Florida State Seminoles

[Bklyn]

ecat- did you see where your man Ron Paul raised less campaign money than Stephen Colbert--- that's a bad sign when your candidate is taken less seriously than a comedian....

To be honest, I'm not sure if Romney did not have the checkbooks of Paulson, Schwartzman and a host of other billionaire private equity and hedge fund managers that his PAC would have surpassed Colbert's either.

That's more of a referendum on the public's view of political figures versus satirical political figures, in my opinion.

[Bklyn]

A nuanced look at Zimmerman and what built up to that night in February:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/ ... 8H20120425

[aTm]

Damn you I was just about to post that!!!!

[eCat]

this jumped out at me

""He was so mellow and calm, very helpful and very, very sweet," she said last week. "We didn't really know George at first, but after the break-in we talked to him on a daily basis. People were freaked out. It wasn't just George calling police ... we were calling police at least once a week.""

[aTm]

It also sounds like they slapped him with a job that required him to call the police a lot.

[eCat]

being profiled sucks and no one should ever have to deal with it, but its a reality we all live with.

I mean no one thinks twice about telling their daughter to not dress like a whore, so why is it wrong to tell an African American kid that if he wants to be respected then dress the part. I doubt there is a school uniform out there that is a hoodie with jeans hanging down below your ass.

I'm constantly surprised when I talk to people of Arab descent about profiling and generally they tell me they are OK with having extra security focus on them at an airport because they realize, hey, its people of Arab descent (in a general sense here, perhaps saying Arab descent isn't the most accurate or politically correct description) that are blowing up planes.

Its not fair that Zimmerman focused on Martin, but then again, that was Zimmerman's job - to find everyone who looked out of place suspicious.

I know it won't be a popular statement but I'm going to put some blame on Martin's parents, especially now that I know this neighborhood was in the midst of skyrocketing crime. I was thinking this was a slightly paranoid well to do community that put a neighborhood watch in place because of a few overzealous cop wannabe's but now I realize it was a necessity. Going back to Martin's parents, they should have been more cognizant of that situation. I know I would have.

[Bklyn]

Whoa. There's a bunch of reckless shit in that post. Let me go through some things:

being profiled sucks and no one should ever have to deal with it, but its a reality we all live with.

Uhhhh, not quite. Unless by being "profiled" you mean it being: "hey he's white with a button up shirt. He must be harmless." Or "hey, she's Asian with her hair in a bun. She must be studious and efficient." If that's what you mean, then yes we all live with that reality. The problem becomes when the profiling is all negative attributes and it leads to someone dying unnecessarily.

I mean no one thinks twice about telling their daughter to not dress like a whore, so why is it wrong to tell an African American kid that if he wants to be respected then dress the part. I doubt there is a school uniform out there that is a hoodie with jeans hanging down below your ass.

So now Trayvon went from a kid wearing a hoodie to a kid with a hoodie and his pants down below his ass? Where did you get that information from? No one tells their daughter to dress like a whore, but suppose the rapist's "whore outfit" criteria is different than yours? Can he rape her then with justification?

I'm constantly surprised when I talk to people of Arab descent about profiling and generally they tell me they are OK with having extra security focus on them at an airport because they realize, hey, its people of Arab descent (in a general sense here, perhaps saying Arab descent isn't the most accurate or politically correct description) that are blowing up planes.

This kills me. Always has. It's always easy to profile the minority. No one profiles white males buying fertilizer to blow up an Oklahoma City municipal building and adjoining day care. No one profiles white males who work in a field that provides them access to Anthrax and postage stamps. No one profiles white corporate males who sniff piles of coke off stripper's asses in various Champagne Rooms across this country. No one profiles white male Christian fundamentalists buying guns and maps to judges and abortion doctor's residences. I'm ashamed of these Arabs who take being targeted so easily.

Its not fair that Zimmerman focused on Martin, but then again, that was Zimmerman's job - to find everyone who looked out of place suspicious.

It was Zimmerman's job to monitor suspicious behavior in the neighborhood. It WAS NOT IN HIS RESPONSIBILITY to carry a gun. As a matter of fact, it was prohibited. You know why? To keep everyone safe. He should have just called the cops and left it at that. Trayvon wasn't even on anyone's property. Wasn't in the backyard of a home being noticed by roofers. Wasn't seen peering in windows. Didn't have a backpack full of laptops. Zimmerman was way outside of his job description. Don't get it twisted that he was just doing his job at that point. He was way outside his wheelhouse as soon as he left his car with gun in hand to confront the teen.

