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44 Thoughts to “The President responds….”
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Every time I think this guy has reached bottom, he manages to sink lower than I thought possible.
Was there anything objectionable in what he said, Cato? If so, what? It all seemed fairly straightforward to me. This statement, coupled with his statement the other day, seemed to be what any American President would say to try to quell unrest following a very emotional event. He has the advantage that no prior president has had of being able to speak to this kind of issue from experience. I would think his comments would have a calming effect.
My only reservation about his approach is that I think he could be even more effective if he emphasized his dual race background. He is as much Caucasian as he is African American. That gives him a special vantage point in a country that has a racially charged history. Having said that, I can’t find anything in his comments that I could imagine anyone objecting to.
I can’t see anything objectionable either. Most of his comments were based on his personal experiences anyway. Good for him.
@Scout
Do you actually believe what you’re shovelling, or is this just par for your course?
“all contributes I think to a sense that if a white male teen was involved in the same kind of scenario, that, from top to bottom, both the outcome and the aftermath might have been different.”
Essentially what he’s saying here is if Zimmerman had been black and Trayvon had been white we’d be looking at a much different outcome. This is an indictment of our entire system of justice. I can’t imagine any other President in my lifetime making such a statement, but please feel free to discuss it with yourself, chum.
Cato, you sound like an angry white man.
You really are ignoring history.
I doubt that Scout is your chum. I have great respect for Scout and expect everyone else to at least treat him with respect, even if it isn’t coming from the heart. Perception is reality.
Interesting and infuriating exchanges on Hennety’s program tonight.
About what?
Does hannity run a repeat?
Ooops its on right now…the repeat. Its just starting.
I caught some of it on the second time slot. You are right, it was rather infuriating but then again it was Hannity. That guaarantees my blood pressure going up about 100 pts.
Cato – Obama wasn’t my first choice for President either time and my proclivities are Republican/Conservative. What I have never been able to understand, however, is the kind of visceral antipathy that the man seems to excite in certain quarters. Objectively, while I have concerns and differences about certain policy decisions this Administration has made, I think this President has been as competent as any of his recent predecessors and is unremarkable in terms of things that should excite enmity, especially on a personal level.
Any president might have felt compelled to address the Martin/Zimmerman situation. Given our history, it is an explosive case. I’ve said here that I feel the verdict was a correct one, given how little hard evidence there is about what actually happened. But that’s a fairly technical response from a guy who makes his living (at least in part) in that system. A President legitimately needs to reach out to a large part of our population who doesn’t see this in technical legal terms. They see a dead kid who didn’t have to die. They see it in the context that the President mentioned. Any President might want to address that. This President has some unique life experiences that means he can address it a bit more personally than could, say, Eisenhower, Kennedy, or the Bushes, just to throw out some examples.
I thought things had started to settle down towards the end of the week. The story had dropped below the fold by midweek. It seems that this speech was intended to stir the pot again. The Justice Department underlings have already advised that there is a very poor case for civil rights violations here. The FBI investigation found no evidence of racial animus on Zimmerman’s part. Even the incompetent prosecutor Angela Corey had said during the trial that it was “not about race,” and so did Trayvon Martin’s parents at one point. And there weren’t even any white people involved in the altercation, for that matter. So why the lecture over this one isolated case? Why the determination to undercut the judicial process to harass an American who has been duly tried in a court of law?
Yeah, we get it. Z was probably no angel himself. But this is the justice system our leaders are sworn to uphold, and sometimes the verdict is not going to be popular.
I don’t think the message was necessarily for us, Emma. I think he was speaking because of the hundreds of demonstrations scheduled around the country this weekend.
The story absolutely has not gone away. There are a lot of people out there who have very much personalized the Trayvon Martin story who simply aren’t viewing it through legal eyes.
I simply cannot find one thing objectionable that the president said.
@Emma: Obama did uphold the verdict. His statement on that point was very straightforward. And, as Moon indicates, yesterday’s statement was very much directed at trying to channel anger in the African-American community into constructive dialogue.
By the way, I was not aware that DOJ had positions for “underlings”. A better job description might be “attorney”. I could see a number of very qualified people deciding not to devote themselves to government service if they had to have “Underling” printed on their business cards.
I’m pretty sure you knew what I was talking about. Eric Holder is publicly pursuing an investigation. People who may have information regarding Z’s racial attitudes have a forum now to submit their information for DOJ review. Privately, DOJ staff have been informing the press that there is no basis for a civil rights case. Shall I provide you a link, or can you Google it?
That’s not “straightforward” to me at all, nor does it send the message that this administration just wants to “channel anger.”
That’s EXACTLY the point! Judging by the reality of the situation in our country, it IS an indictment of our system of justice.
