Sunday, July 14, 2013

Current Events - July 14, 2013

PK'SNOTE: This piece is from Friday, before the verdict yesterday, but has some good summaries. Also this is an event that would have been in Ann Coulter's book, MUGGED. Read it sometime.:

The media lynching of George Zimmerman

A tragic death was spun to fit a racial narrative

George Zimmerman is innocent. The evidence clearly shows this. Yet the liberal media have already convicted him in the court of public opinion. The result is not only that a man’s life — regardless of the verdict — has been shattered. Race relations have been poisoned, paving the way for possible deadly riots if Mr. Zimmerman is acquitted.

From the outset, liberal media outlets — CNN, MSNBC, NPR, CBS, ABC, NBC, the Huffington Post, The New York Times and The Washington Post — put forth one seminal narrative: The shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was a flagrant example of white racism against blacks. Modern-day Sanford, Fla., was transformed into 1960s Selma, Ala. Mr. Zimmerman has been turned into the poster child of a more subtle and polished, but revived Ku Klux Klan. For example, the audiotape of Mr. Zimmerman’s call to a 911 dispatcher on the night of the shooting was deliberately edited by NBC in a pathetic attempt to portray him as a vile racist bent on violence.

The entire mainstream media narrative, however, is based on lies. Trayvon was not killed because he was black. He was shot in self-defense because he repeatedly punched and smashed Mr. Zimmerman’s head on the pavement. The neighborhood-watch captain was trained by police to notice nonresidents, especially those who looked out of place and behaved suspiciously. The Sanford community had suffered a rash of burglaries and other crimes. According to residents (both white and black), the town-house complex has become increasingly unsafe. Hence, the reason — and need — for a neighborhood-watch team.

After spotting Trayvon, who did not live in the neighborhood, Mr. Zimmerman did what any good citizen should do: He called the police. The dispatcher asked for the location of Trayvon’s whereabouts. Mr. Zimmerman followed the teenager, gave the approximate address and street, and attempted to return to his car — until confronted by Trayvon. He then began to savagely beat Mr. Zimmerman, who suffered two black eyes, a broken nose and lacerations in the back of his head. If he had not used his gun, Mr. Zimmerman would likely be dead today.

All of these facts have been corroborated during the trial. A key witness, John Hood, saw Trayvon on top of Mr. Zimmerman hitting him “mixed martial arts-style.” Also, toxicology reports prove that Trayvon had marijuana in his blood and urine that night. Mr. Zimmerman told the dispatcher that the suspect acted like he was “on drugs.” Mr. Zimmerman’s wounds — and the grass stains on his back — were consistent with his story of being on the ground and repeatedly punched by Trayvon.

In other words, rather than the constant media image and picture of an angelic 12-year-old baby-faced boy, Trayvon was the opposite. He was a 6-foot-3 man-child with a history of drug use, who had been suspended several times from school. He even had images of himself on his cellphone smoking marijuana and wielding a gun. He was a wannabe thug, who triggered a deadly altercation. Had Trayvon gone straight back to the home of his father’s girlfriend, he’d be alive today. Instead, he chose to confront and attack Mr. Zimmerman. Ultimately, Trayvon — not Mr. Zimmerman — is to blame for the fatal shooting.

Yet, for the left, none of this matters. Liberals have turned Trayvon into a saint and celebrity cause. He is the alleged victim of racist white America. Here is another gross lie: Mr. Zimmerman is not even white. He is clearly a Hispanic — his skin is brown. He comes from a multiracial — including part-black — family. Hence, to twist reality to conform to their whites-are-racist narrative, the mainstream media manufactured a new racial category: white Hispanic. Only the twisted liberal mind could blame whites for a brown guy fatally shooting a black teen.

Ironically, it is Mr. Zimmerman who is the victim of a racist witch hunt. He never would have been charged with a crime had it not been for vile race-baiters, such as Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. Aided and abetted by President Obama, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and the Congressional Black Caucus, these race-arsonists have fueled the flames of racial hatred. Encouraged by media coverage that has played to the most primitive racial sensibilities, many blacks have become passionately convinced Mr. Zimmerman is guilty — not only of murder, but of hating young black men. Law enforcement authorities in Sanford are preparing for bloody race riots should he be acquitted. Pro-Trayvon supporters on social media have already called for mass civil unrest in the wake of a not-guilty verdict.

If — and I stress if — there are race riots following the Zimmerman trial, then Mr. Obama and his media allies will have blood on their hands. They have smeared an innocent man, fanned the dangerous fires of racial division and hijacked a police investigation in order to pursue a political agenda of black victimology. This represents the ominous corruption of our justice system. Trayvon is dead, but his ghost may haunt us for years to come.
 We never should have witnessed a Zimmerman trial

The George Zimmerman case should never have been brought. Saturday night after the “not guilty” verdict was delivered, State Attorney Angela Corey justified bringing the case “to put the facts out there.” But criminal cases should never be brought simply to put the facts before the public.

No one should be charged with a crime unless prosecutors themselves really believe that the person committed a crime.

Yet, the prosecution and their own experts’ language consistently showed a lack of certainty. Prosecutors aren’t supposed to bring cases where the best they can say is that something might “possibly” have happened or that there was a “chance” that it did. 

Whether it's George Zimmerman or John Doe, no one should be charged with a crime unless prosecutors really believe that the person committed a crime.
Usually defense attorneys are the ones trying to get prosecution witnesses to concede that alternative explanations might be possible. In the Zimmerman trial, even the prosecution couldn’t get definite statements out of their own witnesses.

By the end of the trial, with the prosecution conceding that Travyon Martin was likely on top of Zimmerman, prosecutors were forced to speculate that possibly Martin was about to get off of Zimmerman when he was shot. That, by itself, completely undermined the prosecution's claim that Martin was the one calling for help.

The case was so weak that the local Sanford District Attorney refused to bring charges against Zimmerman. That is why, on the orders of the governor, an outside District Attorney, Angela Corey, had to be brought in to handle it. 

Sanford Police Chief Bill Lee was fired because he also refused to charge Zimmerman with a crime. 
Even the lead detective on the case, Christopher Serino, told the jury he believed Zimmerman's version of the events.

