#I mean I very much am a single issue voter right now; you can bet I'm gonna be looking at people's history with how they've voted on it

[medicinemane]

I want to preface this post by saying I'm not trying to paint the world as bleak and hopeless, this is just something that's been on my mind

With all the horrible things in the world right now, it's struck me just how much the people who've died are dead, and no matter what we do now there's no turning back the clock

That may sound obvious, but what I mean is that nothing we do will ever be able to make these wrongs right

Which ironically just makes it all the more important to fix things as soon as possible, both to prevent more irreversible damage, and also because if we can't do enough then we're obliged to at least do what we can

I know that none of us here are heads of state, or major politicians, or billionaires who bought a social media platform to avoid the FTC beating us into a fine paste for insider trading due to non disclosed shares of said company while driving up the price by saying we were thinking about buying it; so I get that there's a limit to what we can do and out governments are filled with dumb assholes who refuse to do anything to help (some seem to want to, but there's enough people blocking them a lot of the time)

So I don't... I don't have a direction here... I assume you're already doing what you can when you can, and keep it up. I don't know... it's just horrific how many people are suffering and how we'll never be able to take it back

That's what's on my mind with all this and... and it's very frustrating and I'm not even the one in danger with any of it

Keep trying to do better I suppose... and it's not something I have much hope for, but I guess vote in any upcoming elections, given that if there were less awful people in office maybe a few more decent things would get done

Like be a single ticket voter, take what's important to you and say "I only vote for people who support what I want supported"... and then vote for those people

I have no faith in it, but I think you gotta at least try it

(Bonus suggestion, think it's particularly hopeless but vote in the primaries cause that's your one chance to get a trash candidate off the ballot)

[gnosticgnoob]

2020 DNC Candidates’ Answers to the Healthcare Crisis

The conversation among 2020 candidates surrounding the future of American healthcare has been confusing, convoluted, heated, and all over the place. I’ll try to be as succinct as possible  with my points so as not to add too much to the noise. I mostly want to draw attention to the differences and similarities between the healthcare strategies of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

The important difference has been in the specific wording of the discussion, so I will boil the two messages down with relevant, specific wording: Bernie Sanders’ stated goal is to remove private health insurance companies from our healthcare apparatus, replacing the current system with what is known as a Single-Payer system, as is currently in place in Canada, the United Kingdom, the Nordic countries, Spain, Australia, and South Korea, among others. One of the reasons the conversation around Bernie’s plan has been confusing is that people run into the discord between the idea of his goal and the idea that Medicare as it currently exists now would hypothetically be extended to everybody, a case which would not effectively be a single-payer system.

The name of Sanders’ bill is “Medicare For All”, but the plan includes a lot of restructuring that most importantly removes premiums and co-pays from the current Medicare system, instituting a full single-payer system, i.e. Medicare currently has some of the sticky pitfalls of the current system he seeks to replace, but Sanders’ final intention is that if you, a patient, go to your doctor, or the emergency room, or a specialist for any treatment, you simply receive the treatment and then walk out of the building straight to your car in the parking-lot and drive away without having to mess with any financial details (that isn’t to say the service is “Free” as some detractors might believe or mislead you to believe -- it is simply that the rigmarole of finalizing payment is handled wholly by the gears of the system in the background instead of handled personally by the patient, i.e. it’s not free lunch so much as bureaucratic shuffling around of paperwork).

Sanders’ reasoning for switching to single-payer is essentially that the profit-motive as an operating concept, ethically speaking, does not belong in the healthcare system, i.e. the model similar to Coca-Cola or Ford or Apple where the overall goal is for the company to make a financial return on investment: Ford’s bean counters, marketers, and product development teams come together to design and manufacture a product, they calculate the cost of the product, then they price the product higher than it cost them to make it so they can end up with more capital than they started with. Sanders believes on principle that if it costs $40 to fix a broken arm, then the bill for fixing the broken arm should come to $40, and  further that the person with the broken arm should not be bothered with the paperwork relevant to this cost on their way out the door -- this vision is impossible if there are corporations like Ford or Apple or Netflix in charge of handling the bureaucratic ins and outs of processing healthcare costs, because there is always a middle-man-entity with a board of executives whose primary concern is making a return on the investment, and these institutions as they exist put the bureaucratic load on the patient in terms of handling the details of cost and payment, i.e. writing checks, handling invoices, making phone calls to finalize and organize the details between institutions, etc.

