No guarantee that would have translated to the WNBA. Further, she had yet to play against professional level competition.

Why do you keep saying entirely ignorant things? Just WHERE do you think most of the WNBA players came from? They came from COLLEGES here in the US, except for a few foreign players that didn't go to US schools.

Let's do a quick thought experiment. The 4 leading all-time scorers in women's college basketball are Kelsey Plum, Dyashia Fair, Kelsey Mitchell, and #1 Caitlin Clark. What do all 4 have in common? They're all WNBA players - 3 of them being All-Stars and CC being 1st team All WNBA. But you think anyone paying attention didn't believe she'd succeed? Are you Gino Auriemma?

In response to a question about whether he thought Mr. Trump was a fascist, Mr. Kelly first read aloud a definition of fascism that he had found online.

"Well, looking at the definition of fascism: It's a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy," he said.

Mr. Kelly said that definition accurately described Mr. Trump.

"So certainly, in my experience, those are the kinds of things that he thinks would work better in terms of running America," Mr. Kelly said.

He added: "Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he's certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators - he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure."

Mr. Kelly said Mr. Trump lacked a fundamental understanding of basic American values and what being president is about.

"He's certainly the only president that has all but rejected what America is all about, and what makes America America, in terms of our Constitution, in terms of our values, the way we look at everything, to include family and government - he's certainly the only president that I know of, certainly in my lifetime, that was like that," Mr. Kelly said.

"He just doesn't understand the values - he pretends, he talks, he knows more about America than anybody, but he doesn't."

on the promise that Clark would drive ratings with no proven track record of having done so.

No track record? Just how ignorant are you?

If I were the "media" I would wait to see if it sticks before signing a long term contract.

They already did - again, at a number I think favors the media and not the league. Starting with the 2026 season, rights will increase to $220 million per season from $60 million. While that sounds like a lot of money, it isn't in context. The NBA stands to make $76 BILLION over the next 11 years, almost $7 billion annually.

What? Should a homeowner not be bound by their mortgage contract because I am losing money? This is just a silly statement.

Not at all. Go talk to Bally Sports Network/Fox Sports regionals or other networks having to bail on sports contracts every year, leaving teams and fans in a lurch.

The leverage is just what I stated: The WNBA has a valuable property that just exploded in popularity and brought ION network its largest audiences ever - full of women who weren't watching that network before. Sports rights are truly partnerships, and when one side brings an enhanced value to the table, it's not wrong to expect that to be recognized.

At the end of the day, the networks want and need the eyeballs the WNBA delivered to them beyond what was thought possible when the current contracts were signed. It's called leverage, and it's no different than players holding out while they're still under contract. There isn't another show that can replace the eyeballs the W is now bringing, especially with Caitlin Clark and the other hyper-popular players. When a player outplays his/her contract, oftentimes owners will rip up the old and give them a new one. This is not unusual for generational talents.

Well, these were all-time record ratings, something equally similar. Don't think for a second that there aren't other networks willing to pay more than the current partners are - even if litigation takes place over contract breeches. But I get good faith partnerships and that's the way business should be run. But no intelligent businessperson should stand by and lose tens of millions while watching partners make even more off the backs of those losing so much. It's simply bad business. And if things drop off, then the reverse should be true as well. Both sides should get what they deserve based on the success or lack thereof of the entire enterprise itself.

The WNBA lost $40M last year.

Only because the owners are frigging idiots and deserve their stupid fate.

You can't create a thread linked to national review on this blog.

#2

Works for me, straight to Mediate. Try Googling.

In a February 2018 budget memo to Congress, bureau officials wrote that under federal law, they were obligated to pay for a prisoner's "surgery" if it was deemed medically necessary. Still, legal wrangling delayed the first such operation until 2022, long after Mr. Trump left office.

"Transgender offenders may require individual counseling and emotional support," officials wrote. "Medical care may include pharmaceutical interventions (e.g., cross-gender hormone therapy), hair removal and surgery (if individualized assessment indicates surgical intervention is applicable)."

The Bureau of Prisons is the only federal agency under court order to provide gender-related surgeries. But the number of inmates requesting such operations within the bureau is minuscule, with only two known surgeries approved via court action.