Many people jumped to conclusions without knowing the facts. Even before they could read the police reports, many conservative commentators claimed early on that Zimmerman had acted improperly (Mona Charen, Rich Lowry, Heather Mac Donald, Robert VerBruggen, and Gregory Kane).

Comments by President Obama, Al Sharpton, and others surely stirred up the racial aspects of the case and appear to have led some blacks across the country to attack whites to avenge Trayvon Martin (e.g., Gainesville, Florida; Oak Park, Illinois; Mobile, Alabama; Toledo, Ohio; Grand Rapids, Michigan; and Norfolk, Virginia).

The media also bears a real responsibility for sensationalism. After all, most people can’t spend their days reading police reports or listening to trials. But in Zimmerman’s case, "NBC Nightly News" and the "Today Show" went so far as doctoring tapes of Zimmerman’s 911 call to make it look as if he was fixated on Trayvon Martin’s race. 

Even late in the trial, media coverage still showed pictures of a much younger 12-year-old Martin continually reinforcing the image in many minds that Zimmerman had shot a young child, not a six-foot, 17-year-old football player.

Many readers might be surprised to learn that 17-year-olds are almost 50 percent more likely to commit murders than 28-year-olds such as Zimmerman.

Other parts of the prosecution's case could only be described as an attempt to distract jurors. For example, much was made of the class Zimmerman took at Seminole State College that taught by Professor Alexis Carter. 
The key was, supposedly, that Zimmerman really understood Flori
da’s “Stand Your Ground” law. Prosecutor Richard Mantei told the court that Zimmerman's legal studies would help jurors understand his "state of mind" and "ambitions and frustrations" before the shooting.

One could debate about whether Zimmerman remembered the part of that lecture from the class. Nevertheless, it was really completely besides the point for the same reason that the defense never referenced the law: with Zimmerman on his back and Trayvon Martin holding him down, he had no option to retreat. 

None of the testimony ever explained why the “Stand Your Ground” law was even relevant to Zimmerman’s actions.

The prosecutors’ biggest problem was that they had to do more than convince jurors that their version of events was “likely,” and they never come close to doing that. 

Instead, they had to show that their claims about Zimmerman were true beyond a “reasonable doubt.” To put it differently, to say something is “likely” just means that there is over a 50 percent chance it is true. To say something is beyond a reasonable doubt means that it is much closer to 100 percent.

This case should never have been brought by prosecutors, but they let politics influence their decision.

Trayvon's Skittles, Arizona Iced Tea and something called 'Purple Drank'

Media speculation as well as internet buzz are openly querying if Trayvon Martin's purchase of Skittles and Arizona Watermelon Fruit Cocktail Juice on the night he died were just to satisfy a young man's sweet tooth or were they two of the three ingredients in a dangerous codeine-based concoction, as reported by the pop culture news portal RashManly.com on July 12, 2013.

Martin has been portrayed by his supporters as an innocent youth armed with nothing more than a bag of Skittles candy and a can of Arizona Iced Tea on the night he was killed by neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman..

During the course of the trial, State Prosecutor John Guy made it official when he identified to the jury Martin's personal possessions found on his body by police, to include an "unopened bag of Skittles" as well as a "full can of watermelon-flavored drink," as reported by Central Florida News 13 on June 25, 2013.

Without citing reference sources, RashManly.com accuses Martin of admitting on his Facebook account as early as June 27, 2011 of being an abuser of a codeine, soft drink and candy beverage popularly known as "Purple Drank" or "Lean."

According to the hipster website, Martin asked a friend online, “unow a connect for codien?”

Martin went on to tell his friend that “robitussin nd soda” could make “some fire ass lean.”

He says, “I had it before” and that he wants “to make some more.”

The RashManly.com statements are credibility-weak without any source documentation cited, but that's exactly what the openly right-of-center weblog/news portal The Conservative Tree House has posted on their site via screen captures of the actual Facebook pages (click here to view).

As cited by the popular contemporary culture reference site Urban Dictionary, Purple Drank/Lean also goes by the street names of sizzurp, Texas Tea and liquid codeine.

Purple Drank is commonly used by Southern Rappers and "wannabe suburban teenagers" according to Urban Dictionary.

Also cited is that the intoxicant is "a mixture of Promethazine/Codeine cough syrup" and any given store-bought clear soft drink or juice.

To further enhance the sweet taste that appeals to the mostly youthful users, Urban Dictionary cites Purple Drank also has "a few jolly ranchers and/or skittles thrown in."

http://www.examiner.com/article/trayvon-s-skittles-arizona-tea-and-something-called-purple-drank 

Zimmerman case's legal absurdities astound

By Mark Steyn
How difficult can that be in a country in which a Hispanic Obama voter can be instantly transformed into the poster boy for white racism? Who ya gonna believe – Al Sharpton or your lying eyes? As closing arguments began on Thursday, the prosecutors asked the judge to drop the aggravated assault charge and instruct the jury on felony murder committed in the course of child abuse. Felony murder is a murder that occurs during a felony, and, according to the prosecution's theory du jour, the felony George Zimmerman was engaged in that night was "child abuse," on the grounds that Trayvon Martin, when he began beating up Zimmerman, was 17-years-old. This will come as news to most casual observers of the case, who've only seen young Trayvon in that beatific photo of him as a 12-year-old.

In that one pitiful closing moment, the case achieved its sublime reductio ad absurdum: After a year's labors, after spending a million bucks, after calling a legion of risible witnesses, even after the lead prosecutor dragged in a department store mannequin and personally straddled it on the floor of the court, the state is back to where it all began – the ancient snapshot of a smiling middle-schooler that so beguiled American news editors, Trayvon Martin apparently being the only teenager in America to have gone entirely unphotographed in the second decade of the 21st century. And, if Trayvon is a child, his malefactor is by logical extension a child abuser.

Needless to say, even in a nutso jurisdiction like Florida, the crime of "child abuse" was never intended to cover a wizened old granny kicking the ankle of the punk who's mugging her a week before his 18th birthday. But, if 'aggravated pedophilia' is what it takes to fry that puffy white cracker's butt, so be it.
If, for the purposes of American show trials, a Hispanic who voted for a black president can be instantly transformed into a white racist, there's no reason why he can't be a child abuser, too. The defense was notified of this novel development, on which the prosecution (judging by the volume of precedents assembled) had been working for weeks or more likely months, at 7:30 that morning. If you know your Magna Carta, you'll be aware that "no official shall place a man on trial ... without producing credible witnesses to the truth of it." But the rights enjoyed by free men in the England of King John in 1215 are harder to come by in the State of Florida eight centuries later.

