President Donald 'Dotard' Deserved His Smackdown From NFL Players, Owners

Jags players in London for the Ravens-Jaguars game kneeling to diss the Asshole -in-Chief. Kim Jong Un must really be feeling he nailed Trump correctly as a "dotard".


"The people run this country, not any one individual and it damned sure isn't this guy!" - Le Bron James on Trump's irate tweets that NFL players needs to be fired if they don't stand for the national anthem.

Let's concede the dotard in the White House is more each day morphing into the caricature of the elderly curmudgeon who screams at the neighborhood kids each morning to stay off his lawn. Never mind it's been ravaged by weeds and insects for the last two decades. But this is what the ignorant fool is devolving into as each day it seems he makes more and more enemies.

Thus, it was a marvelous sight peering at wife's laptop stream of the Ravens- Jags game to see the players from both teams in London's Wembley Stadium kneeling after Donald Trump mounted another imbecilic twitter attack. This time not on Kim Jong Un but  on any players who kneel in protest of the national anthem. The asshole actually demanded they be "fired" by team owners - clearly believing he's still acting on 'The Apprentice' where "You're fired!" were the only words he know how to say without looking at a script.

Not long after Trump fired off his tweets, the Cleveland Cavaliers' LeBron James called the dotard a “bum” - starting a tweet response with U-BUM, and Buffalo Bills running back LeSean McCoy called him an “asshole”. Perfect descriptions for a piece of garbage who can't keep his yap out of others' business or at least business that doesn't concern him. Indeed, it shows this jackass is totally unable to do the work that really counts for this nation. But then we knew from early on this job was beyond him. Too many details, too much stuff to master in an extensive government bureaucracy.  Hence, his penchant for becoming a cable TV and tweet addict. See e.g.

http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/donald-trump-stunned-to-learn-presidency-is-an-actual-j-1792215349


And look,  generally I am no fan of tweets or texts which I regard as crude language "cartoons".   BUT if one is using them as retorts to an imbecile who himself acts like a cartoon - then it's fine by me!

Anyway, yesterday was a climactic day for a movement that began with Colin Kaepernick kneeling before a pre-season game 13 months ago and has since prompted a nation to wrestle with questions of free speech and racial justice.  Sadly, most of the morons who've yelped against Kaepernick, as I posted at the time, appeared not to know he was exercising his free speech privileges. In addition, it signified the important meme that the flag is merely a rag unless the principles it represents - such as  free speech- are adhered to.   In the same way, the anthem is merely an arrangement of words sung to a certain melody if the principles alleged to be behind it are not acted upon. This is what Dotard's supporters seem not to get.

To recap the day's events:

Early on Sunday, shortly before his treasury secretary (Steve Mnuchin) insisted the president was not picking a fight, Trump had doubled down on his bellicose remarks at a rally in Alabama on Friday night and anyone could see he was emphatically picking a fight. It's about all this asshole does, whether with Hillary, NFL players, the media, the courts or Kim Jong Un.. The dotard then repeated his challenge to NFL team owners and encouraged fans to stop attending until the owners take action. He barked in a tweet like the mad dog he is:

“If NFL fans refuse to go to games until players stop disrespecting our Flag & Country, you will see change take place fast. Fire or suspend! NFL attendance and ratings are WAY DOWN. Boring games yes, but many stay away because they love our country. League should back U.S.”

Of course, it was totally beyond this dumb piece of shit to grasp that anyone who REALLY loves his county doesn't work with the Russians to undermine an election and get in through the side door. Or maybe better, the trap door in the basement.

Wembley staged the day’s first game, which featured Janice's Ravens. (Who alas were stomped 44-7) .  Around 25 players from the Jacksonville Jaguars and Baltimore Ravens kneeled.  While The Guardian’s Sean Ingle reported that no white players appeared to kneel “many players, coaches and even the Jaguars’ owner Shahid Khan linked arms instead as they stood, showing unity for their black team-mates against Trump”.

Later, at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, several Miami Dolphins players wore black T-shirts supporting Kaepernick before facing the New York Jets. During the anthem, the Dolphins locked arms.  Meanwhile, at  Chicago’s Soldier Field, he Pittsburgh Steelers collectively decided to remain in the tunnel before their game against the Bears .

Team owners also came out with sober words for the moron Trump.  Steelers coach Mike Tomlin told CBS.

