Day: March 29, 2012

Trayvon Martin and the Fifth Anniversary of the Murder of Ryan Skipper

Jon Ponder

Lynn Mulder, center, standing between her sons, Damien Skipper, left, and Ryan Skipper
Lynn Mulder, center, standing between her sons, Damien Skipper, left, and Ryan Skipper
As details have come to light about the murder of Trayvon Martin last month in Sanford, Fla., the questions being raised about police conduct in the case bring to mind the way police in Polk County, Fla., which is about 75 miles southeast of Sanford, handled the case of Ryan Skipper who was murdered there five years ago this month.

Except for the fact that both murders were senseless and tragic, and both crimes took down young men who should have had long and promising lives ahead of them, the circumstances around the murders diverge. Ryan was robbed, stabbed 20 times by a pair of crazed meth heads who left him to die on a dirt road near Wahneta. Trayvon was allegedly stalked inside the grounds of a gated community by an over-zealous and seemingly paranoiac community watch volunteer who shot him apparently during a struggle.

There are striking parallels, however. Both cases involved some sketchy police conduct, the murders both occurred in Central Florida and both victims were young and members of minority groups. Trayvon Martin was 17 and African-American, and Ryan Skipper was 25 and gay.

It took a month or so for the Martin case to gain attention, and now it has become a firestorm. In the Skipper case, the shock was immediate, but because of the way Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd characterized the case in his first news conference, interest in it in the national media fizzled over night.

[…]

And Then There’s the One About the Factory Closing

Buck Banks

On the Mitt Romney Comedy Tour, er, presidential campaign, the candidate has earned a reputation for having a tin ear when it comes to what a rich white billionaire thinks is funny (firing people, acting like women he’s taking a photo with grab his ass, wearing mom jeans, etc.) and what average people who actually need a job think is funny.

Romney’s latest standup gig, er, campaign appearance, was in Wisconsin, where he told what he considered to be a real ripper:

Talking by conference call with thousands of Wisconsin voters Wednesday, Mitt Romney told them he had a humorous connection to their state.

But it didn’t take long for “funny anecdote” to become “campaign fodder.”

Romney’s story involved the time more than 50 years ago that his father, George, an American Motors executive, shut down a factory in Michigan and moved the work to Wisconsin.

“Now later he decided to run for governor of Michigan, and so you can imagine that having closed the factory and moved all the production to Wisconsin was a very sensitive issue to him, for his campaign,” explained Romney, who described a subsequent campaign parade in which the school band marching with his father knew how to play Wisconsin’s fight song, but not Michigan’s.

“Every time they would start playing ‘On Wisconsin, On Wisconsin,’ my dad’s political people would jump up and down and try to get them to stop, because they didn’t want people in Michigan to be reminded that my dad had moved production to Wisconsin,” said Romney, laughing.

Romney will probably be telling jokes at a venue near you sometime between now and November. If you are a Republican, please laugh politely.

Why Jim DeMint – or a White Evangelical Southern Male Like Him – Will Be Romney’s VP Nominee

Jon Ponder

It is all but a dead cinch now that Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee for president this year, not because he accrued the delegates he needs — he hasn’t — but because the campaigns of his two closest rivals have imploded.

Newt Gingrich’s sugar daddy Sheldon Adelson, owner of the Venetian and Sands casinos in Las Vegas, recently announced he was pulling the plug on the Gingrich campaign. Gingrich is “at the end of his line,” Adelson said in informal remarks at a Jewish Federation of North America event in one of his casinos.

Rick Santorum inadvertently revealed that he knows his campaign is over — a revelation he has not shared with his donors or supporters — in an interview on Pat Robertson’s televangelical “news” network. Asked if he would be willing to be Romney’s running mate, Santorum said, “Of course. I mean, look. I would do in this race as I always say, this is the most important race in our country’s history. I’m going to do everything I can.”

Wrong answer. The correct answer would have been, “Fortunately, I’ll never have to make that decision, because I am going to be the nominee.” Thanks for playing.

The likelihood Romney would choose Santorum as his running mate is zilch — and not just because Santorum lost his last Senate race in Pennsylvania by double digits or because the Obama campaign would have a field day producing ads showing Romney’s running mate shaking an Etch-a-Sketch, describing Romney as “uniquely disqualified,” a “well-oiled weather vane,” “bland and boring” and a “bully.”

But that’s just one reason the Romney campaign won’t choose Santorum. The other reason is that Rick Santorum is a Catholic.

[…]