I'm reading an article in Politico about how Trump's strategy to poach Bernie voters won't work, and I got to the most wonderful sentence and I just had to share it...

And when Donald Trump tried to hold a rally in Chicago, it was Bernie Sanders supporters, outraged by Trump’s racially divisive rhetoric, who took over the arena and chased Trump out of town.

Oh! And here's another quote!

So we've been talking a lot about Trump's relationship with American women (shudder). And there's an op-ed today in the New York Times about that very subject. Here's a quote from a woman supporting Trump--

She added: “He employs more women than men in his businesses, and minorities adore him. The only exception is those who break our laws and come to our country illegally.”

Point Number One: While Trump does have more executives of the female persuasion than the male in certain of his businesses, that ratio does not hold up in the full scope of his business nor is it true of the people who actually manage his wealth--his lawyers.

Point Number Two: He is infamous for sexually harassing those female employees.

Point Number Three: When she says "the only exception is those who break our laws and come to our country illegally" she is referring to Trump's historically low poll numbers with the African American community and the Hispanic community. The vast majority of the African American community are law-abiding citizens. The vast majority of the Hispanic community are American citizens who are born in this country.

Now, obviously what she said isn't true, but the fact that she sees his low poll numbers in those communities and immediately thinks "felons and illegals" reveals all too clearly the kind of knee jerk bigotry that exemplifies the Trump campaign.

Yeah, George Zimmerman is a truly disgusting excuse for a human being. I for one firmly believe that what happened to Trayvon Martin was murder and that the jury that acquitted him committed a gross miscarriage of justice. A grown man armed with a gun stalks, attacks and then shoots an unarmed teenager. His defense was based on the argument that he felt his life was in danger after he followed a teenager, called the police, was ordered to stand down, got out of his car and shot a teenager dead.

And yes, today he auctioned the murder weapon. The gun itself costs around $200-$350 on the market. He is asking for a minimum of $5,000, arguing that the fact that the gun was used to murder a child makes it more valuable. Son of a bitch literally got away with murder and is now literally trying to make a profit off the pain and destruction he wrought.

And to add insult to injury, he has pledged to donate a portion of the money to fighting Black Lives Matter--the movement which Trayvon Martin's murder sparked--and to anti-Clinton groups because of Clinton's work with the Sandy Hook parents.

George Zimmerman is a plague on our society.

In lighter news, Trump's butler is being investigated for threatening to kill Obama on Facebook, so add Republican Nominee Donald Trump's Butler Under Investigation For Threatening President Barack Obama to the list of sentences no one would have ever dreamed of saying just 10 years ago.........

I can't even imagine being rich enough to have house staff...

I wonder how well they'd do if we didn't go through a whole background check on the news
Oh this person (full name) did all these things, here's their story, and because they're on the news, they're gonna get a lesser punishment, if any at all
Oh, and run it for several months

-rolls eyes-
How about remove their name, remove their face, just say that a serial killer went on a rampage or what have you and has been arrested, and BE DONE WITH IT
If there's a manhunt, then yeah, give appearance and potentially what they're driving. But that's an exception to the rule

I mean, I think in this particular case we are talking about someone (Zimmerman) who desperately wants to be in the news, and people like that are going to find a way to get attention one way or another.

There is some evidence that news coverage of high-profile killers has done serious damage. Its why recently major newspapers began to change the way they cover mass shootings, because research shows that if you spend too much time talking about a mass shooter other people with severe mental illness and similar anger issues will see that coverage and idolize the shooter.

But I can't even think about that right now....way too depressing, on top of everything else.......


I mean, you could argue the media has done the same thing with Trump. That they've legitimized him by talking about him so much.

Okay, so...it gets worse......


So Zimmerman's defense was based on Florida's Stand Your Ground law. Before Stand Your Ground laws, if you were in a physical conflict the law would expect you to try and find some way out of the conflict (retreating) before resorting to deadly force (so-called "standing your ground"). Under the Stand Your Ground law, you have no legal responsibility to avoid escalating a conflict with violence.

So when Zimmerman first murdered Trayvon Martin (again, this guy saw a teenager walking home at night, followed him, called the cops and told the dispatcher he was sick of "these guys getting away with it" jumped out of his car, confronted the teenager and then shot and killed him. And those are the facts. I am skipping all the he said-she said bits where there are no witnesses and I'm just stating the factual timeline) the police refused to even investigate the case because of Stand Your Ground Laws.

So guess what happened next? Yup. You guessed it. People were PISSED. African American communities all over the country rose up, demanding a full police investigation into the death--again, the death of a god. Damn. Child.

But when Zimmerman finally got his day in court he was acquitted. And why? Because Florida self-defense laws are so overboard they literally legalize murder.

But Trayvon Martin was a spark, and when people all over the country saw someone hunt and murder and teenager and then walk away a free man, they started wondering why and the answer for many seemed to be race. People began paying closer attention, and the people who had been paying attention began to get angry, and things snow-balled and got bigger and bigger until we have the Black Lives Matter Movement.

The BLM movement gets a bad rap, and I can understand how some people might be intimidated by them. My grandmother once told me that if you look at a protest march the first people you see will be the angriest, loudest, most extreme voices, because those people will be at the front of the march, screaming and banging drums and shaking their fists. And if you're not careful, they're the only ones you see. Especially if you just interact with the movement through the media because the media elevates the loudest voices anyway. But they are not alone, and the people you need to pay attention to are the ones who come afterwards, the quiet everyday people who don't want to burn the world down and are just there to fight for the people they love.

So BLM gets a bad rap, because there are some loud, aggressive, powerful voices that make people uncomfortable. But they are not alone. Every BLM event I've ever been to--whether it was a speech, or a rally, or a workshop, or whatever--the families with small children have outnumbered the radical youths two to one. If you look in the media, you only see angry young protesters facing off with riot cops. But the reality is that the Black Lives Matter Movement is mostly ordinary people desperate to keep their loved ones off the evening news and trying to figure out how to do that.

The case that really breaks my heart is Tamir Rice. He was only 12 years old when the police shot him, a few seconds after getting out of their car....

And for what? For holding a toy gun while he was playing in a park? The courts said that the fact that Rice had a toy gun gave the police legal cause to shoot him dead. But if it is legal to kill a child for holding a toy gun, how in the FUCKING HELL IS IT ALSO LEGAL TO SELL TOY GUNS?!?! It's like a god damn death trap.
I just....a child is dead and no one wants to take responsibility.

Part of the reason Tamir Rice's story effects me so much is I am an older sister, and I heard Tamir Rice's older sister tell the story on the radio of how she tried to reach him as he was dying and the cops held her back and wouldn't let her near him, all the while she's screaming and screaming....

And I imagine our positions being reversed. Mental illness runs in my family, so while I don't expect anyone to be shot for holding a toy gun anytime soon, there are plenty of situations where a cop might interact with my sister or my cousin when they're in a bad place and even though they don't actually pose a threat to anyone when they're in a bad place they talk big so......so I just can't help but think, that could be me. That could be my family. And the only way I can prevent that from happening is if I try to address the militarization of police and wide-spread flawed training practices NOW, and not after I lose someone I care about....

Luckily, I live in a small town and I'm on a first name basis with all our cops. There's a lot of trust. But if I lived in a city, where you're just another face in the crowd....(shudder)....