– I think I will go on twitter and start another trend: #AmericaisGeorgeZimmerman
– Seriously, gents, get a different sign.
– Washington is taking steps to keep Boeing here (Seattle Times Link). The thing they could best offer is that they aren’t South Carolina.
– The GOP press release failing Rep. Mark Takano’s grading is hilarious.
Carl, can you point to even one HA post from you where you show concern or outrage over black on black killing?
Don’t remember any nationwide, or even local marches, after a pack of teenage blacks robbed and kicked to death the Tuba Man, who was white. They only got a few weeks in juvi. The Tuba Man was curled up on the ground in fetal position when these beasts kicked him to death.
Is someone here good at looking up stats? I’m curious, how many blacks are killed by other black every year in America, and how many are killed by whites? I’m guess about ten times as many blacks are killed by other blacks, than killed by whites.
Is it time for Washington taxpayers to pony up another $3 billion extortion payment to Byoing?
@3 Here’s a stat for ya: I bet conservatives tell at least 50 lies for every black-against-black killing.
I do know that the top 9 out of 10 US cities with the highest murder rates have Democrat mayors.
@ 1,2,3
Perhaps it’s the fact that in predominantly “black” neighborhoods, there are no grocery stores with fresh food. Google up “food desert” and educate yourself.
Here, I’ll even give you the first example.
Perhaps its the fact that gun stores are on every other street corner in cities like Detroit, Oakland, Baltimore and Compton, and States like Nevada and Texas sell weapons in any quantity to any person with almost no questions asked.
Perhaps it’s the fact that our big hero industrialists have shipped nearly all of our industrial capacity to places like China, Vietnam, Indonesia and Bangladesh, where they can use prison (slave) labor to make all the pretty plastic shit and worthless baubles you like to stack up in your garage. Industrialists who then keep the money they make from that in foreign banks in countries where there are no laws regulating it.
Perhaps it’s the fact that the schools in such neighborhoods are left to rot and are closed and consolidated to the point where elementary classes have 40 or more students packed into classrooms that were designed for 15 or 20 at the most, and those schools are left without any basic resources at all, like chalk for the teachers and books for the students.
Perhaps it is a natural reaction to being treated like dogshit, held under constant surveillance under threat of lethal violence by everybody around them including their own neighbors, and then left to fend for themselves when it comes to basic justice.
Perhaps it’s the result of being specifically targeted by “law enforcement” based entirely on the color of ones skin, and seeing the young people being given multi-year sentences in prison for the same offenses that the suburban young white people are only fined for. The “war on drugs” is the best example of that. Then we sell the prisons off to private for-profit corporations who then spend tens of millions wining, dining and outright bribing the lawmakers for ever increasing levels of punishment for even the most petty offenses. Then those punishments are directed specifically at the poorest demographic.
Perhaps it is the result of constant, 24 hour, 7 day a week propaganda on television that promotes the idea of violence as a means to solve problems and extract justice. Propaganda that goes all the way back to the first days of television as a public medium. The old cowboy shows and the old detective shows.
If Hitler would have had television, he would have won WW2, quite easily. Because citizens of the allied nations would have already been convinced of the threats he promoted as being so dire, that they needed to be dealt with as quickly and violently as possible.
Total war is a Fascist ideal. The Black folks in this country have been subjected to a rather unsubtle form of it since this country was founded.
So, we wake up this morning to wingers celebrating a vigilante getting away with manslaughter. I’ve seen better Mondays.
@3. Compare apples to apples, Troll.
What is the conviction rate for black men killing unarmed black kids similar to the Travon case?
What is the conviction rate for white men killing unarmed white kids?
and best.
What is the conviction rate for black men killing unarmed white kids?
The protests and outrage aren’t sincere, in my opinion. They are meant to distract us. There is so much black on black crime, and just plain black crime, that when the tables are turned, people use it to reinforce the idea that blacks are victims, when, in fact, they are normally the opposite.
The truth is, that racism is a scapegoat for blacks messing up their own lives. Racism exists, but it’s not the boogyman everyone makes it out to be. In most cases, the black community’s situation is due their own poor choices, not racism.
@9
Black males are only 5% of the population. Now, I have a question for you. Do you believe more black males rape white women, or more white males rape black women? I’m talking total numbers, not as a percentage of race.
