Don’t you wish VEEP was still on? So many new plot lines. Have you heard the one about the U.S. president who told the Canadian PM that his country was soon going to be the 51st state in the Union? But that the PM (who’d insulted him for a decade) could still remain on as governor? And the P.M. laughed? And, as a joke, the president wouldn’t let the PM stay at his swanky resort that night?

Or how about the one about the famous actor who staged a coup against a sitting president—in collaboration with Barack Obama? Yeah, and how the guy they were screwing got them back by endorsing his useless VP to replace him? And now the actor is furious with Obama for taking a powder now that the election was a disaster?

Oh wait… there’s also the one about the 45th president who was impeached for asking questions about how Ukraine was laundering hundreds of millions  in natural gas profits using the previous VP’s crack-addicted son? Yeah, and how that VPOTUS, now POTUS, just pardoned his son for the clandestine activities everyone in the Blob claimed were false when 45 was impeached?

And last but not least, have you heard the one about that female VPOTUS who was thrown into the breach of a presidential campaign against a former POTUS? How, in subbing for her boss the president, she burned through a billion dollars while getting the electoral golden sombrero— losing the White House, the Senate and the House? And how the bottomless well of  DEM donors is so pissed at her that they’re talking about never donating again?

Which one would you make into a Veep episode first? Decisions, decisions.

It takes a lot to impress veteran followers of politics in Canada, the U.S. and Russia. One of these Hey Martha stories in a year would be enough to fill a copybook with story ideas. But these four— plus a lot more just holding fire at the moment— all happening simultaneously? It’s an embarrassment of riches. Okay, just an embarrassment.

For the liberal left in Canada and the U.S. Donald Trump’s bare-knuckled diplomacy is to blame for all this. His rude, unyielding attacks on limousine Canadian liberals, the safe-space feminists and the radicals on the Left are to blame for a coarsening of society. It’s why they blamed him for “inciting” the Jan. 6 riots even though he specifically urged his followers to be peaceful.

It’s also why they so casually shrugged off the two assassination attempts on Trump during the campaign. The idea that any of the turmoil (see: summer of 2020 George Floyd riots) they encouraged themselves resulted in societal breakdown is simply preposterous. If they had any doubts the scribes and town criers of their media assured them it was all Trump, all the time. Not them.

But they also knew they’d reached a crisis with the re-nomination of Joe Biden. Increasingly addled and erratic Biden was threatening to blow the election. His polling stunk. So Obama convinced his noted thespian pal George Clooney to publicly call for Biden’’s withdrawal. If he balked they were to cut off the donations (then aimed at a billion). Cooney penned a traitor’s editorial. It worked, as Biden bitterly conceded when pushed out of the job.

But he left a little candy on the pillow in the form of Kamala Harris. Sadly this was a bitter treat. If possible she performed worse than Biden. When the dust settled on the electoral rout, Obama had left town, leaving Clooney as the fall guy in the coup. The friendly media softened the blow of his bad reviews by ignoring the nasty “coup” word. (It was also easier to hide when 60 percent of their viewing audiences disappeared post Nov. 5.)

Biden still wasn’t done with his revenge on Team Obama/ Clooney. For months he’d vowed that his respect for the law was so great he would not rescue his whoring son if he was in danger of jail. No pardon. Then, on his way out the WH door Biden dropped his bomb on those who’d fired him. No pardon become a big pardon. Not for just gun charges, but for anything he’d done dating back to starting work in Ukraine in 2014.

His admirers were left to explain how their fawning compliments to Biden’s judgement were now blowing upon their faces. As DEMs Senate leader Chuck Schumer said when asked about the about-face, “I’ve got nothing for you on that file.” Some tried to praise his fatherly instincts, defending his son. The came stories that his son had blackmailed him over the Thanksgiving Day holiday saying he was working on a book about the family shakedown business.

Which led swiftly to a pardon. And more embarrassing moments for the sycophants of Team Biden. Trump moved on quickly, declaring that he would slap 25 percent tariffs on Canada if Justin Trudeau didn’t abandon his Boy Scout badges and finally put his house in order. One noted CDN businessman suggested Trump look past Trudeau to PM-in-waiting Pierre Poilievere. “He’ll be getting whacked soon,” said Kevin O’Leary.

Which opened the door for Canada’s 25-percent-approval-PM to scuttle quickly to Trump’s Mar A Lago resort in Florida to forestall disaster. After pleasantries were done, Trump then dropped his little jibe about Canada going the U.S. if it was too expensive to solve balance-of-trade issues. For Trump it was a wakeup call to his neighbours.  AI produced images of Trump standing beside a Canadian flag while surveying Mount Assiniboine (or the Matterhorn).

For gormless Canadians who’ve gotten their U.S. news from Rachel Maddow and the CBC for over a generation it was all too much. @jeancharest “If I were President Trump, I’d think twice before invading Canada. The last time the U.S. tried something like that— back in the War of 1812 —it didn’t exactly end well. Canada even burned down the White House.” (Editor’s note: Canada was not a country in 1812. The British burned Washington.)

“We Canadians of all political stripes are very angry at this” tweeted a Toronto writer . B.C.’s minister of state for trade, Rick Glumac, tried comedy. “I guess, I got one message for president-elect Donald Trump – this is Canada, so take off, eh?” More sober commentators pointed out that admitting 40 million Canadian liberals would ensure a permanent DEM rule in the U.S. While Trump’s “light-hearted” suggestion  died back it’s clear Trump knows what he wants and how to get it this time in the WH.

Which reminds us, did you ever hear there one about the president who was considered washed-up?

