Fighting the economic apartheid of “environmental, social, and governance” investing has become a universal goal among conservatives, but Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon has no problem with it taking root in the Cowboy State. Perhaps, we shouldn’t be surprised. Gordon, a bona fide "Republican in name only," has empowered environmentalists in Wyoming and has said the state will be “carbon negative” — which will effectively result in de-civilization.

Now, Gordon has vetoed a rule that would have clamped down on ESG.

It’s ironic how Gordon suddenly doesn’t like telling private businesses what to do after he imposed so many restrictions during COVID.

Secretary of State Chuck Gray, widely regarded as the leader of Wyoming’s conservatives, proposed a rule last year that would require any financial advisor, stockbroker, or securities agent to inform his investors of any investments based on environmental, social, and governance factors.

(In Wyoming, the secretary of state not only oversees elections but is also the chief regulator of securities. He is also next in line to the governor’s office, as Wyoming is one of five U.S. states that has no lieutenant governor.)

Under Gray’s proposal, anyone who does business in Wyoming would simply have to disclose to investors — who presumably are interested in maximizing profits — whether they are basing decisions on social goals that are not necessarily profitable at all.

Importantly, Gray’s rule would not ban private investors from pursuing ESG goals. It merely would have policed a form of securities fraud that is well within the purview of securities regulation.

As other red states begin to resist ESG, Gray felt it was important to prevent this fraud in Wyoming, especially given the environmentalist assault on the state.

“With an increasing trend of mutual funds and brokerage firms being pressured by woke politicians to push ESG principles that are totally in opposition with our Wyoming values, we must take an active role to protect our state and consumers,” Gray said last year.

Sounds simple enough for a state that votes Republican by a 40-point margin, right? Well, not when you have a governor who is a Democrat in disguise. Gordon last month struck 12 line items from Gray’s proposed rule, including the core requirement that investors disclose ESG or other non-profit-maximizing investment strategies.

Wyoming’s constitution gives the governor power to veto regulations by agencies under the control of other state-elected officials, including the secretary of state, in addition to those agencies under his direct authority. But it’s a power rarely exercised, particularly when it comes to high-profile issues. Gordon gave no warning about his veto, so, clearly, he’s passionate about his opposition to this commonsense proposal.

Keep in mind that Gordon supports the global warming agenda as well as the transgender social agenda. He refuses to support legislation to ban the chemical castration of minors, for example. But rather than admit that he agrees with ESG on its merits, he justified his veto on limited government principles.

“While I agree that ESG investment guidance is improper and misleading, the answer to too much government interference in our lives is not more government,” Gordon said in a press release. “No government should have the right to direct people’s personal investment strategies.”

Nobody is trying to dictate how a private individual may invest his money. ESG is not banned in the private sector under Gray’s proposed rule. Fact is, securities regulators generally require disclosure when investment brokers are not intending to use funds for profit maximization. ESG should be no different. Disclosure is key.

It’s ironic how Gordon suddenly doesn’t like telling private businesses what to do after he imposed mask mandates during COVID. His heavy-handed restrictions led to the arrest of a 16-year-old girl for refusing to mask herself at a public high school. So, his excuse is disingenuous at best.

Gordon in his veto statement accused Gray of using his regulation as “a thinly veiled attempt to inject unwarranted political ideology into the lives of everyday Wyoming citizens.” He also called it “an affront to personal choice and a free market” and an invasion of “personal responsibility and liberty.” That’s rich coming from a governor who opposes any legislation to return health care decisions to the individual.

With the advent of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, Gray is no longer alone in his fight to expose the uniparty. “The governor parrots the favorite talking points of all Wyoming liberals who hate conservative ideas — ‘It’s preempted by the feds!’” said State Rep. Rachel Rodriguez-Williams, a freedom caucus member, in an interview with Blaze News. “As usual, he is wrong. States have a duty to protect the people, and in order to do so we must hold fiduciaries accountable.”

Perhaps it’s time for a new governor in Wyoming who is actually a Republican. Chuck Gray might be the perfect man for the job.

Don’t hate — congratulate Dana White and the UFC for Bud Light’s surrender

I don’t think Dana White and the UFC sold out. Bud Light did.

Anheuser-Busch forking over more than $100 million in advertising to America’s most masculine sport is what victory looks like in the gender and sexuality culture war.

Bud Light and Dana White on Tuesday announced they were renewing their partnership. Bud Light had been one of the original sponsors of the UFC. In recent years, Modelo replaced Bud Light as the beer sponsor of White’s mixed martial arts league. According to a source familiar with the deal, Bud Light doubled the amount Modelo was paying, agreeing to pay the UFC approximately $25 million per year over six years.

This is victory. We took a scalp. We forced the diversity, equity, and inclusion gods to wave a white flag of surrender inside a major corporation. We pillaged Bud Light’s marketing department. Dylan Mulvaney’s favorite beer brand capitulated. And it did so rather quickly.

It was just seven months ago that Bud Light partnered with Mulvaney, a transgender actor-vist, during March Madness. The brand splashed Mulvaney’s face on a Bud Light can, sparking an instant outrage and boycott. Rocker Kid Rock filmed himself shooting cans of Bud Light with a submachine gun in his back yard. Sales of Bud Light dipped 30%. Anheuser-Busch stock plummeted.

The company has been scrambling ever since to plug the gaping wound created by its desire to embrace the LGBTQIA+ Alphabet Mafia. Bud Light cut NFL star Travis Kelce a check to pitch the beer. Football fans roasted Kelce for selling out.

I’m sure some people will criticize White for bailing out the troubled beer. But I disagree. The record sponsorship deal for the UFC is a win for America first and MAGA.

Anheuser-Busch and Bud Light are not going away. I want them spending their money with businesses that reflect their customer base. Dylan Mulvaney doesn’t drink Bud Light. He probably drinks piña coladas and cosmopolitans. Dana White and UFC fans drink beer and support the kind of rugged masculinity that is under attack in America.

