It's 5 and 10 on Skywatch TV for September 28th.
I'm Derek Gilbert, topic number five today, paying for patriotism.
We're going to try to give some context on this ongoing controversy over NFL players
taking a knee during the national anthem before games.
After the weekend, of course, you saw many players either take a knee and some teams
just stay in the locker room during the national anthem.
Many NFL owners released statements afterwards, you know, showing support for their players.
Dallas Cowboys team owner Jerry Jones actually came on the field and linked arms with players
as they took a knee together.
What many of us had forgotten, myself included, is that prior to 2009, just eight years ago,
prior to 2009, teams usually stayed in the locker room during the national anthem and
only came onto the field afterward.
This changed in 2009.
Now we learn that many of these patriotic pre-game displays and ceremonies are actually
paid for by the Department of Defense, in other words, by American taxpayers.
That would be you and me.
This paid patriotism came to light in 2015.
In April of that year, Arizona Senator Jeff Flake released a statement condemning the
practice.
And then in November of 2015, Flake and his Arizona colleague Senator John McCain released
a report stating that the U.S. Department of Defense had been paying the NFL for patriotic
displays for the previous three seasons.
Their report titled, Tackling Paid Patriotism, A Joint Oversight Report, found that the military
services had laid out $53 million in spending.
This was on marketing and advertising contracts with sports teams between 2012 and 2015.
More than $10 million paid to teams in the National Football League, Major League Baseball,
the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League and Major League Soccer.
Over the course of the effort, Senators Flake and McCain wrote, we discovered the startling
fact that the Department of Defense cannot accurately account for how many contracts
it awarded or how much had been spent.
And quote, they did determine from what answers they did get that the Department of Defense
paid the NFL, paid 14 teams in the NFL about $5.4 million for these patriotic displays
before games between 2011 and 2014.
Now, since the report didn't cover the years before 2011, we cannot verify for sure that
it was because the Department of Defense was paying NFL teams that the teams suddenly,
in the 2009 season, all of the teams suddenly decided to come onto the field early and stand
with hands over hearts while the national anthem was played.
But the fact that all of them, coincidentally, decided at the same time to enter the field
for the national anthem does suggest that it was part of the paid patriotism program
of the Department of Defense.
So while you and I are rightly upset by the sight of millionaires taking our money and
disrespecting the nation that gave them the opportunity to become rich by playing a kid's
game, maybe we should be just as upset that our taxpayers, that our tax money is being
sent to their employers, men who are even wealthier, the NFL owners, and paying them
to propagandize us before every game.
Now, Congressman Mo Brooks of Alabama, Republican, said on Tuesday the federal government should
stop paying NFL teams and teams from any other league because of the disrespectful take-a-knee
display of players over the last season or so.
And I'd say representative Brooks is onto something here, and not just because of the
player's childish display of fake outrage, and I'll explain that statement in just a
minute.
In 2015, CNN Money reported that NFL teams get billions of dollars.
I mean, forget the 10 million that they got paid for these patriotic displays.
They literally get billions of dollars from you and me every single year.
The NFL is the most profitable professional sports league.
In 2015, it took in an estimated $1 billion in profits, that's off $10.5 billion in revenue.
This was for the 2014 season.
The profits are made possible at least in part because our elected officials are shoveling
tax benefits and tax breaks to these owners.
Here is a brief rundown courtesy of CNN Money.
22 new NFL stadiums, 22 have been constructed since 1997 with the help of $5.4 billion in
taxpayer funds.
Teams get tax breaks on the money that they do spend for the stadium because much of that
financing is done through tax-free municipal bonds.
Tax-free municipal bonds were originally created by Congress to help fund roads and schools,
not put more money in the pockets of wealthy national football league team owners.
The league also gets a financial boost in less obvious ways.
New officials trying to lure teams to move, like the St. Louis Rams going back to LA,
the San Diego Chargers moving to LA and so on, will often offer discounted city services,
utilities, police protection on game day, tax breaks on the property taxes that they
would normally pay for the property on which the stadium sits, which is usually prime real
estate.
