Friends, please visit Messiah of Israel Ministries page to see what our Father is doing through Messianic Rabbi Zev Porat in the land of Israel. Please join me in praying for Rabbi Zev and the work the Father has him doing their among the Jewish people.
Link to show – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKe7Z82FwXk
“Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.” That’s the caption attached to a gritty, black and white picture of Colin Kaepernick in the publicity marquee of Nike’s new marketing campaign announced Friday, a corporate branding decision which will be studied in business schools for decades along with New Coke and the Edsel as What Not To Do.
Nike’s decision to turn Kaepernick, the National Anthem-defiling, skills-atrophying, cellar-dwelling Social Justice Warrior ex-quarterback who last played NFL football with the then 2-14 San Francisco 49ers in 2016, into its latest corporate product pitch man was announced over the Labor Day weekend, and on Tuesday when the New York Stock Exchange got its first opportunity to weigh in on it the results weren’t good. Nike’s stock closed Tuesday at $79.60, though it did rise a bit in after-hours trading. That was a pretty serious bath from the $82.20 at which the stock closed on Friday before word leaked of Kaepernick’s contract — a loss of 3.16 percent of its value, or more than $3.5 BILLION in market capitalization.
There’s a great, though underrated, Cameron Crowe movie from 2005 named Elizabethtown, starring Orlando Bloom as a Portland athletic shoe designer whose big idea results in a marketing disaster which nearly wipes out the multinational company he works for. Bloom’s character is not-unsurprisingly fired at the beginning of the movie, and what follows is his soulful journey back from the personal brink. The guess here is Elizabethtown is likely going to be a hot rental in Portland over the coming weeks as many of the marketing geniuses responsible for flying Kaepernick’s stupid social justice warrior standard atop Nike’s flagpole get a similar treatment to Bloom’s Drew Baylor in the movie.
How can it be otherwise? Kaepernick has already laid waste to one American corporate giant’s market share, almost single-handedly tubing the NFL’s TV ratings by double-digits through his idiotic kneeling histrionics during the national anthem, and though he’s been out of the league for more than a year now many of those fans are not rushing back. It could well be that Kaepernick has done significant permanent damage to a brand many thought indestructible before he came along.
And Nike has now embraced that contagion. And why? After all, Nike’s brand was made through affiliation with the best of the world’s athletes — Michael Jordan, Serena Williams, Tiger Woods, and many more at the top of their games. Now? Nike’s brand will be Shoes For Losers.
After all, Kaepernick’s fall from status as one of the NFL’s top young quarterbacks to that of whiny political poseur incapable of winning football games and losing focus on his craft has made him toxic to NFL owners, who can’t justify the distraction he presents against the upside that he might offer as a backup quarterback — and because of that he’ll not likely play in the league again. But let’s not consider him any sort of martyr, because he most certainly isn’t. It should be remembered that Kaepernick wasn’t blackballed by the NFL, as he’s alleging in his new lawsuit against the league. Both San Francisco and the Denver Broncos offered him contracts as a backup quarterback last year and he turned them down. That isn’t sacrifice; it’s arrogance. He made himself toxic as the face of a franchise, and he furthermore didn’t pursue the opportunity to play in the Canadian Football League, where he could have reclaimed his promise as a top-level quarterback (particularly given the style of play north of the border).
In other words, Kaepernick is a loser as a pro athlete — because he lacks the focus of the other greats on whose success the Nike brand is built. As Jordan famously said when asked about his apolitical stance as an athlete and product pitchman, “Republicans buy basketball shoes, too.” Williams, Woods, and so many others built their personal athletic brands on being soft-spoken on matters political, which is one reason Nike grew to such immense popularity and market share. That’s all gone with this decision.
It’s the kind of action no good businessperson would ever take. But it most certainly is the kind of thing the social justice warrior crowd who increasingly populate the decision-making positions in corporate America can be expected to do.
Again, why? The answer is something we said in our last entry in this space: because the Left is a political movement made up by and for people incapable of doing a good job at honest work.
And because of that, when you allow the social justice crowd a foot in the door they will soon destroy the entire institution. If they can take down the Catholic Church, after all, how hard is it for them to wipe out Nike?
While Nike’s stock was tanking on Tuesday, so was any semblance of decorum in the Senate, as the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee — including the potential 2020 presidential nominee Kamala Harris, who apparently achieved her position largely on the strength of her reputed former status as Willie Brown’s “side piece” — followed through on a planned attempt to disrupt Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings. And the Democrats’ foot soldiers in the audience proceeded to show their collective derrières with a cacophony of heckling, sign-holding, and farcical costume displays.
Exactly how this is supposed to affect Kavanaugh’s confirmation beyond making the Republican majority more resolute in passing his nomination to the Senate floor is a mystery. One has the strong feeling all political activism in America now, and particularly on the Democrat side, can be reduced to the simple acting-out of children.
But when children act out, typically they are punished. We’ll see if the voters are turned off enough by the anti-Kavanaugh idiocy Tuesday to deliver approbation on Election Day in November.
This article appeared here.
Part 1: What’s happening to America by its own hand: immigration, cultural chaos via diversity and multiculturalism
Arnold Toynbee observed that all great civilizations rise and fall, and that, “An autopsy of history would show that all great nations commit suicide.”
