Nike / Obama Fraudulent Messages
The View from the Middle

Nike just launched an ad campaign featuring Colin Kaepernick with a message that says, “Believe in something even if it means sacrificing everything.” The first problem I have with this message is that Kaepernick isn’t “sacrificing everything” for a cause, which I actually support. He didn’t lose his starting role with the 49ers because of his protest, in fact Jed York, the CEO of the 49ers, supported him publicly and coordinated a million dollar donation to groups that supported his cause. He also started eleven games, including three pre-season games, after he first sat and then knelt for the anthem. After the 49ers went 2 and 6 to start the season, Kaepernick lost his starting job. He lost it for poor performance, not for his protest position. He didn’t sacrifice anything for any cause.

My second problem with this ad campaign is that Colin obviously doesn’t understand what the ultimate sacrifice is. Since World War II we have had over 500,000 men and women “sacrifice everything”. We have had almost 7,000 of our soldiers give the ultimate sacrifice in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars alone. Over the last ten years we have had over 1,500 police officers die in the line of duty and we had 750 law enforcement officers make the ultimate sacrifice as a direct result of their efforts to save the lives of their fellow Americans on 9/11. THAT, Colin, is what it means to “sacrifice everything” for something people believed was more important than their individual lives. Making millions of dollars off an ad campaign after losing your job for cause is NOT the definition of sacrificing everything.

Kaepernick can also suggest, now, that his protest was not meant to disparage our military. Unfortunately, Colin didn’t do his homework. If he had gone to official American flag protocol sites, he would have found that the number one reason we stand for our national anthem is to honor those who have actually made that ultimate sacrifice to insure Kaepernick’s freedom to do exactly what he is doing. In fact, 62% of US veterans believe that Colin and his followers have the right to kneel during the national anthem, and I’m with them. But 40% of those same veterans have also vowed not to watch an NFL game until the kneeling stops. I am also with them, and I believe I’m in good company.

Beware Nike. Beware NFL. Beware NFL players. If you lose anywhere near 40% of your customer base, you’ll all be bankrupt. There are ways to draw attention to this issue, but sitting or kneeling for our national anthem is not one of them.

And while Nike is spewing its ludicrous message, President Obama is busy rewriting history. It started a few weeks ago when he described his administration as “scandal free”. This was the administration of Benghazi, where four Americans were murdered in a terrorist attack which they blamed on a video. It is the administration of Lois Lerner and the weaponized IRS that selectively brutalized conservative organizations. Obama’s DOJ attacked the media when it surveilled James Rosen of Fox News and his parents and the AP wire, and then lied to America as Eric Holder denied it. And don’t forget Loretta Lynch’s “call it a matter” order to James Comey, then FBI Director, as it tried to whitewash the Hillary Clinton investigation. Obama also must have forgotten Hillary Clinton’s private server and the fact that she used bleachbit on 33,000 emails that were under subpoena. This last one is still an active investigation and I believe will come back to bite the first lady of Democratic politics in the butt. Google would have to come up with misdirecting algorithms and the country would have to suffer from a national amnesia for all the Obama scandals to be forgotten, although he will get the support of the “lap dog” media in that effort.

Most recently, Obama has tried to take credit for an economic surge that he claimed couldn’t happen. Remember, 2% GDP growth was the “new normal” and 3% to 4% annual growth was just not possible. Now that it is all but certain that we will reach that 3% growth number in Trump’s second year in office, the “you didn’t build that” President is trying to take credit for it.

Finally, I’m amazed at how President Obama can condemn divisiveness and simultaneously divide the country in order to influence the midterms. In his speech at the University of Illinois he first slandered the rich and successful in America, accusing them of using race, ethnicity and religion to continue to divide us. Of course, I’m sure “his” billionaires are all saints. He then turned on the entire Republican party calling them bigots and fearmongers. With those comments he has demonized 100 million voters, according to the Pew Research Center. That is not just prejudice. It is super, colossal, mammoth prejudice. Then, amazingly, within a few sentences of accusing 100 million people of being fearmongers, he somberly tells the crowd that “these are dangerous times!”. No fearmongering there!

But he finished with something that I totally agree with. He said, “We won’t win people over by calling them names or dismissing entire chunks of the country as racist or sexist or homophobic.” But didn’t he just do that? The hypocrisy of our politicians will never cease to amaze me.