The amount the bureau has spent on hormone therapy was also very small - ranging from $60,000 to $95,000 a year during Mr. Trump's term, according to internal department estimates obtained by The New York Times.

The Trump ads, which have been running in several battleground states - often during events with high male viewership, like football games - focus on a response by Ms. Harris to a question about transgender care for incarcerated people on a 2019 American Civil Liberties Union candidate questionnaire.

In her answer, Ms. Harris told the group that she "pushed" the state corrections department "to provide gender transition surgery to state inmates" while serving as California attorney general from 2011 to 2017.

"I support policies ensuring that federal prisoners and detainees are able to obtain medically necessary care for gender transition, including surgical care, while incarcerated or detained," she wrote. "Transition treatment is a medical necessity, and I will direct all federal agencies responsible for providing essential medical care to deliver transition treatment."

Initially, Ms. Harris represented the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation in its refusal to provide gender-affirming surgery to an offender convicted of murder who was born male.

But there's this nagging complication - if Kamala Harris is as stupid as her critics claim, why does she have the Democratic presidential nomination and a roughly 50"50 shot of being the first female president in U.S. history? Do you know how many ruthlessly ambitious Democratic men and women have desperately yearned to get where she is? How many smart, tough, shrewd, often underhanded and cold-blooded pols have tried to claw their way up the greasy pole and fallen short?

And somehow this supposed dunce managed to do it?

The record indicates that whatever Harris's results are on an I.Q. test or other measure of intellect, she is particularly talented by another measuring stick, one that may be even more important in politics: She is exceptionally skilled at getting other people emotionally invested in her success.

Read on to learn how Harris's political career got started, her connection to Clint Eastwood, how she persuaded the wealthiest and most powerful elites of San Francisco to back her when she was a little-known underdog, the BMW she received as a gift, who ended her relationship with Willie Brown, and the speculation that Halle Berry would play her in a movie someday.

At least Geraghty does present a factual recitation of Harris' rise even while pointing out every perceived misstep or utterance her critics obsess over compared to her presidential opponent, a man who can't even form coherent sentences above the 4th grade level. I guess they both are what they are.

National debt under Biden is up $7.65T and we are not yet done with his term.

Because the majority of that amount is accrued interest on money borrowed before he entered the White House.

But you knew that before you wrote that sentence, right?

Trump's about-face comes after Hurricane Helene left dozens dead and thousands temporarily pushed from their communities after widespread destruction of homes, roads and water supplies when the storm deluged the western part of the state in late September.

The 25 hardest-hit counties are almost all deeply conservative, places where Trump must rack up big margins to offset more liberal urban centers, such as Charlotte and Raleigh, that are likely to net voting gains for Vice President Kamala Harris.

Several Trump advisers said his campaign is worried that hundreds of thousands more Trump voters than Harris voters have been affected by the storm in a critical battleground that the former president must win if he is to regain the White House. Trump won North Carolina by just over a percentage point in 2020.

I wonder if Bill Johnson has anything to say about Trump wanting his affected voters to vote by mail-in ballots. Suddenly Trump isn't worried about voting by mail at all. Go figure.

No one needs Project 2025 to understand what the extreme anti-abortion GOPers are going to do next. Just look to what Justices Thomas and Alito have telegraphed from the bench.

His business career vaulted him to fame, and he had notable successes, perhaps most prominently the rehabilitation of the Commodore Hotel and the construction of Trump Tower. But he often reached further than he was able to deliver. His record in business was pockmarked with plenty of failures.

The Trump Shuttle airline? Failure. His dreams of building a Television City in Manhattan? Failure. A United States Football League franchise? Failure. The Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino, Trump Taj Mahal, Trump's Castle Casino Resort, Trump Mortgage, Trump Vodka, Trump University, Trump Steaks, GoTrump.com? All failures.

His most spectacular flameouts came in the gambling mecca of Atlantic City, where he overextended himself building or buying three casinos that ultimately cannibalized each other's clientele as he failed to keep up with enormous debt payments. He filed bankruptcy for the Taj Mahal in 1991 and then for the other two casinos in 1992. He also filed bankruptcy in 1992 for the Plaza Hotel.

