THE END OF PRO FOOTBALL???

I am a sports fan. I guess I always have been. As a young adult I began to watch the LA Rams. I was enthralled with the skill of the players. I remember, what seemed to be every year, when the Super Bowl came around the Rams would have to travel to places like Green Bay or Minneapolis where the weather was freezing to play their championship games. It all seemed so unfair, but I and they persevered.

I also watched and attended pro basketball games. When I lived in the Northwest, I was a fan of the Seattle Sonics and the Portland Trailblazers. The game was beautiful. It required skill. Shots were made from the floor and “dunks” were quite rare. In other words, the game was played below the rim. Something happened though. The uniforms changed and so did the attitude of the players. The tailored uniforms of old became what I called “thug” clothing. It became a game of showboaters and braggers. The team concept gave way to individuals. “Slamma Jamma” became the order of the day. It seemed the only talent one needed was the ability to grow to seven feet tall. It left me cold. I no longer pay any attention to pro basketball. It is not a game for me.

I have stayed with pro football so far. Over the years I have enjoyed many teams and the game itself. I know it is a brutal sport, but it usually is played with respect for each other and the opposition.

Lately, however, I have been aware of the creeping individuality and showboating that has become a part of many of the games. Then, to cap it all off, a mediocre quarterback named Colin Kaepernick decided to make a fool of himself in order to get attention. I think he knew he was in trouble with his team and that his future was in jeopardy so he decided to draw attention to himself in the most disrespectful way imaginable. He refused to stand up for our National Anthem. Had the NFL done what should have been done and sent him to the locker room, all this nonsense would have ended. But, no. They tried to ignore the whole thing. Now the entire league is participating in some way. Most of the players don’t even know why. It just appears to be mob rule.

Kaepernick explained that his protest was because he believed black people were being abused by police officers. Total B.S. Here’s a simple way for black people, or anyone for that matter, to get along with police. Number one, obey the law. Number two, respect the law and law enforcement officers. Number three, don’t resist arrest. Pretty simple, huh?

The NFL has apparently decided to bow to “political correctness” and give in to some of the players and their disrespect.

I, along with many others, believe this is a crucial mistake. I think it is just stupid to alienate over half of your customers by allowing an act which could be ended with a simple order from the commissioner. I just heard a poll which concluded that over 96% of Americans object to the players kneeling during the anthem. I know the NFL is a money machine, but it can be brought down just like any other business which does stupid things.

As for me, I will be watching college football. It is refreshing and more fun than the pro game anyway. I have lived quite comfortably without pro basketball and I am certain I will be fine without pro football.

What a sad obituary. Here lies the NFL. They didn’t have the courage to enforce their own rules and they disappeared without a whimper. But they were politically correct.

Ron Scarbro

KILLING YOUR GOOSE

Let’s say you had this goose. The goose seemed normal, just waddling around and eating and doing what geese do. Then one day you discover that this is no normal goose. This goose lays golden eggs. You begin to gather up these eggs and you know you are going to be very rich. You decide if you just increase the feed and push the goose a little more, she will lay more eggs. So you feed and you push until you reach a point where the goose is exhausted. Then, sadly, you go out to gather eggs and you find your goose dead. Graveyard dead. Your steady supply of wealth has come to an end.

As I look around me, I can see a number of golden egg-laying geese. One might be the medical industry. The entire conglomerate has priced themselves out of the market. If it were not for insurance, that industry would collapse. Obama tried to salvage it all with his “Mickey Mouse” scheme known as Obamacare but that is failing. Collapse is imminent.

Never fear, avowed Socialist Bernie Sanders has the solution. Single payer government-controlled “free” medical care for everybody. Estimates are that the ten-year cost of such a “free” program would be in the trillions of dollars. Guaranteed bankruptcy for America. So much for free medical care. This golden goose is being strangled and it won’t last long.

