STATEN ISLAND

Most of us remember Eric Garner. Fewer know that the police involved were acquitted of any crime. Very few paid any attention to what happened to the neighborhood because of kinder gentler police tactics.  The people who should be concerned about this development are not white Americans.  We tend to live in nice, clean suburban communities.  Notice in this case that the white people still living there are making plans to leave.  That is often because they have a choice.

https://nypost.com/2018/06/20/area-where-eric-garner-was-killed-now-the-heroin-capital-of-staten-island/

Back in September 2016, I wrote a blog warning that if we allow liberals to restrict the way police respond, the results would be devastating for honest black citizens.  Unfortunately, I underestimated the problem:

https://scotshonor.com/?p=3458

The results will be devastating, for honest black citizens. Even liberals will quickly decide to avoid any place where black people live, work or play. It won’t be obvious at first, but the results will be there for anyone paying attention. Black neighborhoods will become increasingly black. White neighborhoods will become increasingly white. There will be fewer police, of any color, willing to work in black neighborhoods and black on black crime will skyrocket. There will be no shortage of cops, of any color, willing to work in white neighborhoods, where they are welcomed, even by liberals. Rich white liberals will move into safe enclaves where they can put up fences, road blocks and hire private security to keep the undesirables away. That security, by the way, will be armed.

FLINT

I would suggest watching the documentary series called “Flint.” This is a city with more than its’ share of problems where good people, black and white, got together and worked together on a solution.  For the record this was done by a black female major working with a black police chief. They worked together to enforce the rule of law and arrest criminals, without regard to race. They didn’t spend a lot of money on new police officers, new training, new equipment etc., primarily because they didn’t have any money. Instead they took the existing staff and gave them a directive to stop just responding to crimes that have been committed. Instead go out there find and arrest criminals. It is transforming Flint.

Watch the episode where police respond to the assassination of white cops in Dallas. Watch how they respond to the shooting in Minnesota and how is was portrayed by the media and groups like Black Lives Matter. The dialog by both the black and white police officers is raw and honest. They have very different views on race relations in this country, but both are united in the importance of focusing on arresting criminals.

It is quite simple. When you have good leaders, you end up with Flint. When liberals remain in power, you get Staten Island.  The color of their skin is irrelevant.

TDM

If you listen to the main stream media, you know that Donald Trump changed U.S. immigration policy to authorize ICE to physically separate children from their parents. This bitter, cruel and heartless man has no regard for human rights. He is putting people in concentration camps, for political purposes. He is frequently compared with Adolph Hitler. People are outraged. They are writing him scathing letters and demanding action. Who could blame them. How can we tolerate such behavior?

The only thing missing in this narrative are some very real, but inconvenient facts. Our immigration laws are a mess. Whether this was done deliberately or just through incompetence is somewhat irrelevant. What is relevant is that Donald Trump, like any other President, is confronted with only bad options.

Before you judge President Trump, please take a moment to learn the facts. Thousands of people are flooding to our borders. No one can blame them. They are trying to escape countries with systemic poverty and the United States is a far better alternative, even if one must get here illegally. Recent news broadcasts, shown around the world are telling people how to game the system. If you show up at our border, ask for asylum, you will be allowed to enter. You will be given a slip of paper saying you need to come back for a hearing on your legal status. You then just walk away. Very few people bother to show up for that hearing. Why would they? Irresponsible media reports are encouraging people to take long and dangerous trips by promising them they can just walk across the border into the promised land.

Many, but not all the adults showing up with children at the border are real families. History has taught us that evil people are more than willing to exploit children. For example; It is routine for terrorists to use children as human shields.

This means if we just follow the existing system and allow any adult showing up with children to walk into the country at least some of those children will be exploited. Some of them will be victims of sex trafficking. Sometimes the “children” aren’t even related to the adults, they may even be MS13 members.

There are approximately 12,000 children in U.S. protective custody. The majority, 10,000 of them, showed up at the border with no parents. They were abandoned by their parents and sent unaccompanied to the border.

There are approximately 2,000 children who did arrive here with adults claiming to be part of a family. The proper process for claiming asylum is to do so in Mexico. No family is separated if they follow the rules. Instead, people enter the U.S. illegally and then claim asylum. A high percentage of people claiming asylum are lying. ICE reports that 80% of asylum claims are bogus. I know of no one who disputes that fact, they just ignore it.

