{"id":25315,"date":"2017-10-08T23:32:31","date_gmt":"2017-10-08T23:32:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=25315"},"modified":"2017-10-08T23:33:01","modified_gmt":"2017-10-08T23:33:01","slug":"thats-what-it-was-mr-vpotus-a-political-stunt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=25315","title":{"rendered":"That’s what it was, Mr. VPOTUS: a political stunt"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n

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Vice President Mike Pence certainly knew<\/em> what would take place when he went to a pro football game today.<\/p>\n

He knew<\/em> some of the players would “take a knee” while they struck up “Star Spangled Banner.” He knew<\/em> some of the San Francisco 49ers would protest, along with some of the Indianapolis Colts.<\/p>\n

He knew<\/em> that would happen. But he showed up anyway at the game in Indianapolis — only to walk out because, as he said, he wouldn’t “dignify” a disrespecting of the flag, our country, our men and women in uniform, our Constitution.<\/p>\n

Good grief! What we saw today was an act of political grandstanding.<\/p>\n

An Indianapolis Star sports columnist also was right to question why Pence showed up in the first place and why he decided to expend a good bit of taxpayer money — with the requisite security and other things associated with the vice president’s traveling contingent.<\/p>\n

Using high office to score political points<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s not as though presidents and vice presidents don’t occasionally use their high office for political gain. I get that it’s happened before.<\/p>\n

But this stunt that Pence pulled today was so transparently phony it boggles the mind. He wanted to make a statement that the players who are protesting are somehow “disrespecting” the nation that allows them to do the very thing they are doing.<\/p>\n

Lest we forget, the protest — which began this pas season when then-49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick knelt during the National Anthem — is intended to protest police treatment of African-American citizens. I’ll stipulate that I am not pleased with the form of protest mounted. I wish the players would find another way to make their point.<\/p>\n

However, their demonstration is not meant to dishonor the flag, or the country, or our brave fighting men and women. To suggest it does all of that is to cheapen a legitimate form of political protest.<\/p>\n

For the vice president of the United States to make a big show of it in the first place only heightens the phoniness of his own declaration of disgust.<\/p>\n\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vice President Mike Pence certainly knew what would take place when he went to a pro football game today. He knew some of the players would “take a knee” while they struck up “Star Spangled Banner.” He knew some of the San Francisco 49ers would protest, along with some of the Indianapolis Colts. He knew … Continue reading That’s what it was, Mr. VPOTUS: a political stunt<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,17],"tags":[3067,3302,7356,7357],"class_list":["post-25315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","category-sports-news","tag-mike-pence","tag-nfl","tag-nfl-protest","tag-take-a-knee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25315"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25318,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25315\/revisions\/25318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}