The U.S. economy grew at a 3.1% annualized pace in the third quarter — stronger than previously thought, the Commerce Department said on Thursday.
Why it matters: The revision suggests 2024 was yet another shocker year in which the U.S. economy surprised to the upside, as other major nations grappled with sluggish growth.

By the numbers: The revision is an upgrade from the initial estimate of 2.8% growth in the July-Sept. period.

• It largely reflects stronger exports and better consumer spending, offsetting a bigger-than-estimated drag from inventory investment.

The intrigue: The third quarter grew at a slightly quicker pace than the prior quarter, which expanded at a 3% annualized rate.

• A tool developed by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta estimates the economy might be even stronger in the current quarter, with 3.2% growth.

What to watch: The Fed cut borrowing costs for the third time on Wednesday, but signaled fewer cuts ahead in 2025. One reason: the economy is hanging on while progress on slowing inflation has come to a halt.

• "What we see happening in the economy again is most forecasters have been calling for a slowdown in growth for a very long time, and it keeps not happening," Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell told reporters at a press conference on Wednesday.

The bottom line: President-elect Trump will inherit a strong economy. Still unclear is how his proposed policies on immigration, taxes and tariffs will shape growth in the months to come.

Happy Friday and Happy Holidays to all you assholes.

Just wanted a reason to post this video because I’ve watched it like 20 times now and it still makes me laugh.

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He was left with Sam Darnold as the starting QB after he lost Kirk Cousins to free agency and JJ McCarthy to a season ending knee injury.

The Chiefs have the best record in the AFC at 13-1.

In the NFC, the top 3 teams are:
12-2: Eagles
12-2: Lions
12-2: Vikings

A growing number of U.S. colleges and universities are advising international students to return to campus before President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated, over concerns that he might impose travel bans like he did during his first administration.

More than a dozen schools have issued advisories, even though Trump’s plans remain uncertain. At some schools, the spring semester begins before Trump will take office, so students may have to be back in class anyway. But for anyone whose ability to stay in the United States depends on an academic visa, they say it’s best to reduce their risks and get back to campus before Jan. 20.

Here’s a look at what Trump has said and done and how schools and students are preparing for his second term:

What did Trump do in the past?​

Trump issued an executive order in January 2017 banning travel to the U.S. by citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries — Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen. Travelers from those nations were either barred from getting on their flights or detained at U.S. airports after they landed. They included students and faculty as well as business people, tourists and visitors to friends and family.

Trump later removed some countries and added others to the list — 15 nations were affected at some point during his presidency. More than 40,000 people were ultimately refused visas because of the ban, according to the U.S. State Department. President Joe Biden rescinded the orders when he took office in 2021.

How are students being affected?​

More than 1.1 million international students were enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities during the 2023-24 school year, according to Open Doors, a data project partially funded by the U.S. State Department. Students from India and China have accounted for more than half of all international students in the U.S., and about 43,800 come from the 15 countries affected by Trump’s travel restrictions.

Jacky Li, a third-year environmental studies major at University of California, Berkeley, will be traveling home to China Dec. 21 and returning Jan. 16. Though he made his plans months before Berkeley officials sent the advisory, he said worry is growing among international students.

“There’s a fear that this kind of restriction will enlarge into a wider community, considering the geopolitical tensions nowadays around the world, so the fear is definitely there,” said Li, who urged Trump to support, rather than thwart, important academic research.

“If the U.S. is really a champion of academic freedom, what you should do is not restrict this kind of communications between different countries of the world,” he said.

What might Trump do now?​

Trump’s transition team did not respond to questions on the topic this week, but in the past he has said he’ll revive the travel ban and expand it, pledging new “ideological screening” for non-U.S. citizens to bar “dangerous lunatics, haters, bigots and maniacs.”

“We aren’t bringing in anyone from Gaza, Syria, Somalia, Yemen or Libya or anywhere else that threatens our security,” Trump said at an October 2023 campaign event in Iowa.

Trump also vowed to “revoke the student visas of radical anti-American and anti-Semitic foreigners at our colleges and universities” in response to campus protests.

What are schools telling students?​

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School officials have advised international students heading home for winter break to return before Inauguration Day and to prepare for possible delays at immigration control.

The list includes Ivy League universities such as Harvard and Brown, Boston schools such as Northeastern University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and other schools around the country, from Johns Hopkins University to the University of Southern California. Some offer classes that begin the day after Inauguration Day.

