NFL’s kneeling comes to abrupt halt: Protesters miss playoffs

Washington Times

"NBC plans to televise any players who refuse to stand for “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the Super Bowl, but there may be nothing to show.

"It appears that NFL players are no longer taking a knee during the national anthem, namely because none of the teams with still-active protesters has qualified for the postseason.

"By the end of the regular season, only five teams featured at least one player regularly sitting or kneeling on the sidelines for the anthem: the Seattle Seahawks, the San Francisco 49ers, the Miami Dolphins, the New York Giants and the Oakland Raiders.

"None of those franchises made the playoffs, even though four of the five did so in the previous season, leading to speculation about whether the take-a-knee protests wound up dragging down team performance along with TV ratings.

“ 'By their actions, the kneelers brought controversy into the locker rooms, and this kind of distraction is always going to be detrimental to team cohesiveness,” said Robert Kuykendall, a spokesman for the conservative corporate watchdog 2ndVote.

“ 'They unfairly put their own teammates in the tough position, especially the players who believe the national anthem and the flag should be respected,” he said. “Obviously, teams without the distraction were going to be more focused on the game, and that is a catalyst for success.' ” . . .

I'm still angry over the NFL having Beyonce' and her anti-police half-time performance and show no regret over it.

How Leaving the Nuclear Deal would Support the Protesters in Iran

Legal Insurrection

. . . "Shortly after the deal was announced, (and even before the nuclear sanctions were totally suspended,) the Times reported, “it seems that hard-liners, using the intelligence unit of the Revolutionary Guards Corps, have started rounding up journalists, activists, and cultural figures, as a warning that the post nuclear-deal period cannot lead to further relaxation or political demands.”

"In July 2016, (six months after implementation of the deal and the suspension of all nuclear-related sanctions), Reuters reported that “hardliners are gaining authority.” (The news item portrayed Rouhani as a moderate, at odds with the hardliners, a somewhat misleading portrayal.) Perhaps more important, Reuters noted, “Khamenei’s allies control the bulk of financial resources as well as the judiciary, the security forces, public broadcasters and the Guardian Council which vets laws and election candidates.”

"A month later The Wall Street Journal reported similarly, “For all his complaints about American treachery, Mr. Khamenei and his allies recognize that the nuclear deal has produced significant benefits for their hobbled theocracy and may serve to further entrench the regime brought to power in the 1979 revolution.”

"The recent protests in Iran attest to the division between the Iranian people and their increasingly repressive leadership – the protests have been quelled somewhat since the IRGC was called in to put them down – and yet, The New York Times and The Washington Post both argued in editorials that the best way to help Iran’s protesters is to keep the nuclear deal in place." . . .

San Francisco Is A Literal S***hole, Public Defecation Map Reveals

Daily Caller  "While the debate might rage on as to what constitutes a “s--ithole” of a country, one thing is not up for debate: the American city of San Francisco is a s--thole.

"We know this thanks to an interactive map created in 2014 called Human Wasteland.

"The map charts all of the locations for human excrement “incidents” reported to the San Francisco police during a given month. The interactive map shows precise locations of the incidents by marking them with poop emojis:"

"The project shows that the heatmap for poo is most heavily concentrated directly in downtown San Francisco." . . .

Jesse Jackson praises and thanks Donald Trump for a lifetime of service to African Americans. On the other hand, CNN......

Language advisory when CNN covers this president:

CNN Leaps Into The Toilet: Network Aired 195 Uses of 'S***hole' on Friday

. . . "Some hours of Friday were much more aggressive in their use of the word. Don Lemon’s show CNN Tonight used 33 S-bombs -- 22 in the 10 pm hour, and another 11 at 11 pm. Lemon did everything but ask if the missing Malaysian jet vanished into an S-hole.

"Lemon lectured "it was people from what he calls shithole countries who built this country, who built the White House. Nothing that Donald Trump says can change that."

