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Election Season 2014

And it has brought us to this trainwreck called ObamaCare and we have bankrupted our kids and grandkids!

We are now headed into the 2014 Election Season and common sense and conservatism are on the rise. Please stand-up and be counted!

Reading Collusion: How the Media Stole the 2012 Election is a great place to start!

The Founding Father's Real Reason for the Second Amendment

And remember the words of Thomas Jefferson "The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." See Video of Suzanna Gratia-Hupp’s Congressional Testimony: What the Second Amendment is REALLY For, below (u-tube HERE).

The Leaders Are Here... Palin, Cruz, Lee, Paul, Chaffetz....

T'S A WONDERFUL LIFE

Can You Really Still Believe That None of These People Would Have Done a Better Job???

Bloggers' Rights at EFF

SIGN THE PETITION TODAY...

Sunday, July 21, 2013

Rand Paul Endorses Sarah Palin for Senate

“From what I’ve heard of Sarah Palin’s positions, there is a great deal of overlap…I’m sure if she were in the U.S. Senate, you’d find her right there with Mike Lee and Ted Cruz and I…”

Via Sarah Palin NET…

Audio: Rand Paul endorses Sarah Palin for Senate 

TIME 100: Rand Paul (By Sarah Palin)

Sarah Palin previously expressed some interest in running for Senate in Alaska against the near universally-despised Mark Begich…

Audio:  Sarah Palin considering running for Senate in Alaska: "Mark Begich has got to be replaced!" 

Palin: I Do Not Want to Leave the Republican Party, But If They Leave Me…

“I hope she runs!  If people like Murkowski and McCain can get elected, surely Palin would be tremendous as a Senator and can win - she and Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Rand Paul... would be a powerful force against the establishment.  And from there, the sky is the limit.”  …AJ

RS McCain: By God, Sarah Palin is Right! AND So Is McCain. Here’s Why BOTH Are, and Why That’s So Important!

Related: 

Palin’s ‘America By Heart’ released in paperback this month; Christmas book to be released in October

Palin to Hannity, I Won’t Stop Until American Have the Good Government They Deserve! 

Sarah Palin Back as Fox News Analyst… 

Rand Paul: Senate Is Arming Al-Qaeda And Voting To Enter The War in Syria

Thursday, July 18, 2013

Ruling By Decree

Obama Tear Down This Fence SC Obama’s Rule by Decree

Obama’s Rule by Decree

Barack Obama has never been clear on the distinction between sovereign and servant, between the American people and those, including himself, elected to do the people’s business. We saw that yet again this week with the president’s unilateral rewrite of the Bataan Death March known as the Affordable Care Act — Obamacare. For this president, laws are not binding expressions of the popular will, but trifling recommendations to be ignored when expedient.

The collapse of law — not just Obamacare but law in general — is the Obama administration’s most egregious scandal. With the IRS here, Benghazi there, and Eric Holder’s institutionalized malevolence crowding the middle, it gets little direct attention. Perhaps it is so ubiquitous, so quotidian, that we’ve become inured to it.

Above all else, though, the office of the president was created to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. For this president, to the contrary, law is non-existent — and not merely law in the traditional sense of our aspiration to be “a nation of laws, not men.” Obama has contorted the law into a weapon against our constitutional order of divided powers and equal protection for every American.

As with most things Obama, this Olympian outrage springs from a kernel of propriety. We want our laws enforced, particularly when they reflect basic obligations of government in a free, civil society. Nevertheless, we know that the resources of government are finite, that laws are numerous and elastic, and that a federalist system implies a significant enforcement role for states. Thus, our legal system is premised on executive discretion. Not every law can or should be enforced to its fullest extent — nobody would want to live in that sort of society. To execute the laws faithfully is to remain mindful of the federal government’s essential but finite role in our framework and to concentrate its limited resources on enforcement of the most vital laws.

As a practical matter, this necessitates selectivity — some laws will go unenforced, some wrongs unaddressed. With a president who acts in good faith, this is not a problem. For example, simple possession of prohibited narcotics is a federal crime. But it is also a state crime. Given the need to prioritize, it is sensible for the feds to focus their efforts on what the federal government was designed for — international and interstate challenges that the states are not well equipped to address. So the Justice Department targets major drug-importation and distribution networks, leaving less serious drug infractions to the local district attorneys. Notice: This does not mean the executive branch is effectively decriminalizing less serious drug offenses in contravention of Congress’s statutes. It means the public’s federal buck goes to where it gets the best bang.