Cornell University told its students that a travel ban involving the 13 nations Trump previously targeted “is likely to go into effect soon after inauguration,” and that new countries could be added to the list, particularly China and India. It advised students, faculty and staff from those countries to return to campus before the semester starts Jan. 21.

Other schools didn’t go so far as to say a ban is likely but instead advised students to plan ahead and prepare for delays.

President-elect Donald J. Trump’s hammerlock on the Republican Party was shaken on Thursday night when 38 of his party’s lawmakers in the House voted to defy his command to support a spending and debt deal.
Writing on social media, Mr. Trump had told Republicans to “vote ‘YES’ for this Bill, TONIGHT!” He said it was vital to pass a bill that extended spending until early next year and suspended the nation’s debt limit until 2027, well into his next term.
For the better part of a decade, that kind of dictate has usually been enough for Mr. Trump, who has methodically seized control of the Republican Party at all levels. But with just a month left before he returns to office, Mr. Trump found out that at least some of his followers were willing to buck his leadership in the right circumstances. The rebel Republicans, combined with most House Democrats, sank that legislation, leaving the nation about a day away from a government shutdown.
The defiance came not from the handful of moderate Republicans who have previously earned the president-elect’s ire. This time, it was conservatives who would normally align themselves with Mr. Trump’s philosophy who voted against his wishes.
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Several did so because they opposed the idea of raising the debt limit for more than two years, something they argue would allow out-of-control government spending to continue unabated. Mr. Trump had argued that raising the limit would clear the decks for his ambitious legislative agenda, removing a potential fight over the issue early in his term.
For the president-elect, the actions of his party on Thursday night raise questions as he moves into the final act of his political career: Have the signs suggesting his grip over the G.O.P. is tighter than ever been wrong? Has he lost some control he once had? Or was the vote merely a brief hiccup in the absolute loyalty forecast for when he moves back into the White House next month?
The answer may not be known until Mr. Trump puts a razor-thin Republican majority to the test next year. It will only take a handful of Republicans to doom any one of his agenda items in the House or the Senate. But such defiance would come at the risk of their political careers, under a president who has shown himself willing and able to rally voters as he wishes.
Still, the rebel Republicans who voted against his wishes on Thursday did so despite an explicit electoral threat. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump had warned that “any Republican that would be so stupid” as to vote against a bill like the one offered on Thursday “should, and will,” face primary challenges. More than three dozen House members were not dissuaded.

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Former Purdue safety

Money ruins a lot, thought he’d stay in the traditional footprint.

I'd probably go with Robert Plant.

The Satanic Temple of Iowa was supposed to throw a holiday celebration on Saturday — exactly one year after a statue depicting the pagan idol Baphomet was destroyed in the display at the State Capitol building in Des Moines — but the state opted to cancel the event.


The Satanic Temple of Iowa alleges the Iowa Department of Administrative Services (DAS) "forcibly canceled" the event.



"We have made every effort to work with them (Iowa DAS) to ensure a successful event, but after over two months on the official Capitol events calendar we have been informed that our event will no longer be allowed," the Satanic Temple of Iowa announced on the event's page on Facebook Friday night.

Members of the Satanic Temple of Iowa planned to sing Satanic carols, and hold a Krampus costume contest and a Satanic ritual.

"Our goal was to promote tolerance and acceptance of diverse religious beliefs, with a theme of finding a light in the darkness and welcoming the darkest nights of the year with joy and camaraderie," the post said. "We are no stranger to obstacles in advocating for religious pluralism and freedom of speech, and we will continue to fight for the rights of Satanic Temple members and our local community."

Iowa State Capitol stewards confirmed the Capitol was open Saturday despite the ice storm and that the event was removed from the scheduled events calendar in the days before the event.


"After careful consideration of administrative rule and DAS policy, I determined the totality of the event request to include elements that are harmful to minors and therefore denied the request," Adam Steen, the director of the Iowa DAS, said in a statement to the Register.

The mailbox at my previous house was connected to the house. Pretty much checked it every day. Current house has cluster mailboxes that are away from the house (open with a key). We check that once or twice a week. I much preferred the former as it was way more convenient

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported 271,484 immigrants to nearly 200 countries last fiscal year, the highest tally in a decade, according to the agency’s annual report published Thursday.

