Three UCLA basketball players who were arrested in China for allegedly shoplifting while their team was in the country for a tournament last week were released and placed on a flight home Tuesday, Fox News confirmed.
UCLA Men’s Basketball players LiAngelo Ball, Jalen Hill and Cody Riley were arrested after being accused of stealing designer sunglasses from a Louis Vuitton store next to the team’s hotel in Hangzhou. They boarded a plane on Tuesday and are headed back to Los Angeles. The rest of the team flew back last Saturday.
Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott said Tuesday the matter “has been resolved to the satisfaction of the Chinese authorities.”
President Trump personally asked Chinese leader Xi Jinping to help resolve the case during his visit to Beijing last week, Fox News confirmed. Scott thanked Trump, the White House and the State Department for their efforts in resolving what he called “the incident with authorities in Hangzhou, China.” He indicated UCLA made “significant efforts” on behalf of its three players.
Stella's Place 
These players should be thrown off the team. They are DANGEROUS to the other players. Just imagine that they go to China again and since these guys got away with it, others decide to do it and don’t this time. I hope the do remove them from the tea. But, since they are black, I would be surprised that they will do it.
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I thought I read a headline one was expelled. What an embarrassment they are to this country, but heroes to the type of low-life that would steal. I read they had video (not surprising) of them stealing. Too bad Pres Trump got them out, now they think they have green light to do it again, and as auscitizenmom said, have others do it too. I really believe, contrary to many others opinion, our Pres. is too softhearted.
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I agree. I will tell you what I think. I think he was somewhat devastated by what happened to Otto Warmbier and wasn’t going to let something like that happen again if he could help it.
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These fools are not important enough to allow them to be a focus of attention for any length of time. Mr. President has moved them off the headlines. He has demonstrated his influence with Xi. He has made them a non-issue. They are jerks. He is a leader.
I’m glad he did. They are not worth any direct or indirect impact on the things he is getting done these days. If they had been held, their existence would have been a playing card in the hands of the Chinese government and the greasy hands of the left here.
They can now return to the anonymous criminal way of life to which they are accustomed and we don’t have to look at their faces any more.
As it says in Hebrews 12 – it is the child who is loved who is disciplined by their human father. There is no good reason to waste disciplinary efforts of any kind on these thieves.
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You hit the nail squarely on the head, Sharon.
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😯 I just realized. These kids are black. If he had not made an attempt to get them out he would have been accused of racism. And, they would have said he worked to get Warmbier out because he was white. SMH
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uh…..and the Chinese despise blacks as well….
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Exactly this, bravo Sharon.
This was President Trump making true o his promise that before anything can even be discussed you have to send our citizens home.
A shadow of how the president would have handled Iran and it wouldn’t be with pallets of unmarked bills.
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I never believed the money was for the captives. I think the money was Obama’s way of funneling money to ISIS and Al Queda.
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The money, not a dime of it went to a single decent person, it all went to Islamic savages. Only Obama would be capable of laundering blood money through a ransom for captives and be proud of himself for doing such a heinous thing. Filth human filth has been running this country for far too long.
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We need to have scholarships for acedemic excellance only..no sports scholarships.These three and many others in many sports are allowed to attend at others expense just because they are talented at an sport. Many of them can’t read or write properly. I’ve heard that the Ivy League has no sports scholarships. Is this true? Maybe all of the colleges need to do is enforce acedemic standards…..pass the class or don’t play!!
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All of those sports scholarships delays the recipients from getting onto the welfare roles for a few more years…everything’s got a purpose.
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Obama was big on shooting hoops in the hood….these find young African American citizens merely needed some $700 sunshades to be able to walk about in China with all that glare and stuff….heck, with 1000 dollar a nite hotel suites to stay in, they just felt all entitle to the African-American Dream being global…
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Coming this spring: ‘COPS – China’. ‘Bad boy, bad boy, whatcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do when the Chengguan come for you?’
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with two you get cop rolled…
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Wonder if UCLA trip guide will have ‘But officer, this isn’t my coat/pants/shopping bag in my hand’ see-and-speak phrases next year.
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I agree.
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I have an idea. No scholarships.
Just like when you go in the grocery (or should I saw, when we go in the grocery store) we pay for the items we pick up. We don’t expect someone else to pay for it.
Some people can’t afford to go to colleges or universities on their own dime.
Some people can’t afford a brand new car every year.
Some people buy less expensive clothes.
Some people don’t take expensive trips every year.
Some people don’t have 2-3 homes.
If education were paid for by the ones consuming it, I’m guessing tuition rates would go into free fall.
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no skin in the game, free has no value.
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Three black lives that truly do not matter at all to me.
Janet Napolitano is president of UCLA isn’t she…says it all.
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She’s president of the University of California schools but not a specific university in the system. All UC schools are bastions of leftism. She’s all for DACA, too.
As for these three miscreants, it’s too bad President Trump had to expend any political capital on them.
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Did I ever tell the story of how I walked out on a date when he told me his best friend or one of his good friends was an attorney for the ACLU? Bye bye 👋🏽.