The separation-of-powers principle also has implications for executive discretion. To promote liberty, the Framers constructed a central government of divided authorities in which each branch was given tools to check inevitable encroachments by the others. Congress has an irresistible propensity to enact laws that usurp the powers of the executive and the states, and that erode the rights of the people. But Congress can only write the laws. It must depend on the president to execute them.

A president who believes in good faith that a congressional act is constitutionally invalid may properly decline to enforce it — in fact, he would in good conscience be bound to decline — at least until the Supreme Court has ruled on its validity. Faithfully executing the laws has never mandated that a president enforce unconstitutional statutes.

But note that this is a matter of legal legitimacy, not policy preference. Faithful execution, abiding by the president’s oath of office, means enforcing even those laws a president disagrees with on policy grounds if the laws are plainly constitutional. The Constitution gives Congress a wide berth to enact unwise laws, to say nothing of perfectly sensible laws that are uncongenial to a hard-left ideologue. There is nothing wrong with a president’s working to change those laws; in the meantime, though, he breaks his solemn pledge by failing to enforce them.

Bona fide concerns over resource allocation and constitutionality are narrow exceptions to the general rule that obliges presidents to execute the laws. In Obama’s hands, however, executive discretion has become an affirmative license for lawbreakers. Worse, it has seamlessly devolved into an invitation — an inducement — to official malfeasance. Again, only the executive branch can enforce the law. When executive-branch officials know that illegal actions on their part will not be pursued, they are encouraged to commit them.

Thus, Obama eschews enforcement of the immigration laws not because they are comparatively trivial or adequately covered by state police — indeed, his most notable enforcement efforts are directed not at illegal aliens but at states who dare attempt to see to the law’s faithful execution. Obama’s discretionary non-enforcement is not a good-faith husbanding of federal resources, but a cynical enterprise in rewarding lawbreakers and cultivating them as a dependable political constituency. His Justice Department practices racial discrimination in the enforcement of the civil-rights laws, a grievous betrayal of the Constitution, in order to appease and empower his political base.

The faithful execution of laws is never partisan; under Obama, the execution of laws is intensely partisan. He purports to make “recess appointments” when Congress is not in recess. He skirts Congress’s constitutional war powers by pretending that attacking another country (Libya) is not making war. If his core supporters are damaged by the suffocating laws he champions — most prominently, Obamacare — he claims the power to “waive” their provisions selectively. Meanwhile, huge bureaucracies are encouraged, expressly or by nod-and-wink, to harass the president’s opponents and push forward his redistributionist, production-strangling, Islamist-empowering agenda. The executive order — formerly an intra-branch efficiency device designed to organize the exercise of the president’s constitutional powers and the enforcement of Congress’s laws — has effectively become legislation, the president substituting his edicts for our laws.

In a vibrant, pluralistic society, law as an expression of the sovereign will is unavoidably a product of compromise. In the contentious process, the competing sides bend; they settle on something that neither, given their druthers, would support; and they honorably agree to abide by the result. Under Obama, however, massive laws are enacted — such that no one can conceivably know what the law is. Then the president enforces the parts he approves of, contemptuously disregards the parts that enticed naysayers into compromising, and presumes to amend or repeal inconvenient provisions at his whim.

That is not the rule of law. It is how a dictatorship works.

This column was published at National Review. It subsequently appeared on AIM.org and Western Journalism

Video:  Defying the King 

Another Posh Vacay…The Obamas To Spend A Week At Martha's Vineyard 

After all… “Living in the White House is Often Like Living in A Prison

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Watcher’s Council Nominations – Free At Last Edition

http://globalgrind.com/sites/default/files/images/2013_june/170928867_0.jpg

JoshuaPundit on Jul 17 2013 | Nominations

Welcome to the Watcher’s Council, a blogging group consisting of some of the most incisive blogs in the ‘sphere, and the longest running group of its kind in existence. Every week, the members nominate two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. Then we vote on the best two posts, with the results appearing on Friday.