So the prosecutors decided, the day before the case went to the jury, that Zimmerman was engaged in an act of child abuse that had somehow got a bit out of hand: no "credible witnesses" to this charge had been presented in the preceding weeks, but hey, what the hell? Opposing counsel, taking the reasonable position that they'd shown up to defend Mr. Zimmerman of murder and had had no idea until that morning that he was also on trial for child abuse, check bouncing, jaywalking, an expired fishing license, or whatever other accusation took the fancy of the State of Florida, asked for time to research the relevant case law. Judge Debra Nelson gave them until 1 p.m. At that point, it was 10.30 a.m. By the time the genius jurist had returned to the bench, she had reconsidered, and decided that "child abuse" would be a reach too far, even for her disgraceful court.

The defining characteristic of English law is its distribution of power between prosecutor, judge and jury. This delicate balance has been utterly corrupted in the United States to the point where today at the federal level there is a conviction rate of over 90 percent, which would impress Mubarak and the House of Saud, if not quite yet, Kim Jong-Un. American prosecutors have an unhealthy and disreputable addiction to what I called, at the conclusion of the trial of my old boss Conrad Black six years ago, "countless counts." In Conrad's case, he was charged originally with 17 crimes, three of which were dropped by the opening of the trial and another halfway through, leaving 13 for the jury, nine of which they found the defendant not guilty of, bringing it down to four, one of which the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional and the remaining three of which they vacated, only to have two of them reinstated by the lower appeals court. In other words, the prosecution lost 88 percent of the case, but the 12 percent they won was enough to destroy Conrad Black's life.

Multiple charges tend, through sheer weight of numbers, to favor a result in which the jury convict on some and acquit on others and then tell themselves that they've reached a "moderate" "compromise" as befits the reasonable persons they assuredly are. It is, of course, not reasonable. Indeed, the notion of a "compromise" between conviction and acquittal is a dagger at the heart of justice. It's the repugnant "plea bargain" in reverse, but this time to bargain with the jury: okay, we threw the book at him and it went nowhere, so why don't we all agree to settle? In Sanford, the state's second closing "argument" to the strange, shrunken semi-jury of strikingly unrepresentative peers – facts, shmacts, who really knows? Vote with your hearts – brilliantly dispenses with the need for a "case" at all.

We have been warned that in the event of an acquittal there could be riots. My own feeling is that the Allegedly Reverend Al Sharpton, now somewhat emaciated and underbouffed from his Tawana Brawley heyday, is not the Tahrir Square-scale race-baiting huckster he once was.

But if Floridians are of a mind to let off a little steam, they might usefully burn down the Sanford courthouse and salt the earth. The justice system revealed by this squalid trial is worth rioting over.

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/case-516709-zimmerman-child.html 


The Great Tray-Con: America Manipulated to Miss the Real Story

 We’ve seen it before; the mass media hyping up a small story into a national sensation. 

Sensationalism is part of the business, after all, and anybody in the media lives off of ratings or web hits or print circulation. Eyeballs and eardrums, however you break it down.

This here New York-area weekly newspaper editor writing in Clash Daily for the first time, cannot remember the last time a serious story outed as a media-generated fraud has had so much staying power as the Trayvon Martin case. 

The real national news story is that there is no national news story but that which the media itself invented. The rabbit hole goes deeper because the media repeatedly got caught inventing the story, but still managed to sell it!

It started with the initial reports; white guy George Zimmerman, white male George Zimmerman, white white white Zimmerman Zimmerman Zimmerman, killed an innocent black youth and due to racism or some other nebulous force, nothing had been done about it. In an election year with the whitest-looking man ever, Mitt Romney, running against the first black president, Barack Obama, the dog whistle ears immediately perked.
Then we saw Zimmerman. The white man wasn’t even white. He had a “white” name, but his appearance clearly drew from his Hispanic mother. 

Though the census sometimes categorizes Hispanics as whites, the news media never does. Not until the Trayvon Martin story when it invented for itself the new term “white hispanic” on the fly. Everyone was in on it from the NY Times to NBC to Oprah.

In news media land, Hispanics and blacks had generally been grouped together as  ”minorities”; but that is flexible, we have learned. If it helps play into a story-line that white injustice is omnipresent, Hispanics that are clearly mestizo in appearance, will now pass as white as long as it is useful to the editors.

Oh, I’m waiting for someone to say he’s not hispanic cause he’s half-white. Tell that to the president. Zimmerman says he’s hispanic and that’s what most Americans would respond to him as being.

So, the first lie of the media was to send out the initial story that the man who killed Trayvon Martin was white. This basic profile got everyone riled up, but it wasn’t even true. 

Not too many Americans were deterred from believing the white vs. black angle of the story, however, by the fact Zimmerman’s not white. Mere details. He was already chosen by God to play the role of “evil white” in this psychodrama and gosh darn-it if some small detail, such as the basic premise of the story being detached from reality, would be allowed to get in the way. 

This is the mass media and they make Hollywood look realistic, so just back off and let’s live out this make believe drama! 

So now, after Zimmerman, the hispanic, is chosen to play the role of evil white in this play, the pressure cooker’s dial is raising a bit, and media personality Al Sharpton is just the man to come into the picture, barking. We know his routine and it’s all the same everytime. 

Sharpton, a media man with his own TV show, succeeded in multiplying the audience of the drama and brought part of his following to a fearsome rage. While Sharpton is busy working his magick on the ground in Sanford, Florida, the news media is cooking up reports backing up the racial angle and the idea that Trayvon suffered a total miscarriage of justice.

But many of the pieces of information the mass media used to get people’s buttons pushed, turned out to not only be wrong, but to be blatantly doctored to the point of being nearly criminally false. Inciting a riot is legitimately a crime and this is what the news media seemed to be taking it upon itself to do so. 

