Dr Ben Carson, ignorance or lying?

Now there is no question that Ben Carson is a smart man.  He was a very skilled neurosurgeon.  But the problem with people that are extremely good at something is that they often inflate their ability or knowledge in another area.  Well Ben Carson is doing that here.

Now I'm a layperson when it comes to science.  Sure I'm a science geek and love to learn about various topics especially biology, psychology and physics, which includes cosmology and astronomy.  I'm not a scientist. I don't have a degree in the field.  But I am fairly well educated in the field.  So there is a problem if I can punch holes in his arguments.  There are things that I don't know for sure and I'll admit it when asked a question.  If I'm unsure of the answer I'll emphasise that fact and I'll probably go learn more to educate myself and I'd hope others would research what I said and if I was right or wrong about a topic.

So here I'm going to go through his speech and point by point I'll point out where he gets the science wrong.  I'll explain how much he gets the science wrong.  Note that his speech is only 3 min and 45 seconds long.  It is very easy to spout shit about stuff like this and raise doubts.  To convince people that often don't want to know the truth because it goes against their religious views.  It takes a lot longer to refute the claims.  This is because these things are often complex topics.  Learning isn't easy.  If it was everyone would be doctor or scientist.

First here is the interview

What Dr Ben Carson thinks about the big bang

11 seconds in and he uses the term "highfalutin" in regards to literally a whole field of professionals?  What would his response be if someone label all doctors as pompous or pretentious?  So he starts off with an ad hominem attack.  He leads with denigrating a whole field of scientists.  Why? Because he knows his audience is mostly made up of people that don't understand the field in question and don't like the implications it has.  Mind you this audience, as most audiences, wouldn't understand the technical details about neurosurgery either.  He knows it sets up the audience so they can more easily dismiss what scientist say if they ever do hear more.  Because they are just pompous and pretentious after all.

16 seconds in he say that "they" the highfalutin scientist "saying there is this gigantic explosion"
OK 16 seconds in.  2 words "gigantic explosion"
Lets talk about what they actually say.  The Big Bang Theory (BBT) says that everything we can see in the universe was condensed into a very small region of space.  If you watch the show The Big Bang Theory then you would have heard the theme song "Our whole universe was in a hot dense state,".  Already a TV sitcom gets the science much more right then Dr Ben Carson.It wasn't an explosion it was a very rapid inflation.  You might think I'm quibbling about terms but there are very specific differences.  An explosion is a sudden outburst of something.  There is a location where the explosion happens. Material is pushed away from that spot leaving a cavity behind.  This is NOT what scientist say happen in the early universe.  What they say is that there was a rapid inflation of space/time.  We know, thanks to Einstein, that space and time are part of a single whole.  It is space that expanded.  Now what was in this space is very different from what you and I see around us.  Atoms didn't even exist.  The energy density was so high that even protons and neutrons couldn't form. The stuff that they are made up of are called quarks and at those energies you can fit all the matter and energy in the universe into a very small region.  How small?  7.7×10⁻³⁰m.  Now this isn't a size the human brain is used to dealing with.  A proton is about 1×10⁻¹⁵m.  So we are talking about a distance 1,000,000,000,000,000 (1 quadrillion) times shorter.  Now are physics at this point are not well understood for good reasons.  These are energy densities we can't even think about working with.  If we could we could be making universes left right and centre.  So gigantic?  Nope.  Explosion?  Nope.  It was a rapid inflation of space-time   Now see 1 paragraph to try to explain how 2 words are totally misrepresenting the science.  In actuality I could probably right pages on just this bit and I'm not a scientist.

3 more seconds and he say "Everything came into perfect order".  No! It most definitely did not.  In fact the early universe was very smooth.  I'm talking like the differences were 1 part in 100,000.  This in terms of the science is saying that temperatures where VERY even.  To give you an idea of how uniform that is think of the Earth and the temperature difference on it.  Now imagine that instead of having temperatures going from -95C to 56C (-128F to 134F) the temperature was just 21C (70F) The differences in extremes would be about 1/1000th of 1 degree C or 1.8/1000th of a degree F

The universe was even smoother and more uniform before.  This is what it was like 380,000 years AFTER the big bang.  For almost that entire time the universe was so hot, over 2,726C ~5,000F that light couldn't any where because it kept getting absorbed into the protons that made up the plasma that filled the universe.  So the universe started out VERY smooth and over 380,000 became much less smooth but still smoother then 1 part in 100,000.  At this point the inflation had ended but the universe was still expanding.  Stuff wasn't moving through space.  The space between stuff was just getting larger.  With this expansion comes the fact that the density was dropping  As that happens the temperature drops.  After about 380,000 the temperature dropped enough that the electrons whipping around the place could get captured by the atomic nuclei.  Not really "perfectly ordered".  Then the universe continued to expand. At this point there would be a glow everywhere in the sky like the sun but as the universe continued to expand this glow faded.  It then took another about 200 million years before the first stars formed as that very uniform gas started to condense into pockets of higher densities that formed from gravity.  Perfect order my ass.

25 seconds in and he presents to the audience terms they are probably not used to.  He mentions the second law of thermodynamics and entropy.  He wants you to think there is a problem that the scientists can't explain properly.  First off what is the 2nd law of thermodynamics or 2LoT for short.
It is that in any cyclic process the entropy will either increase or remain the same.  Well what is entropy?  Entropy is the amount of energy in a system that is available to do work.  Well there are 2 problems the 2LoT refers to "closed" systems and even if the observable universe was a closed system there was a LOT of energy to do stuff with.  How much energy are we talking about?  Well think of our sun.  It is about half way through its life on the main sequence. The observable universe has about 2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times the amount of energy of our sun.  Note that even after our sun "dies" there will still be a far bit of energy coming out of it.  So yes as time goes on it will be harder and harder to do "work" in our universe but thankfully our universe has a HUGE amount of energy to begin with.

So 37 seconds in he say "you are going to have this big explosion and everything is going to become perfectly organised" well good thing that isn't what the scientist ACTUALLY say happened.