@2 Compare Apples to Apples Troll.
The tuba man death was loathsome but the kids who did the crime were caught, prosecuted, and given time. Zimmerman wasn’t even charged till the media forced the cops to do their job and, as you see, Zimmerman, an ADULT, was given no consequence for killing a black kid.
http://www.seattlepi.com/local.....303450.php
Troll, so your whole argument is Blame the Victim? Zimmerman was justified because black kill blacks? Zimmerman should be allowed to join in?
@11 Wow, anything to weasel away and deflect. You are pathetic.
No.
@12
Zimmerman was given a trial. You just don’t like the outcome. Just like I didn’t like the OJ trial outcome. Move on. Get over it. Statistically speaking, black teenagers being killed by neighborhood watchmen is not a epidemic in America. But black people killing other black people is an epidemic. Try to put this case in perspective.
black people killing other black people is an epidemic.
Yes. I have seen the stats about Chicago for example. However, citing that as justification for letting Zimmerman walk, makes no sense.
But you are a Troll, and facts and logic are not important to you. Bait Bait Bait.
@16. To use your logic: you wouldn’t care that the Tuba Player killers were found not guilty.
Do you care how stupid you sound?
@17
When OJ was found not guilty for murdering two white people, do you believe that sent a message to all white women that it’s not safe to date black men?
@ 18
The difference being, that the Prosecutors in that case were not deliberately throwing their own case in open court.
Trayvon Martin was targeted, stalked, harassed, apprehended and then murdered by an individual who violated every rule of Neighborhood Watch.
The rules of Neighborhood Watch are:
No weapons permitted during neighborhood watch activities.
No interception of suspected individuals.
No confrontation of suspected individuals.
No apprehension of suspected individuals.
Period.
The ONLY purpose of Neighborhood watch is to observe and report to police any suspicious activity. Walking through the streets is not a suspicious activity. Trayvon Martin was considered a suspicious person by Zimmerman based entirely on the color of his skin. If Martin had been white, Zimmerman would never have given him a second look.
Other facts:
The confrontation happened over 100 feet away from Zimmerman’s vehicle. Zimmerman himself said that Martin was running away from him and ran after him in the effort to confront Martin. That was three or four minutes after Zimmerman had called Police, and the cell phone remained on and was recording Zimmerman as he was running after Martin.
The confrontation happened on a grassy area and not on pavement.
No investigation whatsoever occurred for a MONTH after the shooting, and only took place after public outcry over the lack of investigation, in which convicted fraudster Governor Scott appointed a special prosecutor to the case.
Zimmerman was allowed to walk free within hours of the shooting, after a very cursory and friendly interrogation by the Sanford Police by officers that he knew personally. It was really only a matter of helping them file their paperwork. They had already decided to not charge him, based entirely on his statements to them. They conducted no investigation at all at the crime scene other than to take a dozen pictures of Martin’s body.
The whole thing was a whitewash, and the case was deliberately thrown by the Prosecutor.
@19
Zimmerman, as a neighborhood watchman, had many other contacts throughout the years with people in the neighborhood. Some of those encounters were with black people. These encounters are documented on 911 calls. Question. Why didn’t Zimmerman shoot the other black people he encountered?
@ 20
Maybe he was just building up his nerve. He was a man who was out to find an excuse to use his weapon. He stands proud of what he did.
He is a murderer.
(duplicate post deleted by author)
Well, Troll, what the Zimmerman case is all about is a trigger-happy yahoo killing an innocent person. Martin wasn’t committing a crime, he had a right to be there, and was minding his own business when Zimmerman accosted him. This isn’t a Tuba Man case.
Tuba Man was an innocent victim of a criminal attack. Most all of us will agree that if Tuba Man had shot his assailants, or if some passerby had shot his assailants to rescue him, it would have been justified.
The reason Zimmerman’s case is a big issue is because it raises the question of how much license we, as a society, want to give to trigger-happy yahoos to pull out guns and start shooting every time there’s a verbal argument, a scuffle, a shoving match, or an encounter on our streets.
Most people think of self-defense in the traditional sense, i.e., that a person attacked on the street by muggers — the Tuba Mans of the world — or in their homes by home invaders has a right to defend himself. There’s no argument about that kind of self-defense. We all agree people have a right to defend themselves in those situations.
