Zimmerman Trial, Timeswatch

Try as they might the NY Times knows which side they are rooting for in the Zimmerman trial. Here is a sadly typical bit of reporting:

At Zimmerman Trial, a Tale of Pursuit and Attack

By LIZETTE ALVAREZ

SANFORD, Fla. — One of the prosecution’s star witnesses, the young woman who spoke on the phone with Trayvon Martin moments before he was killed, told the jury in the George Zimmerman trial on Wednesday that Mr. Martin was being followed and tried to get away from the man pursuing him.

As spectators and jurors looked on rapt, the witness, Rachel Jeantel, 19, a high school senior from Miami and a friend of Mr. Martin’s, told her story quietly, sometimes haltingly, sometimes with irritation, at times dabbing her eyes with a tissue. Asked by a prosecutor to talk about her final conversation with Mr. Martin, Ms. Jeantel drove home the state’s contention: as Mr. Martin was trying to avoid Mr. Zimmerman, he was accosted and wound up dead.

"He was accosted"? Wait a second - I thought Martin initated the verbal exchange. Wouldn't that be Martin "accosting" Zimmerman?

Ms. Alvarez, ignoring her own lead, confirms that:

“He say, ‘Why are you following me for?’ ” Ms. Jeantel recounted, quoting Mr. Martin. “I heard him, a hard-breathing man, saying, ‘What you doing around here?’ ”

Is that really unclear?

Next, a bit of what may be unexplained urban slang:

Then she said she heard a bump — the headset — and “the sound of wet grass.” “I calling, ‘Trayvon, Trayvon,’ ” Ms. Jeantel said. “I kind of heard Trayvon saying, ‘Get off, get off.’ Suddenly the phone hung up, shut off.”

Boring middle-aged white guys like me (or the defense attorneys) might think "Get off" meant that Zimmerman was on top of Martin. Keep up, and celebrate diversity! From the dictionary of Street Gang Slang:

Get off the gate - Get it on: to start fighting

Who knew? More to the point, did Martin or Ms. Jeantel employ this sort of slang? Maybe the defense could lighten her mood by giving her a chance to talk about a subject she can address with authority. Of course, that is tricky (asking an unfriendly witness questions to which the answer is not known is hardly viewed as Best Practice) but I do wonder how the defense might constructively explore this possibility.

Jeralyn Merritt has lots of detail on how attorney Benjamin Crump prepped Ms. Jeantel and then misled the court about it. Her thoughts on yesterday's performance is here. A snippet:

She's now impeached on several areas, especially GZ's response to TM after TM confronted GZ and asked him, "What are you following me for?" I'm so glad West brought this out, see my post here. Her first answer to Crump was that GZ responded with "What are you talking about" not "What are you doing around here." (Audio clip here.)Crump, immediately realizing that this was different than what she had told Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton, stopped her and told her she had said something different to the Martins, and asked her to start over. She began again, and told it the Crump and Martin way.

 

Comments

[henry]

Kevin, don't knock Mississippi mud. It is much better for barefoot activity than the Missouri mud, and has less dioxin than Merrimac mud. Foot treatments outside of barefoot wading in river mud are effete.

[Clarice]

I iss JMH, too, and MayBee. Hope they come back some day soon.

[Marlene]

Interesting discussion about South Africa last night.We had a lovely (white) South African family move into our neighborhood when we lived in northern Maine. I always wondered why they would uproot from their country,but many white families left.Their little boy loved our little cairn terrier. Sadly,the Mom is struggling with cancer. Great family.

[pagar]

"So they've thrown Cartwright to the sharks,"

Narciso, IMO there is a effort that has been underway since the Obama regime to discredit anyone in the US military that might not be completely on board with the Obama regime.

