The owner of a sporting goods store in Colorado says his shop is going out of business after he stopped selling Nike products over the company's controversial campaign with Colin Kaepernick. Prime Time Sports, in Colorado Springs, is shuttering its doors after "21 mostly good years," owner Stephen Martin wrote on Facebook Monday. He
advertised 40 percent off all merchandise, and thanked those who
"offered help and support through the 'Honor The Flag' memorial wall and
NIKE boycott." Martin said he can't afford to stay open anymore
after he stopped selling Nike products, in protest after the sports
brand featured Kaepernick, a former quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, in its "Just Do It" campaign. The
controversial ad from the campaign included a photo of Kaepernick's
face, with the words "Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing
everything" superimposed on it. Nike’s decision led to calls for a
boycott of the company, with more than 42,000 people tweeting with the
hashtag #NikeBoycott the day after the ad was released. Martin told KOAA-TV that "being a sports store without Nike is kind of like being a milk store without milk or a gas station without gas." "How do you do it? They have a monopoly on jerseys," he said. Martin
said that despite having NFL apparel for every team in the league sold
at his store, he currently isn't selling the jerseys of any current NFL
player because of his decision to boycott Nike. “As much as I hate
to admit this, perhaps there are more Brandon Marshall and Colin
Kaepernick supporters out there than I realized,” Martin confessed,
adding that he canceled an autograph event with Marshall, of the Denver
Broncos, in 2016 because the linebacker kneeled during the national anthem. Martin
said Prime Time Sports will remain open until he's sold all his
remaining merchandise, but is seemingly proud he did what he felt was
right. “I
didn’t give in to big Nike and big dollars. I didn’t give in. I did it
my way," he said. "That part of the military respect that’s in me just
cannot be sacrificed or compromised, as I believe Brandon Marshall and
Colin Kaepernick both did. I don’t like losing a business over it, but I
rather be able to live with myself." Martin anticipates his store will close in about a month's time.
How in the hell have we managed to vote IDIOTS like this into office??
Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Wis., was slammed by House GOP Leader Kevin
McCarthy after following up a list of White House economic successes
with "blah blah blah."
(U.S. House of Representatives)
A House Democrat's "blah blah blah" mockery of key Trump administration accomplishments drew a quick response on Twitter on Wednesday from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Wis., appeared unimpressed as she read a list of the economic successes of the Trump administration during a House Ways and Means Committee hearing on Capitol Hill. "GDP
is great, unemployment is at an all-time low, African-Americans are
doing well, Hispanics are doing well, wages are rising at the fastest
pace in ten years -- blah, blah, blah,” Moore, a congresswoman since
2005, said at the hearing. Afterward, McCarthy, R-Calif., tweeted a
video of Moore making the remarks, adding an overlay of the words "blah
blah blah" for emphasis. "From the party that claims to be #ForThePeople," McCarthy wrote. Moore later responded to McCarthy, referring to what she called the "GOP tax scam." "Any
benefit of the #goptaxscam is put on the national credit card," Moore
wrote on Twitter. "The middle class knows they’re going to be the ones
who are forced to pay it back. "Meanwhile," she added, "Democrats grew the economy, shrunk the deficit, & gave everyone healthcare. Thanks, Obama!" Donald Trump Jr. later described Moore’s comments as “a joke.” “If
over his entire presidency Obama had accomplished 10% of what
@realDonaldTrump for these groups the left would anoint him emperor for
life. When Trump does it in less than 2 years it’s Blah Blah Blah. What a
joke!” Wednesday's House Ways and Means Committee hearing focused on how middle-class families are faring in today’s economy. Moore,
the first African-American elected to Congress from Wisconsin, had
noted that there appeared to be a disconnect between the Trump
administration’s list of economic wins and the testimony from the panel
of economists invited to speak in the chamber. A representative for Moore did not immediately respond to Fox News’ request for comment.
