Comment:

• How the NFL blitzes taxpayers
• Billionaire NFL owners receive tax subsidies, despite rampant homelessness and infrastructure decline in the US
• Bread & circuses: NFL hysteria a reminder of how the Elite have controlled men for thousands of years

Comment: See also: Berkeley mayor member of 'anti-fascist' social media group that helped organize city riots

Comment: In contrast to the NFL, NASCAR owners are standing firm against kneeling:

Richard Petty who co-owns Richard Petty Motorsports told the AP that anyone who refuses to stand for the national anthem should be forced to leave the country.

"Anybody that don't stand up for the anthem oughta be out of the country. Period. What got 'em where they're at? The United States," Petty said.

Those sentiments were echoed by another owner, Richard Childress, who said any protests from his team members would "get you a ride on a Greyhound bus."

"Anybody that works for me should respect the country we live in. So many people gave their lives for it. This is America," Childress said according to Yahoo sports.

Owner Andy Murstein also condemned the protesters but took a more conciliatory stance. When asked what he would do with an employee who takes a knee, Murstein told ESPN: "I would sit down with them and say it's the wrong thing to do that and many people, including myself, view it as an affront to our great country."

"If there is disenchantment towards the president or a few bad law enforcement officers, don't have it cross over to all that is still good and right about our country."

There was one notable exception to the hegemony, however, with driver and team owner Dale Earnhardt Jr backing the right of all Americans to peaceful protest, by quoting JFK on Twitter.

Trump tweeted his appreciation for the stance of most involved with NASCAR on Monday morning, saying he's "so proud" of the sporting organization and its fans.

Judge Jeanine Pirro chimed on on Fox to say "shame on you" to all players taking the knee, as well as commissioner Roger Goodell:

Roger, if my memory serves me correctly your stance on some of the NFL players and the women they batter is somewhat problematic. Think Ray Rice... and Josh Brown.

And a neuropathologist examining the brains of 111 NFL players found 110 to have CTE aka "chronic traumatic encephalopathy" the degenerative disease linked to repeated blows to the head.

Instead of mouthing off about how you are a force for good, Roger, maybe you ought to get ready to reveal damaging information when the lawsuits start. Think Aaron Hernandez.

According to USA Today NFL player arrests are not only disproportionate to the general population, but the violence associated with these arrests is shocking. And I'm not even talking about the homicides.

And Commissioner, instead of taking sides against the national anthem, maybe you ought to think about your stock holders, your investors.

Even though the stock market, thanks to President Trump is at an all-time high, there is one area that is suffering greatly. Companies that broadcast, yes, the NFL games.

They are all down. Do you think that just maybe there is a correlation between the NFL broadcasting stock slump, the NFL TV ratings fall off, as the protests by these Bozos rises? Attendance is down at NFL games. Sunday night football viewership is down at least 7 percent.
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Here's my take: People watch sports to get away from day-to-day stresses, work, illness, financial worries, we don't need to be reminded of political divisions.
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There are so many of you who make tens of millions of dollars why don't you get together and take care of the social injustice instead of disrespecting our country?

The country that has turned you into heroes while you train 8-year-olds who don't know any better to take a knee against America... because they're taking their lead from all of you when they don't know any better.

See also:

• Love your country! National anthem only began playing at NFL games in 2009 (after the Pentagon paid million$)
• Just a reminder: Obama paid the NFL millions to be patriotic
• Trump's stump: 'Strange' night in Alabama, Kim Jong-un and the NFL
• Is the NFL dying? 49ers game played in front of a nearly empty stadium

Update (Sept. 26)

Restaurants across the US are boycotting NFL games due to the player protests. They say they'll start showing the games again once players begin paying respect to their flag and country again. The crowd at Monday's Dallas Cowboys game booed the team as the entire members locked arms and kneeled before the anthem. However, they stood up for the anthem, earning some Trump praise:



The opposing team, Arizona's Cardinals, stood with arms locked.

Update (Sept. 28): When games were broadcast on Sunday, networks made sure not to show images of angry fans booing the anthem protest. One staffer even told Sporting News that camera operators had been told to avoid crowd shots for this very reason (CBS denied the allegation). Networks usually don't broadcast the anthem. As Sporting News put it yesterday:

By covering one of the most significant days in NFL history with rose-colored glasses, the networks cheated viewers. We got an incomplete picture of what really happened in stadiums on Sunday and Monday.

