Retraction TIME

A reporter is supposed to report the news in an accurate and unbiased way, correct?  Is this still true?  I remember a time when it was, but it sure seems like that time has gone away.  I mean, it's been a while since the major news networks in the U.S. haven't taken sides politically.  FOX on the right, NBC on the left, joined by ABC and CBS, and firmly CNN at this point.  But when did accuracy also stop mattering?  The New York Times story on Gary Johnson's Aleppo flub last month is a disturbing and hilarious example of how bad reporting has gotten.  The New York Times is supposed to be a high-quality and trustworthy news publication, and in the age of finding answers on the Internet, you would think that if they wrote a story about how Gary Johnson didn't know what Aleppo was, they would have looked up what it was themselves, right?  And if the writer didn't fact check, maybe an editor would, right?  Apparently not.  The first published version of the article called Aleppo the de facto Capital of the Islamic State (it's not).  They then corrected that and called Aleppo the capital of Syria (it's not) and an Islamic stronghold (it's not).  Finally, they gave up and called it a war-torn Syrian city (accurate).  I guess there's no time for fact checking when you're quickly trying to write a big story to make sure Gary Johnson doesn't take too many votes away from Hillary.

But the reason I'm writing this isn't because of the New York Times.  It's because of a TIME article from a few weeks ago about a Christian organization on 667 college campuses across the nation, InterVarsity.  When I went to college at Wesleyan University, I was involved in the Wesleyan Christian Fellowship there, which was run by InterVarsity.  I met some wonderful Christians from all over the world there, very literally.  We were from Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the United States.  As a white male in the group, I was in the minority, and on some weeks, the only white male in the group.  While these meetings could have been a goldmine for admissions photos, we were all just brothers and sisters in Christ.  We were different, we had different ways of worshiping, but we were unified by our love for Christ and our love for one another.  My experience may not have been the typical InterVarsity experience if you take the country as a whole, but it was certainly not a rarity.  Even today, InterVarsity is a diverse and inclusive group of Christians and has expressed its support of Black Lives Matter, which is not something that very many Christian groups have done publicly.  I've continued to support InterVarsity after college and became more involved with it recently, having started to volunteer in a behind-the-scenes way a few years ago, so I am very familiar with this organization.

I don't know if TIME magazine just felt like doing a hit job on a Christian organization or if they had an epic lapse in fact checking, but it had to be one of those two options, because calling its October 6 article "Top Evangelical College Group to Dismiss Employees Who Support Gay Marriage" misleading is an understatement.  It is flat out wrong.  The article begins, "One of the largest evangelical organizations on college campuses nationwide has told its 1,300 staff members they will be fired if they personally support gay marriage or otherwise disagree with its newly detailed positions on sexuality starting on Nov. 11."  For someone unfamiliar with InterVarsity, that doesn't sound like a made-up thing, right?  It's plausible.  But for me, when I read that statement, it blew my mind.  I felt like Lois Griffin in a 2006 episode of Family Guy...
Peter Griffin: Yeah Brian, your doing the same thing that Mia Farrow did to that Chinaman that Woody Allen brought home from the circus!
Lois Griffin: Peter, hold on to that thought, because I'm gonna explain to you when we get home all the things that are wrong with that statement.

Let's explain all of the things that are wrong with that statement.  For one, staff members will NOT be fired for supporting gay marriage.  And for another thing, InterVarsity has not changed its positions on sexuality in any way.  There you go.  That pretty much destroys the entire premise for the article right there, but I'm not holding my breath for a retraction.  Want to know what's really going on with InterVarsity?  They posted a response here on October 7, the day after the article in TIME came out:
http://intervarsity.org/news/intervarsity-reiterates-theology-human-sexuality

To sum it up, not only are employees not being fired for supporting gay marriage, but InterVarsity's views on sexuality, based on the Bible, have never changed in the 75-year history of the organization, AND LGBTQI folks are more than welcome to attend InterVarsity events and meetings.  They even included a statement that Christians don't say enough, noting, “Throughout this process, we are very aware that LGBTQI people have experienced great pain, including much caused by Christians. We also know that we ourselves each need Jesus’ grace daily. So we attempt to walk humbly in this conversation.”  The crux of the issue at hand for InterVarsity is theological agreement with what the Bible says on sexuality.  So if I were an InterVarsity employee who agreed with what the Word of God says about sexuality, but I still thought Gay Marriage should be legal, I would NOT be fired.  My personal views on Gay Marriage are here if you're interested: http://thediblas.blogspot.com/2015/08/jesus-loves-gays.html

Look, there are a lot of great reporters out there today, but the general trend in the media has been scary.  I say this as someone who considered reporting as a possible career.  I was editor-in-chief of the country's oldest twice-weekly college paper, The Wesleyan Argus.  While my political views then were significantly to the right of the Wesleyan community as a whole, which was and is one of the furthest-left Universities in the country, you would not have know it from reading the newspaper when I was in charge of it.  That's because what we did was reporting.  The editorial section was for editorializing.  The rest of it was actual reporting.  There are two times I can recall having a discussion with other Argus Staff members that my political or religious beliefs entered into.  In one case, I was wrong, and in another case, I was right.  In each case, the discussion was brief, and the issue was quickly resolved before print.  In the case where I was wrong, I had referred to Jesus as "Jesus Christ" in an article.  An editor told me that calling Him "Christ" was editorializing.  Even though I know that Jesus is Christ, the editor was right, and I agreed that the article should be modified in that way.  In the case where I was right, a writer decided to use all gender neutral pronouns in an article (yes, this was a thing ten year ago, and few outside of the Wesleyan bubble at the time would have had any idea what this was) for no particular reason.  I changed it and said that when the New York Times starts using "ze" and "hir" instead of he, she, his, and her, then the Argus would do it.  That's it.  I didn't steer the newspaper to the left or the right.  Our goal was to make a quality college newspaper.

