Thanks to reader GregB for this fabulous commentary on Trump and the NFL and civil rights and racism and the Constitution.
Dale Hansen is a clear-thinking sports commentator in Dallas. He is a Vietnam vet, unlike Trump, who got five deferments (the fifth one for his sore feet).
Take three minutes and watch. Trump offends the Constitution and the flag every time he attacks those who disagree with him. He is waving the flag to distract attention from the Russia investigation and the fact that all of his top aides used their private email servers for government business, exactly why he wanted to jail Hillary Clinton. Lock up Jared! Ivanka! Bannon! Priebus! Cohn!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Very well stated and he offers quite a bit of food for thought.
LikeLike
Wow. Perfect!!!!
LikeLike
There’s another great one out there, also by a career soldier, now a vet. He goes into exhaustive detail so get comfy as its not a short read. http://www.stonekettle.com/2016/09/respect-colin-kaepernick-extended-cut.html
LikeLike
JL, Thank you; article is inspiring.
LikeLike
THANK YOU, Jon.
LikeLike
Dale Hansen is amazing and has single handedluy rewritten my opinion of Texas, and I thank him for that. When you go to YouTube to watch the video, please take the time to hear his thoughts on other related and unrelated issues. He is a clear eyed and honest reservoir of common sense and true American values.
LikeLike
Yes! His comments on Greg Hardy’s abuse of women and how it was tolerated by the Cowboys and Michael Sam’s coming out and its meaning are two of the greatest public statements of which I am aware.
LikeLiked by 1 person
When Dale speaks his mind, is usually spot on. I’ve listen to Dale for years and he has always been a class act.
LikeLike
I agree. This just covers it all!
LikeLike
Best political T-shirt of the month:
https://www.teeshirtpalace.com/products/it-s-mueller-time-robert-mueller-logo-t-shirt?gclid=CjwKCAjwmK3OBRBKEiwAOL6t1NFqo_M06iwterJqZVTslyOVHJe68no7TcgjvXEh2LXrNxK1IAtC4RoCyNQQAvD_BwE
LikeLike
My Christmas shopping list just got a lot shorter!
LikeLike
Google the slogan
Many companies have this shirt
LikeLike
That was a good commentary but this Facebook post was more uplifting;
“How about everyone stop worrying about who stands and who kneels during the National Anthem and throw that son of a bitch out of the White House. “
LikeLike
IMHO, Better still is this: Why the self righteous outrage about athletes taking a knee during the national anthem to protest ongoing injustice when so very many of our vets are homeless and without the medical care we owe them? When so many are taking their own lives? When their honor and commitment is insulted by sending them to be maimed and to die in wars of choice, not of necessity? Where is the outrage over that? Where is the outrage over all the fans in the stands playing on their phones at the exact same time, over those waiting in line to buy food and ignoring the whole thing? About wearing the flag printed on your underwear, how is that not a far greater insult to the flag? What about Trump not putting his hand on his heart during the pledge, not once but many times? Did his feet hurt too much for that? All of the whining and self righteous, holier than thou complaining about althletes taking a knee is nothing more than the bleating of a herd of sheeple running to and fro and jumping through hoops at the absurd commands of the boy who cried wolf, little Donnie Dumpster.
LikeLike
Many athletes seem determined to ignore the tired, old mantra of “stick to sports.’’
“I think the hardest thing is that all of us would love to just stick to sports,’’ Elana Meyers Taylor, a two-time Olympic bobsledder, told The Times [NYT] this week. “But if you want us to be role models to kids then you need to stand for more than just sports.”
LikeLike
Amen! STAND FOR MORE THAN SPORTS.
LikeLike
I’m not a sport’s enthusiast but I love the sight of those who kneel to protest black inequality and/or the unfitness of ignoramus tRump. That is a sight worth watching.
LikeLike
The owners who donated to Trump and are now suddenly champions of civil rights strike me as hypocrites. It’s not like Trump was MLK before the election.
I have respect for the players but not the owners, most of whom are interested in one thing only: money. TheWashington Redskins owner, Daniel Snyder, recently joined arms with his players, some kneeling, during the national anthem but has said previously “we will never change the name of the team”, which is blatantly racist and deeply disturbing to native Americans given the history (eg, bounty posters for “Redskins” — scalps of native Americans)
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a29445/true-redskins-meaning/
LikeLiked by 1 person
I agree that the owners are wealthy people. Wonder why they are standing up for the protests because those protests won’t go over well with conservatives. As Trump has said, it is destroying our flag. Besides, who needs to protest racial inequality?
(He finds time to Twitter against the NFL but doesn’t have time to insist that Puerto Rico and the American Virgin Islands get the help they need. People, all American citizens, will soon die without any food, medicine, water or electricity.)
LikeLike
I suspect that the owners who donated to Trump and are now “standing with” their team are actually standing for whatever they figure will be best for the bottom line. It’s a calculated business risk, but many of these folks have made their money precisely off of such risks. I suspect there is also a “stick your finger in the wind” element at work.
And I agree about Puerto Rico and the rest of that region,, American and not.
It’s bad enough that we have allowed Wall Street loan sharks to feed on the people in Puerto Ric for so long, but now we sit idly by while people there face a disaster of apocalyptic proportions.
LikeLike
YES: “The owners who donated to Trump and are now suddenly champions of civil rights strike me as hypocrites.” SO many shockingly wealthy sports moguls willing to look the other way as Trump embarrassed a nation and denigrated cultures, women, the handicapped — all so that they could blindly vote for the part of the rich.