I know it won't be a popular statement but I'm going to put some blame on Martin's parents, especially now that I know this neighborhood was in the midst of skyrocketing crime. I was thinking this was a slightly paranoid well to do community that put a neighborhood watch in place because of a few overzealous cop wannabe's but now I realize it was a necessity. Going back to Martin's parents, they should have been more cognizant of that situation. I know I would have.

It wasn't his parents' neighborhood. His family is from Miami. He was up visiting his father's fiance (I guess his father was there too). He was most likely unaware of the crime stats in the neighborhood...just like I suspect his father was too. But even with that said, I find it ridiculous that this can in any way be put back on the parents...let alone on Trayvon and his hoodie wearing gangsterism that NO ONE ELSE IN THE WORLD should be able to wear and have the expectation of not being shot at or have your shooting justified.

[Bklyn]

BANG!!!

[Bklyn]

BOOM!

[Bklyn]

He's up to something! Kill him!

[T Dot O Dot]

people are acting like he was rocking it on a warm summer day

It was raining out

[Bklyn]

Either way, it was just a hoodie. That's the justification to lay down a probable cause for murder? That's where we've come to as a country? Even when girls "dressed like whores" are raped the rapist goes to jail, if that's the basis of their defense. The way they were dressed doesn't justify anything. I don't even think it explains it, let alone rationalizes it. It's crazy to me.

[Bklyn]

Also, let me run back to something again:

why is it wrong to tell an African American kid that if he wants to be respected then dress the part.

When your kid runs to the store to get some crappy sucrose, glucose and Yellow No. 5 bullshit to put in his body, do you look at what he's wearing and assess whether he will be "respected" when he is seen by someone in the public? Maybe so no one will find it necessary to shoot him? Does your kid have to leave the house looking like Alex P. Keating or Carlton Banks every day? And if he doesn't look like that, will it make it easier for you to wrap your brain around the fact that someone killed him as he was walking down a neighborhood sidewalk?

Maybe that is what some black people may see wrong about that statement. Maybe.

[eCat]

I don't know whether he had his pants down below his ass but the point here is that he was wearing something that made him fit a profile. And lets not dance around the background information that the kid was kicked out of school for theft and for a bong, posting on twitter about getting high and making reference to hitting his bus driver. Now is that relevant? Well, yea, not in the sense that Zimmerman could make that distinction but in this case, Trayvon wasn't doing a whole lot to fight this image placed on him. He wasn't a thug or gangbanger but no one is going to stand up and say Trayvon Martin was a model student and fine representative of American youth.

Going back to your previous statements - if Trayvon was wearing Khaki's and a white button down, would he be profiled for simply being black? I can't answer that but I can say that if I saw a *white* kid in my neighborhood wearing a flat bill baseball cap, a hoodie and had pants hanging down below his ass - and he was walking down my street AND I didn't know who he was, I would be suspicious of him. Would I be concerned enough to call the police - nope, but then again, my neighborhood hasn't had a series of break-ins, not to mention that I'm not in a neighborhood watch program, much less in charge of one.

If my house or a neighbors house had been broken into the week before by a kid fitting that description, you better believe I would keep an eye on him, and at a minimum, call my neighborhood watch person to get down here and check this kid out.

. No one profiles white males buying fertilizer to blow up an Oklahoma City municipal building and adjoining day care.

you are way wrong on that. Living in a farm community post Oklahoma City bombing, I know you can't buy large quantities of fertilizer as just a regular citizen , even as a farmer without being under scrutiny. Tim McVeigh created a profile of , not necessarily a white male, but anyone purchasing fertilizer or a combination of chemicals. You can't get a rental truck without appropriate ID. While this is a very narrow profile, its the same premise as a hoodie - an image of crime is associated with a hoodie in the right context, just as buying large quantities of fertilizer is now.

et alone on Trayvon and his hoodie wearing gangsterism that NO ONE ELSE IN THE WORLD should be able to wear and have the expectation of not being shot at or have your shooting justified.

no, that is a huge jump. Wearing a hoodie might get you unjustly hassled by a wannabe cop neighborhood watch dude, what gets your ass shot is banging a wannabe cop's head on the pavement when he has a Kel Tec 9mm in his pocket.
9 times out of 10, regardless of what you are wearing or what color you are, you're gonna get capped.

