08:39 – I get so tired of hearing Sharpton and the other demagogues playing the race card at every opportunity. Yes, Martin was a young black man. Yes, Zimmerman has a “white” name. But Zimmerman self-identifies as Hispanic, and is apparently of mixed white and black heritage. To attempt to portray this incident as a racially-motived killing goes beyond contemptible. In a rational world, Zimmerman wouldn’t even have been charged with a crime. It was so clearly self-defense that the police didn’t charge him for weeks, until they caved to political pressure.
Much has been made of Martin’s age and race, that he was somehow “profiled” because of them. Maybe so, but so what? It is not sexist to state that men are much more likely than women to commit violent crimes. It’s fact. It is not ageist to state that young men are much more likely than older men to commit violent crimes. It’s fact. And it’s not racist to state that black men are much more likely to commit violent crimes against whites than the converse. It’s fact. Whites are immensely more likely to be the victims of violent crime perpetrated by blacks than the converse. That’s not racism. That’s reality.
Everyone has situational awareness of threats. It’s been bred into us by millions of years of evolution. If I, as a 60-year-old white man, am walking down the street and see someone approaching me, I instinctively evaluate the situation without even having to think about it. If the person approaching is female of any age or race, the potential threat is minimal unless she’s behaving strangely. Not zero, but not of much concern. If the person approaching is male of any age or race, the potential threat is much, much greater and I am accordingly more alert. If the man is also young, I’m still more alert. And if the young man is also black, I’m still more alert. And if it’s a group of young black men rather than just one, I’m on full alert. And if the group of young black men is rowdy, I’m in DEFCON 1 and mentally prepared to engage multiple targets. And there’s nothing sexist, ageist, or racist about that.
13:59 – This is very cool, at least to me. Tracking information on the two science kits I mailed Monday to the UK.
Customs Clearance UNITED KINGDOM July 17, 2013 6:14 pm
Customs Clearance UNITED KINGDOM July 17, 2013 6:13 pm
Processed Through Sort Facility UNITED KINGDOM July 17, 2013 6:02 pm
Processed Through Sort Facility ISC MIAMI FL (USPS) July 16, 2013 11:06 am
Arrived at Sort Facility ISC MIAMI FL (USPS) July 16, 2013 10:45 am
Processed through USPS Sort Facility MIAMI, FL 33112 July 16, 2013 9:24 am
Depart USPS Sort Facility GREENSBORO, NC 27498 July 15, 2013
Processed at USPS Origin Sort Facility GREENSBORO, NC 27498 July 15, 2013 8:07 pm
Dispatched to Sort Facility WINSTON SALEM, NC 27106 July 15, 2013 5:33 pm
Acceptance WINSTON SALEM, NC 27106 July 15, 2013 4:07 pm
Electronic Shipping Info Received July 15, 2013
I get so tired of hearing Sharpton and the other demagogues playing the race card at every opportunity.
That is the product that people such as Sharpton and Jackson sell. They have made a lot of money being racists. And in my opinion are two of the biggest racists on the planet. Without racism neither would have a job or career and would be on welfare like any other uneducated individual as they have no skill worth anything to any employer.
Racism to those two jerks is employment.
I take my dogs on a walk in an undeveloped area right off the coast daily. If I see a Labrador retriever temporarily slightly distance from its owner, no cause for alarm. When I see a coyote, I profile it and pull the (canned) air horn out of my pocket.
Speaking of shakedowns, looks like the EC is shaking down Google now:
http://windowsitpro.com/paul-thurrotts-wininfo/eu-demands-more-concessions-google
I don’t understand why Google doesn’t just tell the EU to screw off. I mean, Google is a US company, so it’s not like the EU is entitled to an opinion. If I were Google, or Microsoft for that matter, I’d close any operations I had on EU turf and tell the EU to get screwed.
Isn’t DEFCON 1 the stage where life is beautiful and you are watching the butterflies? Oh wait, it is an inverse scale:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEFCON
Me, I am on DEFCON 4 whenever any group of men are just standing around a place that I am frequenting. Especially at night.
