Domestic Violence

Domestic violence is a pattern of behavior in a relationship used by ignorant jackasses to gain power and control over a partner. These jackasses usually have nothing substantial to offer to another human being. Abuse can be physical, sexual, emotional, verbal, economic. It can be in the form of threats or other psychological actions to frighten, intimidate, terrorize, manipulate, hurt, humiliate, blame or injure. This occurs within all races, ages, genders, sexual orientation, religion, socioeconomic groups and education levels and at all levels of a relationship.

Emotionally and verbally abusive partners withhold affection, threaten to harm their partner/wife/girlfriend and/or the people and pets important to them; name-call, insult, humiliate, excessively criticize; are possessive, jealous, distrustful, isolate, spy/monitor, exert financial control and force submissiveness such as obedience and obtaining permission.

Physically abusive partners damage property. This can include throwing things, punching or kicking walls and doors; push, slap, bite, kick, choke; will abandon their partner/wife/girlfriend in an unsafe or strange environment; drive recklessly, threaten with a weapon, hold them against their will, prevent them from contacting the police or other emergency services, harm their children or pets and forced sexual activity.

Sexually abusive partners objectify women, enforce strict gender roles, is obsessively jealous, frequently to the point of paranoia, refers to or defines their partner/wife/girlfriend by using sexual language; through manipulation, coercion, verbally demands or physically forces sexual acts.

Now for some sickening statistics to bring the above into sharp perspective:

On average more than three women a day are murdered by their husbands or boyfriends in the United States.

In 2005, 1,181 women were murdered by an intimate partner.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published data collected in 2005 that finds that women experience two million injuries from intimate partner violence each year.

Nearly one in four women in the United States reports experiencing violence by a current or former spouse or boyfriend at some point in her life.

Women are much more likely than men to be victimized by a current or former intimate partner.

Women are 84 percent of spouse abuse victims and 86 percent of victims of abuse at the hands of a boyfriend or partner and 75 percent of the persons who commit family violence are male.

Women were more likely than men to be victims; the rate for rape/sexual assault for persons age 12 or older in 2007 was 1.8 per 1,000 for females and 0.1 per 1,000 for males.

To bring all of this into even sharper perspective, here in Santa Maria, the 35 year old woman pictured above was murdered by her husband a week ago Friday. He shot her three times. He evidently didn't care that his children would be without their mother.

The jackass husband, Isaac Martinez, 32, is the father of the four youngest children, ranging in age from 4 to 14. Immediately after murdering her, the coward fled the scene. Luckily he was arrested the next day near Yuma, Arizona, when his vehicle was spotted matching a description provided by Santa Maria police.

Maria described the years of physical and emotional abuse at the hands of this useless jerkweed. He's a piece of work. In the paperwork filed seeking the restraining order, Maria said she left him on May 27 and was no longer living with him and was planning to divorce him.

She wrote, “He is physically, emotionally and psychologically abusive all of our 15-year relationship. He would slap me, kick me, punch me and choke me unconscious. He has even pulled a rifle out on me in the few years we were together."

She went on to describe several incidences of abuse, including having her face slapped at work in 2002 while she was pregnant, and an altercation in 2006 when he hit her, cracking her nose and making it bleed.

A search of criminal court records in Santa Barbara County revealed that this jerk has been busy.

He has a history of criminal convictions and prison stints: including a false-imprisonment case in 2006, a felony DUI in 2004, fighting in public, robbery, burglary and resisting an officer in the 1990s, suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon in April of 2010, and he's a documented Santa Maria gang member.

Now, the son of a bitch is facing murder charges, using a gun to cause a death, making criminal threats and being a gang member in possession of a firearm.

He is currently being held without bail in Arizona awaiting extradition to California.

 I sincerely hope that other women in this situation will not ignore the signs of domestic violence. I also hope that they have a secure and dependable support system to shield them from the assholes they're running away from.

Our "Post Racial Society"

Let's take a moment and look at all of the reasons why all of this talk about a post-racial America by various blowhards is so absurd.

How can we claim to be living in post-racial America when nearly 40 percent of black children under the age of 5 live at or below the poverty line?

How can we claim to be living in post-racial America when the level of school segregation for Hispanics is at its highest in forty years and segregation of blacks is back to levels not seen since the late 1960s?

How can we claim to be living in post-racial America when the gaps in wealth, income, education and health care have widened over the last eight years?

In 2006, 20.3 percent of blacks were not covered by health insurance, 34.1 percent of Hispanics were not covered by health insurance, compared to only 10.8 percent of whites.

In 2007, the unemployment rate for blacks was twice as high as that for whites.

There are those who will continue to insist that the gap in wealth, income, health care and education is due to an inherent culture of victimization.

There are some who will continue to say, "If people of color only worked harder, they’d be fine."

Well, to put it bluntly, that's an idiotic assumption.

This economy has never provided enough jobs for everyone.

The manner in which education is funded gives a leg up to those who grow up in wealthy districts.

Health insurance is a necessity, more so to those without the means, since they rarely see a doctor.

Like it or not, admit it or not, institutional racism persists.

President Obama once said, “Our union can be perfected. What we’ve already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.”

His election and his words redeem some of the sacrifices of so many during the protests at lunch counters and on Southern roads. However, it does not fix nor will it make the racism and bigotry go away overnight.

You still think that we've achieved a post-racial society simply because we have a black president? Well then, consider one more thing, the vast disparities still remaining between the conditions of blacks and whites in America. According the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median black worker earns just over $600/week, about 80% of what the median white worker makes. Black men are incarcerated at 6.6 times the rate of white men, with almost one in twenty black men in prison. Unemployment rates are nearly twice as high for blacks as for whites in almost every demographic category. Almost half of all young black men without a high school education are out of work nationally.

So much more needs to change before we start spouting off about a "post-racial" society.