LikeLike
“Take Two Knees (for Trump)”
One knee is bad
But two knees are good
Athletes are sad
Cuz worship they should
LikeLike
Someone should create #take2kneesfortrump
LikeLike
And then there is Shannon Sharp, pulling no punches… an edit version of this was circulated on FB… http://www.thecoli.com/threads/shannon-sharpes-is-unimpressed-with-the-nfl-b-c-it-took-being-called-sobs-to-act.573570/
LikeLike
Thanks, Diane. Intelligent!
LikeLike
Everyone should copy the following transcript of Hansen’s commentary and post it as a comment on every Facebook post by some flag-waving bigot or right-wing group. Here’s the transcript of Hansen’s remarks:
Former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick takes a knee during the national anthem in San Francisco last year. We noticed, but very few players joined him.
He can’t get a job in the NFL now, and very few have said much about that, either.
But the president says he wants that peaceful protest to stop… He says those players should be fired if they take a knee during the anthem, and calls those players a name I never thought I’d live long enough to hear a president say.
Now, everybody cares.
Donald Trump has said he supports a peaceful protest because it’s an American’s right… But not this protest, and there’s the problem: The opinion that any protest you don’t agree with is a protest that should be stopped.
Martin Luther King should have marched across a different bridge. Young, black Americans should have gone to a different college and found a different lunch counter. And college kids in the 60’s had no right to protest an immoral war.
I served in the military during the Vietnam War… and my foot hurt, too. But I served anyway.
My best friend in high school was killed in Vietnam. Carroll Meir will be 18 years old forever. And he did not die so that you can decide who is a patriot and who loves America more.
The young, black athletes are not disrespecting America or the military by taking a knee during the anthem. They are respecting the best thing about America. It’s a dog whistle to the racists among us to say otherwise.
They, and all of us, should protest how black Americans are treated in this country. And if you don’t think white privilege is a fact, you don’t understand America.
The comedian Chris Rock said it best: There’s not a white man in America who would trade places with him, and he’s rich.
It has not gone unnoticed that President Trump has spoken out against the Mexicans who want to come to America for a better life against the Muslims and now against the black athlete. Ht he says nothing for days … about the white men who marched under a Nazi flag in Charlottesville except to remind us there were good people there. And when he finally tried to say the right thing not 1 of them was called an s-o-b, nor did he say anyone should be fired.
Maybe we all need to read our Constitution again. There has never been a better use of pen to paper. Our forefathers made Freedom of Speech the First Amendment. They listed 10 more, and not one of them says you have to stand during the national anthem.
And I think those men respected the country they fought for and founded — a great deal more than the self-proclaimed patriots who are simply hypocrites — because they want to deny the basic freedom of this great country…a country they supposedly value and cherish so much.
LikeLike
Thank you, Scisne. Reading the transcript is somehow as powerful as Dale’s delivery. We can reread sections that mean more to us.
I am reminded often these days of a quote by 1986 Nobel Literature Prize laureate Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian writer (where they know something about political opposition): “The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.”
LikeLike
” “The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.””
That’s why N. Korea and Saudi Arabia are such difficult places to live. There is no criticism.
LikeLike
Diane,
Standing for the anthem, I guess, is perceived as making a political statement. The truth is standing for the anthem is not politics. That’s how you do not make a political statement. Not standing for the anthem is the political statement. The coaches say, “I can’t tell these men what to do but then tells themwhat to do! Where to be, what time to be there, what they can eat and can’t eat, what they can dress, what the fine’s gonna be if they violate any rule.
John Calvin – September 25, 2017, 12:05 am
Donald Trump, the person the media tells you at every turn is the dumbest guy in whatever room he is in, in just one weekend outflanked the left, the Democratic Party, the media, and the elites. Not only did Trump outmaneuver his political enemies, all the self-proclaimed enlightened people still haven’t caught on that he has taken them to school as they are too busy digging a deeper hole.
By nationalizing this issue, the President has come off as the guy who is standing up for the flag, America, decency and common sense. The President’s critics who are so quick to jump on him no matter what he says, looked before they leapt on this one and consequently come off as people who hate America. Former member of Congress, Donna Edwards, seemed to sum up the left’s sentiment after Trump’s weekend remarks, recommending that all players now take a knee. Come election day, being the party that is against the anthem, the flag, and for millionaire athletes is not a good place to be. And for Donald Trump, every time a player takes a knee the president comes out as the hero for defending American values. Politically, this is the gift that keeps giving.
NFL is on a suicide mission. The activism that the NFL engages in is a slap in the face to the league’s composite customer. What kind of marketing genius would alienate their customer base when there isn’t a realistic plan B to replace it?
Sunday at Joint Base Andrews, a bunch of reporters, parrotsis it true that you’re racist? Is it true that your comments on the NFL were based on race? , is it true that what you really don’t like is black people protesting? Mr. Trump, are you just racist?”
He’s heard this, the questions come, the allegation has come, the allegation was made on CNN Friday night, the president’s a racist. It’s cheap. Trump’s reply.
THE PRESIDENT: That’s okay. Look, he has to take his ideas and go with what he wants. I think it’s very disrespectful to our country. I think it’s very, very disrespectful to our flag. But when you get on your knee and you don’t respect the American flag or the anthem, that’s not being treated with respect. This has nothing to do with race. I’ve never said anything about race. This has nothing to do with race or anything else. This has to do with respect for our country.
