>> ^Darkhand:

>> ^GenjiKilpatrick:
@Darkhand.
Did you even listen to Cenk's point?
A heavy adult male with a gun stalks an unarmed teen, then claim self-defense..
What logic are you using to conclude Zimmerman is somehow not guilt of murder?
What if Zimmerman had stalked a 17 year old white girl, then shot her dead after she fought back?
What you need to see more evidence then?

Someone stalking you, whether anyone likes it or not, is not a just cause for you to turn around and beat the crap out of them.
If Martin turned around and punched him and knocked him on his ass I think that would have been a justifiable amount of force. But continuing to beat on him as some people suggesting to "knock him out" you don't understand how the body works. You can't tell the difference between "Oh yeah I knocked him out" and "Awesome! Internal bleeding and his brain is swelling now I can get away".
Does everyone here really believe because Zimmerman was being over zealous they feel he deserves to get knocked down and have someone sit on top of him and continuously punch him in the head?


According to the SYG law, which they claim let's Zimmerman walk away with no charges. Yes Trayvon had the right to defend himself from a pursuer if he felt that he was in danger. The level of damage he could inflict was dependent on how much danger he thought he was in. The law defines everything as "reasonable" for the level it has to meet. If someone chased you down in a vehicle, you escaped him and he continued looking until he found you again. That to me is reasonable grounds to assume this person means you harm.

Plus, I still have trouble fathoming how Trayvon got within striking distance of Zimmerman in the first place. I find it entirely unlikely that he would approach his stalker. So I believe that Zimmerman cornered him or caught him in a hiding spot. It just never would have happened if Zimmerman would have 1) not followed him 2) not got out of his vehicle.

And I'll just throw this out, carrying a gun carries with it a certain expectation that you will use said gun otherwise carrying it will end up getting you shot if you draw and don't use it. I think Zimmerman felt confident due to his gun and his willingness to use it. Substitute any other rational adult and they would not hunt down a kid and approach him to within striking distance, it's too predatory to continue forward once you've gotten within speaking distance of someone who has tried to evade you once already. Keep in mind that Trayvon had not committed a crime to warrant the amount of attention Zimmerman was giving him, nor the need to approach him beyond the distance a loud speaking or even shouting voice would carry. I certainly would not approach a kid on public property who ran away from me initially. I may be more inclined to hunt them down if they were on my private property or in a dangerous area, but neither of those fit this scenario.

The act of pursuing someone who is trying to get away is by it's nature aggressive. Martin had the right to defend himself from a stranger demonstrating aggressive behavior. The language and frustration Zimmerman expressed on the phone call also suggests he was not pleased to have someone get away on his watch, and perhaps semi-racist in nature.

On the flip side. If Trayvon had chased Zimmerman and still ended up shot to death, would this conversation even be happening? Trayvon would have been provoking the encounter and even if he never laid a finger on Zimmerman, the law states you can use deadly force if you believe someone means to great bodily harm or commit a felony.

It's a joke that Zimmerman has the right to "defend himself" with deadly force, in an encounter he forced upon a teenager against all advice and all material that Zimmerman had presented at a neighborhood watch meeting. The presenter came forward and spoke about it. Under the law he has to meet criteria as the aggressor. I do not believe the police have released information showing he fulfilled those criteria, and his immunity under SYG should be forfeit.

The language on the call "coon", the lack of a tox screen, and the various other screw ups by police. PLUS not holding him until they at least interviewed everyone they could find within a block of the shooting. Now all of those people are potentially tainted by Zimmerman's presence, the media coverage, and the bias of the sources of this information. It's up to the second investigation to hopefully see that they screwed the pooch and see if it was because they are incompetent, racist, or covering up for Zimmerman.

I don't blame anyone for being outrageously pissed and concerned over this. It essentially means you can walk down the street, stalk any lone person, and shoot them dead if they have anything in their hand you can claim looked like a gun or say anything like "I'll kill you...........................if you come any closer." Just the last part won't make it out of their mouth if you have your gun good and ready to blow a hole in them.

I think it's that socialism works in other countries, and works quite well. While in the US capitalism has become very predatory, everyone is out to tie you up in confusing deals and contracts or hit you with hidden fees. There's almost no straight forward business being done when it comes to things that are considered "necessities" by most citizens.

Healthcare, every one says they are doing what they do to keep costs down...overwhelmingly your experience at the doctors office gets shorter and shorter, they order more tests that show nothing and you pay more and more. Most doctors, if you have even the slightest cause for a test, they are off the hook for frivolous tests....you should be able to trust the doctor to have your best interest in mind and not withhold information to earn themselves referral fees and what not.