Initial reports that stoked the fury of the masses said Zimmerman was never even taken in for questioning. Of course, that turned out to be a lie. He was taken in in handcuffs, as a matter of fact, as video shows. How many other lies were there? Can we count them all? Needless to say, if the story was initially reported consistent with what the facts bore out, it wouldn’t have been much of a sensation.

One of the key lies that stoked the embers of racial tension was when NBC released a tape of Zimmerman saying, ”This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black,” for seemingly no reason other than to profile a black kid as a potential criminal. However, the alleged news stations (we probably should call them propaganda stations), conveniently deleted out several seconds of audio which showed the operator had asked the race of the youth, so police could identify him.

Oh, just a small detail. He answered a question, for crying out loud, he didn’t smear the kid with a racial insult!

Then WABC puts out a video it claims showed Zimmerman suffered no damage to his head or face in the fight with Trayvon. Only problem is, instead of looking for wounds, they were hoping not to see any. As we know from police footage, Zimmerman did have a busted nose, lacerations on the back of his head and blood spilling out of him. 

It wasn’t tremendous physical damage done to him in the fight, but it wouldn’t have been fun to be on the receiving end of those blows either. But alas, the experts at WABC couldn’t be bothered to get an accurate look at his head, anxious instead to see what they wanted.

And another station was caught turning the word “cold” into “coon.” No wonder everybody got riled up, it would be outrageous if a watch volunteer casually referred to someone as a coon on a 911 tape! But again, none of it was real, and when it was revealed as being non-real, for some reason few changed their initial reaction of outrage. It’s as if we’re in a state of mass hypnosis.

Then there’s the trick of showing the pre-teen photo of the victim to stoke empathy, while making the “bad guy” look, well, bad. It’s just a show like any TV or movie.

The bigger story that Trayvon vs. Zimmerman provides, is the inexcusable and unethical practices of our national news media. 

It does seem following the vast number of inaccurate reports disseminated during and after the Boston bombings and the Newtown massacre, there is some growing awareness that working in this field of media we journalists should try to, you know, get the facts at least mostly straight, before running with a story.

As much as the Internet has grown and we try to deny the power of TV and the big networks and newspapers to ourselves, we’re lying if we can’t admit, for the biggest stories that really move the world, the old establishment news media still has us in their grip. Even when we know they’re advancing an agenda, it’s hard to break free 100 percent.

The mass media drives story-lines that end up creating our political destiny, and we follow even when we know the stories aren’t really legit. Once they inflame emotions, their job is already done.

It’s like we’re in an abusive relationship with the lying news media, making excuses for them. If you are a media critic, you are not exempt.  More people must be stubborn when we learn a story is bull. 

Kick the habit! You didn’t feel that. The media made it happen. 

Zimmerman Defense Attorney Chastises Media During Press Conference: ‘You Guys’ Went After Him Like Mad Scientists

Mark O’Mara, the lead defense attorney for George Zimmerman, took the opportunity during the final moments of his post-verdict press conference to chastise the media for its handling of the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case.

“Two systems went against George Zimmerman that he can’t understand: you guys, the media. He was like a patient in an operating table where a mad scientists were committing experiments on him and he he had no anesthesia,” an agitated O’Mara said after a reporter asked if Zimmerman ever showed emotion. “He didn’t know why he was turned into this monster, but quite honestly you guys had a lot to do with it. You just did. Because you took a story that was fed to you and you ran with it, and you ran right over him. And that was horrid to him.

“Then he comes into a system that he trusts — let’s not forget, six voluntary statements, voluntary surrender — and he believes in a system that he really wanted to be a part of, right? And then he gets prosecutors that charge him with a crime that they could never, ever, prove. … So those two systems failed him.”

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/07/13/zimmerman-defense-attorney-chastises-media-during-press-conference-you-guys-went-after-him-like-a-mad-scientist/ 

Guilty Until Proven Innocent: How the Press Prosecuted Zimmerman While Stoking Racial Tensions

... As you will see below, by hook and crook, the mainstream media did everything in its still-potent power to not only push for the prosecution of Mr. Zimmerman (the police originally chose not to charge him) but also to gin up racial tensions where none needed to exist. 

It all started with the anchor of a major television network (Al Sharpton) inserting himself in the story to spread division and hate; it continued straight through to the closing days of the trial when another major news network, desperate to keep a fabricated racial narrative alive, propagated the portrayal of Zimmerman as part of a racial group that doesn't exist -- the "white Hispanic."

In-between, there has been an astonishing amount of malicious fraud and lies, all in an effort to serve a president, stir racial hatred, and influence the justice system.


February 26, 2012 - George Zimmerman Shoots and Kills Trayvon Martin
Zimmerman claims self-defense. After an investigation, the police agree and decide not to press charges.
March 8, 2012 - The AP Falsely Describes Zimmerman as "White"
The story of the grieving parents of Trayvon Martin demanding Zimmerman be arrested first achieves national attention on March 8 when CBS This Morning runs a report.
Later that same day, the Associated Press throws the first log on the racial fire by inaccurately describing Zimmerman as white.
March 13, 2012 - NBC's Al Sharpton Uses MSNBC Platform to Stoke Phony Racial Narrative
Breitbart editor-in-chief Joel Pollak:
Sharpton devoted a portion of his program on MSNBC, PoliticsNation, to the Trayvon Martin case. He interviewed Martin family attorney Benjamin Crump, who reiterated the accusation that Zimmerman was “white”: “We think Trayvon Martin didn’t know who the heck this white man was who approached him before he got killed.”
Earlier that same day, Sharpton's National Action Network released a statement calling for...
...a “complete and thorough investigation” into Martin’s death. He added: “[W]e are told that racial language was used when the young man reported his suspicions to police[.]”
The story about Zimmerman's use of racial language was false.
March 13, 2012 - ABC News Reporter Claims Trayvon Shot Because "He Was Black"
About ten days before Al Sharpton and President Obama would launch the Zimmerman story into the stratosphere, Matt Gutman, an ABC News correspondent based in Miami, Florida, was already (and without a shred of evidence) laying the track for a racial narrative.
Gutman covered the case for the network, and his Twitter feed at the time was full of falsehoods, innuendo, and irresponsible speculation. In one tweet, Gutman came right out and claimed Trayvon was shot "bc [because] he was black."
Gutman would also recklessly accuse Zimmerman of "stalking" and shooting down Trayvon.


