Sunday, October 1, 2017

Exclusive poll: 62% of NFL fans plan to watch less football

Via Billy

 

Is it a passing storm or an existential problem? That’s a key question for the NFL as it grapples with the mushrooming controversy of players kneeling in protest during the national anthem, and President Donald Trump’s persistent bashing of the kneelers.

A new Yahoo Finance poll suggests the NFL has an enduring problem on its hands. Nearly 62% of 9,056 respondents told us they plan to watch less pro football in response to the anthem controversy. 

Thirty-six percent said they plan to buy less NFL merchandise, and 32% have chosen not to attend a game they would otherwise have gone to. Those findings all have financial implications for the NFL and its 32 team owners.

More with video @ Yahoo

CNN Anchor: NFL Owners Have Data That Support Trump’s Claim on NFL Protests Hurting TV Ratings

Via Billy


CNN host John King said Sunday that NFL owners have data supporting President Donald Trump's claim that television ratings have gone down because of  players' protests during the national anthem.

"NFL owners so far siding with their players for their right to free speech, but they're also keeping close tabs on the financial impact and the public relations impact of this confrontation," King said.

He went on to say that the NFL owners have research "clearly showing the president is right" when he claims the national anthem protests are one factor in TV ratings dropping.

"Since the president weighed in, the owners are now dealing with a surge in ticket holder requests for refunds," King said.

Yes side wins Catalonia independence vote marred by chaos

Via Billy

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Catalonia’s regional government declared a landslide win for the “yes” side in a disputed referendum on independence from Spain that degenerated into ugly scenes of mayhem on Sunday, with more than 800 people injured as riot police attacked peaceful protesters and unarmed civilians gathered to cast their ballots.

Catalonia has “won the right to become an independent state,” Catalan president Carles Puigdemont said after the polls closed, adding that he would keep his pledge to declare independence unilaterally from Spain if the “yes” side wins.

“Today the Spanish state wrote another shameful page in its history with Catalonia,” Puigdemont added, saying he would appeal to the European Union to look into alleged human rights violations during the vote.

More @ AP

Sex change regret: Gender reversal surgery is on the rise, so why aren't we talking about it?

Via Billy


Around five years ago, Professor Miroslav Djordjevic, the world-leading genital reconstructive surgeon, received a visit at his Belgrade clinic: a transgender person who had undergone surgery at different clinic to remove male genitalia - and since changed their mind.

That was the first time Prof Djordjevic had ever been contacted to perform a so-called gender reassignment “reversal” surgery. Over the next six months, another six people also approached him, similarly wanting to reverse their procedures. They came from countries all over the western world, Britain included, united by an acute sense of regret.

Documentary on the Vietnam War: a great lie + 2

Via Mike

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As the Ken Burns and Lynn Novick documentary on the Vietnam War came to a close at the end of the 10th episode, over 18 hours, anti-war protestors with greying hair must be celebrating since the film thoroughly vindicated their arguments – a manipulation many of us predicted before the opening of the first episode. Great lies have an element of truth, and while Burns tells a great story in film, that does not make his stories true.

The documentary misleads viewers from the beginning with two false premises, first that Ho Chi Minh and his North Vietnamese were nationalists dedicated to reunify North and South Vietnam. In fact, the North was determined to impose Communist rule by force on South Vietnam. We were there to stop the spread of Communism in southeast Asia. The difference is vast.

America’s part in the war was certainly not immoral or misguided as Burns portrayed, and the war was not unwinnable from the getgo, the second false premise the film pushed repeatedly from different angles. Americans were depicted as dubious, confused, incompetent and fully expecting to fail, while our enemy was presented as united, energetic, enthusiastic, pitching together as a well-oiled machine, fueled apparently by the virtue of their mission. The irony is comical, even if lost on most viewers who won’t notice the film used old Communist propaganda footage to depict happy North Vietnamese working eagerly as a team.