“Anheuser-Busch and Bud Light were UFC’s original beer sponsors more than 15 years ago,” White said in a statement. “I’m proud to announce we are back in business together. There are many reasons why I chose to go with Anheuser-Busch and Bud Light, most importantly because I feel we are very aligned when it comes to core values and what the UFC brand stands for.”

The boycott realigned Bud Light’s values. I don’t think White and the UFC realigned theirs. Why would they? They’ve cornered the sports market on masculinity.

The NFL is transitioning into a powder puff league. Every Sunday, we see more and more evidence that Roger Goodell’s league prioritizes safety above competition, female fans over men, the Alphabet Mafia above traditional values. This week, the NFL flagged a defensive tackle for gently shoving quarterback Jalen Hurts and suspended a Denver Broncos safety for a routine hit.

The NBA came out of the closet years ago. This week, Adam Silver’s league celebrated its first nonbinary referee, Che’ Flores, who uses they-them pronouns and wants to be a role model for kids.

The leaders of the NFL are praying for the day when a woman or transgender person competes in their league. ESPN would love nothing more than to showcase two transgenders celebrating victory while cuddling in a hot tub.

Meanwhile, Dana White is holding the line.

“Let me put it to you this way: I have a daughter; I don’t ever want to see a day where somebody who is a biological male is competing against my daughter,” White said in an interview with Piers Morgan when asked about a transgender martial artist competing in the UFC. “No, I think it’s another nutty, insane thing that’s happening in the world today that we’re all trying to deal with. My daughter is a cheerleader; she’s not playing any competitive sports. It hasn’t happened in the cheer world yet.”

Well, that’s not actually accurate. The Carolina Panthers have a transgender cheerleader.

I’m not the hugest mixed martial arts fan. When it comes to combat sports, I still prefer the sweet science of boxing. But I’m a big supporter of Dana White and what the UFC represents.

White has never backed down from publicly backing Donald Trump. White is authentic. I trust what I hear from him. I value authenticity above most everything else. Men have lost their authenticity. White hasn’t.

This entire Bud Light scenario has shown us the way forward. We have to stand our ground as men. Eventually the sellouts and feminists will crawl back to us to restore their credibility.

That’s what happened here. Bud Light folded, not White and the UFC.

Whitlock: The new launch of Blaze News sends ground troops to the front lines of the information war

The highest and most impactful form of communication is the written word. I have believed that for most of my life.

God’s decision to release the Bible in written form rather than video or audio justifies my assertion. He breathed mankind into existence, and when we completely lost our way, He chose to guide, inform, and encourage us with words on a page.

Doubting the power of written text is to doubt the Creator of our inalienable rights.

Thomas Jefferson, this nation’s most profound Founding Father, recognized the power and importance of writing and reading.

“The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people,” Jefferson wrote in 1787, “the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them.”

The enemies of American freedom and founding principles have used Big Tech to de-emphasize the written word, amplify the power of video, and manipulate language to distort foundational truth and dumb down our citizenry.

The pervasive chaos, perversion, and corruption you see overrunning America are directly tied to the assault on the written word and newspapers. The information war is a dispute over language and access to truth.

Through its relationship with Big Tech, the secular left controls the distribution and reach of accurate information.

I’m telling you what you already know. You’ve seen Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and the newspapers that rely on these platforms disappear the Hunter Biden laptop story. We all suffered the consequences after the same cabal magnified the drug-induced death of George Floyd to trigger massive, sustained, and violent unrest across the country. The same group has defined half of this country’s citizens as potential domestic terrorists and plotters of an insurrection.

At some point, we have to do more than complain. We have to take bold steps to end our dependence on platforms that openly despise our worldview and values.

Today Blaze Media has taken a bold step. We’re relaunching our website, TheBlaze.com, and freeing it from internet advertising. This is far more important than it sounds. When publishers like Blaze News host ads on their websites, Google and other major ad exchanges use bots to scan stories for content they deem “unsafe” for advertisers. When an article is deemed “unsafe,” Google then demands that the advertisements be removed and threatens to demonetize the entire website. If we refuse to back down, Google then uses its algorithms to bury the story.

So just imagine Steve Deace writing a piece at the height of the COVID pandemic explaining the stupidity of masks and an experimental medical trial labeled a vaccine. That story has no chance of reaching a wide audience. Google and Facebook won’t allow it.

Here’s another hypothetical: Imagine me writing a column explaining from a biblical point of view why transgenderism is an affront to God. That story would be considered “unsafe” for advertisers. Google and Facebook would do everything in their algorithmic power to prevent people from reading it.

Big Tech is pressuring publishers and content creators to adopt a secular worldview for financial and/or relevance success.

I started writing opinion pieces in 1992 when I took a job at the Ann Arbor News. On every platform, whether it be the Ann Arbor News, the Kansas City Star, ESPN.com, FoxSports.com, AOLSports.com, J.school, or OutKick, my columns never had a problem reaching a wide audience.

I’ve written my most consistently profound and impactful pieces in the last three years writing for Blaze News. At the same time, Big Tech has turned up the algorithmic headwind against my work. When you Google my name, it’s easier to find pieces I wrote about Kobe Bryant 20 years ago than anything I wrote last week.

What I say about Black Lives Matter, Deion Sanders, Megan Rapinoe, the murder of Tyre Nichols, Stephen A. Smith, Josh Allen, and Colin Kaepernick will go viral. What I write about the exact same subjects has a much harder time reaching the masses.

Big Tech and the left control the written word. They realize its importance.

Do we?

Blaze Media is going to take a significant financial hit disconnecting from the major ad agencies. We’re also adding additional staff to fortify the site and create more original content. It is a high-risk move. It’s a move I support. I would rather write in support of God’s truth for less money and to a small remnant than write compromised lies to a wider audience for more money.

I don’t want to be popular. I want to be saved, and I want to save the freedoms our ancestors fought, died, and sacrificed for against forces just as wicked as the enemy we face today.