I want to start discussing Warren’s approach with spelling out her stated goals and how the wording specifically differs from Sanders’: whereas Sanders’ goal is to institute a single-payer system removing health insurance companies from the process, Warren’s stated goal is: “Universal coverage at the lowest possible cost.” If you are already familiar with some of the differently-worded strategies, approaches, and plans for addressing the healthcare crisis, this fundamental difference may already show important ways the two candidates are taking different approaches, but don’t worry if it isn’t obvious as I will elaborate why the wording is important.

The discussion around Elizabeth Warren’s approach to healthcare has been confusing for several reasons, but one of the main reasons is that she has stated she supports Medicare For All when there are some gotchas in the fine print that call into question what exactly this means. We will come back to why this isn’t as simple as it sounds, but first I will take a slight detour explaining why this is relevant to another candidate: Kamala Harris does not currently support a single-payer system like Sanders and does not support removing private insurers from the system, even though Harris was a co-sponsor on Bernie’s original bill. Compared to the rest of the candidates, it has been particularly confusing pinning Harris’ campaign down on what she really believes to be the way forward because Harris has answered one way and then contradicted herself in subsequent interviews answering differently the next day, for various reasons that may or may not be her fault but instead due to confusion in the way candidates are asked questions about their plans. Harris has since clarified her approach by officially proposing her own plan that is different from Sanders’ single-payer plan, keeping private health insurers in the system, but she introduces extra confusion in calling it a “Medicare For All” plan. So Sanders was previously able to set himself apart as a candidate with a unique approach, simply pointing prospective voters to his Medicare For All plan, but now that situation is more complicated, because Harris can look in the camera and say confidently, “I support Medicare For All” or “I support a Medicare For All system” when it technically means something completely different when she says these words. This could be misconstrued as being even more confusing by accusing her of hedging bets on two different approaches, but this isn’t really the case as it is important to note since Bernie’s original bill will not be passed, in a sense it’s irrelevant who has co-sponsored it, and so we can defer to where candidates stand currently--and specifically where Harris stands currently with her own new plan--as canceling out previous support/co-sponsoring for Sanders’ single-payer approach.

Warren has stated for the record that she supports Medicare For All. Looking at the case of Kamala Harris, we can see why saying such a thing does not necessarily translate to sharing Sanders’ goals. Like Harris, Warren was also a co-sponsor for Sanders’ original Medicare For All bill, but again, looking at the case of Harris, we can see why this doesn’t translate to Warren literally sharing Sanders’ exact goals. In discussions that I’ve seen in the media and on various social media platforms, this is where a lot of confusion, arguing, name-calling, and hostility arise: there is a contingency of voters who support Sanders’ goals who want to know definitively whether Warren shares those goals or might instead be led to diverge with more moderate proposals that are similar to those of other moderate candidates.

Some heated comments read like this: “Why are Sanders supporters either daft or intent on sowing discord: it is clear that both Liz and Bernie support Medicare for All. Their plans are the same. Stop pretending like his plan is somehow better when she has said on record that she supports Medicare For All.” -- For reasons already stated, you can see why this statement is problematic, either misunderstanding or misconstruing the conversation as it relates to their approaches.

If stating support for M4A wasn’t a confusing enough issue, Warren unfortunately confuses the matter further by consistently stating, regarding her stated goal of “Universal Coverage” that “there are many paths to get there.”