Foul on all the leftists rushing to protect the NFL’s protest crusaders from President Donald Trump’s criticism of their national-anthem antics. Their shabby line of defense? The NFL is a “private enterprise” whose “rights” are being violated by those who dare to challenge the league’s political radicalization. The anti-Trump Democratic Coalition has even filed an ethics complaint alleging that the president’s comments constitute a criminal violation against using government offices “to influence the employment decisions and practices” of a private entity. Funny. These fair-weather friends of corporate free speech and the First Amendment were nowhere to be found when Boston mayor Tom Menino and Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel were vowing to shut down Chick-fil-A in their towns as government retaliation against the founders’ private religious beliefs. As for the NFL’s status as a “private” enterprise? That’s some Super Bowl–sized audacity right there. I first started tracking publicly subsidized sports boondoggles with my very first watchdog website, Porkwatch, back in 1999. Since then, taxpayers at all levels of government have foot the bill for football stadiums to the tune of an estimated $1 billion every year.
the NFL, its teams, and its sponsors continue to benefit from a bonanza of tax-free loans, municipal bonds, rent waivers and property tax exemptions. Congress provided the league with an antitrust exemption that protects its monopoly broadcasting rights. Localities have raided “emergency” funds to help pay for stadium construction. And corporate benefactors write off their expenses for luxury boxes, tickets and naming-rights purchases. You want to raise your fists on the field? Get your grubby hands out of our pockets.
The NFL, its teams, and its sponsors continue to benefit from a bonanza of tax-free loans, municipal bonds, rent waivers and property tax exemptions. Congress provided the league with an antitrust exemption that protects its monopoly broadcasting rights. Localities have raided “emergency” funds to help pay for stadium construction. And corporate benefactors write off their expenses for luxury boxes, tickets and naming-rights purchases. You want to raise your fists on the field? Get your grubby hands out of our pockets.
The owners and players give the public the finger while sticking their hands in our back pockets. Free speech issue is disingenuous. Over the past decade, new tax-supported NFL stadiums rose up for the Indianapolis Colts (the $720 million Lucas Oil Stadium), the Dallas Cowboys (the $1.15 billion AT&T Stadium) the New York Jets and Giants (the $1.6 billion MetLife Stadium, the Minnesota Vikings (the $1.1 billion U.S. Bank Stadium), the Atlanta Falcons (the $1.5 billion Mercedes-Benz Stadium), and the San Francisco 49ers (the $1.3 billion Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara). Next in the works: a whopping $2.6 billion stadium for the Los Angeles Chargers and Rams and a $1.9 billion stadium for the Oakland Raiders when they move to Las Vegas. Left behind? An $83 million taxpayer debt on two-decade-old renovations to the Alameda County Coliseum that the Raiders are abandoning. Both political parties have supported massive redistribution of taxes from working people to the gridiron’s spoiled 1-percenters.
the NFL and other increasingly left-leaning corporations see are vast piles of money and legions of fans flying out the window. This is an issue that matters to an awful lot of Americans, not just because of the disrespect shown to our country, but also because it’s symbolic of how liberalism has been allowed to spread unchecked through our culture. If Trump’s rants and tweets get more Americans to do something about it, then he has done a good thing.
The whole blowup is exactly what Trump wanted. The media is in meltdown mode. The NFL is going apoplectic. And some on the Left are saying that Trump has engaged in a culture war that he can’t win. I’m not so sure about that. In fact, they could be dead wrong (again). CBS Sports reported on a poll, where 72 percent found Kaepernick’s antics to be unpatriotic (via CBS Sports)
In two recent polls that were both conducted within the past week, a majority of respondents said that they disagree with Kaepernick’s decision to protest racial inequality and police brutality by not standing for the national anthem.
In one poll, which was conducted by Reuters, 72 percent of Americans said that they thought Kaepernick’s behavior was unpatriotic. Another 61 percent said that they do not “support the stance Colin Kaepernick is taking and his decision not to stand during the national anthem.”
The Reuters poll of 2,903 adults was conducted between Sept. 6-12. Kaepernick’s protest went public on Aug. 26.
One should worry more about the general public response than Trump.
Scott Jennings is a CNN contributor and former special assistant to President George W. Bush. He is a partner at RunSwitch Public Relations in Louisville, Kentucky, on the 26th noted that Trump understands that his base may support free speech but is largely opposed to taking a knee in football. There’s good reason to believe that public opinion is on his side and he has again found a winning cultural issue with which to solidify his standing in Middle America.
One could hear the loud “boos” ringing in several NFL stadiums across the country this weekend indicates that many actual football fans lean toward the President’s feelings.
Other clues? As CNNMoney reports, Alejandro Villanueva’s jersey “just became the hottest buy in the NFL,” outselling all others. Who is Villanueva? The only Pittsburgh Steeler this weekend to emerge from the locker room and stand for the national anthem. “Allan Jones, CEO of Hardwick Clothing and Check Into Cash payday loan company, announced on Tuesday he is through with sponsoring the wardrobes and advertising on the NFL. Hardwick Clothing is America’s oldest suit maker. “In his statement Jones said, ‘Our companies will not condone unpatriotic behavior!’
The Times Free Press reported: ‘Two years ago, Cleveland, Tenn., businessman Allan Jones was proudly showing off his newly acquired Hardwick Clothing-brand suits by providing the wardrobe for NBC’s on-air talent during the network’s broadcasts of NFL football games.
“But after NFL players and coaches challenged President Donald Trump and many took a knee during the national anthem played before their games over the weekend, Jones said he is through sponsoring the wardrobes or advertising on stations that air the National Football League.” Same thing with the founder of Check Into Cash. They pulled ads from NFL games denouncing the league as unpatriotic. These are two sponsors, regional. Of course, the plug for NBC clothing is a big deal.
