This headline is gold.

This past Friday evening, prior to his team’s preseason game against the Green Bay Packers, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick decided, in an act of protest, not to stand for the traditional playing of the national anthem prior to kickoff. Kaepernick defended his actions with the following statement:

“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”

I won’t go into the details of the type of responses towards his actions Kaepernick has received, but if you check out the comments section of any pro-Trump website or almost any twitter user that has the hashtag #TrumpTrain in their bio, you’ll be subject to some stuff that might even make the most hardcore Klansman blush.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t agree with Kaepernick’s actions one bit, furthermore, I disagree with his reasoning behind his refusal to stand for the anthem. The idea that the Unites States of America, in 2016, is a country that “oppresses black people and people of color,” is a flat-out ignorant belief to hold.

That being said I find it somewhat ironic that many of those who are the most vocal in their disdain of Kaepernick’s stance are those who consider themselves conservative. What is so conservative about blind devotion to the State?

Had our Founders wanted a national anthem at the creation of our republic, would they have not taken the time to adopt one? It wasn’t until the 20th Century, thanks to the father of the modern progressive movement, Woodrow Wilson, that we even had an “official” national anthem.

Woodrow Wilson, the man who pretty much spent his entire life trying to destroy the dedication to natural rights and limited government that the framers put into our republic through our founding documents, is the man who spearheaded the effort to make The Star Spangled Banner our national anthem. Let that sink in for a moment.

Patriotism and love of country are not bad things, as a matter of fact American conservatism has always included a strong sense of both. What is alarming in recent years, particularly in this most recent election cycle, is the confusion of patriotism and nationalism, the latter of which goes against the heart of the conservative principles of individual liberty and limited government of which our republic was founded.

The 49ers organization issues the following response to their quarterback’s actions:

The National Anthem is and always will be a special part of the pre-game ceremony. It is an opportunity to honor our country and reflect on the great liberties we are afforded as its citizens. In respecting such American principles as freedom of religion and freedom of expression, we recognize the right of an individual to choose and participate, or not, in our celebration of the national anthem.

They are absolutely right

If you disagree with Colin Kaepernick and want to show your displeasure with the 49ers and the NFL for not taking stiff action against his act of defiance by boycotting the team, the league or their sponsors that is also your right as well.

While I don’t hold the somewhat radical view that suggests that standing for the national anthem or reciting the Pledge of Allegiance is designed to deprive one of individuality while instilling blind nationalism — I can’t in good conscience deny someone the freedom to refuse to stand, even if I find his reasoning repulsive.

Apparently the old woman who “repaired” the fresco of Jesus in Spain, is now employed as a police sketch artist in Pennsylvania.

Berks County, Pa. (WTXF) Cumru Township police say they are searching for suspect wanted for a food mart robbery.

According to police, on Monday August 8, Cumru Township police were dispatched to the Valero–Shillington Food Mart, located at 110 Revere Blvd, for a robbery that had just occurred.

Police say the suspect entered the store wearing a dark hooded sweatshirt, possibly blue in color, with the hood up and pulled tightly around the suspect’s face. The suspect was also wearing gray sweatpants with white stripes down the side of the pant legs.

According to investigators, the suspect approached the counter, displayed a knife, and demanded money by stating, “Give me the money.” The suspect was described by the cashier as a white male, approximately six feet tall, with a thin build.

Police say after receiving an undisclosed amount of cash from the cashier, the suspect fled the Valero– Shillington Food Mart and ran north crossing Shillington Road into the Lincoln Park area of Spring Township, according to police. Read More…

Maybe Hugh Jackman can hunt him down.

Seen at a recent Kansas City Chiefs game.

Nicholas Salerno, 90, of Dennis Port, Massachusetts, was charged recently with solicitation of a prostitute. The charge came after he had called the police to report that the call girl had stolen a necklace from him after the act.

Salerno reportedly paid 48-year-old Karen Proia $100 on June 22nd to take a taste of his beefy bologna.

He told police she used the bathroom in his house and he later noticed his necklace was missing. He reported the alleged theft to police June 30, records show.

Police recovered the necklace at Bass River Coin, records state.

A police officer told Salerno he also would be charged with a crime, for soliciting a prostitute, to which Salerno responded, “I don’t give a (expletive). I’m 90 years old …” according to court documents. Read More…

According to the police report, Salerno informed the officer that arrived to file the theft report that he had made, that he had learned about Proia from a friend who had told him that he had paid her for a blowjob and she’d do it for him too.

