I lived in an apartment complex for several years and never bothered to learn any of the internal street names, nor was there any point at which that information ever would have been useful. I knew what street the entrance to the complex was on, and that's all that mattered. There's a five-way intersection right outside my home and I don't know the name of the third street. It's never come up.
Zimmerman said he didn't know the address of his current location while talking to the dispatcher prior to the shooting. Unless he was actually planning on shooting Martin at that point, he had no reason to lie. Why would you not take that claim at face value?
Okay, I see the source of the confusion now. He did get out of the truck after telling the dispatcher he didn't know the address of his current location. He hold the dispatcher that he didn't know his current location, and a few minutes later he got out of the truck. I didn't mean to suggest that he got out immediately after saying that, which I have no reason to believe is the case.
The lines labeled "Me" are my commentary, inserted after the fact. I wasn't actually in on that call. And it would have been kind of creepy if I'd said that stuff.
I'm not sure how much more clear I can make this: I didn't say he got out of the truck during the call. I didn't say he announced his intention to get out of the truck during the call. I said that the call indicates that he had a reason to get out of the truck:
Dispatcher: Alright, what address are you parked in front of?
Zimmerman: Um, I don’t know. It’s a cut-through so I don’t know the address.
Me: This establishes that Zimmerman was unsure of the address of his current location.
Dispatcher: Alright, George, I’ll let them know you’ll meet them at …
Zimmerman: Could you have them call me and I’ll tell them where I’m at?
Dispatcher: OK, no problem. I’ll let them know to call you when they’re in the area.
Me: This establishes a need for Zimmerman to determine the address of his current location. Which, given that it was roughly one hour after sunset, making it difficult to read signs from the street, gives some plausibility to his post-shooting claim that he exited the vehicle to check the address. He could be lying, but as it stands now his claim is consistent with publicly disclosed evidence, and speculation that he confronted Martin, or even continued following him after the dispatcher said that he didn't need to, is just that---speculation.
So your alternative to a plan you criticize as failing to make any hard choices is to increase taxes dramatically on an electorally insignificant portion of the population?
Keep in mind that population is increasing. If you hold real spending constant, real per-capita spending is decreasing. Even if you increase real spending in proportion to popualtion growth, leading to constant real per-capita spending, any increase in real per-capita GDP (which is the norm) will result in declining spending as a percentage of GDP. This is basically what happened in the '90s. Between the cuts to military spending and Congressional Republicans holding domestic spending in check, real per-capita spending remained more or less constant, and spending as a percentage of GDP fell by quite a bit. It wouldn't have fallen as much if it hadn't been for the Internet boom, but it would have fallen some regardless under any non-recessionary conditions.
That means tax hikes on the lower and middle classes. Given that Obama's whole schtick is that he's going to give you free stuff and make someone else pay for it, I can't see that happening.
To be fair, their greater numbers were a big part of it. Young adults commit the most crime, so all else being equal, crime rates will be higher when young adults are a greater prorportion of the population.
This appears to be part of a broad, nationwide trend encompassing crime and a number of other forms of risky behavior. Basically, the country stopped going to hell in a handbasket around 1990 on all measures except drug use, mainstream popular music, and entitlement spending.
I reviewed the transcript before I made that comment, to make sure that I got it right. I didn't say that Zimmerman got out of the truck while on the phone with the dispatcher. I said that the conversation indicated a reason for him to get out of the truck: "Um, I don’t know. It’s a cut-through so I don’t know the address." A bit later, he told the dispatcher to have the police call him when they arrived so that he could tell them where he was. Private communities often have inconspicuous street signs that are difficult to read in dim light, especially if your vision is less than perfect---I myself have had to exit my vehicle to determine my location on more than one occasion in the past.
That Zimmerman got off the phone with the dispatcher, got out of his truck to check the address, and was then approached by Martin is plausible and consistent with the publicly known facts.
You're kind of lowballing it by looking at only a single year. And murder is of course the tip of the iceberg; the rates of less severe crimes are much higher.
That said, the vast majority of black people are not criminals. And they're not in any way, shape, or form responsible for the crimes of those who are. Racial guilt is collectivist BS.
I assume that the uncomfortable inferences he refers to are for those who use an exaggerated narrative of white oppression of blacks to push a left-wing socioeconomic agenda---the "professional grievance industry" that was mentioned in the first sentence of that paragraph and which was the topic of the prior paragraph. I guess I can see how someone coming in with different priors could interpret that as a statement about collective racial guilt, but the context strongly suggests otherwise.