An interviewer specifically asked: “Is there room for private health insurance in your vision of the ideal American health care system?”

She answered: “Our obligation is to make sure that everybody gets coverage at the lowest possible cost to all of us. So what does that mean? Right now, it means fighting the Republicans who are trying to sabotage the Affordable Care Act. So job number one is to defend the Affordable Care Act. ...Job number two is to make changes where we need to make them right now: changes to hold insurance companies accountable and lower[ing] the cost of prescription drugs. ...And the third: how do we get universal coverage? Medicare for all. Lots of paths for how to do that. But we know where we are aiming: every American has health care at a price they can afford, and that the overall costs in the system are held as low as possible.”

Rightly not getting the impression that Warren had satisfied his question directly, the interviewer asks again, “But right now, your vision for Medicare for all, would it all be a public option, or would it also include private insurance?”

She answered, “So right now, there are multiple bills on the floor in the United States Senate. I’ve signed onto Medicare for All. I’ve signed on to another one that gives an option for buying in to Medicaid. There are different ways we can get there. But the key has to be always keep the center of the bulls-eye in mind, and that is affordable health care for every American.” This answer similarly evades the actual question as it was worded.

As someone who supports Sanders’ vision of instituting a single-payer system in America, and someone who is very much interested in supporting any/all candidates who display a similar willingness to fight for the well-being of citizens over corporate interests, I am NOT trying to paint Warren into some kind of wily “gotcha” corner in a clumsy attempt to discredit her or sabotage her campaign -- I simply feel: 1) she has been consistently, purposefully evasive in signaling whether or not she would fight as hard as Sanders for Sanders’ specific gold-standard, 2) this evasiveness, while strategically understandable, is unnecessary, and 3) the resulting confusion in and of itself is not only damaging to her campaign in muddying the healthcare conversation but also calls into question her overall integrity as it relates to any other given issue or plan in any other area of policy. If she is someone who wants the bar raised as high as Bernie’s aims and is also willing to fight for it as hard as Bernie, then I want to be able to shout from the rooftops my support for her as clearly and fullheartedly as I do for Sanders’ campaign, but I am frustrated by the consistently misleading media narrative that they are two peas in a pod on this issue when there’s obviously room for contention between the goals and approaches of the two, and I honestly cannot tell whether or not she will lower the bar mirroring the incrementalist approaches of other moderate candidates.

When Warren says, “Universal coverage at the lowest possible cost,” it could be the case that she doesn’t include a single-payer system within her idea of what is “possible” -- if the “lowest possible cost” in her view is the cost we can achieve by introducing a Public Option instead of instituting a single-payer system, then it is the case that her views differ considerably from Sanders’. If Warren wants to then argue as many other candidates have argued that the lowest cost we can “possibly” achieve is via introducing a public option into the current system, the problem is two-fold: 1) the math will always prove this argument as technically wrong, since a single-payer system would hypothetically always cost less than the current system, ergo 2) the argument essentially comes down to what is “achievable” or what is “possible” within the American political system, which is a rhetorical point that merely comes around to what people are willing to fight for, in other words, how high we are willing to set the bar; to argue that setting the bar as high as single-payer is not achievable is a self-fulfilling prophecy and a rhetorical point that merely reveals the mettle of the politician fighting for their preferred reforms.

There are some Warren supporters who prefer her approach over Sanders’ because it seems that she might be willing to take a more incrementalist approach such as a public option, that she might be willing to postpone universal coverage (indefinitely?) as she considers it “Job #3” after Job #1 of restoring ACA and Job #2 passing other pieces of regulatory legislation. The worst case scenario would be that she 1) deprioritizes “Universal coverage” as a long-term-nice-to-have, and 2) that her definition of “Universal coverage” is the same as Obama’s (Romney’s?): an individual mandate for every citizen to sign up for something within the current broken system. If this is the case, how is her healthcare approach any different than Buttigieg or Biden? and how do the supporters and talking heads get away with suggesting that Sanders and Warren have solidarity on the issue? And how do the Warren supporters that believe Bernie and Warren have identical approaches manage to miss the Warren supporters that prefer her approach because it’s not the same Bernie’s?