As I am posting this week’s Watcher’s Council Nominations, watching riots and vandalism in California in the background on my TV and listening to talk radio, I am pondering the questions:  What is really behind these riots and unrest and why is Attorney General Eric Holder making inflaming comments to the NAACP instead of calming the waters?  Why are the main participants and signs at the Zimmerman verdict protests from the very group that the DOJ subsidized with taxpayer money to protest this case?  When did we stop believing in the Constitution, the law,the jury system (not perfect but the best in the world)?  Is there a bigger agenda?  What is the hidden agenda?  AskMarion~

Council News:

This week,
Ask Marion, The Pirate’s Cove, and Maggie’s Notebook earned honorable mention status with some great pieces.

So, let’s see what we have this week….

Council Submissions
Honorable Mentions
Non-Council Submissions

Enjoy! And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us Twitter..’cause we’re cool like that!

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

What Happened to the ‘Post-Racial America’ Dream?

ZIMM TRIAL BT 2

By Marion Algier - AskMarion

Many Americans voted for a Senator named Barrack Hussein Obama: half-black, half-white with a Muslim middle name, that they really knew nothing about in the hope that America, as a nation, could finally put racism behind her.  Sadly his election for president in 2008 and re-election in 2012 did not accomplish that. In fact, in many ways it appears that the divisions within America have grown; divisions between parties, between religious and secular Americans, between racial and ethnic groups, between conservatives and liberals (or progressives), between traditionalists and those who want to fundamentally change America, as well as the gap between the haves and the have-nots.

beer summit For many Americans the bloom was off the rose far too quickly after the Obama Beer Summit incident and Holder’s decision not to prosecute the voter intimidation by the New Black Panther Party and has gone downhill ever since. America in 2013 is not what most Americans expected or at least hoped for on Election Day in November 2008.  And the division seems to have played itself out through the Trayvon Martin – George Zimmerman trial.

The entire saga of the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman encounter: the killing of a 17-year-old by a neighborhood watch captain (no matter who was guilty or their colors of skin); the intervention of politics and politicians into the process; the pressure to bring this case to trial even though they lacked the suitable evidence; the media circus; the race-baiting from far too many and now the acquittal of George Zimmerman by a very engaged jury and the pre-verdict suggestions of possible violence was and is a tragedy.

Most Americans want to move forward into an America that sees issues and not color; that sees people and not the color of their skin, but the people in power and pulling the strings say one thing outwardly while doing and creating circumstances that create the opposite affect, impression or situations. 

Even liberals like Geraldo Rivera have said that President Obama should never have injected himself into the Zimmerman-Martin Case by making comments like, “If I had a son, he would look just like Trayvon” as people like Sharpton were screaming ‘No Justice No Peace’ planting seeds and worrying many about race riots… 

holdersharpton

Americans overall remained calm and peaceful after the verdict, but California did not.  There were demonstrations and riots from Los Angeles to Oakland. Many were prompted by the tweets of celebrities they followed, that have since apologized.

America and Americans have changed in many ways and there is an ever-growing chorus of conservative and independent black voices (see videos below).  Just recently a Democrat State Senator switched Parties… and the video of this comments went viral.

Video: African American Conservatives Townhall – COMPLETE – Sean Hannity – Fox News – 6-21-13

Video: “Hannity” Special On African American Conservatives – COMPLETE – 4-8-13

Video: Dr. Benjamin Carson Wipes The Smile Off Obamas Face At The National Prayer Breakfast

But when you have Obama’s Department of Justice helping to organize, pay for, provide security and facilitate the ‘Justice for Trayvon’ protests in Florida (The Daily Caller has discovered supporting documents) that ultimately  led to the farcical Zimmerman trial and then you have Eric Holder give a speech supporting the feelings of the protestors the Monday after the verdict instead of staying neutral and acting as a calming force, it is an uphill battle.

We are a country of laws that has been held together by a common culture and a history of becoming better, albeit sometimes slowly…  One of the best straight forward discussions on the politics of justice comes from Judge Janine Pirro.  Judge Janine is a straight shooter who does not change her opinions or comments for the crowd or political correctness.  Definitely worth the watch!

Video: Judge Jeanine: "The Politics of Justice" in Zimmerman Trial – Opening Show Statement

The Zimmerman verdict is a chance for all Americans to work together and pray together to improve America and race relations; to open our eyes and hearts on both sides.  Let us hope that politicians of all colors and creeds let that happen without anymore interference.  And let us hope that the news media starts reporting all the news and reporting it accurately without their personal spin… and that celebrities with agendas think through the affects of their tweets and comments before making them.

