpoint they hold privately.

…Former Texas Rep. Charlie Stenholm, a longtime conservative Democrat, acknowledged that “race is definitely a factor for some Texans but not the majority,” adding: “The most significant factor is the perception/reality that the Obama administration has leaned toward the ultra-left viewpoint on almost all issues.”

Oh, so race is a factor for “some” but he has also leaned ultra-left. That couldn’t be the reason could it?

According to the WaPo, it’s not because these states are mostly conservative (including the Democrats in those states) and they don’t like ultra-left candidates. No, it’s just racism.

Tom Cole, a Republican House Member, dismissed the idea of race as a major factor in opposition to Obama out of hand.

Said Cole:

“Obama fares poorly in states like Oklahoma, Kentucky and Arkansas because he has nothing in common with them. They are rural, he is urban. They are populist, he is elitist. And in case anyone hadn’t noticed, they are conservative while he is liberal. That isn’t just true of Republicans in these states. It is true of Democrats as well.”

Get outta here. We all know it’s because they are all a bunch of redneck racist hillbilly’s.

Sigh….

Surprise Is A Near Sighted Porcupine Falling In Love With A Cactus
Cowboy Proverb

I remember hearing my creative writing instructor say, we should write about things we are familiar with and understand. I repeat this advice to myself at least once a week; my old writing instructor’s words have served well as a guide, but they have never been humorous until today.

When You Got Nothin To Lose, Try Anything
Cowboy Proverb

Robin Abcarian was probably excited about the prospect of covering the horsey story of Ann Romney, while trying to gain political traction for the failed presidency of Barack Obama; however, writing an article on a minnow in the shark tank and trying to expose the secrets of life in the shark world is laughable.

Apparently, Ann Romney sold a horse and the horse turned up lame at a later date. Does Robin know how many advanced Dressage Horses turn up lame at some point. I’ll let you in on a little secret, Robin, nearly all of them. Lameness finishes up all the careers of dressage, jumpers, hunters, and three day event horses; it is not a question of “will” or “if”, it is a question of “when”.

It was the end of a long day in a stuffy Simi Valley office building. Ann Romney had been under oath for more than four hours, testifying in a sometimes contentious deposition about a pricey horse she sold that may or may not have been afflicted with a condition that made him unrideable.

In the airless room, Romney was getting annoyed.

“That really is — that really is irritating,” she said when the opposing attorney implied she didn’t know who looked after her horse in Moorpark when she was at her home in Boston. “Of course I know who was looking after my horse. You’re just trying to irritate me.”

Stupidity and overwork on the part of a rider or trainer can lead to premature lameness, but if a horse continues to advance and compete, they will eventually become lame. (Ask any human athlete at the upper levels if he has lameness) There are a few “iron horses” that never display lameness, but they are approximately one in a thousand.

Is Dressage an Elitist Sport? It can be, especially, if you ride in Sullivan Canyon, Beverly Hills, Malibu, Calabasas, Thousand Oaks, Hidden Valley, and Moorpark; however, there are low scale operations in those areas, where the riding is comparatively inexpensive. Although, I must report, some of the Liberals’ biggest and wealthiest donors and fat cats are horse owners who live in these areas and their horse stories of indulgence would make delightful reading material for many Americans. I am sure they would gain far more traction than Ann Romney’s deposition over a horse deal that went south. (Not an uncommon event by the way, but when someone feels like a fool in California, someone else should pay.)

When we speak of spending excessive amounts of money on equine indulgences, comparing the Libs in Sullivan Canyon and Malibu, to Ann Romney in Moorpark, would be like running a race between a freight train and a fat man. The LA Times might call some of the Lib Fat Cats with horses and ask if they mind having their horse indulgences opened up to the internet. Ask if they want the public to know of luxury bathrooms in barns that cost more than most homes in California or if they want to hear of wood from Africa and South America being used to build stalls for their horses. Luxury digs for horses within twenty or thirty miles of people living in the drug infested squalor of the ghettos of LA. The same ghetto dwellers for whom they pretend to care for so self-righteously.

Do Not Tamper With The Natural Ignorance Of A Greenhorn
Cowboy Proverb

Ann Romney says she loves her horses and I believe her; although, I have never worked for her and I don’t know her, but I recognize her compassion for animals, for people like her, people with genuine or real compassion for horses, generally have the same compassion for humans.

Many horse owners have no compassion for horses when they can no longer perform, they become more like inanimate objects; to be frank, they become disposable, they become devoid of value when they no longer allow the limelight to shine upon the rider. They are discarded with extreme indifference, for they have served their purpose. This is the real story, a story of cold callous cruelty, especially, among those who wear false compassion on their sleeve.

“It’s like children,” Romney, a mother of five, testified about Super Hit, the horse at the center of the lawsuit. “You don’t … say one is better than the other, but I loved him.”

Ann Romney spends her own money on her horses, she feels they are therapeutic and for those of you who have read my articles on horses, you probably know, I agree with her.

Romney, who rode horses as a girl, began riding seriously as an adult after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1998. “I was losing most of the function of my right side,” she testified at her deposition on June 3, 2010. “And I decided I needed to go back and do what I loved before I couldn’t do it anymore.”

