Well, looks like the Obama administration is try to generate some fuax Sequestration Drama – by claiming a measly $600 million cut from $58 Billion budget (which is a paltry 1% cut, or 1 cent from every dollar) requires the closure of 150 control towers:

Air traffic control towers at nearly 150 airports across the nation are going to sit empty, forcing pilots to figure out safe landing procedures by a combination of the seats of their pants and furiously cracking open fortune cookies. In other words, you’re all going to die.

…

The FAA claims that it cannot cut $600 million from its $58 billion without impacting air traffic control. Honestly, though, I can’t believe that this is true. It seems more likely to me that the Administration is phasing in cuts that are designed to have the most public impact in order to win a political battle. Take a fine tooth comb to that budget, guys, before you start risking public safety.

As I noted in a previous post, this clear risk to human safety posing as political drama is grounds for criminal charges of negligence and dereliction of duty.

So here is the answer and what the GOP needs to push through Congress this week (and I dare the Dems to fight it).

Make it illegal to pull services, support, etc from mission critical activities as long as there are non-mission critical funds available. This would make it impossible to hold us hostage or threaten us before, say, salaries are cut, or regulations are cut, or new programs on the drawing board are cut, etc.

Make it a felony for anyone to play games like this – and we will see an end to this kind of dumb melodrama! Let’s make political melodrama ILLEGAL!

Let me put this in perspective.  As of 2004 there were 19,820 airports of all types in the USA. The $58 billion budget works out to $2.9 million per airport.  This seems low to me, even on average. Some airports are enormous and tower operations are expensive. Other smaller airports would be much less. So do 150 airport towers (out of 19,820) really produce the needed savings? I doubt it. Here we are not even seeing 1% cut, but a 0.1% in number, and these are the smaller airports!

What about FAA executive pay, bonuses, etc? What about FAA new programs? Why, after years of blowing $1.2 billion on modernization screw ups, is this agency still allowed to spend money without adult supervision?

 The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration’s En Route Automation Modernization (ERAM) program, which started ten years ago at an estimated cost of $2.1 billion, was scheduled to go into full operations last year. However, the modernization effort ran into major software and system difficulties (pdf) as outlined by the Department of Transportation Inspector General Calvin Scovel in late 2010. To address the myriad of problems, the FAA decided by early 2011 to add another US $300 million and three years to the modernization effort. This amount, and schedule, change was at the low end of the range the IG said the effort might take; Scovel estimated it might need three additional years and another $200 million more than what the FAA predicted.

The fact is this is another case of playing fast, lose and risky with public money and human lives.The FAA is in full BS mode:

The Republicans who oversee LaHood’s department accused him of dishonesty after the briefing. “[T]oday’s exaggerations are not backed up by any real financial data,” House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Bill Shuster, R-Pa., said in a joint statement with Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., and Rep. Frank LoBiondo, R-N.J. “The agency is well positioned to absorb spending reductions without compromising the safety or efficiency of the National Airspace System,” they added.

There should be consequences for such acts of incompetence and dereliction to the public trust.

The title of the post, and the above image, is in reference to a silly 1960’s movie about a bunch of normal people who go berserk trying to find a hidden treasure. It portrays how greed can drive a person to heights of crazy. It is also an apt metaphor for what we see occurring in the power drunk halls of government these days.

The madness in government intrusion into personal life is stunning – both in its stupidity and its vapid morality sense. The government (and its news media puppets) are on their high horses, noses stuck in the air, as if the luck of their successful lives has embodied them with wisdom of the ages! The ego trips are just pathetic to watch.

Take Mayor “Nanny” Bloomberg of New York City for example, the most notorious nosy neighbor out there. He wanted to ban large drinks because, you know, you can’t think for yourself. And now he wants to ban Styrofoam cups, even though there are good economic, human safety and ecological reasons for the technology.

Styrofoam cups and other containers are convenient and efficient packages that keep hot food hot, cold food cold, and help keep costs down.

…

Just try carrying hot soup in a paper cup. You’ll need multiple cups. (Again, Mayor Moneybags may not realize that New York’s famous food carts can’t serve on fine china.)