Statistics on enemy desertion during the war would put the lie to the film’s selective virtue and villain, but that would require viewers to think instead of being swept along by feelings. The dry truth – though it does not make good film - is America’s purpose was not a war of conquest at all, but to block the invading Communists and defend South Vietnam against their attacks. That meant finding and killing the invading enemy whenever their concealed positions were revealed.

Our soldiers’ lament that they fought hard to take a hill, took heavy losses then abandoned the hill, leaves an appearance of the absurd on the surface. But among combat vets - who know more than couch critics - it should raise questions far different than a feeling we should have stayed to defend the top of that hill in the middle of nowhere. Maybe the tactic of ordering an attack on a dug-in enemy holding the high ground advantage was a lousy command decision, a poor way to spend American lives, but the flip side is America was not in a real estate war. Securing every patch of ground we took away from the enemy by force would have required millions more troops and would have made little sense, but I understand the sense of futility. We were in a different kind of fight, to stop an invading enemy by attacking and killing them wherever their positions were revealed.

Like naïve children, the film crew shows horrific scenes from Vietnam, disturbing to any viewer with a shred of humanity. Burns and Novick should know better. As I tell students, during the Vietnam War we had three TV channels, ABC, CBS and NBC, and news came on one hour a day, at dinner time, delivering scenes from Vietnam of blood-spattered wounded and dead, enemy and allies, adults and children. And so, to the viewing public back then, just as to the Burns film crew now, the Vietnam War seemed like a foul and nasty business in which Americans should not be involved.

What the children don’t realize is every war is an ugly, foul, unfair, unforgiving killing contest full of chaos, imperfection and collateral damage. It has always been so. If you want to find glory in war, the only place you will find it is in a Hollywood movie.

Burns might be surprised to know that Gen. Eisenhower in WWII, the good war, openly wept as he walked through a European battlefield, requiring great care to avoid stepping on body parts. War is a bitch, like a different planet, and reporting in WWII was heavily censored to prevent panic at home.

This might be a good place to pause to tell you a few lessons America should have learned from the war, but did not.

Lesson 1: don’t get involved in a war unless committed to the overwhelming force to win.

Lesson 2: combat should not be viewed through the lens of home life, because it is a different world, with unfamiliar values and mores requiring tough standards and lethal measures. The public at home knows nothing about life in that world and has no business watching idiotic talking heads on TV and second-guessing from the comfort and safety of their living room. We should stay out of wars until we can’t, and when forced to fight we should squash our enemy like a bug then tell the public about it when the awful task is done.

That is why - if I were king - we would apply Lesson 3: journalists in a war zone could write anything they wish, but no photos and no videos until after the war is done. Citizens with sufficient brains and motivation could read and be informed, but the masses would have to wait until after the conflict closed to have their feelings manipulated by powerful images.

There certainly were villains in the Vietnam War, but a bit different than the film portrays. The chief villains were Communist invaders intent on conquest, feeding to naïve anti-war types like Burns and his predecessors the cover story of being nationalists, like a Vietnamese version of George Washington’s patriots. Without Communist aggression there would have been no war. Ho Chi Minh’s mission of conquest made America’s stand to defend South Vietnam a noble cause, even though our own villains screwed it up badly as we fought to stop the Commies.

The Communists were the chief villains also for systematically committing countless atrocities against non-combatants, ignored by the US media. Sig Bloom lives in Jonesboro, GA. As a helicopter pilot he flew a news crew to a place near the Ho Chi Minh Trail during the Cambodian incursion in 1970; they said they were eager to see the atrocity he vaguely mentioned. When they arrived, they saw American medics treating Cambodians in leg irons, starved to skin and bones on the brink of death, having been slaves to the North Vietnamese humping ammo on the trail. The reporters were not interested since it was not an American atrocity, so Sig took off, leaving them behind to fend for themselves.