And there are tax breaks for the NFL's biggest customers, corporate America.
Remember, about $10.5 billion a year in revenue, about $1.5 to $2 billion a year comes from
the sale of luxury seats and club boxes.
Almost all of those suites and club tickets are bought by corporate clients who then turn
around and write off that expense as business entertainment.
And yet the NFL is considered under law a not-for-profit organization.
How is this possible, you ask?
Good question.
It's because the league distributes all the money out to the team owners and keeps just
enough for itself to cover management expenses.
So I agree with Congressman Mo Brooks of Alabama.
If NFL teams want to put on a display honoring the flag, honoring our servicemen and women
before the games, because they want to and because they recognize that their fans really
appreciate it, then that would be fine.
But they already get enough of our money, even from those of us who don't go to games.
They don't need the Department of Defense paying them for patriotism.
Now onto the players and their protests.
You might remember this all started last season with former San Francisco 49ers quarterback
Colin Kaepernick taking a knee, sitting down during the national anthem.
He told ESPN later he could not support or honor, quote, a country that oppresses black
people and people of color, end quote.
The underlying assumption is that police brutality against black men or the possibility
that black men could become the victim of such violence is behind these protests.
The case of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the north county, north St. Louis County suburb
being one example presented as proof that white police officers are gunning down unarmed
black men in record numbers all around the country.
The problem is this narrative is false.
It is factually untrue.
In reality, a randomly selected black man on the streets of any city in America today
is overwhelmingly unlikely to be the victim of police violence.
Although white men experience such violence less frequently than black men, this disparity
is often consistent with the difference, the racial gap in who commits violent crime.
Now am I saying that white men are treated the same as black men?
No, I'm not saying that.
We are not perfect when it comes to race relations in the United States.
We're just looking at raw statistics here and breaking down the numbers.
Now last year, according to the Washington Post, just 16 unarmed black men, 16 out of
a population of 20 million were killed by police.
The year before that number was 36, 36 men out of 20 million African American men in
the United States.
Now to give you an idea, some context here.
That number is about the same number of black men who were killed by lightning in the United
States last year, and we're extrapolating from numbers here because about 300 Americans
a year are killed by lightning.
Black men make up about 7% of the population.
We're just extrapolating from numbers here.
Now, not equating the two, not drawing any kind of moral equivalence here, and I'm recognizing
that lightning is active God.
So there are some differences here.
I'm just giving you an idea of the frequency, and yet we don't hear cries from liberals
saying that we're not going outdoors until God stops striking black men dead in the street.
The narrative that the players are using to justify their protest is false.
The narrative that is being used by Black Lives Matter to justify their, what the media
calls protest, what are in fact violent riots, factually untrue.
And by not challenging this narrative, the media is feeding it and feeding into the hatred
that is growing between different segments of the American population literally tearing
at the fabric of our society.
There are three main points here.
Number one, the media needs to step up and take some responsibility, challenge the underlying
assumptions behind these protests.
Until it does, this is only going to get worse.
Number two, the players, frankly, are idiots.
Their protest is typical of today's hashtag sad face mentality.
If I just change my profile picture at Twitter, I'll change the world.
No.
You won't.
Look, Colin Kaepernick, if you want to change things for the better in the United States,
take some of that $39 million you earned as a quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers
and put it some good use.
Support some programs in the black community that will strengthen the family there.
That would actually put some feet to your message.
You players taking a knee on Sunday?
Okay, fine.
You've made your statement.
Now, what are you going to do when you stand up again?
The third and most important takeaway is this.
By making this protest about black people versus Donald Trump or black people versus
police, the NFL players who are taking a knee every Sunday are drawing attention away from
the real problems, serious problems, confronting the black community in America today.
It's not Donald Trump.
It's not police brutality.
It's violent crime.