Banking, just look at all the fees fiascos we've been having recently. Then look at the mortgage situation, they were filling out completely false paperwork in people's names and submitting it. Now they are coming to take your house, whether they have a right to do legally or not. They aren't so helpful with loans anymore either, you'll find it more difficult to get a reasonable loan (than say 7 years ago), despite all the federal aid and such they took in.

Phone, you have so many fees on cell phones and landlines. They used to toy with area codes and have "local long distance" areas that would change randomly over periods of time. I remember a friend of mine could walk across the street and make a no extra fees local call while at his house it was local long distance rates. It's equivalent to roaming on cell phones.

Internet, not only are they trying to pass laws to censor everything they rape you on most plans. You pay the same or more for less every year as they over burden their networks and never expand. Then complain about all the congestion like they weren't adding more people the whole time and it's YOUR fault.

Air travel, you get felt up, treated like a criminal, and you better have a smile on your face while this is all going down. Plus pay extra for your bags, use special containers, etc etc.

The idea of capitalism is great, but only when the companies can't leverage their monopolies or size to quit being competitive and become predatory. And we have predatory capitalism, where instead of offering the best possible services for the lowest possible prices, you get less and less as time goes on for the same money. Or they offer a "standard service" but it becomes more costly as times goes on for unexplainable reasons in many cases that usually end up being "Rising costs" but no one knows where or why they are rising.

Plus there's more and more barriers to entry for small businesses who only make enough to support their employees. New required licensing for a job they've never required licenses for previously, minimum insurance coverage for their work, minority ratio requirements if you are working on something that is receiving public funding.

And then we have outrageous requirements for jobs, such as 4 year degrees for jobs that even 10 years ago probably didn't have those requirements.

Rising education costs which pair up with the above point, making it even costlier to simply function in our capitalist society. Less apprenticeships and similar training programs to receive hands on experience under a working professional.

30 years, it's just become more and more complicated to do anything at all many times with no good reason for it being that way beyond allowing a small group of people to exploit everyone else.

In the end, it's the predatory "American" corporations that are destroying the country by outsourcing jobs to the lowest global bidder with the laxest environmental and labor regulations.

It really seems like the capitalists of this country aren't going to be satisfied until the middle class is transformed into a locally available source of 3rd world labor.

The people who demand and benefit from false prosperity are also masochistic in a dumb kind of way. If everyone was smart, we wouldn't have this problem. But they are not. Whether you are intentionally doing something or unintentionally doing something is irrelevant.

Even now jobs (money) dominate over issues vastly more important... Because we don't care...

>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^Lawdeedaw:
Although you are right, Cain is partially right too. We allowed our bubble to blow up because the middle class and poor were benefiting from the false wealth as well. So too were the rich--who lobbied for the disaster. But it was all of America.
In other words, we demanded stupidly from Washington and they accepted. Even now they want to lower tariffs (I.e., outsource more jobs) and lower taxes (I.e., do the will of the Tea Party.) Crazy.

Wait wait wait. I didn't vote for deregulation. I certainly didn't vote for banks to lobby congress.
I don't even think the Republican voters who did vote for deregulation knew that they were voting for bubbles and the biggest recession in generations. They certainly were told differently by Republican politicians, and the corporations who love them.
The people who promote the idea that markets are self-regulating were and are liars. Scam artists. Frauds. Yes, people were suckers for believing them. But I don't blame them for being naive and trusting, I blame the predatory fucks who used them to screw all of us out of our savings and livelihoods.
Cain wants people to mostly blame the victims of the scam for believing in the scam...all the while promoting the original scam itself!

>> ^Lawdeedaw:

Although you are right, Cain is partially right too. We allowed our bubble to blow up because the middle class and poor were benefiting from the false wealth as well. So too were the rich--who lobbied for the disaster. But it was all of America.
In other words, we demanded stupidly from Washington and they accepted. Even now they want to lower tariffs (I.e., outsource more jobs) and lower taxes (I.e., do the will of the Tea Party.) Crazy.


Wait wait wait. I didn't vote for deregulation. I certainly didn't vote for banks to lobby congress.

I don't even think the Republican voters who did vote for deregulation knew that they were voting for bubbles and the biggest recession in generations. They certainly were told differently by Republican politicians, and the corporations who love them.