The only way you get to a post racial America is through communication, honesty and love… not through lies, manipulation, and hate!!  Remember the words of MLK.  If handled correctly perhaps this tragedy could be another step toward the post racial American Dream?

Related: 

GEORGE ZIMMERMAN NOT GUILTY! (Great Re-Cap In Video)  

Racism? A Flashback In The Trayvon Case No One Mentions 

Justice Dept. faces obstacles in reviewing Zimmerman case – Video 

Conservative filmmaker: Trayvon Martin protesters in Oakland ‘slugged me,’ ‘kicked me’ in the head

Video:  Allen West: Where was the NAACP and media when two black teenagers shot a white baby in the face?

Trayvon Martin Supporters Call Cat ‘George,’ Burn It Alive (Photo)

Prisoner on Pennsylvania Ave – POP

Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech 

Obama's post-racial promise

Monday, July 15, 2013

GEORGE ZIMMERMAN NOT GUILTY! (In Video)

"Many are asking, should charges have been even brought to this case in the first place?" asks Judge Jeanine Pirro in her opening statement a day after the 'No Guilty' Verdict was determined for George Zimmerman in the murder trial held in Sanford, Florida.

It’s a Wrap – 07-07-13 – 07.14.13 Edition

Its a Wrap

Our weekly wrap… Sunday to Sunday… Please share! Ask Marion

Also See: 

We are living in amazing times, good and bad, the kind of times that truly try men’s (and women’s) souls and that make or break countries and shape (or reshape) societies. Please get involved, pray for guidance, prepare for the worst (for yourself and to help others), then educate yourself and share what you learn with as many people as you can. All our futures depend on it!!

Its_a_Wrap

Be sure to come visit us here at Ask Marion regularly and subscribe to receive the latest posts first… as well as visit:

Just One More Pet, True Health Is True Wealth!!, Knowledge Is Power, and the Daily Thought Pad.

Saturday, July 13, 2013

Janet Napolitano to resign as head of Homeland Security… To Head Up University of California

Marion Algier – AskMarion

Yes, Big Sis is getting out of DC while the getting is good…  U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano confirmed (today) Friday 07.12.13) that she will leave her position to lead the University of California and thanked President Barack Obama for the chance to serve the country as part of his Cabinet.

With things like Fast and Furious, the NSA scandal, the AP scandal and numerous others brewing around the Obama Administration, seems she's decided it might be smarter to get out of Dodge for awhile.

And where's she headed? Where do all failed political figures from Democrat administrations go? If not to the media, than to academia… the place where they can make sure to turn out another crop of Progressives.

"I will be nominated as the next president of the University of California to play a role in educating our nation's next generation of leaders," she said in a statement. "I thank President Obama for the chance to serve our nation during this important chapter in our history."

Big Sis has been named to be the next president of the 10 campus University of California system, at three times the salary she now makes.  Her proposed salary has not been released, but current U.C. President Mark G. Yudof makes $591,000, according to the U.C. website, significantly more than Napolitano's $200,000 Cabinet position.

Napolitano’s nomination by a committee of UC regents came after a secretive process that insiders said focused on her as a high-profile, although untraditional, candidate who has led large public agencies and shown a strong interest in improving education, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Being a UCLA alum, my heart sank as I heard the news.  It took be back to the Angela Davis years…

Why Napolitano? Oh, the L.A. Times article provides a few perhaps unintended hints:

UC officials believe that her Cabinet experiences –- which include helping to lead responses to hurricanes and tornadoes and overseeing some anti-terrorism measures -- will help UC administer its federal energy and nuclear weapons labs and aid its federally funded research in medicine and other areas. [...}

Robert Powell, the chairman of UC’s system-wide faculty Senate and who consulted on the UC search, said Napolitano stood out among the more than 300 potential candidates. She “has demonstrated an outstanding ability to deal with complex organizations under demanding circumstances,” he said.

Acknowledging that she will be a departure from UC’s traditions of having a president with strong records in campus administration or academic research, he stressed that her political skills will be important. “When she goes to Sacramento, clearly the conversations will be on a different plane,” he said.

Yes, it's all about the Federal and State ‘benjamins’.