44 seconds in he says "when you ask them about it they say they can base this on probability theory if there are enough explosions over a long enough period of time" blah blah blah.  He already got the first bit extremely wrong.   But you may have heard something vaguely similar and I'll try to explain this.  Often you'll hear people say how finely tuned our universe is.  You might read some popular science magazine say how many different types of universe there could be out there. There are various hypothesis about where the universe came from.  Scientists don't say the BB (Big Bang) is when the universe was created.  We don't know that.  We have some ideas but the BBT (Big Bang Theory) just says we can trace back to a point where the universe was very hot and dense, again just like the song says.  Scientist also ask questions like "Why does the electromagnetic force have the strength it does?" "Why is gravity so weak in comparison?" "Why is the speed of light what it is?" "Why does the electron have the mass it does?" and the list goes on.  These are what we call fundamental constants.  They are numbers that we can measure but don't seem to have a reason why they have the value they do.  It is possible they could have other values but if they did the universe would act different then it does.  We may never know why some or even all the fundamental constants have the values they do.  On hypothesis is that these values some how get frozen in at the very first instance of inflation.  There is another hypothesis that inflation happened not just in what we can see.  We estimate the entire universe is at least orders of magnitude large then what we can see there might be other universes that bubble off that have different values for the constants.  This would result in a whole range of possible universes.  Most of them not at all compatible with life as we know it.  But this could be happening countless times which means there would also be a countless number of universes that would be very similar to ours.  This will blow your mind too.  It is entirely possible that this multi verse is itself infinitely large.  That means there would be an infinite number of universe.  Not only that there would be a smaller, but still, infinite number of universes that would be EXACTLY like ours.  But this is just hypothesis at this point in time and truth be told we probably would never be able to detect another universe. But it isn't incompatible with the models we use to describe and make predictions about our universe.

Well that doesn't even scratch the surface of that but he's distorted what the scientists actually say.  So lets just go with "We don't know why our constants are the way they are" but even so given they are constants our universe would have ended up pretty much like this no matter how many times you re ran the process.  Sure there might not be a Earth but there would be Earth like planets.  There would be the same chemical processes going on and there is every indication that there would be life in it that evolved to a point where it could ponder such questions.  So no we don't need the "perfect explosion" we just needed that inflation to happen and our constants to be about what they are.  They could even fluctuate.  Some of them could fluctuate quite a bit and life could still evolve let alone have stars, galaxies and planets form.

1 min 11 secs in and he's used the, what is normally tornado in a junk yard, creationist claim.  He just modifies it to a hurricane in a junk yard.  Normally this is used to try to discredit evolution.  Saying that there hasn't been enough time to form life blah blah blah.  But hopefully being a doctor he isn't that stupid about biology.  But you never know.  For the record the Vatican supports evolution and not just "micro evolution" because there is no such thing in science terms.  That is a creationist term and that is the audience he is talking to.  Again science says that given the constants of our universe the structure we see would be inevitable.  Might be slightly different like comparing a blue mustang with a red one. Essentially the same.

1 min 31 secs and he is amazed that we can predict a comet is coming in 70 years.  Dude, it is just gravity and high school maths.  Even if the constants where different we'd still be expect predictions of that type to be possible.  That is because the universe does have constants.  Perhaps if gravity wasn't a constant well then we couldn't make that prediction but then if it wasn't a constant then stars might never have formed let alone planets.  Bill O'Reilly has a saying "Tides go in, tides go out.  You can't explain that!" and he's just as fucking ignorant of the science as Dr Ben Carson seems to be.  We can predict tides because gravity is constant.  We know that the moon won't sudden'y take 10 days to orbit around the Earth.

1 min 40 secs in and he drops the "fairy tale" line to a crowd that probably believes that there was an actual first human male named Adam was formed from much by a human shaped magical being that knows everything  but yet didn't see that his creation would be tricked into eating from the tree of knowledge by a talking snake....yea that isn't a fairy tale.

1 min 43 secs "that is amazing!"  Yea scientist would think that too because that isn't what scientist say happened!.

1 min 52 secs "even if you use their own theories you have this mass spinning and then it explodes" NO! that isn't what the theory says.  How about he either learns what the actual theories say or shuts the fuck up about it.  I would never dream of walking into an operating theatre and telling some brain surgeon that he's doing it all wrong because I read a comic book that had a drawing of a brain in it.

2 min 13 secs he starts babbling about angular momentum and tries to discredit scientist even more by pointing out how some moons don't orbit in the same direction as most other moons. Guess what that is OK.  Because the total angular momentum is still the same.  Some moons where captured after the formation of the solar system.  Some might have been put into a different orbit because of interactions with other planets.  But forget that.  According to him the universe is in "perfect order" now he is showing us that no...no it isn't. Hell out solar system isn't even in perfect order.  Something hit Venus so hard it almost flipped completely up side down so now it rotates in the opposite direction to most other planets.  Uranus is tilted on its side by over 97 degrees so one of its poles points almost directly towards the sun.  Again science explains this just fine because science doesn't say the universe is "perfectly ordered"

2 min 28 secs "what about the billions and billions of explosions that where not perfect?"  I don't know Dr Carson.  You are making up a fantasy universe that doesn't at all match what we observe and what scientist say happened.  Fuck where is Santa Claus?  Where is Darth Vadar?  Dr Carson's understanding of the actual science isn't even close to being right.  There is a saying used in science "That's not right. That isn't even wrong" and is used in reference to statement that are so off base it doesn't make any sense.  Kind of like someone say that taste of an apple is the letter J.

2 min 34 secs Again where is this debris?  Well if you want to talk about the multiverse then by definition those other universes are not connected to us.  If he means something else then again it isn't what scientist are saying.

2 min 41 secs He say it, science, requires an enormous amount of faith.  No ... no it doesn't.  It takes a bit of learning.  This argument is often used by creationist and there is a reason why.  Either they are just parroting it from someone they heard it from or they what to put science on the same footing as their religious belief.  Faith is defined as a strong belief in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual conviction rather than proof.  Science is about finding actual evidence and seeing if that evidence supports or falsifies a hypothesis.  The 2 are not even remotely the same.   A person of ANY faith or no faith at all can go out and look at the data and test models and see if the predictions match observations.  We can't do the same with religious claims.  If we could there would not be so many religions.  Hell there would not be so many versions of Christianity.

2 min 54 secs and the first mention of God.  What does science say about gods?  Nothing.  Science is agnostic on the topic.  Why?  Because science is about describing the natural world around us in a manner that allows us to make useful predictions.  Deities are super natural and would be not subject to "natural laws" especially if you think they created them.  Now science can make statements about religious claims like the claim the Earth is only 6 thousand years old or that there was a world wide flood.  Both which are demonstrably false but those are topics for another day.

3 min 3 secs  he doesn't have enough faith to believe in scientist.  No he doesn't have enough knowledge in the appropriate field to believe it and probably doesn't want to because it threatens his very weak theology.  This isn't a dig against people that believe in any god(s).  This is a fact that his theology is very weak.

3 min 13 secs he claims that so many things have to violate the theories own principals.  No. His poor understanding of the science makes him confused.  That is OK if I had his false understanding of what the current science said I would probably be confused.  But instead of him going to learn he just wants to throw up his hands and says "God did it"  Why is he even a doctor?  Surely if his god knew someone was going to have a brain condition then that god wanted them to have it.  Let them die and go to the kingdom of heaven.  Ah bad theology there.


