San Fran QB is a champion of the wrong cause

The whole issue of San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick not standing for the national anthem should not surprise anyone. This has been coming for a long time. It’s the product of a divider-in-chief and his willing accomplices in the media.

Let’s look at Kaepernick’s supposed beef with America. He believes black men are being gunned down indiscriminately in the streets by white cops. Why does he believe this? Because the president takes every opportunity to harp on it and the media cherry pick every case of unarmed black men being shot by police and act as if it’s the norm. It’s not.

Kaepernick wearing t-shirt with Castro
and Malcolm X with the caption
'Like minds think alike'

First of all, police shootings of innocent people are extremely rare. Yes, police do occasionally make a mistake. I’m not here to excuse that. What I’m here to do is set the record straight on police shootings in general and race.

Here are the true statistics. In 2015, 50 percent of the fatal shooting victims by police were white, while 26 percent were black. This according to statistics compiled by The Washington Post. What needs to be noted is the vast majority of these ‘victims’ had a gun and were threatening the police.

Before you jump to a conclusion about percentages, it’s important to note that blacks commit roughly 62 percent of the robberies and 57 percent of the murders. Taken in that context, blacks are less likely to be shot by police in relation to the crimes they commit. In other words, white folks are far more likely to be shot by police, especially considering their relatively low crime rate.

Kaepernick is basically a victim of the disinformation machine coming from the left. That’s not to let him off the hook. It’s to explain, possibly, why he’s acting as he is.

Of course, there’s always the possibility that he sees the handwriting on the wall and knows his days in San Francisco are numbered. Perhaps he’s trying to create a controversy around which it would be hard for the 49ers to cut him. But he should be cut because of the controversy.

Everyone wants to talk about Kaepernick’s right to voice his opinion. How about the 49ers’ right to fire him because he’s becoming a circus side show? Their only goal on any given Sunday is to win games. Can you imagine what the season will be like when every eye is on Kaepernick to see if he’ll stand for the national anthem? The questions in the locker room won’t be about the win or the loss but about what the other players think of Kaepernick’s stand.

And his cause will surely spread like a cancer throughout professional sports to other athletes equally ignorant of the facts. There is no more fertile ground for the left than those who are completely in the dark. Elucidation is the antidote to liberalism.

Instead of blaming cops for protecting us, how about if Kaepernick were to focus on the real problem? It’s unconscionable that blacks—predominately black males—are committing over half the murders. The other half of that startling statistic is their victims, over 90 percent of the time, are black.

The issue can be traced to the destruction of the black family. Over 70 percent of black kids today are born to a single mother. Broken homes are breeding grounds for crime, no matter the race.

Kaepernick’s mother gave him up for adoption so that he would have a better home than she could provide as a single mother. If Kaepernick really wants to change the world, his own story would be a good start. 

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Trump to black voters: 'What the hell do you have to lose?'

For the last fifty years, ever since the mass exodus of the black vote, Republicans have grappled with one question: How do they get the black vote back? It took Donald Trump, in his no-nonsense style, to approach black voters from the obvious angle. Donald Trump asked blacks, “What the hell do you have to lose?”

Of course, he was excoriated by the mainstream media. Jennifer Rubin, the Washington Post’s best effort at a ‘conservative’ voice, tried futilely to answer Trump’s question. All she could come up with was that Trump had overdramatized the problem in the so-called black community and that he was ignoring “legitimate complaints in the African-American community about policing.” Complaints in the black community about policing are not legitimate. Study and study proves that innocent blacks are not being gunned down by police at a greater rate than any other segment of society.

For nearly the first 100 years of the Republican Party, the vast majority of blacks were Republican. Many fault Barry Goldwater’s nomination as the party’s standard-bearer in 1964 as the reason for the exodus, but it actually started long before that. FDR got 71 percent of the black vote in 1936. That was the beginning of the welfare state as we know it. Eisenhower was able to pull some of the black vote back to the Republicans in the ‘50s, but the Civil Rights Act cemented Democrat support by black Americans.

However, it wasn’t the reality that forever changed the voting demographics, it was what the media now love to call the ‘optics.’ The image of LBJ shaking the hand of Martin Luther King, Jr. after signing the Civil Rights Act into law is indelibly etched in the minds of all Americans. The truth is something far different. LBJ fought hard against the 1957 Civil Rights Act. Then-Senator John F. Kennedy voted to table the measure instead of bringing it to a vote. The Republicans provided the majority of the 60 votes needed to pass it in 1964, but their efforts have forever been forgotten thanks to the ‘optics’ and the efforts of the mainstream media to rewrite history.