She soon fell in love with dressage, a fussy Olympic sport that is also called “horse ballet.” In dressage, a horse moves in delicate, dance-like steps to music as the rider, formally clad in top hat and tails, imperceptibly guides the animal.

Because it requires tremendous muscle control, dressage also provided Romney unexpected therapeutic benefits.

“Riding exhilarated me; it gave me a joy and a purpose,” Romney told the Chronicle of the Horse magazine in 2008. “When I was so fatigued that I couldn’t move, the excitement of going to the barn and getting my foot in the stirrup would make me crawl out of bed.”

So now, we know why Romney is not suited for the presidency. His wife sold a horse that became lame and during a deposition she became annoyed with a lawyer or maybe it is because she has a healthy hobby, a hobby she pays for with her own money, instead of flying around on vacations at taxpayer’s expense with an entourage. Oh excuse me, Michelle’s vacations are to promote good will around the world and show poor people how the Obamas can spend money on indulgences like separate jets to vacation hot spots, now there is an indulgence.

I would rather write about more significant political ideas, but if the LA Times wants to continue trying to smear Ann Romney over senseless and inane horse trivia, they might be surprised at the some of the secrets of the elite equestrian world.

The Orlando Sentinel has apparently answered the question of whose voice was heard screaming for help in the Trayvon Martin shooting.

In a timeline included in evidence documents released last week, Sanford police spelled out down to the second, what happened the night George Zimmerman fatally shot Trayvon Martin, based on time-stamped calls to their dispatch center.

It shows Zimmerman fired 1 minute, 57 seconds after he hung up.

*1911:12 – Call received from George Zimmerman reporting suspicious person

1913:19 – Zimmerman relays that suspicious person is running from him.

1913:36 – Dispatcher asks Zimmerman if he is following suspicious person

1913:36 – Dispatcher advises Zimmerman “Okay; we don’t need you to do that”

1915:23 – Approximate time call with Zimmerman ends

1916:43 – 911 call placed by (blacked out name) where Zimmerman is heard screaming for help

1917:20 – Shot fired; screams from Zimmerman cease

1917:40 – Officer T. Smith arrives on scene

1919:43 – Officer T. Smith locates and places Zimmerman in custody.

via Patterico

No other version ever made any sense. It’s now abundantly clear that the Angela Corey persecution prosecution is political and nothing more.

The issue of Barack Obama’s birthplace has been simmering for a long time. It has been ridiculed by the left incessantly, as well as by some on the right. The seemingly sensible course is to deny that Obama was born anywhere else but in Hawaii, but as is typical of Obama, nothing is as it initially appears. There are questions that need answers.

Breitbart has disclosed that Obama’s literary agent published a booklet that describes a young Barack Obama as being born in Kenya:

Breitbart News has obtained a promotional booklet produced in 1991 by Barack Obama’s then-literary agency, Acton & Dystel, which touts Obama as “born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.”

The booklet, which was distributed to “business colleagues” in the publishing industry, includes a brief biography of Obama among the biographies of eighty-nine other authors represented by Acton & Dystel.

It also promotes Obama’s anticipated first book, Journeys in Black and White–which Obama abandoned, later publishing Dreams from My Father instead.

All too predictably, the media immediately leaped to defend Obama, asserting this was some sort of oversight:

Barack Obama birth certificate conspiracy theorists have been foiled again.

Conservative-leaning Breitbart.com on Tuesday published a copy of a promotional booklet from Obama’s former literary agency. According to a brief biography in the 1991 booklet, Obama was “born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii,” fueling fire to the idea that the president is not a natural-born American citizen.

As New York magazine noted, the article caused a stir in conservative circles, drawing commentary from the Drudge Report and other popular websites.

However, the woman who wrote Obama’s biography in the pamphlet said Thursday that she had misidentified Obama’s place of birth.

“This was nothing more than a fact-checking error by me — an agency assistant at the time,” Miriam Goderich, who worked for the literary agency Acton & Dystel, told Yahoo News. “There was never any information given to us by Obama in any of his correspondence or other communications suggesting in any way that he was born in Kenya and not Hawaii.”

So the left would have us believe that this woman allowed this error to fester for 20 plus years. Saner heads might question why this remained uncorrected all this time. Maybe she didn’t know Obama had been elected President? From where did she get the notion that Obama could have been born in Kenya?

But then another “Born in Kenya” account emerges- this one from the AP in 2004.

Kenyan-born Obama all set for US Senate

Kenyan-born US Senate hopeful, Barrack Obama, appeared set to take over the Illinois Senate seat after his main rival, Jack Ryan, dropped out of the race on Friday night amid a furor over lurid sex club allegations.

The allegations that horrified fellow Republicans and caused his once-promising candidacy to implode in four short days have given Obama a clear lead as Republicans struggled to fetch an alternative.

Ryan’s campaign began to crumble on Monday following the release of embarrassing records from his divorce. In the records, his ex-wife, Boston Public actress Jeri Ryan, said her former husband took her to kinky sex clubs in Paris, New York and New Orleans.