Interestingly enough, a Times poll at the link showed that 77% of the locals think she's a bad choice to head the UC system, as of 9 AM PST this morning.

Janet Napolitano

While it will be a fresh breath of air to be rid of her, we can be assured that President Obama will certainly pick someone even worse to fill her slot.

Friday, July 12, 2013

Zimmerman Trial Brings Coulter and Williams Together

ZIMM TRIAL BT 2

Marion Algier – Ask Marion

There is probably no greater example, even with the all the court room antics and lack of evidence from the prosecution, of the fact that the Zimmerman trial was a show trial (costing taxpayers millions) that never should have happened, than the fact that Ann Coulter and Juan Williams are on the same side on this issue.

Plus, let us not forget that The Daily Caller has discovered documents that reveal that the Obama Department of Justice helped organize, pay for, provide security and facilitate the 'Justice for Trayvon' protests in Florida that led to the farcical Zimmerman trial:

holdersharpton

The Community Relations Service (CRS), a unit of DOJ, reported expenses related to its deployment in Sanford to help manage protests between March and April 2012, according to documents obtained by the watchdog group Judicial Watch.

CRS spent $674.14 between March 25-27 related to having been “deployed to Sanford, FL, to work marches, demonstrations, and rallies related to the shooting and death of an African-American teen by a neighborhood watch captain.” CRS spent another $1,142.84 for the same purpose between March 25-28.

CRS spent $892.55 “to provide support for protest deployment in Florida” between March 30-April 1, and $751.60 “to provide technical assistance to the City of Sanford, event organizers, and law enforcement agencies for the march and rally on March 31.” {...}

CRS expenditures related to the anti-Zimmerman protests continued through mid-April. Between April 11 and April 12, CRS spent $552.35 “to provide technical assistance for the preparation of possible marches and rallies related to the fatal shooting of a 17 year old African American male.”

Local government officials noticed the Department of Justice’s efforts in building “bridges of understanding” in Sanford.

“Congratulations to our partners, Thomas Battles, Regional Director, and Mildred De Robles, Miami-Dade Coordinator and their co-workers at the U.S. Department of Justice Community Relations Service for their outstanding and ongoing efforts to reduce tensions and build bridges of understanding and respect in Sanford, Florida,” wrote Amy Carswell, Miami-Dade County Community Relations Board Program Officer, in an April 16 email.
“Thank you Partner. You did lots of stuff behind the scene to make Miami a success. We will continue to work together,” DOJ official Thomas Battles wrote in reply to Carswell.

JoshuaPundit: If the DOJ was willing to do this much, what else did they do we don't know about yet? And what kind of pressure was put on Broward County to prosecute Zimmerman? And did the protesters get any of that 'Obama money' to scream, yell, carry signs and act out?

Obama intimate, Racist and anti-semite Al Sharpton played a prominent role in ginning up the protests. Rev Al doesn't do these things for free. Where did the money to attract him, pay him to speak and put him up in the kind of five star hotels he favors come from, and how much was it?

What we have here is gross White House interference at the taxpayer's expense in local legal matters, based strictly on race. Like the president's remarks on the matter, it is unethical and unjust at its very core.

beer summitYou see, President Obama told yet another whopper when he claimed he was going to be the president of all the people, back when he was inaugurated in 2009.  Let us not forget the famous beer summit that pretty much doused the hope for a new post-racial America for most thinking Americans.  It quickly created a dilemma for many black voters and remorse for more than a few white voters.

Ann Coulter wrote: “This Year’s Duke LaCrosse Case”:

This week, instead of attacking a Hispanic senator, Marco Rubio, I will defend a Hispanic citizen, George Zimmerman, on trial for the murder of Trayvon Martin. (Zimmerman would make a better senator.)

It's becoming painfully obvious why no charges were brought against Zimmerman in this case -- until Al Sharpton got involved. All the eyewitness accounts, testimony, ballistics and forensics keep backing up Zimmerman. We should send a big, fat bill for the whole thing to Sharpton, courtesy of MSNBC.

With the prosecution's witnesses making the defense's case, the inquisitors' last stand is to claim that, if the races were reversed, the black guy would have been instantly charged with murder. As explained in The New York Times:

"Had Mr. Martin shot and killed Mr. Zimmerman under similar circumstances, black leaders say, the case would have barreled down a different path: Mr. Martin would have been quickly arrested by the Sanford Police Department and charged in the killing, without the benefit of the doubt." (Also, CNN could have dropped the "white" and referred to Zimmerman exclusively as "Hispanic.")