In a world where we now have three so-called "democratic" socialists
in office (which is an oxymoron if I've ever seen one), you'd think the
American public must be increasingly moving to the left. But you would
be wrong. A brand-new Fox News poll disputes
that thesis. The poll, which was released on February 13 finds that
“Fifty-seven percent of voters have a positive opinion of
capitalism. That’s more than twice the number who feel the same about
socialism (25 percent).” How about that. (And, if you ask me, the actual
figure is probably even higher because most people, especially
millennials, can't even define socialism.) So what's causing this surprisingly large disdain for socialism? I have a few ideas... FOX NEWS POLL: CAPITALISM BURIES SOCIALISM 1. Americans enjoy eating food Like you, I prefer three meals a day, and rotten meat for zero of them. Call me petty, but this is a major issue for me. For
as much as we hear about our nation's obesity crisis, it's a problem
that our friends in breadlines would kill to experience. While no
famine has ever taken place in a democracy, they're the rule rather than
the exception in socialist countries. In just the 20th century alone,
six of the ten worst famines were in socialist countries, as were seven
of the top fifteen. I guess they all weren't "real” socialism? Capitalism
even does a better job at producing food within socialist countries
themselves. The Soviet Union (which went from being an exporter of food
to an importer after going socialist) eventually had to resort to
opening up some agriculture to private hands. While private agriculture
never composed more than 4 percent of the land mass of all Soviet
agriculture, it yielded a third of the nation's total produce. 2. Americans don't want to be equally poor While
it's easy to find polls showing that the average American would prefer
lower levels of economic inequality, the average American will also draw
the line far before we're all equally poor. Ironically, socialist
countries do tend to have immediate short term decreases in poverty
before collapsing. After Hugo Chavez came to power the Venezuelan
poverty rate was cut in half from 54 percent to 27.5 percent from
2004-2007 to the cheers of socialists worldwide. And then Chavez ran out
of other people's money -- and by 2014 the poverty rate had nearly
caught up to where it was in 2004, and in 2018 the poverty rate
skyrocketed to 90 percent. And only then did Venezuela become "not real
socialism" to other socialists. While capitalist countries have
more inequality - they also have more wealth overall. The Frasier
Institute's annual studies one economic freedom routinely finds that the
poorest people in the freest economies are wealthier than the richest
people in the least free economies. 3. Freedom of speech matters I have a podcast that you all listen to ("The Dan Bongino Show")
and I must say the job would be so much more stressful if I recorded my
show under the threat of potential torture every day, fearful of
criticizing the wrong person. Similarly for you, the reader, in a
capitalist country you have the ability to answer a poll question from
Fox News about capitalism vs. socialism truthfully. Something tells me a
similar poll would generate 110 percent support for socialism in a
socialist country. It's
ironic that socialism and similar left-wing ideas appeal to people who
fashion themselves as "anti-establishment," when you can't have
socialism without political repression. Any college student who disagrees may want to speak with one of the tens of millions of people who have wound up in a gulag.
Sen. Bob Menendez, left, had a testy encounter with Daily
Caller reporter Henry Rodgers. (Zach Gibson/Getty Images, Fox News)
U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., had a fiery exchange with a reporter on Capitol Hill on Wednesday when asked to comment on the Green New Deal. Henry
Rodgers, the Daily Caller's Capitol Hill reporter, approached the
senator at a subway station and asked him if he supported Rep.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's legislative proposal. Menendez avoided
the question and asked where Rodgers worked. Rodgers said that when he
told Menendez he worked for the Daily Caller, the Democrat responded by
saying he would not answer any questions. An intern who was with Rodgers
asked a follow-up question, and tensions apparently rose. The reporter followed the tweet with an audio clip from their back-and-forth. “I am wondering why you won’t answer questions on the Green New Deal?” Rodgers asked. “I won’t answer questions to the Daily Caller, period! You’re trash,” Menendez responded. “Why do you think we’re trash, sir?” the reporter followed. “Don’t keep harassing me anymore or I’ll race to the Capitol Police,” the New Jersey Democrat threatened. Rodgers
told Fox News he had no prior interaction with Menendez and was working
on a story that was to include the responses of Senate Democrats
regarding the Green New Deal. Menendez was criticized on social media for threatening to call the police on the reporter. Numerous
members of Menendez’s office, including his communications director,
Tricia Enright, defended the senator and trashed what one described as
“gotcha journalism.” Sen. Menendez’s office did not respond to Fox News for comment.
