From June 9 (an oldie but a goodie):

Uncertainty over Trump infrastructure plan jeopardizes transit projects, jobs

Rideshare.

Foot-ball.

I mean, the guy's already destroyed one American football league....

Potraiture:

Author.

Others.

Progressives: Anonymity in the internet is bad! It empowers bigots to do their nefarious bidding!

Also Progressives:

Sleeping Giants’ spokesman says. “We are doing this on a voluntary basis, so we need to keep our day jobs going,” he says.

Hence the group’s anonymous nature. The spokesman says some leading members are employed by companies that might not take kindly to their employees engaging in a prolonged activist effort.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-mysterious-group-thats-picking-breitbart-apart-one-tweet-at-a-time/2017/09/22/df1ee0c0-9d5c-11e7-9083-fbfddf6804c2_story.html

I mean, the guy's already destroyed one American football league.... ~ Crid at September 23, 2017 1:49 AM

Yeah, but to be fair, he had help on that. Trump gets an outsized portion of the blame for the USFL's failure.

The rapid expansion of the USFL the same year Trump bought in was a desperate effort to stem the league's hemorrhaging of cash - described by Esquire as "a money grab by owners to collect millions in franchise fees and soften their growing losses." That expansion diluted the talent pool across both leagues.

According to Jimmy Gould, president of the New Jersey Generals (Trump's team), "The league was dying" and Trump's entrance was a "massive shot of steroids."

With Trump behind it, the team's fortunes rose and players got paid. The league's fortunes did not and its players did not always get paid. According to Jim McVay, Director of Marketing for the Tampa Bay Outlaws, "You had the San Antonio team: players had a gumball rally to get to the bank to get their checks cashed. There was a lot of that going on."

According to Charley Steiner, radio announcer for the Generals, Trump was "the best thing that ever happened to the USFL, and two years later he was the worst thing that ever happened to the USFL."

Desperate owners, who had already lost a collective $200 million heard Trump's siren call to challenge the NFL and force a merger and took the bait. Moving to a fall schedule sealed the USFL's fate. The USFL lost television coverage (and the attendant revenue) to the older league in head-to-head play.

An anti-trust lawsuit challenging the NFL's control of nationwide television access saw a jury conclude that the NFL did indeed engage in stifling competition from the USFL, but that the USFL had largely shot itself in the foot. The jury awarded the USFL a total of $1, tripled in anti-trust cases to $3. After a series of appeals, the NFL wrote the USFL a check for $3.76, but there was no one left to cash it by then.

Had the owners stuck to their original vision, patiently building a league through spring football where they had no competition for football viewers, they may have made it. But the huge losses incumbent upon operating a nascent major league sports franchise frightened them. Donald Trump brought an infusion of cash and publicity to the league. For two years, he was able to cajole and bully to get his way, a backdoor buy-in to the NFL.

In the end, Trump was actually a pretty good team owner. According to ESPN, "the Generals were better during Trump's two seasons as owner than they were in their inaugural season in 1983." According to one Generals lineman, "If you were a player, you liked playing for Donald Trump."

Was Trump's vision bad for the USFL overall? Yes. Does he bear sole responsibility for the collective decision of the owners? No.

Trump's bombast and outsized ego make him a convenient scape goat for league owners who failed to adhere to their own original vision and grew desperate to stem their massive losses, trading the cow for some magic beans.

> Was Trump's vision bad for
> the USFL overall? Yes. Does he
> bear sole responsibility for the
> collective decision of the
> owners? No.

Hey, *I'm* asking the questions here. The larger point is that it's transparently obvious that he's working out his minor business butthurt from the Oval Office.

Don't worry, the owners, players and Roger Goddell are already doing a great job of running the NFL into the ground.

San Diego...err...Los Ang...err...da Chargers can't even fill a 30,000 seat stadium. The Rams are barely better.

Maybe Los Angeles isn't the best market for one NFL team, let alone two

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/look-chargers-cant-fill-30000-seat-soccer-stadium-rams-fans-arent-any-better/

And if you're thinking that people are staying home and watching on ginormous flatscreen TVs, umm...

The question today, however, is what if this entire edifice is just a house of cards? NFL ratings have fallen significantly across all providers over the past seasons and so far 2017 is not looking any better.

http://fortune.com/2017/09/20/nfl-monday-night-football-tv-ratings-decline/

"Trump gets an outsized portion of the blame for the USFL's failure."

Compare and contrast Secretary of State Clinton accepting over $30 million from the Rooskies to grease their purchase of control of North American uranium mining.

Because importance.

Here's Nikon's 2017 winners in the Small World in motion competition:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLb-EWw1bYXPnxyOd7tW-wJJ_ieUuX4SJU

NFL ratings have fallen significantly across all providers over the past seasons and so far 2017 is not looking any better.

Let's blame Colin Kaepernick.

> Because importance.

Whataboutism?

Is there any day on the calendar, any sequence of imaginable physical-world outcomes, any broad spiritual transformation that could allow Trumpistas to cast Hillary Clinton from the gleaming mantra forefront of their consciousness?

Because this is starting to seem like less of an acquired habit and more like dressing for church.