How many of you are subscribers on DirecTV to the NFL Sunday Ticket? Well, if you know anything about it, if you are, you know that you cannot cancel, you cannot get a refund. Once you buy a subscription for the season, you own it. And it auto-renews unless you say you don’t want to. “Paid subscribers to DirecTV’s exclusive Sunday Ticket package … have begun demanding refunds. That demand has grown large enough to pressure the satellite entertainment provider to reverse its long-held policy and give the money back.” Headlines: “All Patriots to Stand for Next Game Anthem,” and another team: All players to stand. “Cowboys Will Stand.” This is backfiring on the NFL. It’s backfiring on the protesting players exactly as you and I knew it would. Let’s see. “Trump Urges NFL to Ban Players Kneeling During Anthem.” Trump continues to double down. DirecTV is allowing NFL customers, Sunday Ticket customers their refunds. “The Green Bay Packers have asked fans attending Thursday night’s game to lock arms during the national anthem.”
Players have a right to protest — clearly — and most conservatives I know don’t begrudge any American’s right to express a view under the First Amendment.
Speech, truly, is free, and every American is welcome to speak his or her mind.
What we are not free from, however, is the consequences of our speech.
A survey conducted this August by The Washington Post and UMASS Lowell found “the most common reason that fans reported for a decrease in interest in the NFL in recent years was not concussions or violence, but political issues. Of those who identified that reason, 17% pointed to protests during the national anthem by players such as Colin Kaepernick.”
These acts of free speech will negatively affect a league that some commentators have said is already in “decline.” As columnist Larry Stone wrote in the Seattle Times, “the NFL has major issues that seem to be converging at once to form a cesspool of negativity.”
I don’t like the idea of kneeling for political protest during the national anthem because it interrupts an important ritual that is uniquely American; we participate together in the anthem– at NFL stadiums, at Little League baseball games, at high school graduations and at any number of civic gatherings, no matter our geography. That ritual reminds us that we are all, as Americans, in this together.
A clear majority of Americans — according to the Reuters polling — have expressed a negative, visceral reaction to multimillionaire athletes disrespecting a patriotic national ritual in honor of the country that has given them the opportunity to make a living beyond the wildest dreams of 99.9% of the world’s inhabitants.
Many people in Middle America agree with him on this issue, and this liberal elite freak-out makes it an even more effective tactic.
Such overreactions play right into Trump’s hands, further reinforcing to the Trump Tribe that they are right to be in full revolt against a nation whose culture dramatically lurched to the left during the Obama years. This is a key reason Democrats lost control of the politics of the Rust Belt in 2016.
Trump, the guy you call dumb, has routinely exploited this for political benefit.
To be sure, race relations and tension between police and minority populations — the issues that had Kaepernick and others taking a knee — are among the most worrisome cultural problems we face in American society. They didn’t begin on President Trump’s watch; in fact, a CNN/ORC poll taken in the last months of Barack Obama’s presidency showed that most Americans believed racial tensions had already worsened during his tenure.
Thanks to Trump’s reinvigoration of the debate, it didn’t take long for pundits on the left to start suggesting that taking a knee during the national anthem is now a direct protest of Trump himself. D.C. Bureau chief for Mother Jones, David Corn outright stated “The kneel will now become a sign of opposition to Trump,” effectively hijacking the gesture from black activists. Washington Post social justice reporter Wesley Lowery called on colleagues to demand a reasoning from players who chose not to kneel. No word yet if Lowery chose to ask Pittsburgh Steelers tackle and former Army Ranger and Bronze Star recipient Alejandro Villanueva why he chose to stand for the anthem in the tunnel, the only player from the team to do so. Villanueva’s jersey sales have now skyrocketed in only a day. Jon Schwarz from the left leaning site The Intercept wrote “The National Anthem is a Celebration of Slavery”
The left has chosen to make kneeling for the national anthem now a referendum on Trump himself. A larger problem for them, and the NFL in general, is they picked this fight on a day meant to honor Gold Star mothers.
Americans can differentiate between the man in the Oval Office and the country he represents. They can acknowledge problems with community policing, or the commander-in-chief’s tweets while also honoring men and women in uniform overseas and more to the point, they know the politicization of the sport they used to love didn’t start with Donald Trump.
The message is supposed to be “I’m protesting injustice,” but it turns into “I’m protesting injustice, which I equate with America itself.” It is the petulant demand that everyone else fall in line with the protesters’ exact political preferences and their vague political program—I haven’t found anybody who can tell me what concrete measures would convince the knee-takers to stand up again—or else they will refuse to love their own country.
For a fairly large core of those on the Left, this message is deliberate. They have long sought to use racism as their excuse to indict the entire American system as irredeemably evil, in order to justify tearing it down. When I started pushing people on Twitter to tell me what the protests are all about, I got a lot of this back: about how the national anthem is “nationalistic and bombastic,” America has not merely been indicted but “convicted beyond a reasonable doubt,” and we all need to be deprived of the pleasure of “guilt-free sports.”
This is how they have turned the protests into an attack on the game of football, the one area we’re all supposed to be able to put aside our disagreements on politics and instead disagree about which team we should be rooting for. This protest is perfectly designed to break the fans of every football team into warring camps. Even worse, it divides the fans (and players) along racial lines. It takes a social institution that usually unites Americans of all races and creeds and turns it into an engine of racial conflict—in the name of progress!
If you want an idea of how this is going over, observe fans booing the Patriots players who kneeled for the anthem. Or observe that NASCAR immediately announced it would fire any driver or crew member who kneels for the anthem. They know that for their audience patriotism is non-negotiable, and it would be death for their sport to let faddish protests start up there.
