The Glade 4.0

Of course not. If he doesn't get hanged, the honkeys will all be burning crosses in their neighbors' front yards.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

I like to minimize risk. If I worked in LA I would have taken a vacation day.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

I wasn't at the meeting, could you forward me the minutes where this was discussed? I wouldn't want to miss out.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Im sure Eric Holder will publish the minutes of that meeting when Zimmerman walks.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

Link

Newly released

Audio of the interview with Zimmerman hours after the shooting.
Zimmerman's written statement describing the incident.

Sorry, It looks more and more to me that this story happened exactly as GZ has stated. The cries of racism and profiling just don't look to have any merit. This should have never been blown so far out of proportion, but the racists on the other side of this argument decided that since a "white" man shot a black teen that he was obviously doing so for racist reasons.

I don't believe for one second that George Zimmerman ever pursued Travon Martin for any reason other than suspicion of criminal behavior. He got jumped by a kid who felt he was being "dissed", who then tried to end Zimmerman's life, only to have his own snuffed out. TM should have just walked away and gone right home. Instead, he tried to be all tough and prove a point. The only point he figured out is don't jump someone who is carrying a firearm.

Legal type ppls - How much clout does the defendant's written statement have in a court setting? It is his own words immediately following the event. My own take is that this is the best, most unfiltered telling of the story as it had little time to "simmer" in his mind so that he could make up a story that would exonerate him.

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This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

As I've said before, the racism is in the suspicion itself. Sorry man, but there's just nothing at all suspicious about a guy walking in the rain having his hood up. I guarantee you that Zimmerman has a fuzzy picture in his head of what a criminal looks like, and it ain't a white dude. Look at virtually every study done on the subject, and you'll find that most people, regardless of their conscious beliefs about race and criminality, have significant unconscious biases that make them more likely to suspect or perceive aggression and criminality from black people. It's "racism without racists", as the saying goes.


Actually, I don't think his prior statements would even be admissable since they're hearsay (i.e. an out-of-court statement offered at trial to prove the truth of the matter asserted), and I don't think any of the exceptions to the hearsay rule would apply. You might be able to get the immediate statements to the police at the scene in as an "excited utterance", but the window of time for that exception is pretty limited and statements given hours or days later wouldn't qualify.

I think people really need to learn the difference between racism and stereotyping.

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

Indeed. I'm sure the distinction would be a great comfort to the Martin family.

Let me rephrase that as the more I look at my last statement, the more I get confused about what I said. I am 40, forgive me.

Anyway...I feel for the Martin family, their son being a thug or not...it's a shame that they lost their son. That being said...It is highly unlikely that GZ is a racist or that he did anything with a racial malice. Stereotyping? I could get behind that...but stereotyping isn't that same as being a racist. But all that is imaterial really...Martin got shot because he attacked and looks like tried to kill GZ. You can try to quell all that white guilt you carry in you all you want but it doesn't change the fact that Martin attacked Zim and got shot for it.

The way you carry on, it would seem you would rather get beat to death by a minority rather than save your own life just so you wouldn't look "racist".

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

I definitely agree that there's a difference between racial stereotyping and racial malice, but I believe "racism" as a term encompasses both. I think this is probably a big part of why conservatives and liberals have so much trouble seeing eye-to-eye whenever allegations of "racism" arise. If, for example, Zimmerman's sense that Martin seemed suspicious was in no way motivated by racial malice, but was influenced by a subconscious racial bias/stereotype, is that racism? I say yes, it is. But either way, my (unnecessarily snarky) comment about Martin's family was intended to point out that whether we call Zimmerman "racist" or not, the result is that Martin got hassled, and ultimately shot, in part because of the color of his skin.