Last year, the Argus came under fire for publishing an opinion column that had criticism for some aspects of Black Lives Matter.  A large group of students responded by demanding that the Argus be defunded.  The piece in question wasn't even a news article.  It was an opinion column.  I read it.  The student who wrote it sounded to me like he was on the left, and while I may not have agreed with everything he said, what he was saying really wasn't bad at all, some of it made quite a bit of sense, and it was his opinion!  The editorials, opinion section ("Wespeaks" in the Argus), and columns are where opinions belong in a newspaper, not in news articles, but apparently if someone expresses an opinion that you disagree with these days, you should try to silence them or the media by which they convey it.  The Argus didn't lose funding completely, but its funding was cut.  Oh, how times have changed just in the last decade.

It's not just folks on the left who are trying to silence opposing views either.  Sure, a lot of them try to shut things down by calling them racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, hate speech, whatever.  But now we have people like Trump (on the right, maybe?), who most recently said that Saturday Night Live should be cancelled--because he didn't like the way SNL portrayed him.  SNL, of course, has a long and rich history of Presidential debate parodies.

And InterVarsity has a long and rich history of being a wonderful, inclusive, Bible-based Christian organization, focused on bringing students closer to God and serving others.  To the editors of TIME, if you are concerned with reporting facts, I await a retraction.

Locker Room Talk

I endorsed Gary Johnson.  In any other election year, I would not have endorsed Gary Johnson.  If just about anyone else had been nominated for the Republicans, or if Jim Webb had been nominated for the Democrats, I would not have endorsed Gary Johnson.  But we have two of the absolute worst candidates in history as our major party nominees.  I cannot endorse Hillary Clinton.  I cannot endorse Donald Trump.  I don't understand any reason for the high level of Evangelical Christian support for Trump, except for the high probability that his Supreme Court nominees would be better than Clinton's, more supportive of the First and Second amendments and hopefully more pro-life.

Yes, Hillary's campaign released the video of Donald Trump's disturbing comments from 11 years ago as a planned October Surprise, and it distracts from the latest Wikileaks releases, but I can't defend it.  It's not typical locker room talk.  I know that because I am a heterosexual man.  I have been in locker rooms with other men.  Yes, we talk about women in the locker rooms.  Many men talk about their (consensual) sexual conquests, but I can only recall one time in my life where I heard a man talking in the locker room about a sexual conquest of questionable consent, whether in jest or not.  I can't say that I've ever heard a man say that he likes to just "grab women by the pussy."  Even if it's not true, sexual assault is not a joke.  If Donald's claim that "No one has more respect for women than I do" is true, we are absolutely fucked.  There is no nicer way of saying that.  But it's not true, so don't worry about that.  There are plenty of men who have a whole lot of respect for women.

But Hillary Clinton is not the right person to call Donald Trump out on his comments.  I don't think she understands the actual problem with Donald's "locker room talk."  In Sunday's debate, she lumped together Trump's problematic comment with far less problematic actual locker room talk.  In her own words, "We've seen this throughout the campaign.  We have seen him insult women.  We've seen him rate women on their appearance, ranking them from one to ten."  Ranking women from one to ten IS actual locker room talk.  Men DO talk about the appearance of women.  This is something that MOST men do.  I can see why some will say that even that is problematic, but like it or not, talking about how women look and rating them from 1-10 is typical locker room talk.  Sorry ladies, that's just how it is.  But talking about or joking about sexually assaulting women?  That is NOT what most men talk about.

I don't think Hillary knows the reason why Trump's comments are more problematic than rating a woman's appearance though.  How could she?  Donald Trump may have said bad things, and he may have had some allegations against him, but he's not sexually assaulting women on a Bill C (Clinton, Cosby) level.  The main issue with Bill Clinton is not his infidelity.  It's the many women who have accused him of sexual assault over the years, and also accused Hillary of threatening them and protecting him.  Sure, somehow the Clintons have gotten away without any real consequences over the years, just like Cosby did for so many decades, but does Hillary really expect us to believe that she never knew about what her husband was doing, never defended him, and never threatened his accusers and victims?  She's not trustworthy on most other things, so why would we trust her on that?  After all, she laughed about her days as a lawyer, successfully getting a man off easy who she defended and knew was guilty of raping a 12-year-old girl.  Some defender of women's rights.  That's even less funny than Trump's comments about just going around grabbing vaginas.

Check out Steven Crowder's interview with Juanita Broaddrick from last week if you want to hear what a 73-year-old woman with nothing to gain has to say about Bill Clinton raping her and Hillary Clinton threatening her decades ago.  It doesn't sound to me like she's making it up.  Just remember what Hillary Clinton said about how women who come forward with rape allegations should initially be believed, although she quickly took that idea down from her website when Broaddrick resurfaced.  Strange coincidence, like so many other things in Hillary's life.

It is not a pleasant thought that either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump will very likely be our next President.  I know that a Gary Johnson victory is nearly impossible at this point, seeing as he's been kept out of the debates by the bullshit commission.  The best case scenario would be for Trump to drop out of the race, presumably with Mike Pence to take his place atop the ticket.  But that's probably not going to happen.  And Hillary isn't going to drop out either, although if the VP Debate showed us anything it's that Tim Kaine is horribly unprepared to be President and is creepy AF.

On a lighter note, what a motley crew in the Town Hall Debate audience!  You can't make this stuff up.  We literally have a guy named Ken Bone who looks likes some sort of caricature, and then a guy so big that there can only be one other person in his row, while every other row has three people in it.  And they're surrounded by what appear to be Saturday Night Live characters.  Speaking of which, the SNL cold open this weekend will once again write itself.  I mean, half of it can just be quoting exactly what was said at the debate.

