So I was delighted to see this morning that Latvia upset Canada at the world juniors yesterday. As I was reading the article, I was struck by how almost all of the Lats’ first names ended in s. Turns out that in the lat language nearly all male names do, except for a handful of foreign derived ones ending in o.

On its first try too

The Brief

• A Florida man has been arrested after police said he allegedly engaged in sexual acts with a horse.
• Officials reported the incident took place the day after Christmas in the Lake Wales area of Polk County.
• The 53-year-old man is being charged with sexual contact with animals, deputies stated.

POLK COUNTY, Fla. - A Florida man has been arrested after police said he allegedly engaged in sexual acts with a horse.

The 53-year-old man from Polk County is being charged with sexual contact with animals, deputies stated.

What We Know: The Polk County Sheriff's Office said they responded the day after Christmas to the Lake Wales area in reference to possible sexual activities involving an animal.

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Officers said they spoke to a woman, who told them she saw the man engaging in sexual actions near her horse's head.

The horse is a 28-year-old named Raven, according to the official affidavit.

Officers said the woman took a video of part of the incident to show to the police.

Deputies stated the video confirmed what the woman had reported.

The Other Side: The man told police he made a "stupid" and "dumb decision."

What's Next: Officers reported the man knowingly engaged in the sexual acts with the horse.

Deputies said the man then was placed under arrest.

Same f’n bullshit every season. Can we get someone that can draw up a post route and throw the f’n ball down the f’n field?!?!? I’ve seen other teams do it do it must be legal. You might get a pass interference call. So far Lester hasn’t shown me shit that he deserves to be OC.

Maybe…..this?

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Glory Hallelujah!! No more getting hired because you lopped off your johnson!!

Over a decade ago, a horrific sex trafficking scandal rocked Britain. Starting in the late 1990s, thousands of mostly white girls in the postindustrial north of England, many from struggling families, were groomed by networks of mostly Pakistani men, who often professed to be their boyfriends before trapping them in a hell of repeated rape and prostitution. Several girls were murdered.
The mass abuse went on for years as those who tried to sound the alarm — including Sara Rowbotham, a health worker in the town of Rochdale; a Manchester detective constable, Maggie Oliver; and a member of Parliament from West Yorkshire, Ann Cryer — were largely ignored.
Some of the official indifference was of the kind often faced by victims of abuse; in a 2017 documentary, Cryer described police officers saying that it seemed that the girls, many of whom were 12 or 13, were consenting. But given the ethnicities of the perpetrators and the victims, the authorities were also terrified of inflaming racial tensions, leaving girls to be sacrificed to their own political cowardice.
The first journalist to expose the grooming gangs appears to be the feminist Julie Bindel, writing in The Times of London in 2007. A few years later, the investigative reporter Andrew Norfolk published an award-winning series about the scandal in the same paper. Since then, there have been several high-profile trials and scores of convictions, as well as official investigations at both the local and national level.
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That doesn’t mean the problem is resolved; Alexis Jay, the academic who headed up a national inquiry into the abuse, has said that few of the recommendations in her comprehensive 2022 report have been carried out. But the crisis has been out in the open for some time, even if Elon Musk only recently decided to make it a cause célèbre.
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If you’ve been on X in recent days, you might have the impression that there has been some major new development in this awful story. Musk, the platform’s owner, has been posting about it incessantly, smearing Jess Phillips, the Labour minister overseeing issues of violence against women and girls, as a “rape genocide apologist” and calling for her imprisonment. He’s also called for the jailing of Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and urged Britain’s king to dissolve Parliament and call new elections, something the monarch cannot do.
As the world’s richest man and a quasi-official member of Donald Trump’s team, Musk has enormous influence, and his admirers in both the United States and Britain have taken up the cause. Kemi Badenoch, head of the Tories, is demanding a new national investigation, which her party easily could have undertaken when it was in power until last year. Starmer, in turn, was forced to address Musk’s claims on Monday.
In this uproar, we’re seeing a particularly feral right-wing version of an old-fashioned Twitter mob, but with far higher stakes. Musk is using a genuine atrocity to pursue his campaigns against both Starmer, with whom he has a long-running feud over the regulation of social media, and against mass immigration. The visceral horror of the underlying story — especially to people who are only just discovering it — gives his demagogic attacks a sheen of righteousness. But much of what he’s saying about the current government’s culpability is either distorted or flatly untrue, part of his increasingly vigorous crusade against the world’s remaining liberal leaders.
The proximate cause of Musk’s ire is Phillips’s rejection of a request by the town of Oldham to open a national inquiry into the history of grooming and child sexual exploitation there. Phillips said the investigation should be commissioned locally, as those in the towns of Rotherham and Telford were. I have no idea whether this was the right decision, but it’s not a shocking one; as The Independent reported, the previous Tory government turned down Oldham’s request for the same reason. But to Musk and his followers, it’s proof that Phillips, a woman with a long feminist history, is engaged in a monstrous cover-up meant to protect Starmer, the country’s director of public prosecutions from 2008 to 2013.