It’s easy to look at the statistics on the drug situation to see what the president is talking about. Blacks are incarcerated for drug crimes at much higher rates despite using at the same rate as whites. When you consider three-strike laws, it’s easy to see why our prisons are filled with black people. Black people are charged more for mortgages, denied farm loans, their history has been suppressed and mis-represented, and on and on. It was only recently that historians revealed that there were many brave black soldiers in the civil war, revolutionary war, all wars. That was never talked about when I was growing up. There has been a conscious effort to subjugate and marginalize black people and it continues today. Many of the new voting laws have the effect of disenfranchising minorities, for example.
And Emma, you (and many whites) may think that things were “beginning to settle down,” but the undercurrent of unfairness never goes away, and we HAVE to address the subject. This is always just under the surface for minorities in this country, particularly young black people, and ignoring it just doesn’t seem to be working. We have to be adults, face up to the problem and FIX IT!
I am not sure it can be fixed. How do you make people change their feelings? I think maybe we will just have to try to outgrow it. Kids do better than their parents. The parents do better than the grandparents…etc.
So why the “underling” commentary? In some circles, that would be considered perjorative. I,m sure you don’t mean it that way, but it comes across in this flat medium as angry.
The Civil Rights Division of DOJ would necessarily look at this fact situation in any Administration. I see nothing unusual here. I think they won’t bring a case for the same reasons that the state prosecution was unsuccessful – it doesn’t seem that there is much hard evidence that the homicide was race-based (although people can have reasonable intuitive opinions one way or another about that). But the law is there, at least in part, to cover situations where racially motivated crimes are not dealt with under state law. If you’re suggesting that any DOJ, in this Administration or otherwise, should not examine the record and the evidence, then you leave yourself open to the implication that you do not support the Rule of Law (if we can use that much-abused phrase around here).
What FBI investigation?
Someone should ask “Mister Chicago” why he never addresses the number of black males killed in his glorious city. There have been more black males killed in Chicago – as noted by the Pew Foundation – since 2001 than Military killed in the sandboxes on both sides of the world.
Guess it just does not play in Peoria to address Chicago as well as Mr. Obama saying “black like me” in regards to Florida (to borrow John Griffin’s classic title to that fantastic book).
I don’t think that one thing has a thing to do with the other. Gang violence and poverty were not an issue in Sandord, Florida.
Obama is just a slightly more articulate version of Al Sharpton. It was a slimy attempt at race baiting, and unfortunately exactly what we’ve come to expect from this lilliputian president.
Race baiting? You surely are kidding. Your comment speaks volumes to me. It also makes me understand a little more why there are so many demonstrations this weekend.
Yup! Alive and well for sure.
Why do I get the feeling that Ray and Cato t E, sometimes in the deep dark recesses of their house, think or whisper “n****r” [redacted by editor] when they are talking or thinking about President Obama?
For the life of me, I cannot see the connection between homicidal violence in Chicago and Martin’s death. I simply can’t imagine any scenario where these are linked.
The only link is the politicalization of a dead kid and somehow that has been twisted into some sort of conservative white rallying cry.
There appears to be way too much blaming the victim involved, especially if you watch the show Punchak was taking about with Hannity. I could have closed my eyes and gone back in time 50 years.
I am not as Fox-averse as some (although I may be getting there as I watch the blonde ladies toeing the company line), but Hannity is completely out-of-bounds. I feel like if I watch it for even five seconds, I will be summoned in the next life before some tribunal to mete out punishment for wasting God’s gift of even my modest intelligence. Wouldn’t it be fun if MSNBC and Fox would arrange some sort of exchange program where Reverend Al would have to take Hannity’s spot and Hannity would go to Al’s and they each would have to espouse the competing company line for a month? Serious fuse-blowing time, great entertainment.
Oh dear God. That would be rough to watch.
Well Cato, until you walk in the shoes of a black man, you really can’t speak to personal experience, you can only guess. Having dated a fairly dark skinned black guy, although it was in the early nineties, it was an eye opening experience. It was like we were alien life forms when we went out…well, anywhere!
He was just recently in the Midwest teaching archery and many of the young men he was teaching had NEVER interacted with a black man….NEVER, on any level. He shared his experiences and I am telling you, it was like he was still an alien. He walked into a restaurant and it was like the EF Hutton commercial…..silence! Everyone turned and stared at him.
The experience was a good one though, they guys he taught were very perceptive to him and actually shared what a wonderful experience it was to meet someone who was different from them outwardly, but inside, yeah, not so much. They were just guys with bows and arrows at the end of the day.
Let me add, also, he still hears the car door locks click, he still gets followed.
@ Cato
“Obama is just a slightly more articulate version of Al Sharpton”
Here is a little classic Chris Rock for ya……”he speaks so well”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DePjG71zttQ
@George S. Harris
No, not quite George. Not a word in my vocabulary I use. There are other words I use when referring to Mr. Obama, but that is not one of them. My reference to him as “Mister Chicago” was on the basis of how he always talked about that city.
