Kaepernick Throws Into Double Coverage

Colin Kaepernick refuses to stand for the playing of the national anthem before games. Why? He said, "I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color."

He continued, "There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder."

Now the story has evolved to the point where we are deconstructing The Star Spangled Banner. Joy Reed tweeted,

Wow. Every American should watch and learn this history of the Star Spangled Banner, and it's troubling 3rd stanza. https://t.co/GSAF0d3OL8

— Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) August 28, 2016

I would bet anything that Kaepernick, like about 99% of Americans, is unaware of the third stanza of The Star Spangled Banner. Because they never play that part of the song.

Now we are even deconstructing the composer of The Star Spangled Banner, Francis Scott Key. He was a slaveholder or traded in slaves or raped female slaves or something. Hated blacks. This is a perfect example of current year thinking.

There isn't a better example of comparing the acts of the past by today's standards than looking at a two-hundred-year old song.

But you could play a Maya Angelou poem before games and Kaepernick still would have a problem with standing. That's why retconning the song and the composer is missing the point.

"I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag."

Fine. Don't stand. That is your right under the constitution, and you are free to express yourself in that way. I wonder if he will be struck by the irony of this.

The reason you put on a uniform is to present a standard, unified front to your fans and the opposition. Will he face anything stronger than censure? I would suspend him.

If Kaepernick does make his way into the lineup and somehow beat out Blaine Gabbert for the job, he will be greeted by thunderous applause from the home crowd. Some of that is just supporting their guy. But some of it will be because the effete liberals in the stands in Santa Clara AGREE WITH HIM.

I hope North Korea's first target is a sold-out Niners game.

Burn After Reading

Matt Lee (@apdiplowriter) from the Associated Press last night provoked a torrent of abuse on Twitter. I have long been a fan of Lee's adversarial nature during State Department press conferences. He is among a group of journalists that I trust, a group that doesn't even come to a handful.

He drew the ire of Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) for defending the AP. What did AP do? They published a story that didn't mention "Trump’s scandals or legal violations – past or present." For Kendzior, this is enough to imply that the AP is in the tank for Trump.

The AP, she says, ran a "fact-deprived Trump piece... days after the author of it met with the staff of the Trump campaign." What is the world coming to, when a journalist is allowed to talk to a campaign?

But it's not just AP. In Kendzior's fever dreams, even MSNBC is covering for Trump. She tweeted, "Last appearance was on MSNBC two weeks ago. They got me off fast when I noted media complicity in promoting Trump."

Who else? CNN's Brian Stelter pointed out that AP has done "10s of 1000s of stories about Clintons over the years." Kendzior than attacked Stelter, tweeting that "What AP and CNN don't seem to grasp is you don't *have* to obey the strategy of a man who favorably IDs with Leni Riefenshtal."

Well there is a big word. Funny coming from someone who contributes to Al Jazeera.

This earned a well deserved "calm down" from Matt Lee. Apparently telling a woman to "calm down" is sexist and misogynist.

Sarah Kendzior is a journalist that writes with a straight face that Donald Trump called "for Hillary’s assassination," and that Trump's rallies are "violent." It would be nice if she noted that Trump rallies are essentially wildings for antifas, and that Trump supporters are openly preyed upon.

Calm down, Sarah. You're hysterical.

White Privilege

If you title your article, "Dear Fellow White People," chances are it won't be received as graciously as you intended. ESPN writer Kevin Van Valkenburg contributed this essay for The Undefeated. The article is subtitled, "White privilege is a thing. And Rio was the perfect example."

Oh? Is that why Ibtihaj Muhammad (PBUH), who became a Muslim through the Nation of Islam, was barely out-voted by Michael Phelps to be the American flag-bearer?

I doubt Van Valkenburg believes that Phelps was voted flag-bearer just because of his skin tone. Surely he is aware that Phelps' merit, by becoming the most decorated Olympian in history, had something to do with it.

Van Valkenburg spends most of his essay writing about Ryan Lochte being defended by his bros (other white guys like Matt Lauer and Billy Bush) for concocting a story about being robbed after a drunken escapade.

