From The You Can’t Handle the Truth Files – Mark Cuban Edition

“In this day and age, this country has really come a long way putting any type of bigotry behind us, regardless of who it’s toward. We’ve come a long way, and with that progress comes a price. We’re a lot more vigilant and we’re a lot less tolerant of different views, and it’s not necessarily easy for everybody to adapt or evolve.

I mean, we’re all prejudiced in one way or another. If I see a black kid in a hoodie and it’s late at night, I’m walking to the other side of the street. And if on that side of the street, there’s a guy that has tattoos all over his face — white guy, bald head, tattoos everywhere — I’m walking back to the other side of the street. And the list goes on of stereotypes that we all live up to and are fearful of. So in my businesses, I try not to be hypocritical. I know that I’m not perfect. I know that I live in a glass house, and it’s not appropriate for me to throw stones.”

So says Mark Cuban to Inc. Magazine in an answer to question about his upcoming vote in the NBA and the Sterling saga.

Of course yet another firestorm has emerged from these statements.  Somehow this is becoming about Trayvon Martin. I suppose the Martin family have some sort trademark on the word Hoodie now.   To the point that Cuban has issued an apology to the Martin Family:

“In hindsight, I should have used different examples.  I didn’t consider the Trayvon Martin family and I apologize to them for that. Beyond apologizing to the Martin family, I stand by the words and the substance of the interview.”

 

There is nothing that Cuban said that is untrue.  The problem is that in today’s society the truth is no longer valued.  What a sad state of affairs that is.

We are human beings.  As such we all have frailties.  We all make judgements every single day about people we see out in public.  We do that for safety purposes.  If you are on a first date and that person rubs you the wrong way due to any number of reasons, you are making a judgement not to have a second date.  How you dress for a job interview can, and likely will, make a difference in if you are going to get a job offer or not.  Do you honestly believe that a law firm is going to hire someone who shows up in flip-flops and cut off jeans shorts?  Not likely.  Fair or not fair, it is the way it is.

I will be the first to admit that if I was walking down the street in the dark and I saw someone with a hoodie on, I would think twice.  It has nothing to do with the color of their skin, but the fact that they are trying to hide their face from view.  I would wonder why.  If I saw some big burly man that had wild tattoos all over I would also feel a little fearful.  The same way a black person would feel fearful if they saw a person walking down the road in a KKK hood.  Heck, in fact I would be fearful if I saw someone in a KKK garb and I am not black.  In my mind someone wearing that is someone worth being fearful of.  It is going to set off red flags in my mind.  A swastika is another fearful sign to me.  Does that make me a racist?

Another thing that I am fearful of is neighborhoods with high crime rates.  I lived just outside of DC for almost two decades.  I didn’t go to certain neighborhoods unless it was absolutely necessary.  To me that is common sense and has nothing to do with skin color.   I would feel the same way regardless of skin color of the majority of people living in that neighborhood.

We must talk about these issues instead of labeling someone a racist.  Which of course is exactly what happened to Mark Cuban once this interview went viral:

From twitter:

“Mark Cuban is racist. If I see him walking down the street I’m walking on the other side [because] I’m scared of him.”

 

This from Michelle Obama:

No matter what you do, the point is to never be afraid to talk about these issues, particularly the issue of race, because even today, we still struggle to do that. This issue is so sensitive, so complicated, so bound up with a painful history.

 And we need your generation to help us break through – we need all of you to ask the hard questions and have the honest conversations because that is the only way we will heal the wounds of the past and move forward to a better future.

She may have said it a little differently, but ultimately the context is the same.  We must talk about these issues.  We must face our own biases and prejudices in order to deal with them and overcome them.  We all have them.  Even if it is as simple as our political views.  Many in this country put the democrat in a certain box, put the republican in certain box.  Very few people fit neatly in the boxes that they get stuffed in.

Telling the truth shouldn’t be as controversial as it has become these days.  At this point in history we should be able to handle the truth that people carry stereotypes with them in life.  That virtually all people see certain things in their life and respond in ways that can be conceived as negative.  We make judgements based on how one is dressed.  We make judgements based on the neighborhoods that one lives in.  We make judgements on what type of work someone does.  It is only when we acknowledge these judgements and yes talk about them openly that we can finally break through the barriers of our preconceived notions that we all carry.

In 2014 we should be able to handle the truth.

Advertisement

Can We Discuss All the Other People Who Were Wrong in the Sterling Scandal?

I will say at the offset that I don’t have a problem with what the NBA owners did.  Not because I think private speech should be punished or that racist speech is worse than other type of “hate” speech, but because I believe in the rule of law.  Part of that rule of law is contract law.  The NBA franchise agreement gives the owners the right to fine and suspend others with a simple majority vote.  When you sign that, you agree to the terms and conditions.  Mr. Sterling doesn’t have a legal leg to stand on to stop the suspension or the fine.

But there is a great number of people who are being left out of this conversation.  We can start with former commissioner David Stern.  It isn’t like Mr. Sterling’s comments should come as any surprise.  He was fined one of the largest fines in the history of the country for discriminating against minorities in housing.  His racists views were well-known long before that phone call became public.  David Stern did nothing about it.  Neither did any of the other owners, well at least as far as we know.  There may have been talk behind closed doors, but publicly no one did anything.

We then can move onto the Los Angeles Chapter of the NAACP.  To me they come out looking far worse in this than Sterling ever will.  It shouldn’t be overly surprising that a 80-year-old white man has racist tendencies.  It was a perfectly acceptable way to be and to think when he was growing up.  Yes, he should have “evolved” by now, but he is far from the only one from that generation that has not.  What I can’t possibly fathom is the fact that organization  was about to give him a “Lifetime Achievement” award knowing full well he has history of discriminating against minorities.  Apparently to the NAACP it matters none if you actually are racist if you write some big ol checks along the way.  Did the NAACP not know about his housing discrimination issues?  Or did they just want the money more?   Sterling is just a racist.  The NAACP Los Angeles chapter are a bunch of money-grubbing opportunists that will allow the people they are said to be protecting to be violated against as long as they get theirs.  They will close their eyes to the very serious offense of housing discrimination as long as they are getting paid to.  Which just further proves that the organization has long since outlived their usefulness and should disband.  How can they possibly be taken seriously after this?  Not that I took them seriously about this beforehand, but I hope that some people will open their eyes.  Especially when you consider they are still saying today, they are “willing to work with him” as long as he finances some things.  Another words, write them another check.

Now we can move onto the Congressional Black Caucus.  They seriously want the government to get involved with the NBA and how they set up their franchising?  Really?  They pounced on this to keep themselves in the news and to prove to the few people in the country who think that they actually accomplish anything are doing something.   C’mon the very last thing any professional sports franchise needs is the government getting involved.  They are actually profitable.  That will turn around quickly if the feds get their grubby mitts involved.

We then have dear ol’ Rev. Al who couldn’t wait to get his five minutes in front of the camera.  He is now calling for more diversity in the game of basketball.  I suppose close to three-quarters of the players being black isn’t good enough.  The NBA has more minority coaches and front office personnel than any other major sports in the country.  They have done the job of letting the free market decide who does and who does not have ownership as well as management positions all their own.  They don’t need any interference from others.

I now that many people are upset that Sterling is being punished for a private conversation.  I agree that shouldn’t happen.  The problem is that we just can’t ignore the conversation now that it is out there.  That conversation shined a light on his other transgressions that were wildly well-known within basketball circles that no one bothered to do anything about.  Yes there is a great deal of faux outrage involved.  But the NBA is far better off without this man in their ranks.  They real shame of the whole thing is that they waited so long to do it.

But I have to say the most ironic part of the entire story is this:

Sterling was investigated, tried and convicted for housing violations by none other than that “racist” George W. Bush administration.  His AG office tried and fined him.  The NAACP of Los Angeles was going to give him a lifetime achievement award. You really can’t make this stuff up folks.

 

Race Baiters and the Voting Rights Act

The Supreme Court released its decision on Shelby County V. Holder.  This case dealt with only one section of the Voting Rights Act; section 4.  This section used data from the 1960’s in order to decide which states/counties/districts have shown acts of discrimination in allowing minorities to vote, ever.

