Thanks to the stand your ground law made by that Jeb Bush fellow, you know, the guy that will be running for President this fall after he gets crowned in Tampa.

hoping more people will have forgotten or forgiven his brother,

However, Tampa 2012 is going to be either one of two things: a mess of truly epic proportions, or a well timed, clockwork goosestep. If the election gets close enough for them to steal again, they know they will need someone they can actually sell as getting those few precious extra votes. If the convention is just a bunch of sad folks choking down Mitt because he is the only thing on the plate, they will NOT be able to make a case that Mitt could win a close election. Even Tony Scalia will not be able to make anyone swallow that, especially with social media being a much stronger, wilder beast than it was in 2000.

The GOP is desperate, because they know that, even with a few billion to keep the pacs ripping on Obama, they know Mitt is NOT a name that will lure people into the circus tent. That is why anyone, and I do mean ANYONE, is open. Jeb Bush is actually one of the least crazy options they could pick, awful, but less crazy, why, because they are desperate. Does this mean even Palin has a chance? You betcha.

no matter how improbable any of that might be, a strategy that consciously engaged genocide upon indigenous peoples and which more recently culminated in a WAR OF CHOICE in the invasion and occupation of a sovereign and INNOCENT nation known as Iraq.

ROOT CAUSES: regarding the calculus of what people might-OR-might-not-do > PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY, a highly marketable commodity that makes critical discernment expendable for political capital, and HAS done so from the time of the Constitutional Congress to the murder of Trayvon Martin.

Sad but true. Blacks still are not treated equally. Are still having their civil rights denied by what is supposed to be a non-racist government and society.

We still have a long way to go before we have true liberty and justice for all. Get back to work, people!

find they must tote a loaded weapon around. And use it against an unarmed teenager.

Ha.

This is about the tenth thread on Trayvon Martin.

If you read DU, you might think that Trayvon was the only black homicide victim in the entire United States, if not the whole universe.

Here's a dead black teenager who has not been talked about on DU - in even one thread.

http://www.kansascity.com/2012/03/04/3468942/two-dead-baby-wounded-in-kck-apartment.html

16 year old Ranisha Jones. A 21 year old "man" was killed too. (I put man in quotes, because as a 50 year old, he seems like another kid, far, far too young to die) And a baby was wounded. A one year old. Think of that. A black baby might have been killed. (tempted to add "So it goes" in Vonnegut style, but too easy for that to be misunderstood by people, who, sadly, have not read Vonnegut. But here's a shout-out to other Vonnegut fans anyway - and you know who you are.)

Here's another one, 16 year old Jalisa Reed and a twenty year old black woman was wounded.

http://www.kctv5.com/story/17180934/teen-girl-dead-following-double-shooting

Seems to happen every weekend here is KC, and doubtless is also happening in Washington DC, Philadelphia, Chicago, NYC, Baltimore, New Orleans, etc. etc. etc. About 100 homicides a year in Kansas City. Another weekend, another two or three black homicide victims.

Those young black people are usually shot and killed by - other young black people.

But here, nobody will even know this is happening (other than what they see on the "if it bleeds, it leads" local news).

Why won't we notice it is happening? Or (seemingly) care? Why won't we talk about it?

Because, unlike the Trayvon Martin story, these deaths don't allow us to point at the real problems in our society. Our problems are not despair, hatred, selfishness, violence, cruelty or greed. No, no, no. Our problem is due to something much simpler. Something we can all come together to hate. It is only this - racist white people.

"Because, unlike the Trayvon Martin story, these deaths don't allow us to point at the real problems in our society. Our problems are not despair, hatred, selfishness, violence, cruelty or greed. No, no, no. Our problem is due to something much simpler. Something we can all come together to hate. It is only this - racist white people."

The overlapping centuries old toxic environment of racist white hatred has created fertile breeding ground for those ailments you cite much of it rooted in negative self-image or self-esteem; which has been adversely shaped by relentless propaganda and circumstance.

Having said that I don't believe this column is just about Trayvon.

In the cases you mention we do not know who did the shooting---you make the assumption that it was black on black violence. I live in Detroit, and we have plenty of black on black violence, and as in the cases you identified, ". Anyone with information about the shooting is asked to call the Police Department’s major case unit".

The Martin case is entirely different. A white gun totting whanna be vigilante (I'm sorry that is all these neighborhood watch folks are) guns down an unarmed teenager, and the legal/law enforcement establishment says, "don't worry folks it was all self-defense". Trying to equate the protection this murderer is now receiving with the numerous unsolved black on black crimes is simply ludicrous.

The OP claimed you can be gunned down and nobody will "even know it happened". "You will be just another dead black male on the local news and no one will care ..."

Except that in this case, the story is getting national publicity in some circiles. It is being broadcast far and wide and we are all supposed to care about THIS dead black male and all supposed to wag our fingers and cast aspersions at all those white racists who are constantly gunning down young black males (and maybe even females).

The attention is there, I think, not just because the perpetrator is known, but because the perpetrator is white (white-hispanic but still white)

See, now we get to pretend we care about young black people getting shot, even though we generally do nothing about all the other young black people getting shot. We have no idea how to do anything about that, so maybe if we just yell and demand that this white guy gets lynched (or life in prison) we can then go back to ignoring all the other young black people who get shot every weekend.

What can we do about that anyway? I don't know either, but I think some attention might help, some effort into ending poverty might help. Something besides a trickle down jobs program might help. Something a little bit beyond just shaking our fists at all those white racists that we know are hiding under the bed and causing all of the world's problems. Maybe it is better to light a candle or grab a shovel instead of just cursing the darkness.

One the one side we have a dead black teenager that we are writing and writing and writing about. On the other side we have hundreds or thousands of dead black teenagers that we are ignoring.

I am not black, and at least I have the wherewithal to know that it is not my place to ask "Where's the outrage?" when young black people are murdered by other young black people. Is it a tragedy? Yes, undoubtedly.

But the key difference is that those crimes are not motivated by racism and bigotry. This one clearly was. And the United States has an ugly, shameful legacy of white people killing black people for no reason other than their bigotry and hatred. That is one reason why this case has garnered such wide attention.

Not to mention that in the vast majority of black-on-black crimes, law enforcement officials don't go out of their way to exonerate the perpetrator of any wrongdoing when such an action was clearly not warranted.

That is not to say that anyone should minimize the devastating impact that violent crime perpetrated by black people against other black people has on the black community, but this case is qualitatively different in the worst sort of way.

Judge, Jury and Executioner

People forget that this is one of the main reasons why the Families got as much power as they did. Immigrant communities couldn't get a fair shake from the authorities, so they needed "alternate means" to get results.

Hopefully this gets this guy brought to justice.

http://www.change.org/petitions/prosecute-the-killer-of-our-son-17-year-old-trayvon-martin?utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=share_petit