Quote du jour

"In the wake of the state-sanctioned lynchings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd..."
-Colin Kaepernick

When Your Kaeper Knickers Are in a Twist

Nike's New Colin Kaepernick Signature Line

Now, in XXX-Small!

Slappy Kaepernick

Colin Kaepernick: Call Earl Scheib for Collusion Repair

Explains a Lot!

Posted Without Commentary...

...not a Photoshop.

Quote du jour

“(Kaepernick's) not a natural type of pocket passer. He throws a very hard ball to catch. He throws a lot of fastballs, not a lot of touch. He was good when they had a good offensive line to run the ball like crazy, and the best defense in the league. So there are multiple issues to signing him. He’s not good enough to tolerate, basically.”

-NFL team personnel executive speaking on condition of anonymity

"And You Can't Fix Stupid"

Be Careful What You Wish For

Quote du jour

"At the end of the day, the flag is just a piece of cloth and I am not going to value a piece of cloth over people’s lives”

- Colin Kaepernick

Hey, Colon: At the end of the day, your contract is just a piece of paper. Or would you rather that your employer placed some higher meaning on it?

Colin Kaepernick: You Have the Right to Remain Silent

A couple last points on the Kaepernick Kerfluffle before we relegate him and the NFL to the status of Hula Hoops, Lawn Darts and Pet Rocks in the ash heap of faddish entertainment.

For starters, it seems as though the knee jerk reaction of most of Kaepernick's defenders, was to make the straw man argument that he has the right of free speech in this country. This is most notable as an argument in search of a problem, since I have seen no one saying he did not. Examining his Seat Splinter Spectacular as a free speech issue, we note in passing the words of my dear sainted mother:

"There's a time and a place for everything!"

Location, location, location
We'll start with the old bromide about crowded theaters. You can't yell "Fire!" there. Well, actually you can, there are just certain consequences attached to it. If you falsely yell "Fire!" and someone is trampled to death in a stampede for the exits, you may spend the rest of your life shouting whatever you want in the Gray Bar Hotel. Or, you could go home, lock yourself in a bathroom and yell "Fire!" as much as you like, so long as it doesn't bother the neighbors, or the people you live with don't have you committed. (Admit It, Dude! That's pretty crazy!) Maybe you could try going into a crowded theater and shouting something innocuous like "Snickerdoodle!"? It won't get you arrested, but an usher may escort you from the building.

What have we learned so far? Yelling "Fire!" in your bathroom = free speech, in a theater = no free speech, and yelling anything at all in a theater could bring about unpleasant consequences.

Now if I felt really strong about this, I might take a couple of my redneck friends, we'll call them "Cletus" and "Chauncey", (we kinda have to, because those are their names!), and we'll wave signs and shout and stage a protest on the sidewalk in front of Kaepernick's house. Sidewalk protest = free speech. But then, if we take a walk up the driveway and say the exact same things, waving the same signs on his front porch...that's criminal trespass. Not free speech.

Speaking of "waves" if you do the wave in Arrowhead Stadium, you might get on the Jumbotron. If you try to start the wave at your local Presbyterian church, you may be in for a rude awakening. (But at least they'll pray for your soul!)

All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient
 You have any number of times where you have the freedom to speak, but probably shouldn't.  You are free to walk into any biker bar in America and insult the biggest dude in the place and then insult his bike and his old lady... once! Once the police come to investigate your disappearance, the biker is free to tell them he beat you to a bloody pulp and buried you in the desert...but he probably won't.* (See headline) You see there's a principle involved: Just because you can doesn't mean you should.  You also have the right to tell your boss what you think of his ideas and if your wife or girlfriend "looks fat" in that dress.


Discretion is the better part of valor 
Consider the National Socialist Party of America, when they wanted to march through Skokie, Illinois, wearing their swastikas, marching through a village where one in six residents was either a Holocaust survivor or related to one. They, too had a constitutional right to free speech, but where they chose to exercise it was in incredibly poor taste.Ultimately, they ended up marching through Chicago instead. In retrospect, it's lucky they weren't shot.**

Or that group that claims to be a church that protests at the funerals of soldiers, holding signs that say things like "Thank God for dead soldiers". Would President Obama say that they are "starting a dialogue"? Does anyone dispute that they have the right to free speech in America, even though most good people find them and their practices repugnant?