OK, that was from 2004- a long time ago. Another mistake, no doubt. But then here it is again. Dystel and Goederich, the successor literary agent to the original Acton and Dystel, listed Barack Obama as born in Kenya until April of 2007.

“BARACK OBAMA is the junior Democratic senator from Illinois and was the dynamic keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. He was also the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. He was born in Kenya to an American anthropologist and a Kenyan finance minister and was raised in Indonesia, Hawaii, and Chicago. His first book, DREAMS FROM MY FATHER: A STORY OF RACE AND INHERITANCE, has been a long time New York Times bestseller.”

And it turns out that bio’s are submitted by the authors themselves:

Finally, there should be a more formal narrative Bio of the author.

It strains credulity to think that Obama was entirely unaware of these things- he is aware of absolutely everything that concerns him.

After reading the excerpt from Maraniss’ book Barack Obama: The Story a couple of things stand out. Being a narcissist is nothing new for Obama:

Obama was the central character in his letters, in a self-conscious way, with variations on the theme of his search for purpose and self-identity.

His characters are designed for a specific purpose:

Like many characters in the memoir, he introduced her to advance a theme, another thread of thought in his musings about race.

And there are at least three pronunciations of “Barack”:

She called him Bahr-ruck, with the accent on the first syllable, and a trill of the r’s. Not Bear-ick, as the Anglophile Kenyans pronounced it, and not Buh-rock, as he would later be called, but Bahr-ruck. She said that is how he pronounced it himself, at least when talking to her.

“Dreams” is not really a memoir, but is largely a fiction. It is David Maraniss’ opinion that Obama’s book Dreams from my Father “should not be read as rigorous factual history.”

It’s all very peculiar. We have learned that Obama’s description of his former girlfriend Genevieve Cook is not real but a composite of women he knew. It seems that we know little of the real Barack Obama. People are composites. Everything is “compressed.” Obama claimed to have been born in Kenya. Why?

Clearly, being seen as Kenyan-born because it offered him some advantage. The media has had zero interest in why. Obama got a full scholarship to Occidental College in LA but Obama had steadfastly refused to release his college records. Was his scholarship awarded on the basis of Obama being born in Kenya? Was that the same vehicle he used to gain admission to Columbia and then to Harvard? Obama has freely mixed fantasy with fact his entire life. Was he born in Kenya or was he a fraud? This would be a compelling reason to secret those college records.

Environmentalism and ‘saving the world’ are almost exclusively preoccupations of the left. Outwardly they are noble pursuits, and yet they have always smelt a bit rotten. In order to find the source of the odor it is necessary to look beneath the surface and understand what is going on at the psychological level when someone takes up these causes. Clues are few and far between, so when you find something in the press that hints at a deeper malaise, it’s worth looking at it very closely.

The following comment by English journalist Geoffrey Wheatcroft is one such. He said:

“The great twin political problems of the age are the brutality of the right and the dishonesty of the left.”

By far the more straightforward of the two is the ‘brutality of the right’ and it can be explained by pretty much any of us. For example if I were to summarise my approach to life it would go something like this: “Normally I try to treat other people with respect, but essentially I am selfish and that is what normally guides my actions. I don’t think there is anything wrong with that.” In essence that’s it – the brutality of the right flows from our selfishness. Most of you will relate.

It’s Wheatcroft’s second ‘problem’ that is the clue to what is wrong with environmentalism that we really want to look at. If we drill down into what is meant by the ‘dishonesty of the left’ we eventually come to the concept of ‘pseudo-idealism’. Pseudo-idealism is not real idealism, its feel-good selfishness masquerading as idealism. The vast majority of environmentalists belong to this camp: they preach their cause not from a genuine concern for the environment, but from a genuine concern for feeling good about themselves.

The psychology behind it is that we are all variously embattled at one level or another, and so ‘do-gooding’ can be massively seductive because it is so guilt relieving.

However – and here is the danger – in order to get the full guilt relieving benefit from ‘do-gooding’ (or any of the myriad forms of political correctness including environmentalism), the practitioner has to delude themselves that they are not on a selfish trip. In most cases this is so patently absurd that they have to work very hard at maintaining it. As a result they can become not just a strident advocate, but fanatical and intolerant of others who continue to battle.

This is dangerous because such intolerance is repressive and in essence anti-progress; and I don’t just mean economic progress – at a deeper level this intolerance is repressive of all progress.

In Nineteen Eighty Four George Orwell said, “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face”. If that future isn’t now, it is very close. Political correctness has become so pervasive in all its various guises that the boot may as well have a ‘dolphin friendly’ stamp on it, and as for the face – well we aren’t allowed to discuss its race or its gender or even its age can we – but I can guess it looks pretty much like you and me.

So the dishonesty of the left is manifold – it deludes it’s self that it is selfless when in fact it is extremely selfish; and its insistence we all ‘do good’ masks a threat far more dangerous than the brutality of the right.

So good ol’, “lovable” Joe Biden was in Youngstown Ohio yesterday, firing up the Base.

Click here to view the embedded video.

MSNBC’s Martin Bashir is calling it “Biden’s fire vs. Romney’s misfires“.

“Vigorous blue collar battlecry”?! He “sounds like one of them”? Really?!?!