Zimmerman is not such a victim. He is, at best, a self-appointed vigilante; at worst, he’s a meathead with a gun who appointed himself judge, jury, and executioner because he decided Trayvon Martin was a criminal because (a) he was black, and (b) he was wearing a hoodie. We, as a society, or at least a lot of us, don’t want to give a license to kill to trigger-happy racist meatheads, and that’s what the furor over Martin’s killing is all about.
You are absolutely on the wrong side of this argument. You are siding with death instead of life. You are siding with a meathead who took the law into his own hands, instead of letting the police do their job. You are siding with street violence instead of rule of law. You are siding with profiling and racism instead of judging people by the content of their character instead of the color of their skin. And that makes you almost as big a meathead as Zimmerman and his supporters.
Let’s all just hope you don’t have a gun. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that meatheads shouldn’t be turned loose with guns on our streets.
Maybe, maybe, maybe…that’s all the prosecution had to go on. What if, maybe, perhaps. The prosecutions closing remarks were nothing but emotional hyperbole. Nobody knows what really happened out there except GZ. The rest is all speculation. Keep it up progs. It’s you people that are the racists. All the way down the line. The only way you can keep blacks voting democrat is by fomenting racial hatred. You are caricatures of yourselves.
Three black males rob and murder five white bar patrons in Denver last year. Anyone ever hear about it? Do you idiots realize how common black on black and black on white murder is? And we never even hear about it. THAT’S the epidemic. This Zimmerman story is making the news because is the man bites dog story of crime. It’s rare for a white man to kill a black man. Black violent crime is so common it doesn’t even make the national news.
http://kdvr.com/2012/10/18/thr.....-blvd-bar/
More on the Denver bar murders by three black men. They stabbed to death the white bar patrons. Their total haul: $170.
http://www.denverpost.com/brea.....er-killing
Again, this kind of thing happens all the time in America. We never even hear about it because it’s now become commonplace.
@24 “Nobody knows what really happened out there except GZ.”
Nonsense. We know exactly what happened out there: An innocent teenager is dead and George Zimmerman killed him. That’s all we need to know. The details are just filler.
@25 Irrelevant. Trayvon Martin didn’t rob or kill anyone. George Zimmerman wasn’t justified in shooting Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, because 3 black males robbed and killed white people in a Denver bar.
@26 Actually, it doesn’t happen all the time in America. A crime in which 3 robbers enter a bar, order the 5 occupants of the bar onto the floor at gunpoint, then stab all 5 to death and set and building on fire in order to leave no witnesses and destroy the evidence of their crime, is extremely rare. There’s a lot of violence in our gun-happy culture, but even so, crimes like this are very, very rare.
You just can’t get anything right, Troll. Not even simple basic things. You’re one of the stupidest trolls ever to post on HA. You’re a moron.
Goldy, I’d like to lodge a complaint. I feel like I am being cyber-bullied!
Bottom line, I don’t want a meathead like George Zimmerman, with a gun tucked in his waistband, patrolling my neighborhood and challenging any kid who looks “suspicious” to him. That makes us all less safe, and puts our innocent children at risk. I don’t want him or his ilk in my neighborhood, and I don’t wish them on any other neighborhood. My neighbors don’t deserve that. Their kids don’t deserve that. Our community doesn’t deserve that. Nobody deserves that. My message to George Zimmerman and his fans is: Go away. You’re not helping us. We don’t want you in the vicinity of our homes and families.
@31 Write your complaint here __ and send it here [ ].
Sometimes cyberbullying is legal and appropriate, just like shooting people is sometimes legal and appropriate.
Pitbulls kill, what, dozens of people every year? And poodles kills probably one person every century. This case is like people going apeshit over poodles killing people, when their attention should be on the pitbulls. Again, people, get some perspective.
Some like to bash unions, but I found a piece of good news about unions. While the BART strike in the Bay Area was fuel to the fire, the Pacific Harbor Line and Division 214 of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, which is a part of the Teamsters Rail Conference, agreed to a new 5 year deal. The PHL, an operation of short-line conglomerate Anacostia and Pacific, provides switching operations for the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles. Not sure if it is covered under California labor law, or the Federal Railway Labor Act. (The PHL does not cross state lines)
http://www.railwayage.com/inde.....channel=94
Seems that BLET and PHL did a give and take on the bargaining.