My intent is not to debate single-payer vs public option. I don’t even discredit altogether the notion that a public option could be construed as a “step towards” single-payer (though I think this is extremely problematic, it’s a whole different discussion). My intent isn’t to paint Warren in a negative light, or sow division among democratic voters, or institute a “purity test”. If where Warren’s head’s at right now is, “I’m not sold on fighting for single-payer,”...I just want to know. If where Warren’s head’s at right now is, “I’m not sold on fighting for single-payer, and as a strategy for my presidential run I want the record to be a little muddy right now because I believe it will help me secure the nomination as well as a victory against Trump”...then I not only disagree, I respect her a bit less. But my point is: I don’t know where her head’s at...nobody seems to know...because that’s just where the conversation is right now...and I find it frustrating.

[forsetti]

On Reaching Out To Trump Voters

Another day, another hot take from someone who thinks what Democrats really need to do, must do in order to get back political power is to reach out and cater to specifically white people who voted for Donald Trump.  Every single one of these lava hot takes provides some firsthand examples of individuals who claim to be “ex-Democrats” and their woeful laments about why they felt they had no choice but to vote for Trump.  My first presidential election was in 1980.  I cannot think of any time in the previous nine elections where there have been more “think pieces” written begging for the losing side to understand, take pity on, and cater to the winning side.  I'll bet my right kidney (my left is reserved for Belgian ales) you can search the archives of the New York Times, the Washington Post, any of the major media outlets from 2009 and you won't find a single article written pleading conservatives to “understand and reach out” to Obama voters.  This lack of reciprocal “think pieces” isn't by accident.  If there is one thing I've come to understand the past few years, it's the absolute need for everyone, especially the media, to kowtow to the needs, wants, and feelings of white Americans.  In America, all roads lead to whiteness.

In 2009, it was white Americans who were “jilted” and “upset” so it was them who Obama voters needed to reach out to and understand. In 2017 it is white Americans who feel “disrespected” and “not heard” so the demand is once again being made on progressives to reach out and understand.  Win or lose, everyone must take the feelings of white America into consideration.  As a fifty-six-year-old white American, this is complete and utter bullshit.  By default, my feelings have ALWAYS been considered my entire life for no other reason than I'm a white male.  I never gave this special status a second thought for a lot of years.  I didn't even notice it. However, thanks to the patience of a good close friend and reading writers like Ta-Nehisi Coates, I've come to understand not just how fortunate I've been and treated for the random luck of my birth but more importantly, how those not so fortunate have been negatively impacted by the very system that has blessed me so greatly.  For this reason and many others, I can't give a flying fuck about the feelings of white Americans who voted for Trump.  They made their choice. They need to accept the consequences of it.  Full....fucking....stop.

While some of the hot takes reluctantly admit that Trump voters are somewhat responsible for their vote, they still feel compelled to lay the brunt of the onus on progressives.  I'll accept their half-assed acknowledgment people who voted for Trump are responsible for their decisions.  What I won't accept is the notion that progressives have “pushed white America” towards Trump.  Fuck this nonsense! Nobody held a gun to white America's bigoted/racist head and forced them to fill in the oval or pull the lever on their ballot for Trump. If your political choices are based on what will piss off someone else, you are doing democracy wrong.  Voting for someone because it will upset liberals is at best a childish reaction.  “I didn't vote for what would be best for my and my family, for my job, for my health care, for the environment, for the future...  I voted for Trump because Hillary called me “deplorable.”” Jesus-childish-fucking-Christ!  “I didn't like the neurosurgeon's bedside manner so I yanked my kid out of the hospital and took her to the vet for her brain surgery.  That'll teach him!”  Way to go Jethro.  You just got your kid killed because your fee fees were hurt.  If I know you, and I do, you'll rationalize it by saying, “It was God's will” or some other nonsense instead of owning up to the fact you are the one responsible for your kid's death due to your ignorance and arrogance. This is exactly what is happening right now with regard to many Trump voters.  They are having buyer's remorse but instead of owning up to their shitty decision, they are deflecting responsibility to anyone but themselves.  Fuck that!