Ultimately, America will be just fine, but the next four years are going to be interesting to say the least.

Black Death

So here we have front and center, once again, two of the main things ripping this country apart: Islamic extremist terrorists and police shooting black people.

On Saturday, an Islamic extremist planted a bunch of bombs in places throughout New York City and New Jersey.  As soon as I heard that there was an explosion in New York City, two things came to mind: it was either a accident or a Muslim extremist trying to kill people.  Then they found a pressure cooker bomb, and I was pretty sure I knew exactly what it was.  So did most people if they're honest.  Trump wasn't wrong with his conclusions on this particular issue.  Hillary said he shouldn't jump to conclusions before knowing the facts, which is ironic coming from someone who blamed the Benghazi attack on an anti-Islam video.  The truth is that ISIS and Islamic extremism in general are HUGE problems throughout the world.  Saying this does not make me "Islamophobic."  It makes me cognizant of facts.

Try to remember before September 11, 2001, for those of you who were around.  It was just over 15 years ago.  What was your first thought when you heard about the first plane hitting the tower?  Shamefully, I remember what my comment was, because I'll never forget anything about that day.  The Yankees had just won the last three World Series and four of the last five, and they were well on their way to playing in another one that October.  I was sitting in my Chemistry class Junior Year of High School when I heard about the first plane hitting the tower.
"Probably a pissed off Red Sox fan."
That's what I said.  With little knowledge of the situation, it was a hauntingly terrible joke.
Then the second plane hit.
"OK, that was on purpose.  We're under attack..."

I had no idea who was attacking us.  I knew nothing of Islamic extremism them.  Being a Christian, I knew Judaism well, and I knew of Islam to some extent.  I knew that Jews and Muslims often didn't get along very well in the Middle East.  I knew that they both revered Abraham, but then split on Isaac and Ishmael.  We all seemed to get along just fine in America though.  I knew some Muslims, just like I knew Jews, Buddhists, Atheists, Agnostics, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Unitarians, Hindus, whatever.  They had different religious beliefs than I did, but they were people.  I had no problem with any of them.  I try to treat everyone with respect until they don't treat me with respect.  And on that day, more than ever, we were all just Americans.

Then we found out who did it, and if something similar to what happened that day occurred again today, most of us would probably, and probably rightly, immediately attribute it to Islamic extremism.  But before that terrible day 15 years ago, that was the furthest thing from my mind.  Sure, I was a naive high school student, but I didn't know that was a thing that could exist here in America.  It was a different kind of war, and it still is.  Yes, there are a lot of Christians and Jews and people of all religious beliefs who do really bad things.  But there is a brand of terrorism that's pretty unique to Islamic extremists.  Christians and Jews aren't attacking infidels in the name of God, but the number of terrorist attacks by extremist Muslims done in the name of Allah is out of control.  It is a regular occurrence in this world.  No, not all Muslims are terrorists--not even close--but in this modern day, most terrorists are Muslims.

We haven't found a solution to this yet, so there's nothing like a good old-fashioned police shooting of a black person to distract us from it, because that's actually something that we should be able to solve.  I've gone over the numbers before.  The number of police shooting black people is not an alarming number, and most black people who are killed in general are killed by other black people.  But, quite honestly, these facts do not matter to those who are grieving the loss of a loved one.  Black lives do matter.  I empathize with the black people who are hurting.  No, I will never fully understand being black, but I can grieve with those who grieve.  I can demand change.  I can acknowledge that racism is not completely dead, and this is a problem that must be corrected.  But I'm still going to examine the issue more closely, and I'm not going to support people who are rioting, shooting cops, or encouraging violence against police officers in any way, shape, or form.  If you want a civil war in this country, that's how you bring it on.  If you want real change, let's have a rational discussion about the issues, the causes, and the solutions.

My first job out of college was in Quality.  In a Quality Department, when something goes wrong, you must find the root cause and the corrective action.  Different incidents may have different root causes and different corrective actions.  There is almost never a fix-all solution for something.  When a black woman is pointing a gun at a police officer and threatening to kill him with that gun, while also using her child as a human shield, the root cause of her death is her own actions.  We can grieve, we can wish she didn't die, we can believe she didn't deserve to die, but the color of her skin is completely irrelevant here.  It's another black life taken by police, but the root cause is not racism.  When a black child points an air gun at a police officer that looks like a real gun with a laser sight on it, and the police officer draws his gun and kills the child, we can grieve, we can be saddened, but again, the root cause is this child's actions, and has nothing to do with the color of his skin.  The main corrective action in both of these cases is to not point a firearm (or something that looks exactly like a firearm) at a police officer.

Then we have the less straightforward cases.  There are riots in Charlotte now because a black man was shot in his car.  His daughter says he was a disabled man reading a book who did not have a gun, and the officers say he had a gun.  I don't know who's telling the truth here, and I'm not going to make excuses for the police officer or the victim when I have such little knowledge of what occurred, but regardless of all that, this wasn't because of racism either. The officer who killed the black man was also black.  And finally, there's the situation in Tulsa, where video has surfaced of an unarmed black man being killed.  The female officer who killed him has given her account of what happened.  But again, I don't know what exactly occurred, so I can only grieve for another life lost right now.  Was racism a factor?  Maybe it was, and maybe it wasn't.  Hopefully the truth comes out in both of these situations and justice prevails.  There are no positives when things like that occur.  But what are some steps we can take as a nation?  What are some corrective actions?