And those multiple cup alternatives have environmental costs. In fact, one study found that replacing a foam cup with a single paper one could require a dozen times more water for production.

Styrofoam cups are simply more efficient — which is why so many vendors and their consumers prefer them some of the time. Maybe not at trend-conscious, high-priced Starbucks, but at bodegas and other shops that plenty of New Yorkers prefer.

Bloomberg is the classic example of the bored moron. He has nothing to do of import, so he runs around nagging people and butting his nose into their lives. He’s on a crusade to prove he is still of value.  Devoid of any real ideas, he is now a caricature of a caricature. Basically irrelevant squared. [click image or link to view larger version]

Sadly, Bloomberg has lots and lots of company. This has to be the dumbest news headline of the decade:

America’s top military officer in charge of monitoring hostile actions by North Korea, escalating tensions between China and Japan, and a spike in computer attacks traced to China provides an unexpected answer when asked what is the biggest long-term security threat in the Pacific region: climate change.

Navy Admiral Samuel J. Locklear III, in an interview at a Cambridge hotel Friday after he met with scholars at Harvard and Tufts universities, said significant upheaval related to the warming planet “is probably the most likely thing that is going to happen . . . that will cripple the security environment, probably more likely than the other scenarios we all often talk about.’’

Someone tell the poor admiral that there has been NO warming of the globe for 15-18 years now.

Even the IPCC and British Meteorological Office now recognize that average global temperatures haven’t budged in almost 17 years. Little evidence suggests that sea level rise, storms, droughts, polar ice and temperatures or other weather and climate events and trends display any statistically significant difference from what Earth and mankind have experienced over the last 100-plus years.

So the admiral, charged with our national defense, can go back to monitoring North Korea’s nuclear weapons….

I was going to do a rundown of recent headlines illustrating how dumb these idea-taxed Pols are. But on a recent business trip I was reminded of the best example of all – a Congress Critter in his own words. Here, back by popular need, is the Congressman who feared a Pacific Island was in danger of tipping over due to US presence there:

And these people want to run our lives? When will they wake up and realize they are the ones holding jobs no sane, inspiring, and striving human being would want?

I do believe there are many opportunities where left and right can agree that DC and the Federal Government is out of control and run amok. And government usually runs amok when one side force feeds the rest of us their power hungry delusions (e.g., Obamacare, Outlawing all Abortions). Don’t get me wrong, I am all for private sector, market-driven health care and I am against abortions for convenience. But those principled stands are based on the premise most people are good, welling meaning and able to make good decisions on their own.  Government control seems to always be about protecting Americans from ourselves – like somehow government is not filled with error prone and biased people. I won’t even mention to the power and greed components.

This week some common ground arose out of the rejection of the idea that due process is not required when assassinating American Citizens that some government bureaucrats decide are a threat to America. I have been opposed to this Dictatorial madness from day one:

While the death of a blood thirsty Islamo Fascist is on par with the death of a blood thirsty Nazi who slaughtered innocent Jews in a concentration camp, the fact is Nazi mass murderers still received due process – even during the war.

Did an American president just assassinate a US Citizen without any due process, without any court case or verdict of guilty?

The problem I had with this criminal act a few years back is the same problem Rand Paul and other Senators of conscience are filibustering about in the Senate:

“When I asked the president can you kill an American on American soil, it should have been an easy answer — an unequivocal no.

“But his answer was, ‘I haven’t killed anyone yet and I have no intention of killing Americans, but I might.’”

…

What if, Paul wondered, someone had dropped a Hellfire missile on Jane Fonda or college students at the time who were raising money for the Viet Cong? Would the same Democrats who are sitting on the sidelines now have protested such tactics at the time? After all, raising money for the enemy is arguably treason, and Paul said he’d have called it that — but those students would have deserved to get their day in court.

The problem with the current thinking is it is so damn lazy, as well as cold (not to mention unconstitutional). The big deal here is most Americans believe an American citizen is guaranteed due process. Hell, all those jerks in asylum overseas for lesser crimes get their day in court (in absentia). Why couldn’t the evidence against Anwar al Awlaki have been presented in a court, to a jury of US citizens, and a guilty verdict handed down before the hit? Its not like in that case we did not have plenty of time – after all we had to find the guy to target him and that did take years.