Sigh. We are getting the new water well drilled today. They moved the well location on me and they just cut through my 25 pair phone cable. I am pissed and I bet AT&T is also. We are on cell phones and the backup Wimax internet modem since the DSL lines are dead. Cue the deep calming breathing. I never thought that drilling a water well required a 20 foot long four foot deep trench next to the well.
Google has a company in every country in the world because they have data centers in every country in the world. Google’s goal is to be within 25 ms of any person in the world.
Could Google close all European data centers? I doubt it. The traffic would overwhelm all the undersea phone cables.
I guess this is no surprise to any of us. The cops video all citizens activities all the time. Don’t video the cops though, ’cause you’ll get a beating.
http://www.myfoxny.com/Story/22863801/driving-somewhere-theres-a-government-record-of-that
A proud product of our K-12 system. She’s 19, I think, hasn’t graduated, has been offered a tutor to help, and tuition for four years at any “historically black college.” Yet “Yo, I educated, I got a 3.0” Yikes:
http://miami.cbslocal.com/2013/07/16/rachel-jeantel-on-trayvon-martin-friendship-he-never-judged-me/
Sorry for so many posts, the news is crazy today. This one is almost to good to be true. Of all the places for Zimmerman robbers, Hollywood:
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-hollywood-robbers-20130717,0,7520634.story
One last link and I’ll stop. This one makes me happy and I’m glad to say I contribute multiple times to the result:
http://www.nationaljournal.com/domesticpolicy/americans-own-nearly-half-of-the-privately-owned-guns-on-earth-20130716
Yeah, but that was before all of us lost most of them in rivers, lakes, and so on. I accidentally left most of mine lying on an automobile crusher, and when I got back they were part of a big cube of crushed steel.
I wonder if OFD is busy building a levee around his house:
http://www.wcax.com/story/22778046/concerns-over-lake-champlain-flooding
http://www.ibrattleboro.com/article.php/20110427171625231
IIRC, Dave’s house is not right on the lake. I don’t know how much elevation he has. I hope at least a meter or two.
Given that he said that the town pier was three feet under water for the July 4 fireworks, he may not be very far above the lake water. Not good.
Hey.
Been busy with lotsa stuff.
We had about three months straight, more or less, of rain, often torrential, monsoon-level downpours.
No rain this week; temps in the mid-90s and lake water level slowly going down. It was at record levels again, flood stage. No, we are not right on the lake, but about two meters above it; this house has been here nearly 200 years and never been flooded; finished basement dry as a bone. Well, finished with concrete and stone; a lotta basements up here in these old houses are just dirt.
Got rid of our crappy electronically-run pellet stove and got us a woodstove. Next up: some sort of apparatus/device for pumping wottuh outta the well in case the juice cuts out for a while. After that we gotta fix/repair/paint/replace most if not all of the windows and get shutters up. The next two big projects after that are a downstairs head and winterizing the back porch.
Mrs. OFD is in Indiana this week, Marion, I believe, and she is not digging it. Dunno how fah from Tiny Town but she says it’s a “shit-hole.” A “dump.” She’ll be home Friday night for the last hour or two of my wonderful 60th birthday and then gone again on Sunday for Philadelphia, Boston, Wyoming and Alabama.
One of our fun things this past couple of weeks was that her Saab station wagon’s “turbo” failed for the second time and had to be towed, with us, about fifty miles over the Green Mountains on a flatbed and then declared DOA at the shop. So she’s now looking at and really badly wants, a yellow Saab convertible. I have limited input on this because she’s pushing 60 herself; has serious medical issues, including life-threatening; and works her ass off all over the country at very intense stuff, so if it makes her happy, I say laissez les bon temps rouler, baby! So long as we get my truck fixed up with new doors, new rocker panels and a paint job, and get a third backup vehicle here.