Conservatives can and will tell themselves whatever they want to make themselves feel better about voting for and supporting Trump.  They will come up with things like, “economic anxiety,” “need for a change,” “liberals were mean to me” and other such nonsense but these are all intellectual dodges in order to avoid the underlying truth. Conservatives have bought into an ideology bereft of facts, bereft of morality, bereft of anything closely resembling the America and Constitution they claim to love almost as much as the baby Jesus. “Sure Trump and a lot of his supporters said racist and bigoted things, but that isn't me.  I completely disagreed with all of this.” Did you give money to his campaign?  Did you vote for him?  “Of course, but that doesn't make me a racist/bigot.”  Maybe.  This has yet to be determined.  At the very least, it shows you are willing to overlook the racism, bigotry, misogyny, blatant lies...for whatever reasons you have.  What does this say about you?  Am I supposed to sympathize, empathize, reach across the aisle and make peace with you because you are so willing to overlook these things?  Fuck no!  The “Progressives need to reach out to Trump voters” articles make it sound like this is nothing but a misunderstanding, a mix-up that could easily be the plot of a “Three's Company” episode instead millions of people being fucked over.  This isn't a misunderstanding. Misunderstandings happen when something happens “out of the blue.” Progressives were waving red flags and screaming, “This is going to be a fucking train wreck!” for months before the election.  This isn't a misunderstanding.  This is purposefully ignoring fire alarms then saying, “I'm shocked I lost everything in the fire.  I wished someone would have warned me.”  

Now, if people who voted for Trump want to have a heart-to-heart conversation about the issues and why they made the decisions they did, I'll happily participate.  I have yet to see anything that can even remotely be viewed as such.  Instead, all I see are “Progressives are mean and they are only making me love Trump more.”  Bravo!  While progressives are telling you taking your kid to the vet for brain surgery was a really, really bad idea, you're reaching for your Bible and the program from your child's funeral saying, “IT WASN'T MY FAULT!  YOU MADE ME DO IT!  IF YOU DON'T STOP, I WILL BE FORCED TO TAKE MY OTHER KID IN FOR THE SAME PROCEDURE!”  I'm supposed to reach out to these people?  I'm supposed to be understanding and sympathetic?  I'm supposed to not even bring up the fact it was their direct actions that led to consequences of that decision?  Fuck off!  Fuck off hard.  Fuck off often.  I can't.  I don't have the capacity or the inclination to let these people off the hook in any form or fashion or their actions. For years, all I've heard from conservatives is how liberals have turned our children into a bunch of lazy, entitled brats who have to have a participation trophy every time they do even the most basic task.  Trump voters want a participation trophy, a cookie, a pat on the back, a ticker tape parade, and reach-around for voting for the most dangerous administration in U.S. history.  Not only can't I do this, I won't.  I refuse to reward bad behavior.  I won't enable people who are responsible for making an already dysfunctional government completely broken.  They need to own their mistakes. There needs to be a collective mea culpa from conservatives.  There needs to be a reckoning, an acknowledgment from them that they fucked up and fucked up royally.  Then, and only then, will I muster up a smidgen of empathy, give a damn about reaching across the aisle, give a flying fuck about anyone who voted for Trump.  