The people who promote the idea that markets are self-regulating were and are liars. Scam artists. Frauds. Yes, people were suckers for believing them. But I don't blame them for being naive and trusting, I blame the predatory fucks who used them to screw all of us out of our savings and livelihoods.

Cain wants people to mostly blame the victims of the scam for believing in the scam...all the while promoting the original scam itself!

I agree with everything you just wrote.

The only thing that I would point out is the media is biased as Jon Stewart put it to be lazy, and to generate conflict, but it will spin what is going on in society either conservative or liberal to get out of real reporting, and to be sensational. Anything they can do to get people to consume said media is fair game. That laziness falls on both sides of the political spectrum media wide. And it doesn't help when society tunes out when the story isn't something that elicits an emotional response, or doesn't have a simple lesson or solution. Nuance and complexity is something most Americans abhor.

Case in point, when is the last time you saw something on the news that showed how many IT jobs are given to people with work visas, and compare that to how many people are graduating college with computer science degrees to illustrate that portion of outsourcing? I don't think I've ever seen that presented in the news. That point is very hard to pin as conservative or liberal because solutions to remedy it could come from both parties. And there's no easily identified villian, either. So instead, let's paint the big bad evil corporations for outsourcing in general because that's easy to report on, throw some basic generalized stats up about number of jobs outsourced, show corporate profits increasing, and do people love to consume that kind of story. I see that left and right in IT. I know friends who see it left and right in other sections of the economy like bioengineering, etc. But it never gets reported on. These are the jobs and sectors that will be growing in the modern economy, and we as a nation are doing a poor job preparing the next generations to succeed in them, no question about it.

Or conversely, if you love you some Fox News, let's focus on the fact that there's this agency called Planned Parenthood, that is in part funded by federal tax dollars, and it performs abortions! OMG! This must be this huge problem! Only, if you're a sane individual, you'd normally then want to know how much of this is going on, and you quickly realize the number of abortions that are performed in these facilities is under 100 annually nationwide, and it's dubious at best if federal dollars actually paid for any of those procedures. But finding those statistics is either purposefully omitted to sensationalize and stir up conflict, or done so out of sheer laziness. But conservative Americans eat that stuff up, because it's easy for them to follow, clearly identifiable villians, and fits their ideological narrative of the US crumbling from disregarding "traditional values". The facts of course clearly show this isn't a significant problem.

Back to the housing crisis, etc, the truth is there's blame to go around with the banks, government, and consumers. I also have a friend who took on a mortgage he shouldn't have. Got an 80/20, he's a single income earner, wife is in the process of getting a degree in nursing, they have two kids. In 2006, they got this big massive house in a brand new neighborhood. It's the American dream. Now, it's not like this guy is dumb. He took out $400,000 mortgages (80/20), very high interest, etc. on a single income, knowing full well his wife was going to school, and he didn't have an emergency fund to speak of.

I don't care what he was told by the lenders and real estate agent - he had no one to blame but himself in the end. He had a perfectly good house in a good neighborhood already. He just bought a new car as well. He had credit card debt. He wasn't putting much money away for retirement either. There's nothing anyone can say but "it's your fault" when the economy tanked in 2008, we both worked for the same company, and they cut our salaries to avoid layoffs. I'd have been sympathetic if he were doing the basics right, had a good emergency fund, could put a good 20% down for the mortgage, had no credit card debt, etc., then got caught later despite his best efforts, or lacked the mental capability to know he was walking into a potential economic deathtrap. But he wasn't putting forth anywhere close to a best effort financially speaking. When the same thing happened to me, I cut back on paying my mortgage off early, and sat on a six months emergency fund if the layoff ever came, and increased my retirement contributions when the market tanked to jumpstart it when the market would inevitably rebounded. There was never a sleepless night.

He's in better shape now, we got our salaries put back, and what did he do? Took that several year "postponed" trip to Disneyworld with the wife and kids, put off contributing to the reinstituted 401k, never has started an IRA for him or his wife, no college fund for the kids, only has one month emergency fund, although he has reduced his credit card balances.

I wouldn't pretend to know which is worse in the US - predatory lending and other abuses by businesses against consumers, or a complete lack of personal responsibility. But I know this - there's plenty of both, but you certainly don't hear it's both from pretty much any media outlet.