Background check still in progress here with the Feds and it’s now been nine weeks since I was offered the damn job. Next-younger brother down in MA, a UNIX guy for thirty years, has been outta work for two years now, fired by vindictive and crazy black manager who knew zip about IT. Has been working part-time minimum-wage jobs and eating shit from in-laws about what a loser he is, etc., and unending pressure at home. This while taking care of our mom in an in-law apartment attached to his house, with her Pick’s Disease symptoms steadily worsening, and one daughter at junior college dealing with affirmative-action/diversity craziness all day and the other daughter with an eating disorder and bullying going on at her school. So he applies for yet another UNIX gig yesterday and the HR asswipes make him take a personality assessment online and then a tech-question test, with thirty questions to answer in 25 minutes. He does all that and then they tell him he didn’t pass the personality assessment screening part. He clearly made the mistake of voluntarily identifying himself as a married white male, and das ist verboten now in this country.
I guess the powers-that-be are just gonna continue ratcheting up this kind of shit, along with tanking the economy and having our kids fight endless foreign clusterfuck wars, until we hit some kind of breaking point and people wake the fuck up finally.
Other than that, it’s summertime and the living’s easy…catfish are jumpin’ an’ the cotton’s high….or the corn, in this case.
I’ve never shipped to the EU, but airmail from there gets here really fast. I just got an envelope from Paris in 3 days. Of course, the fact that there are multiple daily non-stop flights from Houston to cities in Europe, all over South America, and the Middle East helps. And we’ll soon have a non-stop to Beijing that will fly several times per week, and we have a couple of non-stops to Africa each week.
Given the volume I’d expect, I’d think the USPS and Royal Mail would run frequent cargo jets.
Glad to hear that you are not under water!
He clearly made the mistake of voluntarily identifying himself as a married white male, and das ist verboten now in this country.
And here you go to get your blood pressure up:
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-the-lowest-difficulty-setting-there-is/
I’m looking at getting a new photoprinter. I have an old HP, but it’s going nuts and needs to be reset all the time. Any suggestions?
I’d prefer it have fax and wired ethernet, but wireless is OK, as it will be within 5 feet of my wireless access point.
Check out Jamie Dellinger’s company Madison Office Machines in Madison, WI. He refurbishes HP printers under the name “cheapHPprinters.com”. Not sure whether you are looking for laser or ink jet; I think he specializes in lasers only. He has a vast range of offerings, as he gets the old ones from the nearby university to refurbish.
I have bought 2 HP 1200/1300 series laser jets from him since I have been back. No complaints whatever. A 1200/1300 with a new toner cartridge is a lifetime investment. I am still working off a test toner cart he sent me, when a refilled cart I bought failed because the plastic lever piece necessary to open the printer roller cover was missing. That’s 4 years now, on a cartridge less than 1/4 full. My experience has been that they stand behind their work. There was no expense to me in diagnosing and correcting the toner problem—and he gave me a free half-lifetime toner cart.
I did upgrade to a genuine HP replacement cartridge, though.
Although I am returned to the US in the Hoosier state, where everyone thinks there is nothing wrong with the word “Hoosier”, when it is actually used as an expletive in every surrounding state but Kentucky, I cannot always speak what I think. Yeah, Marion, Tiny Town, Connersville, Richmond, Anderson, Kokomo, Logansport—all of them are fairly near to each other. Marion is still somewhat alive, but Tiny Town is stone cold dead—never to be resuscitated, IMO. They just (finally) tore down the whole block where the Kresge’s of my early childhood collapsed from a structural defect a couple years ago. My grandfather and his brothers moved here from Columbus, Indiana, because New Castle had become an economic powerhouse. Unfortunately, it never became anything remotely like a center of the educated, so those my age or older, with any IQ at all, moved out fast once they graduated high school, and that fed a sucking sound as the city reduced itself to about one-fifth its peak about the time we moved. There is NO ONE from my childhood left living here.
My folks moved us to Indy when I was in Middle School (known as Jr. High back then). Over the years, Indy has matured to a respectable city, with some very small amount of culture, lots of sports, an amazingly active business community that dealt well with the collapse of automotive manufacturing, and one of the most calmly integrated cities in the country. People respect each other there, even if they are overly friendly. Having lived out East, I like being able to take walks in the neighborhood with my own thoughts, without having to interrupt them to say hello to every man, woman, child, and dog I pass. I would be arrested around these parts as up to no good if I didn’t acknowledge everyone and every stray that passes me by.