The people who say this are counting on the rest of us being too polite to mention that it is nearly impossible to imagine such a case in a world where half of all murders and a majority of robberies are committed by blacks. To reverse the races with the same set of facts, first, we're going to need a gated, mixed-race community, similar to the Retreat at Twin Lakes, that has recently experienced a rash of robberies by white guys. The only way to do that is to enter "The Twilight Zone."

There were at least eight burglaries in the 14 months before Zimmerman's encounter with Martin. Numerous media accounts admit that "most" of these were committed by black males. I'm waiting to hear about a single crime at Twin Lakes that was not committed by a black male.

Just six months before Zimmerman's encounter with Martin, two men had broken into the home of a neighbor, Olivia Bertalan, while she was alone with her infant son. She had just enough time to call 911 before running upstairs and locking herself in a room. The burglars knew she was home, but proceeded to rob the place anyway, even trying to enter the locked room where she held her crying child.
Bertalan had seen the burglars just before they broke into her house -- one at the front door and one at the back. They were young black males. They lived in the Retreat by Twin Lakes.

In another case, a black teenager strode up to Zimmerman's house and, in broad daylight, stole a bicycle off the front porch. The bike was never recovered.

Weeks before Zimmerman saw Martin, he witnessed another young black male peering into the window of a neighbor's house. He called the cops, but by the time they arrived, the suspect was gone.

A few days later, another house was burglarized. The thieves made off with jewelry and a new laptop. Roofers working across the street had seen two black teenagers near the house at the time of the robbery. When they spotted one of the teens the next day, they called the police.

This time, the roofers followed the suspect so he wouldn't get away. The cops arrived and found the stolen laptop in his backpack. This was the same black teenager Zimmerman had seen looking in a neighbor's window.

The only reason it's hard to imagine the Zimmerman case with the races reversed is that it's hard to imagine a white teenager living in a mixed-race, middle-class community, mugging a black homeowner. This is not a problem of society's reactions, but of the facts.

There is, however, at least one case of a black homeowner fatally shooting a white troublemaker. He was not charged with murder.

Meanwhile… Juan Williams wrote:  'Crackers,' a 'teenage mammy' -- the sorry truth about race and Zimmerman trial

Juan Williams: Media guilty of fanning flames of racial division for better ratings

  Screenshot: FoxNews.com

“The media is clearly guilty of playing on the most primitive racial divisions in our society to fuel racial animosity and boost ratings.”

"White Hispanics," "Creepy-Ass Crackers," "Teenage Mammies," and "Suspicious A--holes who always get away" -- that is the vernacular of the George Zimmerman trial.

George Zimmerman faces life in jail as a jury considers second-degree murder charges against him for killing 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. But thanks to the media he is already sentenced to life in the American public's mind as a racist.

NBC edited a tape of Zimmerman’s call to police as he was following Martin to make him appear to be focused on Martin’s race.

The New York Times has referred to him in unique racial terms as a “white Hispanic." The terminology was necessary to have the story fit into a well-worn news narrative throughout American history from the Scottsboro Boys to Emmett Till to Rodney King – the black victim of white racism. Hispanic people can be as racist as black or white people in a country with a deep history of racism. But, apparently for the Times, Zimmerman's whiteness was important. It fit their good versus evil tale of a white racist killing an innocent black man.

The media is clearly guilty of playing on the most primitive racial divisions in our society to fuel racial animosity and boost ratings.

In June, before the trial started, a CNN poll asked Americans if they believed the murder charges against Zimmerman were true or false. Without any courtroom testimony or evidence, but based on the racially charged media coverage, 62 percent of Americans said the charges were “probably true” or “definitely true.”

My bet is that poll would have different results today. The trial has failed to prove Zimmerman acted with a “depraved mind” – as required for a second-degree murder conviction – or even with a racist mind. He certainly killed Martin. And the jury may decide he is guilty of second-degree murder or manslaughter. But what we heard in the courtroom fits with an FBI report that found race was not a factor in Martin’s shooting death.

