There ya have it. Massive win for Iowa and their 2025 recruiting class.

STORY:

A 37-year-old Iowa man who yelled "God is real" and began attempting to open a cabin door on a flight from Omaha to New York City was sentenced to three years of probation Friday in federal court.

Wesley Orban, of Ireton, in northwest Iowa, was sentenced in the U.S. District Court for Nebraska for assault in a special aircraft jurisdiction. Orban was a passenger Nov. 9, 2023 on a Delta Airlines flight from Eppley Airfield to LaGuardia International Airport.
Shortly after the plane had pushed back from the jetway and began to taxi to the runway, Orban began yelling and speaking about demons. He then left his seat and ran to the front of the plane.

Orban began "pounding on the cabin door" and attempted to open the door. He physically struggled with a flight attendant, who got between Orban and the cockpit door.




Orban was then subdued by passengers and crew. He was removed from the airplane before takeoff and taken into custody by police officers from the Omaha Airport Authority.

Ireton is a town of about 590 residents located 36 miles north of Sioux City, Iowa.

Patriot this, patriot that? It’s an alt right cesspool now.

Fannie Willis will go down in history as one the biggest failures in the legal field.

Georgia attorney Ashleigh Merchant reacted to news that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis had been disqualified from her "weak" election interference case against President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday.

A Georgia court of appeals filing declared that the "appearance of impropriety" stemming from an affair Willis had with Nathan Wade prior to hiring him to prosecute the case required her disqualification from the case.

Merchant, who exposed the improper affair months ago, told "Fox & Friends" on Friday that she believed Willis stuck to the case despite the scandal because she didn’t want anyone else to know how "weak" the case was.

"She could have done the right thing early on, whenever we brought this to everyone’s attention, and said, ‘Hey, let’s have a neutral prosecutor handle this case. Let’s have someone else look at it.’ But I think she was terrified because her case was so weak, she didn’t want someone else to look at it," Merchant told Fox News Channel’s Steve Doocy.

Based on Merchant’s uncovering of Willis’ relationship with Wade, Judge Scott McAfee ruled in March that Willis must either withdraw herself and her team from the 2020 election interference case or remove Wade as special prosecutor. Following the decision, Wade resigned from his position in the case, leaving Willis to continue it.

At the time, Merchant expressed her desire to have seen Willis removed from the case entirely, writing in a statement, "While we believe the court should have disqualified Willis’ office entirely, this opinion is a vindication that everything put forth by the defense was true, accurate and relevant to the issues surrounding our client's right to a fair trial."

Merchant’s goal to see Willis ousted happened months later on Thursday, after the state appeals court declared that Willis’ "appearance of impropriety" constitutes "the rare case in which disqualification is mandated, and no other remedy will suffice to restore public confidence in the integrity of these proceedings."

Merchant characterized it as an obvious decision, telling Doocy that Willis’ impropriety was "something that you couldn’t turn your eye away from, and I think that’s something the court of appeals said."

"It’s one of those things that you know it when you see it," Merchant continued. "It’s the appearance of impropriety. It is so great that it had to be enough to kick them off the case."

After speculating that Willis wouldn’t willingly leave the case because of its weakness, Merchant expressed her belief that if a more "neutral prosecutor" got hold of the case, they would have it dismissed.

"I’ve always thought, if a neutral prosecutor – someone who didn’t have a financial interest in this case and a political interest in this case – looked at it, that they would see things differently. And they would decide that the taxpayers, the courts, the people who are charging the case, they deserve this case to be dismissed."

The $ has been rising since Trump won. Europe has not responded to Trump's tariff threats and and the $ is going up. 10% tariffs will have little impact on trade.

I do not advocate tariffs on our traditional allies.

China is a different story. The US runs a $350 Billion Trade Deficit with China.

China is spending the money we send them on new weapons from Destroyers to ICBM's to destroy the US. This is the same China that does cybertheft, organ harvesting, hacks into our computers, mercantilism through currency manipulation and threatens our friends like Australia and the Philippines.