I have a question for everyone. Which is the greater tragedy? The five white people stabbed to death by three black men in Denver bar robbery last year? Or Trayvon Martin being shot?
@ 35
One is not allowed to prosecute anyone under the Law for a crime, if that person is not suspected of a crime. One cannot presume guilt based on one’s own perceptions of a particular demographic’s behavior.
Trayvon Martin was not suspected of a crime, except by the perceived reputation of his demographic by an individual who had a well-established history of violent behavior that was enough to prevent him from becoming a Police officer. He couldn’t pass the psychological tests, nor did he meet the minimum intelligence requirements for law enforcement. Even in Florida.
He shot an unarmed teenager after instigating a confrontation with him, because he wanted to shoot someone some day. Thats how he sees law enforcement personnel, as executioners and the ultimate judges of right and wrong.
He was a cop-worshipper who just wasn’t intelligent or psychologically stable enough to become one. Any psychologist will tell you, that a sycophant is the worst sort of individual to be given any authority of any kind. They cannot under any circumstances be considered trustworthy to make their own decisions without looking up to an authority for approval, even if that approval is self-perceived and filtered through ones own psychological construct.
And George Zimmerman was a sycophant to law enforcement.
He had NO business carrying a firearm during his neighborhood watch activities. None. He is a murderer.
@31. “WAH. The smart posters are not letting me get away with my trollish BS. WAH!”
@35. Troll, Now you are just being willfully ignorant. Didn’t you read ANY of what Rabbit posted as WHY this is a big deal?
Try this to expand your empathy. Write the reasons why progressives, REAL Christians and people of color think the ruling was wrong. Once you let yourself understand where others are coming from, you can have a better discussion.
@ 37
What does one have to do with the other?
In other news, Michelle Bachmann remains as crazy as a rat in a shithouse.
It is appalling how easily she lies. She is seriously demented.
@19 “The rules of Neighborhood Watch are:
No weapons permitted during neighborhood watch activities.
No interception of suspected individuals.
No confrontation of suspected individuals.
No apprehension of suspected individuals.”
Apparently not in Sanford, Florida.
I think I’ll be staying away from Sanford. In fact, if I have my druthers I’ll be staying away from Florida. I’ve been there and it was bad enough just by virtue of the hurricanes and alligators.
Asiana is going to sue KTVU in Oakland, for broadcasting the fake pilot names last week.
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_new.....names?lite
42) They ignore the rules of the neighborhood watch, because I believe that Zimmerman was not affiliated with the umbrella organization of the Neighborhood Watch program.
Sanford
Fucking
Florida.
Copypasta from the National Neighborhood Watch Institute.
Now, someone please tell me, what crime was Trayvon Martin committing?
Apparently walking home from the store, which everywhere else is not a crime.
About the footage of the “riot in Miami”, a clue for the people posting it that it would not fool people, the smoke did not obscure the French spelling of Canada Post.
Besides the fight to staff the NLRB, the board that oversees railroad and airline labor relations, the National Mediation Board, is also short a member, but since it is one vacancy on a three member board it still has a quorum. Also, the RLA allows redress in Federal Court, the NLRA does not.
http://www.progressiverailroad.....8211;36821
@39 Oh, let him compare George Zimmerman to pitbulls, if he wants. Both breeds are a menace and should be banned.
@39 Oh, let him compare George Zimmerman to bitbulls, if he wants. Both breeds are a menace and should be banned.
I don’t know why WordPress is double-posting. Didn’t used to, but suddenly it’s happening a lot. I wish Goldy would get a better host. This one sucks.
Troll,
1) Murder is wrong, always wrong, regardless of the color of the skin of either the perpetrator or the victim.
2) Although the jury could have used “common sense” and brought a conviction, the law in Florida enables people to (and specifically enabled G. Zimmerman) stalk and kill unarmed victims.
3) For reasons I can only guess, the Sanford Police and prosecutor’s original plan for investigating the homicide of an unarmed 17 year old black person was to let his murderer walk.
