I’m not kneeling for the flag…

Over at Hot Air, found and article about Alejandro Villanueva, the Pittsburg Steeler who made news three years ago for refusing to kneel with teammates in their protest. Villanueva is a graduate of West Point and served in the Army Rangers, his pedigree completely explains his values and choices. Under social and team pressure the Ranger did apologize for appearing to stand apart from the rest of the team.

In that article there was a strange reference to another player, Stephon Tuitt.

We now have another member of the Steelers, defensive lineman Stephon Tuitt, refusing to join the sheep that is now the NFL. The Hot Air article said...

Stephon Tuitt has decided to dispense with the whole apology approach up front. In fact, Tuitt invites anyone who objects to perform an unnatural act on themselves

Naturally, this got my attention, so I did a little hunting and found the following Tweet.

Also I'm not kneeling for the flag and screw anybody who have a problem with that. My grandmother was a immigrant from the Carribean and age worked her ass off to bring 20 people over the right way. She had no money and educated herself to be a nurse. She living good now.

Have never been a big fan of Stephon Tuitt, since he reneged on his commitment to play football at Georgia Tech. That said, I do respect him for recognizing the work and difficulty undertaken by his family, and proudly standing by their side. The spelling and punctuation are Stephon's. 

Never Trumpers Out of the Closet as Liberal Democrats in Drag

Amusing article by Brian C. Joondeph over at American Thinker.
NeverTrumpers Out of the Closet as Liberal Democrats in Drag:

NeverTrumpers are like gnats in the summer, annoying but largely irrelevant as they don’t sting or bite.

Regarding the President

He has walked the conservative walk better than any elected Republican since Ronald Reagan, certainly better than most current elected Republicans. Yet NeverTrumpers oppose him in favor of a Democratic Party further left than at any time in its history.

It has been evident that the Republican leadership has been disconnected with the middle class since the day of Reagan. During both Bush administrations, the tenor placed more emphasis on getting along than following conservative principle. To them being conservative meant being cooperative, being the first to reach across the aisle. This blog has said before that W was a better Democrat than Clinton. It seemed that they were unwilling to accept that no matter how good they acted, they were going to be pilloried for being racist meanies by the Democrats and their sycophantic press corp. They never got it.

When President Obama took office, they were unapologetic and forceful. They saw an opening of ACA and they rammed it through. Since then the Republicans have had the power to end the ACA and never did so, not matter how many promises were made to do so. They were afraid to be seen as hurting poorer voters. 

When the public reacted and gelled as the Tea Party movement, the Congressional Republicans followed the Democrats, reusing to embrace the populist movement. They did their best to co-opt the votes and do nothing.

The rage of the middle class voter grew. This led to the election of a man called Trump, loud a profane man. This President has tried to keep his word, and been rebuffed by the part that should be supporting him. 

Good Riddance to the World Health Organization

Most, if not all, organizations are beholden to their benefactors. When organizations are not led by standard bearings (zealots), objectives are bent to the will of the benefactor. It is a natural thing and for that I bear no ill will toward the WHO. Unfortunately the WHO has lost its bearing and with it, like many primarily political organizations its purpose. It has become irrelevant, and needs to be replaced.

It won't be replaced though.

Good Riddance to the World Health Organization:

China was malicious, and there is plenty of evidence of planning. Doctors in Wuhan knew COVID-19 was transmissible by humans no later than the second week of December. A Harvard Medical School study suggests they might have known far earlier: the disease was infecting people in that city in August. Others believe authorities knew of the disease in the fall. On June 10, Fox News reported that Dr. Li-Meng Yan, a Hong Kong virologist and immunologist and one of the first researchers outside mainland China to study the virus, charges that Beijing for weeks covered up evidence of the human-to-human transmissibility of COVID-19. Yet only on January 20, Beijing for the first time admitted that COVID-19 could be transmitted from one human to another.

When it comes to China, I expect that in time we will learn that they've treated their own citizens worse than they have treated the rest of the world. 

Can We Talk?

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

George Bernard Shaw

The Government You Want

In the last week, the foundation principles of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) leadership has been confirmed and revealed as Marxist. Marxism is universally recognized as a euphemism for communism. Citizens of the United States have the right choose and practice whichever ideology they agree with. Unfortunately, in the United States, there is a significant amount of intentional obfuscation by the embedded Marxists within our social and political groups. Under the guise of social activism these Marxists piggyback upon the emotional flare-ups rooted in injustice, perceived or otherwise. The purpose is to generate devolution, a deconstruction of social behavior, an impugning of the rule of law, and some physical demolition for effect. The purpose is simple enough, create a environment of chaos, within which the leadership can be more easily replaced.

The situation in Hong Kong is a little different but certainly a condition through which the United States is headed. A free and prosperous society, government has changed, from a rights guaranteed model to a Marxists model. In this case not by surreptitious devolution, but by and international treaty. Initially the communists allowed the citizens of Hong Kong to proceed as is for a few years, but now have begun to assert positive control over freedom of speech.

On British based site DailyMail article titled China boasts it holds 'a sword over lawbreakers' heads' after passing Hong Kong security law as campaigners warn it is 'the end of the city as we know it', describes how the Chinese nationalists have begun to crack down on freedom of speech in Hong Kong. Protesters have been imprisoned for carrying flags promoting independence for the formerly free and capitalist centric city-state. People have been imprisoned for leading protest rallies. Mind you that from the viseo I have seen, these protests have been controlled, subdued and even silent. The communist government does tolerate dissent.

Tying this back to the United States, in the last century communist countries have demonstrably failed. They have..... 

• Imprisoned millions, in forced labor camps 
• Killed hundreds of millions of citizens, by summary execution, force hard labor and starvation, far more than the Nazis of World War II and the Holocaust.
• Frozen and retarded economic growth in previously burgeoning countries such as Cuba and Venezuela. 
• Obliterated political party systems.
• Erased rights to keep and bear arms.
• Erased rights to private property.
• Erased right to free speech.
• Erased right to exercise religion.

They get to the condition by obfuscation, then drop the hammer.

A common argument for communism is that it removes the greed, it does not, Milton Friedman pointed out that all systems have greed. In a communist system, the greed is centered on power, those in control have whatever they desire, everyone else is poor or crimnal. 

The result of The Government You Want is a simple caste system of social stratification, if you ain't part of the leadership, you'll be poor.