[bunkerbuster]

Ok, so you had Karl Rove, the Rasmussen fraud and the Dick Morris in your company on the Romney call, but who else? And how about the widespread predictions of economic collapse? That's been a JOM shibboleth for coming on 5 years now. Granted, no one with basic economic knowledge would have ever taken such predictions as anything more than self-destructive fantasy, but still: five years and no collapse does at least demonstrate that JOMers are impervious to shame.
What about Mel and the other economic frauds who post here? Surely they've lost all their own money betting on an Obama economic collapse, so are they now losing other people's money, or have they shifted to full-time culture war masochism? (Of course that dubiously assumes they had money -- or plausibility -- left after betting on the Bush tax cuts to spark an economic boom.)
But back to Zimmerman. I predict JOM will continue to use the case as an opportunity to disparage Afro-Americans, tracking the developments closely and sniffing out any opportunity to belittle the way Afro-Americans talk, dress, vote -- basically any excuse to take their deep-seated resentment, ignorance and racial paranoia out for another transparent ride.
For the next week or so, along with the bigoted disparagement, there'll be predictions of the killer's acquittal and hyperbole aplenty about how terrible American has become because identity conservative politics have failed so dramatically.
But that will fade as even the regulars tire of making jokes about Afro-Americans and as the evidence against the killer mounts. By the time Zimmerman's conviction rolls around, DoT and the crew will be pretending they never even heard of all the stuff they were saying just a few weeks earlier...

[Ricky Spanish]

"And when your children asked what you did in the culture war"

Why wait until they ask? I tell mine about it everyday. They will proudly carry on the tradition of keeping America strong for generations to come, so don't get your hopes up too soon, bunky. Sure you have intellectual heavyweights like Miss Diamond fighting for your cause, so it won't be easy...especially if the instructions are written in cursive.
:)

[Threadkiller]

And what will bunker's fetus do when bunker wins the tin-snip to the spine culture war?

My guess is never grow up, just like dad.

[Old Lurker]

There really are two universes aren't there?

YL received a fund raising call from Penn last night, to which she responded "you will not get another penny from me until you fire the Penn English Professor who told MSNBC that "the war against late term abortions is all a plot by White Supremacists to gain power over the black women."

Huh?

[Neo]

Given:
"Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards," USAG Eric Holder declared.

Case:
Jeantel said she didn't believe "cracker" was a racial term

Problem:
Identify the cowards

This nation never has a conversation on race as it is always a monologue, or, at least, always one sided.

[boris]

Charile's article on the NSA is up.

http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2013/06/27/the-science-of-what-is-and-isnt-happening-with-the-nsas-phone-surveillance/?singlepage=true

[Captain Hate]

Here we go again: http://twitchy.com/2013/06/27/alec-baldwin-threatens-toxic-little-queen-reporter-in-epic-twitter-rant/

[Captain Hate]

This hag is almost as out of it as using the term "Afro-American": http://twitchy.com/2013/06/28/welcome-to-2000-cyndi-lauper-amazed-by-new-gov-of-texas-rick-perry/

[bunkerbuster]

At least your honest about it, Ricky, even if unwittingly so.

[Gmax]

Creepy ass cracker is simply a term of endearment. And the knuckles to the nose and side of the face? Why mere love taps. But "fing punks" is dastardly profiling. Thank you Eric Holder for this fine demonstration of courage, well yours and the guy you report to claiming if he had a son he would look like grill and skittles...

[narciso]

Grest piece, Charlie, summing up the basics,

[jwest]

This witness (Good) is the key.

Don't know why the prosecution called him.

[Gmax]

Butt buster who would not recognize honesty if it beat his pointed little head against a cement sidewalk repeatedly wants to talk about it? LOL

[Gmax]

Don't know why the prosecution called him

I seem to recall having the same thought about every single one of the prosecution witnesses. Perhaps they thought simply pounding the table and screaming racist would look too much like government employees mailing it in?

[jwest]

This "verticle" talk has got to be confusing the jury.

It's confusing me.

[NJJan]

DeeDee must have come across really bad. Drudge has headlines/articles displayed praising/defending her and castigating those racists who don't understand her culture.

[bunkerbuster]

If the white-power posse here could only sideline their compulsion to denigrate Afro-Americans, they might discover the intellectual wherewithal to look ahead.
It's going to come down to the gun and EXACTLY how the firearm got out of Zimmerman's pants (sorry, but the poetics of that are going to seriously hurt the defendant) and into his hands.
Remember, the story from the Zimmerman side is still inconsistent, with his brother claiming his was told one thing, and Zimmerman himself saying another. Very likely there is a reason for that: they both know it's where the story becomes indefensible.
Perhaps Zimmerman and/or his lawyer has a great explanation for how Martin could be sitting on top of a severely beaten man's chest in full control of a fight to the death, but still allow Zimmerman to reach INTO HIS PANTS to pull out the hand cannon and fire it.
If Zimmerman had the physical wherewithal to pull that off, why couldn't he have also had the wherewithal to escape?
And when we say "self defense," what exactly do we mean? Am I entitled to shoot DoT dead to prevent him from stepping on my toe? breaking my arm? cracking my skull?
I have a feeling Zimmerman's going to need to assert at length that he felt his life was in danger. He wasn't fighting to prevent a black eye, he was fighting for his life, he will claim. But the more detailed and lifelike he makes that claim to have felt his life was threatened, the harder it will be to claim he was able to retrieve and fire his gun mid-beatdown.
Maybe he has a good explanation for how that happened. If so, he has a much better chance of acquittal. But I'd bet he doesn't have an explanation and the prosecution will make much of the discrepancies in how he has described those moments in the killing.