While adults can be charged with a crime for entering the U.S. illegally that law does not apply to children. That is why 10,000 kids were sent to the border by themselves. This also means that even if adults enter the country illegally, if they have children with them after 20 days either the entire family must be set free or the children must be separated from the parents and put in protective custody. If family members legally residing in the United States can be found, the kids are given to them. They are given medical care, food and clothing and they attend school. This is a far cry from the cages used by the Obama administration. Yet the media ignored that when Obama was President and would like you to believe these are concentration camps. There is a constant problem with resources because that also requires congressional approval, which is resisted by the same people who are trashing Trump.

Trump was faced with two bad options. He could continue to basically allow anyone to just walk into the country, if they had some kids in tow or he could enforce the law resulting in some children being separated by their parents.

He chose to enforce the law and then he went to congress and pleaded with them to change the law. The same people shrieking with outrage at Donald Trump will not consider changing the law because they want this crisis. They need this crisis. They think this crisis will help them gain political power. They couldn’t care less about the impact on those children. They want heart wrenching videos of children weeping as their parents are led away. This plays right into their narrative. At a minimum they want this crisis to continue through the midterm elections.

Sometimes a President must make very difficult decisions. Winston Churchill ordered thousands of men to fight the Germans, when there was no hope of victory and no attempt at rescue so that Britain could try to rescue thousands of other men stranded at Dunkirk. Someone needs to make those kinds of decisions. If your child is held hostage by terrorists, you would probably be willing to do anything to get them back. But a President knows that if we give in to terrorists the result will be more hostages. This does not mean he hates the hostage and doesn’t care what happens to them, it just means his duty to the country may trump his personal compassion.

Every President is faced with impossible decisions. The job is made even more difficult when public outrage based on incomplete facts is added to the mix. We should all be concerned over the tragedy of people living their lives in unspeakable poverty. However, we should also learn from the mistakes of others. Europe is paying a terrible price for showing compassion to refugees and opening borders to anyone who showed up. What started out as an act of human compassion resulted in a nightmare.

The fact is we need to secure our border. We should set up the fairest possible system for letting people from other countries come here. But the most unfair system of all is letting those people who game the system get the advantage. That is unfair to those who played by the rules and came here legally. It is unfair to those who would like to come here now but can’t because they are crowded out by those who have no interest in playing by the rules.

One may or may not agree with the decisions made by Donald Trump. You may hate his personality. But if you disagree, then please combine your disagreement with an option for another strategy that will solve the problem. Merely screaming at him and pretending he is some horrible monster is not a solution. It is rather part of the problem.

TDM

Coincidence?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-19/starbucks-pumps-the-brakes-in-its-home-market

Starbucks is closing 150 stores. :”Our growth has slowed a bit. I expect better, I think our shareholders deserve better, and we’re committed to address that.”

The good news is that if Starbucks shareholders go broke they still have somewhere they can go to pee.

TDM

There are reports that Peter Strzok was escorted off FBI headquarters today. The response from his attorney is amazing:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/06/19/fbi-official-peter-strzok-escorted-from-fbi-building-lawyer-confirms.html

“All of this seriously calls into question the impartiality of the disciplinary process, which now appears tainted by political influence,” a statement from Goelman said.

He said that Strzok “has complied with every FBI procedure, including being escorted from the building as part of the ongoing internal proceedings.” The attorney did not say exactly when Strzok was escorted out.

“Instead of publicly calling for a long-serving FBI agent to be summarily fired, politicians should allow the disciplinary process to play out free from political pressure,” Goelman said. “Our leaders and the public should be very concerned with how readily such influence has been allowed to undermine due process and the legal protections owed to someone who has served his country for so long. Pete Strzok and the American people deserve better.”

Either Goelman has either never read the texts from his client or he is a complete idiot. This reminds me of the definition of “Chutzpah” I got from a Jewish friend. He said: “it is like the guy who murdered his parents and then threw himself on the mercy of the court because he was an orphan.”

That guy probably has a better chance than Peter Strzok.

TDM

The IG report has been released and it is worse than expected.  After the murder of the Jewish athletes in Munich during the Olympics, Jim McKay said that:

When I was a kid my father used to say “Our greatest hopes and our worst fears are seldom realized.”Our worst fears have been realized tonight.