“We’re not participating in the anthem today, not to be disrespectful to the anthem but to remove ourselves from the circumstance.  People shouldn’t have to choose. If a guy wants to go about his normal business and participate in the anthem, he shouldn’t be forced to choose sides. If a guy feels the need to do something, he shouldn’t be separated from his team-mate who chooses not to.”


Stephen Ross, owner of the Miami Dolphins stated:

"Our country needs unifying leadership right now, not more divisiveness"

Even NFL commissioner Roger Goodell expressed disappointment with the “divisive” comments while the New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, a close friend of Trump, was among team owners to side with their players. In a statement, Kraft said he was “deeply disappointed” by Trump’s remarks.

Trump made his initial remarks at a Friday night rally for the Republican senator Luther Strange, and what likely really tipped the players over the edge was his use of the SOB epithet. Again, which no true President exercising decorum and dignity would do. This isn't "political correctness" which the Trumpsters seem to yelp about obsessively. It is about the qualities that make a president worthy of respect. But in this case the disrespecting dotard blabbered:

“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out! He’s fired. He’s fired!’”

To which all the assembled brain dead zombies roared their approval. But why expect anything different from these yahoos. They don't even recall that back in January Trump insulted them to their stupid faces when he said he didn't give a rat's ass about them, he just needed their votes.

Dotard  also complained about rules introduced to improve safety in the NFL, which has a serious problem with head injuries.  This is a guy that likely hasn't played a down of football - tackle or flag - in his miserable, entitled life.

Finally, I am getting damned sick and tired of Trumpies bellyaching about "real Americans" and those who don't follow their lead who "ought to leave the country".  Hell no, assholes, because this is our country as much as yours.   If you want to bow and scrape before Trump and yelp "Yessiree, Mastuh!" at his every dictum that's your choice. But don't make that a litmus test for who is a real patriot (or American) and who isn't .  The real Americans, for their information, include anyone who stands up to Trump in whatever form of resistance - whether NFL players, NBA players, medical doctors and nurses (fighting for preservation of the ACA), protesters in marches - including the heroes of Antifa (who saved dozens at Charlottesville) and every person who fights to reclaim this nation as a place of decency and honor instead of Trump's cesspool.

Of course, there are some who are just happy as hogs in sewer shit with Trump, his orders and Trumpism. That included Richard Petty, head of NASCAR, who belched "Anybody who don't stand up for the anthem ought to be out of the country, period". Spoken like a true cornpone, Johnny Reb yahoo which is what he and NASCAR are, as defined by historian Joshua Zeitz in his 2002 essay 'Dixie's Victory'.  Zeitz noted NASCAR, along with bible punching and pickup trucks laden with shotguns were carryovers of the Old Confederacy to the modern U.S. - which insinuated themselves despite the South losing the War..  But since we associate the South with traitors we can dismiss Petty's remarks as we do the rest of the crackers that support that line of thought.

We are as much or more a part of this nation, and if the paper patriots don't like it let them move to an autocracy more to their liking! Say like RUSSIA!


See also:

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/p-m-carpenter/75311/trumps-distractions-cant-prevent-his-destruction

Excerpt:

"The sports site Deadspin wrote that Trump's attack on the NFL's new safety rules "demonstrated an already-evident dearth of intellect," which is also the chief characteristic of most Trump supporters. Their tolerance of presidential ignorance and its assorted corollaries appears to be infinite..."

And:

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/harvey-wasserman/75314/it-s-a-lousy-anthem-anyway

• Football legend Terry Bradshaw RIPS into Trump
  

Have The Pro-Confederates Totally Gone Stark Raving Nuts With Their "Backlash"?

Jeebus cripes! This country - at least sections of it - gets more fucking nuts by the minute. Now, as Chris Hayes noted last night, the proto-Confederates (who still haven't admitted they've lost the Civil War) are trying to make out that the retraction of Confederate flags in many public spaces (as in AL) is akin to a "Southern genocide". Are you kidding me?

Seriously? And citing Rush 'the pig' Limbaugh as saying opponents will go after the U.S. flag next? These people have totally lost their fucking bearings! Let me assure these nattering nabobs there is no chance of that happening at all. Not one! No one will make kids stop singing 'Dixie' or prevent people from naming pet dogs 'Lil Reb'. If proof is needed, the worry warts need to get hold of Joshua Zeitz'  seminal article Dixie's Victory(American Heritage, Sept. 2002) . He shows how Southern culture and worship has become so entrenched in many parts of the U.S. - from NASCAR racing to bible meets it will be impossible to ever restrain or dilute.

