Dozens of players kneel, coaches link arms in solidarity as Trump asks NFL teams to ‘fire or suspend’ protesting players

So, now #hesnotmypresident has gotten involved in sports. He's decided that everyone who 'takes a knee' (bends down on one knee during the National Anthem  as a form of protest against this country's treatment of minorities) should be suspended or downright FIRED! This man has no sense of diplomacy, no tact, no common sense; even I, with no political experience  whatsoever can see that this is not the way the President of the most influential country on the planet should be behaving. He's swearing at people on a public social media platform; the fact that he takes to  Twitter at all to make his pronunciations   should be enough to make even the Neanderthals who voted for him queasy.     

    SOMERSET, N.J. — As President Trump called for NFL owners to suspend or fire players who protested the national anthem, players and coaches answered defiantly Sunday morning, with most members of the Baltimore Ravens and Jacksonville Jaguars either standing with their arms locked in solidarity or taking a knee on the field.        
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
I have to interject here. IMO, the author of this Washington Post news article is misrepresenting what the players being discussed are doing. They are not protesting the National Anthem. To say that they are protesting a song is trivializing the whole movement and making them look like children having a temper tantrum. To my (and other's)  way of thinking, the players are not protesting the anthem, they are protesting during the anthem. (While on the subject of children having temper tantrums, what about what happened with  Golden State Warriors point guard Stephen Curry and his team? Since, during an interview, Stephen Curry didn't act enthusiastic about going to the White House, the president decided to punish the team by stating  "Going to the White House is considered a great honor for a championship team. Stephen Curry is hesitating, therefore invitation is withdrawn!"  in a tweet! How's that for childish temper tantrums?)

Ravens Coach John Harbaugh joined his players, locking arms, and Jaguars owner Shahid Khan, a Pakistani American billionaire and businessman, joined his players before the game's kickoff at 9:30 a.m. in London's Wembley Stadium. Ravens Hall of Famer Ray Lewis also took a knee during the anthem.

The dramatic show of defiance comes hours after Trump on Sunday morning renewed his demand that NFL owners fire or suspend players who kneel during the national anthem in protest, again urging that fans should boycott the sport to force change.

“If NFL fans refuse to go to games until players stop disrespecting our Flag & Country, you will see change take place fast,” Trump wrote. “Fire or suspend!”

“NFL attendance and ratings are WAY DOWN,” he continued in a second tweet. “Boring games yes, but many stay away because they love our country. League should back U.S.”

The tweets continue a three-day crusade by the president to pressure the league to fire players who have taken a knee to protest police violence against minorities. Trump has poured fuel on the flame of a simmering culture war and has further pushed sports deep into the political arena.

Among players, coaches and team owners, the public reaction has been sharply negative of his comments.

Even a close friend, Patriots CEO and Chairman Robert Kraft, who donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration, issued a sharply worded statement Sunday morning that condemned his comments and supported the right of players to peacefully protest “in a manner that they feel is most impactful.”

“I am deeply disappointed by the tone of the comments made by the President on Friday,” Kraft said. “I am proud to be associated with so many players who make such tremendous contributions in positively impacting our communities.

“Their efforts, both on and off the field, help bring people together and make our community stronger,” he added. “There is no greater unifier in this country than sports and, unfortunately, nothing more divisive than politics.

“I think our political leaders could learn a lot from the lessons of teamwork and the importance of working together toward a common goal,” Kraft continued. “Our players are intelligent, thoughtful and care deeply about our community and I support their right to peacefully affect social change and raise awareness in a manner that they feel is most impactful.”

           (to read more...)

Article by  Abby Phillip and Cindy Boren

Washington Post - September 24, 2017

DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed in this blog are strictly those of the blog's author, and in no way express the views of The Washington Post, Blogger, Google or any other entity (i.e. news services) whose content and/or services may have been accessed for use in this blog. 

4 Year Old Shot in "extraordinary act of road rage" and Lives

Road Rage. Something you don't hear much about anymore, but that happens everyday.  The victims are the saddest thing about it. Many of them, like this one, are young, innocent children...

IN CLEVELAND

The bullet exploded from the gun’s barrel, spiraling through cool night air toward a  gray SUV’s back passenger-side window. Carter “Quis” Hill was perched in his car seat on the other side of the glass, and as it shattered all around him, the round burrowed into his head, an inch above the right temple. From the boy’s hand slipped a bright-red plastic Spider-Man mask he’d gotten for his 4th birthday, nine days earlier.

A white Pontiac blew past, disappearing into the distance. Carter’s mother, Cecelia Hill, knew it was the same car that had been chasing them for three miles before someone inside fired eight shots at her 2004 Volkswagen in what police would call an extraordinary act of road rage.