I like the idea of police body cameras.  There are good cops, bad cops, and cops who make mistakes, but there are also those who lie about what occurred, so body cams should aid both the officers and those that they are involved with, because they give us a better idea of what actually happened in any given situation.  I like the idea of more police training.  Some of them are just bad with firearms and reading of situations (the incident comes to mind in which the police officer accidentally shot a black caregiver when he was actually aiming for a mentally-challenged person who he thought had a gun, which turned out to be a toy truck).  Some of them are quick to use force.  Some use deadly force when it is not necessary, and non-deadly force options are available.  Training may not fix all of this, but maybe it can help.  Punishment for doing the wrong thing and true accountability are also necessary.  Racist cops being fired immediately when found to be racist, and being punished to the fullest extent of the law when they themselves break the law are obvious necessities.

You want to know what won't help our nation?  Rioting by destroying things and hurting people, demonizing or shooting police officers, and pointing fingers instead of having constructive dialogue.  Are you a BLM supporter who's angry because of the folks who were getting loud about football players not standing for the National Anthem but are silent about the recent highly-publicized police shootings?  Talk about that, but don't tell them that THEY are what's wrong with this nation on social media.  Are you a BLM skeptic who's angry because of the folks who are up in arms over the recent highly-publicized police shootings, because they were also up in arms over other police shootings that turned out to be justified, and they became huge fans of the 49ers second-string Quarterback overnight? Talk about that, but don't tell them that THEY are what's wrong with this nation on social media.  Think racism is gone?  You're wrong.  Think racism is to blame every time an officer shoots a black person?  You're wrong too.  If you're both wrong, there's some common ground to build on.

But let's find some real common ground.  Can we agree that sometimes a police officer shooting a black person is justified, other times it's racist, and other times it's neither?  Be a part of the solution instead of the distraction.  Try to understand the other side.  BLM skeptics are justifiably upset because some folks blame cops for killing black people who are pointing weapons at them, others are saying all cops are bad, and others are violently rioting in the streets, even when the officer who killed a black man is also black.  But BLM supporters are justifiably upset because of the images they see so often of people who look like them, their families, and their friends being killed by police officers.  Yes, the media's disproportionate coverage of these events is to blame to some extent, but the media listing every dead black person's rap sheet is often unnecessary.  It's a big news story these days whenever a police officer kills a black person, and the media covers it from many angles.  It's said that shootings of any kind are still happening in America today.

We need prayer.  We need God.  We need to stop demonizing each other.  We need racial reconciliation.  Love is the only real solution.  Mix it with some common sense and you might have an antidote.

The Horse and the Hippo

I don't like Ann Coulter or Hillary Clinton.  I don't like what they say.  I don't like what they stand for.  I don't like what they look like.  The main difference between them is that Ann Coulter is on the right and Hillary Clinton is on the left (also, one is a criminal running for President and the other is a political pundit not running for President).  If you say something insulting about a prominent person on the right, it's typically accepted as free speech.  It's rare that someone tries to classify it as hate speech, a definition which has startlingly broadened over the years in the minds of many, notably on the left.  Most of the time, no one is yelling that it's sexist or racist if it's said about someone on the right though.  It might be wrong, and it might be in bad taste, but you don't often see people up in arms that you shouldn't be able to say it or that you're a bad person for saying it.  Not so on the left.  Comment on Hillary's hideous appearance?  Sexism.  Her health?  You're sexist.  Heck, Madeline Albright even said there's a special place in hell for women who don't support Hillary Clinton.

It's not just women who are off limits either.  It's minorities.  If you look at the field of Democratic Presidential candidates and the field of Republican Presidential candidates from the primaries this year, you may notice something striking.  For one party, all of the candidates were old white people, of which Hillary was the only female.  For the other party, we had White, Black, Hispanic, young, old, male, female...  Believe it or not, that party was the Republicans.  Yet the oft-repeated narrative is that the Democrats are the party of diversity and Republicans are racists.  The Democrats, of course, were the party in favor of continuing slavery.  The most poor urban cities in America are that way largely because they've been under control of Democratic leadership non-stop for decades.  Our President came out of the shithole that is Chicago, where he was a community organizer, and Chicago has somehow gotten even worse and more dangerous since he's been in office.  But criticize Obama and you're racist.  Criticize Ben Carson, twist his words, make a brilliant surgeon out to look like an idiot, or lazy, and you're not a racist, but rather just stating the truth, because he doesn't fit the Liberal definition of what a black man should be.  Of course, I would say that anyone who has a definition of that may actually be racist, and also that Liberals were scared of Ben Carson because he would be our next President had he gotten the Republican nomination.

All that being said, I'm pretty firmly in the category of "Other" at this point politically, because I don't like the Democratic or Republican parties or their nominees for President.  I identify most as a Libertarian.  But the hypocrisy on the left is just too astounding to ignore.  I understand that this post and the accompanying picture are going to be offensive, and unnecessary, and it wasn't even something I was going to write about until I stumbled upon a short (under two minutes) video clip on YouTube with highlights of people roasting Ann Coulter at last week's roast of Rob Lowe.  I clicked on it, and it made me think.  How outraged would the left be if people said these sorts of things about Hillary Clinton?

Peyton Manning had what I thought was the funniest quip about her, saying that Ann Coulter won the Kentucky Derby.  It's funny, because she kind of looks like a horse.  I laughed at that a bit.  And the other stuff?  Well, some of it was probably in bad taste and went a bit far, but I don't have a problem with it being said.  But the reason I'm writing this post isn't because I take issue with what was said, but rather because I want to picture the backlash if it was said about Hillary Clinton.