[maysoper]

Moving The Goalposts

Make no mistake that the women showed up and nearly stole the show tonight at the NHL All-Star Skills Competition. Kendall Coyne absolutely lit the ice on fire with her lap in the Fastest Skater event. Brianna Decker only went out and won the Precision Passer event. Rebecca Johnston demonstrated the hands needed in the Puck Control event. Renata Fast blew up targets in the Accuracy Shooting event. Yes, the women can play. But you already knew that. In fact, if you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you're very aware that these are four of the best hockey players on the planet. So why am I writing about goalposts moving? The women's hockey writers were all over social media tonight with their usual anger towards the NHL world in that more people should be watching the women's game. I don't disagree that more people should be supporting women's hockey with their butts in seats, merchandise on their backs, eyes on their TVs, and more. I have been a long supporter of women's hockey, and I truly believe the game is more akin to Olympic hockey with speed and skill being the highlights, and I'll take that to the grave as my reason for spending so much time watching the women's product. Here's the thing, though: the NHL is in San Jose this weekend to promote THEIR product. The invitation to the women this season followed last year's invitation of Hilary Knight, Amanda Kessel, Meghan Duggan, and Hannah Brandt to the All-Star Game in Tampa Bay where the same boisterous social media warriors got on their soapboxes, pounded fists on chests, and screamed about how people should be watching the women's game. While Coyne and Decker arguably made this year's inclusion of the women at the Skills Competition more memorable with their performances in the events they were demonstrating, I'm going to wager a bet that you won't see an uptick in attendance at women's games nor will you see any sustained support for the game after tonight's performance. Now you may be asking, "Teebz, if you support the women's game, how can you say that?". The reality is that the NHL All-Star Game is there to showcase players and their talents, but if you have no way to see this talent regularly or don't know how to watch this talent, you likely will forget how good these players are, ultimately forgetting how good they were this week. Don't be angry - that's how our minds work. There's an expression in hockey that sees teams in the Pacific time zone often using when it comes to voting on year-end awards due to the concentration of voters who live on or near the east coast of North America. This "east coast bias" term is used because most games in California start some three hours after all other games do - 10pm in most eastern markets - so the perception from the west coast is that most of the east coast has already turned off the broadcast since no one wants to stay up until 1am watching hockey. I'm not sure this holds true with the exposure that all of the NHL gets with the broadcasting deals they have - Brent Burns won the Norris Trophy in 2017 and Drew Doughty won in 2016 - but they're the only two players who play or have played in the Pacific time zone to win the award. There has yet to be a Vezina Trophy winner from the Pacific time zone, and the only Hart Trophy winners from that time zone are Corey Perry and Joe Thornton in a year where he was traded from Boston to San Jose. Why does this matter? What these writers should be howling about is the fact that you can't find women's hockey anywhere on television - the single largest media influencer in today's households. The NHL? You can find it nearly anywhere in Canada thanks to Rogers broadcasting games on Sportsnet, Sportsnet360, CityTV, and CBC. You can see men's hockey on TSN thanks to the World Junior Championship, the Spengler Cup, the World Championship, a handful of NCAA games, the RBC Cup, and a handful of other Hockey Canada-supported events. Men's hockey is everywhere in Canada, and it's why it dominates most highlight shows and sports newscasts. You know what isn't everywhere in Canada? You get three guesses. If you guessed "women's hockey on TV", you'd be a winner. Sportsnet makes it seem like they're doing the world a favour when it comes to broadcasting four regular season games, the CWHL All-Star Game, and the Clarkson Cup Final. Sportsnet owns the rights to U SPORTS broadcasting and will show the U SPORTS Men's National Hockey Championship, but doesn't even bother to send a reporter to the Women's National Hockey Championship. You know why you're all talking about Kendall Coyne's incredible lap today? Colorado's Nathan MacKinnon. Had MacKinnon not been injured, Coyne would have likely been relegated to the commercial break where she'd demonstrate how the lap around the rink would work before the cameras came back to watch the men do their best. But MacKinnon, who is a student of the game, knew there was someone who likely could hold her own when it came to speed in the rink. MacKinnon reached out to Coyne via Twitter and asked the speedy American star if she'd take his spot in the event. And did she ever!