I would:

1. End the De Minimis tariff loophole
2. End China having Most Favored Nation status
3. Raise tariffs every month on all Chinese imports until they end the demilitarization of the S. China Sea. Start at 1% a month for a few months, then double the tariffs every few months. By starting at low levels of tariffs, this will ease the transition on the economy to buy these imports from countries like India and Mexico. 99% of what we buy from China can be made in other countries.

Good old President Xi, who just replaced all images of Jesus in churches with a picture of him, told Obama he would not militarize the S. China Sea. Let's hold him to his word.

There is incredible bipartisan support to stick it to China. Biden was asleep at the wheel on this and Harris ignored this for some crazy reason.

Who’s conducting the polls this year? We only have 16 days left.

The University of Iowa announced plans to honor former Hawkeye women's basketball star Caitlin Clark on Wednesday.
According to a press release from the university, Iowa will hold a ceremony inside Carver-Hawkeye Arena ahead of its home matchup against USC on Sunday, Feb. 2, 2025 to retire Clark's No. 22 jersey.
"I'm forever proud to be a Hawkeye and Iowa holds a special place in my heart that is bigger than just basketball,” Clark said. "It means the world to me to receive this honor and to celebrate it with my family, friends and alumni. It will be a great feeling to look up in the rafters and see my jersey alongside those that I've admired for so long."

Clark will attend the game against the Trojans, which is set to tip off at 12:30 p.m. (CT) and will also feature a blackout theme for the crowd. Broadcast coverage will be provided by FOX and the Hawkeye Radio Network.

​

“Caitlin Clark has not only redefined excellence on the court but has also inspired countless young athletes to pursue their dreams with passion and determination,” Iowa Director of Athletics Beth Goetz said. “Her remarkable achievements have left an indelible mark on the University of Iowa and the world of women’s basketball. Retiring her number is a testament to her extraordinary contributions and a celebration of her legacy that will continue to inspire future generations. Hawkeye fans are eager to say thank you for so many incredible moments.”


Last season, Clark broke Kelsey Plum's record to become the all-time women's NCAA Division I scoring leader, and also broke Lynette Woodard's AIAW scoring record and Pete Maravich's all-time Division I men's and women's scoring record.


Clark received the Wooden, Naismith, Wad, Anny Meyers Drysdale, Honda Cup and AAU Sullivan awards twice during her Hawkeye career.


She was also named 2024 Collegiate Woman Athlete of the Year by the Collegiate Women Sports Awards (CWSA) and 2024 Athlete of the Year by TIME Magazine. She is also a three-time winner of the Nancy Lieberman Point Guard Award and is the first-ever three-time winner of the Dawn Staley Award.

During her time in Iowa City, the Hawkeyes experienced unparalleled success, claiming three Big Ten Tournament titles (2022, 2023, 2024) and reached the NCAA National Championship in 2023 and 2024.
Since leaving Iowa, Clark led the Indiana Fever to the WNBA playoffs in her first professional season while leading the league in assists. The Dowling Catholic product also earned WNBA All-Star, All-WNBA First Team and WNBA All-Rookie Team honors in 2024.