This series provides a poignant and far-reaching interview with Bromwell Ault, 90, Yale graduate and author of: Who Lost America? He penetrates the reasons for America’s spiraling downfall into multiculturalism, diversity, endless immigration and population overload. He offers an extraordinary depth of understanding of America’s predicament from seven decades of observations on the world stage.
I have spoken with him for hours on this subject. He brings extraordinary wisdom, understanding, and comprehension of America’s predicament.
Ault relates his thoughts as to the changes sweeping over America:
We mention these enormous changes in our society and technology in the brief period of the last half-century because we have recently entered into another period of similarly far-reaching change with the potential to devastate our values, completely alter our culture and turn America away from the destiny which past generations imagined would be theirs and strove to attain. These threats are real and have been enabled by our educational, cultural and political avoidance.
There are multiple factors that contribute to the lassitude that has gripped our government, corrupted our political class and turned the type of national unity we have been able to call upon in the past into a distant memory. If we cannot regain our past ability to view ourselves and function as one nation, then the American dream — however, it is deemed — will no longer exist.
And our time frame is shrinking more rapidly than we can know from the information or opinions provided by our government and/or MSM. It is this rapidly contracting time for corrective action that has given rise to this series of chapters we call The Attack on Western Civilization (WCIV).
America is the youngest and strongest member of what we refer to as WCIV — a mixture of thought, art, religion, government, politics, music, science, commerce, genetics and population with pre-Christian origins in the cultures of Greece and Rome. As war between the various western European states was a constant for centuries, unity was an infrequent experience, most notably exercised to turn back Muslim invasions at Tours, Vienna and the Crimea and to recapture the Christian Holy Land via the Crusades of the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries; and in more modern times to deny the designs for conquest and territorial acquisition by Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm, Hitler and Stalin.
Europe’s monarchies controlled its power until they self-destructed in the failing values and leadership of World War I (WW I). Their system did not allow for real unity because power could shift instantly due to birth, death, marriage, insanity, religion, as well as the usual state causes such as the expansion of commerce, territory, and population.
It became clear that this beautiful, glimmering sense of unity needed determined leadership and improvement to survive in the massive rebuilding of Europe after WW II. And although Europe has been strengthened by new methods and institutions, old ways and memories persist because they have been tried and hardened and have endured centuries of history and conflict. Even so, European unity pales beside that which the U.S. displayed so powerfully in the two great wars of the 20th century. The reason lies in our origin when the first step in becoming a free nation required surrendering our colonial identities of almost 200 years, and establishing the unity that allowed our founders dreams of freedom, honor, and equality to survive and be passed on to future generations.
While we have departed from our WCIV forbears in many ways, our culture is predominantly the same. Our language, law, dress, religion, food, history, music, literature, architecture, and science have European roots and branches onto which we have grafted our own forms for over 200 years. Some have been beautiful, others offensive; but culture, like history, is a long span, an endless game in which we participate only brie y. It thanks us, or not, for our contributions; it uses them, or not, as it prefers. We have been privileged to have a part in it, and we have taken pride in that part.
We have gone into some detail because culture, history, unity and other elements of WCIV are now under global attack and, once again, if we in the West are to defend ourselves, America will have to lead. The peril we face is one of many parts, as are the problems that it will increasingly force upon us. In this, we will describe the background and the threats that we must confront. And we will outline what we must do and how it should be done. For Matters of Conscience, this will require a transformative editorial move away from commentary towards activism which we would not consider unless the stakes were as high as they are.
Contact: Bromwell Ault, www.CenterforPublicConscience.org
© 2018 Frosty Wooldridge – All Rights Reserved
E-Mail Frosty: frostyw@juno.com
Hi friends! I am moving into a new arena – live video broadcasts! DrMikeLive.com is launching September 10, 2018 at 6pm EST! This is something I’ve considered doing for the last year and have reached the conclusion that now is the time. Why now? After over three years of recording interviews with great guests on Soaring Eagle Radio, I believe the time is now to begin addressing issues we face as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ in real-time utilizing video. It is a natural progression for this vision the Lord has given me. Soaring Eagle Radio will continue in its current format as well.
I see situations arising daily that need a strong biblical response. My plan is to make this a weekly one hour program – Monday’s from 6pm – 7pm EST. The format will be interactive, meaning you get to participate!
I am asking for your help with a few of things. One, please let your friends know about this new program. Let’s build a core group of people who desire to hear the information I will provide and who will share this information to equip and encourage others.
We are seeing the words of Scripture play out in living color before our very eyes every single day now, though the unsaved world cannot comprehend it. With all we have to contend with, it’s easy for us to get distracted, focusing on the things we see in this physical world every day, and forgetting about the invisible, spiritual world all around us. But this is where the REAL war is actually being waged.
The abominations we SEE on this earth are actually just the manifestations of intense warfare being played out in the spiritual realm. Ephesians 6 tells us, “We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but…against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” There is a whole SPIRITUAL WORLD “out there” that we do not see while we live in these earthly bodies, yet it is as just as real as the ground we walk on. And these “spiritual forces of evil” are working overtime against all of us. Peter warns us to be aware of this. “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.”