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Bruce Dowbiggin

Damar Hamlin & The Heart Of The Matter: Political Football Follies

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The defensive back wearing his white Buffalo Bills No. 3 jersey cut across the field, eyes lasered on his target. In full stride, he lowered his shoulder and hit the running back midsection, stopping him short. A textbook tackle. Nothing you don’t see in every NFL game.

What made this play so notable was the tackler, Damar Hamlin. The last tackle he’d made in competition last January was almost fatal. Here’s how we described it then. ā€œIt’s a scene few who witnessed it live or on TV will forget anytime soon. Buffalo Bills DB Damon Hamlin made a jarring tackle on Cincinnati’s Tee Higgins. They fell to the turf. The two men quickly resumed their feet to get back in position. It seemed like a routine play. Then Hamlin wavered and collapsed to the turf.

For football fans, seeing a player on the ground is, unfortunately, not unique. Injury occurs in a violent game.Ā Some in the crowd thought Hamlin might be faking to slow down the Bengals. But this moment was unlike almost any others. Players on both teams began urgently waving to medical staffs to attend to Hamlin.Ā 

As we know now, Hamlin was technically dead on the field. He was in the same crisis as Danish soccer star Christian Eriksen, who fell dead on the pitch at the 2021 Euro championships. Both men were in a frantic race for EMS help. Luckily the first responders reached both men in time to restart their hearts. Eriksen was able to resume his career after eight months following a diagnosis of cardiac arrest.ā€œ

As we know now, the game was cancelled as Hamlin fought for his life. But, like Eriksen, his conditioning and will brought him back to the point where, eight months later, he laid a crunching tackle, with no fear, on the Indianapolis Colts runner. ā€˜I made the choice that I wanted to play,ā€ he said after the game.

ā€œIt wasn’t nobody else’s choice but mine. So making that choice, I know what comes with it. When you see my cleats laced up and my helmet and shoulder pads on, there ain’t going to be no hesitation. You can’t play this game like that.ā€

While Hamlin is seemingly making his way back, the nasty debate over vaccine damage that started with his collapse still resonates from that January night. ā€œAlmost immediately the opposing sides in the debate over vaccine injuries leapt to social media to stake their sides in the argument— despite having no firsthand knowledge of Hamlin’s case. Some cited the diagnosis of commotio cordis, blunt-force trauma.

Others took up the ā€˜terrible, horrible people’ theme. Indianapolis Colts writer Gregg Doyel harkened back to the hysteria that prevailed over those who refused to be vaccinated. ā€œAnti-vaxxers using Buffalo safety Damar Hamlin to promote their deadly agenda are evil, and need to be exposed for what they are. Those who believe them are gullible, and need to understand they’ve been told lies.ā€

The denials flew fast and furious here and here.ā€ The debate that started over the efficacy of vaccines and the integrity of health care continues today. Anyone who thinks that the people who used intimidation to repress vaccine information since 2020 (Health Canada, Justin Trudeau, CDC, FDA, Anthony Fauci, Deborah Birx etc.) are now suddenly going to reveal, from the goodness of their hearts, anything that might show their duplicity doesn’t understand the links between the NFL, the government and Big Pharma.

As researcher John Leake explained, ā€œthe NFL is a member of theĀ COVID-19 Community Corps—a Biden Administration & HHS program for transferring money to participating organizations in exchange for promoting COVID-19 vaccination among their members. This may explain why Green Bay Packers quarterback, Aaron Rodgers, came under such immense pressure to receive the vaccine in spite of his known severe allergy to one of its ingredientsā€¦ā€

The vaccine enthusiasts are assisted by an elite commentariat that bit hard on the ā€œ15 days to flatten the curveā€ narrative to crush Donald Trump. And who’ve whitewashed dissent since at the behest of government officials in Canada and the U.S. (Twitter files now reveal that politicians used the media to ban reporters / columnists whose vaccine takes theyĀ didn’t like.)