The problem is not that the FBI colluded with the DNC to try and influence a Presidential election. It is not that the FBI hated Donald Trump so much that it started a Russian collusion investigation based on zero facts.  It is not the fact that the liberal left has spent the last eighteen months trying to overturn the results of an election. It is not that Hillary Clinton is likely to escape the consequences of her criminal negligence with regard to the use of her personal e-mail server. It is not even that the Obama administration used the intelligence community to spy on a political campaign during an election. All of these things are true. They are all documented by the facts in the IG report. All of these things are serious problems. But they are not “the” problem.

The “problem” is that Democrats are so full of hatred for Donald Trump that they do not care. They still view this through purely partisan eyes, oblivious to the danger to our democracy.  I cannot speak for other conservatives or Republicans, but I would be just as concerned and outraged if these actions had been done by conservatives and Republicans in an attempt to stop Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. I would be equally concerned even though I consider Barack Obama to be one of the worst Presidents in history. I would be equally concerned even though I consider Hillary Clinton to be hopelessly corrupt and incompetent. I would be concerned because the miracle of our democracy is our constitution with the separation of powers, the rule of law and the peaceful transfer of power, even when we hate the results of an election.

It is clear that the leaders of the Democratic Party no longer believe this. Neither do their nodding heads in the main stream media. What is desperately needed at this juncture, is one strong Democrat ready, willing and able to stand up for truth, justice and the American way. Instead Democrats dream of Barack Obama, who let this happen on his watch, returning to save the day. The sad reality is that there are no leaders in the Democratic Party today who seem remotely capable of this kind of leadership. I can’t even identify a leader in the Democratic Party who recognizes there is a problem. It is a sad day.

This IG report has legs. The real jury is the American people and they are going to be stunned by the facts. No amount of spin by the liberal left can change the underlying facts. It is impossible to read this report and believe that the FBI was not hopelessly biased with regard to the Clinton investigation and the Trump campaign. It is also impossible to read this and retain even a shred of respect for the integrity of the main stream media. Those days are gone.

These facts can no longer be slow walked and obstructed by the current FBI leadership. They cannot be spun away by the MSM.  If anything, we are likely to discover more facts even more disturbing. The real question is the verdict of the American people. We should learn that in the near future.

TDM

Jeff Sessions kept his promise to find and prosecute leakers. He clearly was focused on the biggest dog of all. James Wolfe, Director of Security with the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (“SCCI”) was arrested on charges of lying to investigators. This is beyond bad. James Wolfe was Director of Security for the SCCI for over 30 years. This was literally asking the Fox (Wolfe) to guard the hen house. It is impossible to overstate the significant of this arrest.

Prior to working the SCCI, Wolfe was an Intelligence Analyst for the U.S. Armey from March 1983 through March 1987:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-jim-wolfe-50393325/

A federal grand jury indicted him. Yesterday the entire Senate authorized the SCCI to cooperate with the DOJ. The SCCI was briefed on this Monday and Mr. Wolfe was arrested yesterday. He will appear in court today. The news media didn’t learn about this until he was arrested.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/top-senate-staffer-arrested-leak-probe-after-ny-times-reporter-n881186

The silence by Senate Democrats, including members of the SCCI speaks volumes. They realize this is beyond bad. They only started commenting after the arrest was made public. Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal, liberal Democrat from Connecticut, said the charges were “extraordinarily serious and troubling.”

The Justice Department seized the phone and email records of Ali Watkins. Senator Blumenthal admitted this situation was serious enough to warrant violating the freedom of the press. Remember that the SCCI was briefed on this so they know a lot more than we will ever know. They aren’t even pretending this is anything other than a national security disaster of the first magnitude.

There will be an immediate and obvious contrast with the Mueller investigation which has come up with less than nothing. Even if Mueller does find, something, it is unlikely to involve a crime and certainly won’t involve a threat to national security. I think even Democrats will start pressuring Mueller to wrap this up and move on.

Hillary Clinton’s email scandal, on the other hand, did constitute a risk to national security. That is being investigated by a special unit let by John Huber. While everyone is waiting for the DOJ IG report, scheduled to be released Tuesday, it is Huber that is likely to ask a federal grand jury to indict people.

It is increasingly obvious that Sessions has been on the hunt and when he strikes it is with brutal efficiency. Unlike the Mueller investigation and the House and Senate Committee investigations there have been zero leaks regarding these investigations. They become public when people are arrested.

http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/391355-dem-sen-charges-against-senate-intel-staffer-extremely-troubling

Ms. Watkins had her records seized by the DOJ in February and it doesn’t appear that she told anyone about this, including her employer the New York Times. We can assume that the DOJ made her an offer she couldn’t afford to turn down. My guess is that there are a lot of people in full panic mode.