And what about collateral damage? Drone strikes ALWAYS kill people nearby the target. There are usually some innocents hurt, maimed or killed. I said it back when Awlaki was assassinated – we are well down a really bad slippery slope.

Update (Ed): Ted Cruz has just joined in to ask questions of Paul, in what looks like a pretty smart strategy.  Paul has specifically stated that he will take questions without relinquishing control of the floor, and both Cruz and Lee are asking oddly lengthy questions.

…

Update (AP): This thing just turned bipartisan:

Ron Wyden @RonWyden

Heading to the floor to speak on Congressional oversight of executive branch & rules for targeted killings. Watch: http://www.c-span.org/Live-Video/C-SPAN2/ …

I salute Rand Paul (R), Ted Cruz (R) and Ron Wyden (D) for not only bringing this subject up to be debated in public, but for standing their ground and hold DC’s feet to the fire.

Finally, the situation that SHOULD have been in place in 2011 (after the GOP swept the house) is finally here. President Obama, due to the rules of sequestration, must now start cutting costs. And true to form, his incompetent team started cutting melodramatically – to create political theater.

But the problem with this simpleton idea is the fact that the bloated federal government is ripe with waste, fraud and abuse – and at every level. The train of failed Solyndra’s alone will provide endless fodder for GOP to push back on team Obama’s melodramatic cuts [emphasis mine]:

The very public failure of energy company Solyndra has focused a lot of attention on the Department of Energy’s loan guarantee programs. Beyond Solyndra’s failure, it’s interesting to take a closer look at these programs. The economic justification for any government-sponsored lending or loan guarantee program must rest on a well established failure of the private sector to allocate loans efficiently, meaning that deserving recipients could not have obtained capital on their own. Absent such a private sector deficiency, the Department of Energy’s activities would simply be a wasteful at best, politically motivated at worst, subsidy to this sector of the economy.

…

So what does this mean? First, very few permanent green jobs were created under the 1705 loan program (or any of the other loan programs). To the extent that permanent “green jobs” were created, the $6.7 million cost per job is quite spectacular. This trend and number also dismisses this particular loan program as a job program.

Second, nearly 90 percent of the 1705 loans guaranteed by the federal government since 2009 went to subsidize lower risk power plants, which in many cases were backed by big companies with vast resources. This includes loans such as the $90 million guarantee granted to Cogentrix, a subsidiary of Goldman Sachs—a company that ranks number 80 on the list of America’s Fortune 500 companies. It’s hard to imagine that these big companies, or Goldman Sachs, wouldn’t have access to capital, if the project was worth it.

More on Obama administration waste, fraud and abuse:

After the demise of Solyndra (with its $535 million loan guarantee) and Beacon Power ($43 million loan guarantee), last week saw the bankruptcy of Indiana-based lithium-ion battery maker Ener1. In 2009 an Ener1 subsidiary was awarded a grant worth up to $118 million from the Energy Department, with Vice President Joe Biden touring and touting its factory a year ago.

Like Solyndra, Ener1 was a foolhardy bet for taxpayer cash. Founded in 2002, Ener1 had not turned a profit by the time of its grant and has proceeded to hemorrhage the $55 million of the DOE money it has received to date. Its losses in fiscal 2010 were $165 million.

Keep those numbers in mind: 535 + 43 + 118 = $696 million. Now, let’s look at Obama’s wasting of taxpayer money – to play golf:

Sessions is the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee.

“While the White House operatives may think this attack is clever, it betrays an astonishing elitism: the federal government is perfect and requires no reform. That is why they have no plan to make our government leaner and more efficient. The President had 18 months to develop reforms to improve the government, but instead he announced furloughs of federal workers as a political cudgel. Yet, his golf weekend at the yacht club with Tiger Woods cost taxpayers over a million dollars—enough money to save 341 federal workers from furlough,” Sessions writes.

This week’s stupid melodrama play from the administration – all the way to their premature (and unnecessary) freeing of 100’s of illegal aliens – gives Congress an opportunity to do something important. I mean something that will make a big difference.