So let us assume there is a god. Are you telling me that you don't think your god could have set those fundamental constants up the way that it wanted? I hate calling the Christian God a he because I can't understand why a god with no other gods  would have a penis.  Set up the constants and set the universe in motion.  Dr Ben Carson's god is so inept that it couldn't produce the universe we see with continually interfering with it.  He's taken evolution deniers claims and push it back to the universe.  Just like creationist that don't understand evolution he doesn't understand cosmology.  Or maybe he does and he is just lying his audience.  I think the answer is some where in between.

Now think about this.  It takes him 3 and a half minutes to spout out a bunch of shit.  It takes a layperson over 4 hours to try to correct the lies he spun.  That is because making shit up is easier then learning the actual science.

 Many of you will still believe him.  Very few of you will bother to even investigate what science actually says.  Most people wouldn't even had read the first few paragraphs of this post let alone the whole thing.  But if just one person decides to actually look into how bad his ramblings are then my time was well spent. Because then you'll probably think how dishonest he probably is even if he does believe what he says because he has to much wrong and to much like long debunked arguments to have just thought this up himself.

Is your news source really about news?

If you live in the USA then where you get your "news" from is most likely not really concerned with news but money and what sells.  So what sells?  Things that make you afraid of things that are different.  Fear mongering is rich among the major media outlets.  What you don't get is a true picture of what goes on in the world.  You normally hear how it is reasonable that Israel kills 4 times more innocent civilians then intended targets.  You hear how they give warning and ask Palestinians to leave before bombing You hear that Israel has no choice when they kill civilians.  You don't hear that the Gaza Strip is basically a large prison.  You don't hear that Palestinians can't really leave the Gaza strip.  You don't hear that Israel bombs civilians completely isolated from valid military targets like the a hospital or 4 kids playing ball on a empty beach.  I could go on but this post isn't about Palestine and Israel.  It is about news outlets and them not actually reporting news.

Do you know who this woman is? Some of you might but odds are most of you don't.  Her name is Shannon Guess Richardson.  I don't know about you but I think she's pretty but then I have a thing for red heads. Shannon is from Texas and she was an actress.  Don't feel bad if you still don't recognize her.  Even though you've probably seen her, she's been in Walking Dead, Vampire diaries, Twilight Breaking Dawn and a bunch of other tv shows.  Pretty much everything she's been in has been as an uncredited extra.  This isn't the news that you should have been told.  What you should have heard from your news sources is that she is a dangerous terrorist inside of the USA.  You might be thinking "WHAT!?!?!, She doesn't look at all like a Muslim!". She isn't.  She is much more dangerous.  She is an extreme right wing conservative who is part of a population that think it is her right to try to assassinate multiple politicians including the president.  She even tried to frame her innocent husband for it.  What did she do? She actually sent ricin to Obama, Bloomberg and Mark Glaze.  She's eventually pleaded guilty and will serve 18 years.  Now if she was Muslim she probably would have had a good chance of being shot while being taken into custody.

Think this isn't a big deal?  I can see some people I'm related to making the claim it wasn't that serious because the president was never in danger because of the security protocols around him.  For you that don't know how deadly ricin is think about 1 aspirin.  Now chop that pill into over 200 equal parts.  Now take just one of those portions and that is enough to kill a fully grown person.  Yes Obama was very safe.  He doesn't open his own mail and there is strict screening on any mail sent to him so even the staff in the white house were in no danger.  But what about Bloomberg and Glaze?  What about the postal worker that handled those letters.  What if on or more of the letters broke open and contaminated other mail.

But even the "liberal" media of the USA didn't really say anything about this.  Because she is a white female.  You can guarantee that if she was Muslim that you would have heard nothing but her story for weeks on end.  But your news doesn't want you to think critically.  They want you afraid of stuff you find hard to relate to, like Muslim terrorist.  That is what drives their profits and you come out the other end with a distorted view of reality.  You look at Shannon and you probably think something like "she looks like someone I'd be friends with."

How many right wing extremists have you heard about killing anyone?  Now how many times have your heard how dangerous Muslim terrorists are.  Do you know right wing extremists are over twice as deadly as Muslim terrorists in the USA?  Left wing extremists are really bad.  They haven't killed anyone in over a decade.  I often blame conservatives for not standing and speaking up against the radicals in their midst.  But truth is most of you don't know they are there.  Funny enough it is right wing extremists that always ask why Muslims don't condemn Muslim Terrorists.  This is what is called projection and isn't anywhere near reality.  The reality is that there are TONS of Muslim organisations that put out statements of condemnation after some terrorist attacks.  From the right you only hear how the actions of radicals in their own groups are some how justified.

So here is what I suggest you start doing if you want real news.  Try other sources.  Huffington Post is a good one. The BBC is pretty good.  Al Jazeera is actually excellent and much more independent from government pressure then the major networks in the USA.

At the end of the day if you want to stay ignorant then by all means keep watching Fox News, CNN, or even MSNBC.  You'll get right wing view, warped "balanced" news or Centre right "liberal" views.  What you will not get is the real story but something that makes them money and doesn't actually amount to anything remotely like journalism.

Double standards with touchy subjects. Did you ever have a crush on a teacher?

  Well another female teacher sleeping with a male student of hers.  29 year old Kathryn Ronk has been charged with multiple counts of first degree sexual misconduct, one count of child pornography (presumably a picture of the boy, and one count of providing a minor alcohol.  The boy is 15 years old.  So I'm going to go some of the things many people think but few will openly discuss.  It may make you feel uncomfortable but stepping outside your comfort zone can very often be a good thing.  Some times doing it is a necessity to really start to make change that is needed within our society.  If you don't care about making change then feel free to click "x" now.

   First off it is inappropriate for multiple reasons in my view.  The age being the first.  The position of authority being the second.  There are some interesting issues we, as society, need to look at these types of things.

  I've seen arguments, in the past, how something like this isn't that bad.  Honestly there is running jokes about hooking up with hot teachers while you are in high school.  It is a huge fantasy of a large number of students of both sexes.  Our culture both demonizes and glamorizes it.  The list of movies and songs that show how it is just normal "young love" is very long.  From movies like Blame it on Rio, American Beauty, Private Lessons, My Teacher's Wife, Circle of Two and many more.  Sting wrote the song "Don't stand so close to me" in the late 1970s and won a Grammy in 1981 for the song. Re-released in 1986 right when I was just 16.  Sting reportedly says the song is not autobiographical but he was a teacher and it really isn't a stretch now is it.