"Try to imagine," Van Valkenburg writes, "what the world’s reaction would be if a black athlete got drunk, urinated in public, destroyed some property, then concocted a story..." You mean, in the absence of any conflicting evidence? The world's reaction would be exactly the same!

Van Valkenburg never tries to identify why Lochte's story was initially accepted. It's the same reason that Lochte has been mercilessly and universally scorned in the aftermath. Lochte's original story was met with credulity because it confirmed some pre-existing biases that we all share. Namely, that Rio is a dangerous place by any standard.

The subsequent contempt that the world has shown Lochte is also a symptom of what happens when our biases are confirmed. Lochte became The Ugly American.

This is a way of admitting that double standards exist. It just seems hackneyed and cliche to cry about them. You would have to spend all your time either pointing them out or defending against them. If you hack out screeds on white privilege, aren't you obligated to occasionally point out cases of female privilege?

Hope Solo entered this Olympics as U.S. Women's Soccer starting goalie, in spite having an active domestic violence case against her. She repaid her team's trust in her by sucking at her job, then blaming her opponents' style of play. If you google her name, you get results like "Hope Solo's behavior not in the spirit of the Olympics."

A sportswriter should be more circumspect about throwing around words like privilege. Aren't black athletes the recipients of privilege also? How many times have white athletes been dismissed as having lesser natural physical ability than their black peers, that they then have to work harder to overcome?

The main problem I have with the casual use of the word, "privilege," is that there are several words that go along with it, words that are silent and implied. Words like, "unearned," and "undeserved." How many black people can you lift up by telling them that the white people they co-exist with, don't face difficult obstacles? Some, perhaps. The vast majority probably just internalize this as a sense of futility and resentment.

I agree with Van Valkenburg that some people get the benefit of the doubt. People make quick, intuitive decisions all the time, often at a subconscious level. Sometimes this is a result of an experience, and sometimes it comes to us innately. And sometimes the standard we use for judging black people comes from black people themselves.

Pro-Life Just Means Anti-Women

The Abortion Industrial Complex is using disputed maternal mortality statistics to justify its jihad against the state of Texas. The Guardian's Molly Redden published an article on Saturday that is getting amplified from the likes of Cecile Richards. Entitled, Texas has highest maternal mortality rate in developed world, study finds, the article draws from the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Redden's article claims a causal link to budget cuts that reduced Texas' family planning budget. The maternal mortality rate increase in Texas was not seen elsewhere. "No other state saw a comparable increase," Redden writes.

The source material is here.

The OCOG study shows that maternal mortality rates nationwide, excluding Texas and California, "rose from 18.8 in 2000 to 23.8 in 2014."

The maternal mortality rates for Texas, which hovered around 18 per 100,000 births up until 2010, doubled in 2014 to nearly 36 per 100,000 live births. At that rate, Texas may soon catch up to the District of Columbia!

Were Texas' budget cuts responsible for the increase? It seems unclear. The OCOG study was motivated to assess how "changes in pregnancy question formats" may have affected reporting rates. In particular, they note that "Analysis of the measurement change suggests that U.S. rates in the early 2000s were higher than previously reported."

In other words, maternal mortality may very well be lower, because the way we measure maternal mortality changed.

If there was a causal link, then why did the budget cuts hurt worse in Texas than in New Jersey, where the state family planning budget was totally eliminated?

And wouldn't budget cuts to family planning services cause a similar increase in infant mortality? The rate of infant mortality in Texas seems to be declining.

The OCOG study raises more questions than it answers. The measurement changes need to be quantified. And the maternal mortality has always varied between ethnic groups. Texas has tried to make it harder to get abortions, but that's usually not an issue with regards to maternal mortality.

My suggestion would be to overlay a chart showing obesity and diabetes rates with maternal mortality.

A Modest Proposal

On the subject of immigration reform, I'm a little closer to "deport them all" than I am to the Democratic Party platform. To a Democrat, immigration reform is just amnesty.

To me, immigration reform means ending birthright citizenship and chain migration.

I'm willing to admit that assembling a deportation force and rounding up eleven million people is not politically feasible. At the same time, not everybody in the United States illegally has identical claims on citizenship. Some are more worthy than others.

My approach would involve a point system.