Salerno’s necklace was found later at a local pawn shop, a worker there told police that Proia had recently brought it in.

The charge of soliciting for Salerno was eventually dropped and Proia faces a September 1st court appearance for prostitution and larceny.

In a just world she’d just be facing charges for stealing the necklace, the other thing was just a business agreement between the two.

This is Euclid Avenue near East 105th Street in Cleveland, OH. This picture was taken sometime in 1911, two years prior to the start of income taxes.

According to liberals, this picture should not exist, because it is only through the theft of people’s income that things get built.

Comedy Central’s @midnight with Chris Hardwick, recast The Golden Girls with Donald Trump, Mike Pence, Vladimir Putin and Little Fatty, I mean Kim Jong-un. The result is hilarious… and scary.

During his acceptance speech this past Thursday night in Cleveland, at the closing of the 2016 Republican National Convention, Donald Trump used the word “violence” a total of eleven times. The word “freedom” was used just once, and it was used in context of “freedom” from free international trade.

In contrast Sen. Ted Cruz, in his speech on the Convention’s third night, used the word freedom twenty-one times and the word “violence” just once.

Trump’s speech, which clocked in at 1 hour and 15 minutes, was a full on display of a spoiled egotistical madman demanding to be anointed into the highest office in the most powerful nation in the world. The Republican Party’s nominee painted a picture of an America that is under siege from urban crime, terrorism and rampant immigration.

Trump’s portrait is of an America that is fraught with rising homicide rates, filled with Americans being killed by those entering the country illegally. It was a portrait of an America that looks more like the events of the Purge film series then the America I see everyday when I step out of my door to head to work.

Trump’s entire speech was completely devoid of any substantial details as to how he would get anything done, just threats and points on how the government should be made bigger and stronger and given more authority with him at the head of it controlling every part of American life.

It has become a sad occurrence over the course of the last few Presidencies that political figures have been likened to evil dictators of the past. The code pink left during the administration of George W. Bush had constantly compared him to Hitler, leftist ideologues have a long history of trying to compare Republicans to Nazis, and they have always been wrong.

Republican’s have always, or at least have claimed to, stand up for the limited government, free market principles outlined by our Founding documents — principles that are against everything the Nazi’s (National Socialists) stood for.

Enter Donald Trump.

In 2016 the Republican Party has abandoned all pretenses of being the principled party of limited government, free people and free markets. This could not be anymore evident by the uproar over Sen. Ted Cruz’s great convention speech and the warm embrace of Donald Trump.

Sen. Ted Cruz urged Republicans to “Stand and speak, and vote your conscience. Vote for candidates up and down the ticket who you trust to defend our freedom… (so that) we will be able to say, ‘Freedom matters… ‘” and Trump’s supporters took it as an attack on their candidate. What does that say about Trump’s base, it says that they know that Trump is not a person of conscience or is principled enough to defend the Constitution.

Now under the reign of Donald Trump, the Republican Party now embraces liberal concepts of federal wage controls and fighting the “gender wage gap.” Trump’s Republican platform embraces a “do as I tell you,” message to private business and anti-free trade policies that will increase the cost-of-living for all Americans.

Some of the same useful idiots who were attacking Bernie Sanders for his socialist policies are now embracing Donald Trump for openly supporting those same policies. In the same way the hardline enforcers of long gone socialist regimes attacked anyone who would dare speak ill of the Dear Leader — Trump’s New Republicans have gone nuts on Ted Cruz for standing up for liberty, because if you are not for Trump you must be defeated.

Trump laid out an argument for unlimited government under a single man, but don’t worry he’s not a tyrant, he’s a “Republican.”

Thanks to the Republican party, a party that helped to fight the Cold War, Donald Trump is frighteningly close to achieving his vision for Trump style National Socialism. Donald Trump is a threat to not just everything that the Republican Party was founded on, but he is an threat to everything our Founding Father’s held near and dear. The Republican Party itself and the misguided idiots who claim to be liberty loving conservatives, yet look at Trump through the eyes lovestruck teenage girl looking at the latest teen idol, deserve just as much blame for allowing this to happen as Trump has for leading the charge.

Congratulations Republicans, you have become everything you have claimed to hate. It’s not Socialism, its “Republican Socialism”.