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I would’ve too.
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That’s what I like about you Aus 🙂 .
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🙂
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“we are measured by the character of the friends we cultivate”
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You know what is hard, I am working with a girl, her mum has 6 kids by 6 different dads, the girl has escaped the life and received a full ride scholarship to a rather exclusive university. She knows she doesn’t want her mum’s life, she is smart as in likely a genius IQ. No drugs no drinking.
Yet.
She is flirting with dating a bum. I can’t go into details but he will be in jail. No doubt about it.
He is 10 years older than her and lives at home with his mum.
She is out on her own supporting herself.
In fact prayers would be appreciated, she is in her own way subconsciously going about repeating her mum’s relationships. I think she feels guilty about leaving her siblings and about achieving or rather working toward the life she deserves.
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Prayers here!
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Thank you, she is such a sweet young lady with so much goodness in her. I’m hoping for the best and working quietly with her. She doesn’t know if she wants to be a vet or a human doctor. I told her be a vet, people will always pay to take care of their pets but if the government succeeds in destroying the free market in health care only blackmarket doctors will make any money.
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God Bless you Lovely for taking an interest in her.
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Thank you G-d&Country 🙏🏼.
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Young girls (of many backgrounds) often confuse sexual attraction with love, and girls are also known to be attracted to bad boys and forbidden fruit. Maybe you can help her to see that.
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I just can’t give all the details here. I think rather than having an actual sexual attraction to him she has a motherly concern. He is a screw up. He does not have any addictions, any children, he portrays himself as what my daughter says is commonly known among younger people as a “twink” (I don’t know if that is a derogatory term.)
He is very effeminate but has had girlfriends and says that he is not gay. He likes feminine close, he is genetically an xy and he does’t think he’s a woman, I realize what I’m saying might be confusing. I cannot say why he is going to jail but he is. He has anger management problems and is very high-strung. He has one woman friend who he makes pay for his gas and his meals if she wants to go out with him.
He talks with me and respects me enough that he apologized to me once which many people were shocked about but I I knew he would apologize because he knew that I would demand it of him. He’s never apologized to anyone else even his mum who he hit once.
This young woman in particular I think feels a tremendous amount of guilt about abandoning one of her siblings in particular. They still talk, she still visits with him but she feels guilty,that, with everything else on her plate is a heavy burden for a teenager. I think this guy in someways assuages her guilt and I’m afraid that may turn into an attraction.
Meanwhile since I posted this morning she has had a big fight with him and called him an asshole. So here’s hoping…..
I am going to talk to her about putting the oxygen mask on her own face before she can save her brother and see if that helps. I’ve spoken specifically to her about the man in question and up until just recently I have never noticed her being particularly warm with him.
Sorry it is a very complex situation.
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Prayers for her here as well. It is hard to emotionally move away from an abusive family past, even if a person has enough of a survival instinct to educate themselves and work towards prosperity. It is the emotion of questioning “WHY” that ties someone to family. Leaving the family emotionally, and getting past the “why” is necessary to ensuring you don’t repeat their mistakes. This young woman may not realize how right her decisions have been, and how, as a child of God and temple of the Holy Spirit, SHE IS VALUABLE in and of herself! It is not healthy to follow their patterns, or go into relationships that are familiar, and therefore comfortable in the beginning. Since she by herself is valuable, she must protect herself. She does not owe this family her own martyrdom and destruction. Giving her new role models of a different lifestyle of loving and RESPECTFUL relationships will go a long way towards helping her. Finding out WHAT PROMPTED HER TO EDUCATE HERSELF, and GET OUT will also be a huge help in stopping her from repeating bad, familiar patterns. Just my humble opinion, some from experience.
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Exactly. All you say is true G-d&Country. It is one thing to know it and another thing to get it from my head and heart into her head and or heart. Some of it is definitely there but she struggles this chap in particular worries me because he is very unassuming and a huge manipulator.
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There is nothing “hard” about recognizing reality. Not trying to be unkind about it. Just stating a fact.
Her choices will have their consequences just like mine and yours do.
Prayer has limited application unless she recognizes that. We cannot pray to have others’ free will overcome.
Most times when people do stupid/destructive things, it’s because they want to. God can’t and won’t over-rule their will.
Please note that I did NOT say “don’t pray”. What I am recommending is being realistic about what’s going on and don’t use “praying for someone” as a substitute for what only they can do. Personal and family experience speaking here. Based on Scriptures theology about the will of God/the will of man; practical repentance, etc.
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thank you Stella for the absolute right message IMO
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I think I was unclear, I’m not counting on prayer alone and asking for a miracle. She has done a huge amount of footwork on her own. She comes from a very destructive family and she chooses to be be drug and alcohol free, no abortions, no pregnancies, no babies, she got herself up and to school since she was about 8 years old, she got herself the university scholarship on merit not financial need.
She works two jobs and goes to school full time.
