Comments:US National Football League to fine teams if athletes kneel during national anthem

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Kaepernick got a sweet multi-million dollar, multi-year deal out of the draft to play with a ball! He consistently performed poorly at doing his job, playing with a ball. Then he wakes up one day feeling he is untouchable because of a contract to play with a ball, and make a political statement under the name of the company that hired him. Then the statement becomes a detriment to the company that hired him to play with a ball. That is like an NSA employee dumping classified information onto the internet and calls it patriotic - O' wait we have one of those guys - Snowden. The guy that ran off to Russia like a coward where he traded NSA secrets for FSB protection.

If you want to make a statement, political or whatever, do not do it under your company's letterhead which becomes detrimental to your employer. Maybe a few good NFL hits to Kaepernick's head caused him to make poor decisions like Arron Hernandez. Kaepernick has not played with a ball professionally for months, and somehow he thinks it is collusion - no it is because you do a poor job playing with a ball and became a detriment to the company. As I see it, Kaepernick is about as cowardly as Snowden. They are selfrichus individuals that when confronted with the gravity of their actions they run for cover. Kaepernick and Snowden should be men, take responsibility for their actions.

I will do you one better, how is that headline relevant to the comment? (darn it! the Infinity War pun did not come out well)

Well I have not seen Infinity War yet, so don't spoil it for me.

Not seen Infinity War? How is this dude still alive? #PunIntended

I don't know where you are, but in Arizona it is hot! The movie theaters are clean, but barely staying in the green so service sucks. I will just wait until it comes out on iTunes or get a pirated version - shhhhh don't tell the FBI.

Re Snowden — the route he took is the one in which his sacrifice doesn't all go to waste. But, digression.

The form of protest chosen here would not have been my first recommendation; better to claim the symbols of idealism (flag, anthem) for one's own cause, rather than cede those symbols to the opposition and foster schism; but, once underway, the protest became a symbol in itself and at that point the best way to support the ideals would be to join the protest. That's especially true once the NFL took the action described in this article.

What seems to be lost on most people, on either side, is that the players are at work. The First Amendment guarantees the freedom to express your political views, through words or gestures, however, not when you are on the job. The players are communicating directly to the customers while wearing the uniform of their employer. I can guarantee you, I would have been fired on the spot if I started espousing my own political views to the customers of my former employer. Similarly, I would want the bank teller to tell me who to vote for while I am making a deposit at the bank. The extent to which an employee can express their own personal views is entirely at the discretion of the employer.
This rule change does not infringe on their freedom of speech. Each and every one of the players can go on Twitter or a street corner and freely express their views when they are off the field. Moreover, these are professional athletes, some of them superstars. They have no trouble getting an interview with TV or the press, if they have a message they want to get across. They have more free speech than most in the sense they have a bigger soapbox.
That being said, Donald Trump should not have interjected himself into this. It is not the President's place to weigh in on the minutiae of employee/employer relations. And for this, we saw a Streisand effect with the kneeling protest spreading across the league, putting the team owners in a real bind. Obama's comment was wrong too. He referred to a history of athletes protesting, well, I assume he was referring to the 1968 Olympics Black Power salute. If so, they were amateurs and not representing a corporation who was paying them, which changes everything. If he was referring to The Cleveland Summit, well, these athletes made their free speech off the field, and very powerfully so.

Considering another facet of this, though, we're not talking about injecting a political statement into a situation that would otherwise be apolitical; these folks were called on, as part of their job, to make a big show with (arguably) political implications.

They have been given the option to stay off the field during the anthem. As far as standing for a national anthem being a political statement in and of itself, I'm a little hesitant, especially as most of the kneelers insist they are in fact patriots. At international sporting events, it is common to stand for all the national anthems played, whether they be your own country's or those of an enemy. If you don't want to put your hand on your chest and sing the lyrics, the least you can do is stand. It's common courtesy, like shaking your opponents' hands, it's not an overt endorsement of everything that has to do with the country in question.
Alternatively, one can also chat up the cheerleaders during the anthem, which I have heard Trump did at the Superbowl.

We call the Miss Universe contest a beauty pageant, Trump calls it speed dating!

Kaepernick also sought protection from the NAACP. Sure the NAACP does not do the work that the FSB does, but they have a cowardly standard line of 'you are racist until proven otherwise'. Weaker individuals or organizations just fold under that kind of attack.

FSB? Not sure who they are. Wasn't the NCAACP involved because of the question of whether Kaepernick was black-listed? If proven true, it would amount to collusion and unfair labor practices.

The Russian FSB is new, repackaged KGB. Snowden, to prevent a sort of spy trade extradition to the US, has been using the top secret information he stole, and is briefing the FSB on NSA programs including those meant to digitally cripple a nation in the event of war.

As for the lawsuit, we are seeing it right now with the Muller Investigation on Russian collusion. It is very hard to prove. You need to confirm if two or more parties agreed upon an action, no matter if it was successful or not. That is why the meetings in Trump Tower are purposefully vague.

With Kaepernick, he needs to show the owners intentionally agreed not to hire him. The burden of proof for Kaepernick is can he prove there was a meeting and there was a formal agreement. In reality, the owners individually concluded he was too much a problem and there were better options.

Oh, that FSB. I didn't know we were still talking about Snowden and Russians. I thought you were bringing up some domestic civil-rights group in relation to Kaepernick.