President Obama went on the air to say that if he had a father who was in his late eighties and fought on Okinawa, he’d look a lot like Delbert Belton.
Well, no. He didn’t.
The beating death of Belton last week was a huge story in the media all last week.
Well, no. It wasn’t. Outside the conservative alt-media, the story – like the previous weeks’ death of Christopher Lane – was all but embargoed.
Described as “the kind of nice old man who’d become your friend in minutes,” World War II veteran Delbert “Shorty” Belton was assaulted by two teens in the parking lot of the Eagles Lodge in Spokane, Washington, at around 8 p.m. on Wednesday. He died in the hospital Thursday morning.
Belton’s death has already gone viral, and is uncovering deep racial divides, simmering anger and disgust with the media. Most pointedly, many are asking: Why has the death of Belton — and similarly the death of Australian college student Christopher Lane in Oklahoma — largely been ignored by a media which was, only a couple of weeks ago, absolutely obsessed with the Trayvon Martin/ George Zimmerman case. Both the Belton and Lane case feature victims who died in race-related attacks. The only difference between the Belton and Lane cases compared to the Martin case is that they feature white victims and black assaulters.
Not to mention serious allegations of explicit racial motivation that were never part of the Martin/Zimmerman case – at least the one that went to the jury, as opposed to the media narrative.
The problem, of course, is that this nation’s “conversation about race” is a monologue.
“The only difference between the Belton and Lane cases compared to the Martin case is that they feature white victims and black assaulters”
Except for one important difference. In the Lane case the cops discovered the suspects and arrested them immediately, in the Belton case the cops will arrest the suspects when/if they find them. In contrast, in the Martin case, the cops knew who killed Martin, but did not arrest and charge anyone until there was a public outcry. You can argue whether Zimmerman should have been arrested/charged, but there is no similar debate about how the police/justice system should respond in the case of Lane or Belton. Precisely because everyone agrees on how the police should handle those cases, there is no need for any public comment by the President.
there is no need for any public comment by the President.
Just as there was no such need in the Zimmerman case. The police and the DA investigated, found that the incident met all the elements of justifiable homicide, and declined to charge. It’s the same course prosecutors take in such cases all over the country, including the two justifiable homicides carried out by carry permittees in Minnesota in the past five years.
The case was then politicized to aid Obama’s re-election bid, brought to court by a special prosecutor that arguably (only barely so) committed legal malpractice to do it, and pounded to fit the dominant narrative by a media that was too lazy, imcompetent and in the pocket of Administration to do anything but.
That is you opinion. Other people disagree. Thus there was a controversy in the Martin case to which the President could speak. Neither you original post nor your comment raise anything like a similar controversy in the Lane or Belton cases. So essentially you are upset about the his comments in the Martin case and the Lane/Belton cases have nothing to do with that.
RickDFL said:
“Other people disagree”
Other _deluded_ people disagree.
I’m not surprised RickDFL is included in the group.
Other people disagree.
Right. Just as “other people” “disagree” that the earth is round.
Thus there was a controversy in the Martin case to which the President could speak.
Change that to “thus a corrupt prosecutor and the media could engineer a manufactured ambiguity for the President’s campaign and the country’s usual assortment of grievance pimps to exploit”.
Neither you original post nor your comment raise anything like a similar controversy in the Lane or Belton cases. So essentially you are upset about the his comments in the Martin case and the Lane/Belton cases have nothing to do with that.
Oh.
“Oh” = you are right.
“Oh” = Dismissive disdain for a steaming pile of codswallop; usually accompanied by eye-rolling and/or *facepalm.*
“Dismissive disdain for a steaming pile of codswallop; usually accompanied by eye-rolling and/or *facepalm.*” does not = any evidence of controversy worthy of Presidential comment or media attention in the Lane or Belton cases.
And the evidence of controversy worthy of Presidential comment or media attention in the Zimmerman case was, what, exactly? Hypocrisy: you’re marinating in it.
Yossarian: I have no interest in re-debating the Martin case. My point is simply that there is no reason for anyone to think the President should comment on the Lane or Belton cases. If you thought the police in the Martin case did not respond correctly and thus the President was right to say something, that reason does not apply to Lane or Belton cases because the police are doing their job. If you thought the police in the Martin case responded correctly and thus the President was wrong to comment, then there is no reason to think he should comment on the Lane or Belton cases. Mitch’s demand for a Presidential statement on Lane or Belton is insincere.
“Thus there was a controversy in the Martin case to which the President could speak.”
Of course there was. Or are violent youths not a federal problem?
RickDFL, you are wrong about virtually any topic on which you comment. Seriously, dude, check yourself.
