The NFL has a NEW Policy About Standing For The Anthem (BAD IDEA)

After an eye-opening 2017 season, which caused NFL attendance and TV rating dropped as Trump and other critic’s scrutinized on-field protest by many of the league players. NFL commissioner Roger Goodall announced this week that the league has a new policy, “this season, all league and team personnel shall stand and show respect for the flag and the anthem. Personnel who choose not to stand for the anthem may stay in the locker room until after the anthem has been performed”.

When Trump was asked about the new policy he says, “I think the people pushed it forward. This was not me. I brought it out. I think the people pushed it forward. This country’s very smart. We have very smart people,” the president said. “And, you know, that’s something ideally could have been taken care of when it first started. It would have been a lot easier. But if they did that, they’re doing the right thing.”

The new policy stem from all of the opinion’s after former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, shocked the world when he decided to Neil for the national anthem before a preseason game and then before regular-season games throughout the 2016 season.

The protest let some to boycott watching NFL games last season and it appeared to have played a part in NFL’s ratings. Television viewership fell 9.7% across all networks last season, according to Nielsen data. An average NFL game was watch by 1.6 million fewer people compared to last year, declining overall from 16.5 million $14.9 million, ESPN reported.

Although their ratings have dropped, the NFL still signed a $1.5 billion deal with Verizon to stream games across the wireless carriers platform, according to Recode. The NFL also reached a five-year, $3 billion to broadcast Thursday night Football on Fox sports, according to Reuters.

The problem with this entire policy is that it effects the 70 percent of football players that are African American feeling the injustice in this country. Colin Kaepernick and other players have said they are not protesting the anthem or the military; they are using the anthem to bring attention to racial injustice and the issue of police abuse of black and brown Americans. Below is the video of Sterling Brown being arrested for a parking violation brings up Kaepernick’s point.

Advertisement

Jay -Z ‘New York Times’ Interview

Rapper/Entrepreneur Jay-Z gets interviewed by Dean Baquet from The New York Times. Jay talks about the reality, we all try to avoid. He speaks honesty and the true that many people need to take in. Touches on how he has learned about himself and becoming a better person. He mentions a lot about his ‘obligation’ to this community. I have always enjoyed listening to Jay-Z music, but the way he speaks brings me happiness. I pray that people listen to this interview and actually leave with something valuable. Below is the full interview.

 

A Hip-Hop Political Rally, Starring Beyoncé, Jay Z (and Hillary Clinton)

CLEVELAND — In an election year when Hillary Clinton is depending on young black voters to turn out, she may have gotten her biggest boost yet here on Friday.Some of the most famous names in hip-hop came out to rally votes for her at an event that featured Beyoncé, Jay Z and Chance the Rapper, all of whom implored thousands of cheering people to back the Democratic presidential nominee.
“Hello, Cleveland!” Mrs. Clinton said as she stood onstage with Beyoncé and Jay Z.
Mrs. Clinton called Beyoncé “a woman who is an inspiration to so many others” and thanked Jay Z “for addressing in his music some of our biggest challenges in the country: poverty, racism, the urgent need for criminal justice reform.”
“When I see them here, this passion and energy and intensity, I don’t even know where to begin because this is what America is, my friends,” she said.
At the concert, aimed largely at urging black voters and millennials to vote on Tuesday, some of the biggest stars emphasized the historical significance of potentially electing the first woman as president.
The reasons were apparent. While black voters catapulted Mrs. Clinton to victory in the primary contest against Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, black turnout is down from 2012 in several states and young black voters have proved somewhat resistant to supporting Mrs. Clinton in the general election.
Yet the challenges facing Mrs. Clinton were clearly on display on Friday. When she took the stage and began making the case for her candidacy, dozens of people began leaving the arena, the performance now over.
Still, Jay Z tried to argue that her rival, Donald J. Trump, the Republican nominee, was not fit to be president. “I don’t have any ill will toward him, but his conversation is divisive,” he said. “He cannot be my president. He cannot be our president.”

Beyoncé took the stage just before 10 p.m., and after singing “Formation,” she put Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy into the context of women’s suffrage and the feminist movement.
“I want my daughter to grow up seeing a woman leading the country,” Beyoncé said to roars from the crowd. “That’s why I’m with her,” she added, using Mrs. Clinton’s campaign slogan. The artist’s backup dancers even wore blue pantsuits, à la Mrs. Clinton.
The concert had a similar, though subdued, feel to one of Barack Obama’s closing events in Cleveland in 2008, when a largely black crowd of 80,000 waited for Bruce Springsteen to finish to get to the real star: Mr. Obama.
“This is historic, this is a moment in time,” the rapper Big Sean said. “Make some noise if you’re registered to vote,” he told the crowd, as an image of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. appeared on the oversize screens flanking the stage and he sang “One Man Can Change the World.”
Chris Stevens, 29, of Cleveland, said he was a “big Hillary Clinton fan” and expressed confidence she would win on Tuesday. Signs of what might be a close race were reflected in his family, however.

Mr. Stevens, his wife and his parents plan to vote for Mrs. Clinton, but he said his 37-year-old brother, who is a police officer and runs a small business as a D.J., plans to vote for Mr. Trump because he believes he would be good for business owners.

Mr. Stevens was left baffled by his brother’s choice. “I can’t, as a black man, vote for Donald Trump,” he said. “I keep telling him, ‘Donald Trump is not going to help you.’ But he keeps saying, ‘Donald Trump is for business.’”