We need you in this fight with us. You’re going to love the new TheBlaze.com. It looks far better. It’s much easier to read and navigate without all the distracting advertisements. We need your direct support to pull this off successfully. If you haven’t already, sign up for a general Blaze subscription and Blaze News.

Support the written word. Support the form of communication that saves souls and can save our republic.

Whitlock: Shaun King and ‘narrative blackness’ distanced black people from God

Shaun King is a “Narrative Negro.”

He’s not black. Not even close. Check his birth certificate. Check his childhood pictures. As a child, he looked like Opie Taylor. As an adult, he looks like the white man listed on his birth certificate.

But what we’ve learned in the past 20 years is that blackness isn’t a skin color. It’s a narrative. Narrative Negroes are people — regardless of skin color — who devote their lives and public personas to advancing the line that black Americans are perpetual victims of white supremacy.

King, the Black Lives Matter activist, is the Narrative Negro of the past decade. No one has been more committed to the cause of black victimhood than King, the white global-elite asset who rose to national prominence standing on the coffins of Michael Brown and George Floyd.

King’s usefulness to the cause may be coming to an end, however. It appears his puppet masters might be done with him.

Over the weekend, King took credit for playing a role in the release of an American Jewish hostage, 17-year-old Natalie Raanan. Raanan’s family released a statement denying any contact or relationship with King.

“Our family does not and did not have anything to do with him, neither directly nor indirectly. Not to him and not to anything he claims to represent,” they said.

In response, King posted screenshots of direct messages between himself and Natalie Raanan’s brother.

Shaun King is Frankenstein. He’s a Narrative Negro monster who now fashions himself as an international diplomat and activist. His job is to advance the narrative that black Americans are victims, not to involve himself in disputes between Israelis and Arabs. King is done as a social media influencer. For the past 72 hours, he’s been the subject of X and Instagram memes trashing his reputation.

It’s now perfectly acceptable to point out that King’s public persona is fraudulent. This is the inevitable fate of all Narrative Negroes. They’re discarded the moment they’re no longer useful or foolishly deviate from the script they were handed.

The exact same thing happened to Colin Kaepernick last month. A letter he wrote begging the New York Jets for a job magically became public. The letter exposed the fraudulence of Kaepernick’s contention that the NFL is a slave plantation. Seven years after Kaepernick took a knee, black people are now no longer required to pretend the former 49ers quarterback is the second coming of Muhammad Ali.

He’s just another Narrative Negro. No one has ever known who Kaepernick’s father is. He was adopted and raised by a lovely white family. His biological mother was white. Kaepernick’s “blackness” was contingent on his ability to paint black people as victims.

Narrative Negro-ness is the ultimate cosplay for identity-confused mixed-race Americans. It’s lucrative and reputation-enhancing. Bubba Wallace juiced his NASCAR career by advancing the narrative. Nikole Hannah-Jones, aka Homegirl da Clown, won a Pulitzer Prize crafting the narrative with her “1619 Project” at the New York Times. Barack Obama won the White House.

Jussie Smollett is one of the few Halfrican-Americans to bungle being a Narrative Negro. His staged racial assault went too far. It was too far-fetched.

Smollett should have followed the lead of LeBron James.

Yes, LeBron James is also a Narrative Negro. Remember, blackness isn’t a skin color. It’s a narrative. To qualify for authentic or “unapologetic” blackness, you must advance the narrative of perpetual black oppression.

That’s why LeBron claimed unidentified white vandals painted the N-word on the gate of his Brentwood mansion. That’s why Deion Sanders won his first game at Colorado and immediately claimed that his black skin threatened the white college football establishment.

Surviving white oppression is a rite of passage to qualify as black in America. That’s why virtually all black men pretend one of the most defining moments in their lives was some sort of exaggerated negative encounter with a white police officer.

The blackest experience in America is a negative engagement with white people. We cherish, remember, recount, and prioritize those moments above all others. They allow us to advance the narrative that our entire American experience is dependent on the kindness, affirmation, and love of white people.

Narrative blackness is the No. 1 movie playing in America. We’re all actors in the movie. We allow Shaun King to wear blackface because he’s such a talented actor.

We erected statues and memorials to honor actor George Floyd. We pretend that if Floyd had not overdosed on fentanyl, he would be welcomed at our Thanksgiving table next month.

We don’t complain that three black women embezzled millions of dollars during the Black Lives Matter pandemic because it advanced the narrative. We’re good with mush-mouthed lawyer Ben Crump earning millions profiting from the deaths of criminals who resist arrest.

The narrative of black victimization has superseded the story of Jesus Christ, the story of eternal victory through sacrifice. We’d rather be Narrative Negroes than followers of Christ.

The pursuit of “unapologetic blackness” is a mental illness that distorts truth, promotes delusion, and, most embarrassingly, makes the pursuer susceptible to exploitation and emotional manipulation. Worse, it obstructs the pursuit of God and an understanding of His plan.

Whitlock: The decline of the NFL mirrors the collapse of America

The NFL has the same problem as the rest of America: The main thing is no longer the main thing.

For nearly 200 years, the pursuit of freedom was the main thing for America. We bickered, fought, protested, boycotted, and killed in our quest to provide all citizens with freedom.

Sixty years ago, we pivoted to equality, a standard man and government cannot guarantee, a goal that paves the road to the kind of chaos and division that rule modern America. Only God can deliver equality. Man can create rules that provide individuals with the freedom to pursue it.

Frustration over man’s inability to create equality has inevitably led the opponents of God to seize power under the pretense that they can control and ration equality. They launch affirmative action and diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives that limit freedom, attack merit, and divvy the spoils produced by the Americans who took advantage of and protected this nation’s unprecedented freedoms.

America’s collapse is a direct result of failing to keep the main thing the main thing.

It’s happening in football, too.

Earlier this week, I wrote a column explaining that the quality of play, particularly on the offensive side of the NFL, has fallen drastically. Teams can’t score. Not like they used to anyway. And not in the rapid way NFL rule changes have been rigged to promote.