Being a law enforcement officer is a difficult and often times thankless job. Police officers are at risk countless times throughout the day while conducting their job duties, a potentially life-threatening situation can arise at any moment with no warning what-so-ever, because of this they have to be prepared for all possible scenarios with every encounter.

They are not highly paid, for a job at any given moment may cause them to pay the ultimate sacrifice while in the line of duty. The men and women who choose to put on the uniform to “serve and protect,” are husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, uncles and aunts.

The great Paul Harvey once said, “A policeman must be a minister, social worker, a diplomat, a tough guy and a gentleman. And, of course, he will have to be a genius, for he will have to feed a family on a policeman’s salary.”

However, they are still not infallible and they are most definitely not absolved from criticism, especially when that criticism is warranted. Much like it appears, upon an admittedly quick review, may be the case in two separate police involved shooting deaths this week in Louisiana and Minnesota. In both of those situations, the law enforcement officers were white and the shooting victims were black.

The first of the two incidents that occurred this week was in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. 37-year-old Alton Sterling, was standing in the parking lot of the Triple S Food Mart, selling CDs, something he had done for years, with permission of the store’s owner.

Alton Sterling

According to a “source with knowledge of the investigation” CNN reports that at some point in the evening on Tuesday, Sterling was approached by a homeless man asking for money.

The man was persistent, and Sterling showed him his gun, the source said.

“I told you to leave me alone,” Sterling told the man, according to the source

The homeless man then used his cell phone to call 911, the source said.

The details about the 911 call shed new light into the Baton Rouge police’s high-profile fatal shooting of Sterling, a 37-year-old black man.

A graphic cell phone video of the shooting was shared widely on social media, quickly sparking local protests and drawing national attention. Federal authorities have taken charge of the investigation. Read More…

In the grainy first video that was released to social media Tuesday evening, Alton Sterling was seen being wrestled to the ground by two officers, someone can be heard shouting, “He’s got a gun! Gun!” One of the officers then holds a gun over Sterling. Soon after, multiple shots are heard.

A second video obtained by The Advocate, emerged Wednesday evening, also captured on a cellphone, but from a different angle.

Before you hit play, be warned, that it is violent and graphic.

After watching both the original video and then the second video posted above, I don’t know if I am ready to say that it was cold-blooded murder, but there is no doubt in my mind that Alton Sterling would be alive if not for the actions of those two police officers.

The second incident this week occurred Wednesday evening in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, where 32-year-old Philando Castile was shot and killed after being pulled over for a busted taillight. Much like the previous shooting in Louisiana, this one two was captured on a cellphone and shared to social media.

Philando Castile

Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, the passenger in the vehicle, live streamed the incident on Facebook, starting from the point after the shooting took place.

What we saw in the video was a remarkably calm & composed woman watching her boyfriend as he bleed out. We saw a police officer, weapon still drawn and pointed at the dying man, shouting and swearing and not keeping his cool.

Stephen Green, aka Vodkapundit, had an interesting breakdown, on his thought of the video, which I tend to agree with.

When you are legally carrying, you refer to your pistol as a “firearm” so as not to alarm the police when you inform them that you are carrying, and to indicate that you have received proper training. The word “firearm” is supposed to help put the officer at ease in a tense situation.

Throughout the video, Reynolds refers to Castile’s pistol as a firearm. That might be a small detail, but it is a compelling one. Reynolds kept her calm and used the proper language in a life and death situation. I’m inclined to believe then that she has had some kind of firearms training. When she says at the start of the video that “He’s licensed to carry, he was trying to get out his ID,” I’m inclined to believe that, too.

What the video doesn’t show is how Castile was pulling out his license. Was he as cool and calm as Reynolds? Was he moving quickly? Had he used the word “gun” or “weapon” when telling the police officer that he was carrying? Was he following instructions? Were those instructions lawful?

We just don’t know, but there are some things we may reasonably conjecture — subject, of course, to whatever new evidence may come out later.

According to Reynolds in the video, Castile had “never been in jail, anything. He’s not a gang member, anything.” Add that to the calm, good sense, and tactical knowledge demonstrated by Reynolds, and my inclination is to believe that Castile’s behavior during the initial phase of the traffic stop was also lawful and proper. Read More…

I agree with those sentiments, we don’t know what happened before the video started rolling, however based solely off Reynolds’ actions and demeanor in the video, I tend to believe that Castile would be alive today if not for the actions of that police officer.