@heropsycho
i appreciate your response but i think i may not have been clear.
the points you are making...and understand i am not attempting to invalidate them, but rather attempting to point out that anecdotal evidence or a media fueled narrative meant to illicit an emotional response does not an argument make.
the actual statistics paint an entirely different picture and that is what i am referring to.in the 80's the narrative was "welfare queens" where they would take a handful of people who abused the system and painted them as being the "norm" when the reality was the exact opposite.
or that the people who bought homes during the housing bubble were somehow mentally deficient while IGNORING the predatory and out-right deceitful practices of mortgage brokers who lied to these people.
the latest narrative has been directed at unions,specifically the teachers union.now we can discuss corruption and abuse of power concerning unions but that is a wholly different subject, because historically unions have dome more for the american worker and middle class than anything else combined.

all these tactics are taken directly from the propaganda playbook:conflate,deflect and demonize.
all to get YOU to view your fellow citizen with a questioning eye and to judge based on the parameters dictated to you based almost solely on disinformation and emotive language.i am just trying to point that out.

here is my anecdotal story for the day:
i have a dear friend,very conservative and religious and gets her news solely from FOX.
her favorite statement is :"we were taught if things get tough you pull yourself up by your boot-straps and get it done"
sounds noble yes?
but the reality is her and her husband were given 25 grand when they got married to buy a house(that BOUGHT the house in those days).she worked only 10 years until she had her first child and then stayed at home (because she could).
every 4 yrs her family would buy a new car for her husband to get to work who happened to work for GM and she collects a pretty penny from his retirement and still qualified for medicaid.

am i upset she was blessed with these things? of course not, but i do find it delicious irony that this woman rages against:unions,social programs and people getting help when they need it, when her own family benefited from the very things she is raging against.

Love Mr. Reich.
I totally agree w/ this explanation, but why doesn't he mention predatory capital and job losses? Why does he stop at "wages" and "taxes". I guess he's not ready to condemn neoliberal/globalism for what it actually does to workers.

Ah, the classic case of correlation versus causation.

In the U.S., between 1974 and 2004, 52.2% of all homicides were committed by those who listed their race as black, despite blacks accounting for 12.6% of the population (according to the 2010 census).

This of course will lead most racists to conclude that black people are inherently violent or cold-blooded, etc. Nevermind the socio-economic status of the majority of black Americans (almost a quarter of them live on wages below the poverty line, much higher rates of unemployment, etc.) which is a much more likely to be a reason for the crime statistics. Nevermind the justice system that has a much higher conviction rate for black offenders (probably also tied to the socio-economic status since if you can't afford a private lawyer you're going to get stuck with an over-worked and underpaid public defender).

It seems to me much more likely that these attacks are the result of immigrants who are coming from countries (Iraq, Somalia, and Pakistan seem to be where most of the rapists have come from) where they were likely already successful predators due to a lack of law enforcement and crumbling social structures. Old habits die hard. They move to Oslo and continue their predatory ways.

But could Islam really be the cause of this? Let's look at another statistic:

In Oslo, there are approximately 163,000 Muslims. Let's be generous and assume that only a quarter of these are adult males (40705) and the rest are women and children. Let's also be generous and assume that for every rape reported in Oslo, 10 rapes go unreported due to fear or shame (86 reported rapes x 10 unreported = 860 rapes). Let's further be completely unrealistic and assume each rape is the result of an individual offender (no repeat offenders or serial rapists). So now we have...

860 rapists / 40705 adult male population = 2.1% of the population

I've been hugely generous with these numbers, but I think you can see that this particular statistic does not really implicate Islam as a cause of the rapes. Wouldn't we expect to see a much higher percentage of the male population rampaging through Oslo if Islam was truly the cause of this behavior?

I'm not implying Islamic attitudes towards women don't contribute to the behavior of those who commit these crimes. But it seems hard to believe Islam is somehow responsible for these crimes any more than Christianity is responsible for pedophile priests (though the Catholic Church is certainly responsible for covering the abuses up).

This has some very interesting parallels with legends like vampires. Mysterious illness caused by a predatory and dangerous mystical creature that attacks when no one is watching. The difference is you don't just kill it, you must also consume it to take back what it stole.

Who knows, maybe in 300 years these guys will be writing novels about sorcerers that sparkle in daylight and "eat" easily impressed female teens...

wtf? have you all lost your minds?

1. you can't compare a womans vagina to a wad full of cash. but presuming that you could... just because i flashed my wad full of cash does not make it less wrong or even permissible for someone to steal it. your rights end where mine begin.