There is no denying that in sections in the country the ability for minorities to vote was made almost impossible.  In many cases, those areas are in the south.  But the question in front of the court was does the federal government still have the right to micro manage every aspect of how voting procedures are done in all these areas of the country close to 50 years later.  They answered no.  Chief Justice Roberts said that times have changed and the law must change with those times.

I am not going to sit here and deny that racism exists, it most certainly does.  We have heard recent stories about churches in the deep south refusing to marry inter-racial couples.  But the other side to that coin is that in many of the areas that this section covered have minority voters registered at equitable numbers of their populations.

Now we have all the racebaiters out in force today saying that minorities will be again denied the right to register and vote.  Where is the proof of that?  Many areas of the south have black representatives at all levels of government.  Is that automatically going to stop simply because one small provision of the act needs to be adjusted?  It is simply ridiculous.  But Jesse Jackson usually is.

Herein lies the problem.  We are not in 1964 anymore.  Times have changed and the congress was warned years ago that this provisions needed to be updated, not just rubber stamped to continue for an additional 25 years.  This section actually forced the areas it covered to get permission from The Department of Justice if they needed to do something as simple as change a voting location 25 feet away.  How exactly is that going to effect minorities from voting?  If a white person can get 25 feet so can anyone else.

In one recent instance, one small town wanted to take the party affiliation off the ballot on local elections.  The Department of Justice said that was going to disenfranchise black voters.  All it was going to do was make people actually research who was running instead of seeing a letter after their name and voting based on that.  Since it was a very small town, most people most likely knew them anyway.  But it didn’t stop the federal government from sticking their nose into business that had nothing to do with them.

Congress should have acted on this years ago.  Why won’t they?  They are afraid of being labeled racist simply because they admit that many areas of the country no longer discriminate when it comes voting.  The democrats don’t get to hold onto they are the champions of minorities and the republicans don’t want to get called names.  So what do they do?  They simply act like nothing has changed in 5 decades.  We all know that it has.

Many on the left are talking about the voting rights act has been gutted.  No such thing is true.  What we really have seen here is that voting rights act has been successful and it is a law that has done what it was supposed to do (the law was always supposed to be a temporary one until things leveled out) and we should be celebrating that.  There may very well still be areas of the country where problems exist.  Lets figure out where those areas are and write laws that make sense.  If this is still such a problem, it should be no problem being able to prove it.

But of course that will make the likes of Jesse Jackson less relevant.  We wouldn’t want that would we?

Quote of the Day – Sebastian De La Cruz Edition

“I just am just saying for the people who did write the bad things about me, I would just like to tell them that I respect what they said, because I think in the United States people should have freedom of speech and that’s their opinion. But the thing that I don’t really like about it is that they don’t know that I am Mexican American, and that my father was in the Navy for many years and that I’m a proud American living the American dream.”

Sebastian De La Cruz, 11, sang The National Anthem at game three of the NBA finals the other night.

The reaction on twitter was disgusting comments.  You can see them here.  Simply digusting.

But the kid obviously was raised well.  He can sing too.  For those that don’t know, this took place in San Antonio, Texas.

Accidental Racist – Much Ado about Nothing

I keep hearing about this song and how racist and insensitive it is.  Now I am not a fan of country music, and quite honestly the only thing I know about Brad Paisley is that he is married to actress Kimberly Williams.  I have never heard his music before that I know of.  I am not really a big fan of LL Cool J, but he seems like a nice enough guy from little I have seen of him.

So here are the words to this song that is causing such a dust-up:

To the man that waited on me at the Starbucks down on Main, I hope you understand
When I put on that t-shirt, the only thing I meant to say is I’m a Skynyrd fan
The red flag on my chest somehow is like the elephant in the corner of the south
And I just walked him right in the room
Just a proud rebel son with an ‘ol can of worms
Lookin’ like I got a lot to learn but from my point of view

I’m just a white man comin’ to you from the southland
Tryin’ to understand what it’s like not to be
I’m proud of where I’m from but not everything we’ve done
And it ain’t like you and me can re-write history
Our generation didn’t start this nation
We’re still pickin’ up the pieces, walkin’ on eggshells, fightin’ over yesterday
And caught between southern pride and southern blame

They called it Reconstruction, fixed the buildings, dried some tears
We’re still siftin’ through the rubble after a hundred-fifty years
I try to put myself in your shoes and that’s a good place to begin
But it ain’t like I can walk a mile in someone else’s skin

‘Cause I’m a white man livin’ in the southland
Just like you I’m more than what you see
I’m proud of where I’m from but not everything we’ve done
And it ain’t like you and me can re-write history
Our generation didn’t start this nation
And we’re still paying for the mistakes
That a bunch of folks made long before we came
And caught between southern pride and southern blame

Dear Mr. White Man, I wish you understood
What the world is really like when you’re livin’ in the hood
Just because my pants are saggin’ doesn’t mean I’m up to no good
You should try to get to know me, I really wish you would
Now my chains are gold but I’m still misunderstood
I wasn’t there when Sherman’s March turned the south into firewood
I want you to get paid but be a slave I never could
Feel like a new fangled Django, dodgin’ invisible white hoods
So when I see that white cowboy hat, I’m thinkin’ it’s not all good
I guess we’re both guilty of judgin’ the cover not the book
I’d love to buy you a beer, conversate and clear the air
But I see that red flag and I think you wish I wasn’t here

I’m just a white man
(If you don’t judge my do-rag)
Comin’ to you from the southland
(I won’t judge your red flag)
Tryin’ to understand what it’s like not to be
I’m proud of where I’m from
(If you don’t judge my gold chains)
But not everything we’ve done
(I’ll forget the iron chains)
It ain’t like you and me can re-write history
(Can’t re-write history baby)

Oh, Dixieland
(The relationship between the Mason-Dixon needs some fixin’)
I hope you understand what this is all about
(Quite frankly I’m a black Yankee but I’ve been thinkin’ about this lately)
I’m a son of the new south
(The past is the past, you feel me)
And I just want to make things right
(Let bygones be bygones)
Where all that’s left is southern pride
(RIP Robert E. Lee but I’ve gotta thank Abraham Lincoln for freeing me, know what I mean)
It’s real, it’s real
It’s truth

Now it seems pretty clear to me that all the two were trying to accomplish was to say that we need to not judge people.  There are blacks that feel threatened by the confederate flag, there are whites that feel they are being blamed for something they had no part of.  The only way to move beyond this is to try to understand each point of view.  Not every southern is a racist.  Not every black person is up to no good.

Seriously, what is so bad about that?

I know I have asked this question many times, America is far from the only country that had institutionalized slavery in its past, why do have the “stain of slavery” when other countries do not?  In some respects slavery still exists in the world, it just has a different name; Human Trafficking.  It happens all over the Middle East and Asia.  Children are sold and/or kidnapped and forced into prostitution and indentured servitude still exists in many countries.  This is a very serious problem that can even be found in this country if one really cares to look.  Why aren’t we having a discussion on the here and now and not what ended a 150+ years ago?

Two artists recorded a song that meant to get people to think of their own perceptions.  But as usual it has turned into LL Cool J is turning his back on race.  But I guess since the rumor is that he is a gasp, republican (the horror) that he did that a long time ago anyway.

 

 

Hey Jay-Z, This is What Che Thinks of You

“The black is indolent and a dreamer; spending his meager wage on frivolity or drink; the European has a tradition of work and saving, which has pursued him as far as this corner of America and drives him to advance himself, even independently of his own individual aspirations.”

We’re going to do for blacks exactly what blacks did for the revolution. By which I mean: nothing.

“The blacks, those magnificent examples of the African race who have maintained their racial purity thanks to their lack of an affinity with bathing, have seen their territory invaded by a new kind of slave: the Portuguese.”

 

 

 

 

Has this man picked up book?  Say Che’s own diaries for example?