I was really surprised to see her interaction with this guy, I didn’t see it coming because of conversations that we have had about him. So I have to look to what weakness of will is within her that would make her attracted to him in any way. I posted what I think that is in a response to Stella above. Where are her blind spots?
There is a Celtic saying “All that I know is all that I know.” I don’t think she knows what it is within her that she would be willing to toss her very good instincts aside and give him a chance. That is where I feel I can be of help and prayers can be of help. She is receptive to me, so I will tell her what I see and tell her that it is something unhealthy inside of her that is telling her that she doesn’t deserve the life that she is capable of living and achieving and he is a dandy way to derail everything she is working for and in some way make herself feel that her mom is not a monster.
She is going to have to come to terms with who her mom is and that her mom cannot justify what she did to her children and that failing spectacularly will only be failing spectacularly it won’t make her mom a good mom.
I hope the makes some sense. thank you Sharon you helped me further flesh out what I am seeing happen with her which gives me insight into how to approach things with her.
I’ll tell her what I think that is and see where we go from there.
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Ah, lovely – and you are! Thank you for giving the benefit of receiving what I shared, even though with excessive bluntness…. bull in the china shop is me, at times – – these are hard things to work through which often makes them difficult to discuss openly – – even face to face, much less on the internetz…..
🙂
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“There is a Celtic saying “All that I know is all that I know.” I don’t think she knows what it is within her that she would be willing to toss her very good instincts aside and give him a chance. That is where I feel I can be of help and prayers can be of help” – Exactly. I respectfully disagree with Sharon about “There is nothing “hard” about recognizing reality. ” There certainly is. I know that you can actually be brainwashed. As a young child certain synaptic pathways/connections in your brain are strengthened during stress. So no, you can not see reality. It takes getting out and away, realizing you do not have to martyr yourself, because that was THEM, and YOU ARE YOU, and YOU HAVE VALUE. Praying does have a pro-active effect. I could see my family’s life and my life was not what I wanted, but I had no idea what to do. A dear, good person praying over me was my 1st step. Sitting down and reading the 4 Gospels like a book, one right after another over a weekend, and researching the questions I had was the light bulb turning on in choosing to change my behavior. The words of Jesus was what I thought the world should be. Praying fervently (and to this day) on my own was the 3rd step. Noticing and listening to the 3 people in my life who had good sense (all religious, good people) was the next step. I thank God for my grandmother, the one pro-active, shining light of kindness and goodness in my youth. Without that limited interaction of kindness as a child, that perhaps acted as a seed to grow, I may have very well have turned out very differently, and not for the better. My only caution to you Lovely is, if she goes down, do not let her suck you down too.
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Well there is good news, we talked today and one of her many attributes is that she hears, she even understood about dating a man who is bad for her being a way to feel her mum actually loved her.
I was really proud of her, she said she would never date the chap we were discussing but more importantly she got the bigger picture. Something very beautiful about coming from an environment where you are not intrinsically valued and kept whole as a child is that it makes me very attuned to these kids.
On a larger scale I agree there are mitigating factors in freewill and an informed conscience. If you have never been valued, if your small world is a destructive, dysfunctional world and your community is more of the same it is very difficult to grasp the concept that all that you know is not all that there is.
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God bless you both Lovely.
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Thank you G-d&Country ❤️.
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seeking a father figure in hopes he will take care of her emotionally…not about money…but not well either…anyone experienced with addictions knows that when you hang with or date or have a relationship with users or abusers or deadbeats, you will eventually get to have your own addition crop up to your detriment and that of all your kids and loved ones.
this is not about smarts….this is about a REALLY needy small child that lives within her that never ever was safe and now is just a big empty hole looking for something to fill it. Her history is already the facts. Her future is dependent upon her serious will to survive without giving away her soul for the small child inside that she must learn how to be the parent and safekeeper of……we can all pray for her and we must, because miracles happen…but they happen for those that pick up their bed and walk….our prayers are for the children and those dependent upon her to find adulthood and personal strength…she needs serious tough love and counsel and probably a twelve step group with a nazisponsor to take her to the solution and not become a part of her victimhood.
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Thanks Joshua, please see my responses to Sharon and Stella above. She’s been carrying her own bed since she was a very little girl.
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Just goes to show that racism exists in China too! Just another case of a paranoid Asian store owner following black shoppers around, profiling them. Why they probably just forget those glasses were in their pockets: “Honest, officer, this isn’t my jacket!”. Expect a stinging rebuke from notables such as the Congressional Black Caucus, Al and JJ and select other BGI apologists reading off of the same old scripts.
But what the hell, why not give the Chinese a good idea of what they’ll be dealing with when they take over…might be our best card to play in keeping them away.
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How do you say “I dint du nuffin” in Mandarin?
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shoulda make them work in a Chinese Laundry for 10 years as labor….
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If these three basketball boneheads are stupid enough to try to steal some sunglasses in a foreign country, after seeing what happened to that unfortunate young man, Otto Warmbier, in North Korea, they’re probably too stupid to realize they owe an expression of gratitude to their President for possibly saving their lives.
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