A person is justified in using force, except deadly force, against another when and to the extent that the person reasonably believes that such conduct is necessary to defend himself or herself or another against the other’s imminent use of unlawful force. However, a person is justified in the use of deadly force and does not have a duty to retreat if...He or she reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the imminent commission of a forcible felony.
I don't think that "I think he was following me" qualifies as such, though certainly I would be interested in seeing any precedent for this interpretation in Florida or any other state with similar laws.
Right, he got out of the truck after he told the dispatcher that he had lost sight of Martin and didn't know the address of his current location. That's a matter of public record. That's not something he made up in the wake of the shooting to cast it in a favorable light, so he was almost certainly telling the truth.
He needed to find out his location in order to tell the police where to meet him. Which means that he had a perfectly good reason to get out of his car, with Martin presumably nowhere in sight. He had no apparent reason to want to confront Martin---he had already called the police, after all.
Claims that Zimmerman confronted Martin, or that he sought a confrontation with Martin, are entirely speculative, and are not regularly being presented as such. They may in fact turn out to be correct, but that doesn't mean that they're justified at this time.
Let's turn this around. Suppose a white guy had beat up a black guy because he thought he was following him? Self-defense, or a case of Walking While Black?
Nowhere in that piece does he claim victimhood. He's rightly pointing out that the left's rhetoric on these issues is complete and utter bullshit, but he doesn't say that he's a victim, or that he's suffering.
Your comment makes no substantive point. It's just cattiness.
Ugh. This again? First, it's not clear from the 911 tapes that Zimmerman was pursuing Martin. He said he was following Martin, but there's no real evidence that he was pursuing with the intent to confront, rather than keeping an eye on him until the police arrived. Furthermore, he said during the 911 call that he had lost sight of Martin. There's no real evidence that he continued following Martin after the dispatcher told him they didn't need him to (which, I should add, is not the same as ordering him not to follow). In fact, he said during the 911 call that he wasn't quite sure of the address of his current location, which is entirely consistent with his claim that Martin confronted him when he got out to check the address.
Finally---do I really need to say this?---it's not illegal to follow someone. Zimmerman did not forfeit his right to self-defense by following Martin. "I think he was following me" is not a legitimate reason to knock someone to the ground and repeatedly slam his head on the sidewalk. That may or may not be what actually happened, but if it is, Zimmerman was entirely justified in shooting him.
Obviously, Zimmerman has a very strong incentive to lie if the facts are not as he has claimed, and his story is not the only story consistent with the evidence which has thus far been made public. But his story is one story that is consistent with that evidence, and if it's true he's unquestionably innocent of any crime.
Anyone who thinks the “disproportionate rate of criminality and drug use” from official statistics is based on the fact that black “culture” is somehow just inferior to the rest? You’re either willfully ignorant or have an unspoken prejudice. If you seriously think that a white, middle-class teenager is less likely to possess or use marijuana than a black urban teenager? You’re either stupid or blind. One can get away with it with a wink and a nod. The other gets sent to jail. Guess which actually shows up in crime statistics.
Speaking of sophistry, you addressed the weak point and pretended like that covered the strong one. Hanson is wrong about drug use. Blacks have only a slighter higher rate of past-month drug use than whites (Source). But he's right about real crimes. For example, here's a table (PDF) of the race of perpetrators of violent crimes as perceived by victims. Whites outnumber blacks six-to-one in the general population, but by no more than three-to-one in any of these categories (except simple assault, barely). Here's murder. More murders by black offenders than by white offenders, suggesting that blacks commit murder at a rate about seven times higher than whites.
That's because the right uses "anti-semitism" much as the left uses "racism"---as a magic word to delegitimize opposition, rather than in any meaningful descriptive sense.
To be sure, these phenomena really do exist---they're just wildly overdiagnosed to score cheap rhetorical points.
On “Characters And Records: Defining The President In 2012”
Hitler was Schrödinger’s president for a while. Why you gotta go and pull a Godwin?
On “Talking About The Talk”
Sure. Bruce and Sheila.
"
For someone who complains as much as she does about men not being masculine enough, she doesn't strike me as particularly feminine.
On “Strawmen Tell No Tales: The Sophistry of Victor Davis Hanson”
Will:
I lived in an apartment complex for several years and never bothered to learn any of the internal street names, nor was there any point at which that information ever would have been useful. I knew what street the entrance to the complex was on, and that's all that mattered. There's a five-way intersection right outside my home and I don't know the name of the third street. It's never come up.