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Most deportees had crossed the U.S. southern border illegally, part of a record number of people fleeing authoritarian regimes, poverty and economic collapse in the Western Hemisphere after the pandemic. The ICE report covered enforcement operations from Oct. 1, 2023, to Sept. 30.

The report is ICE’s final accounting of immigration enforcement under the Biden administration before President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Jan. 20. Trump has promised to immediately launch the largest deportation campaign in American history, though he has offered few or conflicting details about how he would manage it. Staffing levels of immigration enforcement officers have been stagnant for years.


“Our agency is chronically underfunded, but our workforce is adaptable, resilient and agile, and they set the bar high within the federal government,” said ICE’s top official Patrick J. Lechleitner, in a statement. “ICE is an apolitical agency, and one thing I can tell you about our workforce is that they’re here to investigate crimes and enforce the laws Congress sets forth.”
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Biden took office in 2021 pledging to pause deportations, and he sent Congress a bill that would have allowed most of the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country to get on paths to citizenship. But surging border crossings derailed his plans, and Biden officials ended up expanding rather than reducing detention and deportations.
Illegal border crossings have plunged since Biden implemented new rules last summer that sharply restrict asylum claims, resulting in far more migrants being deported than released into the United States with a pending court case.


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4.1 million migrants​

The Washington Post analyzed more than 4.1 million U.S. immigration court records from the past decade to find out where migrants come from and where they live once they arrive in the country.

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Deportations by ICE during Trump’s first term peaked at 267,260 during the 2019 fiscal year, data show. Under Trump, deportees were more likely to be individuals arrested in the interior of the United States, rather than recent border-crossers.
Federal immigration officials said several factors drove the overall increase in Enforcement and Removal Operations during the past year, particularly to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, which accepted more flights transporting those deported from the United States.
“These actions enhanced ERO’s ability to scale up removal operations and laid the groundwork for the increase of removals in FY 2024,” the report said.

ICE also expanded after “intensive diplomatic efforts” the number of charter flights last year to countries in the Eastern Hemisphere, including the first large removal flight to China since fiscal 2018.

Five hundred deportees were dispatched to China last year, down slightly from fiscal 2019. Other flights went to Albania, India, Senegal and Uzbekistan.
Records show Biden largely kept his promise to focus on immigrants who are a top priority for removal, including recent border crossers and people who posed a threat to national security or public safety.
Immigration officials typically remove a tiny fraction of the nation’s undocumented immigrants each year, in part because of huge backlogs in U.S. immigration courts, budget constraints and public opposition to removals in many states.

The 2024 report shows that the highest numbers of immigrants removed from the United States went to Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, in that order.
Those countries typically cooperate with deportations, and their citizens are likely to be significant targets for removal under the Trump administration.

Venezuela, however, is less cooperative. People from that South American country are among one of the largest groups on ICE’s deportation docket. But last year just 3,256 people were deported.
Trump and his surrogates have provided few details about how they would steer a dramatic expansion in enforcement.
ICE has about 6,000 immigration enforcement officers, roughly the same staffing level that it had a decade ago, the report shows. During that time, the number of people with pending immigration cases on ICE’s docket — individuals who are not detained but under ICE’s management — has nearly quadrupled to about 8 million.

Trump also promised to aggressively increase deportations during his first term, but because of resistance from Democrat-led cities and states, he never surpassed the Obama administration’s record of more than 400,000 removals a year.

Long live President Musk. Make Germany German again.

Did anyone catch what happened with Jon?

After the election he went on a X posting spree and then deleted his account? I know he had went a pretty left leaning over the last few years, I am curious to see what he posted.

might now be my top pet peeve.

We get to our kids' Christmas program 30 minutes early. There are tons of open seats, but literally every section we tried to sit in with a decent view was being saved by family or friends for people who weren't even there yet. I asked four separate times if the people the seats are saved for were even there yet and got awkward 'well, no... but they're coming answers'. Fine if you're saving seats for someone going to the bathroom or something. Maybe my wife and I were being wusses by not just sitting down somewhere being saved; we wound up sitting on the side with a bad view. CSB

Britney Spears was apparently backhanded by Victor Wembanyama’s security when she approached him.

He says she grabbed him. She says she tapped his shoulder. At least we’ll recognize his arm when he posts his Pints concrete picture.