Too bad Mrs. OFD did not get a gig in Indianapolis, Bloomington, Evansville, Ft. Wayne, or “the Region” around Chicago (excepting Gary, of course). I think she would have found those exceptionally more appealing than (cough, cough) Marion. Even Muncie, a short distance south and home to Testicle Tech (Ball State University, where David Letterman attended) would have been preferable to Marion.
I presume she flew into the brand-new Indy airport. It is one of the nicest I have ever been in—including eclipsing the new ones in Munich and Frankfurt. Very nice.
Not sure where I will end up, but providing I live as long as my parents and aunt and uncle, it won’t be in Tiny Town—perhaps not even Indiana, where essentially there is no culture, except for the surprising oasis of Bloomington in the middle of an otherwise vast wasteland of true cultural obscurity.
Rush is now suggesting that Trayvon Martin thought George Zimmerman was gay:
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/07/17/nobody_will_go_near_rachel_jeantel_s_revelation_that_trayvon_martin_inflicted_a_whoop_ass_on_george_zimmerman_because_he_thought_zimmerman_was_gay
Yeah, now there is speculation that she egged him on to attack Z-man because Z-man was a creepy ol’ cracka and probably a gay rapist. So now she could be charged as an accessory to murder or some such bullshit. She ain’t getting charged with nuttin. Whole deal was a political show trial that didn’t turn out the way the regime and its media lackeys wanted and so now they’ll commit double- and triple-jeopardy to jam the guy up and if that don’t work they’ll set the New Black Panther assassins on him.
My advice to Z-man: Change your appearance drastically, homes. Get new ID. Move to another country and I highly recommend Chile; you could get over like a big dawg down there. Possibly Portugal, Andorra or San Marino. I’d forget Austria; that’s for us Anglo-Saxon types, homie. You stay here and you’re dead meat, son.
Zimmerman ought to move to the Great State of Texas. He would fit right in here out in the burbs. Good solid citizen, gun and all. I would be proud to have him as a neighbor.
Just got my phone and DSL lines back in service with a four foot splice in my 25 pair phone cable. 5 of my pairs were bad before, now 8 pairs are bad. That leaves me with 5 spare pairs back to the CO. Sigh. Now we will have an argument over who is going to pay for the emergency phone cable fix since neither one of us did a locate. I maintain that the water well contractor was responsible for the locate.
“Portugal is often overlooked as a tourist destination for more famous venues like Spain, France, and England. But if you’ve never been before, I highly recommend it.”
“People thought that the housing crisis in the US was bad a few years ago when you could buy tracts of ratty patio homes for less than $50,000 each. It’s far worse here. I’ve been looking at entire developments that have been abandoned, and apartments that are selling for less than half of the cost of construction. ”
“Right now, Portugal is on sale. The cost of living here is next to nothing, assuming that you’re not tied to the local economy.”
http://www.sovereignman.com/lifestyle-design/how-to-ensure-you-dont-end-up-like-edward-snowden-12298/
In Indiana, the law is clear that whoever is doing the physical digging of the earth has the ultimate responsibility to protect the cables/pipes. But if those cables serve only you and are on your property, I would think even that would be unclear in Indiana. If they travel on to serve other customers, they have extracted compensation from those doing the digging here, to pay for losses to others that were affected by the accident.
Boy, it’s a crime to dig in this state without that utility consortium’s knowledge. Penalties are pretty stiff here. Even local nursery folks refused to dig up a tree in my yard without having the buried pipe survey done first.
RBT wrote:
“Yeah, but that was before all of us lost most of them in rivers, lakes, and so on. I accidentally left most of mine lying on an automobile crusher, and when I got back they were part of a big cube of crushed steel.”
Um, you’ve said you sold them at gun shows, without documentation. Apart from the ones in you buried in Pa in 1993 and I dug up and sold 10 years later. Or was that a different set of guns? 🙂
Yeah, I get the Sovereign Man emails and saw that same article about Portugal. If I was Zimmy I’d head for Chile.