The Obama Tape

Last night a video of a speech that President Obama gave back in 2007 was released in its entirety.  The tape is divisive, race baiting, and pandering.  One must ask themselves why that fake accent he is putting is not the moral equivalent of black face?  It isn’t like the president grew up in a predominately black neighborhood and was speaking “Ebonics” as a child, then as an adult learned better diction but occasionally falls back into old habits when back in the “neighborhood”.  Why the black community doesn’t see how condescending it is for him to speak that way in front of them is beyond me.  

 The speech was also widely inaccurate in terms of Katrina.  Of the course the media’s conventional wisdom has been that President Bush put his feet up on his desk and thought to himself, hey I am gonna kill me some black people today.  New Orleans is what was put on television.  It certainly wasn’t the whole story. The damage caused by the storm itself was much worse in Mississippi than New Orleans.  New Orleans actually survived the storm quite well until the levees were breached.  But New Orleans is what people saw.  The media didn’t totally ignore what was going on in other parishes in Louisiana, but they almost did.  There was another parish that was just as devastated as NOLA was, and that one is predominately white.  The help didn’t get to them anymore more quickly.  The government failed.  Which to me isn’t a surprise.  I don’t think the government is all that quick or efficient.  Matter of fact the government was by design meant to move slowly.  To me the biggest failures of Katrina in New Orleans was Mayor Nagin not doing enough to get those people out of there before the storm hit.  The Governor also was far too lax in her call for federal help.  

 To this day many people don’t realize that President Bush couldn’t do anything for the first few days.  That pesky little thing called the constitution got in his way.  The state had to request federal troops.   The governor didn’t do that for days.  We don’t want the President of the United States to have the power on his own to put military forces on the ground in this country.  It is an invitation to tyranny.  

 I also think it comes as quite a surprise to people like me who gave money to funds to help the victims of Katrina that I didn’t care.  After all I am white, they were mostly black, so hey so what.  My church went to NOLA for about two years after the storm hit, cleaning up areas and helping people rebuild their lives.  We raised over $100K in those efforts in just the first month.  I am sure over the two years we raised a considerable greater amount.  But now I am being told that I didn’t care.  That is news to me.  Not only did my faith based community give funds, they gave their time and their sweat.  But I guess I am just that average white person he talked about months later.  

 I also found out that my roads don’t need to be fixed.  Really?  I pay taxes too.   One of the things that I was reminded of while listening to that speech is the controversy here in D.C. surrounding the opening of the Walmart in several depressed neighborhoods.  He specifically mentioned that people have to go too far to do their everyday things.  That is very true in the neighborhoods that these stores are scheduled to open in.  But they have been fought tooth and nail.  It is mostly about Walmart not being unionized, but they won’t admit that.  One of the D.C. council members actually said that opening them is a bad idea because people will get arrest records when they can’t resist the urge to shoplift.  Yes, they really said that.  That is how little they really think of the poor.  

 But the president had that covered too:

“We can’t expect them to have all the skills they need to work. They may need help with basic skills, how to shop, how to show up for work on time, how to wear the right clothes, how to act appropriately in an office. We have to help them get there.”

I must be an idiot.  It never occurred to me that being poor meant you couldn’t figure out how to get to work on time or even understand why that would be important.  I didn’t realize that they need to be taught how to dress.  Now, I can imagine that a person of limited income may need some help being able to afford nicer business attire, but not that they were unable to comprehend that they needed it.  I didn’t know that being poor means that your intellectual capacity is very limited and the government needs to sweep in and teach you everything that may need to know how to behave in an office setting.  

 Sadly, many in this country agree with him on this.  This is why I can’t be a liberal.  I have more faith in the individual, even the poor ones.  I don’t think they are so stupid they don’t know these things without a government program to teach them.  Now, I would like someone who agrees with these statements to explain to me what makes you think if they lack the intellectual ability to grasp this without a government program why do you think they will ever get it?  Obviously you think they are so stupid that the concept of being on time to work doesn’t occur to them on their own.  

 Even this won’t wake up the inner city/poor black community.  Here he is, telling you that you don’t have the capacity to complete simple and basic thought processes on your own.  You are totally dependent on government to do that for you.  Yes, he has your best interests at heart.  

 But, even more sadly is that, as president, he has done none of those things to help you.  The unemployment rate is almost doubled that of the general population.  But, hey details.  What do I know? After all, I am the racist for thinking this tape says something important about the liberal mindset of minorities and the poor.  Even though I have said repeatedly that being poor is more of a barrier in this country than color is.  Being born white and poor is no easier than being born black/hispanic/asian/ and poor.  I am still the racist.  

 

Of Dog Whistles and Other Such Nonsense

I have enjoyed the spin on the left about the convention this week.  The outright falsehoods that are going on about the auto plant in Wisconsin has been quite amusing.  The video and newspaper reports that prove that the plant was indeed still making cars when President Obama took the oath of office doesn’t seem to deter them.  I guess Romney’s underwear is truly magic since the videos dated long before he choose Paul Ryan as his running mate.  

The outright disgusting behavior that was shown towards Mia Love and Condi Rice was very sad,  but even worse, it was expected.  The cries of the female version of Uncle Tom was heard loud and clear.  We get it, you don’t like any person of color being conservative.  They are not allowed to think for themselves.  They must follow your vision, because after all, you are the party of tolerance.  

The left got their pants all twisted by Ann Romney’s line of ‘I have a real marriage’.  She wasn’t talking about gay marriage.  She was talking about the same thing that every other married couple knows to be true, marriage is work.  The movies and the fairy tales don’t tell you that when you are growing up.  She had five children to raise with a husband who travels.  She has dealt with real tragedy in her life.  The loss of a child, numerous health problems in breast cancer and the knowledge that she will be dealing with MS for the rest of her life.  She has come out the other side of those things with her marriage in tact.  That is not an easy thing to do.  The rates of divorce in our country prove that.  

Chris Matthews schooled me this week on the words that I am not allowed to use.  Chicago means racist.  Golf means racist.  All that secret code, oh my.  Al Sharpton has decided that the fact that Romney has a proven and clear record of putting minorities and women in positions of power and authority is a negative.  I am not even going to try and figure that out.  In his world up is down and black is white.  The only people who can legitimately put minorities is someone who shares his world view.  If not, I guess they are just pandering.  Some have gone as far to say that proves that they are racists.  Paul Ryan’s college girlfriend who happens to be black is also somehow proof that he really doesn’t like black people.  You figure it out, it just makes my head hurt.  

But this has to be one of my favorites of the week.  

 But that line about how when America needs to accomplish something great, “you need an American”? Dog whistle to the birthers?

Now, take a look at what he actually said:

Tonight that American flag is still there on the moon. And I don’t doubt for a second that Neil Armstrong’s spirit is still with us: that unique blend of optimism, humility and the utter confidence that when the world needs someone to do the really big stuff, you need an American.

She is just pulling this crap out of thin air.  He didn’t say when America needs to accomplish something, he said when the world does.  He was talking about American Exceptionalism.  Something that Maria Cordona obviously cannot even begin to understand.  The left doesn’t see America in the same vision that I and others on the right do.  They just don’t.  They don’t view our place in the world as something special.  We are just one of many to them.  We should be more like Europe to them.  Why they don’t just pick up and move to Europe is something that I don’t understand.  You like it there so much, pack your bags.  No one is stopping you.  I will help you pack.  

Pizza, Safety, & Raaaaacism

Jets Pizza in Dearborn, Michigan will no longer be delivering pizza in the city of Detroit after dark.  Recently a 19-year-old employee was shot point-blank in the chest while delivering a pizza.  The normal procedure had been two people would go to make any delivery in Detroit.  One of the delivery people was legally armed.  It was the last delivery of the night and only person remained and was willing to go to make the delivery.  Luckily the young college student was not killed.

The cries of raaaaacism didn’t take long.  So let me see an employer has to take the extra step of hiring people who have legal carry permits in order to protect the delivery man from being robbed and/or shot at while in the city limits.  The management/owners of this pizza place have at very least a moral obligation to their employees for their safety.  In some states it may even be possible that they have a legal one.

I am sorry, but his has nothing to do with race, this has to with safety.  A young man was doing his summer job and was shot in the chest and the bullet nicked his lung.  He is a football player and more than likely will miss the season because he was trying to be responsible and do the job for which he was hired to do; deliver pizza.