Now she shoved her foot against the brake, squealing to a stop in the middle of Interstate 90. In the back seat, her son and daughter snapped forward against their taut seat belts. Carter’s 7-year-old sister, Dahalia Bohles, looked over at him. Shards of glass speckled her dark hair, but she didn’t notice them at first.

“Mommy, Quis got blood on his head,” the second-grader said, then she reached over and began to wipe it away.

“Stop!” Hill screamed, turning to check on her son, who, just before midnight on Aug. 6, had become one of the nearly two dozen children shot — intentionally, accidentally or randomly — every day in the United States. What follows almost all of those incidents are frantic efforts to save the lives of kids wounded in homes and schools, on street corners and playgrounds, at movie theaters and shopping centers.

For Carter, his mother feared it might already be too late.

The bullet had driven through her boy’s skull and emerged from a hole in the center of his forehead. Blood trickled down over his eyes, along his nose, into his mouth.

“Mommy, Mommy,” he’d been shouting minutes earlier, as Hill had fled from the shooter, but now her irrepressible 36-pound preschooler, with his plum cheeks, button nose and deeply curious brown eyes, was silent. He stared at her.

She faced forward and punched the gas, pushing the speedometer past 100 mph. Hill veered off an exit, stopped and leapt out of the car. She rushed to the other side and unbuckled her son, then wrapped him in both arms and collapsed to her knees.

“Help,” he heard her yell into the night, over and over, until a passing driver pulled up and called 911.

“Please don’t let my son die,” prayed Hill, a 27-year-old housekeeper at a medical clinic who had raised her kids mostly alone. She squeezed Carter against her chest.

Hill wished he would cry or scream or speak, even one word, because when Carter was happy, he chattered without pause about the most important things in his life: bananas, or “nanas,” which he could eat for any meal of the day; growing up to be the Hulk, because smashing things sounded like the best job; his sister, who was Carter’s favorite friend, even though she wouldn’t let him play with her Barbies; fidget spinners, mostly because when his mom called them “finny” spinners, it made him laugh so hard that he would hold his stomach and fall to the floor.

But there, bleeding into Hill’s blue work shirt while sirens drew closer, he still hadn’t said anything.

“Is my baby going to be all right?” she asked the paramedics in the ambulance as it sped to the hospital, but they didn’t answer.

(For the rest of the story, click here.)

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After 5 Years, Ferguson Drops Bogus Charges That Cost Navy Veteran His Job

Fred Watson, who was mentioned in a DOJ report on abuses by Ferguson police, says he was arrested and prosecuted for no good reason.

  Jacob Sullum|Sep. 12, 2017 5:00 pm

           In its 2015 report on the Ferguson, Missouri, police department's rights-violating, revenue-maximizing enforcement of the city's municipal code, the

Justice Department described a 32-year-old African-American man who was accosted by a cop while "sitting in his car cooling off after playing basketball" in a local park on a summer afternoon in 2012. That man was Fred Watson, a Navy veteran who at the time worked as a cybersecurity contractor for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. His encounter with Ferguson Officer Eddie Boyd III resulted in nine charges that caused Watson to lose his security clearance and his job. Yesterday, more than five years after the incident, the city of Ferguson finally dropped all nine charges against Watson.     
      According to a federal lawsuit that Watson filed against Boyd and the city last July, the officer approached him as he sat in his parked car and shouted, "Put your hand on the steering wheel! Do you know why I'm stopping you? Do you know why I pulled you over?" Boyd's command and questions struck Watson as strange, inasmuch as he had not been pulled over. He pointed that out to Boyd, who demanded his driver's license, proof of insurance, and Social Security number.
When Watson asked why Boyd needed that information, since he had no reason to think Watson had done anything wrong, Boyd suggested that Watson might be a pedophile, looking for victims at the park. When Boyd indicated that he planned to write Watson a ticket, Watson asked why, and Boyd replied, "I think your tint is too dark, and I can give you a ticket for that." Lest you get the wrong impression, I should clarify that Boyd, one of Ferguson's few black officers, was referring to the windows of Watson's car.
In addition to asking why he was being detained, Watson did several things that apparently irked Boyd. He offered to retrieve his driver's license from the rear seat but declined to give his Social Security number. He asked for Boyd's name and badge number (which Boyd refused to give). He picked up his phone and tried to call 911. He declined to toss his car keys out the window, worried about how Boyd, who at this point had taken out his gun, might respond if he again moved his hands from the steering wheel. He refused to consent to a search of his car.
After three other officers arrived at the scene, Boyd handcuffed Watson and took him to the police station. The car was towed, and according to the complaint Boyd repeatedly searched it without consent or probable cause. Watson had to pay a $700 bond to get out of jail. When he retrieved the vehicle, he says, his possessions were in disarray, and $2,000 (tuition money for his kids) was missing.
Watson initially faced seven charges, including driving without a license (which he had), driving without proper insurance (ditto), driving an unregistered car (the registration was in the vehicle), and driving a car with windows that were illegally tinted (which, according to the complaint, they weren't). Boyd even charged Watson, who was sitting in a parked car, with failure to wear a seat belt. After Watson tried to file a complaint with the police department about Boyd's behavior, the officer tacked on two more charges: making a false declaration and failing to comply with a police officer's order.
Boyd probably expected Watson to swallow his pride and pay his fines, but instead he fought the charges. The city dragged out the case for years, and as a result Watson lost the top-secret security clearance he needed to keep his job. "Without this clearance, Mr. Watson is unable to find employment in the highly specialized field of government cybersecurity," the lawsuit says. "As a result, he has remained jobless for most of the past five years and is now undertaking efforts to begin a new career."
By dropping the charges now, Ferguson Prosecuting Attorney Lee Clayton Goodman lends credibility to Watson's case against Boyd and the city, which accuses them of violating his rights under the Fourth, First, and 14th amendments. The New York Times says Goodman "declined to discuss the matter."
Last year the Times noted that as a St. Louis police officer, Boyd "pistol-whipped a 12-year-old girl in the face in 2006, and in 2007 struck a child in the face with his gun or handcuffs before falsifying a police report, according to Missouri Department of Public Safety Records." In addition to Watson's lawsuit, Boyd "is being sued by a woman in Ferguson who said he arrested her after she asked for his name at the scene of a traffic accident."

Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason magazine and a nationally syndicated columnist.

From the blog writer: Things to think about:
 1. There were three other charges originally (this article shows four, and there were seven before the last two were added, so Ferguson PD probably would not tell the others. Why not? Were they that ridiculous and made up?
2. Ferguson Prosecuting Attorney Lee Clayton Goodman "declined to discuss the matter." Why? What is he afraid of?
3. The same officer, Ferguson Officer Eddie Boyd III, as a St. Louis police officer "pistol-whipped a 12-year-old girl in the face in 2006, and in 2007 struck a child in the face with his gun or handcuffs before falsifying a police report". Why was he ever hired in Ferguson?
4. He's also "being sued by a woman in Ferguson whom he arrested after she asked for his name at the scene of a traffic accident". How many other times has this happened and he's managed to scare the people into not filing a complaint??

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"This is a new era. This is the Trump era."

     This statement was made by Jeff Sessions (no designation necessary, we all know who he is.) as part of a speech he made during a trip to Arizona and a meeting of Customs and Border Protection personnel. We've all already seen, in one way or another, examples of what this 'Trump era' means to this country, especially to certain minority peoples. Sessions made the statement, but believe me, no matter how Trump claims he feels about DACA and other such programs, the words we heard from Sessions (IMO) are Trump's.

Jeff Sessions to speak on Trump's plan for DACA

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is scheduled to hold a news briefing Tuesday morning on the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, the Justice Department said late Monday.

The announcement comes amid reports that President Donald Trump plans to end the 2012 program, which defers deportation for nearly 800,000 young people who entered the United States illegally as children.

The Justice Department said Sessions would “not be taking questions” after the Tuesday morning briefing with reporters. It did not provide any additional information.

Politico, citing sources familiar with Trump’s thinking, reported Sunday night that President Trump had decided to end the so-called Dreamers program with a six-month delay for Congress to act.

A decision to end the program would likely spark political controversy. Twenty state attorneys general said they would defend DACA “by all appropriate means,” in a public statement in July.

New York and Washington state on Monday promised to sue Trump if he rescinded the program, while nine Republican state attorneys generals said they planned to file suit on Tuesday if Trump did not end it.

President Trump’s public schedule for Tuesday made no mention of a DACA announcement, but he tweeted Monday night that there was a “Big week coming up!”

Sessions has been a vocal proponent of curbing both legal and illegal immigration.

“Legal immigration is the primary source of low-wage immigration into the United States,” Sessions wrote in a 2015 Washington Post op-ed . "What we need now is immigration moderation: slowing the pace of new arrivals so that wages can rise, welfare rolls can shrink and the forces of assimilation can knit us all more closely together.”

At the beginning of his tenure as U.S. Attorney General, Sessions promised to bring on a dramatic Justice Department crackdown on illegal immigration and directed federal prosecutors to prioritize certain immigration related offenses.

During a trip to Nogales, Arizona, in April for a tour of the border and a meeting of Customs and Border Protection personnel, he warned of a “new era” of U.S. immigration that would bring felony charges for people who entered the United States illegally multiple times or had gotten married in order to gain legal status.

“For those that continue to seek improper and illegal entry into this country, be forewarned: This is a new era. This is the Trump era,” Sessions said in remarks prepared for delivery in Arizona. “The lawlessness, the abdication of the duty to enforce our immigration laws and the catch and release practices of old are over.”

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