So people in an uproar need to cool their pants off, get a grip, and find their mental bearings . Also, cease talking or writing about "attacks" or "wars" as a response to what's going on now - which remains purely in the symbolic realm. (As one guest on Hayes' All In noted last night - quite correctly-  the real changes are when all the absurd voting ID laws are repealed!)

Yet  with the proposals to ban the Confederate flag gaining momentum across the South in the wake of the Charleston massacre, we see the Reb-backing Southerners going ape shit nuts. Such as one character, a member of the extremist group Sons of Confederate Veterans. He was  featured multiple times last night - almost jumping out of his seat as he faced a black MSNBC interviewer-  and screaming: "This flag din't kill no one!" Uh, no Roscoe, we never said it did. What we said - if you had even a 5th grade education and could understand - is that it was used as an ideological prop for killings. It was used as such - as Chris noted - by one former Confederate general who later became head of the KKK and lynched his way to fame - using the necks of blacks! In the same way, it was used by that turd Dylann Roof as a prop for his crimes, never mind he didn't actually wear the Reb flag when he killed those nine - he had it plastered all over on his damned website.

Thankfully, officials at the Southern Poverty Law Center are  warning that white supremacists are trying to exploit any backlash as a recruitment tool.  They say fringe groups are framing the removal of the flag as "cultural genocide"  or "Southern genocide" which is total bollocks. How or why would anyone in their wildest phantasms - whether "libos", "libtards" or "Jewish commies"-  try to wipe out a whole section of the nation? We wouldn't! Get them to secede from our sane nation, yeah, well, maybe! If they want to have their own little nutty enclave which still hasn't accepted the past, that's their biz.

Heidi Beirich, Intelligence Project director for the center, noted yesterday:

"There's no question that organized white supremacy right now is using the battle flag as a rallying cry for their views,"

Neo-Confederate and white-pride groups say the flag is a symbol of  "Southern heritage" and a memorial to Civil War dead — not a symbol of the racist views of Dylann Roof, the white gunman who killed nine black church members last week.  But still it was  the flag of traitors and was wielded by Klan members as well as Rebel militia (including Quantrill's Raiders) in assorted depredations so must be considered much like the Nazi swastika.  Hence, deserves to be in museums and no where else.

Predictably, since the Southerners are such sore losers, the recent calls to take down the flag from the South Carolina capital and from other government-sponsored locations (as in Alabama and Mississippi)  has opponents planning rallies and mulling boycotts.  GO for, it, folksies, just try to keep the chaw tobaccy spittle from flying (and hitting innocent bystanders) when you scream.

On one forum run by the white-supremacist group Stormfront, members are chatting about buying flag stickers in bulk and slapping them up at their local Walmart to protest the retail giant's decision to stop selling Confederate merchandise.  Typical of the comments from these knuckle-draggers:

"I say boycott Walmart or any other business which refuses to sell Confederate Flags, which are simply a part of American and Southern history and heritage,"

Good, go for it, Sparky! I am sure that Sam Walton's multi-billion empire will wince, and curdle when it loses about $4, 300 a year from your bunch!

 Meanwhile, a Facebook page run by Defenders of the Confederate Cross has invited hundreds of people to attend a Saturday protest at the South Carolina Statehouse in Columbia. The caption bellows:

"Lets make our stand and show overwhelming support to keep the flag were it is or place it back on top of the dome!"

 At mid-morning, 42 people had replied that they would attend. Again, just don't get into fights or start heaving spittle at the thousands more who demand taking that stupid flag down, which  - btw  - is the flag of Northern Virginia, not SC.
                      
The League of the South, which is pushing for secession, is also planning a protest in Columbia this weekend, but it has not announced details. Pat Hines, head of the group's South Carolina chapter, wailed:

"I would like to see several thousand people. Obviously, the politicians are rushing to get the law changed while everyone is excited about the deaths of these people.I don't see the connection. We certainly didn't advocate the murders of random people like that."

Well, you didn't have to "advocate the murders", once you supported and upheld a flag under which banner tens of thousands were raped, whipped, lynched and slaughtered for over a hundred and fifty years. Just as the swastika didn't murder the 6 million Jews - but it was sure attached to the armbands of the slime who did, and flew over the concentration camps where the genocide was carried out.

Michael German, a former FBI agent who infiltrated white supremacist groups during a 16-year career, said the organizations should not be underestimated. And we the sane ought to take him at his word, especially as these domestic terrorists have killed more than twice as many as Muslim radicals in this country since 9/11. As he said:

"White supremacist groups are recruiters so they're constantly going out trying to seek new people, trying to spread their message. And they can do that. They have radio shows, they have internet shows, they have rock bands that tour around the United States. So this is an ideology that has been around for a long time."