Didn't notice a thread that had been started yet. Iowa offered Kai Rogers, 6'10 center out of Wisconsin.
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Wow, Trump is tweeting so many threats to House Repubs before today's votes, Repubs like Chip Roy, but the threats of being primaried did not scare these 38 Repubs. They helped vote it down.

The bill today was an even more Team Orange Musk bill and was laden with even more bloat and debt for no reason.

Again I am just laughing at these two clowns. Yesterday Musk tweeted to not pass any bills before Jan 21st of 2025. Well that would have wrecked the lives of many and caused an economic downturn.

And their new bill today cut out previous funding for research into children's cancer while having a lot of excess pork to put in a bunch of barrels to make the rich richer.

Buckle up baby

A federal judge in Texas has ruled that a 55-year-old federal agency created to help minority-owned businesses must now open its doors to every race, siding with a group of White plaintiffs who argued that the agency discriminated against them.

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In a 93-page opinion rendered Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Mark T. Pittman ruled that the Minority Business Development Agency’s presumption that businesses owned by Blacks, Latinos and other minorities are inherently disadvantaged violated the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection. He permanently enjoined the agency’s business centers, which have assisted minority-owned businesses in accessing capital and government contracts, from extending services based on an applicant’s race.

“If courts mean what they say when they ascribe supreme importance to constitutional rights, the federal government may not flagrantly violate such rights with impunity,” Pittman wrote. “The MBDA has done so for years. Time’s up.”


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The ruling is the latest blow to government affirmative action programs after the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in June against Harvard and the University of North Carolina that upended race-conscious college admissions. The decision sparked a broad legal offensive against affirmative action and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs in the private and public sectors. In July, a Tennessee judge ruled that the Small Business Administration 8(a) Business Development program’s use of the racial presumption of disadvantage was unconstitutional, forcing the agency to overhaul its program.
“This is a historic victory for equality in America,” said Dan Lennington, an attorney with Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, the conservative public interest law firm representing the plaintiffs in the MBDA case. “No longer can a federal agency cater only to certain races. MBDA is now open to all.”
Lennington has previously noted that the case is likely to be appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which leans conservative.
Justice Department lawyers representing the MBDA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This is a developing story and will be updated.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/03/06/minority-business-programs-racial-disadvantage-unconstitutional/

AP Top 25 (12/16)
1. UCLA (30) (10-0)
2. South Carolina (1) (10-1)
3. Notre Dame (1) (9-2)
4. Connecticut (9-1)
5. LSU (12-0)
6. Texas (10-1)
7. USC (10-1)
8. Maryland (10-0)
9. Duke (9-2)
10. Oklahoma (9-1)
11. Ohio State (10-0)
12. TCU (10-1)
13. Kansas State (11-1)
14. West Virginia (10-1)
15. Michigan State (10-0)
16. Kentucky (9-1)
17. Georgia Tech (11-0)
18. Tennessee (8-0)
19. North Carolina (10-2)
20. Michigan (9-1)
21. North Carolina State (8-3)
22. Iowa (9-2)
23. Nebraska (10-1)
24. California (11-1)
25. Mississippi (7-3)

Others Receiving Votes
Alabama, Iowa State, Illinois, Utah, Vanderbilt, South Dakota State, Richmond, Creighton, Oklahoma State, Harvard, Mississippi State

Dropped From Rankings
Iowa State (#18)

============================

Coaches Top 25 (12/17)
1. UCLA (31) (11-0)
2. South Carolina (10-1)
3. LSU (12-0)
4. Notre Dame (9-2)
5. Connecticut (9-1)
6. Texas (10-1)
7. USC (10-1)
8. Maryland (10-0)
9. Ohio State (10-0)
10. Duke (9-2)
11. Oklahoma (9-1)
12. Kansas State (11-1)
13. TCU (10-1)
14. West Virginia (10-1)
15. Kentucky (9-1)
16. Tennessee (8-0)
17. Michigan State (10-0)
18. North Carolina (10-2)
19. North Carolina State (8-3)
20. Georgia Tech (11-0)
21. Baylor (9-2)
22. Iowa (9-2)
23. Iowa State (9-3)
24. Alabama (10-1)
25. Michigan (9-1)

Others Receiving Votes
Mississippi, California, Nebraska, Illinois, Mississippi State, Wisconsin, Florida State, Utah, Vanderbilt, South Dakota State, George Mason

Dropped Out
Mississippi (#23), Illinois (#25)

nice bolt on's

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Crazy how that happens ain’t it?

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