[Extraneus]

Anyone who likes bunkerbuster and thinks he adds value to the site should of course read and respond to his comments.

[jwest]

Is O'Mara's team monitoring the comments at JOM?

"Pssst.. Jwest says to clear up the "verticle" issue."

[Extraneus]

Daily Mail: Nearly 1,200 people have starved to death in NHS hospitals because 'nurses are too busy to feed patients'

[bunkerbuster]

Thanks Extra-anus! You have a hilarious way of combining tautology with condescension toward your teammates.

[Old Lurker]

New thread

[Threadkiller]

Tautology may refer to:
Tautology (rhetoric), a self-reinforcing pretense of significant truth
Tautology (grammar), the use of redundant words
Tautology (logic), a universal truth in formal logic
Tautology (rule of inference), a rule of replacement for logical expressions

[Danube on iPad]

I scanned four bubu posts and did not once see the phrase "identity conservative" (to be fair, I might have missed it). Has he tired of trying to get it to catch on?

Not to disillusion bubu, but I declared the culture war lost over thirty years ago. As for economic collapse, I haven't seen it predicted here. What I predicted was continued high unemployment, anemic GDP growth, and a declining standard of living. Sad to say, I nailed it.

[bunkerbuster]

right on Killer! tautology of the kind Extra-anus wields is the epitome of rhetorical masturbation. But it's his patronizing of JOMers that makes it special...

[Dr Jordan Edilstein]

Bunky is not angry about creepy ass crackers pointing out Diamonds lies and poor presentation, bunky is mad at Diamond. Bunky is mad at her because she is on display for all the world to see what happens to people living under the liberal agenda of anti-family, pro-welfare, pro-union run schools. Their socialist ways are hurting the poor and keeping them down, not creepy ass crackers. Poor bunky is going to be an angry man for the rest of his miserable life.
:)

P.S. since I am new here i did not realize bunky was a troll so i will no longer respond to his ramblings, but i just wanted him to know i understand where his anger and pain are coming from.

[Danube on iPad]

911 caller--called by the prosecution--destroy's the prosecution's theory. These clowns are something to see.

[OldTimer]

The race hustlers and ideological whores bought and paid for by the administration have a paycheck to collect. Apparently these dedicated little apparatchiks think they are effective barging into comment sections of those they disdain, dropping their intellectual waste like so much fecal matter.

It's all rather amusingly predictable, isn't it.

[Danube on iPad]

I'm at a loss tu understand the lust of the Left to see this poor quadroon youngster imprisoned. He is, after all, twice as black as Homer Plessy.

[Ignatz]

--If the white-power posse here could only sideline their compulsion to denigrate Afro-Americans, they might discover the intellectual wherewithal to look ahead.--

"Afro-American" not once but twice, even after CH pointed out the anachronism.
I can just see Bubu hobnobbing with his numerous Afro-American friends in his long red coat, fedora with the pheasant feather and his gold 1972 Continental.

[bunkerbuster]

Thanks Ignutz! If you find "Afro-American'' objectionable, what do you make of "quadroon"? LOL...

[Ignatz]

Quadroon is a humorous reference to an earlier nomenclature by someone you consider an insensitive bigot.

Why do you give yourself a pass on something not even slightly meant as humorous, Superfly?

And you seem awfully hostile today rather than your usual jovial condescending self despite declaring the culture wars won.
Something's amiss.

NSA and the IRS and Benghazi and another war in Syria and Guantanomo and 7.6% unemployment and 1.8% growth and Barry less popular than W up your nose?

[Danube on iPad]

Poor bubu should acquaint himself with Lydia Marie Childs and the noble historical role of the quadroon in literature. But he won't.