The National Football League and The Internationale

Players of the national football league have been exploiting the national anthem during football games for political purposes recently. They take a knee to protest either the way black Americans are treated by American police forces in the states or President Donald Trump. In either case the nation nis not favored to have the gracious loyalty of such wonderful Americans as football stars. If war breaks out the NFL will perhaps not be people one can count on to go to basic training to be available for service after the war is ended. Well, they have a lot of money to count anyway.

The national football league acquiring an unsavory reputation as yippees loyal to the nation only if their political party wins or if it suits them are not helpful to the cause of nationalism. Nationalism is the right realm for the existence of democracy. Elites have been trying to give it a bad reputation ever since aristocracies lost power. Quite grudgingly I might add.

Elites and aristocracies are the traditional enemy against which democracy formed. Communism and a classless society is equally bad for it represses individualism and promotes elite dictatorial rulers and committees, besides usually being atheist. Aristocracies or their proxies-national socialist corporatists such as Hitler evolved or plutocrats dominating power through the extreme concentration of wealth, have always warred against democracy. Especially the American democracy. Keeping it free from global and international elites of any sort- imperial, communist , aristocratic or plutocratic is a never ending challenge.

Nations can support any sort of government. A geographic region is not the problem. The problem is the sort of government that is sovereign in it. In the era of aristocratic, royal nationalism kings warred against other kings. Nations did fight nations yet the nation was no more than an extension of the will to power of a monarch.

Europe has little history of large scale democracy. Aristocracy or communism-totalitarianism of some form or other is behind about every nation during its time. Athens had a limited democracy, and so did Holland with the Dewitt brothers before being torn apart, even so most of European history is one of elites ruling masses of inferiors, and that isn’t what then United States was supposed to be about.

So the NFL stars that support tribalism or globalism, Internationale communist songs or those were the days tunes and need to protest during the U.S. national anthem are doing a double disservice to the nation. Or make that triple.

1) They are bad role models training youth to hate the national anthem, sports or football players

2) They represent the word nation as disloyal, spoilt rich guys with head injuries

3) They seem too spaced to have particular issues to fix that might have some political remedy directly such as increasing taxes on the rich to pay for better police forces in the U.S.A., and must instead support anomie and chaos to help destroy U.S. democracy in order to benefit the rich

NFL Free Riders and a Minute With Gen WT Sherman

NFL players have taken to free riding political advertising during the playing of the national anthem at NFL games. That is, the protest by disrespecting the national anthem written by Francis Scott Key during a notable battle.

NFL players are rich and could easily afford full-page ads in the N.Y. Times expressing whatever political opinion they have. They could hire writers to write graphic novels and cartoons to reach Democrat Party members with their opinions, and of course they have radio, television and Internet advertising media, as well as formation of political action committees to express their grievances with President Donald Trump and American policemen and women. Yet they choose to disrespect the playing of the national anthem because they don’t have to pay anything at all.

The solution to the police indiscipline issue perceived by NFL players is not to pass hate crimes laws against those who kill white policemen instead of black because each year 99% of slain policemen are white men. The solution is to have Congress raise a special tax on rich people solely to pay for doubling the number of policemen, raise police salaries 50% and double the training budget.

Quite likely over-worked, underpaid police forces without adequate equipment and training or supervision feel the need to use decisive force instead of more relaxed means of apprehension of suspected felons that result fatalities.

Thus I sought the opinion through the means of the erstwhile reporter with the latest tech gizmos, of Civil War General W.T. Sherman about the national anthem. 

Sign of the Times- Record Minimum Arctic Ice 2017

There is no question that the atmosphere is warming this era. Regardless of the cause humans should take action against increasing global heating. 
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/sea-ice-extent-sinks-to-record-lows-at-both-poles/
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/videos/arctic-ice-record-low-29075
It is ironic that the capitalism has improved the human material condition while degrading the ecosphere simultaneously. Unreformed philosophy of capitalism theory little improved from its foundation by Adam Smith cannot support less than viscous competition or alternatively plutocratic network oligarchy neither of which actually are functioning models for capitalism or ecosphere defense to follow in a new era of material and technical production.

A basic minimum income for all to enable individuals never to be stuck in non-productive, oppressive currents, and free education along with a reformed U.S. patent system with patents limited to 5 years followed by just 10% royalties for inventors, would support a capitalist philosophy wherein  it is recognized that since everyone has basic social and material requirements for existence cynched, that it is better for a hundred inventors to be searching for tools to better the republic's life than for just a few that dominate and stagnate the market forcing unresponsiveness onto it.

image credit; Cryosphere Today

NFL, Seahawks and LeBron James Against the U.S. National Anthem

One might understand Carlos Kapernick and Steve Currie of San Francisco taking a knee in support of homosexual marriage. For LeBron James to call POTUS a bum and the NFL Commissioner to defend the right of players to moon the national anthem is something else. I defended Bill Clinton a little during the darkest of his lying about blow job impeachment days, though I never voted for him nor would not, simply because he was POTUS and should not be overly abused. Mr. James shows no respect for the office at all.