Detroit is the armpit of U.S. cities at this point in time.  If I owned a business that had delivery options available it is very possible that I wouldn’t even go into Detroit in broad daylight.  I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if one of my employees was badly injured or worse yet killed just to make a food delivery.  It isn’t worth it.

I do have sympathy for the people who are left in that city.  Good paying jobs are not easy to come by, the crime rate is very high, gangs have infested the city, and it is just downright dangerous.  The public school system is an abject failure.  We could spend $50K per student and it probably wouldn’t make a dent.

But this has become the new mantra in the U.S., cry racism at every turn.  As an employer do you really think it makes a difference that the city is mostly black?  Do you think the owner of this restaurant would do something different if the city were mostly white and still just as dangerous?

A local resident said this:

Ryan, a resident of southwest Detroit where the shooting happened, said he would “never let his wife outside after dark.” Would he go outside himself after dark? “Yeah, I would, but I’m armed,” Ryan said.

He added that many delivery companies in Detroit won’t go to addresses they don’t already know.

This man lives there and is afraid to let his own wife go out onto the streets after dark.  Is he racist too?  Maybe he is one of those safe hating black men?

Another said this:

John from Chesterfield called in and said, “This is not racist, this is a high probability risk assessment. I was in the military … If you’re going to go into Detroit after dark the risk assessment is you’re going to be robbed, shot or mugged … There are people in Detroit who don’t want to go out after dark either, it’s crazy, but that’s it.

One more for good measure:

Mike, a U.S. Post Office manager, said he had a part-time carrier who moonlighted in that area as a pizza delivery man, and he was also attacked. “The guy jumped out of the bushes and basically attacked him, pulled out a gun … It’s very dangerous over there. I’m black, I’m from the city, but that’s the highest crime area I staffed. I can’t blame the pizza owner for doing that. He has to look at those employees every day.”

The owner/management of this business is doing the responsible thing.  He is protecting his employees from danger that can easily be controlled by not making deliveries after dark when the chances are high they will be robbed, mugged, or even killed.

As I said, I have a great deal of sympathy for the people in Detroit who are stuck in this crime ridden area and sadly can’t find a way out.  From what I have heard, the mayor is really trying, but has yet to make a significant difference as of yet.

If you bought me a house, paid all of bills, gave me a very healthy monthly salary, I still wouldn’t live there.

This isn’t about racism, this is about common sense.  Sadly, there are elements in that city that put zero value on human life, personal property, or civil liberties.  I realize it is easy to say that the citizens need to band together to stop these elements when I am not the one doing it.  I remember a woman in Baltimore who tried to do just that and she was murdered, and her killer was never found.  She was killed in broad daylight in the middle of the street.  Someone saw who did it, but are too scared to come forward.  I can’t say that I blame them.  But the problem is, until the citizens band together to rid their city of these elements, they won’t be getting any pizza deliveries from Jets.  I have this feeling that many others will be doing the same.  The honest people in this city are being held prisoner by the thugs.

Where is Jesse Jackson on this issue?

Are we so worried about right vs. left that we have forgotten right and wrong?

I am beginning to think so.  Much has been made about National Review’s Rich Lowry firing John Derbyshire.  I would think it was a pretty simple clear-cut case.  Derbyshire wrote an article about his version of “The Talk” you have with your children.  His version was for people of white and Asian backgrounds.  It was in a word, disgusting.  He flat-out says that black should be judged by a different standard as whites, especially in terms of politicians.  I don’t know about you, but I will take Tim Scott over Nancy Pelosi any day of the week and twice on Sundays.

He also went to try to demonstrate that blacks are stupid and violent.  He used some “evidence” to back up his claims, but what he didn’t do was talk about how socio-economics factor into those numbers.  Take a good hard look at any poor performing school district anywhere in the country and the standardized test results are lower.  Not all poor performing schools are in predominately black areas.

He also said to tell your white children to stay out of mostly black neighborhoods.  Does he include the neighborhoods of Prince George’s County Maryland as well?  That is the most affluent black community in the country, or did he just mean instruct your children to stay out of neighborhoods that have high crime rates?  Of course, any parent that isn’t living in one of those areas will tell their children that.  But again, not all high crime areas across the country are black communities.

This man is free to think and feel what ever he so chooses to.  That isn’t the issue.  The issue becomes does National Review have to employ someone who so blatantly demonstrates those views?  I don’t think they do.

I have read different things across the conservative blogosphere in regards to his firing.  Many are upset about the fact that he was let go and say that Lowry has no right to fire him.  Why exactly is that?  Stacy McCain has explained it that since Derbyshire has been expressing these types of views for quite sometime the only difference is that the left complained about it.  While there is truth to that in part, it isn’t the whole truth.  Derbyshire has always been  provocative in his writings, but he has never gone this far before.  This was an outing of his racist views.

— n
1.	the belief that races have distinctive cultural characteristics determined by hereditary factors and that this endows some races with an intrinsic superiority over others

There can be no doubt that his little rant is racist by the true definition of the word.

Now, the right spends a great deal of time pointing out the racist views of those on the left.  Pointing out that the likes of Al Sharpton is considered a hero by many on the left and is allowed to spew his views on television.  There is currently an online petition going around asking MSNBC to fire him.  There are all sorts of things being said about how Eric Holder is doing nothing about the threats made against George Zimmerman, the man who shot and killed a black teenager in what he claims to be self-defense.  The truth is that the Eric Holder has no power over what the black panthers are currently doing.  That is a state issue.  The person that should be answering the question of why nothing is being done is AG Pam Bondi or the local police departments.  Not Eric Holder.  It is easy to make him a target, but in this case he shouldn’t be one.  But AG Bondi is a conservative republican so the questions are not forthcoming.

If you think that it the right thing to do to take Al Sharpton off the air for his views, then how can it be wrong that Lowry fired Derbyshire?  What Derbyshire said was equally offensive.

I have heard others say that Lowry should have used this as way to disprove him.  Others have said the answer to bad speech is more speech.  I don’t disagree with either of those statements.  But neither justifies keeping him employed.  You can actually do both things; fire him and prove him wrong.

There is right and wrong in the world.  Derbyshire can be as racist as he wants to be.  That is his business.  But Rick Lowry has a responsibility to National Review and to its readers to give fair and accurate accounts of the happenings in the world.  Giving a platform to a man who holds the views that blacks are stupid and violent by nature is neither of those things.  Good riddens, Mr. Derbyshire.

It is time that we admit that racism is neither right nor left.  It is a human condition.  Racism knows no boundaries when it comes to politics or to social strata.  It will rear its ugly head in just about any place and by people of any color or background.

The Politics of the Death of Trayvon Martin

The death of Trayvon Martin is still in the headlines and getting a great deal of coverage on the cable news shows.  I personally watch very little television, but when I do turn on CNN or MSNBC this is a major topic.  New polling is out that shows a racial divide on how you look at the case.  Many whites, myself among them, feel that this has been politicized by the likes of Jesse Jackson and Rev. Al Sharpton.  Now, I will admit anytime that Rev. Al gets involved in something I am more than just a tad suspicious.   See, I grew up outside of New York City and I remember the Tawana Brawley Case.  A very sad story of young teenaged girl who made accusations of rape at the hands of white attackers.  The longer it when on the more of the circus it became.  Brawley came from an abused background and had a step-father who was literally a killer and a mother who had abused her in the past for running away.  The racial strife that besieged the city during this incident is well-remembered by the people who had to live with it once this story left the news.  While Sharpton was successfully sued, he didn’t pay the monetary damages, people paid it for him.  We then can move onto the Duke LaCrosse players.  Rev. Al tried to destroy these young men’s lives based on a lie.  When there is a big spotlight that he can climb into, he never misses the opportunity.  He is nothing more than a race hustler and a con man.  How this man continues to have any creditability is beyond my comprehension.  Al Sharpton has blood on his hands.

I have been on record as being disgusted about how some one the right have decided to put Trayvon on trial.  This doesn’t belong in the court of public opinion.  This case is moving along in the justice system.  More slowly than many people would like, but nonetheless it is moving along.