ABC News:

At a campaign stop in Youngstown, Ohio, today, Vice President Joe Biden lit into Republicans and their presumed presidential nominee Mitt Romney for what he described as a failure to understand the plight of the middle class.

“I resent when they talk about families like mine that I grew up in. I resent the fact that they think we’re talking about envy: it’s job envy, it’s wealthy envy; that we don’t dream,” an impassioned Biden told a crowd of manufacturing workers.

“My mother believed and my father believed that if I wanted to be president of the United States, that I could be, I could be vice president! My mother and father believed that if my brother or sister wanted to be a millionaire, they could be a millionaire! My mother and father dreamed as much as any rich guy dreams!

“They don’t get us! They don’t get who we are!” he yelled before the crowd, drawing loud applause.

And who is Joe Biden? Someone from a blue collar, working middle class family background?

Steve Chapman:

Joe Biden once got in trouble for plagiarizing a speech and inflating his academic record. So it will not surprise you to find that his famous working-class background turns out to be mythical. But it may surprise you to learn that Biden isn’t the one who has trouble with the facts.

~~~

But the legend of Joe Biden, born in a welding shop, dies hard with political reporters, who find it easier to romanticize a gritty, hardscrabble childhood than a conventionally comfortable one.

The facts are there for anyone who wants to look at them.

~~~

So where did he get his working-class reputation? Partly it comes from Biden’s streetwise demeanor and his preoccupation with the fact that his family wasn’t as well-off as some of the people he knew — which seems to have given him a permanent chip on his shoulder. Partly it comes from his frequent tributes to blue-collar folks, such as the firefighters who took him to the hospital when he suffered an aneurysm.

But mostly it reflects journalists’ weakness for simple, vivid narratives.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Michelle Malkin on Uncle Joe’s audience a few days ago:

The nation’s vice campaigner in chief went on the attack against Republicans this week, clad in full populist armor. “These guys don’t have a sense of the average folks out there,” said The Everyman. “They don’t know what it means to be middle class.” But who was his audience?

Nope, not blue-collar workers in Allentown, Pa. Biden was speaking to an exclusive club of $10,000-per-couple campaign donors gathered at the home of the Senate’s $200 million man, Democratic Mass. Sen. John Kerry, in Georgetown, D.C.

That’s smack dab in the middle of Beltway America, where they like a twist of cognitive dissonance with their aperitifs.

The White House is once again drawing on the fantastical myth of middle-class Joe to portray Republicans as out-of-touch elitists. A Washington Post headline described Biden “digging back into his roots to move Obama forward.” But the administration’s leading populist poster child is a wretched symbol of entrenched Washington power. And his fables are getting oldy-moldy.

And on his speech in Youngstown yesterday, Malkin writes:

While Biden’s family came from humble beginnings, the wheeler-dealer politician and his family (including two lobbyist sons) have reaped the benefits of public office for nearly a half-century. The entrenched senior senator from Delaware amassed wealthy donors and crooked cronies over six Senate terms. These are some of the stories, reported in my book “Culture of Corruption,” that have been whitewashed out of the loquacious veep’s campaign folklore:

–Biden’s custom-built house in Delaware’s ritziest Chateau Country neighborhood, assessed at $2.5 million four years ago, is the Bidens’ most valuable asset. He secured the estate with the help of a corporate executive who worked for Biden’s top campaign donor, credit card giant MBNA. In 1996, Biden sold his previous mansion to MBNA Vice Chairman John Cochran. The asking price was $1.2 million. Cochran forked over the full sum. Biden then paid $350,000 in cash to real estate developer Keith Stoltz for a 4.2-acre lakefront lot. Stoltz had paid that same amount five years earlier for the undeveloped property.

–Among Pal Joey’s dearest old pals: campaign finance “rainmaker” William Oldaker, who showered generous benefits on both the elder Biden and his lobbyist son, Hunter; Baltimore-based Peter Angelos, whose law firm gave Biden $156,250; Wilmington-based Young Conaway Stargatt and Taylor, which kicked in $127, 979; and Pachulski Stang Zielhl and Jones, which donated $145,625, according to The American Lawyer.

–Disgraced trial lawyer Richard Scruggs donated $11,500 to Biden in 2008. After Scruggs was convicted of attempting to bribe a federal judge, Biden tried to show his ethical bona fides by donating the money to a worthy charity. But Biden couldn’t steer clear of nepotism. The money ended up with the National Prostate Cancer Coalition — a charity where, The American Lawyer pointed out, Biden’s son Hunter sits on the board of directors.

–Another Biden family pal in the trial lawyers’ community: Jeff Cooper. With his partner, John Simmons, the 39-year-old Cooper built one of the biggest asbestos litigation firms in the country. SimmonsCooper, based in Madison County, Ill., has donated a whopping $196,050 to Biden’s campaigns since 2003, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics in Washington, D.C. In that same time frame, the firm poured $6.5 million into lobbying against a key tort reform bill — which Sen. Biden worked hard to defeat. Without a hint of irony, Cooper extolled Biden’s anti-tort reform stance: “He understands the plight of the little guy and is against huge corporate interest.” But what Biden did was help fuel lucrative business for the tort bar. When courts in SimmonsCooper’s home base in Illinois finally started cracking down on what had become “America’s No. 1 judicial hellhole” for filing out-of-control tort claims, the firm turned East. And in Joe Biden’s Delaware, they created a new sanctuary.

