The following is the text version of my YouTube video which can be viewed by clicking here: https://youtu.be/s1wU8PIM_vQ
You can subscribe to my YouTube channel by clicking here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIb4k41f3A1lftMXivcvj5g.
LMV: Welcome. In today’s episode we will look at the controversy over NFL player protests and then look at some stories related to this year’s active hurricane season.
We’ll take the NFL story first. Last season in 2016 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick began kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality against blacks. In case you didn’t know already, he is a black player. A few players joined him in the protest last year and many more have joined in the protests this year. A few of the owners have even joined with the players in solidarity as have some of the head coaches.
As I mentioned, this all started about a year ago with then 49ers QB Colin Kaepernick; he is no longer with that team.
Video 1: Coverage of initial protests.
Here are some of the comments Kaepernick made following the initial protests:
There’s a lot of things that need to change. One specifically? Police brutality. There’s people being murdered unjustly and not being held accountable. People are being given paid leave for killing people. That’s not right. That’s not right by anyone’s standards.
Niners coach Chip Kelly told reporters Saturday that Kaepernick’s decision not to stand during the national anthem is “his right as a citizen” and said “it’s not my right to tell him not to do something.”
LMV: Even President Trump has inserted himself into this controversy. Here is a clip from one of his speeches.
Video clip.
LMV: The Pittsburgh Steelers team decided to protest by remaining in the locker room before the anthem. One of their players, former Army Ranger Alejandro Villanueva, refused to join the protest. He came out of the locker room and placed his hand over his heart during the anthem.
In a post-game press conference his coach, Mike Tomlin, who has never been in the military, was disappointed that Villanueva came out for the anthem. Here is text from a foxnews article:
Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin appeared to take a swipe at the Bronze Star recipient’s decision in a post-game press conference. Tomlin told the media that, prior to kickoff Sunday, the Steelers held a team meeting and decided, though not unanimously, to not come out of the locker room for the national anthem.
- Are blacks being disproportionately targeted by police?
- Is Chip Kelly correct? Does the NFL have any right to tell the players “what to do?”
- Should the President weigh in on this issue?
- Who are the winners and losers here?
> Are blacks being disproportionately targeted by police? According to data just released here at the end of Sept. of 2017 we have these facts:
+ So far in 2017 there have been 10 unarmed blacks killed by police in the U.S., about one a month. If you are black, you are more likely to have been killed by bees or hornets than by police officers. That means you are more than 4.5 times more likely to be killed by lightning than to be shot by a cop. I did the math. You are 5x more likely to be struck and killed by a train.
+ In 2017 there were 7881 blacks murdered in the U.S. in 2016. White people committed 243 of those murders. That means 97% of these murders had nothing to do with white people at all.
+ In 2016 police were 18.5x more likely to be killed by a black person than was a black person to be shot by a cop. Does the media focus on these numbers? No, they will barely see the light of day because it does not fit their false narrative of oppression. As a matter of fact, if a black person does speak out about these alarming statistics they are more likely to be attacked by the media.
Charles Barkley recently called blacks out for killing each other and was called a “black white supremacist” by the left-wing website the Root. Here is a photo.
Photo of Barkley and a copy of the newspaper with the headline “Charles Barkley is a great example of a black white supremacist.”
If you are Black Lives Matter and are concerned about blacks being shot, you should be focused on preventing other black people from shooting blacks.
> Is Chip Kelly correct? Does he or the NFL have any right to tell the players “what to do?” The NFL owners are the employers of the players and have every right to tell them what they can and cannot do ON THE JOB. This comes down to property rights; the owners own the team and can set whatever policies they like within the limits of the law. Does UPS want their drivers to deliver a political message when they deliver a package? Do you want the Wal-Mart greeter to urge you to support state funded abortion?
> Should the President have weighed in on this issue? Yes and no. This is a matter between an employer and employee and he has no official business stepping in between the dispute. That’s the no part of the answer.
The yes part of the answer is that this has played really well with his supporters and has been a political win for him.
Who are the winners and losers here? The main stakeholders here are the NFL owners and players, the media outlets carrying the games, the NFL fans, and the President. This has been a loss for all of these stakeholders except President Trump. The fan reaction towards the protests have been negative. Some fans have bought fewer game tickets, burned the jerseys of players, cancelled their NFL season ticket for television, etc.
From Zero Hedge article entitled “Blowback? NFL ticket sales crash 17.9% as owners lose control of players”:
Probably just a coincidence… or just transitory, but The online ticket reseller TickPick told The Washington Examiner that sales have dropped 17.9 percent, far more than the usual Week Three fall…
- 17.9 percent decrease in NFL orders this week compared to the previous week.
- Last year the drop was 10.8 percent in orders on Monday & Tuesday following Week Three games.
“We have seen a massive decrease in NFL ticket purchases this past week in comparison to years past. Week 3 seems to usually have less ticket orders than week 2, but this year ticket purchases are down more than 7 percent from this time last year,” said TickPick’s Jack Slingland.