LBJ and McNamara, among others, were breathtakingly stupid in how they micromanaged the war with insane rules that withheld overwhelming force and prevented victory, fully to blame for prolonging the war as it ate American – and Asian - casualties. US Generals polished their next star instead of resigning in protest about how the stupidity from the White House was spending American lives as if they were cheap. The American anti-war movement gave aid and comfort to an enemy engaged in killing America’s sons. The news media twisted the truth, like showing their outrage at the execution in the streets of Saigon during Tet of 1968, but never seeming to care he had just been caught murdering a Saigon police officer, his wife and 6 children. After so much focus on that one execution, the media seemed uninterested in the Communists’ execution of thousands of civilians in one battle: doctors, nurses, teachers, business owners, government officials and other “enemies of the people,” hidden in mass graves in the battle of Hue in 1968. The media also didn’t raise too much fuss about genocide next door in Cambodia, I suppose because America had finally disentangled from Vietnam, a goal far more important to the media than truthful reporting. Can you say “hypocrisy?”

But Burns, squinting ever so tightly to keep his eye on the anti-war narrative, wouldn’t know that. Here’s something else he does not know, and can never truly appreciate.

Like every other war, as we came home from combat we had no idea how much we had been changed. We didn’t know it would be hard to re-connect, even with those we loved, or the isolation many of us would learn to feel from a public that was and remains oblivious to the brutalities of life we had learned.

Every one of us who were in combat carries with us memories hidden in our secret box deep down inside. When bad things happened, like a buddy whose guts were suddenly scattered in the bushes when a booby trap detonated and he screamed for his Mom while he died, or a fellow helicopter pilot who burned alive in the wreckage of his crashed aircraft, a soldier pushed that anguish down deep into his secret box and closed the lid tight so he could go on to do what he must do. For the rest of his life, he carries his secret box deep inside, and no matter how many years pass, when he opens his box the heartbreak he felt at the time is still there, fresh as yesterday when unwrapped.

When asked about things that only we know are hidden away deep inside, some of us will open our box to answer, many won’t, because they can’t find the right words, they know others will never understand, and they don’t want to cry in front of people, as often happens when we raise the lid to our box.

Congress cut off funding to South Vietnam in 1974, breaking the promise America made to our allies – our friends - when we withdrew in 1973, and Congress refused to intervene when North Vietnam took South Vietnam by force in 1975, thereby violating America’s pledge to come to their aid if the Communists violated their pledge not to attack. It broke our heart that America did not keep its word, and that our country abandoned our friends to a horrible fate of executions, re-education camps, being driven from their homes and jobs, and becoming permanent 2nd class citizens in their own country, living under the thumb of Communist control. In this matter of honor, we were better than that, our country was better than that, so we still carry that heartbreak and shame in our secret box.

Now comes the Ken Burns film story, as if told by naïve children, mixing a wrapper of reality around half-truths, distortions, and carefully selected interviewees that feed his leftist narrative that the North Vietnamese were the good guys, justifiably committed to their cause while America bumbled and stumbled in a well-intended but completely misguided horrible mistake.

Those of us who answered our country’s call to do our duty in a tough place like Vietnam had to become accustomed to the overt and covert insults from fellow citizens who organized their protests and convinced themselves we had done dishonorable things when, in fact, we were doing the hardest things we have ever done while serving a purpose larger than ourselves. Not even Ken Burns and his masterful film skills can take from us pride in our service.

Since the public doesn’t have the knowledge to recognize the film’s omissions and distortions, viewers will be swept along by powerful scenes, mood music and interviewees they won’t know were cherry-picked for the war’s turning them into tormented victims. For hordes of viewers who have no idea they are being fed the big lie, the Burns film will become the standard by which the Vietnam War will be judged. Most viewers won’t know and won’t see in the film that the vast majority of us who fought in Vietnam are still proud of our service and would do it again, and they won’t know their trust in Burns’ film is one more disappointment we will cram into our box and close the lid tight.
_________________________

Terry Garlock lives in Peachtree City, GA. His columns, written when the mood moves him, run in The Citizen, a local Fayette County GA paper, because they publish his columns the way he writes them, unlike major papers like the Atlanta Journal Constitution, which edits, composes their own desired title and limits word length. Readers may reach Terry at tlg.opinion@gmail.com