Powhatan Mingo:
Perhaps you should check your own post. Sentence 1 appears to agree with me about the Martin case(although I can’t tell). Sentence 2 seems to raise a federalism issue which no one else has raised and is not a controversy in any of the three cases, so I really don’t get your point. In addition, if you refer to the violent youths in the Lane and Belton cases, then no they are not a Federal issue. The prosecution of local crimes is almost always a state/local problem and as I said there is every reason to believe local officials are responding properly.
That is a lot of confusion to pack into 12 words.
@Powhatan Mingo: You cannot scourge/rack/waterboard the Commerce Clause enough to make violent yoofs a federal problem. Period.
RickDFL wrote:
“Precisely because everyone agrees on how the police should handle those cases, there is no need for any public comment by the President.”
And then RickDFL wrote:
“Sentence 2 seems to raise a federalism issue which no one else has raised and is not a controversy in any of the three cases, so I really don’t get your point.”
Whatever the point is, RickDFL, it’s way over your head.
Looks like RickDFL is ready to assume the role of clueless liberal punching bag. Good. I’m ready to throw a few.
“In the Lane case the cops discovered the suspects and arrested them immediately, in the Belton case the cops will arrest the suspects when/if they find them. In contrast, in the Martin case, the cops knew who killed Martin, but did not arrest and charge anyone until there was a public outcry.”
Rick, they investigated and found there was no basis for charging Martin, so he was released after being detained. He was handcuffed, in case you didn’t notice. The “public outcry” you refer to was a firestorm of imaginary outrage over a fictional narrative of what actually happened. Much like the fictional Duke lacrosse team “rape.” Anytime a serial con artist like Al Sharpton takes the airwaves, hold onto your wallets ladies and gentlemen. President Obama was out of line in commenting on the case. Maybe you don’t appreciate the meaning of the word “irony,” which is the basis for Mitch’s post, not a request for Presidential interference in local law enforcement. Have one of your liberal friends look it up for you.
“The only difference between the Belton and Lane cases compared to the Martin case is that they feature white victims and black assaulters. ”
Actually there is evidence that St Trayvon was also the assaulter and Zim (the Multi-ethnic avenger) was the victim. Enough evidence that a jury found his defense credible.
I don’t think the defendants in the Lane or Belton cases will be able to make a credible case for self defense.
“Maybe you don’t appreciate the meaning of the word “irony,” which is the basis for Mitch’s post”. Well now we are getting somewhere. This concedes that the Lane and Belton cases call for no Presidential comment. I still don’t see anything ironic in the situation, even if you assume that Zimmerman was justified and the President’s comments were inappropriate. That would require Belton or Lane to be killed by an unjustified assailant claiming self-defense.
But I suppose you can find irony in anything if you have the right background beliefs, so I would be interested if you would explain what exactly is ironic in the situation.
Have you figured out yet what +/- means yet, RinkyDink? Your KoolAid is brown.
And while you are at it, RinkyDink, care to opine why your exhalted emperor 0bumbler had not spoke up in Roderrick Scott case? Ahh… thought so…
RickDFL wrote:
” I still don’t see anything ironic in the situation”
That’s because you are an idiot, RickDFL.
Obama identifies with a teenage kid dressed like a gangster, but not a WW2 vet. Hilarious!! And you don’t even see it until it’s pointed out to you!
Because, unlike Zimmerman, Scott was promptly arrested and charged with a crime. So there was no issue of local police not aggressively investigating the killing of an unarmed civilian. Also there was no dispute that the person killed was engaged in criminal behavior and on the killer’s property. In contrast, there is no dispute that Martin was minding his own business in a pubic area prior to Zimmerman following him.
So there was no issue of local police not aggressively investigating the killing of an unarmed civilian.
Facts (Police did NOT aggerssively investigate Zimmerman? Really?) don’t mean anything to a brain fried on libecRAT koolaid. Brain that does not know what +/- means.
JPA: Even if you are right that the police investigation of ZImmerman was “aggressive” (I have no desire to debate that issue), how does that affect whether the President should or should not have addressed the Scott case?
PM: What evidence is there that the President does not identify with Belton? Simply that he did not speak about it? That is silly. It is a routine criminal case being handled properly by local officials. Everyone agrees what happened was bad and should be a crime. Why would the Pres say anything about it?
RickDFl wrote:
“In contrast, there is no dispute that Martin was minding his own business in a pubic area prior to Zimmerman following him.”
Are you saying that it was illegal or improper for Zimmerman to fallow Martin? Please do not imply that this is so if it was not the case.
What difference does it make if Martin was a civilian? Zimmerman was as a civilian as well.
Some days you act like you ain’t got two healthy neurons to rub together, RickDFL.
Rick,
I’ll give you this much; you’re no worse-informed than any other lib when it comes to second-amendment-related topics.
Which is nothing to brag about:
Because, unlike Zimmerman, Scott was promptly arrested and charged with a crime.