Zimmerman said he didn't know the address of his current location while talking to the dispatcher prior to the shooting. Unless he was actually planning on shooting Martin at that point, he had no reason to lie. Why would you not take that claim at face value?
"
Okay, I see the source of the confusion now. He did get out of the truck after telling the dispatcher he didn't know the address of his current location. He hold the dispatcher that he didn't know his current location, and a few minutes later he got out of the truck. I didn't mean to suggest that he got out immediately after saying that, which I have no reason to believe is the case.
"
The lines labeled "Me" are my commentary, inserted after the fact. I wasn't actually in on that call. And it would have been kind of creepy if I'd said that stuff.
"
I'm not sure how much more clear I can make this: I didn't say he got out of the truck during the call. I didn't say he announced his intention to get out of the truck during the call. I said that the call indicates that he had a reason to get out of the truck:
Dispatcher: Alright, what address are you parked in front of?
Zimmerman: Um, I don’t know. It’s a cut-through so I don’t know the address.
Me: This establishes that Zimmerman was unsure of the address of his current location.
Dispatcher: Alright, George, I’ll let them know you’ll meet them at …
Zimmerman: Could you have them call me and I’ll tell them where I’m at?
Dispatcher: OK, no problem. I’ll let them know to call you when they’re in the area.
Me: This establishes a need for Zimmerman to determine the address of his current location. Which, given that it was roughly one hour after sunset, making it difficult to read signs from the street, gives some plausibility to his post-shooting claim that he exited the vehicle to check the address. He could be lying, but as it stands now his claim is consistent with publicly disclosed evidence, and speculation that he confronted Martin, or even continued following him after the dispatcher said that he didn't need to, is just that---speculation.
On “Eating Peas”
So your alternative to a plan you criticize as failing to make any hard choices is to increase taxes dramatically on an electorally insignificant portion of the population?
"
Keep in mind that population is increasing. If you hold real spending constant, real per-capita spending is decreasing. Even if you increase real spending in proportion to popualtion growth, leading to constant real per-capita spending, any increase in real per-capita GDP (which is the norm) will result in declining spending as a percentage of GDP. This is basically what happened in the '90s. Between the cuts to military spending and Congressional Republicans holding domestic spending in check, real per-capita spending remained more or less constant, and spending as a percentage of GDP fell by quite a bit. It wouldn't have fallen as much if it hadn't been for the Internet boom, but it would have fallen some regardless under any non-recessionary conditions.
"
Fat lot of good that'll do. Have you ever tried to get the guy at 7-11 to break a million?
"
This seems to me like it has to be a short-term thing. I don't think it's possible to have a long-run glut of capital.
"
That means tax hikes on the lower and middle classes. Given that Obama's whole schtick is that he's going to give you free stuff and make someone else pay for it, I can't see that happening.
On “Strawmen Tell No Tales: The Sophistry of Victor Davis Hanson”
To be fair, their greater numbers were a big part of it. Young adults commit the most crime, so all else being equal, crime rates will be higher when young adults are a greater prorportion of the population.
"
This appears to be part of a broad, nationwide trend encompassing crime and a number of other forms of risky behavior. Basically, the country stopped going to hell in a handbasket around 1990 on all measures except drug use, mainstream popular music, and entitlement spending.
"
I reviewed the transcript before I made that comment, to make sure that I got it right. I didn't say that Zimmerman got out of the truck while on the phone with the dispatcher. I said that the conversation indicated a reason for him to get out of the truck: "Um, I don’t know. It’s a cut-through so I don’t know the address." A bit later, he told the dispatcher to have the police call him when they arrived so that he could tell them where he was. Private communities often have inconspicuous street signs that are difficult to read in dim light, especially if your vision is less than perfect---I myself have had to exit my vehicle to determine my location on more than one occasion in the past.
That Zimmerman got off the phone with the dispatcher, got out of his truck to check the address, and was then approached by Martin is plausible and consistent with the publicly known facts.
"
Or that if a black person was killed it was almost certainly his fault.
Do you want to maybe revise that a bit, or are you standing by this as a fair description of the defense of Zimmerman?
"
You're kind of lowballing it by looking at only a single year. And murder is of course the tip of the iceberg; the rates of less severe crimes are much higher.
That said, the vast majority of black people are not criminals. And they're not in any way, shape, or form responsible for the crimes of those who are. Racial guilt is collectivist BS.