Heidi Beirich of the SPLC meanwhile said some defenders of the flag could be riled up enough to get sucked into the white-supremacy culture.                      

"It is entirely possible that people who are maybe a couple steps into racist thinking will see the battle flag coming under attack and believe that they should be activists in support of a pro-South view, which frankly is a pro-white view when it comes to the battle flag,"

True. Which is sad. But as I said, maybe all this shows that now is the time to let these unapologetic Southerners really secede from the Union - since they obviously can't countenance its laws, provisions and even the Constitution (especially the Preamble and the general welfare clause). If they can't abide by what states and sane governors are doing now - or contend Obama is not legitimately elected  - then let them start their own little mini-nation, in the South.

I don't think many other "libos" would object! As long as they keep their violence there!


See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/bill-berkowitz/62812/nixing-the-confederate-flag-yes-dealing-with-white-supremacy-not-so-much


and

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/john-grant/62801/dog-whistlers-run-for-cover-lone-wolf-racist-terror-backfires

What If The Tea Bagger South Had Won The Civil War?

"Remember that had we as a nation followed the Southern model for government and social values up to now, we would not be near the great and inclusive nation that we are today. Remember that 19 red states (as determined by votes in the 2012 presidential election) are given back more in federal revenue than their citizens are taxed. The top 10 states that give more to the federal government than they get back are all blue states.

If you were the CEO of a progressive corporation looking to relocate, would you pick the state where people grow up having basic health care that includes preventive care for which your company doesn't directly have to pay? Or would you pick a state where people can't afford to even get basic preventive care and have high levels of diabetes, obesity, infant mortality, etc.?- Jonathan H. Reilly, letter in today's Colorado Springs Independent.


It is time for the non-Southern American majority, in alliance with many non-elite Southerners of all races, to target and attack every element of the Southern Autonomy Project simultaneously. If the neo-Confederates want to wage political and economic war, their fellow Americans should choose to respond with political and economic war on all fronts, not on the terms and in the places the Southern conservatives choose.- Michael Lind, The South is Holding America Hostage, salon.com



Confederate sympathizers across the land continue to blow noxious clouds of revisionist history on how the South was "wronged", that it was really a "war of Northern Aggression" (never mind the South seceded first) and wow...how great things would have been if the Confederates had prevailed! (Actually, in many cultural-political ways they did, as noted by author Joshua Zeitz in his article 'Dixie's Victory' in the Sept. 2002 issue of American Heritage. From fundie, bible pounding hellfire religion, to run -amuck gun toting and incessant braying by the political class for ever more tax cuts and 'smaller government', the South really has put its odious mark on the nation.)

In fact, we are seeing the attempted revival of the Old Confederacy (certainly its values) play out again on the national landscape with this government shutdown – and as I remarked several blogs earlier – this is an economic manifestation of a Civil War. It is also an effort to racially tar Obama by the diversionary subterfuge tactic of repealing (they call it “defunding”) his signature ACA health care law. Whether hailing from North or South, the Tea Party is the reincarnation of the Confederates who once tried to secede from the Union. They can’t this time, but the next best thing is to destroy the functions of government so totally that – starting with their ignorant base- they will elicit (or try to) millions across the nation to demand Obama and the Dems capitulate - thereby effectively returning the nation to “Southern style” economic governance.

For those lacking a historical bearing here, “Southern style” governance means a basic formula including:

- No church-state separation and bibles admitted in schools as well as creationism taught instead of evolution

- No unions at all, period, in no manner, shape or form

- Minimal government spending on social services, and repeal of Social Security, Medicare

- Massive government spending on anything military, including building as many bombers, fighters and new missiles as possible.

- Total outlawing of abortion as well as contraception and also rendering illegal a host of sexual acts, including masturbation, oral sex.

- Imprisoning all pregnant women who are deemed to be risking the life of their unborn by any “reckless” acts – such as motorcycling, skiing or drinking alchohol.

- Keeping all females barefoot and pregnant, by altering employment laws, in the interest of “biblical mores and family values”

Now , what IF these Tea Bagger miscreants and traitors had prevailed in the Civil War? Let's give their worshippers and many others a bit of a reality check on what the state of the nation would be today. Maybe, just maybe, some will think again about their derelict ideations and realize the best outcome was the one that transpired.