Finally, a note on the character of what constitutes "speech". Personally, I disagree with the proposition that burning a flag is "speech". Speech consists of what you say, or what you write. Leaving aside the utter hypocrisy of those who say that global warming constitutes the biggest threat to the planet, yet see no problem in setting a cotton or polyester flag (or in extreme cases, SUVs) on fire, burning the flag is an action, an activity. I also believe that if we can redefine activity as speech, then the guy who punches the face of the person burning the flag is also "making a statement". But, I digress...

San Francisco, the football home of Colin Kaepernick, voted narrowly to ban public nudity a few years back, but many there and elsewhere across the country view nudity as a form of "free speech". My question for the NFL is:  If Mr. Kaepernick, or any of the other esteemed legal scholars which constitute NFL teams, decides to flip off the flag, burn the flag or drop trou and 'moon' the flag: Will that be a bridge too far? Maybe you could put together and focus group and see if that will stop the hemorrhaging of fans? Or not.



*Note to Tim Kaine: I am not inciting violence here, but using this as an example of what not to do

**Note to Tim Kaine: I am not inciting violence here, either, merely making note of the high numbers of shootings and firearm related deaths in the liberal Utopia of Chicago.

Colin Kaepernick and the Teardrops of the Internet Indian

This is not a post about politics, so I thought I could indulge myself with the headline. This is a story of connections. You throw a pebble in a pond and you get...a wet pebble! Or ripples, or something like that!

The Indian is a reference to a classic public service announcement about litter. Iron Eyes Cody, who turned out to be as much of an Indian as Hillary is healthy, portrayed the classic Native American looking across his once pristine land, and as he looks at all the trash and litter, a tear rolls down his cheek. Message? "Look, America! You made this guy cry! He needs a safe place, free from litter so as not to hurt his feelings!" (Okay, I may have taken a few liberties with the message, but there could be some Millenials in the audience and I want to relate to them!)

What does this have to do with the Internet you may ask? As the Indian in the PSA wept when he saw the sheer volume of litter, if there were an Internet Indian, he too might weep as I litter my stuff in even more places on the Internet, and Colin Kaepernick is responsible!

Bear with me. Colin Kaepernick prompts me to write a post about his classless disrespect for his country, Confessions of an ex-NFL Fan. My friend Gator Doug Hagin of The Daley Gator, reads it and leaves a terse, but complimentary two word comment. Just another day in paradise!

And then, unbeknownst to me, (and believe me, anytime you get to use "unbeknownst" in a sentence is a good day!), Doug quotes from and links to "Confessions" in two different places. (We're going to get to that whole "ripples in a pond", "Internet Indian" thing in a second.)

One of the places he linked from was the Watchers of Weasels magazine site, where the editor (here comes the ripple!) saw my post and invited me to start cross posting my stuff at WoW Magazine, thus littering the Internet in even more places and making the Indian cry. Whew!


Long story short (why didn't I just start here? I guess I need a good editor!) my inaugural post at WoW is "Hillary's Health is Off the Charts", which you've already read here, no doubt. There's also a link to WoW on the sidebar to keep us abreast of other good things going on there

Now tell the truth...that headline kind of made you think of Indiana Jones or Harry Potter, didn't it?

Oh. Okay. Anyway, just wanted to let you know!

Confessions of an ex-NFL Fan

Hi, my name is Mike and I'm a recovering NFL fan. No, that's not me in the picture...I just thought it would class up the place. Maybe not.

My addiction to the NFL started as a lad. I was born in the state of Maryland and the Baltimore Colts were my "home team". (Yes, Virginia, the Colts were originally from Baltimore!). I used to watch Johnny Unitas on what would be by today's standards, an incredibly small black and white screen.
Back in the day, they didn't have the numbers painted on the field every ten yards. The people in the stands knew exactly what portion of the field you were on. Back then, they only had lines. And on TV, all the lines looked the same. You'd watch a player make what you thought was a ten to fifteen yard run only to have the announcer tell you he'd gained five, because he had initially run back ten yards behind the line of scrimmage.

But it was great! I watched whenever I could. I personally watched as Johnny Unitas invented the two minute drill. Those were the days! Johnny Unitas and Raymond Berry were the Montana/Rice of their day.  Technology has improved greatly since then, on both sides of the camera. The play by play guys then would give you stats, but what you see today: the graphics of every player, how tall he is, how much he weighs, which school he attended, interviews with the quarterback's grandmother...none of that was available to the average viewer. You just watched the players go up and down all those lines that looked the same. As a kid, that was enough.