Here’s the truth. A greater percentage of Republicans in both the House and Senate voted for the Civil Rights Act than did Democrats. Far more Democrats voted against it. After all, this was the slavery party, the party that spawned the KKK, and the party that gave us Jim Crow laws. All of the segregationists of the ‘50s and ‘60s were Democrats. Lyndon Johnson deserves much credit for pushing the legislation through, but were his efforts genuine? What’s not in dispute is that LBJ was a dyed-in-the-wool racist. He was fond of using the N-word and saw the Civil Rights Act as a way to placate blacks in America and bring them over to the Democrat Party.

Former Washington Post reporter, Ron Kessler, quotes LBJ as saying, “I’ll have those niggers voting Democratic for the next 200 years.” Kessler says the remark was made to two Southern governors aboard Air Force One. Many journalists dispute this account but two things are certain. Kessler is a journalist of impeccable credentials, and LBJ was a known racist.

Whatever the motivation, the damage was done. Blacks have now certainly left the party of Lincoln. Since the advent of the Great Society, the illegitimacy rate in the black community has gone from 7 percent to 73 percent. The black poverty rate has only marginally improved.

Trump’s question is a good one, and one for which Democrats have no answer.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Are we as divided as the media portray us?

Carolina Panthers QB Cam Newton tells GQ we’re beyond race, as a nation. The release of the interview happened to coincide with the burning of Milwaukee over the shooting of a black thug by a black police officer. In light of all the Black Lives Matter violence, is Cam right?

I think he is.

That’s hard to jibe with what’s happening in many cities across the nation, but it’s not when it’s put into perspective. Despite the Divider-in-Chief in the White House, I truly believe people are sick and tired of hearing about race. The very fact that we have a black president should be evidence enough that we’re over it. The only ones obsessed with race are the media and the liberals. Their reasons are now obvious. They thrive on division. The liberals have nothing else to stoke their base. The media have nothing else to draw viewers. When cities like Milwaukee burn, people tune in to cable news in droves.

And it’s not because we’re particularly obsessed with race. It’s the traditional fascination we humans have with disaster, any disaster. That’s why CNN milked the Malaysian airlines crash long past when it was either relevant or decent. The heart of any good story is conflict and racial conflict is just easier to conjure up.

Understand that Black Lives Matter was totally manufactured by cable news and social media sites. The movement was getting no traction whatsoever until the liberals who run both decided to make it important. The BLM Manifesto that was released recently exposes the movement for what it really is. It’s a limited number of malcontents who somehow still believe they’re owed something from white America.

News flash: We’re over you. And by ‘we’ I mean all Americans, of all colors.

We’re sick of the whining. We’re sick of the division. We’re sick of little weenies with service monkeys frantically searching for a safe space. We’re sick of political correctness and race pimps like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. We’re just sick of the whole mess.

As football season approaches, nothing proves this point better than our rabid love — or hatred — for the players and the teams. Our passion is color-blind. If you’re a Panthers fan, you love Cam Newton, I don’t care what color you are. If you’re a fan of a rival, then you think he’s a cocky SOB who got his comeuppance at the last Super Bowl.

You have to be a die-hard Browns fan to not think Johnny Manziel is a complete idiot. And now that he’s left Cleveland, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a fan of any color.

The Olympics are always a welcome reminder that race doesn’t matter. The only colors we cheer for are red, white, and blue. OK, I may have celebrated the green, black, and gold of Jamaica when Usain Bolt crossed the finish line in the 100 meter. Yeah, I know he’s cocky, but there’s just something about him.

We don’t celebrate race at the Olympics (unless you’re a leftist member of the media). We celebrate excellence. There are no quotas. There are no set-asides or affirmative action. It simply comes down to who is the best. What a beautiful thing. Unless, of course, you’re one of those weenie parents who thinks everybody should get a trophy. There’s gold, silver, and bronze. That’s it.

I even saw a guy disqualified for literally jumping the gun in a race. Four years of training and he’s sent packing in one second. And he was black! Where’s Al Sharpton when we need him?

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Media drop pretense about liberal bias

Jim Rutenberg, a columnist for the New York Times, has finally let the cat out of the bag. As if we didn’t know the mainstream media are in the tank for the Democrats, especially Hillary Clinton, Rutenberg laid it all on the line. He summed up Donald Trump as someone playing to our darker tendencies of racism and nationalism. He addressed America’s journalist with this admonition: “If you view a Trump presidency as something that’s potentially dangerous, then your reporting is going to reflect that. You would move closer than you’ve ever been to being oppositional.”

Rutenberg’s wild rantings against Trump sound strangely familiar. Saying “that he would be dangerous with control of the United States nuclear codes” sounds just like the hysteria leveled against Ronald Reagan back when it looked like he might take down perhaps the most inept presidency in American history. Reagan was a cowboy, a wild man, a lunatic with his finger on the button.

Now, let me say, Donald Trump is no Ronald Reagan, but he’s just as dangerous to the liberal agenda as Reagan was. Back in Reagan’s day, the economy was in shambles. Today, our economy is certainly not as bad as 1979, but it’s the socialist policies of Barack Obama that make this the worst economic recovery in our history. 