  These days we seem to have more views of predatory pedophiles lying and manipulating "grooming" young people on-line.  Before the internet such grooming was much more personal.  Actual pedophiles had to put themselves in roles where they would be around young people constantly but that is for another blog post.  I'm not sure I'd class Kathryn as a predator or a pedophile but is that because of culture I grew up in?  It reminds me of this episode 10 from season 10 of South Park.  I've got a clip here for you. Basically Kyle's little brother, Ike, who can barely talk, is having an affair with his kindergarten teacher.

  You might not find South Park funny but the sentiment isn't really far off the mark if Ike was 10-11 years older.

  When I was in high school  there were 2 young female teachers I had a crush on and would have been ecstatic if I hooked up with either of them.  Lets be honest, like most young men, I probably would have been over joyed if I hooked up with almost any of the young women in the whole student body back then.  The attitude is boys are boys and, well, as young men we are naturally horny little bastards.  So when I was 15 if I had a teacher like Kathryn that I had an affair with I can say that I'd have come out of the whole ordeal with very minimal metal scaring.  I'm sure it would not last and would be very sad when it ended.  At the time it would be very hard emotionally but hormones would have kicked in and some other girl would have caught my eye.  I'm sure I wouldn't have been scarred for life.  I'd wager that probably 95% of the guys I went to high school with wouldn't have ended up any worse for the wear if it happened to one of them either.

  We, as a society, don't like to think of young women in the same light.  We hold them in a better light for the most part.  In a way everyone just accepts the way young men will act.  But females...they aren't controlled by hormones like boys aren't they?.  They are looking for long term love!  Their crushes on a teacher are motivated differently in our eyes as society.  But I wonder how many of the women I know had such crushes and what was honestly going through their heads.  My experience is that young women are not all that different then young men.  Young men are controlled by hormones but most guys I know at 16 were not out to play the field.  We were, for the most part, happy to try to latch on to one girl for as long as we could.  Bird in the hand mentality.  Tho the 2 in the bush would get us in trouble even if we never got close to them.  Males and Females have our differences for sure but girls aren't the princesses we expect them to be.  That is fine too.  Because once we stop trying to hold them to unrealistic expectations they'll have less pressure and can  be who they want to be.  A young woman that does have sex shouldn't be looked down upon and called a 'slut' while young men get a pat on the back and a 'that's my boy!'

  So looking at this situation I know I should look at this in the same manor that I'd look at it if it was a 29 year old male teacher and a 15 year old female teacher but it is hard to keep that in frame.  Maybe because I've got a strong protection instinct.  I've gone through so many phases looking at age differences between couples from different perspectives.  When I was 18 and based in Georgia I had a girl friend that turned 17 just a month after we. I also dated a 28 year old woman when I was barely 18. Was the fact that I was a Marine a reason people didn't look at that as a bit odd?  When I was just 22 in and stationed in Hawaii I met a 20 year old woman I fell head over heels for but I remember thinking when I first met her "Hold on! She's only 20...she's pretty young!" when in reality it was me that wasn't as mature as I would have liked to think.  Years later after getting married, leaving the Marine Corps, having a child and broken up with my ex I found myself 28 and in the same year I dated two women that were very different.  One woman that was 9 years older then me and one that was 9 years younger then me.  The younger woman was much more mature then the woman that was over twice her age.  In my mid 30s I once again found that I couldn't bring myself to date women that realistically where only 7-8 years younger then me.  In 26+ years of dating my views on age have changed.  The rule of 1/2 your age plus 7 years seems pretty safe but I still wouldn't want a relationship with a 29 year old.  Not because she'd be to immature but realistically the problem would be years down the line when the 15 year gap doesn't get smaller but actually bigger. I relate to people younger then me just fine these days but when I'm 85 and needing some care I'd hate to think I'd be hindering a partner just 70 and still very much in the game of life

  So I've had a roller coaster ride with my personal views on ages and relationships but I've realized a few things.  Age is often a poor factor when it comes to the emotional maturity of a person.  At the same time we have to have some lines.  Many courts are now starting to factor in age differences in situations where current laws are fairly stupid.  For example a 17 year old boy and his 15 year old girlfriend's relationship shouldn't suddenly become illegal because he turns 18.  The age difference didn't really change and he shouldn't face a sex offender charge because of it.  Was dating a 19-20 year old when I was 28 wrong?  Some might say so and if she wasn't the woman she was I would have agreed but it still wouldn't be illegal just like when I just turned 18 and dated a 28 year old while stationed near D.C.  So is 29 and 15 all that different then 28 and 18.  Realistically the difference between 28 and 29 is nothing.  The difference between 15 (probably almost 16) and 18 is just over 2 years.  Even going through boot camp I'm not sure I  was all that much more mature at 18 then I was at 16.

  So where does this leave my opinion of the matter.  Surprisingly enough I'm pretty clear in my head despite what I've said up to this point.  She's gone to far.  Most places the age of consent is 16 and we have it there for a reason.  She faces up to 15 years in prison because she couldn't seem to wait just a few months.  Do I think she deserves 15 years?  No.  Partly, I'm sure, because of how society has framed my view about this topic.  Partly because I think the current laws in many places need to be further reformed and some judgement should remain in the power of the Judge.  If Kathryn is convicted and there was no evidence that something more devious was going on then yes I think she needs to be rehabilitated but I think it should be more mental health treatment then hard core jail.  I'd have to say the same thing, and this is difficult, if it was a 29 year old male teacher and a 15-16 year old female student.  Hell, the student could be of the same sex as the teacher and I don't think it should matter.  If the teacher was found to have been grooming more then one student then the picture starts to drastically change from a bad indiscretion to predatory behavior. The liberal in me starts going out the window and I'd want the judge to throw the book at the teacher.  Our teachers need to be stronger morally because of the position they are in.

  Finally some random thoughts that I know are just not informed.  OK call me shallow but she's very attractive.  If she wanted a young guy she'd have an easy time with young men just in uni or the military.  First thought I think of is why?  Just go pick up an 18 year old. I'd like to think that she did fall for him.  I don't know what they are feeding some of these young men but they seem to look much older then anyone I went to high school with.  This is what an under 18 player in Australia looks like these days.  Would you look twice if you saw the woman above kissing this young man?

With young women we might try to say it is all the make up and that is partly true.  In reality it is our media that is changing our views and changing the outlook of our young men and women.  I'll wait and see if I can get a transcript of the court case when it happens but in reality I'll never know the real true story.  I hope she gets the help she needs and hopefully someone talks to the young man and puts the whole thing in perspective for him at least.  Hopefully the whole process of her going to trial doesn't traumatize the young man.

Mitch McConnell, GOP Hypocrite Grand Wizard and Senate Minority Leader.