March 19, 2012 - CBS News Falsely Claims Zimmerman Is White
A small detail that the Obama administration and the media apparently missed was that the white versus black racial narrative they were preparing to invest so much into was missing just one thing: a white person.
Proof of this is that CBS News falsely claimed Zimmerman was white about a week before the story exploded.
In their venomous zeal, the media and Democrats likely assumed that someone with the last name Zimmerman had to be white. But they were wrong, as Zimmerman is Hispanic.
Never ones to back off a good narrative, rather than use this revelation to tamp down tensions or correct their reporting, the media simply made up out of whole cloth a new racial category: the "white Hispanic."
March 22, 2012 - Zimmerman Described as a "White Hispanic" by The New York Times
Just in the nick of time, before the story was engineered to explode the very next day with the Sharpton rally, The New York Times put its stamp of approval on the term "white Hispanic."


March 21, 2012 - CNN Falsely Accuses Zimmerman of Saying "F**king Coon"
Knowing full well the phony racial storm brewing around the Zimmerman case was about to have gasoline thrown on it the next day, CNN went to extraordinary lengths to claim Zimmerman had uttered the racial slur "coon" when he had not.
This has to be watched to be believed.
CNN wouldn't officially retract their defamation until April 5th, long after it was too late.
March 22, 2012 - NBC's Al Sharpton Goes to Florida
Though the police had investigated the shooting and saw no reason to charge George Zimmerman, in March of 2012, President Obama's reelection chances looked dim. He would need the crucial swing state of Florida to win another four years, and nothing brings out the Democrat vote like a good old racial bonfire.
With the help of thousands of dollars from Obama's Justice Department, it was then that Rev. Al Sharpton (anchor of MSNBC's Politics Nation) held his incendiary rally:
At the protest, Sharpton was flanked by Martin's parents. "Trayvon could have been any one of our sons," he said. "Trayvon could have been any one of us."
He continued:
"We are tired of going to jail for nothing and others going home for something. Zimmerman should have been arrested that night ... you cannot defend yourself against a pack of Skittles and iced tea. Don't talk to us like we're stupid! Don't talk to us like we're ignorant! We love our children like you love yours. Lock him up!"
Sharpton said that he would stay on the case.
"We cannot allow a legal precedent to be established in this city that tells us it is legal for a man to kill us, tell any story he wants, and walks out with the murder weapon," he said.
March 23, 2012 - President Obama Repeats Sharpton's Talking Point
The day after Sharpton held his rally and said, "Trayvon could have been any one of our sons," President Obama made huge news when he stepped before the cameras, demanded action in the Zimmerman case, and famously said, "If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon."
In just two days, a network news anchor and an American president had blasted the Zimmerman case into the nation's top story and did so based on a racial narrative without a shred of evidence to support it. Almost every other major news outlet would now commit every journalistic sin imaginable to fabricate evidence.
March 24, 2012 - Reuters Describes Zimmerman as a "White Hispanic"
To keep the white versus black narrative alive, Reuters jumps on the ridiculous "white Hispanic" bandwagon.
Many others would follow.


March 27, 2012 - NBC News Edits 911 Audio to Make Zimmerman Look Racist
On the storied Today Show, NBC News told America Zimmerman said this on the 911 call:
Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black.
When the truth is that the unedited audio actually went like this:
Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. Or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.
Dispatcher: OK, and this guy — is he black, white or Hispanic?
Zimmerman: He looks black.
After the fraudulent editing was discovered by the New Media (first by Breitbart News), former NBC News president Steve Capus would claim that the edit was "a mistake and not a deliberate act to misrepresent the phone call."
Eventually, several NBC producers would be fired (without being named), and Zimmerman would file a lawsuit against NBC; it remains unresolved.
March 28, 2012 - ABC News Falsely Claims Zimmerman Wasn't Injured Night of Shooting
The day after NBC News released its falsified 911 bombshell, ABC News released a phony, hyped-up story of its own. Using grainy surveillance video of Zimmerman at the police station on the night of the shooting, ABC News claimed, "A police surveillance video taken the night that Trayvon Martin was shot dead shows no blood or bruises on George Zimmerman."
Obviously, if true, this would go a long way towards proving Zimmerman was not in fear of his life the night of the shooting and had lied about being beaten up.
The only problem is that the ABC News story was not true -- not even close. The network didn't bother to enhance the video before breaking the news. Had they, Zimmerman's bloody head would have been quite apparent.
It would take four days for ABC to retract its falsehood.
March 28, 2012 - Boston Globe Falsely Describes Zimmerman as White
By late March it was widely known that George Zimmerman was Hispanic. This did not stop the Boston Globe from using its pages to describe him as "a white neighborhood watch captain."
This error has never been corrected.


March 29, 2012 - NBC's Chris Matthews Contradicts Guest to Claim Zimmerman Not Injured
By the next day, ABC's false story about Zimmerman not being injured had already gone viral. However, some were already doing the job ABC apparently didn't want to do: enhancing the video. A guest on MSNBC's Hardball told the show's host, Chris Matthews, that his enhancement did show bruises on the back of Zimmerman's head. MSNBC even broadcast the enhancement, which clearly showed cuts and bruising.
Regardless, during the same show, Matthews stridently claimed:
George Zimmerman says he shot Trayvon Martin after Trayvon broke his nose and repeatedly slammed the back of his head into a concrete sidewalk, but newly released video tape of Zimmerman arriving at the police station--we're looking at it there--appears to show no evidence of a broken nose or obvious wounds to the back of Zimmerman's head.