My analysis was mostly anecdotal. Six weeks into the season, the NFL seemed more boring and low-scoring than usual. This past weekend, only two NFL teams scored more than 26 points. Over the course of two weeks, six NFL teams failed to score a single touchdown. A quick perusal of stats showed that scoring and touchdowns were down and field goals were up.

Well, yesterday, Warren Sharp, an NFL expert who analyzes football data for a living, wrote a long essay titled, “Where Has All the Offense Gone this NFL Season?” It’s a great piece. It starts with these sentences:

If the NFL feels different this year, that’s because it is. If it seems less exciting, less competitive, and less entertaining ... that’s because it is. No, your eyes aren’t deceiving you. What you sense when you are watching these games is what the product is becoming. It’s the direction the game is trending. The product is bland.

From there, Sharp breaks down the data and offers a boatload of theories and conclusions on why scoring and touchdowns are down. I strongly urge everyone to read his piece. I don’t agree with all of his conclusions, but they’re worth considering.

I also want you to ponder my hypothesis. The problem with the NFL is that the main thing is no longer the main thing.

Roger Goodell’s league is mostly concerned with divvying the spoils of football. It’s hyper-focused on creating the appearance of equality. People with no real affinity for football have been given voice over the direction of the league.

This goes way beyond pandering to Taylor Swift fans. This is about transgender cheerleaders, female football coaches, female football players, gay players, female executives, female referees, Black Lives Matter, black head coaches, media criticism of players, breast cancer awareness, LGBTQ pride, rappers attending games and performing at halftime, safety concerns, Donald Trump resistance, vaccinations, and whatever else Big Pharma and the World Economic Forum prioritize.

The people running the NFL don’t care about football. They don’t care about the actual game, the product on the field. That indifference is why the product on the field is the worst it’s ever been. Diversity, equity, and inclusion are the enemies of merit. Football rose to prominence as a symbol of the ultimate meritocracy. It symbolized the freedom, courage, ruggedness, and innovation of the men who made America great.

No more. Football is a platform for special-interest groups, groups with no love for football’s founders or what it used to represent. The NFL is America. The same forces and initiatives tearing down America are undermining football.

Everyone can see it. Most people with a large platform talk around the issue. They don’t want to get kicked off the NFL gravy train. This week, Tom Brady complained about the league’s overemphasis on safety.

“This is football. This isn’t touch football,” Brady said. “This is real football, and I think the physicality — which people really enjoy — I certainly enjoyed. I love the physical element of the sport. I don’t think we should ever lose that. There are so many people that want it less and less physical, it’s more like flag football, which is going to be in the Olympics in 2028. Maybe football goes to flag football over a period of time. I don’t think fans would like that very much.”

The hyper-concern about safety has caused the league to reduce practice time and the number of padded practices. The lack of practice has diminished the quality of play.

“They don’t want to work,” Hall of Fame defensive tackle Warren Sapp told me on Wednesday. “They don’t want to practice. It’s that simple. You go to an NFL training camp, it’s like an old Wendy’s commercial. ‘Where’s the beef?’ Ain’t nothing going on around here. Where’s the beef? Where’s the work being done? ... The different things that we put in during a week of work to go out and showcase our talent. It’s just not being done right now in the National Football League. Across the board they don’t practice no more.”

You can’t innovate if you don’t practice. You can’t add new offensive wrinkles if practice time is limited. It’s much harder to develop a quarterback in this new era.

The concern over safety and the mega player contracts have changed the way the game is played. Every NFL player has a little Franco Harris in him. They all dip out of bounds or slide to the ground before contact. On a scramble, quarterbacks routinely sacrifice two or three yards to slide before getting hit.

NFL officiating is sloppy and uneven. No one should be surprised. The league is far more concerned with what the referees look like than the individual performance of each official. In 2020, during the St. George Floyd national holiday months, the NFL bragged about fielding an all-black referee crew. The NFL keeps putting women in a microwave training program and elevating them to sideline judges.

The NFL is just like America. The league is overrun with people who don’t love the game or know its history. Roger Goodell is in charge of the NFL’s southern border. He’s allowed the Alphabet Mafia, Marxists, and feminists to radically change the focus of the league.

Merit has been eliminated. Once you remove merit, everything suffers. Smash-and-grabs become commonplace. Why not? Goodell just received a new $70-million-a-year contract for being the worst commissioner in sports. He’s a high-priced looter. Why shouldn’t the BLM-LGBTQ Alphabet Mafia loot the NFL?

Politicians and global elites have looted American taxpayers since 1913. They’ve been systematically stealing our money since the inception of the Federal Reserve, and they’ve been stealing our freedom for 60 years.

Freedom and merit used to be the main things in America. Now it’s pronouns and safety. It’s a woman’s world.

Whitlock: The NFL ‘pump and dump’ scheme has fallen and can’t get up

The NFL reminds me of “The Smartest Guys in the Room,” the documentarythat chronicled the collapse of Enron.

Roger Goodell is Jeffrey Skilling, the CEO who appeared to save Enron with a devious accounting scheme that allowed the company to claim projected earnings as immediate profits. Corporate media and market analysts ignored the obvious fraud for years, celebrating Skilling and Enron founder Kenneth Lay as visionary geniuses.

Eventually, Enron filed for bankruptcy, and federal prosecutors convicted Skilling and Lay of securities fraud. The smartest guys in the room proved to be not so smart.

A similar comeuppance awaits Goodell. He will go down in history as the man who oversaw the fall of professional football.

Nothing is more overvalued than the NFL. This year’s product is the worst the game has ever produced. The league’s most interesting story is a manufactured love story between America’s top pop star (Taylor Swift) and a vaccinated tight end (Travis Kelce). The on-field product is sloppy and uninteresting.

This weekend’s slate of games produced just two teams that could score more than 26 points. The Dolphins scored 42 points in a rout of the Panthers, and the Jaguars put up 37 points in a blowout of the Colts. The league’s Sunday night showcase between the Giants and the Bills mercifully ended at 14-9, with the Bills scoring two fourth-quarter touchdowns. Two weeks ago, six NFL teams failed to score a single touchdown. How about this? The Tennessee Titans have scored fewer than 30 points in 24 straight games.