With any reversals of their intimidation policy by CDC, WHO, Health Canada et al. why should anyone believe a sentence that comes out of the mouths of Big Pharma politicians, health officials, media and corporate shills these days? We needn’t list the misrepresentations (about the origin of the virus) they made while accusing others of misrepresenting the facts, but you can see but a few here. (Don’t get us started on the magic of masks.)Ā 

From Day One of the Covid panic the establishment side has insisted there’s only been one side to truth— even when, as revealed by Covid Task Force member Deborah Birx— they knew their policy was unsupported by data.Ā Now, via Twitter reveals and determined scientists, we see how the population was intimidated into accepting a policy pushed by Big Pharma.ā€

In recent days, these authorities have allowed that, maybe, the vaccine’s efficacy was oversold. Data shows that, far from being spreaders of Covid, anti-vaxxers are no more dangerous than people who’ve had five or six jabs. Only the most corrupt deny the lab source for the virus.

However, the hysterics who wanted neighbours dead because they declined to join a cult urged by medical elites are still silent as vaccines sit unused by the millions. That includes Canada’s PM who locked returning citizens into hotel jails and then declared a public emergency when truckers didn’t sign up for his bullshit. Crickets from him.

As we said in January: ā€œDamar Hamlin’s restored health will be one positive outcome of this frightening incident. The second should be the restoration of active public debate on healthcare. Both are to be celebrated.ā€

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Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public BroadcasterĀ  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx

BRUCE DOWBIGGIN Award-winning Author and Broadcaster Bruce Dowbiggin's career is unmatched in Canada for its diversity and breadth of experience . He is currently the editor and publisher of Not The Public Broadcaster website and is also a contributor to SiriusXM Canada Talks. His new book Cap In Hand was released in the fall of 2018. Bruce's career has included successful stints in television, radio and print. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster for his work with CBC-TV, Mr. Dowbiggin is also the best-selling author of "Money Players" (finalist for the 2004 National Business Book Award) and two new books-- Ice Storm: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Vancouver Canucks Team Ever for Greystone Press and Grant Fuhr: Portrait of a Champion for Random House. His ground-breaking investigations into the life and times of Alan Eagleson led to his selection as the winner of the Gemini for Canada's top sportscaster in 1993 and again in 1996. This work earned him the reputation as one of Canada's top investigative journalists in any field. He was a featured columnist for the Calgary Herald (1998-2009) and the Globe & Mail (2009-2013) where his incisive style and wit on sports media and business won him many readers.

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Bruce Dowbiggin

Canadians Thinks America Owes Them. Trump Has Other Ideas

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Breaking: It’s now being reported that in the 2024 U.S. election, zero Canadians voted for Donald Trump. In fact, zero Canadians voted for anyone on the ballot. They’re not allowed to. And yet rage monkeys in the Canadian media seem to have the idea that Canada is— and should be— an immediate priority of POTUS 47.

Here’s Globe & Mail/ CBC wind therapist Andrew Coyne about ten exits past normal on the idea of Donald Trump on Canadian soil. Okay, on Alberta soil. ā€œWe’re going to roll out the red carpet for the wannabe dictator of America at the very moment he is moving to suppress dissent with armed force?ā€ (You mean like the Truckers Convoy?)

Cartoonist Michael DeAdder, who likely cries if you use improper pronouns, says ā€œHold my kombuchaā€. His latest etching has Trump asking a veteran what he did in the war. The witty retort is ā€œFought against people like youā€. Get it? Trump murders six millions Jews. But The Hill keeps this guy working, and the laughs just keep on coming. Free speech!

The presumption is jaw-dropping. Even as Trump’s approval rating hits 53 percent, Canadians online were echoing Democrats’ fever dreams of forming a shadow government to take over from Trump via coup. This sense of impunity at a distance is why the Canadian government— along with other drive-by virtue signallers UK, Norway, New Zealand, and Australia— have imposed sanctions on two sitting members of the Israeli cabinet. They know it will rile Trump’s America.

For ordinary Canadians, Trump became a post-it note to justify giving Team Liberal another swing at ruining the nation. ā€œWe used to be such friends! He’s a tyrant.!ā€ This just in: Love him or hate him Trump is employed by Americans to do their bidding. He’s not a sentimental buddy of Canada who’ll cut us some slack for old time’s sake. He has no remittance from Canada to please the Laurentian elites. If your defence is non-existent and your military gender-obsessed: you had it coming.