The strong public judgment of Zimmerman’s guilt in the poll reflected a racially weighted media telling of the story. Photos of a bloodied Zimmerman after the incident, Zimmerman’s claim of self-defense and the police decision not to charge Zimmerman all got a dismissive glance from the press and contributed to public assumptions about Zimmerman before the trial. 

Liberal and conservative news TV and radio have played to the racial theme, too. The left, notably Rev. Al Sharpton, have made the case a crusade for racial justice. The right-wing media, especially talk radio, has responded by making Zimmerman a hero. In fact, Zimmerman’s lawyer, Mark O’Mara, created an online site that attracted more than $145,000 from people who somehow made Zimmerman into their champion, possibly their great white hero.

The national focus on race in this case hit a high point when Rachel Jeantel, a 19-year-old student, testified that she spoke with Martin just before he was killed. Jeantel, Martin’s friend, told the court that Martin complained that a “man was just watching him.” And Martin described this man, Jeantel said, as a “creepy, white, excuse my language, cracker --- creepy-ass cracker.”

Jeantel’s testimony set off a stupid debate, requiring total ignorance of slavery and legal segregation, about the equivalence of blacks using “cracker” to describe whites, versus whites using the word “nigger” to describe blacks.

And Jeantel’s physical appearance, as a dark, heavyset young woman, speaking with a Southern dialect as she gave the lawyers a lot of attitude with her curt answers, contributed to the racial view of the case.

She became the “teenage mammy,” in the words of a sociology professor quoted in the New York Times, caricatured for “not being smart and using these racial slurs and not being the best witness.”

And now the media, especially some conservative talk radio outlets, are fixated on the possibility of race riots if Zimmerman is acquitted. Meanwhile, Twitter and other social media sites are full of threats from angry black people to kill Zimmerman if he is not held accountable by a jury for killing Martin.

Martin, the 17-year-old, is dead. But he has not escaped the racial slander attached to this case. Zimmerman’s backers note that Martin had smoked marijuana – as if that is unusual among American teenagers. They seem delighted to find online messages in which he took on a rapper, street-thug persona and posed as a tough guy.

These are all caricatures of two real people caught in a tragedy.

Zimmerman should have listened to the 911 emergency dispatch operator who told him to stop following Martin.

Why did he have a gun if he was simply part of a neighborhood watch program?

He had no basis to suspect Martin of any crime. So why does he describe Martin as “suspicious” to police?

Why does he apparently lump Martin with people he describes as “these a--holes, they always get away.

Why didn’t Martin just walk away from Zimmerman?

But Martin is dead. He can’t speak for himself and get beyond the box of racial stereotypes the media built for him.

Zimmerman is alive. He has chosen not to speak at his trial, and although the prosecution played an interview he did with Fox News' Sean Hannity, it is still no match for skipping an ideal chance to tell his story when everyone is listening in the courtroom and on television.

Now, no matter what the verdict, he is going to carry his box of racial stereotypes around until his death. His identity will always be as a want-to-be cop who trailed a black kid who was not doing anything wrong, got in a fight with him, pulled out a gun and killed him.

Ultimately, it is/was the job of the media to give straight, objective coverage of any story.

Whatever the final verdict on Zimmerman, the media is clearly guilty of playing on the most primitive racial divisions in our society to fuel racial animosity and boost ratings.

There are no winners here… 

But my opinion of Juan Williams just went up a few ticks!

And now we sit and wait for the verdict as the jurors deliberate

Related: 

Zimmerman Lynch - Judge Gives Jury Option To Convict On Different Charge- After Defense Rests!

Democrat Senator Switches Parties… Video Goes Viral

Brent Bozell just released his new book: Collusion: How the Media Stole the 2012 Election—and How to Stop Them from Doing It in 2016. (On Kindle: Collusion) – Good read. Addresses media collusion in general…

The Council Has Spoken!! This Week’s Watcher’s Council Results - 07.12.13

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JoshuaPundit - The Council Has Spoken!, the votes have been cast, and we have the results for this week’s Watcher’s Council match up.

“A little rebellion is a good thing. ” ― Thomas Jefferson

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This week’s winner, Joshuapundit’s The Coup In Egypt And Why It’s Important   looks at  one of those ‘little rebellions’ , what it means and yes,  why it’s very, very important.   Here’s a slice:

The military coup in Egypt is pretty much a done deal. Former president Morsi’s in jail, along with the real people who were pulling the strings, the top figures from the Muslim Brotherhood including its chief Mohammed Badie and his deputy Khairat el-Shater.