If the Confederacy ‘Tea Baggers’ Had Won:

1) The Trade Union movement would never have originated in the 1940s. Kids would still be toiling starting from the age of 8 from sunrise to sundown. No worker's compensation, no paid time and a half for overtime, no time off for illness, or family problems.

2) Women, if they had jobs at all, would be working for less than half of what males earn.

3)Blacks would never have been accepted into the military or as football or baseball players. (They might have been allowed to play basketball, but who knows?)

4) The Jim Crow laws would still prevail, with separate facilities (restaurants, motels, rest rooms, etc.) for each race. Blacks would continue to have to sit at the back of the bus. Rosa Parks -- had she refused to change her bus seat-- would have been flogged then flogged again, and likely branded.

5) The lowest wages, slave wages, would predominate throughout the land. African-Americans would be disallowed for all jobs other than possibly house servants or lawn workers, landscapers, and even then only be paid by meals or housing - like today's sugar cane workers. No benefits, no health care.

6) Immigration, especially illegal, would be disallowed at the point of guns. Anyone crossing the border of even a light brown color would be shot on the spot.

7) The Confederate Battle flag would fly everywhere. There'd be no Lincoln Memorial in D.C. but rather a Jefferson Davis Memorial, with only whites allowed to visit.

8) There'd be little or no entertainment except for the Confederate Broadcasting System, and the Confederate Movie Network. The latter would show 'Birth of A Nation' on an endless loop, while the former would have all the current news about the great new Confederate strides.

9) Andersonville would never have been closed, and would remain today a Confederate -run concentration camp for those with pro-Northern sympathies.

10) Bibles (KJV) would be mandated in every home under pain of being horse-whipped - or sent to Andersonville!

11) Southern -cum-biblical morality law would rule the land. Eye for an eye justice, and morality from the Old Testament.

12) The military would be the biggest employer and the budgets would be allocated at nearly $1.5 trillion a year. The national debt would be twice what it is now, given the Southern ascendants had forbidden any taxes (thus, no 13th amendment to the Constitution would have been passed). Also, no Federal Reserve. (which originated as part of the 13th amendment).

13) There would be NO Medicare or Social Security. Those would be seen as "Yankee inventions". People would either make do with what they had, or perish. If kind enough, a gentle neo-Confederate would put an oldster out of his or her misery with a shot to the head or a shiv from an old Rebel bayonet.

14) The life expectancy would be 55 for men, as opposed to the median of 75, and 62 for women, as opposed to 78. All the wonderful modern medical inventions that beat back disease, including polio vaccine, flu vaccines, smallpox and typhoid vaccines, as well as MRI machines, CAT scans and colonoscopies...would never have been invented. Cancer and smallpox would be the number one killers along with self-inflicted gunshot wounds to the head.

15) University research would be almost non-existent. As opposed to thousands of universities such as we have now, there'd be maybe 100 in all. The only ones assured of existence would be the Ivies, e.g. Harvard, Princeton, Yale, etc. because of their endowments.

16)Confederate History would be taught at all high schools and universities.

17) Corporal punishment (e.g. paddling using monster paddles 21/2 -3' long) would be mandated nationwide at all high schools for both sexes, as opposed to being confined to mainly Southern High schools (e.g. in MS, AL, GA, NC), as is the case today.

18) Bible reading would be mandated at all high schools nationwide, as well as prayer in schools. Any atheist kids, if they existed or revealed themseles, would get the paddle about every day.

19) Prisons would actually be converted to work farms, and prisoners (for all crimes, including anti-Confederate sentiments, civil rights protests etc.) would be rendered neo-slaves. Forced to work in the fields from dawn to dusk and flogged by overseers at any slight infraction.

20) Barack Obama would never have become president, nor would Herman Cain have beeen able to contend for a spot on the Republican ticket. It's also likely that the most Cain would have risen to in his employment would have been 'pizza delivery boy'- never the CEO of Godfather Pizzas!

21) Neither Barack nor Michele Obama would have received the Ivy League education they did at Harvard. Indeed, they'd each likely have only been able to attend a "Negro college" - if allowed to go at all.

22) Miscegenation laws (e.g. against the races mating or mixing) would apply under pain of instant execution...e.g. flogging then lynching. (Thus, Barack Obama might never have been born).

23) Adult Yankee atheists would be given the choice of leaving the country, or being permanently remanded to a CSA work camp.


See also:

http://www.salon.com/2013/10/07/shutdown_shows_the_civil_war_never_ended_partner/