A number of other entities are working at killing their goose as well. Consider ESPN. In their wisdom they have decided to become a political action sports network. It is not enough to broadcast sporting events, no, they must also offer political commentary on events whether they are related to sports or not. I, like many others, tune in ESPN now only when I have no other choice. Very soon other networks will take up the slack and ESPN will be history. Another dead goose.

How about the National Football League? A few of the players, millionaire spoiled brats, have decided to disrespect this country, our military, and our flag be sitting or kneeling during the playing of our national anthem. The NFL says they have that right to self-expression. This is the same league that dictates how long their socks must be, but they have this other right to be disrespectful to their country. Their ratings are down, down. Their goose is teetering on the brink. They have a choice. Either get a handle on their disrespectful punks, or watch their audience, and incidentally their billions in revenue, disappear. Another one bites the dust.

Not to be outdone in the killing of geese department is the US Congress. For years they have catered to special interest groups and to big money donors passing laws to benefit them at the expense of the country as a whole. What they euphemistically call campaign donations turn out to just be bribes to get special consideration for pet legislation. Their practices and actions have turned our nation’s capital into a swamp and as it turns out, golden geese cannot live well in a swamp. Our Congress is well on their way to killing their goose as well.

There is no doubt that others are busy working on their own geese. It happens every day. Greed seems to take over and good common sense goes out the window. The election of Donald Trump should have been an alert to the  greedy everywhere that the people are fed up. The swamp is going to be drained. Time will tell who will survive the drainage.

America is going to return to her earlier greatness and Hollywood, Emmy Awards shows, the national media, and higher education are just going to have to get used to it. You are killing your golden goose.

Ron Scarbro

BEFORE THE STORM AND AFTER

It’s Friday and here I sit. I am watching weather reports. I’m trying to make the best decision I can in light of what information is available.

We have been warned of an impending hurricane named Irma. Cute name, huh? We have further been told by the weather wizards and prognosticators that Irma is the largest hurricane in recorded history. This storm is scheduled to hit southern Florida as a Category five hurricane. At that point, and this is where it gets a little iffy, the storm will travel up the center of the state of Florida and hit southern Georgia as a Category one or possibly Category two hurricane.

For those of you who don’t know, I live on St. Simons Island which is approximately ten miles east of Brunswick, Georgia. It is basically a barrier island. This is truly a beautiful place with huge oak trees which are hundreds of years old. This island has seen many, many storms over the years and so have these trees. Today, however, we are in the target area of Irma.

Now it’s Saturday and we have been ordered to evacuate the island today. In fact, our local emergency management people have ordered the evacuation of our entire county which includes Brunswick. Incidentally, there are no available rooms in the entire state or even in surrounding areas. Many Floridians have reservations with hotels in this county but these will be cancelled and those people will have to just find someplace else to hunker down. Our son-in-law’s mother has invited us all to her house on the extreme west side of the state which should give us safety. That will be a four to five hour drive which we will probably undertake tomorrow.

The latest update just came in. The storm is now due to hit Georgia about 150 miles west of my home. Winds are forecast for the island of about 50mph at their strongest. That is barely a tropical storm. Now the dilemma, what to do? This storm could move even further west and miss us entirely, or, it could go the other way and smack us right in the face. What to do?

This is the dichotomy. As I look outside, it is a beautiful day. Our temps are in the low eighties with gentle breezes. It is a postcard day here on the island. No one could know what is bearing down on them without modern weather tracking equipment. In a couple of days, southern Florida could be under water. Much of the state could experience catastrophic damage. People could be killed. But today it is beautiful.

I am going to close this column for now and re-visit it after the storm, which should be in three days. We shall see.

We decided to ride out the storm at my daughter’s house which is about twenty miles from the coast. It hit Sunday night. We were wakened at 3:00 AM by extremely high winds, probably 75 mph or greater, and torrential rains. We also had a power failure. Sadly, because my daughter’s home is served by a well, we also lost water. So here we were. No power, no water, and what turned out to be five inches of rain in twelve hours. We were by a small lake which continued to grow. The road out front flooded. By Monday afternoon, the storm moderated but our situation didn’t.