And all too often, it is black on black violent crime, drugs, gangs, many of whom are just
low-level drug dealers from Mexican drug lords, poverty, jobs stolen by globalists and sent
overseas, fatherless homes, unsafe neighborhoods, which makes it really difficult for a kid
to get a decent education when just getting to school and home again is life-threatening
behavior.
By fixating on police brutality, players and their media enablers are drawing attention
away from actually getting something done.
You can't deal with the problem if you don't acknowledge the problem.
Leftist sports broadcasters are doing you players, especially you players who come from the communities
dealing with these problems, they're doing you no favors, and just one final note, speaking
of the media.
Do you remember how they dealt with this player when he took a knee?
It's Tim Tebow, of course, thanking his creator for giving him the opportunity to play in
the National Football League.
The media and its approach to this topic is one of the reasons I haven't watched ESPN
in months, why its ratings are dropping.
I have better ways to spend my time.
Let's move on.
Topic number four, Middle East Update.
The Kurdish regional government is planning a historic vote on independence Monday.
They are the largest ethnic group in the world without its own nation.
About 20 million of them spread across Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.
They were the only major ethnic group to come out of World War One a hundred years ago without
its own state, when all those new lines were drawn on the map, somehow Kurdistan was not
one of those areas.
Monday they hope will be the first step toward establishing independent Kurdistan, even though
Turkey, Iran, Syria and Iraq are opposed.
They consider it a threat, a security threat, even the United States government has said
the vote is provocative and destabilizing.
Meanwhile, in Syria, Russia and U.S. allied forces have accused one another of deaths
in their ranks caused by enemy fire, adding to tensions as both groups work on operations
in close proximity.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov accused United States-backed forces for the
death of a Russian general over the weekend, and meanwhile a spokesman for the U.S. allied
Syrian Democratic forces, mainly Kurdish militia, said Russian planes targeted their
fighters in gas fields near the city of Deir ez-Zor, killing one and injuring two fighters.
And a commander for Hezbollah says the group has more than 10,000 fighters in southern
Syria ready to confront Israel.
Told the Middle East Eye website this week that the fighters are concentrated around
the Golan Heights, and that tunnels and military bases are being built for a possible confrontation
with Israel.
Topic number three, Muslim murder in Oklahoma, a Muslim man from Oklahoma who beheaded his
co-worker three years ago after being suspended from the job, told investigators that Allah
wants to get the oppressors out, the oppressors out of Oklahoma.
This was according to audio that was played during his trial last week.
He said that he acted out because he felt he was being treated differently by his co-workers
because he is a follower of Islam.
Topic number two, Obamacare imploding major health insurer, Anthem, leaving Maine's Obamacare
marketplace next year because it remains volatile.
This is the latest defection from a state marketplace by Anthem, which has been worried
about the uncertainty in how the plans are going to change in 2018.
Anthem has given a similar reason or similar reasons for pulling out of other states such
as Virginia, scaling back in states such as Kentucky and Missouri.
The health insurance tax that was temporarily halted by the government this year goes back
into effect in 2018.
The Senate was trying to negotiate bipartisan agreement on stabilizing the marketplace through
cost sharing, reduction subsidies, but those talks collapsed last week.
The White House Speaker Paul Ryan opposed any bipartisan deal.
Now we turn to the White House where we learned yesterday Wednesday that President Trump is
preparing an executive order to allow people to purchase health care across state lines.
Health insurance across state lines, it is.
This is a reform that conservatives, including President Trump, have been calling for for
a long time as a way to bring down costs and increase competition.
A Senate GOP source told the Washington Examiner that this appears to be a done deal and could
be announced within the next few weeks.
And topic number one, crowdfunding the flat earth.
Rep singer B.O.B., and I know singer is kind of a loose application of the term, but we'll
let it stand.
He has established an online funding campaign to determine whether, in fact, the earth is
spherical rather than flat.