I assume that the uncomfortable inferences he refers to are for those who use an exaggerated narrative of white oppression of blacks to push a left-wing socioeconomic agenda---the "professional grievance industry" that was mentioned in the first sentence of that paragraph and which was the topic of the prior paragraph. I guess I can see how someone coming in with different priors could interpret that as a statement about collective racial guilt, but the context strongly suggests otherwise.
"
Wasn’t Zimmerman following Martin sufficient cause, under Florida law, for Martin to shoot Zimmerman dead?
Not as I read the law. The standard is:
A person is justified in using force, except deadly force, against another when and to the extent that the person reasonably believes that such conduct is necessary to defend himself or herself or another against the other’s imminent use of unlawful force. However, a person is justified in the use of deadly force and does not have a duty to retreat if...He or she reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the imminent commission of a forcible felony.
I don't think that "I think he was following me" qualifies as such, though certainly I would be interested in seeing any precedent for this interpretation in Florida or any other state with similar laws.
"
Right, he got out of the truck after he told the dispatcher that he had lost sight of Martin and didn't know the address of his current location. That's a matter of public record. That's not something he made up in the wake of the shooting to cast it in a favorable light, so he was almost certainly telling the truth.
He needed to find out his location in order to tell the police where to meet him. Which means that he had a perfectly good reason to get out of his car, with Martin presumably nowhere in sight. He had no apparent reason to want to confront Martin---he had already called the police, after all.
Claims that Zimmerman confronted Martin, or that he sought a confrontation with Martin, are entirely speculative, and are not regularly being presented as such. They may in fact turn out to be correct, but that doesn't mean that they're justified at this time.
Let's turn this around. Suppose a white guy had beat up a black guy because he thought he was following him? Self-defense, or a case of Walking While Black?
"
Nowhere in that piece does he claim victimhood. He's rightly pointing out that the left's rhetoric on these issues is complete and utter bullshit, but he doesn't say that he's a victim, or that he's suffering.
Your comment makes no substantive point. It's just cattiness.
"
Does this mean you guys are axing the swimsuit edition? If I don't get a full color fold-out of Tom van Dyke in a bikini, we're through.
"
Ugh. This again? First, it's not clear from the 911 tapes that Zimmerman was pursuing Martin. He said he was following Martin, but there's no real evidence that he was pursuing with the intent to confront, rather than keeping an eye on him until the police arrived. Furthermore, he said during the 911 call that he had lost sight of Martin. There's no real evidence that he continued following Martin after the dispatcher told him they didn't need him to (which, I should add, is not the same as ordering him not to follow). In fact, he said during the 911 call that he wasn't quite sure of the address of his current location, which is entirely consistent with his claim that Martin confronted him when he got out to check the address.
Finally---do I really need to say this?---it's not illegal to follow someone. Zimmerman did not forfeit his right to self-defense by following Martin. "I think he was following me" is not a legitimate reason to knock someone to the ground and repeatedly slam his head on the sidewalk. That may or may not be what actually happened, but if it is, Zimmerman was entirely justified in shooting him.
Obviously, Zimmerman has a very strong incentive to lie if the facts are not as he has claimed, and his story is not the only story consistent with the evidence which has thus far been made public. But his story is one story that is consistent with that evidence, and if it's true he's unquestionably innocent of any crime.
"
Anyone who thinks the “disproportionate rate of criminality and drug use” from official statistics is based on the fact that black “culture” is somehow just inferior to the rest? You’re either willfully ignorant or have an unspoken prejudice. If you seriously think that a white, middle-class teenager is less likely to possess or use marijuana than a black urban teenager? You’re either stupid or blind. One can get away with it with a wink and a nod. The other gets sent to jail. Guess which actually shows up in crime statistics.
Speaking of sophistry, you addressed the weak point and pretended like that covered the strong one. Hanson is wrong about drug use. Blacks have only a slighter higher rate of past-month drug use than whites (Source). But he's right about real crimes. For example, here's a table (PDF) of the race of perpetrators of violent crimes as perceived by victims. Whites outnumber blacks six-to-one in the general population, but by no more than three-to-one in any of these categories (except simple assault, barely). Here's murder. More murders by black offenders than by white offenders, suggesting that blacks commit murder at a rate about seven times higher than whites.
On “Beyond Derbyshire”
That's because the right uses "anti-semitism" much as the left uses "racism"---as a magic word to delegitimize opposition, rather than in any meaningful descriptive sense.
To be sure, these phenomena really do exist---they're just wildly overdiagnosed to score cheap rhetorical points.
"
That "turd" is a pretty fair analysis. As I've said elsewhere, "racism" isn't just a magic word you can use to delegitimize the opposition.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.