Are his policies jostling Canada? Absolutely. Read Art of the Deal. The 51st state jibe when Justin soiled himself was rude. But it worked on pliant Canadian liberals. Now the The Little Banker is disavowing the dissolute decade of Trudeau while employing Conservatives’ policies on defence spending, inter-provincial trade and border security. Hell, he’s naming longtime Tories to his personal staff.

In the end Carney knows this ain’t mock Parliament. That his dossier begins and ends with satisfying the beast to the south. None of this should be a surprise. Yet Canadians dozed when Trump made clear in his election campaign that the American economy is the greatest in the world. If you want to fish in that pond it’s not going to be for free. That means tariffs for a range of U.S. industries that couldn’t compete in a Biden world.

We can argue how well tariffs work, but Trump wants them to reduce taxes on the people who elected him. Not the Canadians who fly first class but pay economy. And who have pushed his approval ratings into the 50s, higher than ever before. (Likely to spike higher after the No Kings Riot season peters out.)

No wonder Canadians preferred the guy before Trump, the senile sock puppet whose government was run by anonymous figures using the auto-pen. Sleepy Joe let Canada slide into mediocrity and financial peril without any judgement. It was comfortable. Then The Donald had the nerve to expose the ditch Canada was in.

Canada, Trump pointed out,Ā  was delinquent on its defence, harbouring Chinese drug lords, printing money like Canadian Tire and its banks were involved in money laundering. That was the nice stuff. Try Organized fentanyl networks operating with impunity in the largest cities of the nation So dumping on Trump in salty cartoons allows Canada’s Mod Squad to ignore the real issues that should have been litigated in the April election.

We have written extensively about the ruse that was played on gormless Canadians inĀ  ā€œU.S. Voters Smelled A Rat But Canadian Voters Bought The Cheeseā€ We have catalogued Canada’s drug and money laundering disgrace in ā€œChinese Gangs Dominate Canada: Why Will Voters Give Liberals Another Term?ā€ We’ve described the real-estate bubble economy created by Trudeau and sidekick Carney that threatens to crash the economy and ruin seniors’ pensions in

In the end, it is still la-la-la-la We Can’t Hear You. Trump-obsessed Boomers more concerned with the equity in their jumped-up bungalows gave the finger to the next generations and blamed it all on Orange Man Bad. In the monotone of Canadian political comment it all seemed so easy. Turn against Trump. Cash another dividend. Cheer on MSNBC and CNN bitch sessions.

The Family Compact don’t get it. Their Antifa heroes down south plan demos and ā€œnonviolentā€ activity to crater the public resolve. In Canada that still works. But in the U.S. the Covid reverb is hitting the natural governing class of the nation. While they craft fine phrases about democracy the consumers remember them using a virus to stop society.

The appetite for Gavin Newsom blovaitors and Jen Psaki fart catchers is crashing in America. Riots may be coming in the U.S., but it won’t be likeĀ  George Floyd and Covid and the pussy hats. At some point Canada’s docile classes better wake up, too.Ā America owes them nothing. They need to earn the respect.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public BroadcasterĀ  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

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Bruce Dowbiggin

Simone Biles Fails To Stick The Landing Going After Riley Gaines

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Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them. George Orwell

Or, in the case of Olympic legend Simone Biles, only gymnasts believe in the incendiary issue of trans men competing in women’s sports. Biles, who has made a secondary career as an object of pity, took exception when former swimmer Riley Gaines, an opponent of trans men competing against women, sent a picture of Minnesota softball team that recently won a state title with a pitcher who is reported to be transgender.

ā€œComments off lol,’ Gaines wrote in response to the post which wasn’t permitting any comments from the public. ā€œTo be expected when your star player is a boy.ā€

That brought Biles into the fray. ‘You’re truly sick, all of this campaigning because you lost a race. Straight up sore loser. ‘You should be uplifting the trans community and perhaps finding a way to make sports inclusive OR creating a new avenue where trans feel safe in sports. Maybe a transgender category IN ALL sports!! ‘But instead… You bully them… One things for sure is no one in sports is safe with you around!!!!!’

She then poked Gaines again, saying: ‘Bully someone your own size, which would ironically be a male.ā€ (Gaines husband is 6-foot-4)

The loser reference was to Gaines having lost to a trans swimmer in an NCAA race. Since then Gaines has launched a campaign to outlaw biological males from competing with cisgendered girls and women. She has testified in the U.S. Congress and has appeared in numerous interviews espousing a position supported by the vast majority of Americans.