Why does the Left always augur in this kind of self-destructive protest? It begins with how they defined themselves as the “Resistance,” which caused them to stop asking whether something is right and only to ask whether Trump is for or against it. So if he comes out in favor of God and country and the anthem and the flag and football and mom and apple pie, then the Resistance has to be against all of those things.
What if you don’t go along with them? Well, if you’re not in the Resistance than you’re a collaborator and you must be the racist enemy, too. But kneeling, of course, is an ancient sign of submission, not resistance.
People will kneel before him wherever he goes, Funny!
Resistance fighters. You’re going to get Trump re-elected,
What voters in that big chunk of the country turned red do you plan to win back on a platform of kneeling for the national anthem, revoking due process, removing monuments of our founders, sympathizing with jihad, glorifying property-destroying (and journalist-punching) thugs or backing Kim Jong Un in a nuclear showdown? The more the left has ramped up its cultural war, the more their governing power has diminished. Donald Trump’s election should have been a giant wake up call to both the media and the left that the causes they care about and blast out with their bylines are not the issues Americans care about. They may view Donald Trump’s twitter commentary as beneath the office of the presidency, but they can forgive a lot when the other party is demanding they bend the knee.
LikeLike
Jscheidell,
So the owners should follow Trump’s advice and fire all their players?
Even the owners are taking a knee.
How about just closing down the NFL?
LikeLike
Diane,
I think the NFFL leadership does not know their source of bread and butter. I also think they are afraid of their employees. Fire them all – no, they just have to tell them to stop or those individuals will be benched for the game and lose play – as I mentioned before they can tell them when to sleep wake practice and eat and how to dress.
The NFL viewer, the average target marketing of the NFL, is not a white wine and brie sipping cheese eater. These are people that buy Ford F-150s and buy beer by the case. And it’s like the NFL’s trying to market to left-wing social justice warrior snowflakes and that’s not who’s watching the game. Those are the people that wish the game didn’t exist as it does. And the NFL itself is the target because the left doesn’t like it, period, because It stands for much of what they don’t like. Strong, masculine, rugged individualism with unified team concepts, patriotism, love of country, uniquely American game.
And since you pray for the collusion of the Ruskies and Trump, I found this story a twist. This is Reuters. “Senator Says Russian Internet Trolls Stoked NFL Debate.” “A U.S. senator on Wednesday said Russian internet trolls, seeking to polarize Americans, helped fuel a debate ignited by President Donald Trump over whether NFL players should have the right to kneel during the national anthem. The assertion, made by Republican James Lankford, comes as congressional investigators probing Moscow’s alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential election are focusing on how Russian agents used social media to spread divisive political content.”
So the Russians are responsible for all these players taking a knee during the anthem. Makes you wonder –
Free speech, not the issue here, and it’s not the best stage available. If they’ve got a legitimate grievance, go to Chicago and demand a meeting with Rahm Emanuel and ask him why in the hell there are so many black murders in that city. And not by the cops. They’re not advancing. They are dividing people! Standing for the anthem is not political. Not standing, kneeling, that’s what’s political.
The owners are caught, in their minds, between a rock and a hard place. They’re afraid of that if they don’t support the players, the players will strike or not play the game and then that’s not good.
LikeLike
If the NFL fires the African American players, it won’t be much of a league. They will have to fire the white players too, because the teams are sticking together.
This whole issue was cooked up by Trump to distract attention from the failure to pass a GOP healthcare repeal bill. Colin Kaepernick was unemployed. Why did Trump drum up the issue? He lives to play with racist fire to distract from his failures.
As for the Russian connection, no one doubts that Putin interfered in our election. Twitter and Facebook both admitted that Russian troll farms bought ads to stir up divisiveness and to attack Hillary.
The question for me is how the Republican party got in bed with the Kremlin. Joe McCarthy must be spinning in his grace.
Jared Kushner didn’t meet with those Russians, did he? That was fake news, right? They didn’t promise to get him dirt on Hillary, did they? More fake news. He didn’t respond, “Love it!” to their offer, did he? Fake news. Mike Flynn didn’t take $50,000 from Putin to give a speech, did he? Fake news. That photo of Flynn and Jill Stein at Pitin’s head table? Couldn’t be!
It’s Mueller time.
LikeLike
Diane,
I agree on not firing the players – — bench those who kneel and sub in 2nd string, establish a rule on the issue of respect during the anthem and flag salute. Don’t follow the rule – then bench/fine them.
And Trump directed his comment on firing the SOBs to those who knelt and showed disrespect during the anthem – it doesn’t matter if they are black or white players. Unity – not seen – some stood some knelt, Locker room will be a major issue for the team. He didn’t bring up race and he was not the instigator of the issue – the players made that decision for him – and as a populist he says what he believes – even though there are many who don’t like his approach, but many do..
You assume – that the Republican party was/is in bed with Russians – Mueller time – still waiting for your evidence….
LikeLike
Trump plays the race issue like a fiddle
LikeLike
55% think tRump is intelligent? Good grief. At least 51% are embarrassed by him.
tRump is the greatest, most successful and best loved president ever with a 36% approval rating.
…………………
A new Quinnipiac University national poll showed that 51 percent of Americans were embarrassed by Trump, and 69 percent want him to stop tweeting. Just 26 percent of respondents want him to continue the habit.
The poll also found that:
67 percent said he was not level-headed
60 percent thought he was not a good leader
61 percent believed he didn’t share their values
59 percent said he wasn’t honest
56 percent thought he didn’t care about average Americans
56 percent believed he was not fit to serve as president
Overall, Trump’s approval rating was at 36 percent, with 57 percent of respondents disapproving of his job performance.