There were some quips in there about Coulter hating black people and being part of the Klan, cutting eye holes in sheets, and David Spade even saying that she's "wild in the sheets--just ask the Klan."  Can we say that about Hillary?  Just ask Senator Robert Byrd and her other Klan friends.  Oh, then there was the one saying they "haven't seen [Ann] laugh this hard since Trayvon Martin got shot."  I wonder if she was laughing as hard as Hillary when she successfully defended a child rapist.  Oh wait, that actually happened.  And she actually laughed about it in an interview years after it happened.  Too real.  Can't make a joke about that.  Let's just imply she laughed when a 17-year-old black kid got shot instead.  Or does that miss the mark because only Republicans can possibly be racist?

Then there was the joke about Ann being against gay marriage because, "if I can't get a husband, they shouldn't either!"  I wonder how Hillary's marriage is doing...  Bill is just the portrait of a loyal husband--as long as the portrait is taken from the waist up while he's sitting at his desk.  Maybe Hillary should be against all marriage since hers is a sham anyway.

While some of these quips about Ann had some level of comedic value, there were some that were in no way funny, but actually just mean-spirited. Again, I have no problem with people saying these things.  That's their right.  And I'm not defending Ann Coulter, nor do I even like her.  But rather than try to make a joke tailored for Hillary out of these Ann Coulter jokes (if that's what they're supposed to be), I simply ask that you picture these things being said about Hillary Clinton instead of Ann Coulter.  How would that go over?

"Looks like a truck stop transvestite whore."

"The right-to-lifers wanted everyone to see what an abortion looks like up close."

"One of the most repugnant, hateful, hatchet-faced bitches alive, but it's not too late to change...  You could kill yourself."

Wow, and to think, Donald Trump just made a dumb statement about the Second Amendment people stopping Hillary.  He should have just quoted that last one word for word and all the Liberals would have just laughed instead.

Stay classy, America.

Contradictory Kaepernick

America is a free country because of the men and women who fought and continue to fight for our freedom.  That means that Colin Kaepernick is free to sit down during the National Anthem in protest if he wishes.  It is perfectly legal, it is a way to peacefully protest, and the NFL was right to not punish him.  Yes, it could be viewed as a sign of disrespect for America and for Veterans.  But, quite honestly, most Veterans I know are pretty tough and can handle it just fine.  They know what real trauma is.  They're not like students at Emory University who are emotionally traumatized by sidewalk chalk that says "Trump 2016."  That being said, I take issue with his decision to do so for different reasons than most others.

The first reason is that I do not understand the premise of his statement about why he chose to sit.  He says it's because he "will not stand to show pride in a country that oppresses black people and people of color" and that "There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder."  Alright, if that's true, I can understand that, but I'm not quite sure specifically what he is referring to here.  While there are places in the country where some people do indeed oppress black people and people of color, the country itself does not.  Our leader, the most powerful person in the world, is half African-American, like Colin.  There are many others in power who are people of color as well.  We've come a long way as a nation, and we still have work to do for sure, but saying that this country is oppressive is a pretty general statement that does not get to the root of any problem, real or perceived.

Based on the rest of his statement though, I'm thinking he was mostly referring to police killing black people, but again, he provided no specifics here.  When I think bodies in the street, I think of places like Chicago, but that's not what he's talking about (although that certainly is a real problem).  He's talking about police officers getting paid leave after murdering black people.  Sure, there are some bad cops and a few pretty disturbing examples of them murdering people every year, but police officers generally do not murder people because they are racists, and the rate at which they kill people of color is actually not alarming when you look at the statistics (I've gone over that previously here, so no need to do so again).  So I honestly don't know what reality Kaepernick's statement is based on, or if it's just based on his perception, perhaps influenced highly by mainstream media.

My second issue with Kaepernick is that I question his motivation.  Why now?  Why in the preseason, when no one is paying much attention to football yet, at the start of the sixth year of his NFL career?  Maybe he's truly doing it for the reasons he says, but maybe there are other factors as well.  Somehow, he got replaced as the starting QB last year by Blaine Gabbert, who's basically the second coming of Rex Grossman.  He may very well be cut from the team.  His statistics last year were lousy.  Does he want attention?  Does he want something to blame if he gets cut, apart from his own poor performance on the field?  I don't know.  It's speculation.  But the timing on this is odd.  Kaepernick makes $19 million per year to suck this badly at football.  He's not exactly oppressed himself.  His black father left him and his white mother before he was born, and his mother put him up for adoption, so he was actually adopted and raised by two white parents.  If he was white, he would fit the definition of white privilege.  But he isn't.  Yet, because he is a famous athlete, he has a platform, and people listen to what he has to say.

That brings me to my third issue.  If he wants to use his platform to make a statement and raise awareness, why not do it right?  You know how every now and then, Donald Trump says something so absurd that you wonder if the article you're reading is satire (but it's not)?  That same thing happened when I read an article saying that Colin wore a shirt with Fidel Castro on it during a press conference this week.  The shirt had Malcolm X and Fidel Castro on it and a caption that said, "Like Minds Think Alike."  Fidel Castro, of course, is the former leader of Cuba who personifies oppression.  Is Kaepernick really that ignorant of recent history?  I mean, really, are you joking?  How can you have any credibility on the topic of oppression when you are touting Fidel Castro (which I'm assuming he was doing while wearing that shirt, because I can't imagine he was making a statement against Malcolm X)?