If any of the players or the commissioner had ever served in the nation’s military or received a purple heart their refusal to stand during the playing of the national anthem could be understood if not entirely respected. One must wonder if Ulysses S Grant or George Armstrong Custer’s brother, twice was awarded the medal of honor, had taken a knee during the national anthem of the day and not fought whole-heartedly for the Union because everything wasn’t perfect in the southern states, if life today would be the same.

The entire Seahawks team stayed in the locker room during the anthem in game against Tennessee. If anyone in the entire national football league has served in the armed forces I would be surprised. There are other ways to protest than to show disloyalty to the nation as a whole. It is simply not respectable- the players don't deserve any respect any more than Kim Jong Un.

Black millionaire football and basketball players are some of the world’s most overpaid performers. Lebron James, playing a children’s game as a full grown man, is paid more than enough to provide food annually for 20,000 starving African families. It is no surprise that the most spolit are not loyal to the nation than supports their extravagant, non-productive lifestyles that are about as valuable, at best, as that of decadent rock and roll singers such as the beknighted Elton John.

After the cold war the national Democrat Party abandoned traditional party politics and moved toward Wall Street and voodoo economics. Wealth became concentrated after the Bush-Obama tax cuts even faster than before. Public debt rolled up and black millionaire, ignorant, sports stars move toward political leadership trough disloyalty to the U.S.A. completely satisfying globalists that plan to concentrate wealth for global plutocrats and downgrade the U.S.A. and its people to junk bond status.

The best way to secure better economic and legal rights defense for black Americans is in securing those economic rights for all Americans through adequate taxation of the rich, secure borders and a lawful labor market. Solid national public financing must needs occur if the social safety net for the masses of poor and middle class is not to collapse during the predictable economic crisis down the road that black millionaires will largely be exempt from. None of the black sports stars are taking a knee during the national anthem to protest their low tax rate.

The late NFL convicted murderer Aron Hernandez was found to have suffered severe brain trauma from football concussions perhaps explaining his tendency toward violence. Ok. So NFL players are brain damaged. What explains Lebron James and Steve Currie?

While attending Theology School in Houston during the 90s I bought a small motorcycle to drive to Alaska where I lived. I had a Honda Civic wagon with a rusted out floor that I wanted to store someplace in my absence, so I choose a garage-an old-fashioned one made of wood, not too far from where I lived, in El Campo Texas.

Parked and walked inside the rather dark and warm auto-repair shop toward the back where I found an office with the door open. Inside sitting at a desk was an Hispanic man of medium height. Behind him on a shelf was the sole item that caught my attention; a photo of the man with a medal of honor around his neck, in Army dress uniform, beside an American flag. A little taken aback I asked, is that what I think it is? He answered, yes.

Roy Benavidez was a humble and ordinary appearing gentleman entirely not puffed up after receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor. An auto mechanic in plain El Campo Texas, besides owning the modest auto shop. I looked up his award citation on the Internet and it read like a classic archetype, something like…

Sgt. Benavidez had a glorious day. He had the day off while his green beret team were on a mission a dozen miles away. They were attacked by 1000 N.V.A. and along with other soldiers were taking heavy casualties. Sgt Benevidez boarded with the rescue helicopters to go and extract the team/

Sgt Benavidez having landed repeatedly took the wounded aboard the evac choppers and returned to fight the attacking N.V.A. He was shot and stabbed and engaged in hand to hand combat then continued to load team members and other soldiers aboard evac helicopters, making sure he was the last one out.

Sgt. Benavidez was exceptional in another respect. He returned his medal of honor to congress because he did not like the way the nation’s poor are treated. He did not take a knee or something similar to show disrespect to the nation during the national anthem though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Benavidez

http://www.cmohs.org/recipient-detail/3229/benavidez-roy-p.php

The poor and increasingly the middle class too are endangered in the nation today by the careless attitudes about public affairs proven by the most rich. Unstable federal financing will be balanced during emergency times not by increasing social security as F.D.R. did during the depression. Today the rich globalists will just let the house of cards collapse and focus on their foreign investments. Of course black ultra-millionaires that are sports celebrities can fan the flames of racism easier than comprehend economic reforms required to bring the poor up to a productive standard of living, so they work on that, taking the nation’s attention. In a nation they never fought for and may have less loyalty to than their race.