In a press conference today Reynolds shed more light on the incident.

“I’m the woman who recorded the video,” said Reynolds, referring to the footage she streamed last night on Facebook Live, in which Castile could be seen bleeding through his shirt while Reynolds’s young daughter looks on from the back of the car and a police officer stands over Castile with his gun drawn.

“We got pulled over for what allegedly was supposed to be a broken taillight,” Reynolds said. “[The police officer] let us know that we had a broken taillight. He asked us, were we aware of it and we said no. As we said no, he tells us to put our hands in the air.”

According to Reynolds, she and Castile complied with the order, at which point the officer at the driver’s side window asked Castile for his license and registration.

“My boyfriend carries all his information in a thick wallet in his right side back pocket,” Reynolds said. “As he’s reaching for his back pocket wallet he lets the officer know, ‘Officer, I have a firearm on me.’ I begin to yell, ‘But he’s licensed to carry.’ ” According to Reynolds, the officer started firing shortly after.

According to Castile’s uncle, Castile died of his wounds around 9:30 p.m. at the hospital where he was taken after the shooting. According to Reynolds, “nobody checked his pulse” in the immediate aftermath of the shooting.

Instead, Reynolds said, she was placed in the back of a police car as other officers “soothed” the officer who fired on Castile. “They pulled him over to the side and they began to calm him down and tell him that it was OK and he would get through this,” Reynolds said. Read More…

Philando Castile, a law-abiding and legally licensed concealed carry permit holder who was exercising his God-given 2nd Amendment rights is dead because of the petty law enforcement of a busted tail light. I apologize if that sounds like hyperbole, but it is the truth. A busted out tail light is the excuse that the officer had to stop Castile and begin an interaction during which some point something happened that made him uncomfortable or nervous. Was it Castile’s skin color? I don’t know, I’m not going to begin to question what is inside the heart of a man, especially with limited evidence.

I’m not going to go the “Trumpservative” route and say that all cops are great and Alton Sterling & Philando Castile have criminal records. I’m also not going to go all “social justice warrior” and say that cops are evil and are systematically targeting black men.

The truth is somewhere in between.

Shame on anyone who calls themselves a liberty-loving Constitutional Conservative and is not absolutely outraged at the total denial of the civil liberties of these two men. It doesn’t matter what their skin color, gender or sexual orientations were. They are both dead because their Civil Rights were violated and anyone who refuses to see that is blinded by hatred, bigotry or stupidity.

A lot of people are angry, and rightfully so. I don’t know what the answers are, I just hope that we are able to find it.

I hope everyone has a great and wonderful day of fun and barbecue with family and friends.

But I also hope that everyone remembers that July 4th is just the date on the calendar, today is the day that the final version of the greatest Dear John letter ever written was submitted.

Today is the day we celebrate our Independence.

It is the day that the Forefather’s of what would become our Republic cut themselves free from a tyrannical government that oppressed and levied taxes against them without representation. It is the day that the American Nation began the greatest experiment in the history of the known world, the idea that government is not the masters over our lives, but just the caretakers that We The People have entrusted to manage just a small amount of our affairs.

I fear that far too many of us have lost sight of that fact.

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Todd A. Clark, 51, was told by family members to stop smoking marijuana in the house, allegedly reacted by grabbing a samurai sword and attacking his brother-in-law in the face.

While the stick-in-their-asses drug warriors will blame this on marijuana, I know what the real culprit is. The sad condition that is being born and raised in Steelers Country.

Via Penn Live:

Who says marijuana isn’t dangerous? A Westmoreland County man who was told by family members to put out the pot he was smoking in his bedroom allegedly reacted by grabbing a decorative samurai sword and striking his brother-in-law in the face.

TribLive.com reports that Todd A. Clark, 51, who is missing his left arm, was arraigned on charges of attempted homicide, simple assault, possession of a prohibited offensive weapon and two counts of aggravated assault filed by Monessen city police in the Thursday morning incident.

Clark’s brother-in-law, identified as Bill Garey, was struck with the 3-foot sword across the bridge of the nose and was treated and released with stitches on his nose and above his right eyebrow… Read More…

This is either one of the greatest videos in the history of the internet, or one of the worst. I can’t quite tell.