​

Starmer’s history on this issue is far from shameful. As The Financial Times reports, it was Starmer “who began the prosecutions of the Rochdale grooming gang” during his final year in the prosecutor’s office, “shortly after the scandal in the Greater Manchester town became the first to come to light.” Additionally, The Financial Times said, his office overhauled the way it “investigates sexual abuse to ensure more perpetrators are brought to justice,” making it easier to revisit old cases.
That doesn’t mean that Starmer’s record was impeccable. In 2009, prosecutors in his office dropped a case against a group of abusers in Rochdale despite having DNA evidence, insisting that the victim wouldn’t come across as credible. But two years later, with Starmer’s support, a new chief prosecutor for the North West England region, Nazir Afzal, reopened the case and secured the conviction of nine men. As Afzal said in 2022, “Keir was 100 percent behind the decision to publicly admit that we had got it wrong in the past.” You’d never know from Musk’s calumnies that Starmer owned his mistakes and took steps to make them right.
Meanwhile, it’s worth noting that Musk has been throwing his enthusiastic support behind a man who jeopardized convictions in another trafficking case brought by Afzal. In 2018, the far-right anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson violated restrictions that a judge had put in place during the trials of a grooming gang from Huddersfield by confronting some of the defendants on Facebook Live. One of the jurors later mentioned Robinson during deliberations, nearly causing the case to collapse. Because of Robinson, wrote Afzal, “we had to fight to persuade the court to allow trial to continue. Those criminals came close to being freed and victims close to getting no justice.”
Robinson is in prison for contempt of court stemming from an unrelated libel case, and Musk has repeatedly demanded his release. When Nigel Farage, the head of the right-wing Reform U.K. party, tried to distance himself from the thuggish Robinson, Musk called for Farage’s replacement. In asserting himself as the most powerful troll on earth, Musk is doing nothing to protect women or girls. Rather, he seems to be trying to show that the world is his plaything.
As I write this, his pinned post on X is a quiz asking whether “America should liberate the people of Britain from their tyrannical government.” (“Yes” is winning.) Like so much of what he says, it’s a dumb but menacing joke. What a travesty that the world must take him seriously.

Worker gets nose ring caught in office chair — leading to wild fire-department rescue caught on video​

Worker gets nose ring caught in office chair — leading to wild fire-department rescue caught on video

She was stuck in a wheely-bad spot.
A woman in Bandung City, Indonesia, had to be rescued by a whole squad of firefighters after getting her nose ring impossibly caught in a rolling office chair.
“She had a new piercing and was playing around, just playing for fun, before she messed up,” Asep Rizky, an official with the Bandung City Fire Department, told local media, per the Daily Mail.
The unnamed office employee had apparently been sticking her nose through the chair’s mesh frame when, all of a sudden, “it got stuck,” per the official.



“She kept putting the piercing in the chair and it got stuck, and in the end, she had to call the fire brigade,” said Asep Rizky, an official with the Bandung City Fire Department while recounting the incident (pictured). Viral Press
Security footage taken at the woman’s office shows her sitting backward in the chair with her face stuck in the mesh like a bat caught in a net.

Employees desperately try to save her by wheeling the chair across the room and yanking on her head as she cries in pain.


Rescuers — shown wheeling the victim into the fire station — managed to free her after 10 minutes and with the aid of pliers. Viral Press
Despite their myriad attempts, the employee’s bling remained firmly entangled in the netting and, left with no other recourse, the fellowship of the nose ring had to dial the fire brigade, who quickly arrived on the scene.
After their rescue attempts proved equally fruitless, they gingerly wheeled the woman into a van and transported her to the local fire station with a colleague in tow, as seen in ludicrous footage.
The woman’s coworker couldn’t stifle her laughter despite concerns that her bauble could be ripped out of her nose.
The fire brigade also saw the funny side. Footage shows them trying to ease her tensions at the station by busting out a chainsaw, axe and other heavy-duty tools and pretending to cut her free.

