Sad news

I’ve been on vacation in Vegas with Rob the past week (no, we did not get married), so I haven’t blogged. However, several folks informed me via comments that Bob Strait has died. The military veteran who recently lost the woman he loved for 65 years to a brutal attack has finally joined his sweetheart.

I can’t imagine the loss. Even writing about this, I feel this ache inside – this unreal anger that makes me want to find the filth that raped and beat an elderly woman to death – and end his life in the most painful way possible. I know my grief can’t compare to the grief this family is feeling. I almost feel like I have no right to grieve for their loved one, but I do.

I grieve, because Bob and Nancy Strait died needlessly. She died from violence. I think he just died of a broken heart.

“It broke his heart, regardless of the injuries, it broke Daddy’s heart,” Lanora said. “For 65 years, the love of his life was gone.”

I grieve because there is little media attention to this family’s suffering. There’s little outrage, other than our military community. There are no sweatshirts. There are no politicians and loud charlatans demanding justice.

There’s just this family, and those of us who cared enough to repost this story and work to spread it far and wide, so people know.

And Tyrone Woodfork is still alive. And I don’t see him mustering even the little remorse it takes to give up his fellow scumbags.

Here’s hoping he dies. Painfully. Slowly.

If that makes me a bad person, so be it. Someone has to be outraged.

As for Bob Strait…

Be at peace. Be at peace evermore…

I’m surprised it took this long (UPDATED with some unbelievable shit!)

CBC is crying RAAAAAAAAAAAAACIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISM in the Trayvon Martin shooting.

Dimwit #1: Bobby Rush removed from House floor for sporting the ever-so-fashionable hoodie.

Rush was wearing a grey hoodie under his suit jacket. He took off his jacket, pulled the hood over his head and put on sunglasses while saying “racial profiling has to stop, Mr. Speaker. Just because someone wears a hoodie does not make them a hoodlum,” he said. [emphasis mine]

Because hoodies are obviously limited to black people. I’ll have to tell Rob, my son, my daughter, and… well… me to stop wearing hoodies, lest I be accosted and shot by a neighborhood watch captain. (Yeah, good luck with that!)

Dimwit #2: Frederica “The Hat” Wilson, who did not sport a hoodie, but did wear the ever so fashionable glitter hat.

Not one person has been arrested in Treyvon’s murder. I want to make sure that America knows that in Sanford, Florida, there was a young boy murdered. He is buried in Miami, Florida, and not one person has been arrested even though we all know who the murderer is. This was a standard case of racial profiling. No more! No more! We will stand for justice for Treyvon Martin. [emphasis mine]

Dimwit #3: Hank “Guam is Capsizing” Johnson.

“He was executed for ‘WWB’ in a ‘GC.’ Walking While Black in a Gated Community.” [no emphasis needed - stupid enough to stand on its own]

Dimwit #4: Maxine Waters, who claimed the shooting was a “hate crime.”

Personally, I hate it when some kid slams my head into the ground several times after he has broken my nose. Yep. Hate crime.

The usual suspects are creeping out to claim racism in this case.

I’m surprised it took this long.

UPDATE: Among all the screeching by the Congressional Black Caucus, the current Administration is accusing Republicans of politicizing the Trayvon Martin issue. Not even kidding.

Mr. “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon” is accusing Republicans of playing politics!

“People have to stop politicizing it… It’s no surprise that some of our Republican opponents are trying to make an issue with this. But the President spoke from the heart and we need to let the investigation take its course.”

I don’t know whether to laugh, or to beat my head against the wall until I can UNSEE this insanity!

SNAP!

I guess someone told them!

Former NAACP leader C.L. Bryant is accusing Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton of “exploiting” the Trayvon Martin tragedy to “racially divide this country.”

“His family should be outraged at the fact that they’re using this child as the bait to inflame racial passions,” Rev. C.L. Bryant said in a Monday interview with The Daily Caller.

