Fish Fear Me

Celebrate Civilization Tonight

It's back once again, my friends. The annual event in which you can publicly proclaim whether you are on the side of civilization or some backwards religion, "Earth Hour," is upon us. Being the public service sort of guy that I am, I will present a simple guide that anyone can use to decide which side they wish to represent.

If you wish to side with the people who view humanity as an infestation, who would prefer the days when all but the richest of mankind feared the night and huddled behind walls and gates after the sun went down, then you should turn off all of your lights tonight at 8:30 local time. You should also then spend the next hour contemplating the pain that your existence inflicts on the Goddess Gaia. Actual self-flagellation is not required, but highly encouraged. 

That's for the little people only, of course. One percenters who are up to date with their eco-indulgences are naturally excused.

On the other hand, there are those of us who recognize the blessings that our recent ancestors bequeathed to us with the internal combustion engine and a power grid that allows us to vanquish darkness and time-consuming and tedious toil with the flip of a switch. Many of their ancestors spent most of their lives toiling at those tasks that we take for granted today.

I don't know about you, but just as an example, I'm profoundly grateful that for clean clothes I don't have to use the washboard and clothes-wringer that my grandmother still had in her basement, though no longer used, when I was a kid. Ditto for having to spend hours each day gathering fuel to cook with or heat my home. 

So if you are not into self-flagellation and self-indulgent pseudo-religions, let your neighbors know and turn on as many lights, inside and outside, as you can at 8:30 local time tonight. Let your neighbors know that you stand by civilization and the advancements that have turned most of us from a people simply scrambling to survive into a society that has time for intellectual and leisure pursuits that were undreamed of 100 years ago.

Pissing off that sour-faced jackass across the street is just gravy.

If An Olbermann Falls On Current TV And No Viewers Are There To See It, Does He Make A Sound?

I wasn't going to post about this:

Former Vice President Al Gore’s Current TV LLC dismissed its lead anchor Keith Olbermann after a year, saying he no longer represented the channel’s values.

But then I came across what has to be the line of the day:

Keith Olbermann has been fired from Current TV, because he no longer reflects the company’s values, it was announced today.

He will be replaced by a man who cheated on his wife with a prostitute.

I've said this before and I'll say it again, God keeps us around because he has one heck of a sense of humor.

Does Not! Does Too!

The City of Sanford has posted the police station surveillance camera video that shows George Zimmerman being taken into and through the station with his hands cuffed behind his back on the night that Trayvon Martin was killed.

Some people, egged on by an irresponsible ABC News, have decided that it conclusively shows that Zimmerman was uninjured and his story about that night is a lie.

Others claim one moment does appear to show a mark on the back of Zimmerman's head.

You can watch the video yourself on YouTube at the first link. My take is that it is not of sufficient resolution to decide one way or another and that Zimmerman's red and black jacket makes it impossible to see any stains that may be there. I have a nifty idea though:

Let's wait until the investigation is finished and/or the closeup photos that the police almost certainly took are released. 

It's possible that the police didn't take any pictures of Zimmerman's injuries, but that would be incredibly inept. And on that point, while I've heard plenty of people charge the Sanford PD with bungling the investigation, none of them have actual knowledge of what was or was not done and their charges to now have simply been wild speculation, some of which has already been refuted.

For example, "Zimmerman kept his weapon." No, it has been seized as evidence.

"They just let Zimmerman go." No, as this video shows and the preliminary police report states, Zimmerman was disarmed, cuffed, and taken into custody for questioning. He was not charged and booked that night, but to just say he "wasn't even arrested" leaves a false impression that the Sanford PD didn't even care that he had shot someone.

I think it's 100 to 1 against the Sanford PD not having closeups documenting the extent of Zimmerman's injuries, or non-injuries, that night. Unfortunately, after today I suspect a fair number of people will not believe them if they do in fact show that Trayvon Martin injured Zimmerman. Nice work ABC News, I hope nobody eventually dies in some riot because of your yellow journalism.

Like most everything else about this case, I don't know one way or another. I'm just going to go where the evidence, the actual evidence and not wild speculation, takes me. Some of the hot heads on both sides might try that.

Hahahahaha...yeah, the hot heads might try that. Sorry, lost my head there for a second.

Spike Lee Is Still A Douchebag

Spike Lee has finally apologized to the Florida couple whose address he sent out to 250,000 Twitter followers when he mistakenly thought he was retweeting George Zimmerman's address. 