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By Russel L. Honoré
Lt. Gen. Honoré retired from the U.S. Army in 2008.
It is now fair to ask the question: Is Elon Musk a national security risk?
According to numerous interviews and remarks, Mr. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency co-leader, Vivek Ramaswamy, once appeared to believe he was. In May 2023, Mr. Ramaswamy went so far as to publicly state, “I have no reason to think Elon won’t jump like a circus monkey when Xi Jinping calls in the hour of need,” a reference to China’s leader. In a separate X post targeting Mr. Musk, he wrote, “the U.S. needs leaders who aren’t in China’s pocket.”
Mr. Ramaswamy has since walked back his numerous public criticisms of Mr. Musk, but he was right to raise concerns. According to news reports, Mr. Musk and his rocket company, SpaceX, face federal reviews from the Air Force, the Defense Department’s Office of Inspector General and the under secretary of defense for intelligence and security for failing to provide details of Mr. Musk’s meetings with foreign leaders and other potential violations of national-security rules.
These alleged infractions are just the beginning of my worries. Mr. Musk’s business ventures are heavily reliant on China. He borrowed at least $1.4 billion from banks controlled by the Chinese government to help build Tesla’s Shanghai gigafactory, which was responsible for more than half of Tesla’s global deliveries in the third quarter of 2024.
China does not tend to give things away. The country’s laws stipulate that the Communist Party can demand intelligence from any company doing business in China, in exchange for participating in the country’s markets.
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This means Mr. Musk’s business dealings in China could require him to hand over sensitive classified information, learned either through his business interests or his proximity to President-elect Donald Trump. No federal agency has accused him of disclosing such material, but as Mr. Ramaswamy put it, China has recognized that U.S. companies are fickle. He added, “If Xi Jinping says ‘jump,’ they’ll say, ‘How high?’”
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Mr. Musk’s relationship with China’s leaders could prove a problem for America’s national security given that SpaceX has a near monopoly on the United States’ rocket launches. The United States is in an intense space race with China. In a May interview, Maj. Gen. Gregory J. Gagnon, the deputy chief of space operations for intelligence at the U.S. Space Force, said that there has never been a buildup comparable to what the Chinese are attempting in space — not even during World War II — and that “an adversary arming this fast is profoundly concerning.” The last thing the United States needs is for China to potentially have an easier way of obtaining classified intelligence and national security information.
Mr. Musk already has a history of pleasing the Chinese Communist Party. He heaped praise on Mr. Xi to commemorate the party’s 100th anniversary. In 2022, earning thanks from Chinese officials, he went to bat for the party by arguing that Taiwan should become a special administrative region of China.
In May 2023, Mr. Musk also reportedly told Qin Gang, then the Chinese foreign minister, that Tesla opposed the United States decoupling from China, stating that U.S. and Chinese interests are “intertwined like conjoined twins.”
Although claiming to be a free-speech advocate, Mr. Musk was the first foreigner to contribute an article to China Cyberspace, a magazine that is run by the Communist regime’s internet censorship agency.

​

Chris Stewart, a Republican former congressman and senior member of the House Intelligence Committee, whom Mr. Trump reportedly considered nominating as director of national intelligence, once pushed for closed-door briefings on Mr. Musk’s China ties. Mr. Trump’s choice for secretary of state, Senator Marco Rubio, who previously accused Tesla of covering up for the Chinese Communist Party, introduced a bill to prevent NASA and other federal agencies from giving contracts to companies linked to China or Russia.
The question now is whether the incoming Trump administration will take this risk seriously.
Mr. Musk is one of Mr. Trump’s top advisers. Mr. Trump may have gone so far as to reject a bipartisan congressional budget measure because it did not have Mr. Musk’s stamp of approval. In November, after his election, Mr. Trump traveled to Texas to watch Mr. Musk’s Starship launch. That is fine, but doing nothing to ensure America’s space apparatus remains secure from potential vulnerabilities would not be.
The Musk-China concerns might just represent the beginning. In a November letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Pentagon’s inspector general, two Democratic senators asked that they investigate Mr. Musk’s “reliability as a government contractor and a clearance holder” because of his reported conversations with Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials. In a separate letter, the senators asked the Air Force secretary, Frank Kendall, to reconsider SpaceX’s “outsized role” in America’s commercial space integration. Mr. Kendall wrote back stating that, while he was legally prohibited from discussing Mr. Musk’s case, he shared their concerns.
If the federal investigations demonstrate deep connections to China and Russia, the federal government should consider revoking Mr. Musk’s security clearance. It should already be thinking about using alternatives to SpaceX’s launch services.
The fact that Mr. Musk spent a quarter of a billion dollars to help re-elect Mr. Trump does not give the incoming White House the license to look the other way at the national security risks he may pose. If Mr. Trump and his appointees mean what they say about getting tough on America’s adversaries, then they will act on this matter without delay. There is too much at stake to ignore what’s right in front of them.

16 US military survivors remain alive
https://apnews.com/article/pearl-harbor-attack-anniversary-hawaii-97e21f0b36f969bf0c5b3a8bb2641694

How much more of his soul will he have to give away to remain Speaker? If he doesn’t make it, who succeeds him? Is Musk a viable alternative?

So Much Winning

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I couldn't find the thread about this from a few weeks ago, so starting a new one. This documentary is wayyy better then Tiger King. I actually felt sorry for ole kc...until the very end. Anybody else watch this one?