Teams stuck around back then. The Colts were the Baltimore Colts for what seemed like forever, until they snuck out of town one night, in the dead of night to go to Indianapolis. That seemed like a huge betrayal, but even that wasn't enough to take the NFL monkey off my back.

There was one other time I went cold turkey. Back in the day before instant replay became a fixture in every game, referees had to rely on their old Mark I eyeballs to call every play. And one season, they were particularly bad. I mean they stunk on ice. After watching game after game determined by bad calls of referees, rather than the strength and abilities of the players,  I got disgusted and gave up the NFL.

As I recall, the world didn't come to an end. I didn't experience any physical symptoms of withdrawal. Life went on. A year or two later I tried it again after implementation of instant replay. It wasn't perfect, but a definite improvement over bad officiating.

Which brings us to the current situation. The Olympics had a brush with the black power movement in Mexico a few years back, but it passed with only one incident. Not sure what they might have done to prevent a repeat, but, so far so good! The NFL is a different story. It was bad enough when NFL players parroted the erroneous "Hands up, don't shoot" last year, but now the NFL is arbitrarily choosing whose free speech matters.  They deny the Dallas Cowboys the opportunity to express their own free speech, by not allowing them to put a sticker on their helmets to honor fallen Dallas police officers. They fine players whose free speech dared to put memorials to 9/11 on their shoes. Free speech for thee but not for me??

If it is important for the NFL to control the look of the product they produce on the field, they should consider the actions and demeanor of their players who take the field. The NFL has gone out of their way in the past, to support the troops, arranged for military bands and military flybys. But allowing players to disrespect the national anthem... some of that goodwill may be short lived.

President Obama praised Kaepernick for "starting a conversation". But, what kind of conversations are acceptable to the NFL?  Was Ray Rice "starting a conversation" about spousal abuse in that elevator video? Using the Barack Obama standard, so called 'hate crimes' laws would simply disappear. A Klansman who burned a cross on your lawn could claim that he was just "trying to start a conversation".  If it's okay to sit during the anthem, is it all right to flip the bird at the flag? What's the difference? How about setting one of those giant flags on fire? It's all free speech, isn't it?
Well , you might say that flipping off the flag or members of the armed forces visiting the stadium or burning the flag "crosses the line". And that's the point, isn't it? Someone has to draw the line as far as the deportment of those who represent them. Whether it is a hotel concierge or the counter worker at McDonald's who asks if you want fries with that, the person that writes the checks has the right to set the rules.  You don't want to wear the paper hat? Don't work for McDonald's. Don't refuse to wear the hat while working the fry machine and tell us you are 'starting a conversation' about hygiene!

If I were a millionaire sports star, I could think of any number of ways I could "start a conversation" about whatever was on my mind. After game interviews, take out a full page ad in the New York Times, hire a skywriter, set my Ferrari on fire in my driveway and let the press (and my insurance company) interview me!

But to publicly disrespect the flag, IMHO, crosses that line. I do not need to watch a demonstration of  the ignorance and gullibility of spoiled millionaire jocks, who believe things that simply aren't true about the state of law enforcement in the country that provided them wealth, fame and boundless opportunities.

If the NFL doesn't agree with me, fine! That's their right. But if I refuse to watch any of their teams, or patronize any of their sponsors, or promote them in any way, that's my right, too, which I will exercise until such time as I am satisfied that the NFL is not providing a platform for a poisonous form of dissent.

The NFL didn't miss me when I left the last time. They probably won't this time either, unless enough people who feel the way I do pull the same plug.

I have a feeling I'm going to get a lot done with all the time I've just freed up on my weekends!

I may never go back.

Separated at Birth?

What Colin Kaepernick Sees in the Huddle

Colin Kaepernick's Biggest Problem

I was holding off posting this until I was sure I wasn't just going to be "piling on". I needn't have worried.

Scumsucking Colin Kaepernick Thinks Cops are Pigs

There's a kind of class surrounding SF 49er Colin Kaepernick and its name is "No".

Picture taken during training camp wearing socks with pigs wearing policemen's hats. Class. None whatsoever.

Quote du jour

You have people who practice law, lawyers, who go to school for 8 years, but you can be a cop in 6 months. You don’t have to do the same amount of training as a cosmetologist. I mean someone with a curling iron has more education and training than people who have a gun.

-Colin Kaepernick

Colin Kaepernick's New Tattoo

Unbeknownst to most of his friends and fan, Colin got a new tattoo in the off season...