This changes EVERYTHING! Democrats and their fawning idiots in the MSM have egg all over their face. While they have been shrieking hysterically about the mythical unicorn of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, they literally missed the crime of the century going on under their collective noses. This is beyond embarrassing, it borders on criminal negligence.

If we start seeing criminal indictments of Andrew McCabe, James Comey and possibly Loretta Lynch and even Hillary Clinton it will become a perfect storm. The obvious bias will only be exceeded by the level of stupidity. Don’t bet against Sessions. James Wolfe held his job for over 30 years. He clearly thought he was immune which is why he wasn’t concerned about lying to the FBI. He was very wrong and he will pay a terrible price for this mistake.

Slate published an article showing that prosecutors were able to quote “Signal” messages in the indictment. Signal is a secure encrypted messaging system used by a lot of reporters who foolishly thought these messages would never be exposed. Just ask James Wolfe about that.

https://slate.com/technology/2018/06/signal-how-did-fbi-read-james-wolfe-encrypted-messages-reporters.html

There are probably a lot of leakers and reporters seeking out discounts on “depends” because at least some of them are peeing their pants.

TDM

Have you ever tried to drain a swamp, or maybe just had to clear a clogged drain? I have done that several times, usually regarding drains in my yard that become clogged with debris. The pattern is always similar. First, you need to find the source of the problem. That is sometimes difficult because a clogged drain can result in an enormous puddle.  Sometimes you need to dig around blindly until you finally locate the drain itself.  Then, once you locate the drain, you start removing the items clogging up the drain. Sometimes that takes a lot of messy work. Eventually the water starts to move.  You clean away more debris, the water starts to drain faster. Then there is the magical point where the cover of the drain is completely cleared of debris. The water starts rushing down the drain and the water rapidly disappears.  At this point, the water rushing toward the drain brings more debris. But you are expecting it this time, so each time the drain starts to clog up again, you instantly take additional steps to keep it clear. If you do it right, the entire puddle is gone and if you keep that drain clean, your yard doesn’t flood again.

Donald Trump is draining the swamp and is following the same pattern. It took him a long time to even find the drain. Then he had to figure out who and what was blocking the drain. He is not an experienced politician and he made some foolish hiring decisions. Some people were merely incompetent. Others were set on sabotaging him. If Trump is good at one thing, he is good at firing people. He now has cleared away much of the debris and the swamp is starting to drain. The biased liberal media is not reporting this yet, but to those paying attention, it is easy to see the water levels falling.

We may be close to that point where the water starts to gush out in a flood. One thing has been obvious for a long time. If the rumors about the political corruption at the DOJ and the FBI were true, there had to be a lot of main stream FBI agents who were furious. They were also frightened. They knew some of the bad guys, but they didn’t know all of them. If you don’t want that coveted job of guarding an airport hanger in Fairbanks, Alaska in January, you better keep your mouth shut. They have seen other agents who had their career destroyed because they failed at internal enemy identification.

There are now numerous reports of agents who want to tell the truth, but they also want protection. They are asking congress to subpoena them, so they can freely testify under oath. If this is true, then we could soon see the slow circling of the drain turn into something that looks more like a shark feeding frenzy. The main obstruction to draining the swamp was the Mueller investigation. It was kind of simple, it was hard for Trump to work on draining the swamp when he was spending so much time and energy responding to an investigation that should never have been started. But now the Mueller investigation is nearly over and there is zero evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. In the meantime, other people have been working on draining that swamp. The entire top floor of the DOJ and the FBI has been replaced. The real work has been done by people you don’t even know. These people don’t leak to the press and they don’t seek out microphones. They just do their job, slowly and carefully until they are sure they have all the facts. When they strike it will be in the form of referrals for prosecution, indictments and convictions. Only a handful of convictions are necessary before those people currently engaged in covering things up start to run for the nearest exit. I believe we are very near that point.

Draining the swamp is a slow process, until it isn’t.

TDM

I have never had a cup of coffee from Starbucks. I hate coffee. I tried a few times to drink a couple of cups of coffee to develop a taste, but it never worked. It tasted terrible when I drank it and the awful taste seemed to linger for months. So, I have never understood the attraction to Starbucks in the first place.