4) Murder is wrong, always wrong, but not always illegal and not equally prosecuted in the USA.
@37 The answer to your question is that all 6 deaths are equally terrible tragedies.
How stupid must a person be before it’s necessary to spell this out to him? I’ve met bricks that are smarter than you, Troll.
@42 In fact, it came out –last year– that the Sanford “neighborhood watch” adheres to none of the accepted guidelines for organizations of that sort, and that the national organization of neighborhood watches (a subsidiary of a national association of sheriffs) had never heard of them.
Troll used to be a little more upfront with his racist bullshit.
53. Troll spews:
@49
Are you talking about the niggers beat Tubaman to death, and only going to be sentenced to weeks in jail?
04/03/2009 at 6:09 pm
Your opinion doesn’t mean jack shit, Troll. Go fuck yourself.
Zimmerman Juror Seeks Book Deal
“One of the six anonymous jurors who acquitted George Zimmerman of second-degree murder in the death of Trayvon Martin has signed with a literary agent to write a book about the case less than 48 hours after the verdict.
“The woman, known only as Juror B37 under court order, will enlist her husband, an attorney who works in the aerospace industry, as her co-author, agent Sharlene Martin said in a statement Monday.”
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_new.....agent?lite
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Now we know what kind of people were on that jury.
Juror Seeks Book Deal
“One of the six anonymous jurors who acquitted George Zimmerman of second-degree murder in the death of Trayvon Martin has signed with a literary agent to write a book about the case less than 48 hours after the verdict. The woman known … as Juror B37 … will enlist her husband, an attorney who works in the aerospace industry, as her co-author, agent Sharlene Martin said in a statement Monday.”
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_new.....agent?lite
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Now we know what sort of people acquitted George Zimmerman.
Juror B37’s agent assures us, “The reader will learn why the jurors had no option but to find Zimmerman not guilty due to the manner in which he was charged and the content of the jury instructions.”
Let’s skip over the jury’s copout and ask this public-spirited juror why should would ask the public to pay for this information. If she’s got something on her conscience, why not just call a press conference and tell the world what it is? Going the book deal route makes it look like, you know, she did it for the money.
You know, it occurs to me (in less than 3 seconds) that a book deal is worth a lot more if the verdict is controversial. So did that influence her deliberations? Verdicts can be set aside for juror misconduct. The judge ought to summon Juror B37 back to court for questioning.
This verdict is getting stinkier by the minute.
A Michelle Bachmann staffer has been arrested for theft. I’m not insinuating anything about the person who hired him. As a liberal, I don’t play the GOP’s guilt-by-association games.
(snicker)
(chuckle)
(chortle)
HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR
In other news, Texass filibuster hero Wendy Davis has raised nearly $1 million in campaign donations in 2 weeks.
Looks like the UK is one step closer to marriage equality. The bill passed third reading in the House of Lords, and if the House of Commons agrees with a few amendments, it goes to the Queen for Royal Assent.
http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/.....?mobile=wp
Withholding Royal Assent would be akin to a veto, but it is rare?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Assent
64) It will be a tough fight for her, whether a run for Governor, or her own senate seat. Still, she should keep up the fight.
Two months ago, a Florida tycoon who was convicted of DUI manslaughter in a high-notoriety case was granted a new trial because a juror’s behavior “turned the trial into a constitutionally impermissible proceeding.” The juror lied to get on the jury and then wrote a book based on the trial.
“‘A juror who deceives to get on a jury in a high profile case for his own profit is a trial lawyer’s worst nightmare,’ Goodman’s attorney Roy Black wrote in a statement.”
http://abcnews.go.com/US/polo-.....eSjPI21F6E
65) Rare to the point of non-existence, at least in the modern age.
Yeh Roger, it was about like waking up the morning after OJs trial. His dear wife was tragically bludgeoned to deaf, but he walked off into the sunset
68)I think that works for Canada, and New Zealand. The latter voted on Marriage Equality a few months ago, and the conservative PM and Labor opposition leader agreed to a free vote, the party whips were left out of it. For PM John Key of the National Party, more of his caucus were against him on the issue than for it. They only have one house, Royal Assent was a formality.
In English history class at EWU, the professor said that the last roual veto was during the reign of Queen Anne.