Whatever the politics involved, the protests are bad for business. The CEO Hardwick Clothing, America's oldest suit maker, just announced he is pulling the company's wardrobe sponsorship and advertising from the NFL. Louisiana state rep Kenny Havard is pushing a bill to stop subsidizing the New Orleans Saints.

"I totally agree with their right to protest and I think it just needs to be done somewhere else. They can do it in the streets, they can do it on Sunday mornings... They can do it wherever they want, but not during our national anthem. I think it's disgraceful."

According to a 2015 piece in Forbes, Saints owner Tom Benson could potentially make around $400 million via state taxpayer dollars through 2025.

And just in case you thought this was an issue that could in no way involve Russians, you were wrong. Russian trolls are allegedly fanning the flames:

Russian Internet "trolls" are exploiting a controversy over protests against police violence by black American football players to stir up divisions in the United States, a senator on the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee said on September 27.

Senator James Lankford (Republican-Oklahoma) said paid social-media users, or what he called "trolls," have been fanning both sides of a heated public debate that emerged recently after some black football players, to protest against recently reported incidents of police violence against black crime suspects, knelt on the ground rather than stood up, as is traditional when the U.S. national anthem is played.
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Lankford said the Russian trolls, who congressional aides said were detected by U.S. intelligence agencies that briefed committee members, are not taking sides in the dispute but rather are seeking to amplify the anger expressed by people on both sides.

"They were taking both sides of the argument this past weekend, and pushing them out from their troll farms as much as they could to try to just raise the noise level in America and to make a big issue seem like an even bigger issue," Lankford said at a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee.

Comment: This is Israeli "justice".

Comment: These military warehouse explosions seem to be an ongoing trend:

• Ammunition depot explodes in Kiev-occupied Donetsk
• Largest munitions depot in Ukraine up in flames, nearly 20,000 evacuated
• Munitions warehouse explosion completely destroys town of Svatovo, Ukraine while Govt. does nothing
• Fire in ammunition warehouse with 3.5 tons of ammo causes huge blasts in Lugansk region of Ukraine

Ukrainian authorities are calling it sabotage. But, if so, by whom? Some Ukrainians are offering up their speculations, and the culprit ain't Russia!

The fire at the munition arsenal near Vinnytsia could have been organized by the Ukrainian authorities themselves, and not only to hide the theft of the army. This assumption was made in a conversation with a serviceman of the Dnieper Army, a volunteer from Odessa Igor Nemodruk.

"My personal opinion - they undermined the warehouse themselves. And here are two motives. The first is arson in order to hide theft. The second motive of a higher level is the preparation of public opinion for the fact that they need to negotiate with the Donbass.

Poroshenko did not achieve anything with his last trip. And in order to save himself, he needs to make some kind of non-standard move. To unleash a full-scale war is death for him. Leaving the situation like it is now - too, will not lead to anything good, because Saakashvili and the opposition are preparing to overthrow him.

Therefore, it is entirely possible that he is now preparing such a move, which is, say, to negotiate with the republics of Donbass. And here it is convenient to say: see, our warehouses have exploded, there are no shells, let's agree on something quick.

This explosion could also kill two birds with one stone - concealment of theft and preparation of public opinion for the fact that the war needs to end somehow," he summed up.

Savchenko has similar ideas:

The deputy of the Verkhovna Rada, Nadezhda Savchenko, believes that a fire in the ammunition depots near Vinnitsa could been organized to hide Ukraine's links with the weapons trade.

"We are talking about the following, we see a lot of warehouses in Ukraine, which have been blown up. How they are blown apart, an investigation will establish, but these warehouses have been getting emptied for a long time by the arms trade. Now that all these warehouses are exploding, we need to analyze what was in them," she said.

In this context she recalled in this the report of the international human rights organization Amnesty International, which referred to Ukraine's involvement in the illegal supply of arms to Southern Sudan.
"We ought not overlook at the fact that warehouses could be half empty, so they are destroyed," she added.

Update (Sept. 28): The following quote, from Ukraine's secretary of the Security and Defense Council, Oleksandr Turchynov, suggests that the two explanations above may not be too far off the mark:

"The country has suffered the biggest blow to our fighting capacity since the start of the war."

And the chief military prosecutor Anatoliy Matios "ruled out the possibility that the blast had been caused by foreign saboteurs". Looks like they haven't ruled out domestic saboteurs!

Matios said investigators were looking into possible negligence, abuse of power, or sabotage by those who were authorized to handle the ammunition.

So far the investigation has uncovered that the fire alarm wasn't working and security was understaffed. Sounds like Ukraine!