Had two t-storms a couple of hours ago; during the first one I heard a cracking noise and saw a big effin branch fall down across the street at the neighbor’s house, from about eighty feet up. It came down across the canopy on their back porch and glanced off her shoulder, not injured, as it turned out, but I’d been sitting up here in my office and saw the whole deal and ran over there. She had a real close call; if that had struck her head she’d be gone, probably. No one hurt and hubby over there, who I’ve yet to see crack a smile, will chain-saw it outta there. Severe t-storm warning from local NWS here in northwestern VT. The sky is still lighting up over us.
Mowed the whole yard today in 95-degree heat and lost about ten pounds in sweat. Drank it back in fine Vermont tap wottuh.
Sorry for your underground troubles down there, Lynn; hope it all pans out for ya.
OFD wrote:
“So he applies for yet another UNIX gig yesterday and the HR asswipes make him take a personality assessment online and then a tech-question test, with thirty questions to answer in 25 minutes. He does all that and then they tell him he didn’t pass the personality assessment screening part. ”
Glad to see you’re still around, I thought you might have defected to the Vatican… 🙂
One of my pals had to do a personality test for a job. He failed so didn’t get the job. His personality was a bit strange, a cow-orker with an autistic son thought our colleague might have been autistic as well. But he was brilliant. He could fix anything, never forgot a thing, but was as personable and subtle as a brick through a window. He was also one of the first people I would have hired if I was running an IT shop. I wouldn’t have wasted him on first tier support, would have put him on third level, where he would have been of most use and not exposed to sensitive members of the general public.
Sorry to hear about your brother’s problems. Not having a job if you need one is a real bummer.
$50,000 each? Try $14,000 for the 2 bedroom home with full unfinished attic and unfinished basement next to mine. A 3 bedroom house down the street sold for $42,500 a few months ago, so the hopes for Tiny House may be improving. Before the crash in 2007, Tiny House was appraised at over $70,000 by two different appraisers before we put it on the market at $59,500 for ‘a quick sale’. There was one offer at $52,000, who was “pre-qualified” for that price, and which we accepted, but she was denied the mortgage as the housing market collapsed right before our eyes. So much for being pre-qualified.
Portugal is a lot like Puerto Rico in the US—a foreign language destination that Continental natives never think about. There is housing going just as cheap across the Portugal border in Spain, however—Portugal does not have a corner on the housing market collapse.
My EU cousin’s family was considering retiring to the seacoast of Spain (wife is from there), but they spent this year’s summer vacation investigating the sea coast of Bulgaria. One of my US Volkshochschule classmates (US military) lived right next door to Bulgaria in Romania for 2 years prior to Berlin, and said Romania was very much like the US, with English spoken everywhere. She liked it there. A lot of interesting options are opening up for people who want to get out of the US. In the ’90’s it was Argentina that was being touted as the place to be. Wonder how that turned out for those that went there?
The housing market is crazy in California, so I’m told. A friend is a real estate agent in San Jose and she was acting for buyers in one case. Her buyers were delighted to get the place they wanted for $100k *over* asking price.
My place in Canberra is in the final stages of prep for sale. My agent thinks I should ask $470-530k, which is a disappointment to me as I’d been thinking $550k minimum. The kinds of places I like and can afford in Adelaide are usually $600-700k. I hope to be there by Christmas.
A dentist’s employee was sacked because she was irresistible:
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/business/worklife/melissa-nelson-fired-for-being-8216irresistible8217/story-fni0d8zi-1226681340800
Sure, she’s not bad looking, but irresistible?
The people who face the greatest threat from black criminals are other blacks.
“… the opinion could allow bosses to legally fire dark-skinned blacks and replace them with light-skinned blacks or small-breasted workers in favour of big-breasted workers.”
Round and round we go, where we stop no one knows.
From a movie OFD saw years ago, a biker dope dealer: “This was a great country before the cities and lawyers.”
“The people who face the greatest threat from black criminals are other blacks.”
Shhhhhhh….mustn’t disturb people. Or mention this, either: “…black men are much more likely to commit violent crimes against whites than the converse. It’s fact. Whites are immensely more likely to be the victims of violent crime perpetrated by blacks than the converse. That’s not racism. That’s reality.”