Here's what you can do, Colin, if you really want to make America a better place for blacks, people of color, and everyone in general.  First, call out issues specifically, instead of making vague, general statements that anger the easily-angered and baffle the critical thinkers (although you became a cult hero to mindless liberals at least, so there's that).  Then, present some solutions.  Maybe one solution will be to start a charity.  I imagine you must do some charity work, but being on the East Coast, I'm not familiar with it.  Take a page out of Derek Jeter's book.  Jeter started the Turn 2 Foundation, which is a wonderful charity that helps children and teenagers avoid drugs and adopt healthier lifestyles.  Speaking of Derek Jeter, he's half African-American too.  Like you, his dad is black and his mom is white.  I can't imagine Derek Jeter ever choosing to sit down during the National Anthem though.  But if he did, you can be damn sure that I would listen to every thoughtful word he would have to say about why he chose to do it.  You see, Jeter has earned my respect and the respect of many others.  He respects this country, its veterans, police officers, and the game he played at a high level for so long.  He practices what he preaches and is very involved in helping the community.  You haven't earned my respect, Colin.  I don't know what or who you respect.  Your admiration for Fidel Castro confuses me as much as your vague accusatory statements.  I don't know what you're doing for the community.  You played well at the start of your career, signed a big contract, and tanked.  Every time I've seen you throw a Touchdown pass, I've seen you showboat and bring attention to yourself.  You threw six touchdowns last year in nine games.  Is this all about you wanting to be relevant again, or do you really want to see positive change?  If it's the latter, then be a part of that positive change.  You have our attention.  Now what?  You can keep sitting there, or you can get up and do something!

Thunder Rod

I just spent two minutes debating whether I should title this post "Thunder Rod" or "Lightning Rod."  Thunder Rod seems to be the better fit, because it has the Thunder Road connotation, perhaps the Thunder Mountain connection for a roller coaster of a career, and there was literally Thunderous applause for A-Rod the other night (I'll get to that story shortly).  But Alex Rodriguez was a Lightning Rod for much of his career as a Yankee, perhaps more than any other before him, including the straw that stirred the drink, Reggie Jackson himself.

Alexander Emmanuel Rodriguez was drafted by the Seattle Mariners in 1993 with the first pick of the draft.  He got his first taste of Major League playing time as an 18-year-old in 1994.  For years, he was one of the best shortstops in the league, and he signed a monster deal to play for the Texas Rangers in 2001.  With so much money invested in A-Rod, the Rangers sucked and did not make the playoffs in 2001, 2002, or 2003.  Meanwhile in the Bronx, Aaron Boone's epic Home Run against the Red Sox sent the Yankees to the World Series in 2003.  They lost the World Series that year, and then Boone hurt himself during the off-season, and the Yankees needed a third baseman.  So, before the 2004 season began, the Yankees traded away Alfonso Soriano, Joaquin Arias, and cash to the Texas Rangers in exchange for Alex Rodriguez and his massive contract.  With Derek Jeter entrenched at Shortstop, Rodriguez was signed to play at the hot corner.

In 2004, the Yankees blew a 3-0 series lead in the ALCS to the Red Sox, who went on to win the World Series for the first time since 1918, breaking the Curse of the Bambino.  In 2005, Alex Rodriguez was the AL MVP.  In 2007, Alex Rodriguez was the AL MVP, with 54 Home Runs and a career-high 156 RBI.  The Red Sox won the World Series again.  A-Rod opted out of his contract.  The Yankees re-signed him to another 10-year deal, worth even more money than the one he had just opted out of.  The Yankees failed to make the playoffs in 2008, their final year in the old Yankee Stadium.  Alex Rodriguez, known to have used steroids, though admitting that it was only when he played with the Rangers, was naturally the lightning rod for many of the problems that the Yankees had.  He was paid an absurd amount of money, he was a known PED-user, his playoff numbers with the Yankees had not been up to expectations, and he was known to be kind of a narcissistic asshole.  He divorced his wife in 2008, the same year they had their second daughter together.

But in 2009, redemption came at last.  Everything went right for a year.  Rodriguez had his 12th of 13 consecutive seasons with at least 30 HR and 100 RBI, led the Yankees into the playoffs, and hit 6 Home Runs during the playoffs, driving in 6 runs in each series, and the Yankees were World Series Champions again, for the first time since 2000, and during their first year in the new Yankee Stadium!  A-Rod still wasn't in the same category as other Yankees greats like Jeter and Mariano Rivera, but Yankee fans embraced him and loved him still.

But A-Rod never hit another playoff home run, nor did he do much of anything else positive in the playoffs, and he ended up getting hit with a huge suspension for using PEDs while he was with the Yankees, which caused him to miss the entire 2014 season, losing tens of millions of dollars in the process.  A-Rod had lied to the Yankees, the fans, and tried to sue everyone under the baseball sun.  But then he came to his senses, dropped the lawsuits, and quietly prepared for 2015.

And for A-Rod, 2015 was another redemption year.  Alex played the game right.  He went about his business on the field, and wasn't a distraction to the team on or off the field.  Improbably, he hit 33 Home Runs and had 86 RBI, serving largely as the team's Designated Hitter.  But he was a target once again, A-lightning-Rod.  Opposing pitchers sometimes decided that they wanted to hit him.  His manager and teammates defended him, as did the Yankee fans, who began to love him again.  Alex turned 40 during the season, and the Yankees got knocked out of the playoffs in the Wild Card game.  And in 2016, A-Rod's statistics took a nosedive.  The Yankees decided to become sellers at the trading deadline, re-stocking their farm system, getting younger instead of older.  Playing time for Alex dried up, and the Yankees talked with him and decided it was time to release him, but keep him around as a special adviser to help mentor the younger players in the farm system.  And so it was announced that Alex Rodriguez was slated to play his final game for the Yankees on August 12.