Mitch McConnell, Republican leader in the Senate is complaining that Alison Grimes who is running against him in Kentucky has received some funding from out of state, notably from some Hollywood people like Leonardo DiCaprio, Cameron Diaz, Ben Affleck, J.J. Abrams, Steven Spielberg, Danny DeVito, Jack Black, Jennifer Garner, Mike Myers, James Cameron, Jon Hamm and Nicolas Cage to name just a few.  She raise $250,000 from these people.  Now you can ask why they care if they aren't from Kentucky she is taking their money.  But then you'd have to realize that Mitch McConnell got about $16,000,000.00 from out of state.  That is 80% of the money he has raised.  So apparently  to the leading GOP Senator  raising $250,000 from individual citizens is worse then him raising $16,000,000.00 from bank executives that he does everything he can to keep them from getting in trouble when they break the law.
Who are you more worried about having an adverse influence on politicians.  Cameron Diaz or someone like Winfried Bischoff, CEO of Citigroup in 2008, who thought it was a good idea to use federal bail out money to give over $3,500,000,000.00 in bonuses to executives.  Bonuses ... to executives that played a major role in the banking collapse.
This is just one reason I say Fuck the GOP.  This is like Ted Bundy criticizing me for bumping into someone on the street.  As Jon Stuart says these GOP members just live on Bullshit mountain and not in the real world.
This old white man needs to be booted out of office.  I would love to see some new faces take their place.

How about this ... let us get fucking big money out of politics all together.  http://www.wolf-pac.com/ is an organisation not funding politicians but funding the fight to reclaim real citizens rights.  Almost all Americans agree that the federal government is being destroyed and control by corporate and big money donors.  We need 33 states to call for an amendments convention of the states.  We have 1 state down 32 to go.  Because corporations are not people.  Unfortunately they are treated better then people.  They don't get in trouble when they break the law like we do.  If I steal a few hundred dollars I'll be arrested and serve some time in jail.  If a national bank defrauds millions of Americans for hundreds of millions of dollars no one goes to jail and at worst they are hit with a fine of just a small portion of the money that they've stolen.

Go and see how you can help

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What kind of Governor sentences 6 poor people to die every day?

I've been going over some of the literature and legislation of various states with respect to the ACA better known as Obamacare over the last few weeks.  With the deadline/milestone just past I was curious to see what various states have been doing with Obamacare.  For those that don't know as part of the ACA states have been offered an expanded Medicaid system to cover low income citizens. This care is funded by the federal government and unlike Medicare part D which Bush implemented but was completely unfunded the Medicaid expansion is fully funded.

  What both surprised me and at the same time was totally unsurprising to me is that 21 states have refused the Medicaid expansion.  This expansion was to cover very low income workers that previously would not have fallen under Medicaid.  This include single adults under the age of 65 earning less then 133% of the poverty amount.

What that would mean is a woman struggling with 3 part time jobs could be covered by Medicaid and receive the health care and medicine she needed to stay alive.  Let me call this woman, I don't know, Charlene Dill.  Now what is sad is Charlene isn't some hypothetical woman.  She was a real woman that was working as hard as she could to support her 3 children who couldn't afford health care and feed and shelter her children.  She would have been eligible for Medicaid under the expanded program.  Instead she died on the floor in a strangers home while trying to sell them a vacuum cleaner. I shit you not,  one of her jobs was as a door to door salesperson. But because she couldn't afford her hear medication because she had to make the decision to take care of her kids over taking care of her health.

You might be asking yourself why she was not covered.  The reason is Governor Rick Scott of Florida refused the expansion because he's a hard core Republican and doesn't want the ACA to succeed.  His opposition to the ACA puts 750,000 low income Florida residents, like Charlene, in a healthcare dead zone. Of these 750,000 uninsured people we can expect that 1 person will needlessly die every 4 hours because they can't afford the healthcare they desperately need.  Bu Rick Scott doesn't care.  Those are poor people and he has to stand up for his principals as a GOP member and fight against this evil Affordable Care Act, that was actually the idea of a GOP think tank, simply because it is a Democratic President enacting it.

The sad thing is there are plenty of other republican Governors that have vetoed or outright rejected the offer to expand Medicaid, 19 to be exact.  7 republican Governors have actually put their citizens health before their political obedience.

 First off Gov Brian Sandoval Nevada who, over a year ago, became the first GOP governor to break ranks and cover almost 78,000 of his citizens who would have most likely continued to go uncovered.

Gov Jan Brewer Arizona cover who fought through a deadlock of the republican controlled legislature to get 350,000 of her citizens coverage they would otherwise not have had.

Gov Susana Martinez New Mexico who was also an early adopter in Jan 2013 assured that over 170,000 of her low income citizens would now be eligible under the expanded Medicaid that previously would not have been.

Gov Terry Branstad Iowa has made it possible for over 100,000 of his citizens to be covered under the Medicaid expansion program in his state but has instituted a premium for anyone with an income over 1/2 of the federal poverty level.  Just to let you know that is just $5,835 a year for a single person.  To the state legislators credit the provision will not cut those that do not pay the premium.

Gov Jack Dalrymple North Dakota.  Next Wednesday, the 16th of April, will mark the 1 year anniversary of Gov Dalrymple signing the legislation that will see almost 30,000 new low income residents become eligible for the expansion.

Gov Rick Snyder Michigan along with a republican controlled legislature passed the expansion with a 75-32 vote to cover an additional 400,000 Michigan citizens that were previously ineligible.

Gov John Kasich Ohio just signed the expansion to the program on Jan 1, 2014.  A special bipartisan legislative panel of 7 state legislators approved the expansion with a 5-2 vote.  Republican lawmakers are now upset with the panel's decision and are preparing to fight the expansion that will cover 275,000 Ohioans.  The republicans instead want to offer income tax cuts instead.  Note those income tax cuts will do nothing to help the low-income citizens and will mostly benefit the top 1% of income earners.




So hats off to these 7 republican governors that put their citizens health ahead of the stupid politics that have plagued America for far to long.  The GOP party leadership has openly said its number one priority is to oppose everything Obama tries to do.  Think about that.  Regardless of the value of any program that aids to the success of the nation the GOP leadership have vowed to oppose it simply because it is being put forth by a democrat President.  The GOP is so bold they don't even care that they've said this while on national television.  They bank on the fact that most of their supporters would rather see America fail then to allow the current President put American on the right track on any issue.  Then they could turn around and blame President Obama for the failures that the GOP brought about.

One thing to watch is how you will hear the GOP change the way they talk about the ACA from Obamacare to The Affordable Care Act.  They've lost the battle.  As more and more Americans actually start seeing the benefits of actually having healthcare coverage that works for them and that they can no longer be dropped because they've fallen ill and the program becomes even more popular the GOP will no longer use the term Obamacare because they won't want to associate it with Obama.  Mark my words you will also see a number of republicans trying to rewrite history and claim they were always in support of it.  Many of their supporters will blindly believe it because they to don't want to think that Obama could be responsible for setting America down a path where the Charlenes of America don't die because they have to choose between feeding their kids or buying the medication that will save their lives.