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  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. 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.

We were watching the NFL on U.S. Thanksgiving Day with a posse of passionate Detroit Lions fans. In between their efforts to convince us to return as Lions fans after our nasty divorce with the team a few years ago, they excitedly talked about the team’s dynamic running backs David Montgomery and Jahmyr Gibbs.

Montgomery is Thunder and Gibbs is Lightning as the Lions head toward what might be their first Super Bowl appearance. Ever. As in, not a sniff of a title since they played the NFL championship game in 1957. But we digress. Montgomery, who has 11 TDs, is signed at a comfortable $5.056 M per year on a two-year contract. Gibbs, who has 10 TDs, is on the second year of his rookie deal that averages $4,461,283 a year.

Naturally, the Lions fans want Gibbs signed to a deal so they don’t lose him when he’s a free agent in 2027. But here’s where it gets tricky. In a previous NFL, when RBs were prime attractions, Gibbs would be among the NFL’s top money earners when he’s free to take offers. It doesn’t work that way anymore. The days of Walter Payton and Barry Sanders are over. Even with a slight resurgence in the NFL’s running game in 2024 RBs are still values as penny stocks.

Last July we looked at the reality of two star backs coming off rookie deals. “Las Vegas Raiders RB Josh Jacobs looked at the reality of being a running back in today’s NFL and caught the 6 AM flight out of Vegas. New York Giants RB Saquon Barkley looked at the reality of being a running back in today’s NFL and signed a one-year deal for $10.1 million. The incentives in the deal will be very challenging for Barkley. He said he had an “epiphany”. Or maybe a chat with his banker. 

Same situation. Different response. As players coming off their rookie-capped contracts both Jacobs and Barkley found a market that valued running backs just above place kickers on the economic totem pole. Prone to injury and undercut by a steady stream of star running backs emerging from the Draft, veteran running backs across the league now found themselves squeezed on short-term deals for what constitutes pocket change for quarterbacks.”

In the offseason Barkley ditched the Giants for a three-year deal with the Eagles that earns him $13 M with a lowly $3.8 M cap hit. The man who could well be the NFL MVP is 13th on the Eagles salary cap, squeezed between Milton Williams and kicker Jake Elliott. He’s hoping this breakthrough season will recoup the money the Giants declined to pay him coming off is rookie deal.

Jacobs, meanwhile, has become the Green Bay Packers MVOP playing for $ 12 M in the first year of a four-season contract. But the two of them are small fry next to QB Patrick Mahomes’ $450 M contract, Joe Burrows’ and Trevor Lawrence’s $275 M deal or Deshaun Watson’s guaranteed $230 M to stink it up in Cleveland. To say nothing of the $140.6 M going to Tampa Bay’s LT Tristan Wirfs or the $140 M deals for WRs Davante Adams of TB and Minnesota’s Justin Jefferson. How come?

It is, of course, all a matter of sports caponomics . (For more on the evolution of salary caps in sports leagues read our book Cap In Hand: How Salary Caps are Killing Pro Sports and Why the Free Market Could Save Them. brucedowbigginbooks.ca)

Scarcity drives value, and the most scarce commodity is not excellent running backs. It’s excellent quarterbacks. Scarcity is why left offensive tackles make more than guards and centres. It’s why cornerbacks make more than middle linebackers. It’s why these positions are drafted in the first round while running backs and others slide to the later rounds. Gibbs’ first-round selection by Detroit was widely seen as too early for the position and, thus, a cap mistake.

As we remarked in Cap In Hand, the NFL knew it was a two-tier league back in 1987 when it busted a strike by the NFL Players Association for free agency. “There had been no new CBA since the 1982 agreement expired in 1987. To drain the NFLPA’s bank account, the NFL had previously created a “Quarterback Club” marketing arm separate from other players. While the league’s top QBs and select others were handsomely compensated with bonuses and percentages of sales, the move denied significant marketing revenues to the rest of the players and the union.”

End of strike. You’d think that with agents advising RBs and the market establishing value running backs would put pride aside. Nah. Running back Le’Veon Bell described the process when he turned down guaranteed wealth in Pittsburgh in 2022. “My franchise tag was $14.5M, and I walked away from it,” Bell said on the AP Pro Football Podcast. “It’s a respect thing. You told me you were going to do this for me but you didn’t… I could’ve just ignored it, went inside the locker room and had been playing. 

“But that wouldn’t have made me happy, and I’m sure inside the locker room, everybody would’ve felt it, and, as a team, we wouldn’t have been good. I feel that’s the same with Saquon. He’s trying to be the best he can, but obviously deep down, he’s not happy, because he wanted to be compensated. He still wants his teammates to be good, so he showed up.”

Bell’s own gamble didn’t work out, as he’s drifted from the Jets to the Ravens to the Buccaneers. Now he’s training to be a boxer. From leading man to bit player. He’ll never make up the money he’s lost by choosing to be a glamourous-but-unappreciated RB. But ask yourself, at what other position in what other league would the three best players at a single position be allowed to switch team from 2023-24?.

That’s what happened last winter when top candidates for 2024 OPOY— Barkley, Jacobs and Derrick Henry— all departed their former teams for slightly better paydays on the Eagles, Packers and Ravens. Doesn’t seem to make sense. Till you see 49ers star RB Christian McCaffrey injured again Sunday night in Buffalo with a PCL tear. Then you understand why teams are unwilling to take a longterm gamble on the man carrying the rock.

And why we’ll stay fans of the Buffalo Bills and their QB $258 Million QB Josh Allen for the time being.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  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. 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.