Yankee Stadium was buzzing, and there was a ceremony to honor A-Rod before the game.  The clouds rolled in.  I told my friend Chris who I went to the game with that Reggie would probably be there with A-Rod.  He was.  Then I told him that it would probably rain on his ceremony.  It did.  Dark clouds rolled over Yankee Stadium.  The ceremony began.  At one point, the announcer said, "Alex, you've spent 12 of your 22 seasons with the Yankees."  Loud thunder crashed immediately, as if on cue.  Wow.  Well-timed, God.  Nah, God could do better.  The ceremony continued.  Swirling rain rolled in.  Then the announcer said, "Ladies and gentleman, let's have one more Yankee Stadium ovation for Alex Rodriguez..."  Possibly the loudest thunder that I've ever heard interrupted the announcer's sentence at that point.  Maybe God is a baseball fan.  Chris and I looked at each other in awe.  We were sitting in the first row of the main level down the left field line, and at that moment it really started to pour, so we walked back up to the concessions area.

The rain soon stopped and the game was underway by 8.  A-Rod had an RBI double to tie the game at 1 in his first at-bat (causing an F-Bomb from A-Rod if you watch the replay), and the Yankees ultimately won 6-3.  The fans, myself included, were chanting for A-Rod the entire game, especially right before he came out to play third base in the bottom of the ninth, and then after he was removed from the game for the final time one out later.  And then after the game, as A-Rod got some dirt from the third base area and acknowledged the fans.  There he was, tipping his hat to the crowd.  A man who hit 696 Home Runs, drove in 2,086 runs, scored 2,021 runs, stole 329 bases, recorded 3,115 hits, won 3 AL MVP awards, and, most importantly, won one World Series.

It's possible that Alex will play baseball again, but he may not.  Either way, five years after he hangs up his cleats for good, he will be on the ballot for entry into the Baseball Hall of Fame.  But will he get in?  Rafael Palmeiro, Sammy Sosa, and Mark McGwire have not been able to muster up many Hall of Fame votes, despite great career numbers.  The steroids and the lies haunt them.  Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds have mustered up some support, but are still far from getting the call from Cooperstown.  Same reasons.  Roger won an insane 7 Cy Young awards!  He was among the handful of the best pitchers to ever play the game.  Bonds won an insane 7 MVP awards!  He was one of the few best hitters of all-time.  A true five-tool player, he hit more Home Runs than anyone ever did, in a season and a career, he stole 500 bases, and his numbers from 2001-2004 are mind-boggling.  How the hell do you play the whole season and have a .609 On-base percentage like he did in 2004?  That's more ridiculous than his 73 Home Runs in 2001!

If I could cast a vote for the Hall of Fame, I would vote for Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Alex Rodriguez.  I would vote for David Ortiz too, five years from now.  I'd even vote for Palmeiro, Sosa, and McGwire.  Andy Pettitte and Manny Ramirez eventually too.  These are the guys I grew up watching.  They were the best in the game.  I get it.  They messed up.  They used banned substances.  Pettitte came clean right away, saying he used HGH back in 2002 to help accelerate his return from an injury, and Yankees fans immediately absolved him of his sins.  Some haven't admitted it.  A-Rod has admitted it, although it took him a very long time to finally do so, but he did, and he apologized.  Speaking of eventual apologies, I think Pete Rose should be in too.  He never did steroids, but who cares that he bet in favor of his own team?  Really, the guy had more hits than anyone who ever played the game, and he played the game the right way.  Yeah, he was a flawed liar and kind of an asshole, like Bonds, like Clemens, like A-Rod, but he was one heck of a baseball player.

The truth is that we don't know who used performance-enhancing drugs during the steroid era, before the bans and testing expanded.  It could have been anyone (not Jeter or Cal Ripken, but, you know, almost anyone).  There are rumors that Mike Piazza, and potentially others who are already in the Hall of Fame like he is, were users.  Maybe what it will take to bust open that door is confirmation that there are already Hall-of-Famers who used performance-enhancing drugs.  Then what do you do?  You can't kick them out.  You have to let their peers in if they put up numbers that are worthy of induction.  And as for A-Rod, it has been one heck of a roller-coaster ride of a career.  Like most Yankees fans, I've booed him and I've cheered him, but it has truly been a pleasure to watch him play.  Love him or hate him, or love him AND hate him, he is one of the greats.  Thank you, A-Rod!

Left Nut, Right Nut, JOHNSON!