I also agree that Martin's actions were not ideal, but I find the details of Zimmerman's story (painting Martin as a violent attacker) pretty implausible. I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that what actually happened is:

1. Zimmerman followed Martin for a while, then lost him and turned back at roughly the same time that Martin got pissed off and turned back to confront him.
2. Some in-your-face swearing from Martin ensued, followed by a moderate scuffle that ended up on the ground.
3. Zimmerman freaked the **** out (in part because his fear was elevated by the aforementioned racial bias) and genuinely thought his life was in danger, so he shot Martin in what he perceived was self-defense.

RangerDave:

I was with you up until halfway through point 2.

Did you read Z's description of the attack? How about the video on CNN where he takes the detectives and reenacts the incident?

In the course of the attack:

TM punched Z in the nose, breaking it.
TM mounted Z once the punch knocked him down.
TM smashed Z's head into the concrete repeatedly.
TM covered Z's mouth and nose and said "You're going to die tonight"
Z tried to shuffle forward to get out of the mount. This pulled his jacket up and exposed his gun.

At this point, Z thought he felt TM reaching down towards the, now exposed, gun.
I'd say he has every right in the world at that point to "freak the **** out" and shoot his would be killer.

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This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

Part one...

Martin may have been hassled because of his skin color(stereotyping) but he was killed because he violently attacked a guy with a gun.

Part two...

I’ll agree with 1 and 2 but 3…the damage done to GZ doesn’t bear that out. If someone is beating my head into the concrete, I’m assuming they are trying to kill me. That’s not freaking out, that’s doing what I have to do to live. Black, white, green…I get to keep someone from trying to kill me.

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

You guys are citing Zimmerman's self-serving account as though it's established fact, but as I said, I just don't find his account plausible. Martin didn't have a violent history, but we're supposed to believe that he literally "jumped out of the bushes", punched Zimmerman, repeatedly smashed his head into the ground, said "you're gonna die tonight" and then reached for Zimmerman's gun? Please. Zimmerman has no evidence for any of that, of course, and he's obviously got huge incentives to exaggerate the level of the threat he faced.

Much more likely scenario to me is some in-your-face posturing, a scuffle and a couple of punches (which I should have mentioned). The damage to Zimmerman's nose and the back of his head seem consistent with that scenario.

Good Lord...


Here's hoping you never get jumped by a minority RD.

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

Am I reading this correctly, that you're saying getting his head bashed against a sidewalk wasn't a strong enough motive for self defense? That he perceived his danger?

You point out the bias in those on Zimmerman's side, but your bias is just as strong in the other direction. Even against the mounting evidence, you maintain the idea in your head that Trayvon was still an innocent kid.

No, I'm saying I don't believe he actually had his head bashed against the sidewalk the way he says. I think he's exaggerating the story in order to cover his ***, because (a) he has a big incentive to do so, and (b) the behavior he describes from Martin is wildly out of character based on Martin's lack of any violent history.


What mounting evidence? We have the same thing we always had - Zimmerman's statement about what happened.

Along with police reports that seem to confirm his version of events.

We have some evidence for one side of the story, and you are choosing to ignore it in lieu of an idea with no evidence. You don't know anything about Trayvon's character; none of us do.

Do you realize how silly this sounds? You just said the guy was walking in the rain with his hood up, and essentially acknowledged that Zimmerman couldn't see him, then turn around and talk about how you can somehow "guarantee" he had some mental image. The fact is that he was "walking in the rain with his hood up" in a gated community where there had been burglaries, and you don't get to decide whether it's suspicious or not anyhow.

According to the silly ideas you're expressing here, it would have been "racism" even if Martin had turned out to be white, since you can somehow "Guarantee" that Zimmerman had some image in his head, in his mind Martin would have been black and he would have discovered only later that he was white. Yet we probably wouldn't see anyone pointing out the "racism" in that case.