Here’s the problem:

What is not new, however, is the impulse of officials to resort to melodrama when they are faced with budget cuts. Getting people’s attention has been a challenge in the case of the sequester. In the latest Washington Post-Pew Research Center survey, only one in four said they were closely following news about the automatic spending cuts.

The ploy even has a name: the “Washington Monument” syndrome, a reference to the National Park Service’s decision to close that landmark and the Grand Canyon for two days a week after the Nixon administration cut funding in 1969.

What happened in 1969 – and this week at ICE – is a clear dereliction of duty and an abuse of power. No person should be able to hold America hostage like this. Not even (and maybe especially) the POTUS. There are CLEARLY billions of dollars of waste, fraud and abuse to trim before any government official needs to pull needed services. As a previous post of mine noted, you cannot blow $100,000 of dollars on dog training lessons or billions of dollars on Green boondoggles and then claim there is no money to protect the nation, its resources and its people.

So here is the answer and what the GOP needs to push through Congress this week (and I dare the Dems to fight it).

Make it illegal to pull services, support, etc from mission critical activities as long as there are non-mission critical funds available. This would make it impossible to hold us hostage or threaten us before, say, salaries are cut, or regulations are cut, or new programs on the drawing board are cut, etc.

Make it a felony for anyone to play games like this – and we will see an end to this kind of dumb melodrama! Let’s make political melodrama ILLEGAL!

So, what will happen in the coming weeks when the dire predictions from Sequestration fail to impress anyone outside the beltway? What will happen to all these babbling cabinet members when the skies do not fall, the floods do not come, and the end of the world does not happen?

What will it be like when fools (like this) are eating their crow?

His presentation was similarly dramatic to the claims he made on CBS on Sunday, insisting that “there are literally teachers now who are getting pink slips, who are getting notices that they can’t come back this fall.” But, when questioned further about that claim in his press briefing today, well… awkward:

When he was pressed in a White House briefing Wednesday to come up with an example, Duncan named a single county in West Virginia and acknowledged, “whether it’s all sequester-related, I don’t know.”

And, as it turns out, it isn’t.

This is going to be an interesting spring and summer – because this is when President Obama is exposed as a hyperventilating fool.  One thing is not sustainable – and that is the doom and gloom angst being peddled by the left right now. And for good reason:

My bet is you’ll see stories about the bottomless pit of waste, fraud, pork, cronyism, malinvestment, and idiocy that characterize so much of business as usual in Washington. With a glut of examples a mere Google search away, it won’t be long before even the most disengaged voter—facing some Obama-generated inconvenience and having these stories shoved in his face—asks, “What do you mean I can’t get my passport renewed? Couldn’t they fire Obama’s $100,000 a year dog trainer instead?” And if this phony “austerity” is imposed on the rest of us, how do you think the public will react to the First Lady’s next multi-million dollar vacation?

…

The best thing about the first post-sequester news cycle will be watching an army of think tanks, budget analysts, and media commentators roll out, in exquisite detail, a long list of discretionary spending programs that could easily be trimmed instead of whatever Obama decides to whack with a meat axe.

Solyndra and all the green-boondoggle-debacles will be trotted back out and compared to the cuts dollar to dollar for the madness the Obama administration is planning. How could Solyndra get money instead of ICE, or DOE or our troop?. With billions lost in green madness, do you think the Feds can say ‘we had to make those cuts, we had no choice’?

Pass the popcorn. Sequestration arrives tomorrow and all the end-of-the-world nutters are going to be waiting for the Mother Ship to land and save them from extinction. After all, is there really a difference between these two men (Heaven’s Gate) when it comes to their dire predictions and lapdog followers?

Tags: Obama, Sequestration

The Obama White House has been trying to scare everyone into robbing future generations’ livelihoods through massive deficit spending now that these future generations will be saddled with paying back later. Unless this administration forces this generation to stop stealing the incomes of today’s elementary and preschool kids –  in other words live within their means – we will have become the cruelest, greediest generation of all American history.

We will be the American nightmare.

