Trump: NFL should fire players who kneel during anthem

[Badger]

It's neat how this is a reverse of the usual "But that's why Trump won" argument.

"If you wern't being such thin-skinned snowflakes, we would never have kneeled during the anthem!"

Also:

Arab Muslims were responsible for 9/11.  And many Arab Muslims in America, at a minimum, have a degree of sympathy for Islamic Jihadists.

WTF? What you said was basically what many Americans believed about Japanese-Americans before the government forced them into internment camps.

https://www.thereligionofpeace.com/pages/articles/opinion-polls.aspx

26% of younger American Muslims believe suicide bombings are justified.  (Pew Research)

19% of American Muslims believe violence is justified in attempts to establish Sharia Law.  (Pew  Research)

20% of American Muslims believe violence is justified to advance the cause of Islam.  (Pew Research)

33% of American Muslims believe Sharia Law should be superior to the Constitution.  (CSP Poll)

49% of Muslim-Americans say they are "Muslim first", 26% American first.  (Pew Research)

21% of Muslim-Americans say there is a fair to great amount of support for Islamic extremism in their community.  (Pew Research)

This is from polls conducted by public research firms, not information from conversations with Trump Rally attendees.  

FB, here's a pro tip. Don't take your stats for me website specifically drawn up to explain why Muslims are in fact the exception rule for peaceful religions and why they should be kept out. They just might be a Teensy bit slanted.

Go ahead and Google Pew research views American Muslims. Just in the last 2 months you'll find some of the following

If memory serves, 84% of American Muslims believe it is wrong to kill civilians to advance a political government goal. That compares to only approximately 67% of non Muslim Americans. In other words good old Americans like you and me, FB, are willing to accept collateral damage from drone strikes and bombing raids at a much higher rate than Muslim Americans are willing to tolerate suicide bombers.

A majority of American Muslims believe that the teachings of the Koran must be reinterpreted 4 modern day circumstances. Kind of ironic that you're willing to both impose the worst versions of a littlest interpretation of the Bible on secular society, just as you're willing to and turf with the worst verses of the Quran strictly against Muslim Americans to a degree that even they do not.

The percentage of American Muslims who believe that more than one version or teaching of Islam is acceptable as a post only the traditional interpretation of Islam is comprable to the same percentage of American Christians who believe the same, in the low 60 percentile range. Again, rather ironic considering you are in the minority there as well.

Finally, 92%-- let that number sink in-- 92% of American Muslims say they are proud to be American. Given all the shenanigans going on with the various sports teams protests, I wouldn't be surprised that number was lower among the non-muslim American population.

Again, choose your statistics source from a more legit vendor. It might actually change your views

My view is that we need lower levels of immigration in general, regardless of country of origin.  And those we let in ought to be fully vetted, including vetting as to issues of philosophy.  I don't care about race or ethnicity.  I care very much about one's commitment to liberal democracy and a republican form of government.  

I don't believe Americans ought to allow folks who do not agree with the concept of liberal democracy and individual liberties to emigrate to America, or to come to America and birth children here who will be raised to oppose liberal democracy and individual liberty.  This is not a "Muslim" issue, but it is not unfair to say that Muslims who support a Caliphate are not compatible with the sort of Constitutional freedoms and rights that I would assume most here seek to uphold.  The time to ask these questions is before someone is allowed to emigrate.

This issue is more complicated than most folks realize.  I don't care if I wake up someday and find myself as a racial or religious minority.  I do care if I wake up someday and find out that a new majority of Americans have used democracy to end liberty.  Every Iron Curtain Communist regime was installed in elections; this can certainly happen in America if enough things went wrong.

 

That's a completely Legit View, fuzzy bear, and one shared by the vast majority of Muslim immigrants. That's why they come to America to become Americans in a large degree. Just the same as the vast majority of European immigrants from a different age came over here without any experience of democratic participation and with allegiance to a relatively tightly controlled centralized International Church which to fear and suspicion from established Christian churches in America at the time. Yet those Italians, poles, hungarians, Etc all made our country a bigger and stronger place.

Does this make sense and why I think Muslims will by and large do the same thing to our country? The handful of Italians who were members of Cosa Nostra don't repudiate their immigration experience any more than a handful of terrorists among Muslim immigrants repudiates theirs.

[Badger]

I've been thinking about this whole issue for several days now.  Could I be wrong?  It certainly wouldn't be the first time.