One might think the proof of this position— unquestioned as recently as a decade ago— would be obvious. But Biles andĀ  gender radicals who’ve tried to make trans into the Emancipation Proclamation of the 21st century are not giving up the fight.

Here’s someone named Nancy Armour in USA Today. ā€œThere is no scientific evidence that transgender women athletes have a physical advantage over cisgender women athletes, but that hasn’t stopped Gaines from claiming they do..ā€ When legislation banning trans men in girls/ women sports was presented in the U.S. Congress 106 Democrats voted against the motion. The chattering class on CBC, MSNBC and CNN likewise have a cohort of those opposing the ban.

But it was the outburst from Biles that most appalled fans who’d worshipped her as the GOAT of Olympic gymnastics and then sympathized with her victimization by Dr. Larry Nasser. Even when she bailed on her teammates at the 2024 Games they cut her slack. But suddenly a woman who’s preached against body shaming and intolerance was deriding a fellow athlete’s body and mocking her complaints.

Critics were quick to post Biles’ hypocrisy about compassion, citing her own tear-stained testimony about how she was taken advantage by a doctor. Here’s how we described her psychological distress last August during the Olympics. ā€œProminent among them was gymnast Simone Biles who described the abuse she’d suffered from a male trainer and on social media as the greatest female gymnast in history. Even as she added more golds to her mantle she’d seemed unable to find peace in her accomplishments.

ā€œDue to mental blocks, she’d had to step away from the sport for a time to get her head straight. She had a lot of company from fellow competitors who described sexual harassment and intimidation on social media for their unhappiness. (Hence the constant mental health commercials on the TV broadcasts.)ā€

Now the same role model is mocking Gaines? It seems unthinkable. As for the claims that men have no advantage against women, it was pointed out that there are zero women who try to reverse the equation, going into men’s sports. They show the hard truths about competitive records of men versus women in a range of sports. They describe the physical risks for women playing against larger, stronger men. Here. Here. And here.

It’s still stunning to see Biles toeing the radical LGBTQ line while asking for traditional pity of a victimized woman herself. Or the amount of support that the cause has garnered from progressives throughout society. When did people became so obtuse about the growth this societal contagion?

We wrote earlier this year about how such notions take hold. MacDonald Laurier Institute fellow Mia Hughes charted a history of similar social contagions such as bulimia and multiple-personality disorder. ā€œIn 1972, British psychologist Gerald Russell treated a woman with an unusual eating disorder involving binging and purging. Over the next seven years, he saw a further 30 woman presenting with the same condition. In 1979, he wrote a paper published in Psychological Medicine, in which he gave it the name bulimia nervosa….

ā€œThen something remarkable happened. The illness swept the globe like wildfire… affecting an estimated 30 million people by the mid-1990s, the majority of whom were teenage girls and young women. The explanation for this rapid spread is what philosopher Ian Hacking calls ‘semantic contagion’ – how the process of naming and describing a condition creates the means by which the condition spreads. The epidemic of multiple-personality disorder in the 90s was spread this same way… Multiple studies demonstrate the media’s culpability in the spread of social contagions.ā€

The new contagion is trans athletes. USA Today is just one example of how influencers try to legitimize campaigns to boost their own self esteem. As the battle to reverse the trans incursion shows, there are only too many willing to play politics in the gender debate. Like the pro-Palestinian movement in North America the trans athlete hoax exists is a bubble where reality and fiction can co-exist, knowing they’ll never be put to the test.

Orwell called it doublethink ā€œthe power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.ā€ Biles and the liberal elites have it mastered. Nursing their grievance while finding it a fault in others.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public BroadcasterĀ  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, Bruce is regular media contributor. The new book from there team of Evan & Bruce Dowbiggin is Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL & Changed Hockey. From Espo to Boston in 1967 to Gretz in L.A. in 1988 to Patrick Roy leaving Montreal in 1995, the stories behind the story. In paperback and Kindle on #Amazon. Destined to be a hockey best seller. https://www.amazon.ca/Deal-Trades-Stunned-Changed-Hockey-ebook/dp/B0D236NB35/

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