Shhhhhhh….move along, citizen, nothing to see here.
Reality? This regime doesn’t deal in reality.
I just had a long talk with Kim. She is outraged that Zimmerman was acquitted of all charges, and she makes a pretty good argument. She is as disgusted as I am about the people who tried to make this a racial thing, but she thinks Zimmerman is a cop wannabe and was acting out his law enforcement fantasies. As she says, if Zimmerman had done what the 911 operator told him to do and stopped following Martin, there wouldn’t be any story here. On the other hand, she acknowledges that Martin did attack Zimmerman and that Zimmerman was entitled to defend himself. Still, she thinks Zimmerman’s actions precipitated the tragedy. And I think she’s probably right. Still, ultimately, Zimmerman’s motivations aren’t material. He was attacked, and it’s certainly credible to believe that a reasonable man would have been in fear for his life in that situation, so he was entitled to use lethal force in self-defense, and the jury had no real option but to acquit him. It’s too bad they didn’t have the option of that old Scots verdict, “Not Proven”.
Perhaps Martin was in fear for his life first? He was a black guy in a mostly white neighborhood, so he shouldn’t have been exactly relaxed to start if he had any sense. Then he is being followed, which can be plenty scary. I’ve avoided following the case but I wonder if I knew the guy following, and getting out of the car, was armed? If so he damned well had a right to be in fear of his life. Isn’t that what “stand your ground” is supposed to do, let you defend yourself when you are in fear for your life?
I saw something the other day and will try to find it again that Z did in fact obey the PD dispatcher and backed off; a track of M’s movements show him getting almost home and then hiking all the way back up to where Z still was and jumping him. Z meanwhile had gotten out of his vehicle and was looking for a street name to give the dispatcher. And also meanwhile this chick Jeantel or whatever her name is had discussed with M the possibility of Z being some kind of gay rapist, which sheds new light, so to speak, on this whole caper.
It looks to me like the African-American population in large part is simply buying the retailed version of events from a bumbling and vindictive prosecution team and judge, along with the agitprop being delivered by the usual suspect race-baiting “leaders” like Sharpton and Jackson and the usual suspect celebs.
I guess Z shoulda backed off even further and waited for the cops, who of course are only minutes away, and M should not have been be-bopping in the ‘hood there and just gone home with his Skittles and iced tea or whatever. All 6’2″ and 175 pounds of him, in shape from football, and apparently knowing some MMA moves.
I agree. Martin may in fact have been afraid of Zimmerman, justifiably as it turned out. However, I’ve heard no suggestion that Zimmerman attacked Martin. Martin threw the first punch, got Zimmerman on the ground, and started pounding his head on the pavement. Legally, it was clear that Martin was the aggressor, so he couldn’t have claimed self-defense.
As I’ve mentioned before, when I used to teach self-defense to college women, I started out by telling them something like, “I’m 6 foot 4 inches tall. I weigh 240 pounds. I have a black belt in Shotokan karate. I shoot regularly in combat pistol competitions, and I carry a .45 ACP Colt Combat Commander pistol. And you know what I do if it looks like a confrontation is imminent? I run like hell.”
And the Martin killing illustrates why. If Martin had run like hell, he’d almost certainly be alive today. Unless Zimmerman was truly crazy and shot at Martin as he fled.
As she says, if Zimmerman had done what the 911 operator told him to do and stopped following Martin, there wouldn’t be any story here. On the other hand, she acknowledges that Martin did attack Zimmerman and that Zimmerman was entitled to defend himself.
So is this turning into a pure black versus white issue? There is going to be a riot XXXX march in a very high rent ($3 million homes) Houston neighborhood on Saturday. It will not go well as the cops will be out in force with batons, dogs and horses.
http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Opposing-sides-of-Trayvon-Martin-case-plan-4670687.php
Was Zimmerman obligated to do what the 911 dispatcher supposedly (I have heard several stories on this also) told him to do? In other words, was Zimmerman required to retreat? The law does not say that.
“He was a black guy in a mostly white neighborhood, so he shouldn’t have been exactly relaxed to start if he had any sense.”