Getting into specific issues, Trump had a 62 percent disapproval rating on race relations, 60 percent on health care, 59 percent on immigration and the environment, and 57 percent on foreign policy.
However, 48 percent of respondents approved of how Trump was handling the economy, 55 percent said he was intelligent, and 61 percent believed he was a strong person.
As bad as Trump’s numbers were, Americans were even less happy about Congress. According to the poll, 78 percent disapproved of the job Republicans were doing, compared with 15 percent who approved. Congressional Democrats were also badly underwater, with 63 percent of respondents disapproving of their job performance and 29 percent approving.
LikeLike
Diane,
Trump doesn’t use a fiddle – I believe it is a Stradivarius, and its never been playing race Only the left wing liberals trying to pull him down throw in the race card and their playbook is old and repetitive since Reagan.
LikeLike
The NFL gambit was a race card and nothing more. Even the team owners kneeled with their trans and said the protest was about racial injustice, not patriotism.
LikeLike
Diane
Trump didn’t instigate this “kneel gate” to obfuscate anything. I suggest taking a look at the timeline from Kaper to that day he made his first comments. Comments that offended the left wing libs and these were what many said to themselves – as a populist he knows the audience.
A speech at Hillsdale college noted that we keep being told that President Trump is not normal -obvious, America’s most nontraditional president, since he had never run for office or otherwise served in a public capacity He is the “outsider” He has been accused, not without reason, of breaking all manner of political norms. He has already caused much anguish in Washington, a goal – repeatedly promised to “drain the swamp” and shake things up. Americans knew who they were voting for, and history will judge the results.
Trump’s nascent presidency has coincided with perhaps the greatest violation of political norms this country has ever seen – there has been a sustained, coordinated attack on Trump’s legitimacy as president following his victory in a free and fair election. This has the potential to cause far more lasting damage to America than Trump’s controversial style.
Democratic operatives, the day after Hillary’s loss, and their media allies attempted to explain Trump’s victory with a claim they had failed to make stick during the general election: Trump had nefarious ties to Russia. Trump had been reluctant to express criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin. By contrast, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton repeatedly condemned Russia’s 2011 elections, saying they were “neither free nor fair” and expressing “serious concerns” about them. She publicly called for a full investigation while meeting with top Russian officials. This made Putin livid. “Mr. Putin said that hundreds of millions of dollars in ‘foreign money’ was being used to influence Russian politics, and that Mrs. Clinton had personally spurred protesters to action,” The New York Times reported.
Who is colluding with Putin?
Then rumors surfaced in the summer of 2016 that Russia probably had something to do with the alleged hack of the Democratic National Committee email system, as well as the successful “phishing” of Democratic insider John Podesta’s inbox. Russia was also alleged to have tried to hack the Republican National Committee, but without success. It remained an open question whether the Russians were trying to help Trump or were simply trying to create chaos in the election. Regardless, these Democratic Party emails were published by WikiLeaks, and they confirmed what many critics had said about Clinton and the DNC—the DNC had engineered the primary to ensure a Clinton victory; the Clinton campaign had cozy, borderline unethical relations with members of the mainstream media; Clinton expressed private positions to Wall Street banks that were at odds with her public positions; and various other embarrassing details indicating her campaign was in disarray. Bernie was snookered by Clinton and Debbie ,who is having problems related to her aide.
According to Shattered, a well-sourced book about the Clinton campaign written by sympathetic reporters, Clinton settled on a Russia excuse within twenty-four hours of her concession speech. [Campaign manager Robby] Mook and Podesta assembled her communications team at the Brooklyn headquarters to engineer the case that the election wasn’t entirely on the up-and-up. For a couple of hours, with Shake Shack containers littering the room, they went over the script they would pitch to the press and the public. Already, Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument.
The Russian collusion story involves a lot of details, but there are two basic tactics that Trump’s enemies have used to push the narrative: they have put seemingly innocuous contacts with Russians under a microscope, and they have selectively touted details supplied by a politicized intelligence apparatus. And this has all been amplified by a media which refuses to be impartial, or accurate.
Meetings with Russians?
The media generally celebrated Secretary of State Clinton’s attempt at a Russian “reset” in 2009. Obama was later caught on a hot mic promising Putin more “flexibility” once he was reelected. And during Obama’s reelection campaign in 2012, when his opponent Mitt Romney characterized Russia as our greatest geopolitical foe, Obama mocked him by saying, “The 1980s called. They want their foreign policy back.” The New York Times editorial page said of Romney’s Russia comments that they “display either a shocking lack of knowledge about international affairs or just craven politics. Either way, they are reckless and unworthy of a major presidential contender.”
Trump’s election changed all that. Not since the heyday of McCarthyism in the 1950s have so many in Washington been accused of consorting with Russians who wish to undermine American democracy.
The Washington Post reported in mid-January that Mike Flynn, Trump’s incoming National Security Advisor, had spoken via telephone with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak on December 29, the day the Obama administration announced the expulsion of 35 Russian officials in retaliation for the DNC hacking. Although such conversations are perfectly legal, the Post suggested, quite incredibly, that Flynn might have violated the Logan Act, which bars U.S. citizens from correspondence intending to influence a foreign government about “disputes” with the United States. The Logan Act, which has a long record of being cited by cranks, has not been enforced since it was passed (in 1799!) because it is widely considered to be grossly unconstitutional. In addition to the Post, The New York Times, Foreign Policy magazine, and other outlets credulously repeated the same ludicrous talking point about Logan Act violations.