There are many things that we don’t know about this case.  What does the coroner’s report say about where the bullet entered Trayvon’s body.  They can tell what angle the gun was held at and how close the gun was to his body when it went off.  Did Trayvon have any defensive wounds, did he have Zimmerman’s DNA under his fingernails, and did he have any other injuries beside the gunshot?   Where was Trayvon’s body in relation to Zimmerman’s car?  Where was Trayvon spotted in comparison to the store and his dad’s home?  All of these things will help bolster or help destroy Zimmerman’s statement of events that led to the shooting.  None of these things have been made public, so we have no way of knowing what evidence the state has and what they don’t.  Zimmerman has said that Trayvon went for his gun.  Is his fingerprints on the gun or the holster?  If so, game over; Zimmerman will be a free man.  Rightfully so, in my opinion.  That will be a clear-cut case of self-defense.

I have nothing but sympathy for the parents of Trayvon.  They buried their child.  Let me say that again, they buried their child.  That is a pain that no person should have to go through.  No matter the circumstances, it is one of the most painful things that anyone will endure.  They want justice done in the name of their son.  A perfectly understandable thing.  Any parent would want a full accounting of what happened to their child and how they died.  I am even willing to cut the woman some slack about getting the trademarks.  She has a very good attorney who I am sure told her to do this.  Lets be honest here, people would have tried to make money off her son’s death and this prevents people from profiting off her pain and loss.

What I find so troubling is how this boy’s death is being used and politicized.  The family made an appearance on Capitol Hill in regards to Stand Your Ground laws.  That is a state issue and has nothing to do with the federal government.  But people have decided to use this death to further their anti-gun agenda.  Stand Your Ground Laws isn’t really a gun law.  It says that you can use up to deadly force to protect yourself  even off your own property.  You can do that in any number of ways that don’t include a gun.  Some people are well-trained in martial arts and could end another’s life with their bare hands.  You could use a knife if you happen to have one, a tire iron if you are on the side of the road changing a tire and some one tries to attack you.  The law isn’t designed to be about guns, it is designed to allow people who are being threatened with imminent danger to protect themselves.  But of course the anti-gun lobby will use anything that they can to limit the constitutional rights of gun owners.

We also see cries of racism.  There is zero proof that Zimmerman is a racist.  Zero.  The people who are perpetuating this should be hanging their heads in shame (Rev. Al).  Racism is a very serious charge and it should not be made lightly.  There is word on the 911 call that you can’t make out.  Somehow this has turned into the word “coon”.  When is the last time you heard a person use that word to describe a black person?  That is not something that is part of the everyday conversation about race in this country.  When you make claims of racism that have little to no basis in fact, you are taking away from the true claims of racism.  I have heard one person go as far as to say that Zimmerman’s tutoring of underprivileged people was actually proof that he is a racist.  He did it to prove his superiority or something like that.

The Congressional Black Congress is not going to be outdone by Rev. Al, so they have decided to enter a resolution to honor the life of the young slain teen and it also calls for a repeal of the stand your ground laws.  Oddly, one of the people who signed onto the resolution is Congresswoman Frederica Wilson who helped pass the law in the Florida legislator.  Oh, the irony and how it is not being reported that this law passed unopposed.

The media bias in this case is well documented.  NBC has admitted to “editing” the 911 call.  Apparently that happened in the control room.  Uh, huh.  They purposely reported this case as a white on black hate crime.  They have done everything in their power to convict Zimmerman, to heck with the facts; or more precisely the lack thereof.  They have led to some of this uneven polling that we are seeing.  They have taken an unfortunate set of circumstances that we don’t have all the facts about and turned it into political theater.  A very sad commentary on how the view their jobs as unbiased reporters of facts.   They are losing even the bare threads of journalistic integrity that they had left.  Especially when you consider Al Sharpton is allowed to lead rallies then report on them during his show.  While he is opinion and should be given a little more leeway, he has been allowed to use that platform to push a point a view about a criminal matter.

Rev. Al says it is people  on the right who have decided that Zimmerman is not guilty.  I don’t believe that to be true.  I think most on the right feel that they don’t have enough facts to say what did or did not happen and we would like to see what the special prosecutor has to say about the available evidence.

I have heard on interview with Trayvon’s mother.  She won’t accept anything but a conviction.  Of course she is still in mourning and dealing with her grief.  I can’t imagine that Al Sharpton will accept it if the prosecutors come back and say that the evidence shows that Zimmerman acted within the law and no charges will be brought.  I know some who will not accept it either.  At least at this point.  They have made up their minds.  They ignore the fact that there is a witness that backs up Zimmerman’s claims.  Trayvon was on top of him punching him.  There are wounds seen on him in the video that released.  There was tape on his nose showing that their was some sort of injury.  To me the only way that Zimmerman should have felt reasonably in danger was if Trayvon did go for his gun.  If not, he was not justified in shooting him.

I have come to the conclusion that at the end of the day we will find that both Zimmerman and Trayvon both made some bad choices.  Zimmerman should have stayed in his car and locked the door once he knew the police were coming.  Trayvon should have either ran to his dad’s or called 911 when he was made uncomfortable once he realized that some strange man was following him.  If either of them had done these things, Trayvon would still be alive today.

Tucker Carlson, you should be hanging your head in shame – The Daily Caller Enters the Trayvon Martin Fray

There doesn’t seem to be an end to the tragedy of the Jayvon Martin story.  Two parents buried their child.  Something that shouldn’t happen ever, under any circumstances.  Lets start with what we do know.

Zimmerman was out in his community doing a neighborhood watch.  Zimmerman calls the cops about a kid wearing a hoodie that looks suspicious to him, like he is on drugs or something (how he can tell that from driving by him is beyond me).  The 911 operator tells him that there is no need to keep following him.  Zimmerman doesn’t listen and continues to follow him.

911 gets multiple calls about a fight outside that ends with a gun shot being heard. One caller sees Martin on top of Zimmerman punching him.  People are hearing cries for help.  Two other witnesses say that Zimmerman had his hand on his back after shooting him and made no attempts to help him.  People see a kid lying on the ground and suspect that the kid is dead.  The police arrive.   Zimmerman has cuts and is bleeding.  His injuries are treated in a police car.  No medical treatment that required hospitalization was given.  Zimmerman is then handcuffed and brought to the police station.  He gives a statement saying that Trayvon came up from behind when he was going back to his car after looking at the street sign to get the name of the street.  Trayvon punched him, after falling to the ground Trayvon gets on top of him and is banging his head into the ground.  He started yelling for help, no one came out to help him, he pulled his weapon and shot and killed Trayvon.  Zimmerman is Hispanic (which is not a race by way) and Trayvon is black.

That is what we know for sure.  From this little information this has turned into a three-ring circus.  Zimmerman has been labeled a racist when the proof of that is scant at best.  In walks the likes of Al Sharpton who has a history of riling up racial strife without knowing all the facts.  Remember the Duke Lacrosse players and Tawana Brawely?  Only two examples of his not having all the facts before shooting off his big mouth.  I remember the Brawley case.  I grew up just outside of New York City in a Connecticut suburb.  I was young, but I remember what he did to that city with the false claims and outright lies.

Then we have the journalists and talking heads that have taken a word that cannot be made out from the 911 call and have insisted he used the word “coon” which has racial overtones. CNN decided to go the extra mile and cleaned up the tape.  It seems like the word he really used was punk.   The pictures being released of both people have been purposely misleading.  They wanted to paint a narrative that Zimmerman was some wild-eyed racist intent on killing an innocent young boy simply because he was black.  No proof of that exists.

The president decides to open his mouth and he too further inserts race into the issue by saying his son would look like Trayvon.  We have seen marches, looting, horrible displays of “mourning” done across the country.  It is hard to turn on a cable news channel without it being about this story.  Some being worse than others.  But what I can tell you is from the hits I have had on my several blog posts, this is the story that people want to hear.

We then have the really idiotic left that has tried to blame this shooting on republicans.  It wasn’t being politicized enough I guess.