Fortunately, no sawing was required by the rescuers, who finally managed to free the woman from her furniture prison with pliers after an excruciating 10 minutes.
The clip concludes with the firefighters standing around the woman and cheering as she thanks them profusely.
Fortunately, she emerged from her unorthodox imprisonment unscathed and even posed for a photo with the fire brigade, along with the chair and nose ring.

U.S. immigration authorities will once more put families with children in detention centers when President-elect Donald Trump returns to office next month, according to incoming White House “border czar” Tom Homan.

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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will look to hold parents with children in “soft-sided” tent structures similar to those used by U.S. border officials to handle immigration surges, Homan said. The government will not hesitate to deport parents who are in the country illegally, even if they have young U.S.-born children, he added, leaving it to those families to decide whether to exit together or be split up.

“Here’s the issue,” Homan said in a wide-ranging interview that included some of his most extensive comments to date on Trump’s plans for mass deportations. “You knew you were in the country illegally and chose to have a child. So you put your family in that position.”


President Joe Biden ended family detention in 2021, closing three facilities ICE called “residential centers” that offered about 3,000 beds. The facilities had a dorm-like design with recreational and educational programming. They were criticized by immigration advocates and pediatricians who said detention was harmful for children.

The federal judge who oversees immigration detention programs involving minors has set 20 days as the maximum amount of time children can be held at the family facilities. The deportation process often requires more time, so ICE has generally preferred to prioritize easier-to-remove adults. But Homan said that may change once Trump takes office.
“We’re going to need to construct family facilities,” he said. “How many beds we’re going to need will depend on what the data says.”



Homan will not be directing ICE operations as part of his White House role. But he will work closely on border and immigration issues with Kristi L. Noem, now governor of South Dakota and Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE.
As acting director of ICE during Trump’s first term, Homan drove the “zero tolerance” policy that separated more than 4,000 children from their parents soon after they crossed the border into the United States. He said Trump’s new enforcement campaign will seek to deport families together. But he acknowledged the government cannot remove children who are U.S. citizens, leaving it to parents to decide whether they would split up the family.
After retiring from ICE in 2018, Homan became a regular guest on Fox News, advocating the kind of unsentimental, unapologetic approach to immigration enforcement that seems to appeal to Trump. But of all the border hard-liners in the incoming administration, Homan is perhaps the most cognizant of the limits of the government’s ability to deliver on promises of mass deportation — and the potential for a political backlash. During a 34-year career at the U.S. Border Patrol and ICE, he saw wide swings in public support for immigration enforcement.

Hope to finish season 4 this weekend. Billy Bob Thornton is a badass and I might have to change my name to Billy McBride.

Looking at the remaining schedule I only see one definite loss on the schedule. Honestly at Minnesota, Michigan State and Nebraska isn't intimidating. Playing Wisconsin, Washington UCLA and Purdue doesn't instill any fear. So realistically Kirk will get close to ten wins with a putrid offense. The defense will come together playing offenses like Illinois or Minnesota and Kirk will get lauded as doing more with less.

Only difference is he won't get to the CCG to get an extra blowout. The narrative more with less is a bit deceiving. If Iowa had to play Oregon, USC, Penn State, Michigan and Ohio State yearly plus a tough OOC game like Wisconsin, Ohio State and Michigan do every year and win even half of those I would agree. But Iowa plays teams like Northwestern. Kirk purposely makes younger more talented guys sit behind older players that have earned his respect.

Meanwhile Nebraska is starting a true freshman that has put life into that program. Ohio State has their 100th freshman WR phenom making plays and Florida learned their lesson by putting in their highly touted QB freshman because if they didn't that coach would be gone. Florida also has a meat grinder of a schedule so it likely won't matter, but it's the expectations.

Iowa under a coach with a fire under his butt would've kicked the tires on Kyle McCord, Cam Ward or Will Howard. But the program under Kirk is stable and while everyone is upset now, things will go back to normal after Iowa beats all the teams they should. Kirk will get his ten wins and ride into next year. His backers will point to his tenure as the most impressive thing ever.

Wash, Rinse and Repeat. The beat goes on.

The U.S. economy will continue to be the developed world’s best performer in 2025, easily topping Europe and Japan and giving President-elect Donald Trump a running start on his plan to spur faster growth, the International Monetary Fund said on Friday.