Starbucks was one of the most respected brand names in the world. Here in Folsom, there seems to be a Starbucks on every corner. There is always a line at the drive thru window and the restaurant seems to always be crowded. Now, I think Starbucks may be in serious trouble. This is a classic example of a knee jerk reaction to political correctness resulting in incredibly stupid business decisions.

This all started when a Starbucks employee allegedly asked two black men to leave, because they weren’t buying anything. This was immediately portrayed as an act of racism. Perhaps it was, but we don’t really know. As far as I can tell, no one investigated to see if white people were also asked to leave if they stayed too long without buying anything. The liberal left assumed racism and Starbucks panicked. Starbucks decided to make their restrooms available to everyone, whether they buy anything or not. That is guaranteed to make Starbucks very popular with people in desperate search of a public restroom. If you have ever used the restroom in a public place, like a Bart Station, you know what to expect. It won’t be pretty.

Someone made a fake coupon offering free coffee to any black person who takes the coupon to Starbucks. This may have been intended as a tasteless joke (pun intended.)

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/18/fake-starbucks-coupons-circulate-online-promising-free-coffee-for-black-customers.html

This created a lose-lose situation for Starbucks. People started showing up with coupons expecting free drinks. If Starbucks honored the coupons, they would be racist. If they didn’t honor the coupons, they would be considered racist. All Starbucks got was angry customers and bad press.

In response, Starbucks shut down every store in the country for eight hours of mandatory diversity training:

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-06-01/uncomfortable-starbucks-employees-respond-becoming-worlds-biggest-public-toilet

This is guaranteed to make things worse. I distinctly remember when a company I worked for had mandatory diversity training. These arrogant self-righteous instructors came in, poured the oil of political correctness over everything and offended almost everyone. White associates who were not racist, were deeply offended when the instructors tried to explain why they needed to come to grips with their racism. Black employees were offended because this made them believe everything that happened to them really was racially motivated. The real racists just laughed. They didn’t care what these self-righteous liberals had to say about anything.

It won’t work for Starbucks either, because this never works. In addition to Starbucks becoming the world’s largest public bathroom facility, there will be more racial incidents. Some people will show up wanting to be offended. In their haste to eliminate racism, Starbucks is incentivizing both racism and victimhood. Odds are they will get a double dose of both. In the meantime, a lot of people will really wonder if the high-priced coffee is worth it. The buck already stops at Starbucks, that may now change.

I predict, sooner rather than later, Starbucks will start to look a lot like Sears.

TDM

The following article by the Washington Post is a reminder of how liberal Democrats combined with a delusional main stream media to lose a war:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/did-the-news-media-led-by-walter-cronkite-lose-the-war-in-vietnam/2018/05/25/a5b3e098-495e-11e8-827e-190efaf1f1ee_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.dbdfdeffd477

However, the author ended the story far too soon. His description of how the main stream media covered the war was very accurate. So was the scramble for Democrats to find the candidate who could suggest the fastest way to surrender. But the American public continued to support the war and Richard Nixon won re-election by a landslide. He proceeded to simultaneously prosecute the war, turn it over to the South Vietnamese and negotiate a peace treaty with North Vietnam. If Richard Nixon had not been forced to resign, that treaty would still be in effect and South Vietnam would look a lot like South Korea.

The main stream media continued to promote widespread protests against the war, even though Nixon was clearly working to end it. But they did more than that. They began a full-scale resistance to Nixon clearly designed to remove him from office. They could not accept the fact that a man they despised was President of the United States. They turned a third-rate burglary of DNC headquarters into a constitutional crisis. Richard Nixon became the classic example of someone who, just because he was paranoid, didn’t mean people weren’t really out to get him. He did ask the IRS if it could target his political opponents. The IRS told him no! To the main stream media of then and today, Nixon merely asking was a high crime and misdemeanor. When President Obama did this, and Democratic Senators openly demanded that IRS investigate the TEA Party and the IRS did exactly that, the main stream media didn’t notice and when confronted with this, didn’t care.

Nixon was thrown out of office because some of his supporters did an attempted burglary of the DNC. It is increasingly clear that the Obama administration colluded with the Hillary Clinton campaign to use the DOJ, the FBI and our intelligence services to spy on Donald Trump during the Presidential election. The main stream media is too blinded by their hatred of Donald Trump to consider the possibility that this might actually be a problem.