If U.S. Sen. Cory Booker wins the White House in 2020, he’d make history as the first vegan elected U.S. president. The
New Jersey Democrat recently told VegNews that he started experimenting
with a vegetarian diet around 1992 and then eliminated dairy foods as well, making his diet completely animal-free. “I
remember my last non-vegan meal was Election Day, November 2014,”
Booker, a former mayor of Newark, N.J., told the news outlet. CORY BOOKER COMPARES GREEN NEW DEAL TO GOING TO THE MOON, DEFEATING NAZIS These
days, Booker says, we may all be heading toward a vegan diet because,
in his view, meat consumption is not sustainable in the future. “You see the planet earth moving towards what is the Standard American Diet,” he told VegNews. “We’ve seen this massive increase in consumption of meat produced by the industrial animal agriculture industry. “The
tragic reality is this planet simply can’t sustain billions of people
consuming industrially produced animal agriculture because of
environmental impact. It’s just not possible, as China, as Africa move
toward consuming meat the same way America does because we just don’t
have enough land.”
"The tragic reality is this planet
simply can’t sustain billions of people consuming industrially produced
animal agriculture because of environmental impact. It’s just not
possible." — U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J.
VEGAN ACTIVISTS STORM STEAKHOUSE, ARE MOCKED BY PATRONS MOOING AT THEM Booker says there are a number of goals he hopes to accomplish through legislation that would affect what people eat. “Legislatively,
I want to continue to be a part of a movement of folk who are fighting
against corporate interests that are undermining the public good and the
public welfare,” he says. “So, I’m going to continue supporting bills
that are about public health, whether it is pumping in all these
antibiotics into animals that are literally threatening the safety of
Americans. I believe that Americans do care about the cruelty to
animals, and that’s why you see public movement to stop pig crating,
which is harmful and violates our collective values as a country.” But don’t count U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., among those who share Booker’s meat-free vision. After Booker’s comments to VegNews were reported, the congresswoman – whose state is home to some 60 meat plants, according to the Wyoming Department of Agriculture – fired off a Twitter message that made it clear where she stands on the issue. “Hey @CoryBooker,” Cheney wrote. “I support PETA – People Eating Tasty Animals.”
Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton unloaded on Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal and said the media were “complicit” in burying the most radical parts of the deal. Cotton, a staunch Republican, appeared on The Hugh Hewitt Show on Tuesday and discussed the widely ridiculed Green New Deal that aims to implement sweeping changes across the nation. UNION LEADERS WARN GREEN NEW DEAL MAY LEAD TO POVERTY: 'MEMBERS ARE WORRIED ABOUT PUTTING FOOD ON THE TABLE' But
what particularly caught Cotton’s eye was how the media became
complicit in hiding the now-infamous FAQ document circulated by the
Ocasio-Cortez office, which included lines such as promising a job to
“all people of the United States” – including those “unwilling to work”
– and making air travel industry obsolete. “I understand the
Democrats that proposed this immediately tried to retract that white
paper that went along with their resolution,” Cotton added. “And too
many people in the media have been complicit in the Stalin-like or 1984
technique of disappearing it, sending it down the memory hole.”
“And
too many people in the media have been complicit in the Stalin-like or
1984 technique of disappearing it, sending it down the memory hole.” — Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton
Hewitt asked whether the Democrats who immediately jumped to endorse the radical package have actually read what’s inside it. “Sure.
I mean, Hugh, it’s pretty remarkable that when these Democrats put out
the Green New Deal last week that you had many Democrats running for
president leap onto a proposal that was going to confiscate every
privately owned vehicle in America within a decade and ban air travel so
we could all drive or ride around on high-speed light rail, supposedly
powered by unicorn tears, yes,” Cotton said. Multiple
Democratic 2020 candidates such as Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker,
Kamala Harris, and Kirsten Gillibrand have endorsed the deal.
Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton unloaded on Rep. Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal and said the media were “complicit” in
burying the most radical parts of the deal. (Associated Press)
Cotton finished the
interview the segment saying the Green New Deal, in essence, is what
Democrats believe in and want for the U.S. “But
this is where their heart lies,” he said. “They believe that Americans
driving around in trucks on farms, or commuting from the suburbs where
they can have a decent home into the city to work are a fundamental
threat to the world, and they have to have the power and the control of
those Americans’ lives to implement their radical vision for humanity.”