For example, if you have never committed a crime, you would have a higher point total than someone who has. I don't think traffic infractions are serious enough to deduct points, but everything else is. Driving without insurance, failures to appear, all sorts of crimes would lower a person's eligibility ranking.

Thus, the person who violated our border with the intent to stay, has committed a crime. If they are working, they are also committing the crime of fraud. They are either using fraudulent social security numbers, or working off the books. Also, there are millions of people who knowingly lied on tourist visa applications with the intent of staying. These are all crimes with varying degrees of severity.

People in these situations should do the equivalent of an immigration plea bargain. If they admit guilt and return to their home country, they will get more points, and get closer to the front of the line. The more points, the better the chance of being offered citizenship. If they continue to live and work here illegally, that would be the immigration equivalent of pleading not guilty. We would need to expend more resources to prosecute them, and they should suffer a lower point ranking.

Demonstrating English proficiency would be a way to amass points.

The demonstration of high levels of knowledge of American history would also be a scoring tool.

A felony conviction would mean immediate deportation, and a permanent ban. We should have the right to ask our government to prioritize which people will become our neighbors.

Masculinity So Fragile

Feminist curricula is teaching young women that they are oppressed by the Patriarchy, which wants control over their reproduction. This control reflects not male qualities like protectiveness or strength, but weakness, insecurity, and fragility.

Masculinity So Fragile is a recurring theme among Twitter feminists and Tumbleristas. This is because ridicule is a very powerful psychological tool to use against men.

#MasculinitySoFragile you need to buy a razor that's shaped like an off-road vehicle 😐 pic.twitter.com/2Jl2azWLyI

— Mootel 6™ (@Mala_Moot) February 21, 2016

Here is a very good example. The idea that men "need" a razor that resembles an off-road vehicle is deeply insulting and fallacious. Some men may want it. Some men are playful and in touch with the little boy that they used to be. This is something worthy of mockery.

But what does the use of ridicule say about the speaker? A person that mocks another is telegraphing their own psychological brokenness. They are suffering from deep insecurity themselves. A psychologically damaged person will try to make themselves feel better by displaying derision.

Ridicule is weaponized feminism, and very effective. One of the best ways to humiliate a man is to laugh at him. There is a word that describes a person that takes pleasure in the inadequacy of another person without remorse or shame.

Sociopath.

Yes, men are insecure. We are human beings, after all. But to heap scorn upon us for being human, is, well, kind of sadistic.

Jill of the White Feather

In World War I, the Order of the White Feather was founded. It attempted to persuade young women to hand out white feathers to young men not in uniform. This was an attempt to shame the young men into enlisting, and subsequently giving their lives at places like Passchendaele and The Somme.

These women included pacifists but also early feminists and suffragettes like Emmeline Pankhurst. They lobbied for an involuntary draft along with the right to vote.

Even the proto-feminists of the time considered men disposable and were willing to use their sexual power to shame them into a misguided act of chivalry.

This is what comes to mind when I read the effluent from the mind of Jill Filipovic.

If your husband is willing to elect Trump, he either hates women or just does not care about them/you. Divorce him. https://t.co/CC8myhPd9o

— Jill Filipovic (@JillFilipovic) August 14, 2016

This is a shockingly cavalier attitude toward feminism's most toxic by-product: the no-fault divorce. Jill Filipovic, I'm willing to wager, is not familiar with the parental alienation that a child caught up in a divorce experiences. Her article focuses on two couples that represent her elite world-view, and the question whether they have children or not is unanswered.

Dr. Thomas Stossel is a hematologist and professor of Medicine at Harvard. His wife, Dr. Kerry Maguire, is a dentist and a director at Forsyth Institute in Cambridge. Their status clearly marks them as the cognitive and cultural elite, and thus inscrutable to outsiders. He was thinking about voting for Trump, but his wife gave him an ultimatum.

"If you vote for Trump, I will divorce you and move to Canada," she said. He should have speed-dialed her lawyer and handed her the phone.

Instead, he accepted the white feather and pinned it to his chest. He is planning to vote Libertarian.