NFL teams are averaging just 2.32 TDs per game, the lowest average in 18 years. Individual teams are kicking 2.12 field goals per game, the highest average since the 1970s. The average of 1.84 field goals made is the highest in league history.

This is all odd. Over the past four decades, the league has implemented rule after rule to increase scoring and touchdowns. Bump-and-run coverage has basically been outlawed. You can’t blow up a receiver running across the middle. You can’t blindside-block a defender. You almost have to ask permission to sack a quarterback. Receivers now wear gloves that make catching a pass easier than at any time in football history. Referees love calling pass interference and illegal contact. Quarterbacks routinely complete 70% of their passes.

For all the trouble, rule changes, and alleged quarterback wizardry, all we’re getting is more field goals and 16-14 snooze festivals.

Taylor Swift is the biggest NFL star. Swift and Deion Sanders replaced Tom Brady as the game’s top ambassadors.

This is Enron 2.0. It's a bad product camouflaged by the social media matrix and corporate media influencers more concerned with maintaining access than objectively evaluating the league. The NFL moved Thursday Night Football and the Sunday Ticket to Amazon and YouTube, respectively, because ownership realizes it’s far easier to manipulate and control viewership with internet algorithms.

Why is the product tanking?

Because high-level football requires practice. Teams no longer practice. Under the pretense of protecting players from head injuries, teams no longer practice. They train. They condition. They conduct walkthroughs. They do not practice. Not in pads. And not in any real way.

Players are doing far less and getting paid way more. They’re stockbrokers pitching penny stocks as blue chip. Think Jordan Belfort, the “Wolf of Wall Street.” NBC, Fox, ESPN, CBS, Amazon, and YouTube are the guys hanging on Belfort’s every word in the classic scene from the “Wolf of Wall Street.”

“My killas. My killas who will not take no for an answer. My warriors who will not hang up the phone until their client either buys or f***ing dies.”

They want football fans to believe that Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Joe Burrow, Jalen Hurts, Lamar Jackson, and all the rest are the second coming of Brady, Peyton Manning, Aaron Rodgers, Dan Marino, and John Elway.

It’s not true. You have to actually practice to play at the level of the all-time greats. You can’t build a cohesive offensive line if you don’t practice. You can’t establish a consistent and reliable running game if you don’t practice.

The players don’t care about the product. They care about their brands and their money. They’re entitled. They feel sorry for themselves. I don’t blame them. They watch and listen to sports talk shows and podcasts that paint them as victims and treat them as idols above criticism. The people analyzing the game are liars. They won’t tell you what they see, what’s obvious.

The game is in rapid decline. Most of the quarterbacks simply cannot read a defense. You learn to read a defense in practice. Again, teams no longer practice. You don’t need to read a defense or firmly grasp the playbook in order to excel or get paid in the modern NFL.

The coaches tape the plays to the quarterbacks' wrists and tell them what to do in an earpiece installed in the helmet. You don’t have to win the postseason to secure a major contract. Every starting NFL quarterback gets paid eventually.

The problem is only going to get worse. College quarterbacks are now earning millions of dollars through name-image-likeness deals. You can secure a high six-figure deal before you play a college game. The entitlement and brattiness of the players are major turnoffs. Athletes are as unlikable and as difficult to relate to as Hollywood actors.

Football is trending in the wrong direction. The product is awful. The referees exercise more influence over the outcomes than anyone on the field. Fantasy sports and gambling will only mask the uninspiring play for so long.

The smartest guys in football are just as stupid as the smartest guys at Enron.

Whitlock: We need a forensic investigation of the clash between Israel and Hamas

The horrific events happening in Israel and Gaza made me think of Peter Thomas, the greatest voice in the history of American television.

Thomas narrated one of my favorite TV shows, “Forensic Files,” a series of 30-minute documentaries that recounted the resolution of real-life murder mysteries.

Before finding TV fame, Thomas served in World War II. An Army infantryman, Thomas stormed the beaches of Normandy and fought during the Battle of the Bulge. He received a Purple Heart and Bronze Star. Later in life, he dedicated much of his time to supporting the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The old-school American hero was blessed with a set of pipes, an elderly, soothing storyteller’s cadence. His voice oozed wisdom. For me, he uttered his most memorable “Forensic Files” line during the season 6 premiere in 2001. He relayed the story of the murder of Carolyn Killaby, a woman from the Pacific Northwest. Thomas said the local prosecutor told him: "Before you look at outlaws, you have to look at the in-laws.”

Put another way, when it comes to violent crime, most of the time the perpetrator is someone very close to the victim.

I wish Peter Thomas were alive today to narrate the tragic, deadly events plaguing our society. He would instruct us to first look within. I spent Monday and Tuesday this week talking about the tragedy that befell Israel. Among other things, Hamas terrorists killed babies and raped and tortured women. It’s the type of atrocity that could spark global conflict.

So far, it has provoked politicians, pundits, and influencers to rush to microphones and social media apps to fire off angry hot takes. Presidential candidate Nikki Haley implored Israel to “finish” Hamas. Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro has unleashed a handful of profanity-laced tweets and memes that appear to call for retaliatory and escalated violence.

I understand the raw emotion, particularly for American Jews with close ties to Israel.

But I also understand the caution and confusion of other Americans. The last 60 years of American history have taught us to look at our in-laws before nuking the designated outlaws.

Just 20 years ago, America invaded Iraq because George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Colin Powell told us Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

A couple of years earlier, American citizens surrendered their privacy and our lawmakers passed the Patriot Act because Osama bin Laden masterminded a plot to bring down the World Trade Center Towers with airplanes.

Three years ago, our rulers used the COVID-19 pandemic to change election procedures and normalize mail-in voting and “Election Month” rather than Election Day.

Sixty years ago, a beloved U.S. president was assassinated in broad daylight. The secrets of that assassination are so damning that the files remain hidden from the American public.