Let it also be noted that Flynn, while a critic of Russia and of the Iran nuclear deal that Russia helped put together, also was paid to speak at a dinner hosted by the Russian TV network Russia Today.
It was Kislyak’s job to facilitate as many meetings as possible with top officials across the political spectrum, and he was seen at meetings with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senator Claire McCaskill, two prominent Democrats, as well as other Republicans. Indeed, such meetings between foreign ambassadors and U.S. elected officials are routine.
It’s true that Trump was associated with people who had ties to Russians. His former campaign manager Paul Manafort had previously done political consulting work in Ukraine for Russia-aligned groups. Carter Page, a foreign policy advisor with a limited role, is a Naval Academy graduate, businessman, and academic who has been open about his belief that America’s anti-Russian foreign policy has been counterproductive. And Roger Stone, a campaign advisor with a reputation for outlandish campaign work, reportedly spoke with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as well as Guccifer 2.0, who may be a Russian hacker.
But perhaps no meeting attracted as much scrutiny as one in June 2016 between Donald Trump, Jr., Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, and various Russians, including a Russian lawyer. According to email correspondence, the Trump associates were told they would receive opposition research on Clinton that may have been provided by the Russian government. No research was handed over, but critics said that the language in the emails supported claims of attempted collusion. After weeks of accusations, the story quickly ran out of steam when it was revealed that the Russian lawyer, who was to have provided the information, had employed a shadowy opposition research firm known as Fusion GPS—a business that had strong ties to Democratic interests, had previously tried to smear Mitt Romney donors and critics of Planned Parenthood, and had played a key role in a recent and infamous attempt to smear Trump.
Politicized Intelligence
Many allegations concerning Russia have been taken seriously based solely on the institutional credibility of the accusers. It appears that members of America’s intelligence community are some of the President’s most passionate opponents.
Late last December, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI put out a 13-page report touted as definitive proof of Russian state involvement in the DNC server hack and the phishing attack on John Podesta’s emails. It was remarkably paltry—vague and non-specific in a way that really didn’t help clarify the precise nature of Russia’s involvement. Cyberwarfare expert Jeffrey Carr wrote that the report “adds nothing to the call for evidence that the Russian government was responsible” for the hacks. It listed every threat ever reported by a commercial cybersecurity company that was suspected of having a Russian origin, Carr noted, lumping them under the heading of Russian Intelligence Services, without providing any supporting evidence that such a connection existed. Former Air Force cyberwarfare officer Robert Lee said the report was of limited use to security professionals, in part because of poor organization and a lack of crucial details.
Senior intelligence appointees tried again in early January, with a report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. It was also lacking in specifics. But comments from high profile Democrats, supported by a leak campaign to media outlets, did have an effect. By late December, more than half of Democrats believed—despite the lack of evidence—that “Russia tampered with vote tallies in order to get Donald Trump elected President,” according to a YouGov.com poll.
When Trump responded to these reports with dismissals and a few begrudging admissions of minor contacts with Russians, critics gleefully warned him that partisans at intelligence agencies would retaliate. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said, “Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you. So even for a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he’s being really dumb to do this.” Former George W. Bush speechwriter and current never-Trump activist David Frum echoed this sentiment: “CIA message to Trump: you mess with us, get ready for a leakstorm of Biblical proportions.” Essentially, intelligence agencies were being publicly encouraged to abuse their power to stop Trump before he had even assumed office.
In January, the big story dropped. “Intel chiefs presented Trump with claims of Russian efforts to compromise him,” blared the headline from CNN. According to highly placed anonymous sources, top intelligence appointees had informed Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and Trump that “Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump.” A former British intelligence operative had compiled a damaging “dossier” on the President-elect. CNN reported that intelligence officials considered this operative’s past work credible. But he had paid his Russian sources for the compromising information, and CNN published its report on the dossier without confirming any of the allegations. Within the hour, BuzzFeed published the actual text of the dossier. It said, among other things, that a senior Trump advisor and three of his colleagues had met with Kremlin operatives in Prague in late August or early September to undermine the Clinton campaign. And the Russians were said to have a kompromat file on Trump, including an amazing story about him renting a hotel room the Obamas had used and paying prostitutes to urinate on the bed.
One of the claims was quickly disproven: Michael Cohen, Trump’s lawyer who was alleged to have gone to Prague for a clandestine meeting with Kremlin operatives, had never been to Prague. And to date, no media organization has provided any independent evidence to confirm a single claim made in the dossier. It was soon revealed that the firm that had hired the former British operative and put together the dossier was the aforementioned Fusion GPS. What’s more, the FBI allegedly sought to pay the British operative to continue gathering dirt on Trump.
Aside from a lack of concern about the accuracy of the charges against Trump, intelligence chiefs were not discriminating about who got caught up in their anti-Trump crusade. In March, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) announced that “unmasking” of Trump transition team members had occurred during the last three months of the Obama presidency—that is, significant personal information from and about Trump associates had been collected and widely disseminated.
“I recently confirmed that, on numerous occasions, the intelligence community incidentally collected information about U.S. citizens involved in the Trump transition,” Nunes said. The information collected, he added, had little or no foreign intelligence value, and nothing to do with Russia. Obama’s National Security Advisor Susan Rice, UN Ambassador Samantha Power, and National Security Council spokesman Ben Rhodes were later reported to be involved in this rampant unmasking activity.