Even after recovering from that debacle, Mr. Trump failed again. His casino company filed for bankruptcy in 2004 and then again in 2009, for his sixth trip into that process. In his various bankruptcies, he was compelled to sell assets, and creditors were forced to write off some of his debt. But Mr. Trump has boasted that he still made money in Atlantic City even after leaving a trail of losses for nearly everyone else involved, including workers who lost jobs.

Mr. Trump played the game along the edge, and sometimes over the line, of propriety. To grease his path, he would hire a governor's son or a federal prosecutor's brother. Along the way, he was investigated time and time again. Federal, state and local authorities looked into his ties with the Mafia, found violations of money laundering laws and penalized him for skirting stock trade rules.

At one point when Mr. Trump was strapped for cash to make an interest payment, his father sent a lawyer to one of the son's casinos to buy $3.5 million in chips without placing a bet. New Jersey's casino regulators imposed a $65,000 fine for what amounted to an illegal loan.

But Mr. Trump makes a point of not admitting misdeeds or mistakes. Even his failures he portrays as triumphs. "I made a lot of money in Atlantic City," he once said, "and I'm very proud of it."

Letting men make decisions about women's healthcare is like letting your dog make decisions about maintaining your vehicle because he likes to ride in it sometimes.

In all the different ways that Mr. Trump has upended the traditional rules of American politics, that may be one of the most striking. He has survived more scandals than any major party presidential candidate, much less president, in the life of the republic. Not only survived but thrived. He has turned them on their head, making allegations against him into an argument for him by casting himself as a serial victim rather than a serial violator.

His persecution defense, the notion that he gets in so much trouble only because everyone is out to get him, resonates at his rallies where he says "they're not coming after me, they're coming after you, and I'm just standing in the way." But that of course belies a record of scandal stretching across his 78 years starting long before politics. Whether in his personal life or his public life, he has been accused of so many acts of wrongdoing, investigated by so many prosecutors and agencies, sued by so many plaintiffs and claimants that it requires a scorecard just to remember them all.

His businesses went bankrupt repeatedly and multiple others failed. He was taken to court for stiffing his vendors, stiffing his bankers and even stiffing his own family. He avoided the draft during the Vietnam War and avoided paying any income taxes for years. He was forced to shell out tens of millions of dollars to students who accused him of scamming them, found liable for wide-scale business fraud and had his real estate firm convicted in criminal court of tax crimes.

He has boasted of grabbing women by their private parts, been reported to have cheated on all three of his wives and been accused of sexual misconduct by more than two dozen women, including one whose account was validated by a jury that found him liable for sexual abuse after a civil trial.

He is the only president in American history impeached twice for high crimes and misdemeanors, the only president ever indicted on criminal charges and the only president to be convicted of a felony (34, in fact). He used the authority of his office to punish his adversaries and tried to hold onto power on the basis of a brazen lie.

Mr. Trump beat some of the investigations and lawsuits against him and some proved unfounded, but the sheer volume is remarkable.

He described his experience, which included death threats that upended his life and required the CIA to provide him with round-the-clock protection, in interviews over the past two months. The Washington Post is granting him anonymity because of the ongoing concerns for his safety and has confirmed his account with more than a half dozen former senior officials.

His story mirrors those of dozens of other bureaucrats, diplomats, intelligence analysts, FBI agents, politicians and military officers who stood up to what they saw as efforts by Trump to subvert the country's democracy. Some of these officials were fired or resigned in protest. Others sought to temper Trump's demands without alienating him and, in the process, protect themselves and their institutions from retribution.

Trump has routinely described these people as participants in a "deep state" conspiracy to destroy the country and rob his voters of their voice. If elected next month to a second term, he's vowed to purge them from government.

FTA:

I love HuffPost's headline about this:

TRUMP SCHWING STATE STRATEGY

Since 2022, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, many states have made it all but impossible to get abortion care within their borders, and have done their best to isolate people facing unwanted or complicated pregnancies, making them afraid to reach out to medical providers or even to friends and loved ones who might help them. New laws have forced doctors to delay care in life-threatening situations and made women afraid to seek it, leading to preventable deaths. Did anyone really want this?

We asked people at the front lines of abortion access to help us understand how the new laws have filtered into their worlds. They answered our call with texts, audio messages, videos and pictures; some shared their stories anonymously out of fear of reprisal. Taken as a whole, their dispatches show us an untenable status quo, held together by sheer grit and determination. But for how much longer?