I pointed this stuff out this week on my show, “Fearless.” The theme of Tuesday’s show was “Conspiracy Weary.” A woman emailed me a reaction. The subject line of her email read: “Dead babies are not a conspiracy.”

Here’s what she wrote inside the email:

I love your fires. But I am not sure that I follow today’s. Conspiracy weary is accurate. But I don’t get the connection to the terrorism that occurred in Israel. Facts are not a conspiracy. A lot of innocents died or are in danger today. Both Jews and Palestinian people that are innocent are in danger. Facts. Hamas or Iran have never hidden their disdain for Israel.

No one is denying the danger in or the atrocities that occurred in Israel. I’m certainly not.

I’m asking us to remove emotion and ask important questions before deciding what to do in response to the atrocity. An analysis of American and global history of the last 100 years suggests that the powerful often manipulate world events to promote endless war and conflict.

Before we sign on with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “finish” Hamas and Palestine, I’d like to know how Hamas circumvented Israeli and U.S. intelligence agencies to inflict so much damage. I want to investigate the in-laws. I want to make sure the global elites who keep saying the world is overpopulated aren’t trying to provoke World War III.

The fictional TV show “Game of Thrones” was based on the theory that men will stop at nothing to acquire and maintain power. No depravity is too great. In an attempt to claim the Iron Throne, Stannis Baratheon had his young daughter burned at the stake.

Real-life world history is littered with examples of tyrannical governments committing human atrocities. Do you think all the Obama administration drone strikes spared women and children?

Do you think Antifa is incapable of the kind of depraved violence we just saw from Hamas? Are you that naive?

Political leaders in both parties condoned the violence of Antifa and Black Lives Matter. Antifa and BLM are terrorist groups that work for the Democratic Party and globalists.

As long as the global elites keep arguing that the world is overpopulated, I believe they are capable of extreme violence to achieve their goal of depopulation. The people who promote crushing babies inside the womb wouldn’t have a problem with beheading a few hundred children to ignite global conflict.

They hate humanity. Every political position they take — transgenderism, gay marriage, abortion, experimental vaccines, normalizing obesity, feminism — leads to death and depopulation.

From my vantage point, Hamas shares the same worldview as the global elites who hate humanity and think women should be treated as men, the people who have no problem exploiting children on Epstein Island, at drag shows, inside Planned Parenthood facilities, and on gender-affirming operating tables.

The in-laws are the real outlaws. The last 60 years have taught me to check the alibi story of the elites before I solely blame the desperate peasants.

Squires: Progressive policies that treat criminals like society’s victims cost lives

The late journalist Andrew Breitbart coined the phrase “politics is downstream from culture.” The “Breitbart Doctrine” reminds conservatives that changes to our political system must be preceded by changes in our culture. My personal and professional experience has shaped the “Squires Doctrine,” which holds that “policy is downstream from worldview.”

The recent tragic deaths of Pava LaPere, a 26-year-old tech CEO in Baltimore, and Ryan Carson, a 32-year-old activist in New York City, sparked a debate online about how conservatives should talk about leftists who reap the consequences of their radical policy choices. Both victims were allegedly killed by black suspects. LaPere said her company was pro-Black Lives Matter and that it stood against a “police state that criminalizes black bodies.” Carson’s girlfriend expressed anti-police sentiments online.

The victims of these violent crimes share the same political perspective as many of the lawmakers in their respective cities. This is where the Squires Doctrine comes into play.

Morally neutral public policy does not exist. All laws reflect someone’s beliefs, principles, morals, and values. A 2016 Pew study on religious views and political affiliation found that 69% of atheists were Democrats. A separate study found that 47% rely on “common sense” as a source of moral guidance. People who don’t believe in God will always seek out an alternative source of authority. Some trust science. Others rely on their own reasoning. And many are easily swayed by popular opinion.

Progressives love to talk about justice, but their definition is completely inverted. True justice is rooted in God’s holy and righteous character. It is impartial, consistent, timely, proportional, and corrective. One purpose of justice is to punish the guilty for the protection of the innocent.

Unfortunately, one of the defining features of modern progressive thought is to sympathize more with criminals than the victims of crime. As is often the case, race plays a large part.

I saw this firsthand while working in Washington, D.C.’s gun violence prevention office. More than 90% of homicide victims andperpetrators in D.C. are black. But the city’s decision to label potential shooters “people of promise” would never fly if most of the people killing black people in the nation’s capital looked like January 6 defendants.

Race complicates the politics of law and order, but radical ideologues don’t exclusively focus on ethnic minorities. One self-professed Christian activist named Shane Claiborne recently shared a letter from a death row inmate shortly before he was executed in Florida. The post on Twitter started this way:

Tonight the state of Florida executed Michael Zack. He is the 6 [sic] person to be executed in Florida and the 19th to be executed in the US this year. Please take a minute to read his final words. No one is defending what he did, not even Michael. But we are all more than the worst thing we’ve ever done. The death penalty does not heal the wounds of violence. It just creates new wounds. It is time to stop killing to try to show that killing is wrong.

Claiborne is the co-founder of Red Letter Christians, an LGBT-affirming organization that seems to disregard every part of the Bible but the Gospels. Claiborne failed to mention why Zack, who is white, was executed. Zack brutally murdered two women he met at beach bars in June 1996.

Zack’s defenders claimed he suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome. A New York legislator who knew Ryan Carson said he would have seen his killer as a victim of “structural wrongs” in the city who suffered from a lack of resources.

Progressives are uncomfortable with the idea of punishing people they see as victims. But the truth is, retribution in its proper measure serves a vital social function. People who have been wronged often feel a burning desire for revenge, and the natural inclination is to go one step farther than the person who harmed you. Violence tends to escalate if left unchecked.

The old saying goes “an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind.” But few people stop to consider how much worse the alternative would be, given that a head for an eye would leave everyone dead.

When criminal behavior is not addressed swiftly and consistently, chaos and disorder spread. And when that happens, people are going to die. Eventually it spreads far enough and citizens get the idea that their government has no interest in protecting their personhood or property.