Trump created one of the biggest firestorms of his presidency in May when he fired FBI Director James Comey. The embattled FBI head, who let Hillary Clinton slide after her illegal handling of classified information, had been routinely criticized by both Democrats and Republicans and was officially fired for general ineptness. However, Trump said it was also because Comey was playing games with the Russia investigation. In his letter relieving him of his duties, Trump mentioned that Comey had told him three times he was not under investigation. Many journalists scoffed at this claim, since Comey was publicly intimating otherwise. When he was fired, stories favorable to Comey about private meetings between Comey and Trump came out in the media.
In testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee a few weeks later, Comey admitted he had, in fact, told Trump at least three times he was not under investigation by the FBI. Comey also admitted under oath that his leaks to The New York Times were designed to force the hiring of a special prosecutor. His strategy paid off when his close friend and former colleague Robert Mueller was appointed to head an investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign. That investigation has since spiraled out to include leads “that have nothing to do with Russia,” according to media reports.
The egregious behavior of influential officials such as Comey has encouraged people to think that the verdict of the intelligence community was more conclusive than it was. During a 2016 presidential debate, Clinton said, “We have 17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military, who have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these cyberattacks, come from the highest levels of the Kremlin and they are designed to influence our election.” Clinton’s claim wasn’t true. It was only three agencies—the FBI, the CIA, and the National Security Agency—that made the claim. Yet media outlets such as NBC, CBS, CNN, and The New York Times repeated the number 17. In late June, The New York Times corrected a story that made the false claim. So did the Associated Press.
In general, the media have overstated the confidence and public evidence in support of Russian hacking. One group of skeptical intelligence analysts, the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), issued a memo in late July arguing that the hack of the DNC emails wasn’t a hack at all, but an internal leak. VIPS is generally thought to be sympathetic to the Left—the same group had cast doubt on the quality of intelligence that led the United States to invade Iraq in 2003. The VIPS memo raises questions about why the FBI failed to perform an independent forensic analysis of the Democratic emails or servers in question. In fact, no federal agency performed a forensic analysis, leaving that to CrowdStrike—a company with strong ties to the Clinton campaign that had an incentive to blame foreign governments for the attack. Surely, more forensic scrutiny of the centerpiece of the Russia hack claim is in order.
To date, despite all the misleading claims in news reports, the only actual crime related to the Trump-Russia investigation is the criminal leaking of classified information about U.S. citizens by intelligence officials.
The Washington Post published a story saying that “fake news”—a term originally used to describe the dissemination of blatantly false news reports intended to go viral on social media—was a Russian operation designed to help Trump. An editor’s note was appended backing away from the report a couple weeks later. (Trump would famously appropriate the term “fake news” to describe reports from the mainstream media he found unfair.) A few weeks later, the Post ran an even more incendiary story alleging that Russian hackers had penetrated the U.S. electrical grid. This turned out to be false. One media outlet headline read: “Trump, Russian billionaire say they’ve never met, but their jets did.” Presumably, these inanimate objects exchanged pleasantries and discussed sensitive foreign policy matters.
CNN has had particular trouble. Breathless headlines such as “Trump aides were in constant touch with senior Russian officials during campaign” fail to be supported with evidence. Anonymous officials would say that such communications “are not unusual” and investigators had not “reached a judgment” of any nefarious intent. Other CNN stories had bigger problems, such as the one reporting that Comey would testify he never told Trump he was not under investigation. As mentioned previously, Comey admitted under oath that he’d said this three times, just as Trump claimed. Another story reporting a problematic meeting between a Trump associate and a Russian, again based on a single anonymous source, was quietly retracted, and three employees who worked on it were dismissed.
Journalism in the Trump era has become far too dependent on unreliable and anonymous sources. And considering the steady drumbeat in the media about Trump having a strained relationship with facts, there is plenty of irony in the fact that the media have had to correct or retract an unprecedented number of stories about him and his administration.
There are three primary ways of viewing the Trump-Russia narrative.
View one is that Russians hacked the election and Donald Trump committed treason by knowingly colluding with them. The Obama administration didn’t surveil Trump or his associates, but if it did, it was simply doing its job.
View two is that Russia was probably involved in the hacking and releasing of emails from the DNC and John Podesta. Some Trump associates had ties to Russia, but there is no evidence of Trump or his campaign colluding with Russia.
View three is that the Russia story is a complete fiction concocted by sore losers unable to deal with the reality of their electoral loss.
It shouldn’t be difficult to ascertain which one of these views is most grounded in facts. Despite his friendly rhetoric toward Russia and Putin during the campaign, Trump’s presidency has been marked by a bombing of Russia-backed Syria, bombing of the Russia-aligned Taliban in Afghanistan, stricter enforcement of economic sanctions, support for the expansion of NATO, liquid natural gas exports to Europe that undercut Russia’s economy, the selling of U.S. missile defense to Poland and Romania, and opposition to the Russian-negotiated Iran nuclear deal.
In the meantime, the self-styled anti-Trump “resistance” has created a standard it must meet to justify the broken norms and political trauma to which it has subjected the country. That standard is nothing less than proof that Donald Trump is a traitor put into the White House through collusion with Russia to undermine our electoral system. The better part of a year into his presidency, Trump’s enemies have not come close to meeting that standard.
LikeLike
To see the extent of Trump’s involvement with the Kremlin and all the excuses offered by Republicans, and Trump’s effusive praise for Putin–makes me wonder when the GOP became apologists for and allies with the Kremlin.
As for the kneeling, consider it prayer.
LikeLike
Diane, I don’t know why you bother responding to someone who plagiarizes 100% of the intelligible content in his comments. You’re not debating him. You’re debating echoes.
LikeLike
You are right about that.
He is a bot.
LikeLike
He effectively functions like a bot. A very low-tech bot.
LikeLike