I know that I have been called a racist more in the past three years than I have in the previous years of my life combined.  I get sick of it.  Especially since how I live my life and the people in it are not taken into account before the level is charged.  I am not alone on the right of this feeling.  We are all sick of it.

We are standing here watching Jesse Jackson, who doesn’t even seem to have a grasp of the basic facts of the case when he said that Trayvon was shot in the back of the head, using this death to talk about voter registration.  Trayvon has been compared to Emmit Till, even though there is no comparison between the two deaths.  We see an agenda and we don’t like it.

So instead of asking the left to come up with real evidence of Zimmerman’s racism, we decide to handle it by attacking a dead 17-year-old boy.  An intrepid blogger goes digging around on Facebook and twitter.  Finds some tweets that lead one to believe that the kid and his friends smoked pot and a possible fight with a bus driver.  Alleged pictures of tattoos have surfaced.  His school records were leaked to the media.  Apparently Trayvon has been suspended 3 times during his high school career.  Once for tardiness.  Once for spray painting graffiti, and this last time for having a baggie that had traces of pot in it.  The juvenile authorities in Florida have confirmed this boy had no arrest record.  While I certainly don’t condone a 17-year-old kid smoking pot, all in all there is no evidence that the kid is all that different from many others around the country.    If this is all of it, he is much better than many as well.

I smoked pot when I was younger.  I also got suspended for spray painting some very poorly chosen words about a teacher who gave me a B on school property.  My parents had to pay to clean it up.  And believe me, they weren’t going to hire a professional to do it.  I had to do it.  It took me a couple of hours if I remember correctly.  I learned my lesson.  I never did it again and realized that a B wasn’t so bad.  I have never been, nor will I ever be a gangbanger or a drug dealer.

So this kid has probably smoked pot.  He may or may not have had some jewelry in his backpack.  No one can prove that story to be true.  He has been late to school enough times that he has to serve a suspension.  He had may or may not have had tattoos, that would have been covered by the hoodie by the way. He may or may not have taken a “swing” at a bus driver; no proof of this happening exists.  Is that a drug dealing gangbanger make?  That is just as much as stretch as calling George Zimmerman a racist.  Don’t “gangbangers” carry guns?  Isn’t that the point of calling them bangers?

So in walks the Daily Caller and what do they decide to do?  They print the tweets.  They too have decided that they should be playing defense attorney for George Zimmerman.  They too have decided to put the dead kid on trial in the court of public opinion.  All the while complaining about the likes of Jackson and Sharpton doing the same to Zimmerman.  Hypocrites much?

There is so much we don’t know about this case.  What type of scrapes and cuts did Trayvon have besides the fatal shot.  Did he have any defensive wounds that would put Zimmerman’s version of the events into question?  What angle did the bullet hit Trayvon?  Did Zimmerman have  blood on his shirt?  Where was the body in relation to the car?   It would seem likely to be close by if his version of the story is true.  We don’t know what the coroner’s report says.  As far as I know it has not been released.  It just came out yesterday that the original police officer who questioned Zimmerman recommended that charges be pressed and wanted to arrest him that night.  The district attorney decided that they needed to wait.  Apparently not even the information that the police department wasn’t doing its job as initially reported was incorrect.

But some on the right have decided to tear this young man’s life apart and turn him into the villain.  I have seen people call him a gangbanging thug who got what he deserved.  Yeah, they said that.  Others believe because he had gold teeth (another thing I am not sure is true or not) proves he was a criminal.

What is so disturbing about the treatment of the dead boy in this case, this is how rape victims are sometimes treated.  Zimmerman may be charged with murder or manslaughter, a grand jury has been convened.  He already has a defense attorney.  Tucker Carlson shouldn’t be playing that role.  He also shouldn’t be making it harder for Zimmerman to get a fair trial. He certainly should not be turning what could very well be an innocent young, dead kid into a victim for the second time.  Shame on you Tucker.  You are a parent, you should know better.

The Additional Tragedy of the Tayvon Martin Death

First, I want to make it perfectly clear that I feel that this case should go in front of a grand jury and let them decide what, if any, charges are brought against Zimmerman.  It should not be tried in the court of public opinion. 

The problem is that this case is being tried by the media, the pundits, the race baiters of our country, social media, and around kitchen tables all over America.  It is really criminal that this boy’s death is being used in this way.  There are people with an agenda that are making statements that may very well have no basis in fact.  

The police have released very little information on the evidence that they have on the case.  Maybe because they did a awful job investigating it or just maybe because they are doing a better job than people are willing to admit and are making sure that they are covering every base.  It isn’t all that unusual for it to take time for charges to brought against someone.  Police have to build a case that they believe will hold up in court.  

We also can look at the photos that are being used.  Below is the photos that media are using.  Photos that are old and paint a picture that they want to paint.  

They are using pictures of Tayvon that are old and make him appear much younger than his 17 years.  They are using an old mug shot of Zimmerman that is a close up picture of his face that makes him look much bigger than the picture to the right of it.  Media narrative.  The facebook picture of Trayvon clearly shows that he was much bigger than what the media would like you to believe and that Zimmerman isn’t as big as they want you to believe.  

In Chicago there was a march to honor the life of Trayvon.  But there was barely a mention of the people who were killed by gang violence in a city that has been overrun by gang related crime and deaths this year.  57 children have lost their lives since the beginning of the school year.  The majority of them were gang related.  Are those children’s lives less valuable?  Don’t their parents want justice too?  

We have movie director and producer Spike Lee tweeting out Zimmerman’s home address, not just once, but twice.  He have Al Sharpton involving himself in this crime.  We have Jesse Jackson saying that black men are under attack.  On this point we sort of agree:

While African Americans comprise 13.5% of the U.S. Population, 43% of all murder victims in 2007 were African American, 93.1% of whom were killed were African Americans. 

Shouldn’t we be just at outraged about these murder victims as well?  

It isn’t that anyone is saying that Jayvon’s death isn’t a tragedy.  It is.  No parent should bury a child, ever, under any circumstances.  It goes against the nature of things.  My only point being we need to examine why this particular crime is getting so much attention and how the media is creating a narrative that may or may not be based on facts.   George Zimmerman has been tried and convicted in the court of public opinion. Not only as a murderer, but a racist as well.  The evidence of that is quite lacking.  

Black parents have some worries that others do not.  They have to talk to their sons in a way that their white counterparts do not.  Racism exists in this country.  That cannot be denied.  But not every crime  that have people of different colors involved is about racism.  It just isn’t.  The above stat proves that.  Only 7.9% of black murders are even committed by someone of another race. These numbers may not be comfortable for people like Jackson, Sharpton, and Lee to look at, but it doesn’t make them less true.  

We have to decide as a society if black murder victims are only cared about when they are killed by someone who is not black.  It is about time we have the difficult discussions and broach the topics of why the numbers are so skewed.  Until we talk about the real issues, the problems will never be solved.

I know that I view the police differently than many in the black community do.  I trust the police for the most part.  There are bad apples of course, but by and large they do their dangerous jobs well.  Many in black communities have a very different view of the police.  But I do feel that is more socio-economic related than race related.  I think that distrust of the police is just more prevalent in poorer communities were crime rates are higher than they are in lower crime rate areas. I have had very few run-ins with the police in my life.  So from my vantage point they are doing their job keeping criminals away from my property.  When you live in a high crime area you are going to see police more often.  You will see people getting arrested more.  You may even feel hassled if they question you because their was a crime in your neighborhood, you will also know more victims of violent crimes and you will know more people who have spent time in jail.  You wonder why they are not doing more about the gangs, the drugs, and whatever else is more of a daily occurrence in your neighborhood than what happens in mine.  Those are the biases that people from my vantage point and  people from other vantage points bring with them when they look at this case.  It isn’t about racism, it is about human nature.  We look at the world from what we have experienced and seen for ourselves.  

Read here What if Trayvon Martin were white.  A true story of white teen killed by a black shooter.  A different state with different gun laws.  There is an agenda to why this story is getting the attention that it is.  