Interesting: Steve Bannon and Henry Kissinger Form Project to Sound Alarm on China

 

According to an interview in Bloomberg Businessweek, Steve Bannon and Henry Kissinger have had several meetings and are preparing a project to sound the alarm about what Bannon views as the primary economic threat to America:
If we don’t get our situation sorted with China, we’ll be destroyed economically. The forced technology transfer of American innovation to China is the single biggest economic and business issue of our time. Until we sort that out, they will continue to appropriate our innovation to their own system and leave us as a colony — our Jamestown to their Great Britain, a tributary state.
More @ Breitbart

Hypocrisy Before Annihilation

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Spenser Rapone, the Marxist West Point graduate who outed himself on Twitter, is just another example, maybe the most illustrative example, of the constant push of communists in society. There is no lack of evidence, even though when I write about "communists" it sounds like a throwback to the Cold War and difficult even for myself to take seriously. But, that is just the point. Through the educational system and the constant brainwashing of the media, I have been taught to take threats of communism in our society with a grain of salt. It worked!

“Everything is a big lie, To our people, Ho Chi Minh was a big liar and immoral.”

 American Vietnam War veterans and South Vietnamese Vietnam War veterans meet up to discuss the PBS documentary on the Vietnam War by American filmmaker Ken Burns on Thursday, Sept. 28, 2017, in San Jose, Calif. (Jim Gensheimer/Bay Area News Group)

A gripping documentary on the Vietnam War — described by many viewers as a masterful depiction of a prolonged conflict that divided the nation — has left many American and Vietnamese veterans feeling deeply disappointed, even betrayed.
“The Vietnam War” — a 10-part, 18-hour PBS documentary by American filmmakers Ken Burns and Lynn Novick that concluded Thursday night — depicts the history of the war through photographs, archival footage and interviews with more than 80 veterans and witnesses from all sides. The film has been hailed as a hard-hitting, raw account of the war and the players involved.

But veterans of the South Vietnamese military say they were largely left out of the narrative, their voices drowned out by the film’s focus on North Vietnam and its communist leader, Ho Chi Minh.

And many American veterans say that the series had several glaring omissions and focused too much on leftist anti-war protesters and soldiers who came to oppose the war.

Why didn't TV networks show angry, booing NFL fans Sunday or Monday?

Via Billy

Cardinals-anthem-092617-Getty-FTR

With President Donald Trump's attacks against protesting NFL players still reverberating, the league's TV partners decided to air live coverage of the national anthem before Week 3 games. Those partners left out a key element of the coverage: crowd shots of angry fans.

Networks typically do not televise the national anthem except for the Super Bowl and other special occasions, but they recognized there would be intense viewer interest this past weekend.

More with video @ Sporting News

Catalan: a language that has survived against the odds

Via Billy

Death of General Franco

Repressed over the centuries by conquering powers, Catalan is now spoken by 9 million people

Catalan is not, as some believe, a dialect of Spanish, but a language that developed independently out of the vulgar Latin spoken by the Romans who colonised the Tarragona area. It is spoken by 9 million people in Catalonia, Valencia, the Balearic Isles, Andorra and the town of Alghero in Sardinia.

Variants of Catalan are spoken in Valencia and the Balearics, which were taken back from the Moors in the 13th century. According to Professor Albert Rossich of the University of Girona (Gerona) these variants reflect the origin of the people who repopulated these areas when the Moors were driven out.

Valencia was repopulated with people from Lleida and Tortosa; the Baleares with people from Barcelona and l'Empordà in the north.

More @ The Guardian

Mulvaney: Media isn't showing federal effort in Puerto Rico

Via Billy

Mulvaney: Media isn't showing federal effort in Puerto Rico

White House budget chief Mick Mulvaney said Sunday that President Trump is dismayed with the media over its coverage of Puerto Rico because news organizations are not covering “the federal effort” to help the island recover from Hurricane Maria.