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But without criticizing Trump by name, the fund warned that excessive deregulation and tax cuts could create a “boom-bust” dynamic for the U.S. and global economies, with a short-term growth spurt followed by an abrupt slump. And it warned that new U.S. import tariffs and potential retaliation by other countries could reignite inflation.

During the presidential campaign, Trump promised “large tax cuts,” an end to “costly and burdensome regulations” and the most comprehensive taxes on imports in nearly a century.

The United States is expected to grow this year at an annual rate of 2.7 percent, half a percentage point faster than the fund projected in October. The Euro area and Japan both appear likely to grow at a rate of around 1 percent, the fund said in its latest global economic forecast.

The global economy will post steady but “lackluster” growth through the end of 2026, as major economies outside the United States struggle with their own domestic challenges.
“The big story is the divergence between the U.S. and the rest of the world,” said Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, the IMF’s chief economist.
American voters last year showed themselves unimpressed by Biden administration claims of a strong economy, rejecting Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential bid over inflation concerns.

But since the depths of the pandemic recession, the United States has grown significantly faster than all of its advanced-economy rivals. Increasingly productive workers, a more welcoming business environment and the world’s largest capital market explain the growing U.S. edge, the fund said.
Economic problems in the Euro area and China could allow the United States to pull further ahead, Gourinchas said. The Chinese economy is at risk of tumbling into “a debt-deflation” trap, where weak demand causes prices to fall, making it harder for businesses and individuals to earn enough to repay their borrowing.

The IMF analysis offered no conclusions about specific Trump administration policies and said it is more likely that the United States grows faster than expected in 2025, rather than slower.

On Thursday, hedge fund manager Scott Bessent, Trump’s nominee to become treasury secretary, told his confirmation hearing, that the incoming president would “unleash the American economy” through deregulation, lower taxes and higher energy production.

“President Trump has a generational opportunity to unleash a new economic golden age that will create more jobs, wealth and prosperity for all Americans,” Bessent testified before the Senate Finance Committee.
But the IMF forecast carried some veiled warnings for U.S. policymakers, including on resurgent inflation and long-term government budget deficits.
Gourinchas said some Trump policies could halt progress in the fight against inflation, causing prices to rise at a faster clip.


“While many of the policy shifts under the incoming U.S. administration are hard to quantify precisely, they are likely to push inflation higher in the near term,” he wrote in a blog post on the IMF website.
Tax cuts and deregulation are likely to cause demand for goods and services to increase. At the same time, tariffs on imported goods and immigration restrictions will make it harder to satisfy that higher demand, meaning prices would be likely to increase, Gourinchas wrote.
Tax cuts would help the economy grow faster in the short term but require larger deficit reduction in the long term, which “could become disruptive to markets and the economy,” according to the IMF.

The fund raised particular concerns over the uncertainty surrounding trade policy, as Trump has already threatened to impose tariffs on the top three U.S. trade partners: Mexico, Canada and China. And those countries have vowed to retaliate with their own trade restrictions if he does.

New tariffs, or import taxes, could have a larger inflationary effect than those Trump imposed in his first term, the fund said. Consumers and businesses that were rattled by the highest inflation in 40 years under Biden might react quickly to new price increases, setting in motion a vicious cycle of rising prices and wages.
“Upside risks to inflation could be higher this time,” the fund concluded.

Browns at Ravens
Bengals at Steelers

Booo....

Ross and I detail the addition of Chattanooga wide receiver, Sam Phillips via the transfer portal, as well as Isaiah Johnson-Arigu's commitment to the Hawkeyes after hitting the portal part way through his freshman year with Miami.

What Phillips will bring to Iowa, Getting another weapon for Mark Gronowski, adding Phillips and not replacing anyone, Johnson-Arigu's future role with Iowa, his skillset, Iose Epenesa's All-American Bowl performances and more.

PODCAST:

"You ain’t never had no girl so why are y’all talking about me," he said. "Find someone else to talk about. … Go talk about your girl. Go find a girl. Go find a life. Stop worrying about what I got going on. I know what I got.

"My girl been wif me for five years. y’all are just now starting to talk about me… y’all go do something else with y’all life. Clickbait pages stop, y’all better stop I’m telling y’all. Something bad is gonna happen to y’all [if you] keep doing that. Y’all better stop that. I ain’t playing."