“While we can’t specify if this decrease is due to the president’s comments, player and owner protests, play on the field, or simply the continued division of consumer’s media attention, the conversation around the NFL this week has focused on the president’s comments as well as the players’ and owners’ reaction. As viewers continue to abandon their NFL Sunday habits, both the number of ticket sales and the purchase price of tickets will drop,“ he told us.
And from another article entitled “Angry NFL Fans Lash Out, Burn Jerseys Over Protests: “You Can Take Your NFL And Shove It”:
…Some angry NFL fans have chosen a different way to express their dissatisfaction with the league and some of its players. As Yahoo reports, Steelers’ offensive-lineman Alejandro Villanueva’s jersey becomes an overnight best-seller after he stands for anthem.
…the NFL doesn’t seem to understand that while almost every American can agree that football is a great sport, roughly 50% of them will vehemently disagree with whatever political stance any given player or league exec decides to publicly announce. And, since the NFL’s future depends on selling overpriced ad spots to massive corporations looking for a consistent number of eyeballs, alienating any group of viewers, for whatever reason, is just bad for business.
But don’t take our word for it…here’s just a couple of examples for what the fans had to say over the weekend.
“It’s a disgrace. It’s disgusting. They’re getting paid to do a job…to play ball and do whatever the fans want them to do.”
“They’re paying these guys to do a job. They’re not supposed to be involved in politics.”
“Now, think about that and think about the millions a year that you people are making to play a game while we got soldiers overseas that get paid minimum wage to put their lives on the line for that flag.”
“Protest does not belong in our NFL sports. It’s a game.”
LMV: And, this angry fan burned an NFL jersey to the tune of the star spangled banner.
Video clip: Fan burning jersey.
LMV: So the NFL is shooting itself in the foot with this stuff and it is hurting the league. They should shut up and get back to playing football.
LMV: And now for a little libertarian humor. And the caption reads “Licensing. When the government takes away your right to do something and then sells it back to you.”
Now that we have focused on the NFL protests let’s move the lens back and take a wider angle view. Where does this fit into the larger picture? It is part of a larger scheme by the democratic party to garner votes by the division of America. They want to gain or keep your vote by pretending to protect you from some form of perceived oppression. If you are gay they will protect you from the homophobes. If you are black they will protect you from the white oppressors. If you are Hispanic and illegally in this country they want to find some way to make you a citizen so that you can vote for them. If you are a woman they will protect you from the misogynists.
So who is it that is fanning the flames of racial division in this country? It is groups like Black Live Matter. Consider the following 4/3/17 article entitled “Black Lives Matter Philly Bans White People from its Meetings”:
Black Lives Matter Philly banned white people from an upcoming event, claiming it is a “black only space.”
The April 15 meeting plans to discuss projects and initiatives for the upcoming year and act as a place for people to “meet, strategize and organize.” While children are invited to attend, white people are explicitly banned from the meeting, according to the Facebook event page.
When people began questioning the ban on whites over Twitter, Black Lives Matter Philly stayed by their ban, explaining that their meetings are “black centered.”
Anyone who identifies as “African disapora” is allowed to attend, the group explained over Twitter…“African Disapora” usually refers to people who were taken out of Africa during the Transatlantic Slave Trades.
LMV: Does this sound like actions from a group that is interested in unity or division? You be the judge. Surely, the white supremacists are also interested in promoting racial division but their paltry membership gets little traction. But, unlike the white supremacists, groups like BLM get support from the leftist triad of the mainstream media, academia, and Hollywood.
Another article which demonstrates that academia is on board with the division comes from a 6/2/17 article entitled “Colleges Celebrate Diversity with Separate Commencements”. This article details how many universities such as Harvard, Emory and Henry College in VA., and Columbia are now having separate commencement ceremonies for African Americans.
“…We have endured the constant questioning of our legitimacy and our capacity, and yet here we are,” Duwain Pinder, a master’s degree candidate in business and public policy, told the cheering crowd of several hundred people in a keynote speech.
From events once cobbled together on shoestring budgets and hidden in back rooms, alternative commencements like the one held at Harvard have become more mainstream, more openly embraced by universities and more common than ever before.
“You began college just weeks after George Zimmerman was acquitted in the callous killing of Trayvon Martin,” Professor Terry, an assistant professor of African and African-American studies and social studies, said in his address.
“You were teenagers, like Michael Brown when he was subjected to the Sophoclean indignity of being shot dead and left in the blazing sun. Your world was shaped in indelible ways by these deaths and others like them, and many of you courageously took to join one of the largest protest movements in decades to try to wrest some semblance of justice from these tragedies.”
LMV: And so it goes, identity politics is alive and well on campus. And that’s our show for today. Thanks for joining us. I look forward to seeing you next time on Liberty Watch where we don’t believe you need some guy with a bull horn to tell you what to do.