I feel progressively uncomfortable with Trump's injection of himself into this issue.  There's the issue of a President urging private employers to fire folks for doing something he doesn't agree with.  Even given the inflammatory nature of what the kneelers are doing, what Trump is doing is quite the push of the envelope.  And calling them "sons of bitches" is very much beneath the Presidency.

I don't buy the idea that those who kneel are "respectful".  They are contemptuous of America, and they have been caught at that.  Think about it; if you didn't stand in Court when the bailiff said "All rise!", you'd be held in contempt.  Kneeling in protest of a Judge's decision would not be considered respectful, and rightfully so.  The next time you appeared in Court, you'd probably be needing your checkbook and a toothbrush.  In spirit, I see the kneelers as the same; contemptuous of America until they can remake it in the image they wish to remake it in.  

But I have come around to think that there is something un-American about the way Trump is going about this.  Mike Pence would react to this by saying, "This is what freedom looks like and sounds like." and leave the repercussions to the owners (if there were to be repercussions) without comment.  The kneelers are anti-American, and I've got a closed mind on that.  But using leverage to get folks fired is un-American, if sensibilities are offended, the free market can handle this issue.  I will say that it's hard for me to see how Trump is going to be able to use his incumbency to bring folks together even in the face of Rocket Man having a bigger meltdown than he's already had.

I think you've caught it, fuzzy bear. The biggest concern I have about this whole kerfluffle is that Trump has very consciously, almost instinctively, chosen the path of dividing rather than uniting our country. A second right quarterback from San Francisco man initiated the controversy, but it was almost a non-entity until Trump used his bully pulpit as president of the United States two truly ignited into a national controversy. The man literally can't help himself. This is still about old personal grudges that he can't rise above to act as a proper president over the usfl getting shut down, personal beefs he has with the league, and rather than simply saying I think it's wrong and moving on, he demands the firing of every player who protests.

 His Basic Instinct is to throw a bucket of gasoline on to every controversy and make it all about him him him him him. It is what he has done for 72 years of life he will not change in his 73rd year of life or his 74th. We can only imagine that President Obama, w, or Pence would have handled completely differently.

And that's why he truly is such an awful president. It goes far far beyond a mere liberal versus conservative dichotomy oh, and establishes he just does not begin to have even a threshold level of temperament, dignity, restraint, and acknowledgment that he is the leader of all Americans rather than those that just rabbit Lee support him, to serve as president of this great and-- for now at least-- United Country.

[Suburbia]

I have been busy the past couple of weeks with work and academia, so I did not have enough time to process what Trump said on Sept. 22 in Huntsville, Ala.

I think that Trump made an idiotic move, by stirring up this tension with the NFL/black players.

I do support the right to kneel during the American National Anthem. I believe it is right.

[Fuzzy Bear]

To be clear, I appreciate Fuzzy Bear's willingness to change his opinion. I think he's a quality poster overall, even though we strongly disagree on a lot of issues. I am just still mystified at how anyone can talk about nationalism and the flag while excusing Trump's invitation to the Russians to hack us last year. I realize that's a different topic and some liberals don't even care about it but it's just mind-boggling.

That's exactly what I was thinking, but thought I shouldn't go there, since it is off-topic.
FB says "Trump is far more loyal to America than the kneelers," but as Beet is pointing to, trump totally denies that the Russians hacked/intervened-in our elections.
To trump it is all "fake news" and just "a witch hunt." But yet all our national intelligence agencies are saying that it happened !

Russia's actions should be 1000 times more of a concern (compared to knelling to our flag) to every citizen in our nation. Yet trumpists give the Orange-Haired Clown a pass, and go on to call him "more loyal to America."
WTF.

There is an investigation going on.  I will wait until that is concluded to judge Trump. 

I will note that many of the most raving accusations at best remain unproven.  I will trust the findings of Mr. Mueller, but I will not trust the mainstream media on this issue.  They have become vested in "getting Trump", and they have lost credibility and harmed their own institutions.

[Fuzzy Bear]

I have been busy the past couple of weeks with work and academia, so I did not have enough time to process what Trump said on Sept. 22 in Huntsville, Ala.

I think that Trump made an idiotic move, by stirring up this tension with the NFL/black players.

I do support the right to kneel during the American National Anthem. I believe it is right.