Both we and our hosts had prepared by buying water so we had plenty. Showers were accomplished by pouring bottled water over ourselves while standing in the shower. Cold sandwiches were the order of the day. On Tuesday we ventured out to see if anybody was open. We found the Waffle House who served hot sandwiches and coffee. It was a Godsend.

Finally, on Thursday we were allowed to return to our home on the island. You can only imagine the trepidation we felt as we drove past huge downed trees to get to our home. And then we were in front of our home. We looked but saw no structural damage. Trees and limbs covered the yard but they all missed the house. I pressed the garage door opener and it opened. Power! We raced inside and the water worked. Hooray! Our freezer food survived. We immediately took real showers and had a hot meal. We were safe. Our home had survived.

So today I sit here and consider how important the little things are. Power, water, hot food. I hope I never again take these things for granted. We are indeed blessed and thankful.

Ron Scarbro

WHAT IS A CRIME AND WHO IS A CRIMINAL

At what point is a crime a crime? We are a country of laws with a basic book of rules starting with the Constitution. The job of law enforcement is to find and arrest the lawbreakers. The job of the courts is to interpret the law and to render the proper punishments. It’s really all pretty simple.

We don’t get to pick and choose which laws we obey. We can’t break a law just because we don’t like it. If you are out on the highway and the speed limit is 65mph, that means some governing agency has decided that 65mph is the maximum speed one should travel. It is for the safety of everyone using the highway. If you violate that law, you do so at your peril. You face monetary punishment and worse, possibly even losing your driving privilege.  

If you are a law enforcement officer, you are faced with similar restrictions. You don’t get to decide what laws you are going to enforce. In court you have a somewhat different situation. Often judges can mediate a case and offer reduced punishment if they feel the community is best served. Sometimes however judges take on too much power. They can bring their political bias to a case and make a complete mess of the law.

Such is the case in the matter of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, former sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona. Leftover Obama appointees decided that the good sheriff was arresting too many illegal aliens so he must be targeting them. He must be profiling them. To make sure he never did that again, he was arrested and convicted of disobeying the “illegal” order of a Federal Judge who told him to leave the illegals alone. This 85-year-old sheriff who had faithfully discharged his duties as sheriff was now facing jail time for the crime of arresting criminals.

It is important here to state for the record just what is a crime and who is a criminal. Every single individual who is in this country without proper documentation, whether by overstaying a visa or sneaking in through an underground tunnel, is a criminal. They are law breakers. Some may be murderers or rapists or thieves, who knows? Some may bring strange diseases. Again, who knows? The simple fact is they are here illegally and are subject to arrest and jail time.

Illinois Republican Governor Bruce Rauner just signed a bill forbidding his state’s police agencies from arresting illegal aliens or from working with Federal Immigration agencies. He has decided to make his entire state a sanctuary state. In other words, he has decided to only obey laws which he likes and will only allow that state’s police agencies to enforce laws with which the Governor agrees.

What we are talking about here is simple anarchy. What if the good governor decided that child molestation was okay?  How about simple assault? In other words, what if this governor and the prosecutor in Maricopa County along with the judge who levied punishment on Arpaio, just made their own laws? Oh, wait a minute. That’s exactly what they just did.

Fortunately for the sake of justice and law and order, President Trump pardoned Arpaio thereby relieving this law enforcement officer of what could have easily been a death sentence. It is interesting to note that the Mayor of Phoenix, Democrat Greg Stanton,  publicly declared that this pardon was a slap in the face of all of Phoenix.

No, Mr. Mayor. This pardon was fair and just. The prosecution of Arpaio was an insult to all law abiding citizens of the entire country. You and all who participated in this travesty should be ashamed. Crime is crime, criminals are criminals, and we are fortunate indeed to have law enforcement officers who still do the job they are paid to do.

Ron Scarbro