Right, but “arrest” isn’t the dispositive metric. Both issues were duly investigated. In Zimmerman’s case – before the Administration opted to demigogue it, anyway – the police and DA determined that all the evidence pointed to a justifiable homicide. Which was confirmed at trial.
The facts in the two cases are utterly different. And it’s the facts – not the narratives – you need to compare.
So there was no issue of local police not aggressively investigating the killing of an unarmed civilian.
There was no such real issue in the Martin case either.
And the “unarmed” qualifier is meaningless. There’ve been 3-4 “one punch kills” in Minnesota so far this year. Fists – and sidewalks – are deadly weapons (claiming eight times as many victims annually as “assault rifles).
there is no dispute that Martin was minding his own business in a pubic area prior to Zimmerman following him.
Again, irrelevant. “Following” isn’t a crime. And it wasn’t “minding ones business in a public area” that made the homicide justifiable; it was the violent assault including the repeated bludgeoning of Zimmerman’s head against the sidewalk.
Y’all keep missing that part.
Obama should never let Sharpton decide what is and what is not ‘just’ or ‘called for’.
There is an astounding lack of respect for facts on the Left. Zimmerman bore the signs of a beat-down. Martin had a single wound from the bullet that killed him. Martin could not have struck Zimmerman after he was shot. Therefore either Martin beat Zimmerman, Zimmerman caused the wounds himself, or an unknown 3rd party beat Zimmerman.
These facts aren’t seriously disputed. That’s why RickDFL and his ilk go on and on about ‘profiling’, the unimportant fact that Martin was unarmed, and the even less important fact that Martin had purchased skittles and iced tea at the convenience store before the attack.
how does that affect whether the President should or should not have addressed the Scott case?
It is like debating +/- all over… again. 0bumbler should NOT have opined on the Zimmerman case either. He cherry picked an issue and made political hay out of it – nothing to do with jussitce, rights or price of tea. And if he did in Zimmerman case, why not in Scott? Because it is not politically expedient and that highlites how utterly immoral, irresponsible and depraved 0bumbler is.
One of the reasons that I distrust the media is that they ignore things that seem obvious — and of interest — to me. For example, Obama’s words re: Zimmerman/Martin were exactly what you would expect from a lawyer who taught the 14th amendment. He did not address the facts in the case. Instead he droned on and on about the historical grievances of the people descended from slaves.
Mitch, as I have said repeatedly, I am not missing it, I am not addressing it because I have no desire to debate the Martin case. If you had done a post on ‘Zimmerman justified to kill Martin’, I would have ignored it. Instead you did a post on, (perhaps not seriously, I can’t tell) ‘Obama should comment on Lane/Belton killings’, which seems worth debating. But every time I make a point about the latter you talk about the former.
So in response to your several paragraphs in your previous post justifying Zimmerman, I will just say, none of that is a reason for Obama to say or do anything about the Lane/Belton/Scott cases.
“Again, irrelevant”. I think you are going further than you want here. A case that starts with some one minding their own business in a pubic area is a lot further away from ‘justified kill’ than one that starts with someone committing a crime on someone else property. I get that you think there are additional facts that justify Zimmerman, but I think you would agree that Zimmerman would need fewer of those justifying facts if his case stated with the undisputed fact that someone was committing a crime on his property.
“Zimmerman would need fewer of those justifying facts if his case stated with the undisputed fact that someone was committing a crime on his property.”
Zimmerman needed no ‘justifying facts’ beyond what was discovered during his initial detainment by the police.
This only became a national issue when Sharpton decided it should be, probably based on his wackee idea that Zimmerman was a white guy. Sharpton ain’t very sharp, but the folks on the left follow him wherever he wants to take them.
Take RickDFL, for example. There was no federal civil rights violation in the case of Martin. There was no civil rights violation in the case of Belton. Therefore Obama should speak to both, or to neither.
JPA: What do you think would be “not politically expedient” for the President to say about the Scott case?
PM: You are right, nothing rests on the fact that Martin was a civilian. ‘Person’ would have been a better word to choose. As for the rest, I think if you read more carefully you will see I am not disputing the facts of the Martin case and I did not say it was illegal for Z to follow M.
Game, set, match > Rick
In all fairness MBerg does deserve points for the amount of red meat thrown to his band of Mitchketeers.
I, for one, am willing to cut Obama some slack re: his Trayvon Martin remarks, but only if he shows his even-handedness by showing solidarity with female victims of violence by wearing a giant pink vagina costume.
Congratulations, RickDFL and Emery: you have proven Mitch’s point.
Professional race baiters thunder against George Zimmerman but when three Black kids shoot a White man in the back for thrills, the best Jackson can muster up is that’s “frowned upon” while Sharpton ambiguously claims “the system worked.” The President speaks on racial matters to take the Black side against Whites, for example Treyvon is his son and Cambridge police acted stupidly. He uses his bully pulpit to speak for Blacks, not for all Americans.
