The 6-7 Miami Dolphins travel to Houston today to face a rested 8-5 Texans squad coming off a BYE week. The game is at 1 p.m. eastern on CBS.

Miami had to go to overtime to defeat the Jets last week at home. They are two games out of the final playoffs spot with four weeks remaining. If the Dolphins win out, they have about a 90 percent chance according to the NY Times' playoff predictor. But any one loss drops their chances down to about a 1-in-20 proposition. A loss today won't be automatic elimination, but it's pretty darn close.

After Houston, Miami is home against the 49ers and then cold-weather road games against the Browns and the Jets to close out the season.

The Dolphins have won four of their past five games and Tua is playing out of his mind. Since his late October return from concussion protocol, he's thrown 15 TDs and only one INT. But Houston's defense is stout, ranked second in the league for both interceptions and sacks.

Houston enters as 2.5-point favorites, with the over/under set at 46.5. While analysts expect a tightly contested game, many believe Miami has the potential to pull off an upset, especially if Tagovailoa continues his strong form. Both teams recognize the stakes, intensifying the anticipation for this pivotal matchup.

Weather Report: N/A - retractable roof

FINS UP!

BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street sued by Texas, red states​

• Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is leading a lawsuit against BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street in federal court, alleging they are “conspiring to artificially constrict” the coal market, according to a Wednesday press release.
• Paxton and Texas were joined by 10 other Republican-led states in the lawsuit accusing the three largest U.S. asset managers of buying “substantial” holdings in public coal companies and then pushing those companies to reduce their output, according to the Nov. 27 lawsuit.
• Paxton and the coalition filed the complaint in the U.S. Eastern District Court of Texas and “demanded” a jury trial, according to the filing. Texas was joined in the suit by Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, West Virginia and Wyoming.
• The lawsuit alleges the three asset managers allegedly violated the Sherman Act and Clayton Act — which govern antitrust law — as well as state antitrust laws from Texas, Montana and West Virginia.

Former president Bill Clinton said he hopes Joe Biden doesn’t issue preemptive pardons for his wife or others as Trump prepares to take office.


Has he finally decided to put a ring on it?

Elliot
When will the 2025 Football Scholarship Distribution Chart be updated?

Curious on the old folks on the boards experiences with them.

A federal judge has allowed 13 more Republican-led states — including Iowa — to intervene as codefendants in the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s new lawsuit against the Army Corps of Engineers over the Dakota Access Pipeline.



The lawsuit, filed in October, accuses the Army Corps of unlawfully allowing the oil pipeline to operate without an easement, a complete environmental assessment or sufficient emergency spill response plans. The tribe ultimately wants a federal judge to shut the pipeline down.


Standing Rock has opposed the pipeline for years, saying it infringes upon the tribe’s sovereignty, has damaged sacred cultural sites and jeopardizes the tribe’s water supply.




The Army Corps of Engineers has jurisdiction over a part of the pipeline that passes below the Missouri River less than a half-mile upstream from the Standing Rock Reservation, which straddles the border between North and South Dakota.


“The Corps has failed to act and failed to protect the tribe,” Standing Rock Chair Janet Alkire said in an October news conference announcing the lawsuit.


The more than 1,000-mile pipeline, often referred to as DAPL, passes through North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Illinois. Its pathway includes unceded land recognized as belonging to the Sioux Nation under an 1851 treaty with the U.S. government.

Dakota Access in Iowa​

The crude oil underground pipeline crosses 18 counties in Iowa, running diagonally from the northwest to the southeast.

The Iowa Utilities Board — now called the Iowa Utilities Commission — in 2016 granted its developers a permit to build the pipeline. Iowa regulators also granted the developers eminent domain authority, allowing them to force unwilling landowners to grant easements for the route in exchange for compensation.

In 2019, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled against landowners protesting the use of eminent domain and instead sided with Dakota Access and the regulators.

In 2020, the Iowa regulators gave support to a request by Dakota Access to double its capacity. Developer Energy Transfer Partners — a Texas-based consortium of companies and investors — said a higher volume was needed because of demand.

North Dakota joined the case on the side of the Army Corps earlier this month, arguing that closing the pipeline would cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue, put thousands of jobs at risk, hamper regional supply chains and harm the environment. State attorneys also argue that a federal court order shuttering the pipeline would violate North Dakota’s right to regulate its own land and resources.


In a brief filed last week, the 13 additional co-defendant states made similar arguments. The group, led by Iowa, said Dakota Access is integral to the health of regional energy and agriculture markets.