Olympic Gold Medalist @KendallCoyne kicked off the Fastest Skater competition in style! pic.twitter.com/4Ug3dpsuja

— NHL on NBC (@NHLonNBCSports) January 26, 2019

But let's pump the breaks here because had the Skills Competition gone down according to the NHL's plans, Coyne's lap would have only been seen by those in attendance in San Jose. The fact that both NBC and Sportsnet captured her lap was because she in MacKinnon's spot as one of the actual competitors in the Fastest Skater event. See the irony? The NHL wasn't holding her back from showing off her wheels. They're trying to market their stars in their event. That's just marketing 101, and I can't fault for the NHL for making the NHL All-Star Game about the NHL and its stars. I can fault NBC and Sportsnet, though, for opting to not show the women demonstrating the skills to the public not sitting inside the SAP Center. The problem, however, goes to a larger issues within women's hockey, and that's exposure on television. Half a dozen games broadcast on TV, some YouTube games, and grainy highlights posted on social media won't get the exposure that the women's game desperately needs to become a mainstay on sports highlight shows. "What are the answers, Teebz?" you ask. Well, the first step is to follow that whole "one league" dream that everyone keeps demanding, but only two people can solve. Once that happens, this new Women's National Hockey League can fall under the NHL's watch, and I would hope that they would include a weekly televised game in both the Canada and the US on the NHL's national media partners in Sportsnet and NBC. The enemy of the women's game right now isn't the NHL or men's hockey or men or the apathy that most hockey fans show when it comes to women's hockey. Hockey Canada and USA Hockey have done their parts in making the World Championships and the Olympics must-watch TV when it comes to women's hockey, but they can't run weekly tournaments. That comes down to the two women's professional leagues, and the fact that they have no national media partner who broadcasts games regularly is the major reason why people didn't know that Kendall Coyne was one of the fastest humans on the planet before tonight. In states like Massachusetts and Minnesota, women's hockey is hugely popular because it gets its fair share of coverage locally with some regularity. Women's hockey has long been beating the drum about "you can't be what you can't see". Those are the goalposts onto which women's hockey writers should have their crosshairs fixed, and it starts with demanding that the professional women's leagues either come together to become a stronger product or by having each of the leagues going out to find a national broadcast partner. If you recall, the NHL was once mocked for putting games on the OLN network. The NHL worked through this to prove its product was a viable entity, and they've since been able to sign bigger and more lucrative deals in the United States by continuing to deliver ratings and advertising dollars to its partners. It didn't start with an NBC deal, though, and that's what the leagues and writers need to realize. Time slots on Sportsnet and NBC Sports are expensive. The networks are there to make money, and the women's game simply can't provide the same monetary return as other sports at this time just as the NHL couldn't provide the same return in 2005 when they signed with OLN. This is simply the reality of where the sport is on the sporting landscape right now, and it's a harsh reality that one needs to accept if this sport is ever to move forward. The lack of television broadcasts are the answer to "why isn't this sport more popular". The only way to fix that is to find a way onto television regularly. I'm not a television executive by any means, but I suspect that if the leagues could likely find a somewhat-obscure network to take a chance on one or both of them, then popularity of the women's game will grow by leaps and bounds as the die-hard fans turn casual fans into more dedicated fans and so on and so forth. Y'know, kind of similar to how the NHL grew in non-traditional markets in the sunbelt with local broadcasts and a national deal with an obscure television network. The goalposts need to be moved. This would certainly change the playing field if a television deal was struck. This is entirely what the women's hockey writers who are screaming about Kendall Coyne's performance tonight should be asking their leagues to investigate. If the problem with women's hockey is that no one is watching, it's time to get onto the medium that most people watch. Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice! from Sports News http://hockey-blog-in-canada.blogspot.com/2019/01/moving-goalposts.html

[reallyhopefuldreamland-blog]

Playing Online Poker For Real cash

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