"Technically there were 196 S-bombs, since Van Jones noted in Lemon's space “I understand what he actually said was shithouse, and so he didn't say shithole.” Also technically, Nexis showed no CNN transcript from 3:15 to 4:00 am. (We typically don't record overnight.)

"CNN’s New Day also rolled out 33 S-bombs in its three hours from 6 am to 9 am. Let’s hope the soccer moms didn’t watch Cuomo and Camerota on Friday. By contrast, Wolf Blitzer’s and Erin Burnett’s hours only aired two apiece.­

"The cursing cavalcade was cheered by CNN’s Jeff Yang, who despised reporters beating around the hole: “I'm proud that the great majority of CNN's anchors and correspondents -- including Jim Acosta, Anderson Cooper, Don Lemon, Phil Mudd, Jake Tapper and Brian Stelter -- did not do so.' ” . . .

The media may be digging their own 's-hole'!  . . . "It did not occur to any journalist to ask two simple questions:

1. Did he really say it?  Two senators say he did not.

2. What were Senator Durbin's motives?  Why would a U.S. senator come out of a private meeting and say something like that?  Did he not take into account the damage such a statement would inflict on the country?  Is it all about being anti-Trump?

A blast from the past:

How the Clinton Foundation Got Rich off Poor Haitians

"Some of the Democratic primary support for Bernie Sanders was undoubtedly due to Democrats’ distaste over the financial shenanigans of the Clintons. Probably these Democrats considered the Clintons to be unduly grasping and opportunistic, an embarrassment to the great traditions of the Democratic party."  Dinesh D’​Souza 

"EDITOR’S NOTE: The following article is excerpted from Dinesh D’Souza’s new book, Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party. 

"In January 2015 a group of Haitians surrounded the New York offices of the Clinton Foundation. They chanted slogans, accusing Bill and Hillary Clinton of having robbed them of “billions of dollars.” Two months later, the Haitians were at it again, accusing the Clintons of duplicity, malfeasance, and theft. And in May 2015, they were back, this time outside New York’s Cipriani, where Bill Clinton received an award and collected a $500,000 check for his foundation. “Clinton, where’s the money?” the Haitian signs read. “In whose pockets?” Said Dhoud Andre of the Commission Against Dictatorship, “We are telling the world of the crimes that Bill and Hillary Clinton are responsible for in Haiti.” 

"Haitians like Andre may sound a bit strident, but he and the protesters had good reason to be disgruntled. They had suffered a heavy blow from Mother Nature, and now it appeared that they were being battered again — this time by the Clintons. Their story goes back to 2010, when a massive 7.0 earthquake devastated the island, killing more than 200,000 people, leveling 100,000 homes, and leaving 1.5 million people destitute. 

. . . 

" Haitians such as Andre, however, noticed that very little of this aid money actually got to poor people in Haiti. Some projects championed by the Clintons, such as the building of industrial parks and posh hotels, cost a great deal of money and offered scarce benefits to the truly needy. Port-au-Prince was supposed to be rebuilt; it was never rebuilt. Projects aimed at creating jobs proved to be bitter disappointments. Haitian unemployment remained high, largely undented by the funds that were supposed to pour into the country. Famine and illness continued to devastate the island nation. 

"The Haitians were initially sympathetic to the Clintons. One may say they believed in the message of “hope and change.” . . .  Bill is one of the world’s greatest story-tellers. He has fooled people far more sophisticated than the poor Haitians. Over time, however, the Haitians wised up. " . . . Read more

"The Clintons claim to have built schools in Haiti. But the New York Times discovered that when it comes to the Clintons, ‘built’ is a term with a very loose interpretation."