The result is the “national conversation” about race is a monologue. It’s one-direction only: Black is good, White is bad. That’s racism. And you’re defending it.
.
JPA: What do you think would be “not politically expedient” for the President to say about the Scott case?
Because it would have destroyed the whole bogus “Zimmerman is racisssss” narrative. Not only do you not know what +/- is, you apparently cannot add 2+2 either.
Game, set, match > Rick
In a race to the bottom? How is that list of successful Soci@list Utopias coming along, EmeryTheUSA Hater?
The result is the “national conversation” about race is a monologue. It’s one-direction only: Black is good, White is bad. That’s racism. And you’re defending it.
What Obama should have said is that the events in Sanborn have been investigated by the JD and found not to have involved a violation of anyone’s civil rights. He should have followed this by emphasizing that, as president, he equally represented Zimmerman and his family, and Martin and his family.
That would have been the adult thing to do.
JPA: You have give a ‘why’ answer to a ‘what’ question. What words could the President have spoken about the Scott case that would have been “not politically expedient”.
Joe Doakes: “The President speaks on racial matters to take the Black side against Whites.” I thought the President spoke in the Martin case to take the side of people like me. I could have been walking down the street minding my own business and gotten shot without any legal consequence to the killer. Where you see him taking the side of the black person, some of us see him taking the side of the innocent person who got killed for no good reason.
But again, the Martin case is not the issue. You nor any one else on this blog, can say what the President should have done or said about the Lane or Belton cases and why. In both those cases the government is doing everything it can to ‘take the side’ of the person killed. There is no disagreement from anyone over facts or policy.
PM: What happened in Sanborn? Do you mean Spokane?
+/- Little Ricky, +/-. 0bumbler CHOSE to politicize one case and eschew the other. You just not capable of getting it through your head, just like +/-. It is like arguing with a 5 year old (apologies to 5 year olds everywhere).
RickDFL said:
“I could have been walking down the street minding my own business and gotten shot without any legal consequence to the killer.”
Delusional.
Emery said:
“Game, set, match > Rick”
Delusional.
You nor any one else on this blog, can say what the President should have done or said about the Lane or Belton cases and why. In both those cases the government is doing everything it can to ‘take the side’ of the person killed. There is no disagreement from anyone over facts or policy.
He shouldn’t have said anything about the Martin case, either. But we can’t unring that bell. The only reason people have any interest in hearing from the President on these matters is that he’s had a penchant for commenting on local cases in the past. He also injected himself in the case involving Henry Louis Gates, as you might recall. He said that the local police acted “stupidly,” I believe.
Personally, it would be my preference that the President pay attention to the other matters on his plate, but he apparently he can’t help himself. So you have to wonder — what’s his motive for weighing in on some cases, but not others? And to anticipate the rejoinder — yes, I think we’re allowed to question this president’s motives. As I recall, there was a time, not that very long ago, where questioning the motives of a President was considered a useful exercise, maybe even patriotic. Perhaps that’s no longer the case, but none of us got the memo.
Down goes Frazier, down goes Frazier, down goes Frazier!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZEIMQ42-oU
JPA: “0bumbler CHOSE to politicize one case and eschew the other. You just not capable of getting it through your head”. I think Obama was right to “politicize” the Martin case and you don’t. I get that, (but I don’t want to debate that now). You said Obama should comment on the Scott case, but refused to do so because it would “not [be] politically expedient”. I don’t get that specific claim of yours, because I can’t think of anything Obama could reasonably be expected to say that would “not [be] politically expedient”. Your refuse to give an example of something you want the President to say about the Scott case that would “not [be] politically expedient”. So the reason I can’t “get” it, is you refuse to give it.
With all the comments on this thread, including Mr. D’s at 7:41PM, and you still do not get it. Never mind +/- concept, you cannot even comprehend a folk “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander” saying. Sigh…
Maybe we need to break it down into simpler parts so Rick can understand what “politically expedient” means.
Martin/Zimmerman – a non-black kills a black, gives the opportunity for Obama’s low information voter base to get pissed at the OBVIOUS (to low information voters) hate crime, and create some political movement where he can advance his agenda. This is politically expedient.
Lane/Belton/Scott: Blacks kill whites. Not only does this not piss off his low information voter base, it could potentially draw attention to the fact that as a percentage of population, blacks commit far more violent crimes than whites do. No opportunity for agenda advancement. No opportunity for the NAACP and race-baiters Sharpton and Jackson to rile up his low information voting base. Not politically expedient.
That is why he commented on Martin/Zimmerman and none of the other cases, where the victims were 100% innocent and truly victims, unlike the thug Martin, who stupidly brought fists and an attitude to a gunfight.