Late March, 2012 - Zimmerman's "Black Friend" Vilified by Media
Even though Zimmerman is Hispanic and there was no evidence of any racial motivation behind his actions, the media's racial-hysteria was, at this point, in full bloom. To try and tamp things down, Joe Oliver, a black reporter who had worked with CNN and an Orlando television station, started doing the national media interview rounds to speak on behalf of his friend, George Zimmerman.
The counterattack in the media (CNN, New York Times, and MSNBC, among others) was exceptionally vicious, personal, and effective.
Oliver went away.
April 1, 2012 - The New York Times Maliciously Edits Zimmerman's 911 Call
Although the NBC News malicious edit of Zimmerman's 911 call broadcast on the Today Show had already been loudly and publicly debunked, days later the New York Times did the same thing on its front page.
By rearranging the words of the call, the Times falsely made it look as though Zimmerman had profiled Trayvon as black:
Here is the 911 call transcript:
ZIMMERMAN: This guy looks like he's up to no good, or he's on drugs or something. It's raining and he's just walking around, looking about.
911 DISPATCHER: Okay. And this guy, is he white, black, or Hispanic?
ZIMMERMAN: He looks black.
And here is what the Times reported:
“Hey, we’ve had some break-ins in my neighborhood,” Mr. Zimmerman said to start the conversation with the dispatcher. “And there’s a real suspicious guy.”
This guy seemed to be up to no good; like he was on drugs or something; in a gray hoodie. Asked to describe him further, he said, “He looks black.”
The print edition of the story was even worse than the online edition.
April 9, 2012 - PBS Anchor Gwen Ifill Describes Zimmerman as "White"
Desperate to keep a non-existent racial narrative alive, during a broadcast of the PBS Newshour Gwen Ifill falsely stated:
Martin, who was black, was on his way to a convenience store in a mostly white gated community when George Zimmerman, who is white, shot and killed him after a disputed altercation.
Note Ifill's reporting of Zimmerman's gated community. The condos in Zimmerman's neighborhood sell for about $120,000.
April 11, 2012 - George Zimmerman Is Arrested, Charged with Second Degree Murder
After the arrest, and as the trial date neared the following year, NBC would allow Al Sharpton to turn his primetime MSNBC show into a platform dedicated to convicting Zimmerman.
CNN would continue to refer to Zimmerman as a "white Hispanic" and broadcast all of Zimmerman's personal information, including his social security number, address, and telephone number.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/07/13/Media-Zimmerman-Coverage-Rap-Sheet

Black Conservatives Comment on Not Guilty Verdict in Zimmerman Case

George Zimmerman, who faced charges of 2nd degree murder and manslaughter in the 2012 death of Trayvon Martin, was found not guilty tonight by a six-person jury of his peers in Sanford, Florida.  Members of the Project 21 black leadership network are commenting on the verdict:

“Six women, some of them mothers themselves, found George Zimmerman not guilty of second degree murder and manslaughter in the death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.  Although Mr. Zimmerman was acquitted, there are no winners in this tragic case.  A teenager is deceased and a young man’s family is mourning.  George Zimmerman will never have a normal life again.  I call for all sides to respect the verdict reached by a jury of Mr. Zimmerman’s peers and honor Trayvon’s memory by letting peace prevail in the streets.”  
- Christopher Arps is a managing partner of a digital media and political consulting firm and a co-founder of the black political networking website Move-On-Up.org.

“To celebrate justice rendered in this case is not an admission or an articulation that Trayvon Martin deserved what happened to him that fateful night in February of 2012.  As most will acknowledge, it’s a sad and unfortunate thing that Martin lost his life and that his parents had to bury their son.  The jury ruled – considering the evidence presented – rightly in my opinion.  George Zimmerman is innocent of the filed charges against him.  Despite the considerable emotion surrounding this case, justice has been served.  It is not ‘justice for Trayvon.’  Nor it is ‘justice for George.’  It is simply justice.”
- Derryck Green, a student, has a M.A. in Theological Studies and is currently pursuing his doctorate in ministry.

“The justice system did what it is supposed to do – get to the bottom of what happened.  Agree or not, our system works.  George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin, by his own admission.  He has to live with that, and I believe God will judge him for that action.  But the jury decided that action did not rise to the level of manslaughter or murder.  I accept and respect that.  We all should, whether or not we agree with it.”
- Coby Dillard is a founder of the Hampton Roads Tea Party in southern Virginia, a regular columnist for the Norfolk Virginian Pilot and a Navy veteran.

“George Zimmerman has been found not guilty.  Regardless of how people feel about it, we must still show love and have compassion one for another.” 
- Demetrius Minor, a former White House intern, is an evangelist and motivational speaker. 
              
Project 21 was formed in 1992 when the riots following the verdict in the Rodney King case revealed a need to highlight the diversity of opinion within the black community.  For over 20 years, the volunteer members of the Project 21 black leadership network have provided conservative and free-market perspectives that, until that time, were largely unknown or ignored by the establishment media.

http://greenmountainscribes.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/black-conservatives-comment-on-not-guilty-verdict-in-zimmerman-case/

I was wrong: Obama is behind race violence


Exclusive: Colin Flaherty apologizes after reading of DOJ involvement in Florida

 I owe a whole lot of people an apology. A real big one.

Soon after I first started writing about black mob violence two years for WND and other places, I started seeing comments about Obama.

A whole lot of people thought he was personally behind efforts to gin up the epidemic of black mob violence I was writing about – and the local and national media ignored.

I kind of brushed it off. No, I did worse than that: I mentally placed all these comments into my “black helicopter international banker kook” file.

The president of the United States personally encouraging racial violence? That struck me as crazy.

Yes, I knew Eric Holder said we were cowards on race. Though it was not until recently I came to fully learn what he meant: He was repeating a classic line from Critical Race Theory that says racism is everywhere. Racism is permanent. And white people are afraid to admit it. There’s the coward thing.

I thought it was strange the president would inject himself into the case of the black Harvard professor “Skip” Gates.

Stranger still when the president said Trayvon could be his son.

And when I saw the video last year (thanks to Breitbart) that showed Obama heaping warm praise on the inventor of Critical Race Theory during a party at Harvard, I thought it was just a bunch of pointy-headed academics with a theory that would never survive off campus.

Wrong again. Critical Race Theory is now taught in hundreds of school districts across the country. They brag how their children and teachers learn about the evils of White Privilege.

Now this week, thanks to the heroes over at Judicial Watch, we learn that the federal government of the United States has been sending community organizers to Florida to ratchet up the pressure to indict and convict George Zimmerman.

The Department of Justice people called themselves “peacekeepers.” As in: No justice, no peace.

I keep reading the documents, and I can scarce believe what I am seeing. The president of the United States is sending people to foment racial violence in Florida.

The liberals assure us that everything the Department of Justice did to help organize and facilitate collective action again the people who were refusing to indict Zimmerman had nothing to do with racial animosity.