That is what the sequestration ‘debate’ is all about – how much money in deficit spending do we leave behind. Because Obama, Pelosi and Reid have been credit-card spending like a drunken teenagers. The madness is sickening and the results to date shocking.

Especially all those Democrats on the Sunday shows crying “we need to do this for the children!”

No we don’t need to steal from our kids and waste their life’s incomes. We did not before in our long history, and we do not need to now.

We need to cut spending and stop the pillaging of our kids lives.

And let me give everyone a hint about what is being said across the halls of government as everyone ponders the impacts of sequestration – because the same message is being sent out everywhere.

Government workers will not be impacted!

Got that? No government employees will be impacted by spending cuts. Even if the programs those government workers oversea realize huge cuts, they won’t be among them.

Which is why I say go through with sequester, let every civil servant keep their paycheck and benefits (no matter how screwed up their related programs are) and put all the burden on the tax payers and private industry.

That is political suicide for the Democrats.  And of course they won’t do that. Which means all the scary stories won’t come to pass if the Democrats want to hold onto power.

So call the bluff. The GOP needs to grow a spine, and the Democrats have to decide what they can afford and not. If the GOP wilts now – screw ’em.

This is amazing. This is the essence of the Libertarian/Tea Party movement and describes how runaway government is now mindlessly moving money around, driving up the cost of living, and therefore destroying human society.

The downward spiral succinctly identified here is why no one supports either party, but many citizens feel too afraid to vote out the liberals and the Rube Goldberg Perpetual Economic Machine. H/T JoNova from down under.

Pass it around!

A Tea Party/Libertarian hero may be in the making in the US Senate. Apparently, freshman Texas Sen Ted Cruz is shaking up the old dotards in America’s most dysfunctional institution:

In just two months, Mr. Cruz, 42, has made his presence felt in an institution where new arrivals are usually not heard from for months, if not years. Besides suggesting that Mr. Hagel might have received compensation from foreign enemies, he has tangled with the mayor of Chicago, challenged the Senate’s third-ranking Democrat on national television, voted against virtually everything before him — including the confirmation of John Kerry as secretary of state — and raised the hackles of colleagues from both parties.

He could not be more pleased. Washington’s new bad boy feels good.

It’s about damn time someone went into that dull, dusty and dingy place and started to wake those zombies up.  The complaints are hilarious:

Without naming names, Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, offered a biting label for the Texan’s accusatory crusade: McCarthyism.

“It was really reminiscent of a different time and place, when you said, ‘I have here in my pocket a speech you made on such and such a date,’ and, of course, nothing was in the pocket,” she said, a reference to Senator Joseph R. McCarthy’s pursuit of Communists in the 1950s. “It was reminiscent of some bad times.”

…

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said that some of the demands Mr. Cruz made of Mr. Hagel were “out of bounds, quite frankly.” Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, issued a public rebuke after Mr. Cruz suggested, with no evidence, that Mr. Hagel had accepted honorariums from North Korea.

“All I can say is that the appropriate way to treat Senator Hagel is to be as tough as you want to be, but don’t be disrespectful or malign his character,” Mr. McCain said in an interview.

Pulleaasse. This from overpaid incompetents who have failed to do their mandatory duty to our country for 3 years running.

My hat off to Sen Cruz for waking up the dead wood rattling around the Senate. These people have allowed Trillions of dollars in tax payer money to be spent without the proper process and authorization required by our laws and constitution. And they have the nerve to whine about accusations?

Fire them all!

Because the truth is, the pols in DC are all just like this man:

Update: Some commentary on other  sites linking here seem to be under the impression I was the one who limited the range of George Zimmerman’s elbow in the following analysis. As I stated in the post, the placement of his elbow on the ground and next to his side is Zimmerman’s testimony during questioning. It is also part of George’s ‘tell’ when he fabricates – he drifts into ridiculous details.

You can release George’s elbow from where he anchored it and the bullet trajectory still won’t work. Remember, poor George was fighting for his life against a superior opponent [/sarc]. If you allow more degrees of freedom, it does not help Zimmerman in terms of trajectory path. Any attempt to bend the wrist into the line of fire weakens the grip on the gun and the force on the trigger. If the elbow is out or the arm back enough to aim straight in, then the person on top could  push down and away on the arm and force the gun away. This is the benefit of being on top and having the ability bring all your weight to bear.