It is a right.  But it is also the right of an employer to set standards of conduct for employees while they are on the clock.  And NFL players are on the clock while they are doing this.

It is also President Trump's right to fire off tweets of disapproval and make statements suggesting these folks be fired.  That's his right; he doesn't forfeit it just because he's President.

If you want to talk about the WISDOM and MORAL RIGHTNESS of Trump exercising his rights in the manner he has, that's another question, and a fair one.  If you want to talk about the WISDOM or MORAL RIGHTNESS of NFL owners seeking to enforce standards of conduct during the National Anthem, and sanctioning violators of such standards, that's another issue.  But if those are fair questions, than the WISDOM and MORAL RIGHTNESS of the conduct of NFL players protesting in a way that is KNOWINGLY OFFENSIVE TO MILLIONS OF DECENT AMERICANS ON THEIR EMPLOYER'S DIME when other avenues of protest (not on their employer's dime) that would get their point across and heard without being deliberately offensive is also a fair question.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

To be clear, I appreciate Fuzzy Bear's willingness to change his opinion. I think he's a quality poster overall, even though we strongly disagree on a lot of issues. I am just still mystified at how anyone can talk about nationalism and the flag while excusing Trump's invitation to the Russians to hack us last year. I realize that's a different topic and some liberals don't even care about it but it's just mind-boggling.

That's exactly what I was thinking, but thought I shouldn't go there, since it is off-topic.
FB says "Trump is far more loyal to America than the kneelers," but as Beet is pointing to, trump totally denies that the Russians hacked/intervened-in our elections.
To trump it is all "fake news" and just "a witch hunt." But yet all our national intelligence agencies are saying that it happened !

Russia's actions should be 1000 times more of a concern (compared to knelling to our flag) to every citizen in our nation. Yet trumpists give the Orange-Haired Clown a pass, and go on to call him "more loyal to America."
WTF.

There is an investigation going on.  I will wait until that is concluded to judge Trump.  

I will note that many of the most raving accusations at best remain unproven.  I will trust the findings of Mr. Mueller, but I will not trust the mainstream media on this issue.  They have become vested in "getting Trump", and they have lost credibility and harmed their own institutions.

I mean, the other thing to keep in mind is that Mueller is only focusing on criminal liability, specifically those crimes that he can actually prove.  With Trump, you could name him as an unindicted co-conspirator and/or recommend impeachment in the report for obstruction of justice, but "collusion" itself isn't a legal term.  

I think we'll definitely see indictments against Manafort and Flynn (neither of whom would be very likely to flip until after the government has rested its case well into the trial phase) on a wide variety of charges (some of which may be for crimes separate from the main Russia scandal since – as Renato Mariotti and others have noted – Mueller will want to focus on things that are easiest to prove such as lying on disclosure forms and violations of the foreign agents registration act [the latter of which carries a penalty of up to five years in prison per-violation IIRC]).  I also wouldn't be surprised if we see indictments against some combination of (though not necessarily all these people) Kushner*, Carter Page, Stone†, Donald Trump Jr, and Michael Cohen (although he may be a little less likely than some of the others).  I've seen a few articles saying Don McGahn is worried that he might get disbarred if he ever gets subpoenaed by Mueller, but we don't really know anything about that (if it's even true), so who knows *shrug*.  

I highly doubt Sessions will be indicted (just from what is publicly known, obviously Mueller knows a lot we don't) since unlike with Trump (whose tweets, initial letter detailing his first-reaction reasons for firing Comey, comments to Lavrov, and general inability to shut up about the investigation create a rich body of evidence regarding his intent/mens rea) I don't know that there's enough to really prove that Sessions acted with corrupt intent regarding whatever role he played in the firing of James Comey.  Trump seems like the guy with the strongest obstruction of justice case against him.  

Another interesting thing is that the NY AG's office is actively working with Mueller's investigation which suggests that the probe is also looking into state charges.  Lastly, I wonder if they're also looking into the money laundering at Trump's casinos.  They've had so many citations for money laundering over the years that one almost wonders if Trump got into the casino business in part as a means to launder money.  

*If Mueller can establish sufficient mens rea to prove Kushner was knowingly making omissions on those disclosure forms where he left off hundreds of Russian contacts (IIRC), that alone could result in a major indictment, to say nothing of any *potential* liability Kushner may or may not have stemming from the Trump Tower meeting and his role overseeing the Trump campaign's data-operation and FaceBook ad targeting.

