Clay Jones for August 29, 2016

I screwed up my life, I have no career, I’m finished in the NFL, no one pays attention to me. What can I do to increase my self perceived importance while not risking much?

I didn’t know that Niners was a curse word. /s

Jones could do better.

Respect for tradition is not a given.. it needs to be earned. On ‘the other hand.. if you are not a team player.. you don’t automatically get to be part of the team either.

People died for his freedoms! How dare he use them? Those’re LOOKIN’ freedoms, not USIN’ freedoms. They’re just there to look good.

“What Does He Have To Lose?”

I can legitimately salute the flag, rather than hold my hand over my heart during the national anthem, OR the Pledge of Allegiance. I do not say the two words added in the 1950’s to the pledge, as a “secular Buddhist”, and resent the four words appearing on our money only in the mid 20th century as well. Check out a bill from series 1934 for one example, no “in God we trust”.

I also have patriotic friends who NEVER stand for the National Anthem or the Pledge, as they either lost their legs, or became paraplegics as a result of service to the country that proved their patriotism, with their blood and tears.

You guys are far too hung up on patriotism.

About 31,000 cases of racial discrimination were brought by the EEOC last year. Mind you, those are only the instances where they decided there was enough evidence to support filing a court case.I’ll gladly agree that hiring discrimination is slowly going away, but it’s far from gone. I’ll even agree with the notion that in many cases, it’s not always overt racism, but a tendency of people to hire employees with similar backgrounds to their own. There’s an interesting piece of research that suggests companies that have mandatory drug testing are more likely to hire blacks because in the absence of testing, hiring managers are more likely to assume blacks use drugs than other groups.

It’s one thing to be ignorant but another thing to brag about it. Kaepernick doesn’t understand that the Flag represents the ideals of the country, including those that died defending it. Granted the men and women have often not lived up to those ideals but that doesn’t give him the right to disrespect the idea that is America. He should be working to move the country closer to its ideals instead of acting like a spoiled rich kid that thinks this would be quite the lark.

Night-gaunt: Viet Nam made me very anti-war, especially as badly chosen as ’Nam, which was nowhere near as bad as Afghanistan and Iraq, or our killing all those folks to “arrest” Noriega, or invade Grenada. I am not however a pacifist when we ARE actually attacked by a foreign state, not just criminals that are impossible to wage true “war” against.

“Patriotism” isn’t about how many flags you fly, but how much you GIVE to this country, and it does NOT have to be serving in the military. From all those first responders, police, fire, EMTs, or giving in Vista or the Peace Corps, or merely serving honestly and with integrity as a legislator or other “public servant”.

It’s why the whiners on the far right, who when it gets down to it are in it for what they can TAKE, not what they are unwilling to give, bug me no end.

Old Coal, mine’s a later one, and a twenty, but point illustrated, thanks.

raised by whitey. oh, the irony.