That is how societies devolve into vigilantism and mob violence. The terror that lynch mobs unleashed on black communities from the late 1800s through the 1960s should be a reminder of why the rule of law is so important. Mob justice cares nothing about due process. It is vulnerable to personal prejudices and peer pressure. It is easy to inflame but very hard to tamp down.

I don’t believe anyone should gloat or make light of someone’s death because of their political positions. But it’s important for people to understand that policies have consequences. And no group is in a better position to understand this than Christians who believe that God created the world and that it operates according to his design.

Put another way, “the designer is the definer.” We also believe the biblical truth that humanity’s greatest problem is sin, not a lack of resources or material wealth. Anyone who believes the Bible should also know that no group has a monopoly on vice, violence, or virtue.

But when you’re the type of person who sees yourself as privileged and other people as marginalized based on skin color, then you are guaranteed to make bad decisions when it comes to public policy.

People who think police and prisons should be abolished based on racial disparities in the criminal justice system are uninformed, both about the realities of crime and the basics of human nature.

The sad irony is that the journalists and commentators who typically ignore street crime when the victims are young, poor, and black are likely to be focused on these types of incidents where the victims are middle-class and white. To the Sunday brunch set, black people are only victims of racism, specifically at the hands of police, vigilantes, and “Karens.”

Our hyperfocus on race is deadly because it makes us prioritize color over conduct. Murder is wrong because intentionally taking the life of an innocent person is wrong. It’s a sin. That is true whether the victim is black and the perpetrator is white or the perpetrator is black and the victim is white. It is also true if the perpetrator and victim share the same skin color or we have no clue about the ethnic background of anyone involved.

I don’t care what a criminal looks like. If someone is stabbing, shooting, or assaulting people, I feel no obligation to defend him or his behavior. I’m not interested in hearing people make excuses for people who show no regard for the lives of their fellow citizens. I hope the progressives who think they can usher in utopia through social policy finally see how their ideas make our streets more dangerous. People die when evil is allowed to spread because of misplaced ideas about “social justice.”

Leftists need to realize that their god complex doesn’t come with resurrection power.

Whitlock: ‘The Gaetzful Eight’ provide a blueprint for how we fight the global elite

Righteousness has never needed a majority to be heard and to win. We should not be surprised that it only took eight Republicans to bring down Kevin McCarthy, the speaker of the House and, until Tuesday afternoon, the man third in line for the presidency.

Let’s call them “The Gaetzful Eight,” the small band of House Republicans whom Florida’s Matt Gaetz convinced to speak and act on behalf of the people who voted them into office rather than acquiesce to a corrupt status quo.

I’m grateful for their courage. Gaetz, Tim Burchett (Tenn.), Andy Biggs (Ariz.), Ken Buck (Colo.), Eli Crane (Ariz.), Nancy Mace (S.C.), Matt Rosendale (Mont.), and Bob Good (Va.) made history on Tuesday afternoon. They held McCarthy accountable for selling out the voters who empowered him, for cutting deals with the uniparty establishment that chooses to ignore and silence the concerns of half of America.

Removing McCarthy as speaker of the House was an act of righteousness. It gives voice to the voiceless. It’s the most significant political act of defiance since the election of Donald Trump in 2016.

But let me be clear. I’m not calling Trump or “The Gaetzful Eight” righteous. They’re not. None of us are. They’re unrighteous tools who occasionally allow themselves to be used to speak and act in the best interest of the people the establishment wants to exploit, oppress, and remove.

The political, corporate, and ideological globalists have demonized American nationalists and the working class. Through fear, medical tyranny, well-organized acts of domestic terrorism, and election “fortifying,” they’ve systematically stripped us of fundamental freedoms and our ability to push back against government overreach.

If we protest in public, the establishment’s FBI informants agitate violence and we get sent to jail.

The establishment stopped Christians from attending church, tricked us into wearing masks, defined citizens with traditional patriotic values as racists, opened our southern border to criminals, and sanctioned sexualizing and confusing children about gender. They took billions of our tax dollars and funneled it to Ukraine. They’re baiting Russia into a nuclear conflict.

The pharmaceutical companies and the Black Lives Matter-LGBTQ Alphabet Mafia dictate and manipulate what can be discussed on public platforms.

That’s why I’m so grateful to “The Gaetzful Eight.”

Sometimes I fall into cynicism. I start to believe America’s problems are unfixable and that the rise of secularism and Marxism cannot be thwarted. “The Gaetzful Eight” reinvigorated me. They made me think of Gideon, his army of 300, and the book of Judges.

What happened in the House on Tuesday reminded me that for righteousness to win, it does not need numbers. It only needs a small band of men and women willing to trust and obey God.

This morning I re-read the story of Gideon and how he saved Israel from the Midianites with trumpets and lanterns. The Midianites had 135,000 soldiers. Israel had 32,000.

Israel was plagued by idolatry, the worship of false gods. Their idolatry caused their “children to do evil in the sight of the Lord.” God allowed the Midianites to conquer and oppress Israel.

God first instructed Gideon to tear down the places where Israelites worshiped Baal and false gods. Gideon obeyed, but he was scared. He tore down the altars at night, hoping he wouldn’t be recognized. The Israelites wanted to kill Gideon. His father had to plead for his son’s life.

After he survived tearing down the places of idol worship, God then instructed Gideon to release every Israeli soldier who was scared. Twenty-two thousand soldiers went home. God said 10,000 soldiers were still too many. He told Gideon to take them to a river and have them drink water. He said send the soldiers home who got on their knees and lapped the water like dogs. Only 300 soldiers used their hands to drink the water.

With those 300 men, Gideon defeated the Midianite army. The noise from the trumpets and the light from the lanterns confused the Midianites. They started fighting among themselves. They started killing themselves and then retreated.

The point is obvious. We don’t need numbers to be heard. We don’t need numbers to win the battle of good versus evil battle occurring in America. We need to obey God. We need to be strategic, smart, and bold.