In an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union,” Mulvaney said while news organizations have covered Puerto Rico’s residents, who have largely been without power and water, they are not covering the administration’s response.

“What you’ve not shown, however, is the federal effort that we’ve got in place down there,” Mulvaney said when asked about Trump’s tweet urging those in Puerto Rico not to “believe the #fakenews.” “So I think that’s where the president’s pushback is.”

More @ The Hill

Cuban doctors: We’re tired of being “slaves” for Castro’s communist regime

Via Billy

“When you leave Cuba for the first time, you discover many things that you had been blind to,” said one doctor to the paper. It turns out communism is de facto slavery. Who knew?
It was big news three years ago when Castro more than doubled the monthly wage for doctors with two specialties, from … $26 to $67. Alas, nurses didn’t do quite as well percentage-wise. They went from $13 per month to $25. Imagine knowing you have an expertise in a profession that would let you live comfortably, if not lavishly, even in the richest country in the world and receiving a monthly wage whose equivalent value could be paid in literal peanuts without too much logistical trouble.

More @ Hot Air

New Book Sheds Light on Anti-Trump Agenda in Public Schools and Politicization of the Classroom

Via Billy

 
"A public school might have decent test scores, but if parents feel their children are being politically indoctrinated, are at risk of being victimized by other students or teachers, are being shortchanged because of mismanagement by school officials, or are having their basic value system overturned, then parents and their children should have the right and the tools to exit the public school system for educational alternatives that better meet their needs and preferences,"
In his newly published book, The Corrupt Classroom, Lance Izumi of the Pacific Research Institute illustrates how the public school classroom has become increasingly politicized, with liberal teachers indoctrinating students with an anti-Trump and leftist agenda.

Izumi makes the case that while many school choice supporters rely on academic school performance data to show that public schools are failing, there are many other equally important reasons to support it.

Confederate statues in U.S. Capitol likely going nowhere + 3

Via Bill

 Statues are pictured. | Getty Images

Some of the most famous Confederate statues sit smack dab in the U.S. Capitol — and there are no plans to remove them.

The white supremacist rally in Charlottesville last weekend erupted over the removal of a monument to Robert E. Lee, leader of the Confederate army during the Civil War. Lee is among the 10 Confederates whose statues remain in the Capitol, lionizing a slaveholding era and sparking calls this week from some House Democrats to rid the building of their likenesses.

More @ Politico

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Via Billy


Black Student Group Complains Cornell Is Letting In Too Many African Students (Not a parody)

Via Billy

Cameron Pollack / Sun Photography Editor)

Cornell University’s Black Students United demanded the university start recruiting more black American students because the campus has too many African and Caribbean students Wednesday.

Black Students United, a group for students identifying with the African diaspora, handed the university president a list of twelve demands, with one of them dealing with the disproportionate representation of African students compared to black students on the campus.

“We demand that Cornell Admissions to come up with a plan to actively increase the presence of underrepresented Black students on this campus. We define underrepresented Black students as Black Americans who have several generations (more than two) in this country,” the group stated in their demands.

Spanish Prime Minister claims victory over Catalan separatists saying police STOPPED their 'illegal' vote after riot police leave 760 injured in angry clashes and Barcelona play match in front of empty stadium

Via Billy

Spanish National Police prevents people from entering a voting site for the controversial referendum in Barcelona 

 It has only just begun.
 
Spain's Prime Minister has claimed that a Catalonian referendum did not happen amid scenes of violent chaos across the country.

Mario Rajoy told a press conference that police had maintained the rule of law by preventing the vote in a crackdown which has drawn condemnation from world leaders.

Hundreds of people have been injured in the clashes with officers seen stamping and kicking protesters as they stormed buildings and seized ballot boxes.

Footage captured in the village of Sarria de Ter in the province of Girona showed authorities using an axe to smash down the doors of a polling station where Catalan president Carles Puigdemont was due to cast his vote. 

