Why Zimmerman and Not Egypt?

On one hand, a guy either defended himself from attack or murdered someone in a Florida town.  On the other, the military of a strategically significant country overthrew an elected leader to the delight of the people.

Why did the world shaking news of the Egypt coup rate a minor blip on the American cable news scene?

Part of it comes down to the nature of criminal trials.  What role do they play in culture?  The adversarial nature of a criminal trial combined with the subjectiveness of a jury judging the success or failure of a prosecution's case gives it a baser significance.  Trials, always more so than sports, represent social release.  The Roman emperors used to hold gladiatorial games to distract the people and channel their passions.  They "played" for stakes of life and death.  At times, the head of state got to weigh in on whether a combatant lived or died.

For better or worse, jury trials for centuries have fulfilled that role in America. 

Go back to the 1700s.  The capital murder trials of the Boston Massacre soldiers, defended brilliantly by the patriot John Adams.  No trial has ever matched that one for high drama.  An opponent of British rule convinces a blood bent Massachusetts jury to acquit the soldiers who killed several in the Boston Massacre.  The drama and the bigger issues made it a landmark of justice.  Like many equally famed trials later, the jury required a strong standard of proof to convict despite the social pressure to do so. 

The Zimmerman trial, however, does not reflect current issues as much as it resuscitates the ghosts of conflicts of ages past.  Hispanic on black racism?  Class judgment?  Just a guy trying to be the neighborhood tough guy going one step too far? Or was it a man watching out for his neighborhood?

Racism is as much of a modern issue as anti Catholicism.  It will always lurk in the background, but it no longer looms as large as it once did.  Times change, but memories remain.  Those running the news outlets today grew up in those times and lived in that context.  It is hard for them to understand that America has moved on.  The old paradigm is gone forever.  Nevertheless, it is good politics in some quarters to keep the fading issue alive.

News outlets believed that the Zimmerman trial formed a confluence of trial drama and race debate.  They spent a lot of time and money preparing to cover it as intensely as possible.  Egypt's military rudely launched a coup, disrupting the American media's preferred order.  It had no experts on scene, no reporters breathlessly standing in parking lots outside the coup, packed with meaningless or old information.

Americans proved to be more interested in the coup.  They packed social media, following reporters on the scene.  Online, they turned to BBC, Reuters, and other international outlets.  History was in the making.  A man that the people had elected had tried to transform himself into a tyrant.  They got the military's help in declaring independence from him.

Judging from the reaction of Obama and some other nations, not many understood the fact that an election confers a trust to follow the law, not a mandate to impose one's will.  The people and armed forces of Egypt acted on that very ideal.

And that should have been the big debate of the day.  The role of elections and the responsibility of the elected.  News outlets should have recognized the drama, understood the significance, and devoted analysis to the possibilities good and bad that could arise. 

But they didn't.  And that is why we do not trust our media.

Are Gun Control Advocates Racist and Sexist?

Racist. Sexist. Ugly words. Objectively they mean that an individual has made a conscious choice to dislike and create disadvantages for groups based upon race and gender. Their foul connotation means that they should be used as narrowly as possible. When used broadly, they either raise anger against an individual or group that did not deserve it, or they lose their meaning.

Leftists use "racist" and "sexist" all the time. They do not wield these terms against those who are actively prejudiced, but mostly against people who disagree with them. A Republican fighting Obama's expanded government is "racist." Catholics who resist a legal mandate to pay for abortion pills get called "sexist." Republicans have no anti-minority agenda and the religion that celebrates Mary more than any other certainly does not hate women. In the leftist world, disagreement means hatred. But what about the real world?

Forbes ranks Detroit as the most dangerous city in America. In 2010, the city, which is almost 83% black, suffered 1,111 violent crimes per 100,000 residents. Michigan public radio host, Jack Lessenberry, called for constitutional change to eliminate the Second Amendment to halt the "mass murder."

Detroit in its best recent year, 2010, admitted that priority 911 calls had an average 24 minute response time. How long is that for an elderly woman who hears someone breaking into her apartment? How long is that for a scared young woman who just mustered the courage to leave an abusive, psychopathic partner? It is certainly long enough to get beaten, raped, or killed.

So you have a city which remains one of the most violent in America, where police much of the time take more than a half an hour to get to priority calls. The left wing elite believe that the answer to this problem is gun control. Less gun, less problems, they try to say.

The vast majority of Detroit's 82.7% black populace abides by the law and wants to live in peace. Gun control laws would make it harder for them to protect their homes and families against criminal predators. Using the left wing language standards, this means that, if black law abiding citizens would be more vulnerable, then gun control laws must be racist.

Chicago has a 58% non-white population. Its civic leaders have vainly tried to push aside constitutional guarantees on gun ownership and purchasing while it claims a violent crime rate three times higher than New York City. City leaders need to ask themselves who is hurt most by these restrictions. That would be law abiding citizens living in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Not criminals who get weapons regardless of the law. Not the left wing elite living in gated communities.

Consider the recent case of the young woman in rural Oklahoma, terrorized by a man seeking her dead husband's medicines. She shot and killed her would-be killer. What would have protected her better? Liberal feel good rhetoric? Sheriff's deputies and state police who were who knows how far away? Or a loaded shotgun? You would think that the image of a young single mother protecting herself and her child with deadly force against a crazy, predatory male would warm the cockles of feminist hearts. But they remain eerily non-supportive of women learning to use guns for self-defense.

