Donald Trump and the Depressing Politicization of Everything

[AuH20]

And people act shocked that the NFL is a political mouthpiece for the state? It's all about the denaros. The NFL is essentially the entertainment arm of this unscrupulous empire.

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/12/how-taxpayers-keep-the-nfl-rich/418971/

The league’s agreement with Chicago specified the city would pay for police overtime, firefighter and ambulance calls, and for any “weather mitigation” necessary, while “the NFL will retain all revenue from tickets and advertising” sold. Chicago gave the NFL the right to close streets in the Loop and along the lakefront, and to remove any signs the league did not like: Essentially Chicago suspended the First Amendment, so protesters couldn’t raise banners that mentioned domestic violence, tax subsidies, or brain harm. As if the House of Romanov were touring to review the peasants, the NFL demanded free stopped-traffic police escorts “in and around the city” for “certain NFL dignitaries.” Certain NFL dignitaries.

The league’s primary subsidies flow to construction and operation of stadia. All are at least partially publicly funded: some, entirely so. Judith Grant Long, a professor of sports management at the University of Michigan, estimates that taxpayers provide about 70 percent of the cost of building and operating the fields where NFL teams play. Yet the NFL’s owners keep more than 90 percent of revenue generated at their subsidized facilities, while AT&T, CBS, Comcast/NBC, Disney/ESPN, Fox, Verizon, and Yahoo profit through transmission of the copyrighted NFL images produced in publicly subsidized stadia.

The NFL is on the dole in numerous other respects. Most of the league’s facilities either pay no property taxes (such as Texas’s AT&T Stadium, where the Cowboys perform) or are taxed at a far lower rate than comparable local businesses (such as New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium, where the Giants and Jets cavort). Stadium construction deals often involve significant gifts of land from the public for NFL use (such as Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California, where the “San Francisco” 49ers play).

Hidden costs may include city or county government paying electricity, water, and sewer charges for a stadium (such as First Energy Stadium in Cleveland, where the Browns perform), the city paying for a new electronic scoreboard out of “emergency” funds (ditto First Energy) or the issuance of tax-free bonds that divert investors’ money away from school, road, and mass-transit infrastructure (Hamilton County, Ohio, issued tax-free bonds to fund the stadium where the Cincinnati Bengals play, and has chronic deficits for school and infrastructure needs as a result).

 

[Raginfridus]

Games will MAGA if the best players walk out.

 

[AuH20]

Games will MAGA if the best players walk out.

Most of the best players have haughty lifestyles leveraged to the hilt. Plus, their main production years are limited in the professional football environment. Practically speaking, they can't go anywhere. No one is taking a 75% paycut to migrate to the CFL.

 

[acptulsa]

If the NFL and the government want to be more popular, they should both do the exact same thing--stop filling up the rulebook with silly rules and then applying those rules selectively in order to give their favorites an advantage.

Yeah, people want their team to win. But when it doesn't, it pains them a lot less if the other team actually was the better team, and pains them a lot more when their team was held to a different standard than the other team. And the NFL does that all the time. If people who are fans of small market teams are constantly sent the message that their team has to be twice as good as a large market team, and beat the officials as well as the other team, they give up and stop being emotionally invested in the game out of self defense. And when small business is never given a chance to compete with big business, innovation is severely retarded and the economy suffers as a direct result.

If it makes no sense to enforce it 100% of the time, it's a bad rule, it's a bad law, and it shouldn't even be in the rulebook. That has a much, much bigger effect on participation and interest than a thousand silly 'protests'--or anything else that happens during the National Anthem.

 

[goldenequity]

The Neuropsychiatric Bases for Trump Hatred Explained Clinically






Mel Brooks Attacks Political Correctness, Claims it is Anathema to Comedy (aka 'Blazing Saddles' couldn't be made today)

 

[AuH20]

I love these tweets of superiority by the libs. Suddenly, out of the blue, Trump the barbarian is trampling on the Constitution after 100 years of deliberate destruction.

 

[juleswin]

If the NFL and the government want to be more popular, they should both do the exact same thing--stop filling up the rulebook with silly rules and then applying those rules selectively in order to give their favorites an advantage.

Yeah, people want their team to win. But when it doesn't, it pains them a lot less if the other team actually was the better team, and pains them a lot more when their team was held to a different standard than the other team. And the NFL does that all the time. If people who are fans of small market teams are constantly sent the message that their team has to be twice as good as a large market team, and beat the officials as well as the other team, they give up and stop being emotionally invested in the game out of self defense. And when small business is never given a chance to compete with big business, innovation is severely retarded and the economy suffers as a direct result.

If it makes no sense to enforce it 100% of the time, it's a bad rule, it's a bad law, and it shouldn't even be in the rulebook. That has a much, much bigger effect on participation and interest than a thousand silly 'protests'--or anything else that happens during the National Anthem.

As a long time Chiefs fan, I complete agree with this post. They had to beat the Patriot's players, their cheating coach and the refs in order to win that opener. The down side is that the rush you get from it keeps you coming back even though you know the league is working against you.

I imagine it must be the closest feeling to being in an abusive relationship for a single person

 

[Raginfridus]

The Neuropsychiatric Bases for Trump Hatred Explained Clinically






Mel Brooks Attacks Political Correctness, Claims it is Anathema to Comedy (aka 'Blazing Saddles' couldn't be made today)

Heck, Space Balls couldn't be made today.

 

[euphemia]

Politics is the most divisive thing there can be. It's about power. A political government will not do the right thing. A political media will not do the right thing. Politics corrupts everything it touches. I like a good discussion on principle, but the political framework puts everything in a box.