"I Deeply Apologize To The McClain Family For Retweeting Their Address.It Was A Mistake.Please Leave The McClain's In Peace.Justice In Court."

Not only is that apology several days late, even if the address had been accurate it was a stupid and reckless thing to do. What if somebody had taken that info and decided to act on it? An attack on the McClain's would have been horrific, but a vigilante attack on George Zimmerman would have been the same. 

"Justice In Court" is the right sentiment and I'm glad Lee has come around to it, but he needs to apologize for retweeting any address at all, not just the wrong one. 

Until then he's still being a douchebag as far as I'm concerned.

Great Moments In, "I Knew I Should Have Stayed In Bed Today!"

Yesterday a Jet Blue flight from JFK to Las Vegas was diverted to Amarillo when the captain lost it in mid-flight. And when I say lost it, I mean lost it. This line from the FBI affidavit in the case has a good chance of making it as the understatement of the month:

The FO became really worried when Osbon said "we need to take a leap of faith."

Nothing like your lead pilot sitting next to you and talking about a leap of faith. That would be bad enough by itself, but if you read the full context it's even worse.

Can you imagine how that first officer must have felt as his captain fully hopped aboard the crazy train right there in the cockpit? If by some chance his anti-perspirant actually held up he can land one heck of an endorsement contract.

Thankfully he left the cockpit and was later subdued with the help of passengers before he could get back in. He faces criminal charges, but I can't imagine that those won't go away as long as he gets psychiatric help. Hopefully he will recover, but his piloting days are over I would think. If that might not be the case, please don't tell me. 

Monday Stuff

We have a bit of a cool down in the weather up here, which puts us closer to average temps for this time of year. Close, but not all the way there. It looks like the much above average temps will bounce back and if so, Friday will mark three weeks since the last time we saw temps below freezing. I didn't get as much done outside during this past weekend as I had hoped, but I'm going to try to plant at least some vegetable seeds by the end of this coming weekend. I'm still going to wait on the flowers and tomatoes a few more weeks.

This past Saturday night was the end of season FFL party, which is the major reason I didn't get much done on Sunday. I wisely stopped with the beers well before I had to drive home, but we continued to play cards and I didn't get home until a little before 2:00 A.M. Since I was disgustingly sober and not really tired, I naturally had to have a beer and a bump. Yeah, I was basically worthless yesterday.

Another shoe dropped today in the Trayvon Martin shooting with a partial leak of information from the official investigation that supposedly was never done by the Sanford PD. It is part of Zimmerman's account of what happened that night and seems to match what one witness saw, which was Zimmerman lying on his back and Martin on top him, punching him or slamming his head on the ground before the shot was fired. I think we need to continue to wait for the report to be released or presented as part of a trial before coming to conclusions, but I will point out a couple more things.

There was an initial investigation, contrary to what many have said. I've seen an awful lot of people call it shoddy or some such, and perhaps it was, but how can anybody tell if it has not been released in full to the public? It's not hard to predict that there will be more shoes dropping and I stand by my prediction that the full details of the case will be far more ambiguous than the narrative we were initially presented. I would not be surprised if one of those shoes to drop will be that Trayvon Martin's parents have known all along these details that are dribbling out. And how those details formed the legal basis for the Sanford PD to release Zimmerman that night and why the local DA has been so careful about pressing any charges. 

I have no idea how the Supreme Court will rule on Obamacare. I should be paying attention to it, I know, but I can't seem to muster up much energy. Maybe that's because my reading of the Commerce Clause is historically so dated as to make me a crank in most people's view. I'll still quietly assert though, that many of our current and future massive problems are due to our failure to maintain the constitutional boundaries between local, state, and federal governments.

I forgot to mention it last week, but congratulations to the University of Minnesota Women's hockey team for winning the national championship this year. The U of M Men's team qualified for the Frozen Four yesterday by beating arch rival North Dakota 5-2. They will face a very tough Boston College team in Tampa(Tampa?) on April 5.

"Journalists" Suck

Part of the reason for incivility in our public discourse is plain old nastiness, but I think part of it is also just how easy it is for different realities to exist around the same issue or circumstance. Most of our so-called intellectual and political elites are quick to blame the internet and its unwashed masses for causing that by spreading falsehoods and outright disinformation, and that certainly does happen. But the truth is the legacy media is just as capable of distributing false information as anyone else, and the damage they do with their facade of integrity is far worse to our political and social fabric than anything some obscure group or blogger throws out there. This morning gave us one more blatant bit of incompetence, or laziness, or maybe even outright malice that proves that point.