I like to think that I'm a sane person.  And no sane person can vote for a third party candidate for President of the United States, right?  You're basically just throwing your vote away.  It's nearly as insane as not voting at all. But then, no sane person can vote for Hillary.  And no sane person can vote for Trump.  ...Wait...  Well, shit, we have a problem.  I guess we're all insane.  Maybe the only person who can bring sanity to this country again is a little bit insane.  Maybe he wants a small government, maybe he's smoked pot, maybe he's not a Liberal or a Conservative, maybe he has a last name that's easy to poke fun of, and maybe he thinks for himself.  But what we have here is a nut on the left, a nut on the right, and a Johnson in the middle.  A Johnson-Weld for that matter, which is even stronger than just a Johnson, and Johnson alone is pretty strong, having climbed the highest peak on all seven continents!  Well, here it goes...
I formally endorse Gary Johnson for the Office of President of the United States, and I encourage others to educate yourselves on him further. If he sounds better than the two terrible candidates that the Democrats and Republicans have nominated, please voice your support for him, especially if you are polled, because he only gets into the National Debates if he is polling at least 15%.   Also, whether or not you support him, please sign this petition to get his voice heard in the debates (https://www.johnsonweld.com/debate?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=wall&utm_term=fans&utm_content=debate-01&utm_campaign=debate).  If nothing else, his presence will bring some substance to what promises to be a series of ugly, mudslinging debates.  Also, this quiz (http://www.isidewith.com/elections/2016-presidential-quiz) is worthwhile to take if you're interested in the issues too.  Not only do I dislike Hillary and Trump, but I actually agree with Gary Johnson A LOT more than any of the other candidates.  I am largely Libertarian.  And you might be too.  You see, Libertarian is a spectrum.  Everyone is at least a little bit Libertarian.  Does that mean you'll agree with everything Gary "Three-Run" Johnson has to say?  No.  Actually, I strongly disagree with him on abortion, but not much else.  But that's me.
Johnson is in favor of marijuana legalization, gay marriage, environmental protection, criminal justice reform, and abortion.  But he is also fiscally conservative, in favor of lowering taxes and creating jobs, supports the Second Amendment, and is against Common Core.  He supports congressional term limits too, as should everyone.  Just about the only thing with a lower approval rating than Congress lately is HIV, and with the success of another (Magic) Johnson, it's actually pretty close...
How did I get here?  How can I be supporting a pro-choice candidate and a third-party candidate at the same time?  Well, let me tell you, it's been quite the journey.  The candidates that I liked the least for each major party got the nominations (It wasn't close with Hillary, but I couldn't decide whether Trump, Cruz, or Bush was worse for the bulk of the primaries).  Once that happened, I naturally gravitated toward Trump, because I figured he could easily turn it around, stop saying ignorant shit, and become Presidential, and I have a lot of well-documented problems with Hillary (see a good portion of my previous posts, there's no need to re-hash the many reasons why she's unfit to be Commander-in-Chief).  So I found myself in the same place as many Americans, trying to choose the lesser of two evils.  With Hillary, there's the devil we know (even if she still lies about all her obvious wrongs), and with Trump, it's the devil we don't know, politically anyway.  The main positive I was clinging to with Trump was that he would probably nominate solid Conservative SCOTUS justices who adhere to the Constitution.  I knew he said a lot of terrible things, and I knew he changed his positions daily on some issues, but I also knew I could never vote for Hillary.  And I still never will.  But something changed when I listened to his acceptance speech (I still haven't bothered to listen to Hillary's by the way--I already know who she is).  Donald Trump's speech scared me, and it wasn't because he was trying to scare everyone into thinking that we would all be killed by ISIS and immigrants if he wasn't elected, he alone who could fix America.  It scared me because of the rhetoric he used and the fear he appealed to.  But when you put it together with everything else he's said, it paints an even uglier picture.  The devil we don't know may very well be a dangerously loose cannon.
An old friend of mine messaged me on Facebook when he suspected that I was close to officially endorsing Trump, and he presented some very good information that he was using to explain why he was voting for Hillary, even though he doesn't particularly like her (I'm putting that mildly to avoid using certain words here).  And while I still can't bring myself to vote for Hillary, I will acknowledge that a Hillary presidency probably wouldn't look a whole lot different from an Obama presidency, but it would have costly long-term negative impacts on the country via the Supreme Court nominees, an assault on the second amendment, and having someone in the most powerful office who shouldn't even have a basic security clearance.  I don't think Obama OR Bush were good presidents, but Hillary would be worse, and Trump is basically the embodiment of a parody accidentally set free in real life.  While my friend did not convince me to vote for Hillary, and I probably didn't convince him not to (although we both agreed that Hillary should have stepped down after Benghazi, if only because she was Secretary of State and her Department screwed up big-time), he did help me accelerate the course I was already on, a desperate search for any hope of a third option, and I decided to become a firm Johnson supporter (I'm aware of how that sounds, yes).
The folks comparing Trump to Hitler need to shut up though.  He's not Hitler.  He's not going to try to exterminate any group of people, and certainly not the Jews (you people focusing on the alleged Jewish star he posted are all idiots, he's not anti-Semitic).  The Muslims?  Well, he's talked about attempting to keep new ones from entering the country temporarily, or at least stopping immigration from certain countries, but please don't compare him to Hitler, because that's an overreaction that will and should be written off.  Hitler killed people who didn't look a certain way.  Trump just wants to keep people who look a certain way from crossing the border.  There's a big difference there.  So if you're calling out Donald Trump, for the sake of an intelligent discussion, please at least call out the actual issues with Donald Trump, and there are many of them.
My friend calls him a Fascist.  I call him a Democratic Fascist because it sounds funnier.  Why?  I mean, really, the shit that comes out of his mouth just doesn't stop, and it occurs on a daily basis.  Ted Cruz AND Barack Obama were right on something.  That's not something you can say every day (this is the only time I can think of that I've ever said that, in fact).  Cruz refused to endorse Trump, as I have, because his conscience wouldn't let him.  I respect that.  And Obama said that Trump is unfit to be President, because at some point, enough is enough.  I mean, really, how many times do Republicans have to distance themselves from things that Trump says?  He is out of control.  Him taking the bait and making questionable comments about the Muslim family whose son gave his life fighting for this country isn't even an issue compared to the other stuff he's said.  The Russia hacking thing was a joke, so calm down on that.  It's harmless.  But the stuff about torture, things that make you wonder how he feels about the first amendment, things that worry me that he's more of a war-hawk than Killary, suggesting violating treaties, encouraging violence...  It's a long list.  Oh Long Johnson.
I'll watch the debates regardless.  The SNL skits will write themselves.  But I'm calling on all Internet users, all politicians, all  celebrities, and all major publications to endorse and not ignore Gary Johnson if you think he is the best candidate.  And if you don't think he's the best candidate, please ask yourself why.  He's running against an untrustworthy, power-hungry, extremely careless criminal on the left side and an unpredictable, power-hungry, inciter of fear who keeps saying things that make us all wonder whether he understands the constitution on the right side.  America is fractured because of the left nut and the right nut, so help JOHNSON-WELD America together again!

[Is that good?  On the off chance that Gary Johnson somehow reads this post, whether or not he is partaking in weed at the time, I consent to him using that slogan if he would like to.]