Was the shooting of the Australian in Oklahoma a hate crime? Was it a revenge killing for Trayvon Martin?

I have collected a number of previous cases where blacks have killed or beaten whites or Hispanics in revenge of Trayvon Martin's death (see here, here, and here).  Now there is another case involving the Australian who was killed in Oklahoma.  The difference here is that the death is extremely high profile and you would think that the general media would have to finally acknowledge the impact that the racial angle in the Trayvon Martin case (a racial angle that the media has constantly been pushing).  From the Washington Times:

. . . James, who is black, was arrested along with his friends and suspected accomplices, Michael Dewayne Jones, 17, and Chancey Allen Luna, 16.  James and Chancey were charged with first-degree murder. Michaelwas arrested for using a vehicle to facilitate the discharge of a weapon—  the suspects allegedly fired on Lane from their car as he jogged down the street — and on charges of being an accessory after the fact of first-degree murder. 

Some of James‘ tweets are proving enlightening. 

One: “90 percent of white ppl are nasty. # HATE THEM.” 

Another: He brags he “knocked out 5 woods since Zimmerman court.” The word “woods,” The Blaze said, is a term to describe white people in a derogatory manner. 

Another, on Aug. 13: “With my niggas when it’s time to start taken life’s.” 

And his Facebook account — before it was deactivated — wasn’t much tamer, The Blaze reported. One posting from April 19 read: “At the end of the day it’s all about the kill.” . . .

In 2008, President Obama campaigned on bringing Americans together.  Many whites voted for Obama on the hopes that it would be the ultimate way of helping heal some of the country's racial wounds.  Instead, Obama has done things such as personalizing Trayvon Martin's death and emphasizing the racial aspects of it.  This is what he said on July 19th:

You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot I said that this could have been my son.  Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.  And when you think about why, in the African American community at least, there’s a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it’s important to recognize that the African American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesn’t go away. 

There are very few African American men in this country who haven't had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store.  That includes me.  There are very few African American men who haven't had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars.  That happens to me -- at least before I was a senator.  There are very few African Americans who haven't had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off.  That happens often. . . .

In reading this quote from Obama, it sure seems as if he is indicating that Trayvon was being followed because of his race.  If so, Obama sure seems to imply that the shooting was racially motivated.  To put it slightly differently, when Obama refers to Trayvon as some who could have been his son or that he could have been Obama, isn't Obama saying that could have been the case because Obama is black?  Here is something that John Kass wrote in the Chicago Tribune.

Obama pronounced the killing as racially motivated, though he didn't use the words. He didn't have to, such is his prowess. It was so smooth that few noticed. He put the killing in a racial context, and that was enough. 

"You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot, I said that this could have been my son. Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me, 35 years ago," Obama told reporters at the White House on Friday, addressing last weekend's acquittal of Martin's shooter, George Zimmerman. 

Could Obama have been Trayvon Martin 35 years ago?  Perhaps. If so, then any of us could have been Trayvon Martin. And I could have been Trayvon Martin. Racial motives weren't established at trial. And reportedly, the FBI still hasn't found racial motives in George Zimmerman, who is Hispanic. . . .

These types of comments go back to the Louis Gates case in 2009.  The transcript shows:

. . . My understanding is at that point Professor Gates is already in his house. The police officer comes in, I'm sure there's some exchange of words, but my understanding is, is that Professor Gates then shows his ID to show that this is his house. And at that point, he gets arrested for disorderly conduct -- charges which are later dropped. 

Now, I don't know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that, but I think it's fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge Police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home; and number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there is a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That's just a fact. . . .

President Obama made this inflammatory by claiming Gates showed his ID to show that it was his home.  In fact, that isn't what happened (click on the text below from page 2 of the police report to make it larger):

President Obama and his supporters have helped contribute to this racial tensions in other ways.  Every policy disagreement with Obama seems to be interpreted as motivated by racial animus.

And the polls show clearly that racial relations have deteriorated both nationwide and in Florida where the Zimmerman trial occurred since Obama first took office.

A Viewpoint Florida poll of 900 people asked: Question #5: “In your opinion, have race relations in the United States gotten better or worse since Barack Obama took office almost 5 years ago, or have they stayed about the same?” 53 percent answered that race relations have deteriorated since Obama’s inauguration, with only 10 percent saying they’ve improved.

From the Washington Post:

In a poll conducted by the Pew Research Center titled “King’s Dream Remains an Elusive Goal,” only 26 percent of African Americans said the situation for black people has improved in the past five years, and 21 percent said things have gotten worse. In a 2009 poll, 39 percent saw improvements, Pew said. Today, half said the picture is essentially unchanged.
Whites had a much more positive opinion of black progress, with 35 percent saying things have gotten better in the past five years. Even among whites, however, that share has fallen from 49 percent in 2009.
In the fifth year of the Obama presidency, Pew researchers and scholars of race relations attribute the pessimistic outlook among African Americans to the fading glow of Obama’s first term and the lingering struggle to emerge from the recession. Pew said sentiment is approximately where it was before the recession and Obama’s election. . . .

Why is it that the Post would never consider Obama's racial rhetoric in discussing worsening racial relations? 

Gun control

CNN: "A chart in the Washington Post, using data from The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, shows Australia to have among the lowest gun-related killings in the developed world. The United States had the highest. Former Prime Minister John Howard told CNN's Christiane Amanpour in March that gun control laws instituted after a mass shooting were responsible for the low number."

Christian Science Monitor: "Also getting prominent airplay were comments by former Australian Deputy Prime Minister Tim Fischer that Australian tourists should boycott the US to send a message about gun control. “I am deeply angry about this because of the callous attitude of the three teenagers [but] it’s a sign of the proliferation of guns on the ground in the USA. There is a gun for almost every American,” Mr. Fischer said.  The comments reflect the view of most Australians that lax gun laws in the United States are behind the country’s high murder rate and string of shocking massacres such as last year’s mass shooting at Sandy Hook school in Connecticut."

From Alan Colmes:

UPDATE: Another case in Memphis might have also been a Trayvon Martin revenge killing.

“The first and foremost question in De Diago’s mind: If this was a robbery, why did his brother-in-law still have his wallet, car keys, and cell phone? Nothing was taken from him. And witnesses confirm that,” the Blaze reported.
“Miguel also says the police told him that the 9mm shell casing was found 10 feet from the body — an indication to him that the shooter was not at close range as would typically happen with a robbery.”
The family source told the Blaze that he tracked one of the alleged shooters, Mario Patterson, through his Facebook account, which no longer exists.
“He said the page had numerous photos of Trayvon Martin, and he wondered if it’s possible the shooting was a revenge killing for the Zimmerman verdict,” the report said. . . .