Here's a link to a clip and accompanying story from ABC News' Good Morning America this morning about the Trayvon Martin killing. ABC's Dan Harris interviewed George Zimmerman's legal adviser, Craig Sonner, and one of his friends, Joe Oliver. 

At around the 5:13 mark, Harris committed journalistic malpractice by asserting the following:

"You hear on the 911 tapes, the operator saying to George, do not pursue, and yet he did anyway."

I have heard something similar cited in a number of forums as a reason why Zimmerman was being reckless that night, and it's absolutely untrue. You can listen to the 911 tape yourself, which has been available to the public, not to mention ABC News, for days now. The relevant passage occurs at around 2:22, and nowhere else...

911 operator: "Are you following him?"

Zimmerman: "Yeah."

911 operator: "Okay, we don't need you to do that."

That's it. There was no "do not pursue," nor as I've seen elsewhere, "multiple orders to not pursue" that Zimmerman ignored.

This is not a minor point. It clearly makes it more difficult to claim self-defense if police ordered Zimmerman to stay where he was. I'm sympathetic to the notion that he was unwise to follow Martin, but he was neither asked nor ordered to do so.

For some reason Zimmerman's legal adviser didn't push back at that point and Harris brought it up again at about 6:35...

"But George was told not to pursue. We hear that. This is not a fact that is in question."

That time Joe Oliver did push back and pointed out how Harris was way off-base(see above). Dan Harris then failed at that moment of truth by completely ignoring it, and thus showed his total lack of integrity. 

ABC News proceeded to double-down with a text recap of the interview by one Chris Francesconi that not only completely ignored Oliver's truthful account of the 911 tape, but embellished Harris' original misinformation with the adjective "repeatedly":

"He began to follow Martin, and continued speaking with police, who warned him repeatedly not to approach Martin."

It's no wonder that our perceptions of the truth diverge when a major media organization such as ABC News is so blatantly incompetent, lazy, or outright malicious when it comes to telling the truth. This is just one point in the Martin-Zimmerman case, but like I said, it's an important one regarding the recklessness, or not, of Zimmerman's actions that night.

Now millions of people through first, second, and third-hand citations can cite ABC News as gospel that Zimmerman recklessly ignored police orders of "do not pursue" and did so "repeatedly," even though that is obviously not true. Even though for days now a simple 911 recording clearly says otherwise. And if you disagree with them it will not be surprising if they think you are a little bit nuts, and vice versa. This kind of garbage journalism tears at our social and political fabric.

I would feel better about the profession of journalist if I would ever hear another journalist take this kind of shoddy, or malicious, journalism to task. But I never do. There are no consequences when a Dan Harris, or Chris Francesconi, or ABC News, so totally fucks up the truth. The best one can hope for is perhaps a little dinky correction days after the fact. 

Nobody in journalism really gives a shit about the truth. And that's one reason we are increasingly fracturing as a society. 

Trayvon Martin: Beware The Simple Narrative

The more I read about the Trayvon Martin case, the more it becomes a mess of contradictory information, half-truths, and outright falsehoods. All coated with a mixture of political opportunism, knee-jerk conclusions, and heartless racism. It's enough to make me despair for the future of our nation.

I do not know how all of the facts will bear out, but I think it's fairly certain that the simple narrative of a kid just walking down the sidewalk being confronted and shot will not stand up. That's not to say that I think the shooter, George Zimmerman, is legally or morally right or wrong, just a warning that there is almost certainly more ambiguity to the case than we were told earlier last week. The City of Sanford has a website where some documents and the 911 calls can be reviewed. As far as I know, the full original investigation was forwarded to the local DA but is not yet available to the public.

I think the major news media coverage so far has been its usual dismal fare. More interested in ginning up a controversy and building a narrative than calmly reporting the facts. The pundits across the board have been even worse. Most are more interested in playing political offense or defense and couldn't actually give a flying fuck about Trayvon Martin or George Zimmerman. 