Back on Obama 2012 Fantasy Island, Biden insists on marketing himself as the humble “son of an automobile man.” Give him this: He spins like a used-car salesman.

The Blaze also points out:

There are plenty of gems in that segment, but how about when he seems to catch himself while discussing his parents telling him he could be president if he wanted to, only to realize quickly he only ended up being vice president:

My mother believed and my father believed, that if I wanted president of the United States, I could be, I could be vice president. [Actual quote as it was delivered]

There’s also this:

I resent the fact that they think we’re talking about, we’re envy* — “it’s job envy”, “it’s wealth envy.” [Emphasis added]

President Obama is also hardly of a modest means, non-privileged background.

Yet Democrats continue to identify themselves with the working middle class rather than with the 1 percenters.

No…we’re not talking about America’s merriest, happy warrior-in-chief.

Toni Morrison named Bill Clinton America’s first “black” president in the same sense that Barack Obama is being heralded by Newsweek (are they merely trying to compete with Time’s cover?) as America’s first “gay” president. But who was America’s first actual gay president? It certainly wasn’t Abraham Lincoln.

Well, here’s the straight “news”:

Tina Brown would like you to think that our 44th commander in chief is the “First Gay President.” Jim Loewen would like you to know that title actually belongs to our country’s 15th leader, James Buchanan. After taking a moment to smack Newsweek for the “cheap sensationalism” of its buzzy cover, Loewen imparts a history lesson. “Buchanan was gay, before, during and after his four years in the White House,” he writes for Salon. And the country was well aware of it.

Loewen on the subject of “chronological ethnocentrism”:

Loewen’s intention isn’t just to give you a new trivia tidbit: It’s to explain why Buchanan isn’t lauded as such, and what that means. Quite simply, our “touching belief in progress” is the problem. “We must be more tolerant now than we were way back in the middle of the 19th century! Buchanan could not have been gay then, else we would not seem more tolerant now.” Loewen urges us to embrace a more complex national history, one in which “we all moved backward” for about 50 years beginning in 1890, particularly in terms of race relations. “If we can rid ourselves of the fantasy that we are always getting better, then maybe we can create a nation that actually becomes more tolerant,” he writes. “Then we might—again—elect a real gay president.” Click for his entire column.

Not to make more out of this than is warranted, Loewen concludes:

President Obama’s change of heart about gay marriage remains significant. It does show increasing tolerance compared to our recent past. During the nadir of race relations, that terrible period between 1890 and about 1940 when white America went more racist in its thinking than at any other time, the U.S. also clamped down on beards, liquor (briefly) and, yes, homosexuals. As Jackie Robinson was not the first black player in Major League Baseball, but rather the first after the nadir, so President Obama is not our “first gay” president (Forgive me: I cannot seem to retype Newsweek’s silly headline without putting quotation marks around the words), but only our “first” since the nadir.

Remembering that James Buchanan was homosexual complexifies our national narrative, to be sure, but it is a complexity that we need.

Daily Beast:

Obama has twice been called the first woman president: first in 2008, by Newsweek’s Martin Linsky, and then again by The Washington Post’s Kathleen Parker in 2010. The argument in both cases was that Obama’s wisdom, values, and management style were similar to that of a female leader. In 2009 the Associated Foreign Press asked if Obama was the first Asian-American president while, the same year, Geraldo Rivera suggested he might be the first Hispanic president. Then, in 2011, New York magazine declared him the first Jewish president. “Expectations were high that editor Tina Brown would do something typically attention-grabbing to mark this occasion, but this effort seems, well, cliché,” Randall writes. “It wasn’t going to be long before someone outed our first black, female, Jewish, Hispanic, Asian-American president as gay.”

That’s just so….”gay”.

When will the sexual, ethnic, and religious identity of our president cease to matter?

As an aside and afterthought…now I’m curious to know who was America’s merriest of presidents?

He was injured- just as he said he was.

A medical report compiled by the family physician of accused Trayvon Martin murderer George Zimmerman and obtained exclusively by ABC News found that Zimmerman was diagnosed with a “closed fracture” of his nose, a pair of black eyes, two lacerations to the back of his head and a minor back injury the day after he fatally shot Martin during an alleged altercation.

Zimmerman faces a second degree murder charge for the Feb. 26 shooting that left the unarmed 17-year-old high school junior dead. Zimmerman has claimed self defense in what he described as a life and death struggle that Martin initiated by accosting him, punching him in the face, then repeatedly bashing his head into the pavement.

Also today, a trove of documents are being examined by lawyers for both the defense and prosecution as part of discovery in Zimmerman’s trial — including 67 CDs worth of documents, video of Martin on the night of the shooting, his autopsy report and videos of Zimmerman’s questioning by police.

Zimmerman’s three-page medical report is included in those documents that the defense could use as evidence.

And it also turns out that, contrary to the “Official Report of the Funeral Director”, Trayvon Martin had bloody knuckles- as one might suffer when punching someone else in the face.