It is also interesting how the Zimmerbots dismiss the mountain of contrary evidence  now compiled against George. Anyone who thinks this is the only problem is in serious denial. But this is a huge problem – bullet trajectory. That is a law of physics. Zimmerman’s account is riddled with problems with contrary evidence known. And this is not all there will be, is my guess. – end update

There has been some interesting reporting on the Trayvon Martin murder case this week, reporting that once again points to the conclusion George Zimmerman is NOT the poster child for 2nd amendment gun rights, but is actually the poster child against personal gun ownership. And the sooner the pro-gun, 2nd amendment movement dumps Zimmerman to pay for his crimes, the better off responsible gun owners around the nation will be. I ma pro gun, and Zimmerman is the example of what every decent gun owner would never do.

Zimmerman confused the right to self defense with a right to harass, chase and confront a law abiding person he felt like harassing. He wanted to play policeman, but nearly all knowledgeable gun owners know that carrying a gun is not a license to play cop. No one has any right to stop, harass, threaten or impede another citizen. The only people authorized to stop, search and question a citizen are the police. Even then the police are constrained by a myriad of protections for the lawful citizen (who is innocent until proven guilty) and must be trained and certified to handle a confrontation safely. Not even armed guards can go beyond the property they are protecting and reach out and disturb others on a whim. Gun ownership is a serious responsibility.

How do Zimmerman and his blind followers think otherwise is a real mystery.  But they do – and they are wrong.

Trayvon Martin was armed with a cell phone, tea and skittles. And he was under age. No adult had the right to impede him, and anyone dumb enough to try would have been open to the protections provided minor children against threatening and/or dangerous adults. Given his efforts to get away from Zimmerman, he was clearly AVOIDING confrontation. He did so numerous times. Zimmerman, who chased and hunted Trayvon, was clearly PUSHING the confrontation (and admits so on the 9-11 tapes).

A man who stalks a child, and then finds that child fighting back (and likely winning), cannot then use self defense and kill the stalked child if events go against him.  Law of the land – for obvious reasons.

So what is this new forensic analysis? It shows George Zimmerman’s concocted story is not true or accurate to the death scene details, 9-11 call timelines and testimony:

Among his conclusions:

• If Zimmerman’s retelling of the event were accurate, the confrontation Zimmerman described with Martin would have occurred much sooner than it actually did;
• Zimmerman covered more time and distance after leaving his truck that night than he revealed to police;
• based on the times and distances Zimmerman said he covered, Zimmerman would have still been on the phone with Sanford police when he claims he was attacked by Martin;
• had Martin walked directly to his destination, his father’s girlfriend’s townhome, he would have made it there safely before Zimmerman ended his nonemergency call to Sanford police;
• Martin was in fact leaning over Zimmerman when the fatal shot was fired, just as Zimmerman has maintained.

I  must point out that the last bullet is not conclusive and most likely wrong, and it will backfire on Zimmerman’s case. As presented in this story and accompanying video, a simulated firing  against test clothing shows nothing more than a 3″ gap between the hoodie and Trayvon’s chest. That is the only sound conclusion. The jump to the uninformed conclusion that this 3″gap  means Trayvon was sitting astride Zimmerman, with his shirt hanging down is wrong. Demonstrably wrong.

This is not the only position from which this arrangement of hoodie and chest can be achieved. Moreover, the bullet’s path (if we have the right trajectory) won’t support the story’s conclusion. I noted this in a post back when the first round of evidence showed up. First off, understand the mechanics of the human body and human arm when firing a gun.  When on your back, with elbow against the ground (as Zimmerman himself testified), there is only a small range of trajectories a bullet will travel. Here is diagram one, show the range of the arm holding a gun from the back:

With the elbow on the ground the arm can bend as shown, and only as shown.

Now, let’s put an assailant on top of  a victim, straddling the stomach with knees up into the armpits (again, this is direct testimony of George Zimmerman) leaning over Zimmerman so he can push/bash his head against the ground.