The family isn’t outraged. The family is cashing in.

In the wake of the outcry over his killing, “Trayvon Martin” merchandise has been selling through the roof: T-shirts, buttons, pins, CDs, DVDs, and more. Now Trayvon’s mother, Sybrina Martin, has filed papers to trademark two phrases based on her sons name: “I Am Trayvon” and “Justice for Trayvon.”

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. This isn’t a race issue, and it shouldn’t be made into one. This is an issue of a 17-year-old kid’s death.

Let’s focus on the facts, shall we?

On Trayvon Martin

There’s been a lot said lately about racism in the shooting of Trayvon Martin on February 26th in Florida, after Martin was allegedly shot by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch captain, who claimed he shot Martin in self-defense.

The 17 year old was unarmed, and our society began to demand justice.

T-shirts began to appear with Martin’s photo on them.

The hoodie he was wearing the night of the shooting has become more than a fashion statement, but a statement of support for justice in the case.

Facebook and Twitter exploded in a cacophony of support for the boy’s family, as did online petitions demanding justice in the form of arrest of Zimmerman.

The family asked the Obama Administration to get involved. The President loudly proclaimed his emotional connection to the case, claiming that if he had a son, he’d look like Trayvon Martin.

The groundswell of outrage grew at the police’s refusal to arrest Zimmerman, who was found near the body with a bloody nose and a wound to the back of his head. This was exacerbated by the fact that Zimmerman apparently violated one of the biggest principles of his Neighborhood Watch manual, which states, “it should be emphasized to members that they do not possess police powers, and they shall not carry weapons or pursue vehicles.” (I’ll address that part later.)

Opportunistic swine Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton smelled blood in the water and are race-baiting in full force, and protest marches are planned in a number of cities.

I’m loath to scream “RACISM” as soon as something like this happens. I like to wait and examine the facts and see where the story leads. I just didn’t have enough information to make an informed decision, but I have to admit, even I have wondered if the kid’s shooting was racially motivated, thanks to the media’s consistent pounding of this case.

But this is why I wait. Because once the dust settles, there may be details we previously ignored.

Apparently there was an eyewitness. Apparently the eyewitness gave a statement to police. And apparently that statement is why the police were hesitant to prosecute George Zimmerman.

“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.

[...]

“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…”

Zimmerman says the shooting was self defense. According to information released on the Sanford city website, Zimmerman said he was going back to his SUV when he was attacked by the teen.

Not as clear-cut as we initially believed, is it?

Now, there are other questions here:

Why did Zimmerman follow the kid when the police dispatcher told him not to?

How was a 28 year old unable to restrain or overpower the teen without fatally shooting him?

Why was he carrying a gun in the first place, contrary to the Neighborhood Watch rules?

These are all legitimate questions, and asking them is not only logical, but obligatory if you’re going to make a fair and rational judgment about this in your own mind.

I will say this:

If I am convinced that someone is about to commit a crime on my watch, I’ll certainly follow at a distance, but I won’t confront until I see a crime actually committed, and I will certainly call the police like Zimmerman did.

I have also seen some very large teenagers. I tend to judge all by the size of my son, who is on the small side, but there are 8th graders on his baseball team who are bigger than I am, who weigh more, and who could probably kill me with one hand tied behind their backs. I have seen reports that Trayvon Martin was the same size as boxer Thomas Hearns, but Zimmerman was a pretty big guy, so it’s difficult to believe that he couldn’t physically overpower the teen.

As for the gun…

Let me tell you something, folks. If I’m alone on a dark street, engaged in activity that specifically has me exposed to potential criminal element, damn skippy I’ll be carrying a gun! I’d be stupid not to! It is also my right to do so, and I’m smart enough and realistic enough to know that given my size and physical prowess I wouldn’t be likely to overpower an attacker. So yes. I carry. I would carry if I was performing Neighborhood Watch duties, and I would carry if I was out for a walk in the dark. It is not a question of “Why?” It is a matter of my taking responsibility for my own safety.  It’s not a matter of whether or not I think police will protect me. They will not. Numerous court decisions have confirmed that police have no obligation to protect individual citizens, and even if they did, I certainly don’t have personal police protection on me 24/7.