The Inconvenient Truth About the Democrat Party

"Did you know that the Democratic Party defended slavery, started the Civil War, founded the KKK, and fought against every major civil rights act in U.S. history? Watch as Carol Swain, professor of political science at Vanderbilt University, shares the inconvenient history of the Democratic Party. "

Hat tip to Colby Cline. Indiana

Attkisson: CBS Buried An Obama Quote In 2012 On Benghazi

Hot Air  "Attkisson insisted on CNN and Fox that executives had been notified by 60 Minutes that they had a clip in which Obama rejected the use of the word “terrorism” the day after the attack on the consulate in Benghazi in an unaired portion of Steve Kroft’s exclusive interview. Instead of forwarding that to CBS Evening News and the reporter working on the Benghazi story — Attkisson herself — network news execs instead directed their organizations to use another part of the interview that bolstered Obama’s case, never revealing the existence of the sound bite until after the election. Attkisson tells both Michael Smerconish and Howard Kurtz that “something very unethical was done“:
. . . 

"The full transcript leaked before the election, but it didn’t really catch fire until later. Thanks to the delay, Candy Crowley stepped all over Mitt Romney’s entirely accurate criticism in the presidential debate in October 2012. Rather than speak truth to power, CBS went silent — to preserve it, perhaps, on behalf of Barack Obama? No one’s talking at Black Rock, nor will they likely do so.

"Amusingly, Smerconish spends more time challenging Attkisson on her bias than discussing that of CBS News, although to be fair it might have been to allow Attkisson a chance to defend herself against critics who don’t understand that holding government accountable means doing so in Democratic administrations, too."

Joseph Goebells made a Nazi dictator out of a German midget corporal named Hitler. The most corrupt mainstream media in our history made an American president out of a pot smoking street punk out of Hawaii named Barry Soetero. When lies and deceptions of the MSM are continuous, brainwashing becomes a problem. Obama is a result of that problem.  Comment at Breitbart

Sarah Sanders blasts WSJ for putting an ‘I’ in fake news; then she finishes them off with audio proof

Samantha Chang  "White House press secretary Sarah Sanders continues to slice ’em and dice ’em — fake news stories, that is.

"Sanders fired back at a Wall Street Journal report that misquoted President Trump as saying: “I probably have a very good relationship with Kim Jong Un.”

"Keep in mind that Trump has repeatedly slammed the North Korean dictator as “rocket man” and “short and fat,” so it defies logic for the media to suggest Trump is bragging that he has “a very good relationship” with Kim right now. "

Audio of Mr. Trump's words at the link 

. . . "While quibbling over a single word might seem ridiculous, this is what we’ve been reduced to in light of the avalanche of fake news emanating from the anti-Trump media, which has been caught lying about his koi fish-feeding manners, among other things.

"Sarah Sanders blasted the WSJ over the misquote amid the Journal’s report claiming Trump’s longtime personal attorney, Michael Cohen, had paid $130,000 in hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels (real name: Stephanie Clifford) to keep quiet about an alleged affair Trump had with her in 2006.

. . . 

Samantha Chang is a politics/lifestyle writer and a financial editor. She is a law school graduate and an alum of the University of Pennsylvania. You can find her on Twitter at @Samantha_Chang.

Why Is Liberal California The Poverty Capital Of America? (Updated)

About four years ago, during the administrations of Barack Obama and Jerry Brown, we travelled to the LA flower district, passing blocks of homeless people along the sidewalk. Not just here and there, but shoulder to shoulder.
I have not seen news commentary on them since Democrats were the ruling regimes at the time, but fully expect these people to be media darlings should Republicans return to power in California. The Tunnel Dweller.

Weasel Zippers

"Entitlement programs and taxes."

"Via LA Times:

Guess which state has the highest poverty rate in the country? Not Mississippi, New Mexico, or West Virginia, but California, where nearly one out of five residents is poor. That’s according to the Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure, which factors in the cost of housing, food, utilities and clothing, and which includes noncash government assistance as a form of income.
Given robust job growth and the prosperity generated by several industries, it’s worth asking why California has fallen behind, especially when the state’s per-capita GDP increased approximately twice as much as the U.S. average over the five years ending in 2016 (12.5%, compared with 6.27%).
It’s not as though California policymakers have neglected to wage war on poverty. Sacramento and local governments have spent massive amounts in the cause. Several state and municipal benefit programs overlap with one another; in some cases, individuals with incomes 200% above the poverty line receive benefits. California state and local governments spent nearly $958 billion from 1992 through 2015 on public welfare programs, including cash-assistance payments, vendor payments and “other public welfare,” according to the Census Bureau. California, with 12% of the American population, is home today to about one in three of the nation’s welfare recipients.
The generous spending, then, has not only failed to decrease poverty; it actually seems to have made it worse.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, some states — principally Wisconsin, Michigan, and Virginia — initiated welfare reform, as did the federal government under President Clinton and a Republican Congress. Tied together by a common thread of strong work requirements, these overhauls were a big success: Welfare rolls plummeted and millions of former aid recipients entered the labor force.
The state and local bureaucracies that implement California’s antipoverty programs, however, resisted pro-work reforms. In fact, California recipients of state aid receive a disproportionately large share of it in no-strings-attached cash disbursements. It’s as though welfare reform passed California by, leaving a dependency trap in place. Immigrants are falling into it: 55% of immigrant families in the state get some kind of means-tested benefits, compared with just 30% of natives.

Keep reading…

Update: California is a socialist state. Democrats are a socialist party.

. . . "12.3% of public school students (one in eight) are illegal aliens. You can see why teacher unions oppose enforcing the law, as public school spending is based on part on the number of students.
"Jackson wrote:

With a permanent majority in the state Senate and the Assembly, a prolonged dominance in the executive branch and a weak opposition, California Democrats have long been free to indulge blue-state ideology while paying little or no political price. The state’s poverty problem is unlikely to improve while policymakers remain unwilling to unleash the engines of economic prosperity that drove California to its golden years." . . .

Is Obama as Shallow as He Seems?

"Perhaps it’s time for me to conclude that Obama is too fixated on himself and his image to be other than shallow."

Power Line Blog  "Yesterday, writing about former president Obama’s hack remark to David Letterman about the absence of “a common baseline of facts” shared by Americans, I asked whether Obama really is as shallow a thinker as he appears to be. It was not a rhetorical question. To be sure, Obama has failed to display appreciable depth since he wrote his fictionalized autobiography, Dreams From My Father.

"His signature pronouncements and phrases are banal and borrowed. “The audacity of hope,”borrowed from his spiritual mentor the Reverend Wright. “Just words,” lifted from Deval Patrick. “You didn’t build that,” the obnoxious contribution of Elizabeth Warren. “Right side of history,” the conclusory rallying cry of countless Marxist hacks.

"Yet, I’ve always suspected that Obama has a gear in reserve, one he’s never been called on to display given the desire of so many to anoint him on sight (I assume his Harvard law professors called on him to display his full intellect, but we don’t know his law school grades). First gear will suffice with David Letterman and his audience. Second gear was always good enough for the mainstream media.

"But after the Letterman interview and his chat with Prince Harry, perhaps it’s time for me to conclude that Obama has no gear beyond second. Perhaps it’s time for me to accept Rich Lowry’s assessment:

[T]he deepest truth about Obama is that there is no depth. He’s smart without being wise. He’s glib without being eloquent. He’s a celebrity without being interesting. He’s callow.

"And that of Kevin Williamson:

Barack Obama doesn’t speak a foreign language or play a musical instrument, exhibits no sign that any great book has left a mark upon his mind, has never, so far as the printed word can document, uttered an original thought or put forth an interesting idea.

"Perhaps it’s time for me to conclude that Obama is too fixated on himself and his image to be other than shallow."

Obama Uses Photo of Himself for Christmas Card That Doesn’t Say Christmas

Eight Times When Obama Honored People With Photos of Himself

Like golfer Arnold Palmer for instance:

And John F. Kennedy:

Quoting Rich Lowry in The Callow President:

[T]he deepest truth about Obama is that there is no depth. He’s smart without being wise. He’s glib without being eloquent. He’s a celebrity without being interesting. He’s callow.