Since women are usually more vulnerable, it makes sense that they should be able to obtain guns very readily with no waiting period. Gun control advocates must be aware that men are generally larger and stronger than women and that guns balance the equation. So, according to liberal logic, they must want more women to be attacked, raped, and killed. This means, again according to the left wing language guidelines, that gun control advocates are not only sexist, but exhibit very severe misogyny.

In the real world, Republicans actually oppose Obama on policy issues, not because he is black. Otherwise we would call Herman Cain, Allen West, etc. etc. racists. In the real world, gun control advocates do not hate blacks or women. They simply have a bizarre outlook on humanity that suggests that guns make people inherently more violent, thousands of years of human history not withstanding.

Gun control advocates may not have racist and sexist worldviews. They have either not followed their logic through to predictable conclusions. Or they just do not care. That doesn't make them hatemongers, only foolish.

New Black Panther Party Probably Behind Latest "Tawana Bradley" Type Case From West Virginia

Another white on black gang rape case is shown to be a lie.

Meghan Williams, a young black teenage girl from Logan County, horrified the nation with allegations a few years back that six white men abducted, raped, and tortured her for several days. Now she has completely recanted her story.

The six men all pled guilty and received lengthy prison sentences. With her potentially testifying against them, it was apparently an open and shut case. Of course they were charged under unconstitutional hate crimes statutes.

Williams' attorney, Bryan Potts, accuses Williams' deceased mother and New Black Panther Party leader Malik Shabazz of coercing a young and confused teenage girl of concocting the lie. One of the accused had been a boyfriend of Williams. So far, th enotion of getting back at an ex boyfriend is the only reasoning given by her. A press conference is planned to give further explanation.

This leads one to wonder about the representation these young men had. Certainly it must have been tempting to take a deal that gave these men a chance to be free decades down the road instead of a life sentence. However a jury trial would have forced the police to look for forensic evidence that did not exist. In the modern climate, it is doubtful that a jury would have failed to convict them after hearing testimony from Williams. That being said, a good attorney might have cracked her story.

What ifs are nearly pointless. The reality is that a lie shattered the lives of all of these young men and also Williams herself. She must live with the fact that her lies ruined lives.

The only villain left is the New Black Panther Party leadership. These terrorist thugs saw a chance to get national attention for themselves on the backs of six innocent men. Was it not a hate crime to push a girl to lie and jail white men unjustly? If we are going to have hate crimes statutes, the prosecutors ought to try Shabazz on them because what he did absolutely stemmed from racial hatred.

Barbara Boxer Plays the Race Card Against a Black Businessman

Obama Administration pushes race/sexual orientation based "Hate Crime" bill

According to, Lanier Swann, the special assistant to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. "Moments ago Majority Leader Reid filed a hate crimes amendment to the DOD Authorization Bill. He then filled the tree, which means no amendments can be offered to his amendment, and filed cloture on the amendment."

The amendment is not based on fairness under the law, but on race or sexual orientation. The facts of the matter are any violent crime is a hate crime and should be punished equally. Race or sexual orientation should never be the basis for the punishment for a crime. Those convicted of a violent crime should be treated harshly and equally no matter if the victim is straight, homosexual, male, female, black, white, etc.

By calling for cloture to rush the bill through, this will limit debate and could allow a race/sexual orientation based bill to move forward into law. We must have equal protection under the law with no special classes of citizens. If you value our nation of equality ask for this amendment to be removed from the bill. The number for the Senate switch board is 202-225-3121.

Selfish

The word "selfish" carries a lot of negative baggage. Like "racist" it has a connotation that no one wants associated with them. Therefore people use it to sling mud at those who have otherwise defensible and logical opinions.

But what does selfish mean? It means that an individual has chosen to serve his own choices. The connotation implies that those choices are made to the detriment of others. Liberals love to toss this word around a lot. Those individuals who worked hard to provide for their families, their businesses, or maybe just themselves are called selfish (and most recently unpatriotic) if they do not want to pay higher taxes to fund useless projects or have their wealth redistributed to people that did not earn it.

Freedom means that each one of us has the right to choose. We can earn money, spend money, eat, drink, worship God, sit around and do nothing, take a trip, have sex, collect guns and do a million other things just because we want to, so long as we do not infringe upon someone else's rights in the process. Society can label our behaviors what it wants because of the First Amendment. Being called selfish doesn't hurt so long as individuals retain that basic right to choose. They can say what they want as long as they do not keep us from choosing to do as we please.

The Obama campaign has made it clear that they want to launch a war on what they consider selfishness. And they reserve the right to define that term. Joe Biden called paying higher taxes "patriotic" when the Founding Fathers thought otherwise. They will bring back the death tax which will steal 50% of each person's inheritance. Woe be unto the family business or farm that does not prepare early for sudden death, or all will be lost to Big Government. If he gets his way, Obama will legally steal the benefits of people's hard work and financial discipline through higher capital gains taxes.

The government should not take anything more than it needs to operate. Redistribution of wealth through taxes is theft. It is our right to keep what is ours and do with it what we see fit. Keep Obama's hands out of our wallets and pocketbooks. Vote for John McCain.