As for biases regarding criminality and black people, those are not racism. Blacks are more likely to be criminals than whites. This is because they are more likely to be poorer and less educated. This in turn creates more criminality and the cycle continues. Despite the near-complete annihilation of institutional racism in this country, blacks remain in that state because it is self-perpetuating. Yet we idiotically hear that it's racist to suggest that blacks actually are more likely to be criminals than whites. The irony of this is that it's actually a hidden suggestion of black superiority, that despite lower average income and education than whites they are still only as likely as whites to be criminals, and it's a racist system that arrests, charges and convicts them more frequently. The idea that people's "biases" regarding blacks as more likely to be criminals is in any way racist is a tacit claim of black superiority.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Aside from the fact that you are not in any way qualified to determine what is likely to have happened in a close physical encounter, the fact is that the physical evidence presented is consistent with Zimmerman's account. His injuries are not consistent with some minor "scuffle", in particular those ont he back of his head. In fact, your assertion of this tells me that you have essentially no experience whatsoever with hand-to-hand combat at all and are simply saying what seems likely based on your completely unqualified assumptions mixed with a deep desire to preserve the idea that racism is a major factor here.

As for Martin "not having a violent history" he was a teenager, and every violent criminal has a first offense. There is no rule that says that has to come at age 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, or 16, or even 17. If he were an older man, even in his mid-20s, that would mean more, but for a teenager it's worthless; he has essentially no history, violent or otherwise. In point of fact, a person's "history" is of little probabtive value anyhow, which is why we have rape shield laws. Zimmerman's story may be self-serving, but it is still far stronger than any "history".

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Actually Martin does have a history. Not sure on the violence part, but he was suspected to have stolen property and a tool for breaking into a house in a backpack he owned or was in possession with. This whole image the media has tried to portray of Martin of being this innocent angel(the picture they used of him is proof) is bunk. I'm not saying he was/is some kind of gangbanger, but the guy wasn't just some innocent Cosby kid either.

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

C'mon Fox...

Anyone walking around with a bag of skittles and an Arizona Tea has to be innocent, right?

Jeralyn Merritt put a lot of analysis awhile back into what evidence was known, and today seems to just corroborate it that much more.

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2012/5/27/44552/1872

It's a good read. As far as being suspicious, I thought George explained that pretty well. He first saw Trayvon in between some houses in the grass, looking around, in the rain...in a neighborhood that recently had a rash of burglaries. (Which was why the neighborhood watch was formed in the first place, with cooperation from the Sanford Police).

But yeah, witness testimony closely matches what Zimmerman explained about the fight, witnesses first heard it happen west of the T on the sidewalk (like 10-20 seconds away from Zimmerman's vehicle) and move around south to where the shooting took place. W6 saw Trayvon on top of George, with George struggling to get away, and said he would call 911...George says he saw W6 come out and was yelling out to him for help, and heard him say he was going in to call 911.

It doesn't sound like the State has anything reliable at all to refute that George was on the ground, with a broken nose and lacerations to the back of his head, unable to get away. As Jeralyn put it on her site:

"Any reasonable person in George's situation, on the ground, with a broken nose and having his head banged against cement, would fear serious bodily injury."

We have W-11/W-20 who heard the commotion start north of their house at 1211 TTL, west of the T, which is where George said the confrontation occurred.
We have photographs and medical records indicating a broken nose. Also bruises on his face and lip, and lacerations to the back of his head.
We have George passing a lie detector test.
We have W6 who saw George pinned down by Martin, unable to get away, and other witnesses who heard W6's exchange (including George.)
We have the reports showing that the gun was in contact with Martin's clothes when it fired.

It seems like you guys think my position on this is more extreme than it really is. I've never doubted the general narrative that Zimmerman put forth. My two points are simply that (i) his initial suspicions were unwarranted and likely influenced by racial bias, and (ii) his account of the intensity of violence from Martin seems exaggerated and overly one-sided.

It seems "exaggerated and overly one-sided" in what way? What do you think a real fist fight is actually like to be in?

It seems you've made up your mind that racial bias must have played a major part, and have arranged every other conclusion around that.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."