caroljane

I like loud voices because they are the only ones I can hear on this low=volume laptop. I would like to ask Serapis, who wrote your signature line, "I'm the one..etc" is it from a song? It is haunting.

And you use this example because you were scared of this guy, but decided as a guilty white person you cannot let your judgment be affected by such generalizations. Nothing bad happened in your case--in your one example of being in contact with a person that looked threatening enough that you remembered it and brought it up here--so obviously anyone who avoids these encounters is unfairly profiling. And if that guy had mugged or raped you, would that story have been enough to think in exactly the opposite way? As Patrice O'neal said, "Run, stupid! Get home, feel guilty, but be alive. I'd rather be guilty and alive than feeling good about myself and dead." Being suspicious of someone based on generalizations is not a crime, it's common sense. For godsakes Calvin, I was not scared, it was a public sidewalk and he looked funny and goofy, wasted but happy.I have never felt fear on my city streets day or night, as my own experience has not given me reason to.

That's not how George Zimmerman would react (if he weren't on trial). --Brant you are no argument against George Zimmerman True, it would have been Gunfight at the OK Arena.

A similar thing although not comparable, happened to me last summer. I was passing on the street a young (to me that is, he was 30ish) tattooed black guy in a wifebeater who appeared drunk or high or both. He smiled and said, "Hey momma, lookin good! Want to spend the afternoon with me?" (It was evening actually). Though flattered I declined and he did not take offence.

Sez he. There is no corroboration.

Thank you, America. In our joint birthday week I thank you with all my heart, because if your country did not exist, neither would mine. By the early 1860's most factors indicated that the north-south trade and cultural patterns would result in regional| mergers, with Atlantic Canada joining New England, and so on. (Alberta is still often called the 51st state btw, Adam). But your Civil War (in which an estimated 40,00 Canadians fought) changed the map. The visionary MacDonald saw a viable possibility for a sea-to-sea political union, and exercised his political genius in forging a Confederation amongst a group of regional leaders who were only united by a mutual hatred and distrust. And the rest, as they say, is our history. Canada was an unintended consequence, the good blown by the ill wind of your national tragedy. Thank you for joining both world wars. My grandfather and father might not have survived in battles continuing without the American reinforcement, and previous support. My other grandfather was in fact in the American Army, so thanks for giving him his first steady job. Thank you for the Original Two-Thirds. Thank you for my American aunts and uncles and cousins. If they were all I knew about the USA it would be enough for me to know that yours is a great country. I often comment unfavourably here on what I perceive as injustice or blindness or littleness in America the beautiful. Never think that I protest out of dislike or envy or resentment towards the success of America, the shining ideal of |America. Always know that whenever I hear your anthem, even when sung by the ponciest, most execrable of homie hockey game openers*, my heart swells and the tears rise, because that banner yet waves. *that would be the Chicago guy who looks, and sings, like Michael Palin in a Python skit

Here you make my point for me, Peter. Zimmerman looked at Trayvon Martin, and he saw Godzilla.

http://As we reported earlier today, scores of Twitter users have threatened to riot and loot if George Zimmerman is acquitted. Other prominent voices have also warned of potential civil unrest, including former Chicago police officer Paul Huebl, who said that he fully expects “organized race rioting to begin in every major city to dwarf the Rodney King and the Martin Luther King riots of past decades” if Zimmerman walks. With police already going door to door to calm Sanford residents in anticipation of unrest, some are worried that social disorder could be used as a pretext for gun confiscation in a similar vein to how Hurricane Katrina was used as a justification to disarm residents of New Orleans. This is just the tip of the ice berg... Alex Jones reports on twitter users... this is the media that is fueling riots?

I just read on Oonline, and they ought to know, that the world's foremost authority on Most People, Dr Leonard Peikoff, has announced that they all stop thinking at age 30. Those poor creatures! LuckilyI do not know any Most People, although Dr P has obviously observed all of them.

Misdirection, great trick.

I have to report that the recurrent image of Brant, striding clad only in Coyotes jersy, gunbelt with holster and maybe socks, has had me giggling all day.