Rest in peace Charlene Dill.  Hopefully the people of your state will recognize that Rick Scott isn't a Governor of the people of Florida.

End Corporate Welfare!

So every time you complain about some family getting a few hundred dollars in government assistance please don't be a hypocrite, complain a few hundred thousand times when some, very profitable, multi-national corporation gets hundreds of millions of dollars from that same government.  Me personally I'd rather help hundreds of thousands of families in need rather then just one corporation that is already profitable and we do this for tons of corporations.  But they control the mainstream media and have most Americans thinking it is low-income families that are the cause of all of America's problems.

Paul Ryan wants every American to have to pull themselves up by their own boot straps.  The public schools he went to he wants destroyed and privatized.  Look how that has worked for Universities where it is obvious that only the rich or ultra gifted may hope to attend such expensive schools.  He wants to destroy social security and funnel those funds towards lowering taxes for the rich.  A program he used to help pay for his tuition for Miami University.  He will vote for unfunded programs like Medicare part D when a republican puts them forward but fully funded programs like the Affordable Healthcare Act he'll appose because a democratic president puts it forward, even though "Obamacare" is a republican idea.

Like most GOP politicians, and sadly to many democratic ones too, he has no problem rewarding the rich with extra prizes while making it harder and harder for lower and middle class Americans to actually make it in America.  An attitude that if you inherit millions or, even better, billions, that you are some how better and more deserving then those born into poverty.  That for this privileged birth you should be given orders of magnitude more assistance from the government despite the fact that you don't actually need it.  The end goal for him is to help the rich get richer.  That the worth of government spending is how much money can you make with the money that the government can give you.  Sure everyone knows a rich person can take millions and makes some profit with it.  But a poor person that will just spend a few dollars you give to them on something useless like food is stupid.  They ignore all the losses that happen when the rich fail multiple times.

Trump has made a career out of filing for corporate bankruptcy.  He has already done it 4 times now, effectively, and sadly legally, stealing from others.  Yet so many in the GOP will support this type of man as ideal candidate for political office.  To many rich people, and those that desire to be rich, are happy to help the rich get richer off the dime of American's those in the middle and lower economic range.

Is it fair that we, the people, bail out banks that are "to big to fail" with trillions of our dollars because they gambled with our money in markets they wanted to fail?  Is it fair that we allow them to simply create off shore shell companies to avoid paying billions of dollars every year in taxes?  Is it fair that we subsidize ventures they engage in where they again make massive profits from knowing that they won't pay taxes on those profits?

So the next time you complain about having to subsidize little johnny's school lunch STFU and bitch about Citigroup, and countless other corporations, reaming you to the order of hundreds of billions of dollars a year!

The only way we'll get this system changed is to get the big money out of politics.  Stop the rich and multi-national corporations from legally bribing politicians into passing more and more laws that only benefit the rich while making every attempt to stop providing little Johnny with, probably, the one decent meal he might even get in a day.  Go to WolfPac and help regain control of your government in the manner the founding fathers provided for us.

http://www.wolf-pac.com/

US terrorism on foreigners. When will America stop killings innocent people? Warning Graphic Pictures!

  Just one year ago on Oct 24, 2012,  Momina Bibi, a grandmother, was out picking okra with some of her grand children.  She paid for that with her life.  Her grandchildren eye witnesses to her execution.

  The people live in constant fear of US controlled drones.  But life must go on.  They hear the drones every day, 24 hours a day.  They must still tend the fields for the food.  They must still carry about their day.  Sure, this family had never been hit by a drone strike before but it wasn't uncommon for innocent people to be killed by drones.

   The number of people killed by US drone strikes isn't easy to pin down but the best estimates range from 2,526 to 3,621.  Of which between 416 and 948 innocent civilians have been killed, depending on how you classify some of the young men aged and boys.  What is clear is that over 150 children have been killed by US controlled drone strikes.

  On Oct 24 Zubair Rehman, the 13 year old grandson of Momina, watched his grandmother literally get blown to piece.  Along with loosing his grandmother Zubair received shrapnel to his leg and had to undergo expensive surgery.  Surgery that you might think the USA paid for because they mistakenly bombed and innocent family, wounding a few children and killing a 67 year old grandmother.  But you would be wrong.  The USA government's position on this attack is vague.  They will not release any information about it.  They tried to claim 4 militants were killed in the attack but Momina was the only fatality.  When further questioned Caitlin Hayden, from the NSC, called the strike "Precise, lawful, and effective."  WTF?  Precise? Yea you blew a 67 year old lady picking Okra in a field from a drone flying high over head.  I guess that is "precise".  Lawful?  You have to be a huge scum bag of a lawyer to call killing a 67 year old grand mother "lawful".  Effective?  You have to be a huge fucking idiot to call it effective unless being a terrorist is your goal.  Because these innocent families live in constant fear.

  The kids no longer want to go to school and they come from a long line of educators.  Zubair's father is a teacher.  Zubair's grandfather, Momina's husband, is a teacher and he said "I wish God would just take my life, I can't live without her".  Zubair testified "All of a sudden things became very dark.  It was like she was exploded to pieces.". The kids don't like it when the skies are clear because that is when the drones are used the most. They live in fear because the US drones that circle over head.  They live in fear because the USA is terrorizing them. It is as plain and simple as that.

  So not only are they terrorized by the USA but the government won't even explain why the mistake happened or even acknowledge a mistake was made.  They call it "collateral damage".  The issue is the American public don't want to know about the problem.  For fuck sake the politicians don't want to know about the problem either.  Only 5 members of Congress listened to these families, and there was more then just this one family, at the briefing.  Rep Alan Grayson from Florida, Rep Jan Schakowsky from Illinois, Rep Rush Holt from New Jersey, Rep John Conyers from Michigan, and Rep Rick Nolan from Minnesota.  Why?  Because most American's don't know, or don't care, about the damage the US drone program causes.  The people killed, even if innocent, are non-people.  They aren't as important as you, your brother, your mother, your friend, your neighbor or even some guy in the next town over that you've never even met before.  The less you think about the victims of US military actions the better is the position of most Americans.  I can say that because the evidence shows it to be true.  If American's cared that we, as a nation, are responsible for hundreds and even thousands of children loosing their lives from US military actions then our politicians would know it.  They'd care because you care.  They'd know you cared because you would let them know you care.  Every time another one of these reports surfaced you'd contact your representative.  You call your senator.  You'd petition the White House to stop the terrorism perpetrated by the USA via our military and civilian combat programs.