I also think you are making an assumption here that it wasn't his responsibility to carry a gun. Here we have a situation where someone in a position of authority told Zimmerman to carry a gun for his protection, and Zimmerman went the thru the necessary legal steps to carry that gun legally. His job was to watch the neighborhood, he has precedent just a week earlier that African American kids were breaking into homes regularly. I agree that a neighborhood watch shouldn't be locked and loaded, but I also can see why if they are the point where ...again...African American youth are breaking into homes with people in the house in this neighborhood. I can fully understand why Zimmerman made the decision to carry a gun after reading that article and the circumstances that community was facing.

And Yea I can put some blame on Trayvon Martin's parents. Keep your son off twitter talking about getting high and hitting people, get his ass in school , stop him smoking weed and tell him not to talk shit to people in a strange neighborhood. That is parenting 101.

[eCat]

Also, let me run back to something again:

why is it wrong to tell an African American kid that if he wants to be respected then dress the part.

When your kid runs to the store to get some crappy sucrose, glucose and Yellow No. 5 bullshit to put in his body, do you look at what he's wearing and assess whether he will be "respected" when he is seen by someone in the public? Maybe so no one will find it necessary to shoot him? Does your kid have to leave the house looking like Alex P. Keating or Carlton Banks every day? And if he doesn't look like that, will it make it easier for you to wrap your brain around the fact that someone killed him as he was walking down a neighborhood sidewalk?

Maybe that is what some black people may see wrong about that statement. Maybe.

yea, absolutely he would/I would...if I lived in a neighborhood where kids that looked like him were being suspected of breaking into homes. That is why I'm putting some blame on the parents.

You want to wear the uniform of urban youth in a townhouse community? fine, but you're fooling yourself if you think its Pollyanna and they aren't going to notice them. You want his rights as a citizen respected or you want him to come home every night alive? If these people in this community are living in fear of being broken into by African American youth, then its foolish to not face the reality of that situation.

And again, he wasn't walking down a neighborhood sidewalk, he was using Zimmerman's head as a basketball on that sidewalk. That seems to continually be lost in the discussion of Travyon Martin.

[Bklyn]

Heh, so much to comment on that you're still wrong about, but I have a meeting.

What I will focus on is that last statement. I find it interesting that you are now taking it as fact that Trayvon wasn't walking down a sidewalk (he was, causing no problems while Zimmerman was in his car) and that he was using Zimmerman's head as a basketball on that sidewalk he wasn't walking down (which is debateable and only stated by the assailant, not even the witnesses).

You are digging deeper into a position, it seems.

[eCat]

We've talked about this before. Regardless of what Zimmerman did up until the point there was a confrontation, its irrelevant the moment Martin decided he was going to engage Zimmerman. Even if Zimmerman initiated the confrontation, he has the right of self defense. To say Zimmerman never should have had a gun is just as inflammatory as saying that had Trayvon not dribbled Zimmermans head on the concrete he'd still be alive. What we are discussing is why Zimmerman focused on Martin in the first place

----------------------------------------


The guy on the bottom who had a red sweater on was yelling to me: ‘help, help…and I told him to stop and I was calling 911,” he said.

Trayvon Martin was in a hoodie; Zimmerman was in red.

The witness only wanted to be identified as “John,” and didn’t not want to be shown on camera.

His statements to police were instrumental, because police backed up Zimmerman’s claims, saying those screams on the 911 call are those of Zimmerman.

“When I got upstairs and looked down, the guy who was on top beating up the other guy, was the one laying in the grass, and I believe he was dead at that point,” John said.

[Jungle Rat]

Can't we all just agree that Wiz is a moron?

[10ac]

I guess Bklyn doesn't watch 48 Hours or Bait Car.

[10ac]

"The 28-year-old insurance-fraud investigator comes from a deeply Catholic background and was taught in his early years to do right by those less fortunate. He was raised in a racially integrated household and himself has black roots through an Afro-Peruvian great-grandfather - the father of the maternal grandmother who helped raise him."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/ ... 8H20120425

So, black on black? That's never news.