The Unaffordable Care Act-Democrat Party Perfidy

At the end of the cold war the Democratic Party sought to hide its leftist history and become blue rather than red state supporters of the rich. Their leaders supported unlimited Wall Street expansion and annexation to the west of areas of Russia that were also within the Soviet Union such as Ukraine and Crimea. That led to the sabotage and subversion of post-cold war foreign policy. Domestic policy was subverted with tax cuts for the rich (Obama), piling on public debt and finally, the affordable Care Act known as Obamacare.

Make no mistake- Obamacare is unaffordable for a nation with 20 trillion dollars of public debt and a trillion a year (approximately) federal finance gap. Obamacare is a result of Democrat Party cowardice. That party took up a Nixon era health care plan and abandoned the quest for plain public medical service operated by the government.

Obamacare is corporatism pure and simple. All Americans are required to buy a product from the corporate world and provide them with personal medical information. Therein is the Democrat Party cowardice of abandoning rational policy and opting to follow Hitler’s socialist party way toward the corporate state.

The reasonable and affordable way to provide health coverage for the poor is to expand the V.A. hospital system and unite its services with community health care structures that treat the poor and just not charge anyone qualified (certifiably poor) that walk through the doors.

The government cannot afford to buy health insurance for everyone that can’t afford it, and it is just plain wrong to go about it that way-in a most inefficient manner possible.

The sole group that might reasonably receive federal help would be those people with serious, debilitating illnesses that cannot afford health insurance or for who the benefits but not the illness have expired. They should be given permission to enter the poor peoples health service that charges nothing.

Maybe 70% of Americans don’t need federal insurance support. States are no longer laboratories for political experimentation because of broadcast media pressures to conform to what they believe is correct- and the broadcast media generally is owned by the 1%. Even so a system of free public health service for the poor should be tried in some state instead of the Unaffordable Health care Act.

S.E. Alaska King Fisheries; Taking Account

The population of king salmon has crashed in Alaska again and still the state fisheries management have decided to have a winter king season albeit with limited activity. Why do the fish have such difficult times reproducing? Are they trying to achieve zero population growth. Surely something could be done to encourage them to breed, perhaps marijuana fish pellets?

King salmon are what many people regard as a kind of spirit of Alaska along with killer whales, bear and eagles. An Alaska with weak king salmon sport fishing is a pathetic condition to many, and that hurts revenue streams generated by travelers seeking to bring in a large fish on small tackle.

Actually fish management seems to be treated as a saving account that will refill if their is enough escapement of fish-capital to reproduce itself. Of course the overall size of the account keeps shrinking since none of the high tech fisherman can resist taking any sizable chunk of money-fish, and the state cannot resist giving it to them except for a tiny quota of escaped fish that are regarded as capable of replenishing supply each year and of course cannot. The king salmon fishery has been beaten down to a sliver of its former natural size for decades.

It is not surprising that fish are regarded in the same way as money. The value of fish to fishermen and the state is money, just as the velocity of money through accounts govern Wall Street investment priorities so it stimulates fish management toward resembling financial rather than natural cycles.

Instead of treating the king salmon fish stocks as a saving account it should be recognized as part of nature that will decline with habitat loss from development and logging, and that over-fishing and poor management may reduce it permanently to something as pitiful as that of Washington State.

The answer is simply to allow no fishing at all except for provable subsistence needs in a third of S.E. Alaska (rotating third) for two years of every six.  it might be reasonable to allow sports-fishing a 3/4s of the the usual size-with a very low absolute fish number threshold, in the third of S.E. closed for commercial fishing. Then fish can have a chance to recover some size and numbers. Since kings are plundered in the North Pacific in their four year cycles the U.S., Canada and Russia should agree to close the ocean fishery and police that closure two of every six years, together.

The main thing for fishermen would be to have a stable fishery. The opportunity cost of an an irregular and paltry fishery is probably fairly high. Given more certainty of fish numbers and seasonal reliability fishermen could probably plan for something else to do than fish during the recovery years.

Katy Freeway Station (poem)

Katy Freeway Station

Past a spot under a glistening canopy

cars off the Katy Freeway decades

apart space a station

fragments gas with fuel pumps

cards flash through readers

driving away hearts that I saw

as living forms are quickly gone

concrete oil drip stains

remain

The City grows measuring itself with time

where Euclidean shapes built

prefer 90 degree angles

and trendy pastels

flirt at structural tensors beyond-

those of destruction that first overtake nature’s

lush dreams crowding a prairie's cactus

Buildings demolished like a timed storm-wave

reach renewal of sunset west

like an explorer conquering Katy

fuel hoses gushing nozzles

even as I grew older

Every young stranger’s well-gassed

fueled and flies

performing the same ritual

as the century retools

through glaring lights down the on-ramp

into darkness

A vacant field exists only in memory now

visited by a tornado

tearing apart steel roof anachronisms

from anything meaningful

besides mountainous dream-structures

sheltering a fossil fuel sanctuary

where passing strangers are recurrent thoughts

fueling lifetimes

never to return.