WFTV has confirmed that autopsy results show 17-year-old Trayvon Martin had injuries to his knuckles when he died.

The information could support George Zimmerman’s claim that Martin beat him up before Zimmerman shot and killed him.

The autopsy results come as Zimmerman’s attorney, Mark O’Mara continues to go over other evidence in the case.

O’Mara wouldn’t comment on the autopsy evidence, but WFTV legal analyst Bill Sheaffer said it’s better for the defense than it is for the prosecution.

WFTV has learned that the medical examiner found two injuries on Martin’s body: The fatal gunshot wound and broken skin on his knuckles.

When you compare Trayvon’s non-fatal injury with Zimmerman’s bloody head wounds, the autopsy evidence is better for the defense, Sheaffer said.

“It goes along with Zimmerman’s story that he acted in self-defense, because he was getting beaten up by Trayvon Martin,” Sheaffer said.

The injury to Martin’s knuckle also fits with Zimmerman’s story that before he shot and killed Martin, Martin had broken his nose and knocked him to the ground, slamming his head on the sidewalk.

It continues to fall into place for Zimmerman. The big problem for him is that this execrable, disgusting, racist administration is likely to hunt Zimmerman down for eternity until they find him guilty of something- even if it turns out to be littering.

WFTV has learned charges against George Zimmerman could be getting more serious.

State prosecutors said Zimmerman, a neighborhood watchman, profiled and stalked 17-year-old Trayvon Martin before killing him, so the FBI is now looking into charging him with a hate crime.

Zimmerman admitted to killing Martin in February during a confrontation. However, he claims the shooting was in self-defense. He’s facing a second-degree murder charge, which carries a maximum possible sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. But if Zimmerman is charged and found guilty of a federal hate crime involving murder, he could face the death penalty.

Eric Holder is very sensitive about anyone who offends “my people” and could give a damn about anyone else. There is NOTHING to indicate George Zimmerman profiled Trayon Martin simply because of his race. In fact, there is potent evidence to the contrary:

Though civil rights demonstrators have argued Zimmerman should not have prejudged Martin, one black neighbor of the Zimmermans said recent history should be taken into account.

“Let’s talk about the elephant in the room. I’m black, OK?” the woman said, declining to be identified because she anticipated backlash due to her race. She leaned in to look a reporter directly in the eyes. “There were black boys robbing houses in this neighborhood,” she said. “That’s why George was suspicious of Trayvon Martin.”

None of that will matter to this cretinous Attorney General or his equally miserable boss. George Zimmerman is more black than Elizabeth Warren is Cherokee. But since the left wing media has Zimmerman characterized as a cracker, that will be his fate and Shylock Holder will seek his pound of flesh.

Rarely has this country has so badly needed a change in leadership. And you are still a blithering idiot to believe anything Barack Obama says. An absolute moron.

Just what planet are these kangaroos from:

Click here to view the embedded video.

THE Kuala Lumpur Tribunal on War Crimes sat for five days in the courtroom at the Al-Bukhary Foundation to listen to charges against George W. Bush, Richard B. Cheney, Donald H. Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzalez, David Addington, William Haynes II, Jay Byber and John Choon Yoo of the United States for the torture of detainees held in the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo detention camps.

Many would ask of what use is this hearing by a toothless tribunal.

The answer is that the international community has failed in the proper implementation of international laws to which all countries have officially subscribed. Worse still, the laws are applied only against weak countries and their leaders who are judged and punished.

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The prosecution team of the Kuala Lumpur Tribunal cited the Geneva Convention on torture 1949, the Convention against Torture 1984, Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations Charter, the US Constitution itself and the rules of conduct of the US military to prove that the treatment of the prisoners constituted torture as understood and accepted by international laws.

The acts were cruel, inhuman and degrading. The accused were proven to have authorised, connived in the commission of acts of torture and cruel, degrading and inhuman acts against victims in violation of international laws, treaties and conventions.

The prosecution also gave details of the action by the accused, through their memos, approvals and directives for the torture of the prisoners.

Former president George W. Bush declared that al-Qaeda was not a party to the conventions or agreements and was, therefore, not protected by them. Further, it was argued that should these prisoners capture American personnel, they would treat their captives in the same way.

The defence in mitigation said that the situation after the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers rendered existing conventions, treaties and laws invalid. The accused were entitled to act in contravention of all laws, treaties and conventions.

After four days of hearings, the tribunal adjourned to consider the verdict. On the fifth day, that is, 24 hours after the hearings ended, the tribunal gave a 19-page written judgment, finding that the prosecution had established beyond reasonable doubt that the accused had “engaged in a web of instructions, memos, directives, legal advice and action that established a common plan and purpose, joint enterprise and/or conspiracy to commit the crimes of torture and war crimes, including and not limited to a common plan and purpose to commit the following crimes in relation to the “war on terror” that was launched by the US and others in Afghanistan and Iraq:

TORTURE;

CREATING, authorising and implementing a regime of cruel, inhumane and degrading treatments;

VIOLATING, customary international law;

VIOLATING, the Conventions against Torture 1984;

VIOLATING, the Geneva Convention III and IV 1949;

VIOLATING, the common article III, the Geneva Convention of 1949; and

VIOLATING, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations Charter.“

Yes, we cannot enforce the decisions of the Kuala Lumpur tribunal. But the world must know through the hearings that the leaders of a country that frequently takes the high ground to lecture the world on human rights, the rule of law, etc are no better, but are worse than the many leaders and countries they condemned as not adhering to acceptable behaviour, practice and respect for the norms of modern civilisation.