Ariel Sharon was comatose for eight years, but his countless thousands (millions?) of mortal enemies didn't trash talk him, apparently because they thought he might wake up and take revenge. He's been quite literally deceased for three years, and still, no one's talking.

> Let's blame Colin Kaepernick.

Too obvious. I think something else is going on.

Maybe it's demographics, maybe it's some more obscure change of tastes that will become obvious in years ahead... But as I've understood it in chatter from others, the NFL has just had several unexpectedly strong years in a row, and no one has an explanation for that.

With all the ways that race has figured into football & American celebrity for the past fifty years, it seems terribly improbable that the problem is little Colin Kaepernick.

arctic ice 2012:

ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/north/daily/images/2012/09_Sep/N_20120917_extn_v2.1.png

arctic ice 2017:

ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/north/daily/images/2017/09_Sep/N_20170917_extn_v2.1.png

What are the viewership trends for all major sports?

Personally, listening to the multi millionaire team owners of multi million dollar producing franchises in a multi billion dollar sport bitch about how there multi million dollar TAXPAYER bought, but team owned, stadium is a piece of shit and how the taxpayers better build them a new one right quick has made me eschew sports on general principle

"that could allow Trumpistas to cast Hillary Clinton from the gleaming mantra forefront of their consciousness?"

I dunno. I only know two people who admit to voting for the man, and I'm not one of them.

Still, if Trump had made a big splash with the USFL, I imagine the commentary would be just as snarky. The cheek of that businessman, being involved in business and succeeding/not succeeding!

Repeat ad infinitum, I'll keep reminding folks of the malfeasance the Clintons perpetrated WHILE IN GOVERNMENT OFFICE.

Kinda makes you wonder why they're not in prison, until you see the ocean of dirty money that flowed into the Clinton Foundation. Plenty to spread around, I reckon, and we get all the justice we can afford.

Too obvious. I think something else is going on. ~ Crid at September 23, 2017 4:30 PM

I was being facetious, spurred by the self-righteous outrage over Kaepernick's decision to kneel during the national anthem. I sincerely doubt Kaepernick's "protest" has anything significant to do with the declining viewership.

The latest generation has done everything it can to distance itself from the preceding generations, eschewing past preferences in sporting events, fashion, automobile ownership, etc. All trends are skewing away from past preferences.

And lujip makes a point with the public having sports fatigue from a near-constant demand by franchise owners for cities to pony up tax breaks, bond issues, and revenue to bolster a team paying it players millions without accountability - drug offenses, domestic violence, nightclub stabbings, dangerous gunplay, etc. A working public facing escalating costs and stagnant wages can get tired of providing welfare for entitled millionaires.

The gas mask is simply not long enough to cover your wedding tackle, gentlemen.

Rubber bullets in Phoenix.

I thought you might be facetious, but I wasn't sure which direction because there are concentric rings of irony around all of these topics.

Colin K probably does have something to do with it, but he may well be selling more tickets than he costs, with team owners still uninterested in hiring someone who's obviously going to be contentious.

Agreed... But it's not a political skill so much as it is a Junior High schooler's life skill that happens to work well for this particular figure at this particular hour.

Other politicians will have other reprehensible and childish behaviors to help them move through their careers... Hello, Ms. Harris!... But politicians of the future need no more study Trumps techniques than James Garfield's or Richard Nixon's.

If you're old enough to appreciate just how repellent it is, there's no finer way to ruin a perfectly good weekend —to soil every emotion and befoul every encounter— than to have this song stuck in your head.

Friends, enemies, all of you: Pray for me. Now.

Colin K's protests have had a negative effect on the NFL and ESPN. But Colin isn't really significant at this point. While he may have been the first he is hardly the only one at this point. Even if he retires there will be 4-5 other players at each game doing the same thing.

As for ESPN, the obvious desire management has to turn the network into a political commentary channel doesn't really mesh well with sports. They are going the route of MTV. Probably won't be long before people joke that they used to show sports on ESPN.

Personally, Crid, I liked it and still do.

Can't remember if that one was listed in this book, but maybe there's ONE song in "Dave Barry's Book of Bad Songs" (1997) that YOU like?

Btw, years ago, I thought Gordon Lightfoot was the one who sang "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head." One person responded: "Gaaaaaak! Speaking as a Canadian, what a sacrilegious thing to say!!! :)"

> I liked it

I *knew* it. I just knew that about you, Lenona, before you even said it.

People can *tell*.





(I'll look for the book.)

How do I KNOW you knew I liked it?

At least it's not a 1970s song. Every good song from that decade had at least one bad one. Which is why, in the 1990s, the 1960s revival was milked for all it was worth, since the media et al knew they'd pretty much have to skip to the 1980s after that. (I'm REALLY tired of 1980s music - most of it, anyway...)

I should probably mention that Barry himself, in the book, said he likes some of the songs that most of his readers disliked, but, of course, he wasn't about to say which ones. (Again, there may not be any mention of Herb Alpert in the book at all - but then, at least one song of Gordon Lightfoot's got blasted, so who knows.)

For the record, I never really liked, say, Lawrence Welk or even Frank Sinatra. (My grandmother was barely younger than Sinatra and she couldn't stand him either - she called him "sappy." But then, how many fans did Sinatra EVER have who were born before 1925?)