The other couple interviewed for the article is Matt Latimer and Anna Sproul-Latimer. They are both literary agents in Washington, D.C. He recently wrote an article for the New York Times entitled, Mike Pence Should Get Donald Trump To Withraw. In other words, he is a #NeverTrump.

Did Jill Filipovic interview anybody for this story that aren't her close, personal friends?

Apparently Filipovic was on the receiving end of Twitter abuse after her provocative tweet. Muh mentions! She then tweeted, "Wow, really nothing like saying you shouldn't marry a Trump supporter to get sad fragile men into a Twitter rage." No, Jill, you used the "D" word. Advising a woman not to get married to someone for wrongthink is a far more defensible position.

So men, Jill has handed you a white feather. The question is, you're not sad and fragile, are you? You're not a coward, are you? Go and fight for her!

Olympics Fever?

See your doctor.

I don't understand the fascination with women's gymnastics. Look at this team. Do any of these individuals look like women to you?

Simone Biles is nineteen years old, and stands four feet nine inches tall. She looks like a garden gnome. Like all the other members of the team, she looks like she suffers from facial dysmorphism.

Gabby Douglas is twenty, and stands nearly five feet tall. She's practically statuesque, by gymnastics standards. Like Biles, her face looks like it was sandwiched between plates of a hydraulic press. And like Biles, her routine consists of thrashing around on the floor and doing lots of flips. It's a performance that has no grace or style, just raw power.

Laurie Hernandez is sixteen years old. Technically this is considered an age of physical sexual maturity, but she seems arrested in an earlier developmental stage. Her huge eyes and round head give her the appearance of a baby.

Aly Raisman has a very thick neck. She is nearly tall enough not to be confused with a dwarf, but is still a womanlet.

At least the male gymnasts conform to a general aesthetic. The only use anyone would have for a retired gymnast like Gabby Douglas would be to create a new master race of mutant super-gymnasts.

Either that, or a feminist reboot of Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs. Women today need to be good role models for little girls who are gaining interest in mining and metalworking. Gabby Douglas would be Doc, because they need to show that black, humanlike creatures can also be physicians. Get a handsome man utterly lacking in agency to damsel, like Chris Pine. Practically writes itself.

Bake The Fucking Cake

Delta Air Lines had a rough week. Their first mistake was violating a cardinal rule of civil rights: never eject a passenger who is a Muslim. Nazia Ali and her husband Faisal caused a flight attendant to feel uncomfortable, and they were escorted off the airplane.

Naturally, CAIR has condemned the ejection and demanded that the U.S. DOT "conduct a thorough examination into the prevailing practices of major American air carriers." This will help to end the profiling of and discrimination against peaceful Muslims.

Which will lead to another Michael Tuohey waving through another Mohammed Atta. Whether or not, as Tuohey later recalled, "If this guy doesn’t look like an Arab terrorist, then nothing does."

If the peaceful Muslims with box-cutters don't disrupt your Delta flight, then the lesbian movies surely will. The other major public relations snafu for Delta was airing an in-flight movie, Carol with the kissing scenes edited out.

It seems as if every major media outlet is covering this story, and all they mention is "same-sex kissing."

Does this look like same-sex kissing to you? It looks like a lesbian sex scene.

The greatest reaction to the story was the headline from Mediaite, It’s 2016 and Delta Airlines Edits Award-Winning Movie About Lesbians So They Never Kiss.

IT'S THE CURRENT YEAR! IT WAS CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED!! IT WAS JUST A KISS!!1!!

Delta responded by noting that the studio provides two versions of the movie, and they chose to air "the edited version [that] removes two explicit scenes that do not meet our guidelines."

In 2016, tolerance for perverse lifestyles is no longer enough. We've moved from expecting tolerance to demanding endorsement.

Because upon what grounds would anyone base an objection to being forced to watch two dykes have sex? If you have kids, you could say you don't want them to be exposed to it, but what if you don't? What if you just don't like watching lesbian sex scenes, or any sex scenes, for that matter?

Then you would be labeled a bigot, and soon, bigotry will be a criminal offense. Think that is overwrought? Well, did you imagine five years ago that women would have combat roles, gays and transgenders would serve openly, and girls would be forced to share their locker rooms with boys?