The Tragedy of Trayvon Martin

I was just about to do a post on that poor young man that was shot murdered in Florida.  I happened to read SilverFiddle’s take on the incident and there is no way that I could say it any better:

A Stupid Gun Owner is a Dangerous Gun Owner

Responsible gun owners and defenders of the right to self-defense must demand the prosecution of George Zimmerman

Police in the central Florida town of Sanford have said that 28-year-old George Zimmerman says he shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in self-defense during a confrontation in a gated community. Police have described Zimmerman as white; his family says he is Hispanic and not racist. (US News)

Neighborhood vigilante George Zimmerman murdered young Trayvon Martin.  I don’t see how a reasonable person could reach any other conclusion. News outlets are blaming Florida’s Stand Your Ground Law, but that’s just agenda reporting.

Nothing in that law green-lights what Zimmerman did. He was flat-out wrong. Criminally wrong. You can’t just go chasing law-abiding citizens down the street at the point of a gun.

Zimmerman told a police dispatcher that the teen was “up to no good” because he was walking through his neighborhood “just walking around, looking about” with his “hands on his waistband.”  Does the idiot have kids? That’s what teens do!

Zimmerman chased after Martin, complaining to the dispatcher, “These a******s always get away.”

Hell yeah!  When a gun-toting man is chasing you, you’re going to try to get away. Of course Martin’s going to run. He probably thought Zimmerman was a pedophile or some kind of crazy person. He had every right to run. He also had a right to turn around and “jump” Zimmerman “from behind” (how do you get jumped from behind by someone you’re chasing? Zimmerman is lying.)

When someone chases you down and assaults you, you have a right to fight back. Too bad the kid didn’t end up kicking the dumb bastard’s head in.

Critics are calling for a repeal of Florida’s Stand Your Ground law in the wake of the killing, but that is like calling for the repeal of driving automobiles every time a pedestrian gets run down.

The perpetrator was not “standing his ground,” he was chasing down an innocent young man who was just trying to get back to his house before the second half started. If anything, had the kid killed Zimmerman, that same law would have protected him.

This is a tragedy. It is assault with a deadly weapon and murder. And Florida’s Stand Your Ground law needs to stand.  It will protect potential victims from assaults by people like George Zimmerman. 

The Martin family deserves justice for their son.  Mr. Zimmerman needs to be charged and tried.  Let a jury of his peers decide what his punishment will be.  The city/town of Sanford also deserve a new police chief, one that will follow the letter of the law.  This case is screaming for an arrest and he should be doing just that.

Although, I do want make another point that Silverfiddle didn’t cover in this, the fact that media is purposely fanning the flames of racism by reporting incorrectly that Mr. Zimmerman is white.  That is not a small point when charges of racism are flying around so freely.    Mr. Zimmerman is Hispanic.  

You should also go and read DaTech Guy’s take on this as well.  He makes some very good points too.  The numbers of black on black crime that don’t seem to generate all the outrage that this case is generating.  It is very possible that Mr. Zimmerman had some issues with race.  It is also very possible that he has some issues with aggression and anger management that had nothing at all to do with race.  I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on that until more evidence is presented.  But he needs to be arrested and charged.  Let a jury decide his fate.  

Rest in Peace Trayvon.  

Obama’s America, A Place Divided

I sincerely don’t like calling the president a communist, a traitor, or any of the other names that some have come up with about him.  I figure he can’t possibly be all the things he is accused of being.  I don’t agree with his vision of what this country is.  I also feel that it is important to have dialogue, otherwise things will never change.  

But I have reached a point that it can no longer be denied.  The man is a socialist.  He wasn’t kidding when he said he wanted fundamentally change America (not that I thought he was kidding, I just am surprised by the speed).  He and his minions are doing so much harm to this country, that we are truly reaching a breaking point.  

We were attacked by Muslim terrorists more than 10 years ago.  Very few people in the country deny that.  Since that time we have been unable to have an honest dialogue of what happened on that fateful day.  Let alone on the days since when we have had other attempted and successful attacks.  One such day was November 5, 2009 and it took place in Fort Hood Texas.  A Muslim man who was corresponding over the internet with known terrorists walked onto his military base with a gun, started yelling Allah Akbar and killed 13 people and injured 29 more.  He carried a business card with the initials SOA (Soldiers of Allah) commonly used by Muslim terrorists.  Today we are told again, that this man committed an act of workplace violence not an act of terrorism.  He is just some guy who shot up an Army base.  The reasons for it all point to terrorism, but we can’t call it that.  

There are people in this country who feel very strongly about the threats of terrorism in this country.  Who honestly believe that Islam is a danger to our way of life and to the Western world.  By telling us that we can’t call what Hassan did an act of terrorism all they are accomplishing is further fueling that fire with more distrust.  

Today Congresswoman Barbara Lee stood up on the floor of the House of Representatives and said that the GOP is trying to deny blacks the right to vote. Why?  Because we want people to show ID when they vote.  People have to show ID to get on airplane, cash a check, to have a job, open a bank account, enter many federal buildings, in many states to collect welfare or food stamps, to pick up a registered letter at the post office, and to collect unemployment.  But the simple act of wanting to add voting to that list makes me a racist.  Why?  Because they say so.  There is no proof that in the states that already require that ID be shown (I live in one) that minority voters are suppressed.  But that doesn’t stop them.  

“Having been born and raised in Texas, this certainly looks like a poll tax to me, which those of us remember as a way to prevent African Americans from voting. These voter ID laws have a partisan agenda: seeking to disenfranchise and deny specific populations of voters before they have the opportunity to elect their representatives in government.”She also said the laws are meant to change election outcomes by “turning the clock back to the days of Jim Crow.”

 

 Because I want free and fair elections, I am racist.  The NAACP has gone as far as to petition the United Nations saying there is an effort to suppress minority votes.  No, we are trying to have only the people who are qualified to vote voting and get rid of voter fraud.  

Here is Obama talking about Capitalism

It fits well on a bumper sticker. Here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It’s never worked. It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It’s not what led to the incredible post-war boom of the 50s and 60s. And it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decade.

.  What he doesn’t seem to understand is that when the likes of Barney Franks and Chris Dodd meddled in the way banks gave mortgages it is no longer free market or capitalism.  It isn’t capitalism that failed.  It was the government interference in said capitalism that failed.  Before the Community Reinvestment Act you couldn’t get a mortgage unless you had a good paying job, a healthy down payment, and a good credit score.  It wasn’t the market that changed that.  It was people like Acorn saying things like home ownership is a right.  It was people like former President Carter who thought it was a good idea for the banks to lower the standards.  Now, had we kept with the original intent of the CRA, we may not have had these problems.  The original intent was to stop banks from turning down otherwise qualified candidate simply based on the zip code of where the home was being purchased.  They were predominantly lower-income areas and predominately minority applicants.  But, the left got greedy and forced more and more banks to make risky loans.  There is no denying that there was money to be made when they were bundled and that was taken advantaged of.  But the reality is that it wasn’t the greedy capitalist that started down the slope of giving risky mortgages.  They forced down that slope.  Barney Frank and Chris Dodd are directly responsible for the financial mess we find ourselves in today.  The Bush administration asked the congress to look at the worthiness of Sallie and Freddie.  Barney Frank who was having a sexual relationship with someone at Frannie refused to do it and publicly stated over and over again that Freddie and Fannie were perfectly fine.  He belongs in jail.  

 But the Obama administration feel that they can use to stoke the fires in this country.  The left use the word racism at the drop of a hat to describe anyone that doesn’t feel that this country is going in the right direction. Which is almost two-thirds of the country as this point.  So I guess some democrats are racists too.  We are living in a time when our own government is seeking to divide us more and more.  They do this to gain more power for themselves by not allowing rational discussion of the real issues we are facing in this country.  The mounting debt that is quickly becoming insurmountable and could topple this economy once and for all.  

Has this man read a history book?  Capitalism is exactly what led to the boom of the 50’s and 60’s and allowed the middle class to flourish.  Allowed them to buy homes, to purchases cars, and to move to the suburbs.  This entire country was founded upon capitalism.  Capitalism, with all of its faults, has made our middle class grow.  Back in the day we were a nation of land owners and the rest of the peons.  The Gold Rush, the oil boom, the industrial era allowed this country to become what it is today.  While we had our share of robber barons, and greedy people, it did trickle down to the rest of us.  We have all benefited from the capitalistic nature of this country.  Even our poor are very rich when you compare to the rest of the world’s poor.  We have the most vibrant economy in the world, and if we just leave it alone it will make the proper corrections so the next Bill Gates and Steve Jobs will come along reinvent the way we live our lives and provide millions of jobs as well some great little gadgets.  