Other performers, including Steve Aoki, Jon Bon Jovi, Katy Perry, Stevie Wonder and Ne-Yo, are also hosting get-out-the-vote concerts for Mrs. Clinton.
The events come as Mrs. Clinton is trying to motivate people in Ohio to vote early.
Younger voters are shunning the two major political parties on a scale not seen since Ross Perot’s third-party bid for the presidency in 1992, a striking swing in public opinion that is cutting into Mrs. Clinton’s thin margin for error.
The rally with Jay Z and Beyoncé comes at the end of a campaign in which Mrs. Clinton has carefully cultivated black support. She devoted the first speech of her campaign, nearly 18 months ago, to calling for an overhaul of the criminal justice system and ending “the era of mass incarceration” that has disproportionately affected black men.
She has spent many Sundays worshiping at black churches across the country. She spoke at a church in Flint, Mich., to plead for help with the city’s water crisis, and she campaigned with the mothers of Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin and others who have lost children to gun violence or after encounters with the police.
In North Carolina, where a federal appeals court accused Republicans of an “almost surgical” assault on black turnout and Republican-run election boards curtailed early voting sites, African-American turnout is down 16 percent. And in Ohio, which also cut back its early voting, voter participation in the heavily Democratic areas near Cleveland, Columbus and Toledo has been down.

On board the Clinton campaign plane on Friday, John D. Podesta, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign chairman, suggested unfavorable comparisons between Mrs. Clinton’s performance among black voters with Mr. Obama’s were unfair.
“Look, President Obama was the first African-American president, so he had a level of enthusiasm, commitment that we’re trying to push toward beating, but obviously he has advantages there,” Mr. Podesta said.

Via NYTimes

Beau Biden’s Death Touch The Hearts Of Many

Joseph R. “Beau” Biden III the son of Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and known as Beau died Saturday night, after battling cancer for about two years. He left behind his wife and two kids but had a promising political career in Delaware.

In an unusually lengthy and emotional statement on Sunday morning, Secretary of State John Kerry, a longtime friend of the Biden family, eulogized Mr. Biden as a “class act, period, ingrained with integrity, compassion, a sense of moral obligation to help others, and especially people who were hurting.”

Mr. Kerry’s statement echoed the sense of deep sadness for the vice president that flowed through most of the reaction. The elder Mr. Biden lost his first wife and young daughter in a car crash in 1972, and now must lay his eldest son to rest.

Similar expressions came quickly from top Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the House, and Harry Reid, the top Democrat in the Senate. Former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former secretary of state, each shared their anguish on Twitter.

“Hillary & I mourn the loss of Beau Biden — so full of life, love, honor, and service — and we pray for the strength of his wonderful family,” Bill Clinton wrote shortly after Mr. Biden’s death was announced by the vice president’s office Saturday night.

President Obama said in a statement Saturday that Mr. Biden had been a “good, big-hearted, devoutly Catholic and deeply faithful man.” On Sunday, out of respect for Mr. Biden’s family, the White House canceled a reception that Mr. Obama was scheduled to hold on behalf of Ford’s Theater.

The sense of grief came from Republicans, too. Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida and a likely presidential hopeful, offered his prayers for the vice president and his family. Liz Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, extended the family’s “deepest sympathy and heartfelt prayers.”

Donald Trump offered condolences to the vice president for “the loss of his wonderful son, Beau. Met him once, great guy!” And Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential candidate in 2008, noted Mr. Biden’s service in the Iraq war and said she had enjoyed spending time with his family when she debated his father during that campaign.

“The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer,” Ms. Palin wrote, quoting the Bible’s Psalm 18:2. “My God is my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.”

Celebrities, too, used Twitter to communicate their emotions, often directing their support to the vice president.

“My heart is broken 4 Vice President of the United States,” wrote Cher, the singer and actress. “The 1 thing I know about Joe is, He prizes family above all else.”

She ended her post with emoji pictures of a heart and two hands pressed together.

Mia Farrow, the actress, wrote: “So sad for the Biden family. Everyone loved Beau.”

The surge of reaction on Twitter was a virtual testament to the cheer and good will that the elder Mr. Biden has earned over decades in the public spotlight. Where some politicians earn reputations for playing hardball politics, Mr. Biden has long been seen as a kind of happy warrior, always smiling.

That seemed to make the loss harder to comprehend, according to many Twitter messages in the hours after the announcement of Mr. Biden’s death.

“Just awful for Mr. Biden to have 3 family losses so young. My heart is heavy for him,” one person wrote. Another said: “VP Biden is the epitome of family.” A third said: “No one should have to bury two children in their lifetime. My condolences and prayers to the Biden family.”

Many people on Twitter posted links to a graduation speech that the vice president gave at Yale University earlier this month. In it, Mr. Biden reflected at length about the tragedies that he had endured and the ways in which they made him stronger.

“Six weeks after my election, my whole world was altered forever,” he said, describing the horror of finding out about the crash in 1972. He said he found redemption by focusing on his sons.

“I can remember my mother — a sweet lady — looking at me, after we left the hospital, and saying, ‘Joey, out of everything terrible that happens to you, something good will come if you look hard enough for it,’” Mr. Biden told the Yale graduates. “She was right.”

Mr. Biden reflected on his decision to travel home to Delaware each night even as he served in the Senate. Some said it reflected a lack of ambition, he noted, an indication that he wasn’t really serious about success as a national politician.

“But looking back on it,” Mr. Biden said, “the truth be told, the real reason I went home every night was that I needed my children more than they needed me.”

In his statement Sunday morning, Mr. Kerry quoted the vice president as once saying that after losing a loved-one “there is a black hole you feel in your chest, like you’re being sucked back into it.” But Mr. Kerry added that “Joe has also said there comes a day ‘when the thought of your son or daughter, or your husband or wife, brings a smile to your lips before it brings a tear to your eyes.’”

“As usual,” Mr. Kerry wrote, “Joe said it better than anyone else could.”

Via The New York Times