This is the style of MMA fighting mentioned by one of the witnesses who saw the two on the ground. Notice where Zimmerman’s gun would be located if he was on his back. It has to be on the hip on the backside, firmly pinned to the ground and captured in his holster under his shirt. How do we know this is where Zimmerman wears his gun? Because Zimmerman illustrated this in his crime scene walk through.  The guy on the ground in this picture could never pull a gun from this position.

But let’s combine the two images and see what happens if the gun fell out and the man on the bottom could shoot the man top:

I want everyone to pay very close attention to the angle of the arm and the possible trajectory paths (yellow arrows). Any shot from the position described by George Zimmerman would enter low and go upward into the chest cavity.  You cannot hold a gun and bend the wrist down and fire  to level off the gun (try it). The arm, wrist and trigger finger won’t work, and it would push any lose clothing up against the chest. So you cannot get a trajectory front-to-back with elbow on the ground, you can only get one from lower front to upper back.

Now go watch the video and you will see something amazing. To get the desired effect of shirt and entry wound, the shot has to be fired straight into the chest – like this:

See the difference? The red line is almost perpendicular to the possible yellow trajectories on the above diagram. The forensic simulation employs THE EXACT SAME trajectory on the test shirts as this red line. A straight on shot. There is  one way to get this shot – and it is while both men are standing:

This is the only mechanically possible shooting position that matches the trajectory of the gunshot wound (and the test firing scenario) and the mechanics of arm, wrist and elbow. It is so obvious Zimmerman did not shoot from his back as to be blinding. So, how does one get the hoodie 3 inches away from the chest in this position.

Easy. Zimmerman is holding Trayvon by the hoodie, Tryavon is trying to pull away. As Trayvon bobs back and forth trying to back away (as Zimmerman’s gun is now out and pointed at his chest and he is yelling for help), the gun goes off. Zimmerman’s efforts  to hold Trayvon by the hoodie   pull it away from the body. It is just one of many scenarios that do fit the trajectory path, entry pattern and wound. but one thing is for sure, there is not trajectory that works with Zimmerman on his back, elbow planted on the ground, as he testified. None.

As for the other conclusions, they fit Zimmerman style if lying. He over embellishes whenever he is creating fiction. That is why he adds so many little details no normal person would remember in the heat of  a fight, while not remembering other big things. He demonstrated this ‘tell’ when he showed how his gun is worn on his back hip. It was a pathetic attempt to show how he can pull a gun that is clearly pinned to the ground, in his belt and in a holster, WHILE pinning one of Trayvon’s hands. See this screen grab:

This is Zimmerman explaining how he pinned Martin’s left arm.  And here he shows a draw from his holster:

Can’t do both at the same time. Zimmerman is oblivious to the mechanical limits of the arm, elbow and wrist.  Just as he was oblivious to these constraints when he concocted the entire shooting story. And the fact his timeline, distance and story don’t line up is not a surprise. None of it is.

He lied to cover up the fact he stalked, got into a fight, and then killed an unarmed innocent kid. After all, he’s lying for his life right now.

The fact Zimmerman went farther (or lurked longer) than he admitted is probably due to the fact he was the one hiding. And after Trayvon thought the coast was clear and resumed his evening stroll and talk with his girlfriend, it was Trayvon who was probably ambushed.

Zimmerman had enough time to go the “T” and his truck probably 4 times over between his first call and the 9-11 call with the shot fired. So what was he doing all that time? Playing cop?

Addendum: I watched the video of the simulated firing again and noticed one other problem.  The pattern of gunshot residue on the inner shirt (representing the chest) is a symmetrical circle.  That is because the test firing has the gun perpendicular to the chest – straight on. But as I showed above, there really is no way to shoot straight into the UPPER chest from the position Zimmerman claims to be in. In that arrangement, the residue would be angled, with  smaller dispersion below the wound and it elongated above, to more accurately reflect the possible shooting angles depicted in yellow above.

The stippling pattern on Trayvon – circular. Also indicating a straight on shot..

Again, this physical difference between the yellow and red trajectories is damning. There is no way Zimmerman’s testimony (including the part were is elbow is on the ground) works with the evidence.