It’s interesting how that word came so quickly to George’s mind, though.
@Emma
Oh yes, I know the word, I heard it all the time in my little Oklahoma hometown that was a Jim Crow Town. And I can tell you that I don’t like it because I have two wonderful mixed race grandchildren who, I suspect, hear it quite often since they live in the great integrated state of Texas. My first genuine experience with a black person was the day I enlisted in the Navy in Kansas City, MO. Six of us, including one black guy, tried to go to a movie. We were told we could only buy five tickets. When I asked why, I was told, “We don’t let his kind (pointing to the black guy) in our theater.” And during my entire career, race was always an issue and not just with black sailors. For many years, Filipino and black sailors were only allowed to be stewards and cooks. You rarely saw an Asian when I first came in the Navy in 1951.
So yes Emma, the word comes quickly to my mind along with words like bigotry, race baiting, racist to name a few.
As to your question: “So why the lecture over this one isolated case?” It’s not about “one isolated case.” It’s about generations of folks being marginalized, harassed, beaten and killed just because they have too much melanin.
I have letters my father wrote my mother during WWII expressing his outrage over American Indians not being allowed to go in bars to get a drink when he was stationed out in Washington State towards the end of the war.
I asked my mother where his outrage was over blacks in Virginia and the rest of the country. She said she didn’t know. I found the entire subject to be mind boggling, actually.
“It’s about generations of folks being marginalized, harassed, beaten and killed just because they have too much melanin.”
No, it’s about a man who tragically shot a teenager, and neither one any whiter than Barack Obama, and a paucity of evidence to affirm that race was even a factor in this one case.
Whether race was a factor or not, I certainly think the aftermath has shown that race is still very much the great divider in this country.
@Emma
I really don’t think that all the demonstrations are really about this one incident. I think it is what George said…rightly or wrongly, it is about perceived injustice over the decades, centuries even.
George grew up in an entirely different time than you did, Emma. I am in the middle of both of you. George speaks from his place in tine and his expreiences. I do from mine. Mine are different from George’s. That difference doesn’t invalidate anyone’s experiences.
Apparently furby is having a hard time getting started over here on the open thread. Let me help him out some:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/probe-of-obama-designee-touches-company-that-worked-closely-with-mcauliffes-electric-car-firm/2013/07/24/026e45d6-f440-11e2-81fa-8e83b3864c36_story.html
Come on Furby, put your money where your mouth is.
@Emma
Oh Emma,
While I do not profess to know what it is to be any color than lily while, I suspect you hane no concept of Jim Crow or any of the innumerable insults heaped on people of color and the darker the color, the more hateful and hurtful the insults up to and including death in many forms–shootings, burnings, lynchings and on and on. Moon is right, Imdid grow up in a different time and I have an 80 year perspective on racism–probably really 75 years since anything before I was 5 is pretty vague. Trayvon Martin is a symbol–a symbol of what is wrong and the national coverage of his death has raised his death to an unprecedented level. It now serves as a catalyst for what is taking place now. Remember that catalysts cause reactions that are accelerated by substances that remain unchanged after the reaction. Trayvon is dead, his death is unchanged and unchangeable; however, it has accelerated the discussion of black injustices. Perhaps you live in a very small prescribed white world that simply is incapable of empathy that fall outside your box.
Yes, George, you’re right. I’ve just never been out of the house at all. Thank you for enlightening me, oh great one.
I believe George can give us a point of view which is uniquely his perspective without a cascade of snidery. If you are 80 and from a small town in Oklahoma then you can dispute George’s recollections.
You were quick to dismiss his lifetime observations as though your beliefs were the sole authority on the matter.
I’m quick to dismiss people who make sweeping and insulting assumptions about my life, especially when they have never even met me. With all due respect given his age, saying “Perhaps you live in a very small prescribed white world that simply is incapable of empathy that fall outside your box.” might be considered snidery, even for an 80-year-old. That’s just wrong, and could not be farther from the reality that is my life. That’s pretty personal.
And I in no way dismissed his lifetime observations. I just don’t see this one isolated case as being as racialized and as global as it has been made out to be. That’s just my opinion.
Maybe it has nothing to do with race in reality…maybe. Perception is reality.
I am not even sure race has much to do with Zimmerman. however, i have to ask this question–would a white boy killed in a middle class neighborhood have been left to lie on a slab for 2-3 days or would someone have picked up his cell phone and tried to locate his next of kin?
or, if some black man shot a white kid, would the black man have been let to that night?
Perception has become reality for millions of people.
Aside (obviously) from the death of a teenager and all that he might have been, THAT was a documented, witnessed and outrageous misfortune. If it were my child missing like that for three days, lying in a morgue, I’m pretty sure I’d be hounding the people responsible for that oversight until their dying day. But did Trayvon Martin’s dad notice his absence? Not that that exonerates anyone at all, but I’m just curious. I don’t recall seeing that in the coverage.