There, there Michael, you will be rid of Obama in a couple of short years. I could be stuck with Stephen Harper for the rest of my natural life, but do I complain?

Oh, I misremembered - it was rhetoric, not logic n'estce-pas? Figures!

I read your posts very carefully. You stated that: "I think his highest values sucked." You judged him and yet you knew nothing about his background. This reminds me of that poor African American/person of color/black stripper who was savagely raped by those rich, privileged white La Cross players at Duke University... oops, she wasn't raped, and she lied, and they were viscously and unjustly savaged by folks that pre-judged them also. Kinda like your son. A... No, not like my son at all. Nobody ever accused my son of harming them or committing a crime that they saw. The police lied about his being a viable suspect. As a logic teacher you should know about false analogy.

Zimmerman took up the cause of a homeless man, Trevon Martin did not exist to him when he did. Kinda screws up your pre-judged narrative about him, doesn't it? No Adam, apparently you have not read my posts either. I never said Zimmerman was a racist and I have repeatedly said that the case is only about race to outsiders. That Trayvon was black was simply a component of the "potential burglar" profile in the watchman's mind. Zimmerman could be a model citizen and family saint,and the defence will soon proclaim that he is. But he killed an unarmed stranger and it is not yet clear exactly how that happened.

As I have heard no evidence that his family, or a homeless man was being threatened by Martin, I posit that Zimmerman killed him to uphold the self-image of George Zimmerman/

I can believe that in killing Martin, Zimmerman was upholding his highest values, and I think his highest values sucked.

That suddenly brought to my mind the image of Cyrus laughing at his captors, and before that charging off as the sure-shot big-game hunter, all of which Rand found glorious. Ellen And Dagny shot the guard.

Again Carol, you insist on saying that this was a "strange place." It was not a strange place to Travon, since his father lived there and he frequented the development regularly, or, so we are led to believe. A.... I should have said "a place where he was not known" as obviously he was not to Zimmerman and vice versa.

And when you and Andy sued for false arrest/imprisonment, what happened? I had no standing to sue, he was an adult. My only role was to persuade him to hire a lawyer, which he did not believe he needed because he hadn't done anything wrong. The police were directed to destroy his fingerprint records etc., but I bet they didn't. I am not so sure that you had no standing for pain and suffering. However, he certainly did. How long ago was this false arrest? Too long. I did tell him that he had a good case to sue and likely would get a good settlement. But he was adamant, he just wanted to forget the whole mess. It was his life, and is. His precious irreplaceable life.

lolololOL!

Don't collapse with shock Michael, but I agree with this. If the defence can prove Martin was as you say (and so many many 17-year-olds are - (were you?)- then this scenario is believable. The commonsense part is also, though, how big was the chip, how reckless and thoughtless was Martin, to take on a stranger in a strange place. It was not like proving himself within a peer group.

Zimmerman's Defence Team is very good. They have scored significantly on the prosecution's case, although they have not severely dented it. So far they have followed the classical murder defence playbook impeccably: first delay the trial as long as possible, to fade the memory of the victim and keep the suffering accused sympathetically before the public. Then do your stuff on the prosecution's evidence. Soon it will be their turn and I expect a major thrust will be to plant in the jury's mind a picture of a person who needed killing in general -- as someone on OO said, a"worthless scum" to whom it is good riddance. You can bet they have been scouring the bottom of every barrel to find facts or witnesses to paint Trayvon a violent person with a short fuse, a thief with gang connections, a racist white-hater and allround danger to society.I do not think they will try to show him an actual gang member as he was unarmed and apparently had no gang tattoos. But they will come up with plenty, I think.

There is a funny sequel. As we came out of the courthouse, with Andy triumphantly handsome in his best suit, a girl sitting on the steps asked him, "Hey, did you just get out of jail?Did you meet my boyfriend there - his name"s X. I just noticed your shoelaces were untied." We all looked down, me, Andy and Grace the lawyer, and sure enough they were.