†Incidentally, Stone really needs to fire his lawyer and hire a new one who can control him [Stone].  He's really playing with fire by being as noisy and visible as he has been lately.  He's gonna get himself subpoenaed if he's not careful.

Anyway, Badger and Torie can take a look at this and tell me if I'm wrong about any of it. Either way, I'd be curious to hear both of their thoughts on this.

[Fuzzy Bear]

Fuzzy Bear:
1. Should Biblical law be superior to the Constitution?
2. Would you describe yourself as Christian first or American first?

A fair question, and one that deserves an answer.

The second question, first:  I am a Christian, first.  "I am the Lord, thy God.  Thou shalt have no other Gods before me."  This is the first Commandment, and this includes placing nation before God.  I do not kneel before the flag; it is of man.  I kneel before God, because only He is worthy.  Scripture does, however, say, "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's.", and this, to me, commands Christians to show the respect of standing for an anthem if that is customary.  There are also many Scriptures that command a Christian to not act in a way that would give unnecessary offense.  Proverbs says, "A brother offended is harder to win than a walled city."  Colin Kaepernick has said he's a Christian, so I would ask why is he acting in such a way as to offend so many brethren unnecessarily?

Scripture also calls for folks to live peaceably with others.  “If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.” (Romans 12:18).  This speaks to the folks that are often criticized as typical of Christians; the abortion clinic bomber, the Westboro Baptist Church head cases, the poorly behaved at Trump rallies.  (Trump carried the marginal churchgoers in the primary; regular churchgoers went heavily for Cruz, btw.)  Indeed, Matthew 22:37-39 provides the most important commandment of Jesus, Himself, which is two-fold:

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This brings me to the first question.  My answer is simple:  Biblical Law is superior to the law of man.  This, too, requires expounding, and it requires an honest discussion of the differences between Biblical Christianity and Islam, between the Allah of the Quran and the Jehovah of the Bible.  

Nowhere does Scripture command, or even condone, a Christian Jihadic movement.  Scripture, itself, does not command a theocracy; it implies a separation of Church and State, and points out that a nations leaders are there because God, if not annointing them, has at least allowed them to be in power.  Scripture commands believers to obey the laws and ordinances of man, and does not call folks to massive campaigns of civil disobedience.  Indeed, the only civil disobedience that is sanctioned by the Bible is that of not denying Christ as one's Lord and Savior.  It does not require a dress code or wearing specific jewelry, but it does command that one not deny Christ.  The martyrs of the first century "loved not their lives, even unto death"; they did not, however, strap bombs to themselves in an attempt to kill others for a divine reward.

https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/islam-facts-or-dreams/

Perhaps I misstated a key issue:  The issue is not whether or not a person is an "American" first, or a "Christian/Muslim" first.  The question is whether or not one's underlying religious beliefs are in harmony with, or in opposition to, liberal democracy.

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To that end, I would suggest that to one can be a Christian, and follow Scripture, and be in harmony with our Constitutional system of government (if not every statute) and our system of enumerated powers of government and enumerated rights of individuals.  I would also suggest, however, that a Muslim cannot be in harmony with their faith and with the requirements of Quranic Islam; that those who are in harmony are those who ignore significant parts of Islam.  I do not wish to pretend I am knowledgeable about the Quran, but I will point out two key differences between Allah and Jehovah God:

1.  Allah has contempt for unbelievers and infidels.  Jehovah so loved the World that he gave his only begotten son to die for the sins of the world, that whoseover believeth upon his Son's sacrifice shall have eternal life.

2.  Allah commands believers to Jihad; to conversion by the sword.  Jehovah never commands anyone forcibly to come to Jesus.  Never, in Scripture, is Jihad commanded.  And I would humbly suggest that there is a world of difference between even obnoxious, pushy, streetcorner preaching and acts of Jihadic violence that consume innocent human life.

I can be a Christian, live a Christian life, and be in harmony with our system of Constitutional liberties.  I don't know that a Muslim can do so without being out of harmony with Islam.  And the answer to that question lies not with "moderate Muslims", but with the scholars they rely on for their own religious guidance.  This is not an advocacy for a "Muslim Ban", but in light of the totality of 9/11 and subsequent events, I think it is fair to deal with Islam as it is, and not what we hope it is.  I think it's OK and fair to ask prospective Muslim immigrants what their exact thoughts on these subjects are in the vetting process.