  In the past war was out of sight but US casualties kept it in our minds.  The knock on the door of 2 men in uniform to tell the family that their son has died.  If you didn't get the knock yourself you probably knew someone that did.  So while the images of war wasn't there we had a sense that there is a price to military action taken on by the USA.  In Vietnam we got exposed to not only those knocks but we also had a lot more understanding what was going on via returning vets and journalists.  Pictures that are now timeless that show not only the ugly face of war but let the people know that the USA isn't always the good guy.

  The young people today might not really understand the image above.  Sure the kids look scared but so what?!  Well lets look at Kim Phuc, the little naked girl there today.  She was a victim of a US Napalm attack.  For those of you that don't know it is a disgusting incendiary weapon that was designed to stick to flesh as it burned.  Think of it as hand sanitizing gell that is a LOT more flammable and a lot stickier.  Back then, in 1972, using it on civilians wasn't "illegal".  The UN didn't declare it a war crime until 8 years later.  Unfortunately that didn't help Kim.  Napalm burns at temperatures of 800-1200 Celsius.  For those that are metric impaired that is 1,500-2,200 Fahrenheit or 8-12 times hotter then boiling water.  The problem is that the drones are today's Napalm.  The government calls them lawful and effective but ignore the children and innocent people that are killed by them.  Kim is actually lucky.  She survived.  She lived through the pain of almost being burned to death.  Zubair survived.  He lived through the drone attack that killed his grandmother, wounded him, his sister and a few of his cousins.

  The issue now is that journalists in the USA refuse to publish images that the American people NEED to see.  Images that should outrage all American's.  Images that should stir you to act.  To contact your politicians.  To stop the USA's terrorism program.  We as a nation can not hold the moral high ground and complain when some "evil dictator" kills a few kids when our nation has been responsible for the deaths of hundreds if not thousands of children in Afghanistan alone.  We can not complain about Assad killing a few hundred kids with chemical weapons if we, as a nation, allowed our government to kill hundreds of innocent children with unmanned aerial vehicles.  Just because we are using weapons that have yet to be declared as a war crime if used against civilians doesn't give us the moral high ground over some dictator killing children with chemical weapons.  A dead child is a dead child.  The method of killing them isn't what should outrage you it is their death in the first place that should make you scream.

You should look at these and jump into action.  Remember when the Boston marathon bombing happened?  How outraged where you?  Sure the journalist showed the images over and over but those are images of American's being terrorized, injured and killed.  What about these kids?  Where is your outrage for them?  Where is your posts on Facebook showing support for their families?  Where is your insistence that those responsible for their deaths are brought to justice.  Sadly those you have elected are often the closest you'll get to seeing who is directly responsible.  Look in a mirror and you'll probably see someone that is indirectly responsible.  Someone who, through inaction, allows this to happen.

  The dynamic has changed though.  We no longer have lots of knocking on doors.  Most of you may not know someone that has either died or lost a love one to the current military conflicts going on.  The US "news" outlets seem to weak to expose the public to the ugly side of war.  To many people would look away in disgust.  To many people would call the journalist unpatriotic.  Both these types people disgust me in one way or another.  Every adult should have some understanding of the cost of war.  Right now to many American's call others terrorists because they strap a bomb to themselves and kill themselves and others in an attempt to change things.  But when American's pay lots of money to have foreigners killed without getting their hands dirty at all it they think it is right and just.  It isn't because the policies that control these strikes are flawed.  The people executing these strikes are flawed.  The intelligence gathered that these strikes are based on are flawed and to many innocent people are getting killed.  If you have a program where you know at least 25% of the people you kill are not guilty then there is a major fucking problem. If you don't do anything to stop this program then you are part of the problem.

  Right now the majority of American's support the drone program.  But how many people support the use of a strategy that kills the wrong target at least 25% of the time?  Who supports a program where over 5% of the people killed are innocent children?  Who in their right mind thinks this is "lawful and effective".

  If that all doesn't stir you then think of it this way.  The "interpretation" of the laws that is being used right in the US drone program allows the government to execute you, with out any trial or even oversight from any judge if you are overseas.  There is even grey areas about there use on, or rather above, American soil.

  Take back control of your government.  Let them know you aren't going to let them do what ever they want any more. That it isn't in the best interest of the USA and it's citizens to be terrorizing people half way around the world just because we have more expensive military toys.

My German heritage makes me proud.

While much of the rest of the world says it is to hard, to expensive or not even possible Germany is doing it.  What are they doing you ask?  Converting over to renewable energy sources like wind and solar.  They are doing it at a very nice pace to.  They are putting the change ahead of corporate greed.  They are giving control back to the people.

  For those of you that don't know Germany has a big push and big incentives for people to do things like install solar panels.  There are many people that take out loans to install solar systems that end up not only providing all the power needs for those people but also produces enough excess power to actually pay for the loans and maintenance of the solar power systems.

  This makes me think about the Berkeley professor that redid his house to use more efficient lights and appliances and at the same time install a solar panel system.  The professor paid for the entire conversion by adding on to his existing home loan.  The money the professor saved by going off the grid was more then the increase in his mortgage payment.  It can be done if people want to make the effort.

  Back in July Germany produced over 5.1TWh of power via solar. This broke the record of renewable energy generation previously held by wind turbines of 5TWh.  Germany is looking to get 80% of its energy needs from renewables by 2050 and at this rate Germany will have no trouble not only meeting that goal but exceeding it.

  So successful is the German model that corporations that own old fossil fuel power plants are trying to threaten to leave Germany.  To me that is a bit like a bully threatening a little kid that they'll to go to another school and beat up someone else.  The fact that these corporations are having a hard headed approach to changing to the markets is very telling.

  This is all something that the USA should have been doing back in the late 70s and early 80s but oil corporations lobbied the Reagan administration hard and not only put a stop to changes President Carter put in place but even had solar panels removed from the White House.  Carter said the following "a generation from now, this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken, or it can be a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people; harnessing the power of the Sun to enrich our lives as we move away from our crippling dependence on foreign oil."  Well a generation and a half later we are basically at the same point.  Obama had panels put back into the White House in 2010.  30 years have gone by.  30 years not completely wasted but not even close to being even partially realised.

  This revolution can either be one that the USA can be spear heading and profiting from or one that the USA can watch from the side lines and resort to being just another consumer dependent on other countries for the market and innovations.

  All this is ignoring the benefits of renewable.  All I'm saying is that the conversion can be done.  It isn't beyond our ability.  When people say it is then they are being VERY short sighted and even more ignorant of the reality of the situation.