 

[juleswin]

VERY TRUE ABOUT THE DUPLICITY WITH THE CONSTITUTION WHEN IT FITS YOUR NEEDS AT THE TIME!

The irony of this post is that the sort of people who are whining now also only bring up the constitution when it fit their needs. Everybody on TV who talks politics except for a few strict constitutionalists do this.

And only the ignorant, morally retarded partisan hacks would disagree

 

[acptulsa]

I imagine it must be the closest feeling to being in an abusive relationship for a single person

No? Try being a Republican some time. Reagan addressed all the problems but he didn't do much about them. He stood up and said government was the problem, then turns around and codifies Carter's Department of Education into law. Dubya got elected by saying, no nation building, then Cheney calls off the Air Force on 9/11 and the next thing we know Dubya starts more wars than any one Democrat ever did (and excepting Reagan and Teddy Roosevelt, Democrats had been in office when all the wars started). Trump is having a high old time dividing the country, and Republicans are stoked because they're sick of political correctness stifling free speech, but Trump is engaging in divisiveness for the sake of division, and not addressing the death of American Small Business at all.

Of course, like an abuse victim, Republicans dearly love to be cuckolded by a strongman, so they're their own worst enemies. The best they've had in the last 100 years are Calvin Coolidge and Ron Paul, but the thing that made them both great is their low key approach, which when you think about it is exactly what true conservatism is, a low key approach. But like an abused woman, Republicans love having bigger than life bad boys to follow. So, they have no one to blame for themselves if perfection comes their way and they just can't get those stars in their eyes.

Not that any of this will save the NFL from its own folly in the end. They have one job--to make the game fair--and the more they screw up that one job, the more fans they will lose. Nobody cares if Roger Goodell is charismatic or not.

 

[Ender]

Why does he even tweet about this nonsense?

MPOV?

Trump's a brat without a single ounce of class.

 

[acptulsa]

Why does he even tweet about this nonsense?

MPOV?

Trump's a brat without a single ounce of class.

Ender, when was the last time you saw the tiniest bit of evidence that Republicans give a damn about class?

 

[Ender]

Ender, when was the last time you saw the tiniest bit of evidence that Republicans give a damn about class?

Ummmmm......... Harding?

(And of course, Ron Paul- was thinking presidents.)

 

[Lamp]

Because they are still on the plantation. During the NFL combine I wasn't watching TV, but had it on. The commentary was straight out of a slave market. Those young men were being treated like pieces of meat, and It made my stomach hurt. Professional sports is human trafficking.

 

[acptulsa]

(And of course, Ron Paul- was thinking presidents.)

Who?

Oh, wait--you mean the guy they booed when he brought up the Golden Rule?

 

[Rudeman]

More players kneel, more fans gets disgusted, less viewers for the NFL and eventually less money for the owners and players. Seems like a win for me, college football is more interesting anyways and still reasonably priced.

For such a successful league, the NFL must be filled with morons if they think this will appeal to their mostly conservative fanbase.

 

[AuH20]

More players kneel, more fans gets disgusted, less viewers for the NFL and eventually less money for the owners and players. Seems like a win for me, college football is more interesting anyways and still reasonably priced.

Thanks to Obamcare, there is less discretionary income to spend on things like the NFL.

 

[acptulsa]

All of this partisan stupidity aside, and regardless of which of the several ways Roger Goodell is shooting the NFL in the foot is most damaging, how does The Atlantic think these protests of federally militarized local police shooting people wholesale is anything but political? How can you 'politicize' an obviously political protest? That's like saying a CEO shouldn't address the consumers boycotting his company because that would 'commercialize' the boycott. Yeah, gee, guys, you're right to identify these sports stars as sports stars, and to correctly ascertain that sports stars are not politicians, but, you know, they are kind of protesting something that governments are doing here, right? Are you trying to fakenews us out of noticing that the thing they're protesting is a thing politicians are doing, or are you guys just stupid? I've seen The Atlantic say some nonsensical things in my time, but they're really pushing the envelope here.

Leave it to Zippy to find the single stupidest thing the MSM is saying about a subject.

 

[juleswin]

No? Try being a Republican some time. Reagan addressed all the problems but he didn't do much about them. He stood up and said government was the problem, then turns around and codifies Carter's Department of Education into law. Dubya got elected by saying, no nation building, then Cheney calls off the Air Force on 9/11 and the next thing we know Dubya starts more wars than any one Democrat ever did (and excepting Reagan and Teddy Roosevelt, Democrats had been in office when all the wars started). Trump is having a high old time dividing the country, and Republicans are stoked because they're sick of political correctness stifling free speech, but Trump is engaging in divisiveness for the sake of division, and not addressing the death of American Small Business at all.

Of course, like an abuse victim, Republicans dearly love to be cuckolded by a strongman, so they're their own worst enemies. The best they've had in the last 100 years are Calvin Coolidge and Ron Paul, but the thing that made them both great is their low key approach, which when you think about it is exactly what true conservatism is, a low key approach. But like an abused woman, Republicans love having bigger than life bad boys to follow. So, they have no one to blame for themselves if perfection comes their way and they just can't get those stars in their eyes.

Not that any of this will save the NFL from its own folly in the end. They have one job--to make the game fair--and the more they screw up that one job, the more fans they will lose. Nobody cares if Roger Goodell is charismatic or not.

Well, I wasn't expecting such a well thought out articulated response. I guess I was never really a republican in the first place. My first experience with politics was with the Ron Paul campaign and the whole time we were fighting the republican establishment.

Wish I could rep you some more cos I thoroughly enjoyed the reminder and history lesson. This is the sort of posts that keep me coming back to this forum even though many(about 1/4) of the other posts I read(like a good chunk of the rubbish people say in this thread) slowly kills whats left of my hope with humanity