Bobby Ray Simmons, Jr. goes by B.O.B., he has started a GoFundMe campaign, he's trying
to raise a million dollars to find the curve, he wants to launch satellites into space and
find the curvature of the earth.
Last year he got involved in a Twitter feud with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson over
the flat earth, which culminated with B.O.B. issuing a diss track aimed at Tyson.
Tyson's nephew, who also is a rapper, sent one back, issued a track called Flat to Fact.
Tyson went on Comedy Central last year during this little spat and did a bit of a stand-up
routine where he dropped the microphone and said, this is what you call gravity, boom.
Well Tuesday night GoFundMe put this campaign on hold, donors can still pledge money and
you can see he's got a ways to go yet about 999,000, 998,000 somewhere in there.
You see why Jonathan Kahn said, no more math for you, $997,000 yet to go to reach his million
dollar goal, people can still donate, but until GoFundMe checks this out and determines
that B.O.B. is actually sincere, he won't be able to access any of the funds.
Half if you will, at least he's trying to check the evidence for himself.
Please take us with you, please, and you can do it at no cost.
The free Skywatch TV mobile app for your iOS device, that's your iPad, iPod Touch, iPhone,
your Windows phone, your Android phone or tablet, or your Windows or rather Amazon Kindle Fire
tablet, it's a free download and we've got links to all of those app stores at skywatchtv.com.
Coming up next month, October 13th through the 15th, Sharon and I and Josh Peck from
Skywatch TV, honored to be part of the Blessed Hope Prophecy Forum in Norman, Oklahoma, will
be among 33 speakers in Bible prophecy, theology, archeology, geopolitics, if you can't make
it to the conference and we encourage you to do it, but if you can't, live video streaming
is available, 44 messages from 33 speakers and those messages will all be archived for
60 days after the conference, so watch them on your schedule, watch them again and again,
have watch parties with your friends for information and registration, log on to prophecywatchers.com.
You'll find my stuff posted at Skywatch TV, well at Skywatch TV, but also my own website,
DerekPGilbert.com and tomorrow, it's the return of science as my best friend, Sharon
K. Gilbert joins me for SciFriday. Until then, thank you for watching as we keep watching.
I'm Derek Gilbert and this is Skywatch TV.
I'm Derek Gilbert and this is Skywatch TV.
I'm Derek Gilbert and this is Skywatch TV.
I'm Derek Gilbert and this is Skywatch TV.
Are you ready for the best deal anywhere on Jonathan Cohn's newest works? Now, while
supplies last, when you purchase New York Times' best-selling author, rabbi Jonathan
Cohn's brand new book, The Paradigm from Skywatch TV, you'll receive an unprecedented
special offer. Skywatch TV is proud to announce the ultimate paradigm collection. When you
purchase paradigm from the Skywatch TV store, you'll receive the tales of a wandering profit
by author, Hube Sin. The minister who spoke to Jonathan Cohn before he released his breakout
book, The Harbinger, and prophesied that it would indeed become a New York Times best
seller before it actually happened. In this book, Hube shows you how to hear from God
and demonstrates how God can use anyone for His glory. You'll also receive Jonathan Cohn's
best-selling books, The Book of Mysteries, and The Mystery of the Shemitah. But that's
not all. In this incredible, limited time offer, we'll also include two full-length
special presentations on DVD by rabbi Jonathan Cohn himself. In the six heavenly entities,
Cohn reveals how God chose to use the Hebrew language to communicate His Word and how the
awesome reality of God is often deluded when the English language is the only one used
to interpret Scripture. In the cosmic bride and bridegroom, you'll discover that one
of the greatest mysteries in Scripture is often clouded by common misconceptions regarding
our relationship to Christ. Sold separately, this exclusive offer retails for more than
$120, yours now for only $29.99 plus shipping and handling. You won't find this collection
anywhere else, so don't delay. Order the Ultimate Paradigm Collection now at skywatchtvstore.com
or call 1-844-750-4985.