Our nation is plagued by idolatry. I wrote a column on Monday about how the left is using Taylor Swift and Deion Sanders to completely convert the NFL into a platform that promotes secular and liberal values. Swift and Sanders are idols that advance radical materialism, the matriarchy, abortion, and pop culture debauchery.

I explained that football was built by Christian conservatives and had been an institution that encouraged patriotism, respect for the military and law enforcement, and religious faith. I argued that we should not surrender professional and college football to the left.

I offered a way for us to fight back. I suggested we use American television’s largest platform — the Super Bowl — as a tool to elevate our voices on a multitude of issues.

We’re being silenced. We can’t gather to protest. Corporate and social media platforms diminish or ban our voices. Most politicians refuse to speak for us. Mail-in ballot harvesting has made our elections unreliable and untrustworthy.

Let’s boycott Super Bowl Sunday. Let’s damage Super Bowl TV ratings as a means to draw attention to illegal immigration, transgenderism, the political weaponization of the Department of Justice, the unfair prosecution of January 6 defendants, COVID tyranny, the lack of election integrity, the illegality of the Federal Reserve system, diversity, equity, and inclusion destroying merit, the military, and education, the rampant lawlessness in major cities, the World Economic Forum, and the environmental, social, and governance movement.

I could go on and on. The Bud Light boycott worked. It put a scare into the global corporate forces transitioning America to communism. Super Bowl Sunday is the perfect day to express our dissatisfaction with the uniparty and the corporations that fund our political elites.

It’s a way to make our voices heard. We need a handful of conservative content creators to mimic the courage of “The Gaetzful Eight,” and we could launch an event that speaks for the voiceless and allows us to make demands of the establishment.

This is what the leftists have been doing for decades. They threaten boycotts to shake down the powers that be. We can do the same. Let’s do it Super Bowl Sunday.

Whitlock: Trevor Bauer stars in the woke, weak remake of the Kobe Bryant rape allegations

Twenty years ago, a young woman accused Kobe Bryant, the best player in basketball, of sexual assault and strangulation. The NBA took no action. As the case worked its way through the court system, Bryant continued to play.

Though Bryant initially lied to police about having sex with the woman and eventually acknowledged that he strangled her during rough sex, the NBA granted Bryant a presumption of innocence. The accuser refused to testify in court, ending the criminal proceedings. Bryant issued a public apology and paid the accuser.

Two years ago, a young woman accused Trevor Bauer, the best pitcher in baseball, of sexual assault and strangulation. Three days after the media reported the accusations against Bauer, the Los Angeles Dodgers placed Bauer on administrative leave. He’s never pitched in the major leagues since.

Bauer steadfastly maintained his innocence. Prosecutors never indicted Bauer for the alleged crime. Bauer sued his accuser, Lindsey Hill, a recovering alcoholic. Hill filed a countersuit. Bauer and Hill on Monday dropped their civil suits without either side receiving a penny.

Bauer immediately released a four-minute video restating his innocence and revealing what appears to be damning evidence that Hill tried to extort him.

“Quite frankly, regardless of the outcome in court,” Bauer said, “I’ve paid significantly more in legal fees than Lindsey Hill could ever pay me in her entire life, and I knew that would be the case going in. But the lawsuit was never about the money for me. It was the only way for me to obtain critical information to clear my name.”

So what happened over the last 20 years that we could see such disparate treatment of superstar male athletes revolving around sexual encounters with young women?

It’s easy to simply blame the #MeToo movement and castigate the women who have used the movement to bully and terrorize men.

I honestly don’t blame Lindsey Hill. She has a drinking problem and obvious emotional issues. I feel sorry for her. She’s apparently unstable.

Men are to blame for what happened to Trevor Bauer, including Trevor Bauer himself. Our immorality and cowardice have created the current environment.

Let’s start with Dodgers ownership: the Guggenheim group, which consists of Mark Walter, Magic Johnson, Peter Guber, Stan Kasten, Bobby Patton, and Todd Boehly. They could have stood by Bauer as the court proceedings played out. But they chose the easy, safe route. They distanced themselves from Bauer as soon as they could. This is what cowards do. They took the easy path. They practiced CYA constantly.

Then we can move on to Rob Manfred, the commissioner of Major League Baseball. He could have insisted that the Dodgers take more of a wait-and-see approach with Bauer. Instead, Manfred sought to harshly punish Bauer without all the evidence. MLB originally suspended Bauer for more than 300 games.

I also blame the men running virtually all the corporate media outlets. Sexual assault cases are complicated, way too complex for the kind of instant, believe-all-women analysis that is commonplace in mainstream media.

Based on what Bauer alleges in his four-minute video, I blame Jacob Nix, the former Padres pitcher who reportedly encouraged Lindsey Hill to extort Bauer. Hill is from San Diego. It appears she’s quite well known and connected in the baseball world.

And that’s why I don’t leave out Trevor Bauer. He shoulders a great deal of blame here, too. At some point, he has to recognize that he put himself in danger hooking up with an emotionally damaged, drunken groupie. I get Bauer’s anger. He’s lost millions of dollars that he’ll never recover. His reputation has been smeared. He could have avoided all the trouble had he been more mature with his approach to pursuing women.

Men have fallen. We’re weak. We’re controlled by our lust, and we’re afraid to stand on the values we boldly espouse. When Rome was great, military leaders would fall on their swords if they failed in battle. Men took responsibility for their failures.

We don’t do that any more. That’s why our society is so chaotic and corrupt. Men choose survival over honor. We make decisions that allow us to survive, collect the next paycheck, and avoid criticism.

Twenty years ago, I believe David Stern and the NBA mishandled the Kobe Bryant allegations. There’s a middle ground between doing nothing to Bryant and destroying the life and career of Trevor Bauer.

Bold and thoughtful leadership would find that middle ground. Cowards aren’t bold and thoughtful. They’re weak. Women take advantage of weak men. The #MeToo environment is what we deserve.

Wyoming’s RINO governor snubs profit for green politics