And in Barcelona, the region's capital, officers fired rubber bullets at thousands of protesters demonstrating against their votes being denied. 

More with many pictures and videos @ Daily Mail 

FEMA's Brock Long lashes out at Puerto Rico relief effort criticism: 'Information is being misrepresented'

Via Billy

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Federal Emergency Management Agency head Brock Long hit out at criticism of the administration's handling of the crisis in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria, saying it was the most "challenging" relief effort in U.S. history.

"I think the secretary's words are being taken out of context," Long said in reference to the backlash Acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke received for calling the recovery "a good news story." "The bottom line is that this is the most logistically challenging event the United States has ever seen and we have been moving and pushing as fast as the situation allows."

The FEMA administration confirmed 16 people had died on Puerto Rico, which was lashed by Hurricanes Irma and Maria in September.

Long added while "every day we have progress," speaking of the 13,000 staff and volunteers working to help the U.S. island territory, "every day we have some setback."

Mnuchin on Trump’s feud with San Juan mayor: She attacked, he attacked back

Via Billy

 Mnuchin on Trump’s feud with San Juan mayor: She attacked, he attacked back

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Sunday defended President Trump for launching a series of attacks against San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, who partially blamed stalled hurricane relief efforts on the federal government's inefficiency and red tape.

“When the president gets attacked, he attacks back, and I think the mayor’s comments were unfair given what the federal government has done,” Mnuchin told host Chuck Todd on NBC's "Meet the Press."

 More @ The Hill

West Point Commie: Secretary of Defense James Mattis an “evil, vile f***.”

Via Billy

 

Why in the hell hasn't the Army done something?

The bizarre saga of a now-infamous West Point graduate who claims to be a communist just took another crazy twist.

Over the last week, photos of 2nd Lieutenant Spenser Rapone went viral. The U.S. Army officer posted images of himself wearing a Che Guevara shirt under his uniform, along with the words “Communism Will Win” written on his military-issue dress cap.

Now, the openly anti-American soldier’s motivations have been revealed.

More @ CT

National Guard leaders says he's seen no delay in federal help to Puerto Rico

Via Billy 

National Guard leaders says he's seen no delay in federal help to Puerto Rico

The head of the National Guard on Tuesday said there has been no delay in federal help to Puerto Rico despite claims from lawmakers that the territory was not receiving adequate help.

Gen. Joseph Lengyel said he has not seen any political posturing that would deny or slow aid to the U.S. territory, which has been hit by two powerful Category 5 storms in the past month that killed at least 16 people and knocked out power on the entire island.

Puerto Rico’s nearly 3.5 million residents are now living without electricity, and Lengyel expects it will be “more than a month” until electricity is fully restored.

More @ The Hill

High School Football Players Kicked Off Team For Protesting During Anthem

Via Billy

PHOTOS: What NFL players have done during the national anthem this seasonCedric Ingram-Lewis (left) and Larry McCullough were kicked off the team at Victory & Praise Christian Academy after they protested during the national anthem Friday, Sept. 29, 2017.Browse through the photos above for a look at what NFL teams have done during the national anthem this season. Photo: Cedric Ingram-Lewis

A coach kicked a two Texan high school football players off of the team after the players protested during the national anthem Friday.

Senior Larry McCullough knelt and sophomore Cedric Ingram-Lewis put his fist up in the air during the national anthem before Victory & Praise Christian Academy’s football game, reported the Houston Chronicle. Ronnie Mitchem, the team’s coach and pastor, kicked them off the team directly afterwards.

“I don’t have any problem with those young men,” Mitchem told the Chronicle. “We’ve had a good relationship. They chose to do that and they had to pay for the consequences.”

Mitchem, a former Marine, had previously told the school’s players that he did not want them to kneel during the anthem, believing that the action offends veterans and distracts rather than calls attention to issues. The coach said he wanted the players to express their discontent by authoring and distributing a paper about political issues that troubled them, or by kneeling in the end zone after a touchdown.

More @ Daily Caller