Malaysia had the Internal Security Act. Malaysia did detain people without trial. But it should be noted that there is a law providing for this. The US government of former president Bush detained people before there was any law providing for such detentions.

Malaysia never sanctions torture. Certainly, the Malaysian government never spelt out the kind of torture that could be inflicted on the prisoners. But the US leaders knowingly sanction torture and describe the kind of torture to be carried out, even as they condemn others of being oppressive against their own people.

It is a pity that not many people attended the hearings. They would be horrified at what the leaders of the foremost democracy in the world have sanctioned and are guilty of.

That in this day and age, there are still leaders of governments who break laws and legalise behaviour incompatible with modern civilisation is mind chilling. That this country is the greatest military power in the world is truly frightening.

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The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal is a court of conscience. It may not have the power to have its findings implemented. But there can be no doubt that without the hearing before the tribunal, the crimes of the leaders of powerful countries will never be exposed to the world.

The findings of the court will be communicated to all governments, will be broadcast to the whole world through the Internet, and via international non-governmental organisations.

The people of the US are well known for their insularity. They know little about the world beyond their borders. They believe that they are always right.

Recall as well that former president Bush cancelled his trip to Switzerland last year due to threats from human rights groups. In 2009, Spanish prosecutors sought to indict “the Bush Six”. In 2008, Vincent Bugliosi came out with a book, detailing a legal framework for how he’d go about prosecuting George W. Bush. In 2006, filmmakers fantasized about the assassination of President Bush.

At least there’s some level of consistency here in their condemnation:

“Right now Guantanamo is still open, people are still being held there and are still being tortured there.”

In response to questions about the difference between the Bush and Obama Administrations, he added: “If President Bush was the President of extra-judicial torture then US President Barak Obama is the President of extra judicial killing through drone strikes. Our work has only just begun.”

After the guilty verdict reached by five senior judges was delivered, Mohamad said: “Powerful countries are getting away with murder.”

One of the most typically heard human rights-related comments about the Tribunal’s recent success in the post 9/11 reign of terror leads the comments on Press TV’s breaking news coverage of this event: “Obama and his cohorts need also to be tried for crimes against humanity.”

Thoughts?

I guess smartphones are now going to have to come with smartusers:

Avid texters beware: Fort Lee, N.J. police said they will begin issuing $85 jaywalking tickets to pedestrians who are caught texting while walking.

“It’s a big distraction. Pedestrians aren’t watching where they are going and they are not aware,” said Thomas Ripoli, chief of the Fort Lee Police Department.

Ripoli said the borough, which is home to approximately 35,000 residents, has suffered three fatal pedestrian-involved accidents this year. He hopes his crackdown on people who display dangerous behavior while walking will make his town safer, but not everyone is on board with the idea of issuing $85 tickets.

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Two professors at Stony Brook University in New York conducted a study on walking and texting. They found texters are 60 percent more likely to veer off line than non-texters.

“We want to raise awareness that a real disruption occurs because of texting,” Eric Lamberg, co-author of the study, told Long Island Business News. “Texting disrupts your ability much more than does talking.”

So walking and talking on the phone is still okay? How about reading a book and walking? Isn’t that a walker distraction as well? Dan Seifert notes that walking and chewing gum at the same time is still allowed. Phew!

3 “idiot” (I don’t really know if they were idiots or not) pedestrians vs. about 35,000 potential walkers each day. Is it really necessary to create a new law that affects the rest of society to protect people and society from the lack of sound judgment on the part of the few? Is this not a case of an over-reaction law? Or does it make sound sense? Texting and walking, texting and running, texting and doing just about anything at the same time….potentially hazard to society?

With apparently 74 pedestrian crashes last year in Ft. Lee, maybe this is unique to Ft. Lee residents? Looks like it’s the problem of jaywalking in general that’s at issue in that town:

Pedestrians contributed to 20 percent of all traffic fatalities in New Jersey in 2010, the last year for which complete state police statistics have been compiled. Only distracted driving contributed to more deaths — 23 percent.

Combining both factors — as happens when a driver on a cellphone meets a texter on foot — too often leads to trips to hospitals or morgues, yet cops traditionally give breaks to walkers.

“If you give a pedestrian a ticket, he looks at you like you have two heads,” said Fair Lawn Patrolman Tim Franco, who heads the New Jersey Police Traffic Officers Association. “But when you have a serious public safety situation, as in Fort Lee, I’m glad they’re doing this.”

As statewide traffic figures suggest, almost every town has a serious pedestrian safety problem. That’s why the Legislature passed a law in 2009 requiring drivers to stop — not simply yield — to walkers at painted crosswalks.