Chelsea Clinton on Tuesday called out Vice President Mike Pence for saying that Rep. Ilhan Omar’s apology for earlier Twitter posts called anti-Semitic was "inadequate," and blasted President Trump for peddling hate. Clinton,
who was critical of Omar's tweets, posting that "we should expect all
elected officials, regardless of party, and all public figures to not
traffic in anti-Semitism," but said on Tuesday that Trump is a "far more
powerful person" and has never apologized "for his embrace of white
nationalism & anti-Semitic & Islamophobic hate." Omar said
she had no intention of offending anyone, including Jewish Americans,
when she insinuated that lobbyists were paying lawmakers to support
Israel. Trump called her apology "lame" and said she should resign from
Congress or at least not be allowed to serve on committees. Pence
tweeted Tuesday that Omar's comments were a disgrace. He said "those
who engage in anti-Semitic tropes should not just be denounced, they
should face consequences for their words." The freshman Democratic
posted tweets on Sunday that suggested that members of Congress support
Israel because they are paid to do so. In a pair of tweets, Omar
criticized the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC. "It's
all about the Benjamins baby," she wrote, invoking slang about $100
bills. Asked on Twitter who she thought was paying members of Congress
to support Israel, Omar responded, “AIPAC!” Left-wing historian
and Politico Magazine contributing editor Joshua Zeitz tweeted: "I'm one
of those American Jews who opposes the occupation [of the West Bank and
Gaza Strip], laments Israel's anti-democratic drift, and doesn't regard
the country as especially central to my Jewish identity. And I knew
exactly what the congresswoman meant. She might as well call us
hook-nosed." Omar supports a movement known as BDS, for “boycott,
divestment and sanctions” aimed at Israel. And it’s not the first time
she’s fought accusations of anti-Semitism. She insists her rejection of
the Israeli government refers to its stance toward Palestinians and is
not directed at Jewish people. Omar
has expressed regret for tweeting in 2012: “Israel has hypnotized the
world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of
Israel.” She said the statement came in the context of Israel’s
treatment of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Fox News' Samuel Chamberlain and the Associated Press contributed to this story.
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz thinks convicted Mexican drug cartel JoaquÃn “El Chapo” Guzmán should finance President Donald Trump’s long-promised border wall. “America’s
justice system prevailed today in convicting JoaquÃn Guzmán Loera, aka
El Chapo, on all 10 counts,” Cruz tweeted Tuesday shortly before the
Sinaloa cartel boss was convicted
on drug trafficking, weapons violations and money laundering charges in
a federal courtroom in Brooklyn, N.Y. “U.S. prosecutors are seeking
$14 billion in drug profits & other assets from El Chapo which
should go towards funding our wall to #SecureTheBorder.” Trump’s has said the construction of a wall would cost around $5.7 billion. The Texas Republican then urged his colleagues to pass the Ensuring Lawful Collection of Hidden Assets to Provide Order Act – or El Chapo Act – which would divert drug proceeds from cartel bosses to fund border security. Cruz
first introduced the bill in April 2017 and reintroduced it in
January. The reintroduction puts pressure on lawmakers to put in place a
border security spending bill. A bipartisan group of lawmakers on
Monday tentatively agreed to provide $1.4 billion for border barriers,
including 55 miles of new fencing along the Rio Grande Valley in Texas.
Drug proceeds could go a long way in securing the southern border, Cruz
said. “Fourteen billion dollars will go a long way to secure our
southern border, and hinder the illegal flow of drugs, weapons, and
individuals,” Cruz said of his bill in a January news release.
“By leveraging any criminally forfeited assets of El Chapo and other
murderous drug lords, we can offset the cost of securing our border and
make meaningful progress toward delivering on the promises made to the
American people.” Supporters of the wall argue it will deter
criminals from entering the U.S. illegally while opponents say the wall
would have a minimal impact on the flow of people and drugs into the
country.
Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton unloaded on Rep. Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal and said the media were “complicit” in
burying the most radical parts of the deal.