Pick up a damn history book Mr. President and get your head out of your ass.  We are not Europe. We don’t have, nor do we want, a stagnant economy for the long-term.  For for the love of Pete, please stop stoking the fires of discontent in this country.  We need to stand together to solve our problems. 

Is it election day yet?  

Is Herman Cain Redefining Race Relations?

Herman Cain is resonating and creating a stir across the United States.  Mr. Cain doesn’t fit the typical mode of a black conservative since he has lived his life in the black community.  At least this is part of the argument that some have used.  I suppose to the liberal mind being married to a black women and being conservative is an unusual occurrence.  Mr. Cain also was born and raised in the south during the times of Jim Crowe.  He has seen racism.  He was turned away from the college of his choice due strictly to race. 

 The black liberal talking heads are ready to explode due one statement made by Cain recently,

 “believe there is racism in this country today that holds anybody back in a big way.”

The response to this has been quick.  Race baiter Cornell West believes that he is trivializing a serious issue.  Now, Mr. Cain is not saying that racism doesn’t exist.  He is saying that over the course of his lifetime the chances of being held back strictly based on race is much less now than at the time of his youth.  Cornell West lives his life inside the bubble of “I am black, therefore I am victim”.  His entire world view is based on his color and race relations.  The simple act of going to grocery store has racial implications to him.  Mr. Cain on the other hand lives his life like he is a human being who happens to be black.  He knows what true racism is, as he has seen it.  But, he has also seen his parents achieve the level of success that they were looking to reach.  Owning a home and having the money to send their children to college was the dream that they worked towards.  Today, this man’s son is a potential nominee to run for the President of the United States.  I would say that we have come a long way baby.  I am sure that Cain’s parents didn’t dream this scenario. 

 Juan Williams has gotten into the conversation as well:

“Right on, brother. And I’ll tell you why I say ‘right on.’ Because West, Tavis Smiley, those guys are threatened by the success of Herman Cain. And I think that they feel that anybody who doesn’t buy into all the racism charges that they’re constantly- You know, in their world, President Obama doesn’t exist. You know, these are the same people who criticize Obama for not being sufficient. So imagine the way they feel.”

Think of Al Sharpton, who makes his living playing the victim, if we become a more colorblind society how does Sharpton continue his ways?  People like West, Smiley, Sharpton, Jackson, and others will have to find a new thing to complain about and find other ways to hustle people for money.  These are the same people who seem to ignore that our country has elected a person of color to the highest office in the land.  We weren’t racist on that day, but every day before and since. 

 Herman Cain is redefining what being black in America is all about.  He is reaching out and Middle America is seeing for themselves that the illusion the GOP is full of racists was just that, an illusion.  They are terrified that people who fill their coffers are no longer to going to quite so willing to go along if the true story comes out. 

 The true story is that most people in this country have gotten past skin color and have moved on.  We are interested in living our own lives and could care less if the person who moves in next door has more pigment in their skin than they do.  We are more interested in actually fixing the problems in our country than continually pointing the finger at who is blame for it. 

 Herman Cain is not trivializing race relations in this country, he is redefining them.  That is all too scary of a proposition to the hustlers who make a very good living off liberal white guilt.

Quote of the Day – Emanuel Cleaver Edition

“It’s not personal, they’re attacking his policies, or lack thereof, with regard to this gigantic unemployment problem among African-Americans. If we can’t criticize a black president, then it’s all over.”

Emanuel Cleaver on President Obama’s actions (or inactions on black unemployment)

 Funny, I can’t critize him on his policies without being called a racist. 

Matter of fact, I got called one on Wednesday. 

He goes on, this is rich:

“If (former President) Bill Clinton had been in the White House and had failed to address this problem, we probably would be marching on the White House, there is a less-volatile reaction in the CBC because nobody wants to do anything that would empower the people who hate the president.”

Hmm, interesting. 

 

Read the entire article here. 

A Pop Quiz

I have come to the conclusion that regardless of facts, liberals just stay with their talking points.  It doesn’t matter what the real numbers are, or the what the real voting record is, or just facts in general if it doesn’t fit their objectives.  This being the reason that I really wanted to get the book Demonic by Ann Coulter.  I can’t give you a good reason for this but I am a terrible online shopper, even with books I want to pick it up before I buy it.  Remarkably, the book was constantly sold out at my local Barnes and Noble, quite a feat in heavily democratic Northern Virginia.  Congrats Ann.  I was finally able to pick up it today. 

See if you know the answers to these questions:

Who desegregated more public schools?

1. President Kennedy
2. President Johnson
3. President Nixon

Which presidential candidate was a card-carrying member of the NAACP when running for president in 1960?

1. President Kennedy
2. President Nixon

Who founded the Arizona chapter of the NAACP?

1. Martin Luther King, Jr.
2. Julian Bond
3. Barry Goldwater

How many provisions did Barry Goldwater oppose in the 1964 Civil Rights Act?

1. All Seven
2. Four
3. Two

Why did Goldwater object to the 1964 Civil Rights Legislation?

1. He didn’t
2. He is just another republican racist.
3. He was against the provisions on property rights; specifically on privately owned housing and public accommodations.

Who said “we’ve got to give the goddamned niggers something”?

1. Lyndon Johnson (D)
2. Richard Nixon (R)
3. Senator Sam Ervin (D)

Some other fun facts – 18% of republicans voted against 1964 civil rights act, 44% of democrats voted against in the senate.  In the house, 20% of republicans voted against, and 37% of democrats voted against. 

The longest filibuster in history was done in response to a civil rights bill that meant to fix enforcement provisions that the democrats had gutted.  They filibustered for 125 hours. 

Even after Richard Nixon’s administration had a proven record on desegregating the schools (from 1968-1970 black students attending all black schools dropped from 68% to 18.4%) Julian Bond said the following:

If you could call Adolf Hitler a friend of the Jews, you could call President Nixon a friend of the blacks.

So even after Nixon was able to drop the percentage of black students in segregated schools down by half he was still a racist.  Nixon also created the programs that give minorities advantages to government contracts, called the Philadelphia Plan.  Not something that conservatives are thrilled about due to the unconstitutionally of the federal government picking winners and losers. 

We need to know our history. 

 Bottom choice is answer to all quiz questions.

What Was She Thinking? CA GOP Committee Member Goes Way Too Far

I don’t know what this woman was thinking.  Marilyn Davenport is a committee member of the Orange Country Republicans.  If this is how the California GOP behaves they will never get anywhere.  All this woman has done is to allow the continuing meme that republicans are racist and intolerant.  She has hurt every republican with this nonsense. 

 She actually has made the entire situation worse by saying she isn’t racist because she has black friends.  Really?  How exactly do they feel about your portrayal of a black man as a chimp? 

 There is a big difference between disagreeing about policy and doing something like this.  Ms. Davenport needs to resign immediately.  There is no excuse for it.  Not only does this smack of racism her inability to see it as such says a great deal about what type of person she is and her thought process.  While it is very possible that she isn’t a racist, she is completely blind to how this would be viewed and interpreted. 

 

SEIU Executive VP Advises: “Black people get scared”

H/T: Breitbart

SEIU Executive VP Gerry Hudson lays out a sure-fire plan in this video clip from Naked Emperor News to scare their black membership so they no longer oppose immigration reform. Surely they can’t have the concerns of their own members messing up the opportunity to have a slew of newly legalized immigrants to fill the union coffers. Hudson isn’t really worried about opposition from the black community though, “it doesn’t take a whole lot to argue African-American workers to another place.” Essentially the plan involves telling them pay no attention to these immigrants who might take your jobs look over there at those “f’ing rabid racists.”  Nice plan, shows great respect for the African-Americans he represents doesn’t it? Video at the link, language warning applies as you may have already guessed.