Dozens of towns, including Fort Lee, Bergenfield and Paramus, sent decoy cops to high-traffic intersections to enforce the law. A state-funded study of the Montclair sting suggested that motorists continued to give walkers the right of way long after the program ended.

But not everybody believes this change suggests success. Drivers often complain that the law has emboldened pedestrians to cross streets — at crosswalks and elsewhere — as if they always have the right of way, sometimes long after traffic lights turn against them.

Indeed, fatality statistics suggest that the biggest pedestrian safety issue isn’t at crosswalks. state police figures for 2010 showed 60 percent of pedestrian deaths occurred either in places where crossing was prohibited or because of unspecified “other pedestrian action in roadways.” That’s cop-speak for doing something stupid, like leaping over a barrier or some other form of jaywalking. Figures for 2009 were similar.

The law seems to be backing itself with a study by Erik M. Lamberg and Lisa M. Muratori, and published in Gait & Posture:

Abstract

Cell phone use among pedestrians leads to increased cognitive distraction, reduced situation awareness and increases in unsafe behavior. Performing a dual-task, such as talking or texting with a cell phone while walking, may interfere with working memory and result in walking errors. At baseline, thirty-three participants visually located a target 8m ahead; then vision was occluded and they were instructed to walk to the remembered target. One week later participants were assigned to either walk, walk while talking on a cell phone, or walk while texting on a cell phone toward the target with vision occluded. Duration and final location of the heel were noted. Linear distance traveled, lateral angular deviation from the start line, and gait velocity were derived. Changes from baseline to testing were analyzed with paired t-tests. Participants engaged in cell phone use presented with significant reductions in gait velocity (texting: 33% reduction, p=0.01; talking: 16% reduction, p=0.02). Moreover, participants who were texting while walking demonstrated a 61% increase in lateral deviation (p=0.04) and 13% increase in linear distance traveled (p=0.03). These results suggest that the dual-task of walking while using a cell phone impacts executive function and working memory and influences gait to such a degree that it may compromise safety. Importantly, comparison of the two cell phone conditions demonstrates texting creates a significantly greater interference effect on walking than talking on a cell phone.

One of the co-authors of the study:

“We were looking at whether texting had more disruptions than talking on a cell phone,” Lamberg said.

Researchers asked participants to walk to a point 8 feet away and then asked them to return and repeat the exercise while texting, as well as talking on cell phones.

The researchers found “gait velocity is reduced when using a cell phone while talking or texting,” that “navigational errors occur when texting while walking” and “texting while walking produces greater interference than talking on a cell phone.”

“Cell phone use among pedestrians leads to increased cognitive distraction, reduced situation awareness and increases in unsafe behavior,” according to the abstract of the study in Gait and Posture online. “Performing a dual-task, such as talking or texting with a cell phone while walking, may interfere with working memory and result in walking errors.”

Participants who texted while walking “veered off course, demonstrating a 61 percent increase in lateral deviation and 13 percent increase in distance traveled.”

Lamberg said this shows the impact such distractions have on walking, an activity that seems automatic.

For many people, doing anything that requires diverting brain power for the sake of multitasking obviously reduces attention from one thing in order to engage in another. Some people are good at multitasking. Others are not. You don’t need a study to prove that someone enngaged in something more than simply walking will be less alert. But the purpose of the clinical research wasn’t to study pedestrian & traffic safety issues:

“We are using the findings to help physical therapy patients improve true functional walking,” he said, noting some tasks may affect their gait or certain aspects of memory. “In rehabilitation, we should use this as a tool to prepare our patients to be more ready to function in a natural environment.”

He said patients going through rehabilitation might even be told to text or talk while walking as they seek to regain their stride.

“We think using dual-task methodology is a way to challenge people during rehabilitation,” Lamberg said, noting, at a minimum, people might be prepared for this dual tasking. “Using cell phone use as part of a gait-training paradigm isn’t common in physical therapy.”

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“We want to raise awareness that a real disruption occurs because of texting,” Lamberg said of the bigger picture. “Texting disrupts your ability much more than does talking.”

Should texting while walking be banned? That’s not the idea behind the research.

“Absolutely not,” Lamberg said. “I think it’s just to raise an awareness to this issue, that it does disrupt your ability to walk naturally.”

Here are a couple of examples of really dumb laws:

Greene, NY: It’s against the law to eat peanuts and walk backwards down the street while a concert is playing

Marion, OH: It’s a violation to eat a donut while walking backwards.

In Devon Connecticut:

It is unlawful to walk backwards after sunset.

While in Hartford you aren’t allowed to cross the street while walking on your hands (was this a frequent problem?).

Of course, there are tons like them.

So do we need more and more cumbersome laws to protect people from their own idiocy?

Who’s responsible: Alexa or the state of New York:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Or both? And does this incident require more legislation?! Or just more common sense on the part of both the city workers and Alexa?

Even malls can be dangerous:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Dumb solution idea? Legislate a fountain ban on malls or the city in general (after all, pedestrians also exist outside of malls- and they could sue!); or, or course, create a law banning texting while walking in a mall.

That lady who fell in could have seriously embarrassed hurt herself! Let’s legislate before that happens to someone else!

While we’re at this, why aren’t we banning swimming pools instead of guns?