Then why even BE there? WTF? So far as I know, in my experience, single white kids don’t go be-bopping around in a mostly black ‘hood in the night if they know what’s good for them. What’s HE doing there? And meanwhile Z the neighborhood watch dude knows there has been a series of B&E’s there.
The scenario I’m getting now is that he observes M bopping around and calls it in; the dispatcher tells him to stay put. He gets out of his truck to get him/her the street name. Meanwhile M is almost all the way home now but apparently chats with Jeantel who tells him about creepy-ass homo crackas, etc. He does a U-turn and heads back up to Z and jumps him.
In any case, we only have what the court and the MSM choose to tell us; and the upshot is that Z shoulda backed off and M shouldn’t have even been there to start with and mos def should not have attacked the creepy-ass cracka. Some of these crackas are armed, but then again, so are lots of young warriors in the ‘hood.
And you know what I do if it looks like a confrontation is imminent? I run like hell.”
Yes, that is the smart approach. I stupidly went up to the 6’4″ contractor drilling my well yesterday after he cut through my buried phone lines and said “I thought that I hired a professional”. He replied “Why didn’t you call the locate service?”. I then walked away as he was very mad. He is the digger, not me, and he is responsible for the AT&T bill of $1,000+ to come out on emergency basis and fix my 25 pair phone cable. I had no idea that they were going to cut a 5 foot deep trench, 20 foot long to drill a water well.
A conservative talk guy in Indy,—that I very infrequently agree with because of his reactionary views,—did hit the nail on the head in describing the M-Z affair: it was a testosterone fight between 2 guys, each of whom was going to teach the other a lesson. However, M brought Skittles and iced tea to a gunfight, and naturally lost.
I do agree with Kim that if Z bothered to call 911—an act that alone implies he was going to rely on their assistance,—then he should have obeyed their instructions. Not doing so caused the whole thing.
But the prosecution here should pay a heavy penalty, IMO. Bringing a case that would—without question—exacerbate race relations, then not proving it, was as stupid as what both M and Z did, and opens the door wide to playing of the race card by the usual racist sharks. That is as bad, if not worse than the original incident.
From what I’ve heard, the dispatcher told Zimmerman that they didn’t need him to follow Martin. I believed Zimmerman then claims to have switched from following Martin to trying to pinpoint his exact location for the cops. (I am a bit skeptical that he’d have a hard time finding his way around, but after four years, I have to admit that I don’t know my way around the subdivision I live in.)
I fear the only thing that will come of this is that the laws requiring the current high burden of proof on the prosecution will be weakened. I predict that the harm caused by this will fall hardest on young black male defendants.
I suppose everyone saw Krugman’s article yesterday, noting that Obamacare will drop health insurance rates for most people in New York state by more than 50%—as much as 70% in some cases from current premiums.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/17/obamacare-is-the-rights-worst-nightmare/
Another staged crisis the Republican party is not getting right. Seems to be a serious shortage of brains among them, and the only blame they can assess is ‘low information voters’ another idiot idea in an era when voters have never before been so well-informed in the entire history of mankind. Nice try, Rush, but it ain’t true. Certainly their predictive powers leave a lot to be desired. Must hurt to be such losers that they cannot even come up with good excuses for their poor performance, bad predictions, and staunch refusal to do the voters’ will anymore, but instead, cave-in en masse on their own espoused principles.
“I do agree with Kim that if Z bothered to call 911—an act that alone implies he was going to rely on their assistance,—then he should have obeyed their instructions. Not doing so caused the whole thing.”
This is true, but the trial answered others questions here, that the 9-1-1 operators aren’t police and Z committed no crime by not following their advice. If a cop was on the phone, he could have been charged.
All the race baiters have made this into another set back for race relations. Let’s not discuss the huge problem in the black community with families, teen violence, etc. Blame *WHITEY* in this case *WHITE* Hispanic Zimmerman. Now let’s go riot, steal, harass ’cause we got an excuse. Those people (including Sharpton) don’t represent the black community.
As always, Bill Whittle has a brilliant commentary, this time on the Zimmerman trial that should be seen by all…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ebu6Yvzs4Ls
Enjoy…