I first saw this coming back in late June, and those of you who were awake and online at 3 AM Left Coast Time got the first reports of the army’s move, thanks to a couple of my notorious Lil’ Birdies.

So why is this important? To put that together, we have to get into the back story on what happened. Thanks to the Lil’ Birdies, I have some new details on how the whole deal went down.

The Egyptian Army is not like the U.S. Army. Like China’s PLA, it owns farms, companies and private businesses that are often staffed by conscripts.

A lot of the ‘military aid’ from us goes to the army directly to fund these enterprises.

Morsi had purged a number of the top generals of the Egyptian military and replaced them with men whop were either fellow Islamists or apolitical.. or so he thought. With the Muslim Brotherhood government receiving support and patronage from President Obama, Morsi figured he had the Army under his thumb.

One of his appointments, as defense minister and chief of the Army was General Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, a former junior member of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), the junta that ruled Egypt until the Brotherhood took over.

As Egypt’s economy spiraled out of control, Morsi and his Brotherhood allies began leaning heavily on al-Sissi and the military to eliminate a number of their prerogatives and to transfer most of the military aid they receive back to the government, so the government could use it for their own purposes.

Morsi and the Brotherhood were fairly certain that they would be able to put the squeeze on al-Sissi with President Obama’s help. They were wrong.

After his phone call with Morsi, President Obama tried exactly that, telling al-Sissi and the other generals that a military coup would have a loss of U.S. aid as a consequence. That had worked before for the president, when the SCAF tried to limit Morsi and the Brotherhood’s power and President Obama intervened.

This time, Al-Sissi and the other generals decided to call Obama’s bluff. They realized that giving in to Obama and Morsi would lead to them losing any vestige of independence and freedom they had, and since Morsi was already poised to take their aid money away they had nothing to lose anyway. In the end, al-Sissi and his fellow general’s first loyalty was to Egypt and the army, not the Brotherhood.

Not only that, but not only had Morsi and the Brotherhood become deeply unpopular, so had President Obama. The Egyptian street was very much familiar with Obama’s role in putting the Brotherhood in power and keeping them there.

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Once the decision was made, the coup proceeded smoothly, without any hesitation from the army generals or the soldiers under their command.

So what does this mean? Why is it important?

Today’s events amounted to a tremendous loss of prestige for the genocidal Muslim Brotherhood. It was one thing to be the romantic opposition, operate a few soup kitchens, schools and clinics and tell everyone that if only Mubarak was out and they were in power, they would bring true greatness and prosperity to Egypt by following Allah’s divine sharia-licious path.

But when they finally got in power, things were different. They were almost as corrupt, far more dictatorial and brutal and far more incompetent than Mubarak ever was. They will not be trusted with power for years, if ever. And their loss extends to other countries aside from Egypt, like Jordan, Libya, the rest of the Maghreb and the Arabian Peninsula. Egypt was the Muslim Brotherhood’s chance to show that their version of a Sunni Islamist state could work. They failed miserably, and not only did they lose Egypt but they did major damage to the Caliphate President Obama and his administration were trying so desperately to put together in the Arab World. People who were prepared to put the Islamists in power are now looking at what happened in Egypt are having second thoughts.

More at the link.

In our non-Council category, the winner was Andrew McCarthy’s  superb Elections Are Not Democracy  submitted by Joshuapundit. It details exactly why so many  efforts to export democracy to countries in the Muslim World without a history and tradition of democratic institutions fail. As supplemental reading for those of you so inclined, I recommend  William Manchester’s biography of General Douglas MacArthur, American Caesar, an excellent example of the right way to do this with reference to how General MacArthur imported democracy to Japan.

OK, here are this week’s full results. Both Bookworm Room and the Noisy Room were unable to vote this week, but neither was subject to the usual 2/3 vote penalty:

Council Winners
Non-Council Winners
Honorable Mentions

See you next week! Don’t forget to tune in on Monday AM for this week’s Watcher’s Forum, as the Council and their invited special guests take apart one of the provocative issues of the day with short takes and weigh in…don’t you dare miss it. And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter…..’cause we’re cool like that!

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