Once Nixon was removed Democrats in congress refused to let President Ford consider the resumption of bombing over North Vietnam. They moved to cut off all funding for the war and eventually said they wouldn’t even give aid to South Vietnam. The result was inevitable. The North Vietnamese invaded by driving down paved roads with little or no resistance. The Viet Cong were basically ignored because they had been wiped out during the Tet Offensive, one of the worst military blunders, by the Viet Cong and the NVA, in military history.

The United States suffered a humiliating defeat and our veterans were welcomed home with scorn. Even today many people don’t realize that those Vietnam Veterans actually won that war! The performance of our military in Vietnam was overwhelming and it drove the North Vietnamese to decide they could not win. That is why they signed a peace treaty. It was Democrats, led by people like Walter Cronkite who threw that victory away. They were too busy celebrating their victory over Richard Nixon to give any consideration to the consequences on our country. Incredibly they still brag about their courage in resisting an unjust war. Courage demonstrated by burning American flags while smoking marijuana. This was at the same time over 58,000 men and women were paying the ultimate sacrifice in Vietnam. Then, when the war was successfully lost, this was followed by treating Vietnam veterans as a bunch of naïve drug abusing losers. In realty there was a lot more drug abuse by the anti-war protestors than by combat veterans. We were too busy trying to stay alive.

The loss of the Vietnam War resulted in hundreds of thousands of people incarcerated in re-education camps and millions more being slaughtered in Cambodia. Those inconvenient facts were and are ignored in the afterglow of the rejoicing by the liberal left.

This Memorial Day, please give some thought to those who fought for this country and to the spineless cowards in the liberal left who fought and continue to fight against it. The same jerks who are trying to remove Donald Trump from office and who would also celebrate joyously if either North Korea and Iran successfully obtain nuclear weapons.

TDM

I once had an employee come to see me in my office.  She was upset because she didn’t like an assignment she had been given to complete. She explained, in detail, why she did not want to do this. I listened carefully and then said the following: “If I only gave you assignments that you wanted to do, I wouldn’t need to pay you!”  She blinked a couple of times, then got up, went back to her desk and started working on the assignment.

I think this is exactly the way the NFL should handle the flag protest situation.  If you don’t want to honor our flag by standing for the national anthem, there is an easy solution. Go work somewhere else.

For years I have watched sports franchises put up with ridiculous demands by “star” players.  Sometimes this includes overlooking or even covering up criminal activity.  Some of the owners believe that the only thing that matters is winning.  But, championships are never won by one player. We have all seen teams win championships that no one expected.  In many cases is this with new younger players, or older players rejected by other teams.  There is no better example of this than the Las Vegas Knights.  This is an expansion team that was not expected to be competitive for years.

How did they achieve this?  If you check out their website, they will tell you.  “The formula, from owner Bill Foley on down, is based on team.” If you watch a Las Vegas Knights home game the performance of the National Anthem is a big part of the event.  The singer is Carnell “Golden Pipes” Johnson.  He sings the National Anthem at all their games.  When it comes to the part where the anthem goes:

“gave proof through the ‘night’ that our flag was still there” he pauses and the entire arena shouts: “knight.”  Like I said, it is all about the team.

Google a video of the Las Vegas Knights national anthem and you can see it for yourself.

That is the opposite of a Colin Kaepernick.  When he sat down for the National Anthem, he made a loud statement: “This is all about me, not the team.” When other players joined in for a cause most of them can’t even define, they missed something important. The thousands of people who were paying big bucks to see them play were standing at attention for our National Anthem. If those fans stop buying tickets and people at home turn off NFL games, then your protest will be meaningless.

I think the NFL could have fixed this problem easily by showing some common sense.  This is a sports league.  It is about performance on the field.  We as the NFL honor America.  That is why we make it a big deal to honor the flag before every game.  If you want to play in the NFL, then you are expected to show the same honor and respect for our flag as the fans who are paying to see you.  If this in unacceptable to you, then we suggest seeking other employment.

They could also solve it my directing TV broadcasters to focus on the thousands of people honoring our flag and ignore the three malcontents sitting on their ass.  But, of course, that would require ethical behavior on the part of the broadcasters so that is extremely unlikely.

Instead they said you can either honor the flag or stay in the locker room. Brilliant.  This insults everyone and satisfies no one.   We can bet that the main stream media will showcase every athlete who stays in the locker room and promote them to hero status for their great act of courage.  They will be too pumped up with self-righteous glorification to hear the clicks when a whole lot of us turn the channel.

TDM