Then there's the average commenter I've run across. In one camp we have shallow fools who would string Zimmerman up tonight if they could and in the another we have drooling morons so filled with racist bile that they can't see the tragedy in a 17-year-old boy losing his life. Yes, there are shades of opinions and an actual camp of reasonable people too, but the number of just casual, nasty, hate-filled commenters is appalling. 

I know that at this point it is madness on my part to propose the following, but I'm going to anyway:

• Let the review of the first investigation and any new investigations proceed and wait until the facts are presented to the public or a jury.
• Stop with the threats of all types before somebody does something stupid and kills somebody else.
• Take off the political prisms and have the decency to see the case for what it is. Both of the young men involved should be treated with honesty and decency and get the justice that they deserve. That includes an accounting for a life taken and the rights that any accused man should get in this country, including the presumption of innocence until proved guilty. 

We desperately need an honest discussion about the plight of many minorities and inner-city Americans. We weren't going to get that before and we're damn sure not going to get it from Trayvon Martin's death. It's all too toxic. Instead of trying to find common decency and humanity it is all about political points. We're heading into an abyss and I see not one single major politician from any side who has the chops to keep us from doing so.

Not one.

Cool It Down A Little

One thing for sure about the Trayvon Martin case, it's driving people insane. I understand the passionate feelings people have and it does seem possible that the investigation has been botched, but this is insane:

So is this kind of talk from Louis Farrakhan:

“Where there is no justice, there will be no peace. Soon the law of retaliation may very well be applied.”

This is lynch mob mentality, no two ways about it, and it's getting to the point where it's scary. It's one thing to demand a more thorough investigation, or even a trial. It's quite another to declare that “We want an arrest, we want a conviction and we want him sentenced for the murder of my son.” That's from Trayvon's father. I understand his grief, but he doesn't get to decide those things.

I'm worried that the emotions now driving this are out of control. What's going to happen if the case goes to trial and the facts lead a jury to acquit Zimmerman? Riots? Retaliation? Or will a jury convict Zimmerman out of fear of sparking such riots with an acquittal? 

Another investigation has been demanded and now that will happen. Predetermining its outcome and convicting in the court of public opinion should not be part of the deal though. I'm fine with President Obama expressing his empathy with Trayvon's family. A quiet word to a few black leaders to cool things down a little would be in order too.

Update: Apparently the insanity is spreading. Here's Geraldo's take:

Trayvon Martin Would Be Alive but for His Hoodie

I'm no fan of the ghetto gangster look, but c'mon, a hoodie?

Then there's this bit of batshit crazy from someone named Karen Finney:

So, when Newt Gingrich, presidential candidate Newt Gingrich says that, quote, "really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works. They have no habit of I do this and you give me cash, unless it's illegal," or Rick Santorum says, "I don't want to make black people's lives easier," or Rush Limbaugh calls a presidential candidate, Senator Barack Obama a magic negro, or Mitt Romney says nothing at all, the effect is dangerous, because they reinforce and validate old stereotypes that associate the poor and welfare as criminal behavior with African-Americans and people of color, calling us lazy, undeserving recipients of public assistance. In the case of Trayvon, those festering stereotypes had lethal consequences. 

I'm surprised she didn't blame George W. Bush too. 

I have the feeling we have just begun to see the crazy around this issue.

 

 

 

Nishi Haiku

Time to take grounders

where the heck is Nishi at?

smoking a heater

@GradysElectric

I guess it was Tsuyoshi Nishioka haiku night on Twitter a couple of nights ago and I missed it. Probably in celebration of Nishi being sent down to Triple-A Rochester on Monday. Of all of the cursed moves in the off season leading to 2011, bringing Nishioka over from Japan has to be the worst. Tom Powers sums up why at the link:

I don't know how he did in grade school back in Japan, but he earned a big fat "F" from the Twins in Baseball Basics. And that's despite a battery of tutors. No instruction ever seemed to stick with him and, as a result, this whole experiment has turned out to be an expensive disaster.

I was astonished when he started last year by standing flat-footed on second base during a double play and getting his leg broken for his error. I blamed the Twins' coaches for that fiasco because they obviously didn't work with him enough in spring training. 

Oops. Sorry about that guys. I was working under the assumption that anybody the Twins would pay $9 million to over three years would be teachable. 

Now that that walking disaster is off the radar for now, maybe it's time to take a closer look at how things are shaping up down in Ft. Myers. Maybe more on that this weekend, and my own Nishi Haiku if I get a minute.