The Orlando Sentinel describes it at the time:
When racial tensions flared in Sanford, a league of secretive peacemakers reached out to the city’s spiritual and civic leaders to help cool heated emotions after 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot and killed in February.
When civil-rights organizers wanted to demonstrate, these federal workers taught them how to peacefully manage crowds.
They even arranged a police escort for college students to ensure safe passage for their 40-mile march from Daytona Beach to Sanford to demand justice.
As national figures and sign-waving protesters grabbed the spotlight after Trayvon’s death, federal workers from a little-known branch of the Department of Justice labored away behind the scenes, quietly brokering deals between the city officials and residents to help prevent violence and lay the groundwork for peace.
Like using the IRS to target the tea party, abandoning Americans in Benghazi and now sending “secretive” community organizers to orchestrate demonstrations and help build this case into the most racially charged trial since Rodney King, the Obama crew is once again pleading with us to answer the following question the right way:

Who are you going to believe: us, or your own lying eyes?

Washington, D.C., psychologist Lorraine Land calls it “gas lighting.” She writes about it at my blog at WhiteGirlBleedaLot.com. Gaslighting is a:
a form of psychological abuse that causes its intended victim to begin to question his or her own reality. The objectives of the gas lighting perpetrated by the Critical Race Theory proponents are as follows:
1) to discredit victims of racial violence … “Its all your fault. Nothing happened to you.”
2) to demoralize the victims: “it’s all your fault because of white privilege.”
3) to free black teens of responsibility, “its not your fault, you are underprivileged.” Hence infantilizing them.
4) to create a cohort of “willing victims” to continue to be part of the cycle of abuse and part of the “gas lighting” phenomenon.
Dr. Land reminded me gas lighting has been the plot of several books, movies and TV shows. In the book “1984,” Winston Smith was tortured until he agreed his captor held five fingers before him, when there were only four. Jean Luc Picard of the Starship Enterprise went through the same thing at the hands of the evil Cardassians.

Obama’s secretive peacekeepers failed in their stated mission. In “White Girl Bleed a Lot: The return of racial violence and how the media ignore it,” I documented more than a dozen cases of black mob violence connected to Trayvon Martin in the run up to the indictment of George Zimmerman.

Today, all over the country, police departments are on alert for the violence that could follow Zimmerman’s acquittal.

Like Winston Smith, we are now supposed to believe something that is transparently not true. They had nothing to do with the black resentment and animosity and violence connected to this case. And others.
Just like I believed last year when I refused to consider the depths of ignorance and malice this president would drag this country into.

Sorry about that, everyone.

http://www.wnd.com/2013/07/i-was-wrong-obama-is-behind-race-violence/

PK'S NOTE: To quote Todd Starnes: "Friends - the Democrats and the Obama Administration are declaring war on American citizens."

Harry Reid on Zimmerman Trial: 'This Isn't Over'


'The Justice Department is going to take a look at this.'

Senate majority leader Harry Reid said the George Zimmerman trial "isn't over" and said he thinks "the Justice Department is going to take a look at this."

The NBC host asked, "And the president, does he have a role in speaking about it as he did after the shooting?"

"Yeah, of course," said Reid. "And I think the Justice Department's going to take a look at this. You know, this isn't over with, and I think that's good, that's our system. It's gotten better, not worse."

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/harry-reid-zimmerman-trial-isnt-over_739363.html


HEADSLAM HEADLINE:

President Obama returning to Martha’s Vineyard for August vacation

Impeach Attorney General Holder - for Justice's Sake

This week, I am grateful I am not a civics teacher.  The entire legal and constitutional framework under which we believe we live seemed to have been turned upside-down.  To start with, as former U.S. Appeals Judge Michael McConnell argued so well, Obama's suspension of the employer mandate of ObamaCare conflicts with his obligations under Article II, Sec 3 to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed."

The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which advises the president on legal and constitutional issues, has repeatedly opined that the president may decline to enforce laws he believes are unconstitutional. But these opinions have always insisted that the president has no authority, as one such memo put it in 1990, to "refuse to enforce a statute he opposes for policy reasons."
Attorneys general under Presidents Carter, Reagan, both Bushes and Clinton all agreed on this point. With the exception of Richard Nixon, whose refusals to spend money appropriated by Congress were struck down by the courts, no prior president has claimed the power to negate a law that is concededly constitutional.
In 1998, the Supreme Court struck down a congressional grant of line-item veto authority to the president to cancel spending items in appropriations. The reason? The only constitutional power the president has to suspend or repeal statutes is to veto a bill or propose new legislation. Writing for the court in Clinton v. City of New York, Justice John Paul Stevens noted: "There is no provision in the Constitution that authorizes the president to enact, to amend, or to repeal statutes."

To be sure, in less significant ways, Obama has also suspended the operation of valid laws.  As McConnell notes, Obama is ignoring immigration law by suspending  deportation proceedings "against some 800,000 illegal immigrants."

McConnell warns Democrats that this unfortunate precedent may haunt them when a Republican takes over the White house and follows it.  Worse, it seems, and he also notes, "[w]hy bother debating the details of a compromise if future presidents will feel free to disregard those parts of the statute they don't like?"

Court resolution of this overreaching and constitutional violation is not certain, because it's unclear whether any citizen would meet the threshold standing issue to bring suit.  It's hard to see what "personal stake" sufficient to permit such a suit private citizens would have.

This is particularly unfortunate since nothing gives the executive more power to "control the legislation of congress, and paralyze the administration of justice" than the executive's refusal to enforce the law (Kendall v. United States [1838]).

The House Ways and Means Committee is exploring the legality of this move, but frankly, unless the House is willing to initiate censure or impeachment proceedings, I do not see that there is much more than public exposure they can hope to achieve.

In the states, Republicans, independents, and patriots of every stripe in every legislature should offer up and fight to pass censure resolutions against this power-grab.

With the news this week that Attorney General Holder's Department of Justice had used tax-paid employees of his department to foment the demonstrations which forced the prosecution of George Zimmerman, it is apparent that something is very seriously wrong.