Trump’s policies would change that.

He would lower taxes across the board, which has stoked the economy every time it’s been tried. He would lower the corporate tax from 35 percent to 15 percent. That would undoubtedly stimulate industry and create jobs, but it doesn’t punish those evil corporations as the liberals would like.

He wants to stop the endless stream of illegals coming up from Mexico. That has been the one issue that has resonated with the American people. Both Democrats and Republicans have been afraid to run on it for the presidency for fear of alienating the Hispanic vote. Trump saw it for the national security and economic stabilization issue it is. What liberals see coming up from the border is an endless stream of votes. They see another group of people they can trap on government dependence and blackmail with welfare programs, ensuring Democrat rule in perpetuity.

Mr. Rutenberg at the Times is scared to death that Donald Trump is getting ready to destroy their plan to establish a liberal caliphate in America. He offered as evidence of Trump’s unfitness for office media manufactured stories like Trump’s supposed “fight with the family of a fallen American soldier.” Or Trump’s supposed enticement of Russia “to meddle in a United States presidential election by hacking his opponent.”

Just for the record, asking if a Muslim, who openly advocates sharia law over U.S. constitutional law, allowed his wife to speak at the Democrat convention is not fighting with the family. It may have been a question better left unasked, but it was the question on everyone’s mind.

Trump also joked that the Russians had Hillary’s missing 30,000 e-mails and the media would surely reward them if they released them. The liberal media acted as if they didn’t get the joke, instead accusing Trump of advocating a hack. Another ridiculous media fabrication.

But now we know the gloves are off. You can already see the hatchet stories all over the news. Donald J. Trump is the most dangerous man in America, according to the whacked-out libs in the media. They get in line behind Black Lives Matter and all the advocates of illegal aliens. If this is the crowd that’s most upset about a Donald Trump presidency, let’s do it.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

What everyone seems to be missing on the Trump-Khan controversy

Is anyone in this country allowed to savage another without consequence? Apparently some believe Khizr Khan is. You know the story by now. His son bravely sacrificed his life in Iraq. The Democrats highlighted Humayun Khan’s sacrifice on the last night of their convention. It was a moving tribute not only to Captain Khan but to the diversity of America. Had it been left at that it would’ve been great. But Hillary and the Democrats couldn’t resist. Neither could Khizr Khan. He turned a moving tribute to his son into a malicious attack against Donald Trump.

Media pundits over and over said Gold Star families, the families of fallen heroes, are off limits to criticism. No one is disputing their sacrifice. Everyone shares their sorrow, although we can never fully comprehend their loss unless we, ourselves, experience it. But that doesn’t mean you get to stand before a national television audience and attack someone and distort their position on an issue without a response.

Khan said, “If it was up to Donald Trump, he (his son) never would have even been in America.” That’s a ridiculous statement. Donald Trump called for a temporary ban on Muslims coming to America after the San Bernardino terrorist attack that killed 14 people. Prior to that, he had been adamantly opposed to a ban. In light of how easy it was for Tashfeen Malik to enter the country, Trump decided the only course of action was to ban Muslim immigration until we can ensure that we’re filtering out the terrorists. It’s a common sense approach that I’ve been calling for since 9/11.

Khan said Trump had never read the Constitution, insinuating that Muslims—or anyone else—have a Constitutional right to migrate to this country. Let’s be crystal clear about that. They don’t. United States law, under the Constitution, gives the president discretion to cut off immigration to this country as he sees fit.

Then Khan used the death of his son in one of the lowest public displays in modern politics. He told Donald Trump from the podium of the DNC, “You have sacrificed nothing and no one.” That’s when Khizr Khan crossed over from simply warping a tribute to his son into a political speech using his deceased son as a human shield. What kind of person would use their own loss to call someone else out to measure their own against it?

Donald Trump doesn’t need me to speak for him, but if you want to know what kind of sacrifice he’s made, ask him about Freddy. Frederick Trump, Jr. was Donald’s eldest brother. He was handsome, an airline pilot, and full of promise. He was also an alcoholic. Donald idolized him and did everything he could to stop the drinking. At age 43, Freddy Trump died from complications associated with alcoholism. Freddy’s alcoholism had such a profound effect on Trump that he eschewed alcohol and cigarettes.

I’ve never heard Trump recall the painful, fatal spiral of his older brother then scold someone else that “you have sacrificed nothing and no one.” 

And what did Trump say that was so bad about Khizr Khan? He asked if his wife, who stood silent beside him on stage at the DNC, was allowed to speak. It was a question that was on everyone’s mind. Trump simply asked it.

Trump has had nothing but praise for Captain Khan, but has defended himself against the slanderous attacks from his father. Since when does someone get to use their grief as a weapon? Since the DNC so shamelessly exploited the life of Captain Khan.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.