2. women don't get raped because they're scantily clad. rape is less about sexual gratification and more about power and control. i was a wild ass teenager and i put myself in a lot of unwholesome situations, i experienced my fair share of unwanted, boundary violating sexual advances. i was also a raging tomboy/baby crusty... my clothing didn't have anything to do with the creeps who wanted/tried/did take advantage, it was ALWAYS about power and superiority and control. ALWAYS about some mental defect that made dudes get off on the ability to overpower.

3. you can't blame anyone for mistaking your flirtation with interest. anyone who does is probably being a bitch. but flirting and be provocative is not "stepping into the lion's den and asking to get bit" and you're not contractually obligated to put out... anyone who thinks that it is does is a defective asshole and possibly predatory and almost certainly has issues with women and their ability to own their sexual power, again.. its about power and dominance and control.

4. i sort of agree with the notion that you attract what you put out there. like i chat it up with a lot of mentally ill/homeless men... so a lot of these guys tend to want to marry me.... when i go dancing at the hip hop club, i dont get offended when i get balls rubbed on my leg or some horny drunk guy wants to take me home.... i just go find a girl to dance with after that.... when i go dancing at the gay bar looking like a big dyke, i dont get pissed off when a lesbian flirts with me... i go bowling a lot, i dont get mad when bowling alley people hit on me.... if you dress and behave in a certain way in a certain place, you're bound to attract someone.. you have no right to be surprised or offended when that happens... it may even be what you're looking for.. ... but it does not negate someone else's responsibility to control themselves and respect your words more than your tits. and anyone who doesn't see that, has issues with women and their sexual power. and rape is, once again, about power and control. it is not about cleavage or temptation.

edit: there is also offensive language... i dont get mad if you thought i was flirting with you and expressed an interest, i do get mad if you don't speak to me with respect. again, its about power and control ooorrr maybe you're a social piarha with no idea how interact with people, either way, you're getting turned down and that doesnt make me a tease. it's your problem.

@rottenseed, it's more about us and the choices we're willing to make. I'm saying that choosing to eat an animal alive, as opposed to killing it first, is repugnant and immoral, on the basis that it requires the creature to endure wasteful and unnecessary suffering.

@Stu, what I think is acceptable to eat isn't bound to the mirror test at all, and I just meant that I'm unwilling to eat anything capable of relatively advanced cognition.

I have nothing to do with PETA, we are undeniably the most successful predatory creature on the planet and as for the rest of it, I'm not sure that I care. I've already been pretty clear about what I think on the subject and I've been about as overbearing as I'll allow myself to be.

Edit : Actually, just a little bit more, as you mentioned pain... #1, related to pain with references, and #2, octopus/cephalopod intelligence in general, only a few references.

OMG - a Squirrel almost died at the hands of a predatory cat - Can't let that happen!

It might have been a lone mother trying getting food for her cubs>> ^Skeeve:

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
Don't know much about coyote behavior. Is he playing, or trying to take pot shots for a wound? Seems a little aggressive for play, and a little bold for taking pot shots. None the less, very scary. Should be glad it wasn't wolfs.

While wolves tend to be more skittish around humans, coyotes tend to have less or no shyness around humans. They may seem like simply wild dogs (even playful ones at first sight), they are surprisingly adaptable killers.
I think this one probably saw it for what it was, a human walking alone, and was testing to see if it would be an easy meal. Two coyotes attacked and killed a 19 year old woman out hiking in Nova Scotia last year and coyote attacks have been rising over the last decade or so. A large percentage of those (~37%) are actually predatory attacks with intent to kill.
What this guy should have done, from the second it started approaching him, is make himself look as big as he could (instead of crouching down to its level), yell loudly and back away. When it got close to nip/bite him he should have swatted it.
...And holding out his open hand looked like a good way to lose a finger.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

Don't know much about coyote behavior. Is he playing, or trying to take pot shots for a wound? Seems a little aggressive for play, and a little bold for taking pot shots. None the less, very scary. Should be glad it wasn't wolfs.


While wolves tend to be more skittish around humans, coyotes tend to have less or no shyness around humans. They may seem like simply wild dogs (even playful ones at first sight), they are surprisingly adaptable killers.

I think this one probably saw it for what it was, a human walking alone, and was testing to see if it would be an easy meal. Two coyotes attacked and killed a 19 year old woman out hiking in Nova Scotia last year and coyote attacks have been rising over the last decade or so. A large percentage of those (~37%) are actually predatory attacks with intent to kill.

What this guy should have done, from the second it started approaching him, is make himself look as big as he could (instead of crouching down to its level), yell loudly and back away. When it got close to nip/bite him he should have swatted it.

...And holding out his open hand looked like a good way to lose a finger.