John Fund offers up more on the effect of Obama's lawlessness should more concrete examples be needed to persuade legislatures of the need for passage of censure resolutions:

I wondered back in 2008 how the federal government's focus would change with a left-wing "community organizer" installed as president. We now have a partial answer. It appears that some of the tactics and approaches ACORN used have been moved into the Justice Department and other federal agencies. In the old days, when individual appropriations bills for federal agencies were still passed by Congress, it was possible to defund groups like ACORN. But now, with congressional gridlock ensuring that federal agencies are financed by dubious annual spending resolutions that simply continue existing program funding, any effective oversight by Congress is a dead letter. The question now isn't really how many other left-wing "community organizing" projects like the one at Justice are being subsidized by the Obama administration. The real issue is whether the entire Obama administration has basically become an enabler and cheerleader for every Saul Alinsky tactic its radical appointees want to embrace - from the Department of Housing and Urban Development's bullying local officials over public-housing construction demands to the Environmental Protection Agency's colluding with environmentalist groups to lose lawsuits the groups file against the EPA in court.


 I had thought until this week that the American Dreyfus trial -- the martyrdom of George Zimmerman -- was an unfortunate local miscarriage of justice.  To watch the trial unfold was to be appalled at the outrageous prosecution.  Talk Left's Jeralyn E. Merritt put it well:

Whether George Zimmerman is acquitted or convicted, and I am not making any predictions before hearing closing arguments and reading the jury instructions, the legacy of this case will be that the media never gets it right, and worse, that a group of lawyers, with the aid of a public relations team, who had a financial stake in the outcome of pending and anticipated civil litigation, were allowed to commandeer control of Florida's criminal justice system, in pursuit of a divisive, personal agenda.
Their transformation of a tragic but spontaneous shooting into the crime of the century, and their relentless demonization of the person they deemed responsible, not for a tragic killing, but for "cold-blooded murder," has called into question the political motives and ethics of the officials serving in the Executive branch of Florida's government, ruined the career of other public officials, turned the lives of the Zimmerman family, who are as innocent as their grieving clients, into a nightmare, and along the way, set back any chance of a rational discussion of the very cause they were promoting, probably for years.
The problems of racial disparity and arbitrary enforcement of our criminal laws are real, systemic and need to be addressed. Criminal defense lawyers see it and fight to correct it every day. From charging decisions to plea offers to sentences, the system is not fair and everybody knows it.
But this case has never been representative of those problems. And perhaps most unfortunate of all, as a result of the false narrative created by the lawyers for grieving parents who tragically lost their son -- a narrative perpetuated by a complicit and ratings-hungry media -- any attempt at meaningful reform is likely to fall on deaf ears for years to come.

The disclosure of this unbelievable misuse of government power and resources to indict Zimmerman and remove those officials who had correctly refused to do so underscores Thomas Sowell's admonition about racial leaders :

Groups that rose from poverty to prosperity seldom did so by having racial or ethnic leaders. While most Americans can easily name a number of black leaders, current or past, how many can name Asian American ethnic leaders or Jewish ethnic leaders?
The time is long overdue to stop looking for progress through racial or ethnic leaders. Such leaders have too many incentives to promote polarizing attitudes and actions that are counterproductive for minorities and disastrous for the country.
Certainly Holder comes within the class of figures Sowell warns of.

Michael Ledeen details the polarizing role Holder has played in race relations from the moment of his nomination to his post.

Throughout your tenure, you've acted as if one of your primary tasks were the protection of blacks against criticism and particularly against legal action, regardless of the facts in the cases.  I found the whitewash of the New Black Panthers' actions at a polling place in Philly during the 2008 elections particularly egregious, as did several Justice Department officials in the Civil Rights Division.  I'd be inclined to overlook it - a single event, after all - save for two things.  First, the behavior of your underlings, and second, the Panthers just showed up again in Florida in a "race case."

One of your cohorts at Justice seem to have dissembled about the whitewash. Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez swore that there was no political element involved in Justice's decision, but a federal district judge found otherwise: political appointees within DOJ were conferring about the status and resolution of the New Black Panther Party case in the days preceding the DOJ's dismissal of claims in that case, which would appear to contradict Assistant Attorney General Perez's testimony that political leadership was not involved in that decision.
So your political cohorts were involved in the whitewash, and denied it in sworn testimony (and Thomas Perez, who provided the  false denial, is now up for secretary of Labor).  It's not the only case that suggests active sympathy for the Panthers.

As we have recently learned, Justice quietly helped organize the Florida demonstrations that clearly caused local legal authorities to reverse their original judgment, and bring charges in the now (and improperly) racially defined Zimmerman case.  Those demonstrations included the New Black Panthers.
No one could possibly characterize your race-driven proclivities better than you did, when you said, "I am the black U.S. attorney...there's a common cause that bonds the black U.S. attorney with the black criminal..."
This is not what we need from the nation's top legal officer.  It may well be a candid expression of your deepest passions, but it's wrong for the attorney general, or any legal official of the American government.  We need an indisputably even-handed, fair-minded and color-blind AG.  You're not that man.  You're pushing an agenda that most Americans don't like, based on a racially driven view of American history and society that is false, demeaning to most of us, and a threat - whether deliberate or unanticipated - to our continued progress. We don't need any more of this.

Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution provides for impeachment of the president, vice president, and officers like the attorney general for "treason, bribery, high crimes and misdemeanors."  That certainly seems sufficient to cover an attorney general who regularly misuses his office to polarize race relations; who allowed countless weapons to be transferred across our southern border to thugs, who probably counseled the president that he could refuse to enforce constitutional laws.

Twice in our country's short history, high officials resigned when faced with the prospect of impeachment hearings -- Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon and Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas.  Once, a president, Richard Nixon, resigned once the articles of impeachment were reported out of the House Judiciary Committee.

It's time for Democratic leaders to encourage Holder's departure.  If they lack the will to do so, the House Judiciary should initiate impeachment of Holder.

Crazy Wasteful Spending!

Want to know some of the crazier things the U.S. government is spending money to achieve this year?
The Independent Journal Review (no relation to the Independent Institute or the venerable Independent Review) just featured their list of the Top 25. Here’s a handful of the ones that really caught our imagination:
There are many more examples, but they deserve their own special focus! 

http://www.mygovcost.org/2013/07/05/crazy-wasteful-spending/
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