Very interesting take from sports journalist Jason Whitlock on why the NBA is kowtowing to the Chinese government:
Jason Whitlock
FOX Sports 1 journalist Jason Whitlock connects the dots on how Nike influences the NBA and the athletic apparel company’s relationship with China.
“I’m going to try to explain this,” Whitlock said Friday on FNC’s ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight.’ “It’s very simple actually. Nike is in control of basketball — the NBA, college basketball, high school. Nike is the real person driving this conversation in this thing with China. If you go back to — and I’m going to connect it to politics — in 2015, in May of 2015, President Barack Obama went to Nike’s headquarters in Portland, Oregon and announced his defense of the TPP – Trans-Pacific Partnership.”
“A deal that was going to be very favorable for Nike, for China,” he said. “Who is the President that came after Obama and walked America away from the TPP? Donald Trump. Who is the shoe company that employs LeBron James, Colin Kaepernick and these other athletes that smear Donald Trump as racist? Who are the people constantly criticizing Donald Trump? NBA, Steve Kerr, Gregg Popovich.”
“The NBA answers to Nike,” Whitlock declared. “Nike is a $40 billion business. The NBA is an $8 billion business. President Obama, the basketball President, friendly relationship with the NBA, went to Nike’s headquarters to announce his defense of the TPP.”
“This thing is very simple. This is about money,” he said.
“This is about a President that won’t cooperate with what Nike wants done,” Whitlock said on FNC. “Nike is using the NBA and its leverage over the NBA to go after this guy because they disagree with him about his policies as it relates to trade in China. It’s very simple.”
Trump betraying the Kurds really is getting noticed by US allies. Like the generally pro-US conservative Chosun Ilbo. I'm teaching a Korean language course for the first time in years and I was looking for good examples of the Korean expression "남의 일."+https://t.co/hUdGiW11JRpic.twitter.com/negdrNAeqJ
This Chosun Ilbo editorial isn't translated into English yet but its the kind of "look at what they did to the Kurds what does that mean for us?" other US allies are expressing worry about. https://t.co/hUdGiW11JR
I fail to see what the big deal is about the July 4th celebration involving the U.S. military:
As they strolled along the National Mall Tuesday, visitors to the nation’s capital were just learning about the grandiose July 4th celebration that will showcase Army tanks and military flyovers beyond the usual pageantry.
“Awesome,” California school teacher and U.S. Air Force veteran Walter De Graaf, 57, said as he stood near the Washington Monument. “Let’s show America who we are. Let’s show the world who we are.”
“A little extreme,” David Havens, 67, a salesperson from Sebastian, Florida, said about the military display. “Not so sure about that.”
Trump has yet to deliver his address near the Lincoln Memorial Thursday, but his “Salute to America” already is eliciting strong opinions over whether a president revered by supporters and reviled by opponents was injecting politics in an event above the partisan fray that enjoys national appeal.
You can read more at the link, but there is going to be two Abrams tanks and two Bradleys on static display and a fly over by military aircraft which has people all worked up like this has never happened before when it has many times in the past.
The $2.5 million cost that National Park Service reportedly said the event is going to cost has also been widely cited with claims the money would otherwise go to park improvement projects. What the media isn’t saying is that the annual fireworks show in Washington D.C. usually costs the National Park Service $2 million to put on. I have never heard the media tell the NPS to stop the annual fireworks show because it is a waste of money, it is only a waste of money when the President shows up.
That pretty much sums up all the criticism to the event, Trump is involved so it must be bad.
Anyway I hope everyone has a great 4th of July holiday.
Here is an update on the military family that has been trying to adopt their Korean niece in order to give her citizenship in the United States:
That was when the former Army lieutenant colonel and his wife Soo Jin were informed by the Federal District Court of Kansas that their adopted daughter Hyebin will be deported back to South Korea due to U.S. immigration law that cuts off the age when foreign-born adopted children can become naturalized U.S. citizens at 16. The Kansas court ruled that Hyebin must return to Korea after she finishes earning her chemical engineering degree at the University of Kansas, which she will do in December. Schreiber and his wife are appealing through the 10th District Court of Appeals, though they are not optimistic about their chances of winning. “We have no delusions that everything’s going to come out like a flowing bed of roses,” Schreiber told the Military Times. “We’ve always planned for two courses of action. So it was never something that we thought, ‘Yeah, things are going to work out the way we wish they would come out.’” The immigration policy that is forcing Hyebin to leave the U.S. is under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. A spokeswoman for USCIS told the Military Times via email that “it is USCIS policy not to comment on ongoing litigation, nor will we speak to individual cases due to privacy concerns.”
You can read more at the link, but this is a really tough case because LTC Schreiber missed the cut off date because he deployed to Afghanistan. When he came back to do her citizenship he found out it was too late for Hyebin to receive citizenship.
I am a bit surprised she not able to get a work visa sponsored by an employer considering she is about to graduate with a chemical engineering degree.
What is amazing about this is if she was a child of illegal immigrants she would be allowed to stay, but since she is a daughter of American citizens she will likely get deported.
Although he has lived in Japan for 25 years, Pico Iyer doesn’t choose to learn more than a smattering of Japanese because he says needs mystery and “a sense of open space in life, something to offset the sense of the familiar.” https://t.co/0JpPZ4e03m
Honestly, I despair of politics. Everywhere has gone mad. Or is there still a good country on this earth, where thinking voters elect honest, wise leaders, who debate civilly and rationally, consult widely, seek unity not division, and do sensible things? Is there? Anywhere?
Is anyone surprised that CNN is trying to sensationalize this nuclear football story to make the claim that President Trump doesn’t care about Puerto Ricans:
He was there to survey the path of destruction left by Hurricane Maria. But when President Donald Trump visited Puerto Rico in October 2017, the island’s dire predicament was hardly the only topic on his mind. People familiar with the visit said the President was distracted by other matters — including his then-devolving war of words with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un — as he toured devastated neighborhoods and took an aerial tour of the damage. At one point, Trump pointed to the “nuclear football” — a briefcase always in the President’s vicinity that can be used to authorize a nuclear attack — and claimed he could use it on Kim whenever he felt. “This is what I have for Kim,” he said, according to three people familiar who witnessed the remark.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the incident. The episode came amid an increasingly acrimonious period that saw Trump boast of the size of his “nuclear button” and threaten to rain “fire and fury” on North Korea. Since then, he and Kim have developed a warm friendship and met for two summits. But at the time, the casual reference to his nuclear capabilities was another sign of the spiraling rhetoric that marked his early interactions with Kim. And, to some officials, it was an indication of Trump’s disinterest in the plight of Puerto Ricans, who suffered for months without power and limited resources as their island recovered from the walloping storm. “There were other topics that were being discussed and my view is that the sole focus of that trip should have been on Puerto Rico,” said Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló in an exclusive interview on Thursday.