  Do you think it can and should be done or are you one of the above?
Which of these do you want near your home?

This?

Or this?

Reality of Trayvon's murder. Do you look like a thug?

Warning: Some people may find one of the images in this blog disturbing.

Zimmerman's lawyer is as disgusting as Zimmerman is. When asked if he thought that the outcome would be different if the races were reversed he replies with 

"I think that things would have been different if George Zimmerman was black for this reason, he would have never been charged with a crime. It seems as tho what happened was an event that was being looked into by Sanford Police department, and quite honestly as we now know looked into quite well, what happened was this became the focus for a civil rights event, which again is a wonderful event to have, but they decide George Zimmerman would be the person who they were to blame and sort of use as the creation of a civil rights violation"

Now who the fuck believes that 

• a 29 year old black man 
• with previous charges of assaulting a police officer, resisting arrest and domestic violence 
• carrying a loaded gun 
• confronts a white 17 year old boy, walking home from the store, drinking ice tea and eating skittles 
• and fatally shoots the kid in the chest

would not have been charged with a crime? That "black man" would have been tried and convicted of first degree murder. We know he went after the teenager against the police dispatcher's orders. We know he didn't want the teenager to "get away with it" showing he had premeditation to stop this teenager. My guess is that he would have also had a very good chance of getting the death penalty.

The reason this was brought up as a civil rights issue is because the cluster fuck of an investigation and how the police handled it.

• The police don't do a criminal background check of the white shooter. 
• They do the check on the unarmed dead black kid walking home from the store with ice tea and skittles dressed in khaki pants. 
• They don't do any toxicology on the white shooter 
• They do check the dead black teenage victim. 
• They allow the white guy to travel around the police station unescorted immediately following the shooting. 
• They don't arrest the white guy for weeks after the fatal shooting.

Everything you read about this points to the police treating this as "the black kid must have done something wrong". The police chief even says "This is all very unsettling. I'm sure if George Zimmerman had the opportunity to relive Sunday, February 26, he'd probably do things differently. I'm sure Trayvon would, too.".

Again Trayvon did NOTHING wrong. He walked home from the store. The worst thing he can be accused of is when a crazy man confronts him at night he decided to defend himself. Sure if he ran he might not have been shot in the chest. He would have been shot in the back!

The attacks on Trayvon's character are disgusting and just stupid attempts to make people who support the tragic death of this youth feel better about being raciest bigots.

Trayvon smoked some marijuana! 

Oh shit! he must be a gangsta wannabe...for fuck sake that would have meant that most of the kids I knew in high school would have been a gangsta wannabe, including myself.  For shame on the US government for issuing me with my TS clearance when I clearly told them that I smoked marijuana in high school and even had drugs harder then marijuana.  How can you trust a gangsta wannabe like me with national secrets?!?!

Trayvon may have wanted to get a gun!

Forget that there is no evidence he wanted a gun.  Perhaps if he had a gun he'd still be alive today.  But if he was alive I bet you he'd be in prison convicted of felony murder because he must have had the gun because he was intending to commit a crime because that is what black kids do.

"If you dress like a thug, people will treat you like a thug" : Geraldo Rivera

Trayvon was dressed like a thug!

He had a sweater, that had a hood, on and khaki pants with the ankles cuffed up.  Yea, every punk, going out to rob some place at night, wears khaki pants and cuffs the ankles so they don't get stopped by the fashion police.
Now this is just Geraldo opening his mouth and letting shit come out without regards for reality.  Let us look at some pictures and you ask what you think of each.  As you look at them decide as quickly as possible if you think "thug" or "not thug".  Be honest with yourself.  I bet I know what people will say for most of them.

Trayvon was walking to slow and looking around all the time!

Hmm so he looks around when he walks.  I do that too.  He was looking at houses!  OMG I do that too!  He kept looking over his shoulder.  Well if I noticed someone following me in a car while I was walking I would too.

Trayvon started to run!  

OMG after seeing someone is following him he decided to run. Or after getting rained on enough he thought he'd try to get home faster.  Either way you have a problem where he was suspicious for walking to slow and if he was running he'd also would have been suspicious.  He couldn't win!

Trayvon should have avoided the situation!  

HOW?!?! Zimmerman confronted him!  Trayvon was just walking home.  If some stranger comes up to you at night and starts something with you what do you do?  What do you do if the have a fucking gun and you've got ice tea and skittles?


The issue is people back themselves into a corner.  They say things that are clearly raciest and wrong then instead of admitting they were wrong they try to bring up the most stupid reasoning why they are justified in their remarks.

If you make any excuse why Zimmerman is justified in what happened then have a deep look at yourself.  Ask yourself if the races were reversed and some 29 year old black man killed a innocent white kid would you feel the same and I suspect the answer is no.  But of course if you thought that way then you would justify it in your own head to either make yourself feel like you are not a raciest fuck tart or you'd be proud that you are a racist fuck tart.

I've heard of a few of examples where a black man has "killed a white kid" and "got away with it"
There has been a pattern I've noticed to all the stories.  First is that the white teens in question where in the act of burglary when initially confronted.  Second they went to attack the shooter and the shooter was out numbered.  Does this excuse the shooting?  No, but there is a big difference between 3 young men braking into your neighbour's car then charging at you when you tell them to freeze and a single young man walking home from the store after he bought an ice tea and pack of skittles.

Fact, Zimmerman racially profiled Trayvon Martin, an innocent black teenager, confronted him against direct orders from the police and fatally shot and killed Trayvon. The fact that if you try to justify Zimmerman's actions and miss the fact that an innocent kid lost his life because of Zimmerman's stupidity then you can go fuck yourself.

Don't even get me started on how Zimmerman now has his gun back and how Juror "B-37" thinks that "George" only over stepped his bounds "just a little" and that she thinks he's learnt his lesson and would want him in her neighbourhood watch.  I wonder if she would want "George" on her neighbourhood watch if it was her 17 year old son that "George" shot in cold blood as he was walking home with ice tea and skittles.  I wonder if she would think, after her son is laying dead in the wet grass, that "George" only over stepped his bounds "just a little".

George got a jury of his peers, 5 white women and 1 non black woman.  The prosecutors really didn't want this trial to succeed and in my opinion that is because they didn't want the cops to look bad.

It is ironic that Zimmerman's lawyer says that George needs his gun and bullet proof vest because he will never know if some person will over react and kill him.  It is completely lost on Zimmerman supporters that to most people stalking and then fatally shooting someone with ice tea and skittles is  a much bigger over reaction then anyone coming after Zimmerman for killing an innocent teenager in cold blood.  I don't want Zimmerman dead and I advise people to stay away from him because he's killed a completely innocent boy once. Next time it would be even easier for him to claim he was in fear for his life.