You can only defy economic gravity for so long. And California is on the same, course, as is the country itself, if we don’t come up with new policies.
Category Archives: Social Commentary
Trayvon Martin’s Sympathizers
A message for them that they need, but don’t want, to hear.
[Update a couple minutes later]
What George Zimmerman’s police calls tell us about his attitude toward blacks.
The amount of lies and nonsense that have been spewed about this case over the last year and a half have been staggering, even for the leftist media.
Life In The Fast-Pass Lane
Some thoughts on elite privileges, from Megan McArdle (who is now blogging at Bloomberg).
As someone who fast passed at California Adventure on Monday (without paying extra, I might add), I didn’t notice this phenomenon. But perhaps it’s different, because they aren’t rationing by price, but instead by first-come, first served.
The Broken City Of Detroit
It hasn’t for decades. Its profligacy has finally caught up with it.
The Post-Zimmerman Poison Pill
Heather McDonald has a palliative to the continuing race baiting:
Criminal-law professors across the political spectrum agree that the Zimmerman verdict resulted from prosecutorial overkill, not juror bias. . . . Close on the heels of the “biased justice system” conceit, however, is the preposterous implication that the primary homicide threat faced by young black males comes from honorary whites such as George Zimmerman. “Our children are targeted. Our community is targeted,” Martin Luther King III told the NAACP national convention on Wednesday. Protesters at the Orlando, Fla., courthouse this week held signs proclaiming “Endangered species: young black men and boys.” The New York Times ran an article today about the “painful talks” black parents are having with their children about how not to get gunned down by whites. A nurse’s assistant in Missouri told the Times: The whole situation ‘“would just make me skeptical about what crowd of white people I put [my son] around.’”
In fact, if a black parent wants to radically reduce his son’s chance of getting shot, he should live in a white neighborhood.
Yup.
More from the notorious right-wing racist, Jeralyn Merritt:
Obama said if Martin had been white the result would probably have been different. Not once did he acknowledge that if Trayvon Martin had not attacked George Zimmerman, the outcome might have been different.
As a former Constitutional law professor, I would expect our President to acknowledge that the purpose of a criminal trial is not to send messages to the American public. It is merely to test the Government’s evidence: Did the state prove guilt and disprove self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt.
By the President comparing himself to Martin 35 years ago, is he saying he would have responded as Martin did, and physically attacked someone for following him? I hope not because our laws do not allow such conduct. It is not illegal for a private citizen to follow someone. It is illegal to physically assault another person who has not threatened him with the imminent use of force.
I am very disappointed that the President has chosen to endorse those who have turned a case of assault and self-defense into a referendum on race and civil rights. And that he is using it to support those with an agenda of restricting gun rights.
The President, like so many others, refuses to acknowledge that George Zimmerman had no avenue of retreat from the beating Martin was inflicting on him. Zimmerman would have prevailed on self-defense without a stand-your-ground law. The only additional element a stand-your-ground law adds to traditional self-defense is the elimination of a duty to retreat if one is available.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott says there will be no change to Florida’s Stand Your Ground law. I hope he’s right. The law does not need to be changed. People have a right to defend themselves from attacks like the one Martin initiated against Zimmerman. They should not have to wait until the next blow, which could be a fatal one.
Shameful. But the president has no shame (which is apparently true of some of my commenters as well).
Mitch Daniels
Why he was right about Howard Zinn. Not to mention schools of education.
As Glenn notes, Zinn was a communist, and his works (and those who admire them) should be no more worthy of respect than those of an avowed Nazi.
[Update a few minutes later]
More:
The AP story is a sort of hit job, intended to discredit Daniels who is coming up for his six-month review as head of Perdue University. Its actual effect, on me, anyway, was to increase my already high esteem for the man. Here is a chap that not only saved the state of Indiana from the fiscal nightmare that leftist-run states like Illinois and Michigan are suffering (remember Detroit?), but he is also someone who can spot a Communist fraud at 100 paces and isn’t afraid to say that left-wing propaganda is not the same as history and should not be purveyed as such on the taxpayer’s dime. Zinn’s book, wrote Daniels in one of those emails, “is a truly execrable, anti-factual piece of disinformation that misstates American history on every page.” That’s exactly right.
…Note well, Daniels doesn’t say Zinn’s book oughtn’t to be allowed to be published. He doesn’t want to censor the book. He merely says it shouldn’t be taught as history. He would, I’d wager, say the same thing about The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. And he’d be right.
The country needs a lot more Mitch Danielses. It’s a shame that he didn’t run in 2008.
[Update late evening]
First link was broken. Fixed now. Sorry!
“I Could Have Been Trayvon”
Well, you know what, Mr. President? If you were bashing some guy’s head into the pavement thirty-five years ago to be a tough guy, you may well have been. As Treacher notes: “Apparently, @BarackObama thinks that if a white kid was beating a Hispanic guy’s head into the sidewalk, he couldn’t possibly get shot.”
The notion that this case is about “white supremacy” is sheer lunacy.
I’ll refrain from comment about how much better off the nation might be today had the President been Trayvon, with the same results.
“Stand Your Ground Laws”
Every time morons (or liars — OK, could be both) like Eric Holder talk about them in the context of Martin/Zimmerman, they are a complete non-sequitur. This should be pointed out at every opportunity.
Trayvon Martin
Was he attempting to gay bash Zimmerman?
There’s a lot more evidence for that than that Zimmerman killed him because he was black. But it doesn’t fit the politically correct narrative. Nor does the fact that he was an uncharged criminal.
Sadly for the media, almost everything they reported was wrong, and against the narrative. And of course, they continue to tell the lies. And when Will Saletan is calling you out, you know that you’ve jumped the shark.
[Update a while later]
Shorter Eric Holder: The show trial must go on. Plus a bonus — the gratuitous racism of Nancy Grace. CNN has been more disgraceful (so to speak) than usual on this case.
Justice Is Done
This trial should never have happened, but at least it came out the right way, despite prosecutorial and judicial misconduct. I particularly enjoyed O’Mara’s indictment of the media at the end of his press conference.
But as Glenn writes, “But count on Obama, Sharpton, et al., to use this to promote racial division.”
That was always the point, and there was never any other.
[Late Saturday night update]
As I predicted, the inevitable lynching threats, on Twitter.
You know, Twitter accounts aren’t really anonymous. I’ve never been that big on prosecution for speech, but I think that this really is fire in a theatre.
{Update a few minutes later]
This was another loss for race-baiter Barack Obama:
By injecting himself in a minor Florida criminal case by implying Martin could be his son, the president of the United States — a former law professor, of all things — disgraced himself and his office, made a mockery of our legal system and exacerbated racial tensions in our country, making them worse than they have been in years. This is the work of a reactionary, someone who consciously/unconsciously wants to push our nation back to the 1950s.
It is also the work of a narcissist who thinks of himself first, of his image, not of black, white or any other kind of people. It’s no accident that race relations in our country have gone backwards during his stewardship.
Nope, not at all.
And I’m glad it was a loss for such a moral atrocity.