Pandemonium and Rage in Hawaii

See also: Brain-Dead Lefties Blame Trump for False Missile Alert by Rick Moran.   It's not nice to tick off Hollywood personalities.

The Atlantic

A false alert of an impending missile attack highlights just how unprepared the country is for nuclear disaster.

"Why would my 22-year-old brother be calling so early on a Saturday morning? I’d ignored the first call. But the second time the phone rang, I picked it up. He was panicking, his voice trembling uncharacteristically: He’d just received the emergency alert warning of a ballistic missile that was heading for Hawaii, where I’m from, and where he and my family still live. “THIS IS NOT A DRILL,” the alert read. My brother was alone, and had no idea what to do or where to go. And he wouldn’t have had much time to figure out a game plan—some estimates suggest a missile from North Korea could reach Hawaii in 20 minutes.

"People across the state were terrified. Many assumed they would die, but sought shelter anyway. They took cover in mall bathrooms, bathtubs, drug stores—even a storm drain. Hawaii has very few shelters, and houses with basements are rare. There were reports of people speeding down highways and running red lights to reunite with family members. Others called one another to say “I love you” one last time.  

"The alert turned out to be false, an epic—almost unbelievable—mishap. A state employee had accidentally triggered the Emergency Alert System message at 8:07 a.m., during what should have been a routine internal test. It took officials 38 minutes to announce their mistake, and to confirm that the warning had been a false alarm. Those 38 minutes were the 38 worst minutes of many Hawaii residents’ lives. And they were just as horrifying for people outside of Hawaii who, like me, felt helpless as they contended with the prospect of never seeing their loved ones again." . . .

The Hawaii worker who 'pressed the wrong button' has been reassigned

Ige released a statement on Sunday saying that "steps have been taken" to improve the alert process and that a false alarm "will never happen again."

Obama, Trump, and the Silliness of Spielberg's The Post

CNN did, however, see fit to review O'Keefe's new book, American Pravda, which hits the bookstores on Tuesday.  Although the book is a thoughtful exploration of historical and modern reporting – in a just world, it would be a staple in journalism schools – CNN chose to headline its review thusly: "James O'Keefe says Trump asked him to go on birther-linked mission."

Jack Cashill  " 'The way they lied," says the Ben Bradlee character in Steven Spielberg's preposterous new film, The Post, "those days have to be over.  We have to be the check on their power.  If we don't hold them accountable – my God, who will?"

"This is the same Ben Bradlee, by the way, who retrieved the diary of his sister-in-law, Mary Pinchot Meyer, after she was murdered and burned the pages having to do her affair with Bradlee's pal, President John Kennedy.  The murder took place less than a year after JFK's assassination and three weeks after the release of the Warren Commission report.  Meyer's ex-husband was CIA.  Bradlee collaborated with the CIA to destroy the evidence.  Thanks in no small part to Bradlee's intervention, the murder was never solved.  This is just one of the minor ironies that render the movie absurd.

"A larger irony is that the movie should have been rightly called The Times, since it was the New York Times that ran all the risk in publishing the Pentagon Papers that contractor Daniel Ellsberg had pilfered, not the Washington Post.  "It's as though Hollywood had made a movie about the [Times'] triumphant role in Watergate," said James Goodale, the Times' in-house attorney when the papers were published.

"As is painfully obvious, Spielberg made the movie to rally the liberal troops against President Donald Trump and his perceived threat to the First Amendment.  The silly, subversive part of it all is that Spielberg elevated the role of the Washington Post only because the Post had a female publisher and thus a juicy role for Meryl Streep.  The Times reviewer, paying deference to feminist sensibilities, still dared to write the following: "It is an unfortunate irony that the makers of a film dedicated to the pursuit of truth took dramatic license with Mr. Sulzberger, who died in 2012, in their worthy elevation of Ms. Graham, who died in 2001."  He refers here to the Times publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger and the Post publisher Katherine Graham.  Only among allies in political correctness would so basic a corruption of the truth be considered "worthy.' " . . .