But all this is irrelevant.

It is the right and responsibility of every individual to defend their own lives and the lives of others, and if we choose to use the best tool available on the market to do so, it certainly should not be used against us.

There are a lot of questions in the case of Trayvon Martin. I certainly ache for his family and friends, and I question whether he had to die that night.

But I’m not going to jump to conclusions in this case. There is no clear winner here.

The only thing I do know is that having experienced pretty severe forms of prejudice and racism while living in the former Soviet Union, I’m clearly sensitive to this issue and admit to having visceral reactions to it.

However, I’m stepping back and examining all sides and details of this case, and I would encourage everyone I know to do the same.

This case is not clear-cut, and having race baiters like Sharpton and Jackson screeching “RAAAAACISM” at the tops of their lungs doesn’t really help the situation.

Stop. Think. Examine.

That’s all I ask.

I’ll add one more thing. This guy first wrote about the previously unknown eyewitness. And for bringing doubt to a case the nation previously thought was a clear case of racist murder, he received a bunch of hatred and vitriol, tossed in with accusations of racism.

Are we racist for discussing additional evidence in a case the media has already convicted of being a white-on-black crime?

Are we racist for discussing doubts?

Are we racist for not falling into lockstep with the media narrative about a black victim and a white, racist gun nut?

No, I don’t think we’re racist. I think we’re rational human beings, and it’s a damn shame that any doubt cast on the existing “common” knowledge about this case is automatically turned into racism. It erodes our ability to rationally discuss issues. It significantly degrades the level of discourse (much like the common assumption that the guy who shot Gabrielle Giffords last year was a disgruntled Republican gun nut)…

…not that our level of discourse was all that lofty to begin with.

That’s not racist. Not at all.

Oh, there’s a revelation! Samuel L. Jackson voted for Zero because he’s black.

In an interview with Ebony magazine, Jackson explained, “I voted for Barack because he was black. ‘Cuz that’s why other folks vote for other people — because they look like them … That’s American politics, pure and simple. [Obama's] message didn’t mean [bleep] to me.”

Jackson then went on to drop the N-word several times when discussing Obama, telling the mag, “When it comes down to it, they wouldn’t have elected a [bleep]. Because, what’s a [bleep]? A [bleep] is scary. Obama ain’t scary at all. [Bleeps] don’t have beers at the White House. [Bleeps] don’t let some white dude, while you in the middle of a speech, call [him] a liar. A [bleep] would have stopped the meeting right there and said, ‘Who the [bleep] said that?’ I hope Obama gets scary in the next four years, ‘cuz he ain’t gotta worry about getting re-elected.”

Now I wonder: what would happen if someone like Mel Gibson said in an interview that he only voted for a politician because he was white?

I wonder how quickly the entire Congressional Black Caucus would submit a bill condemning him.

I wonder how fast Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson would be on a plane to Hollywood demanding a public mea culpa?

And how quickly would the national dialogue turn toward racism and its evils.

But since it’s Samuel L. Jackson admitting in a public venue that he’s a racist fuck, I guess it’s OK.  He’s black, you know.

But it’s more than that.

How many others voted for Barack Obama because he’s black? How many voted for him because he was a good looking guy, while McCain looked like a cranky geriatric zombie? How many are going to vote for Romney, because he just looks… presidential.

While Jackson’s admission bothers me on a very fundamental, human level – I have visceral reactions to racism, no matter what color maw it spews from – it also bothers me, because of the sheer ignorance of the admission! He didn’t care about Obama’s abilities, views or leadership skills. He cast a vote for the leader of the most powerful nation in the world based on nothing of substance – the amount of melanin in his skin.

How many Americans did exactly the same thing?