This presidential election will be the first since the Supreme Court ruled on Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, when voters will be presented with a choice: to try to rein in the chaos unleashed by the ruling or to live in a country that continues to be shaped by it.

Freedom is indeed on this year's ballot for all of us, even if many have no earthly idea of that being the case.

At that point the DNC needed a primary. Nothing she's done qualified her to run for president.

I'm surprised the internet is available wherever you live because it must be so misinformed there that evidently history books are only used to place your dunce caps upon. The states run primaries, not the parties. The primaries were all finished. There is no mechanism nor regulation that if a party's presumptive nominee drops out, every single primary must be held again.

Think of how stupid it is to even raise this as a probability! Tell us Einstein, just how would that happen at the end of July? How long would it take to organize each state and territory for a single race ballot? Who's going to pay for this expense, the Republican Party? Dems sure as hell aren't.

Again - as you obviously don't know nor understand - the parties themselves determine how their nominees are chosen, not state governments. As Danforth informed you, the Democratic National Committee DOES have party rules for such a contingency and they were followed to a T! There was an open call for candidates to enter a convention nomination race with the delegates deciding. Only one candidate did, Kamala Harris. None of the 25 other 2020 candidates - nor anyone else - threw their hat in the ring. So Kamala received the votes from delegates to win and become the 2024 Democratic Presidential nominee.

And being the Vice President for 4 years is the ultimate qualification for becoming President. And again, replacing the President is the chief role of the Vice President to begin with. This is why they're elected in the first place and not fireable by the President. The Vice President is the only member of the entire Executive Branch that doesn't serve at the President's leisure, she serves as the first person selected to move into the Presidency should the need occur.

And that, my troglodytic misanthrope, is the most important qualification for becoming the President and its dictate comes from inside the US Constitution itself.

If she was doing so well why did she drop out?

Because she had no constituency from which to win the nomination and she had no money to continue her attempt. Does logic not visit whatever hovel you pollute with your toxic presence?

You're the moron running around putting lipstick on a pig.

At least I'm not sucking the mushroom of one like you are.

Harris is the elected Vice President. When the President can or does not want to continue his service, she's the FIRST ONE in line constitutionally to take over. Why is this so hard for pinheads to understand?

Biden stepped down, Harris stepped up. That is all that matters. If America felt her unfit to be President, they never would have elected her Vice President, something JD Vance is getting ready to learn firsthand.

Because she failed miserably in 2020.

So tired of this insipidly stupid talking point repeated by the ignorant.

Strawlighter is simply being who he is. There should be zero dispute over the article's title and all the substantiation showing it's accuracy in its comparisons.

[W]hen Trump was swaying to music at a surreal rally, he did so in front of a huge slogan: Trump Was Right About Everything. This is language borrowed directly from Benito Mussolini, the Italian fascist. Soon after the rally, the scholar Ruth Ben-Ghiat posted a photograph of a building in Mussolini's Italy displaying his slogan: Mussolini Is Always Right.

[Trump] has said of immigrants, "They're poisoning the blood of our country" and "They're destroying the blood of our country." He has claimed that many have "bad genes." He has also been more explicit: "They're not humans; they're animals"; they are "cold-blooded killers." He refers more broadly to his opponents - American citizens, some of whom are elected officials - as "the enemy from within ... sick people, radical-left lunatics." Not only do they have no rights; they should be "handled by," he has said, "if necessary, National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military." Donald Trump's described his opponents as "radical-left thugs" who "live like vermin."

Adolf Hitler used these kinds of terms often. In 1938, he praised his compatriots who had helped "cleanse Germany of all those parasites who drank at the well of the despair of the Fatherland and the People." In occupied Warsaw, a 1941 poster displayed a drawing of a louse with a caricature of a Jewish face. The slogan: "Jews are lice: they cause typhus." Germans, by contrast, were clean, pure, healthy, and vermin-free.

Stalin used the same kind of language at about the same time. He called his opponents the "enemies of the people," implying that they were not citizens and that they enjoyed no rights. He portrayed them as vermin, pollution, filth that had to be "subjected to ongoing purification," and he inspired his fellow communists to employ similar rhetoric.