“DAPL plays a vital role in ensuring the nation’s crops can come to market — not because DAPL itself transports agricultural products, but because every barrel of oil that DAPL transports is a barrel that does not take space in a truck or a train,” the states wrote.


This also makes highways and railways safer and reduces pollution, they added.

Dakota Access pipeline route - Gazette graphic
The 13 states that joined the lawsuit are Iowa, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas and West Virginia.


According to the states’ brief, the pipeline has paid over $100 million in property taxes to Iowa counties and over $33 million in property taxes to South Dakota counties since it began operating in 2017.


The Army Corps of Engineers has not yet filed an answer to the tribe’s lawsuit.






Energy Transfer, the developer of the Dakota Access Pipeline, has not requested to intervene in the suit.


The case is before U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg, who oversaw the tribe’s 2016 lawsuit against the Army Corps opposing the pipeline.


North Dakota in 2021 sought to join that lawsuit as well, but Boasberg denied the request as the case was in the process of wrapping up.


That case concluded with Boasberg instructing the Army Corps to conduct a full environmental impact study of the pipeline, which still is in the works. Boasberg also ordered the pipeline to stop operating pending the completion of the study, though that demand was ultimately overturned by an appellate court.


In a separate federal court case, North Dakota seeks $38 million from the U.S. government for costs the state says it incurred responding to Dakota Access Pipeline protests.

This article first appeared in the North Dakota Monitor.

good to see people getting second chances in life

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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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And there ya have it.

STORY:

A Miserychant Production


THE MIDWEST’S ANSWER TO THE SLOPPY JOE - THE LOOSE MEAT SANDWICH | SAM THE COOKING GUY

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Not bad. Definitely not as bad as the reviews made it sound. I liked it.

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.

The Amazing Kreskin, an entertainer who used mentalist tricks to dazzle audiences as he rose to fame on the night show circuit during the 1970s, died on Tuesday in New Jersey. He was 89.
Ryan Galway, his former road manager and close friend, said that Mr. Kreskin had died in his home in Caldwell, N.J. He did not name the cause of death.
Mr. Kreskin’s feats included divining details of the personal lives of strangers and guessing at playing cards chosen randomly from a deck. And he had a classic trick at live shows: entrusting audience members to hide his paycheck in an auditorium, and then relying on his instincts to find it — or else going without payment for a night.
Born George Joseph Kresge Jr., in Montclair, N.J., Mr. Kreskin has said he was drawn to magic and psychology as a child. He was performing mentalist tricks for audiences by the time he was a teenager.
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His star rose in the 1970s when he was a regular guest on the talk show circuit, appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, The Mike Douglas Show and Late Night with David Letterman. With other famous guests, he played psychological tricks that looked like magic: asking people to put their fingers on objects that would seem to move, for example, or guessing what card had been pulled from a deck.
He also did live performances around the world, using audience members as his props, promising that he had no secret assistants or electronic devices that enabled him to find hidden objects or guess a strangers’ thoughts.
As his career progressed, Mr. Kreskin diversified. He wrote several books. He earned a few acting credits. He offered mental training to boxers. He even created a dating website for people interested in the supernatural.
Mr. Kreskin often said that he was not psychic and did not possess any supernatural powers but was able to read certain cues, like body language, and use the power of suggestion to guide people’s actions.
That didn’t stop him from making predictions about the future, including about the 2016 presidential election. In 2015, Mr. Kreskin told a Fox News affiliate in Washington that he knew who would win the presidential election nearly a year later but didn’t want to get too specific.

​

“I’ve been in his house,” he said. “The one that’s been shouting all over — everywhere.” Fox’s report mused that “the one presidential-hopeful who could easily fit his description would be Republican candidate Donald Trump,” whom many considered a long shot at the time.
But Mr. Kreskin’s predictions have disappointed fans, too — most notably in 2002, when he said there would be mass U.F.O. sightings over Las Vegas on June 6 and promised to donate $50,000 to charity if he was wrong.
Reports indicate that the gathered crowds were underwhelmed by the night sky on that Thursday. But Mr. Kreskin said a few people saw strange things overhead — enough that he didn’t have to make his donation. And anyway, he said to The Las Vegas Sun, his ultimate goal had been to make a point about the dangers of public susceptibility to suggestion.
Though he continued to perform until this spring, Mr. Kreskin’s star has been on the decline since the 1970s. That trajectory was captured in a 2008 movie based loosely on Mr. Kreskin’s life, “The Great Buck Howard.” The actor John Malkovich starred as the title character, a once-famous mentalist struggling to make a comeback amid increasingly distracted audiences.
Mr. Kreskin himself has suggested that the march of technology was making his work more difficult, changing not only the entertainment industry but the nature of human interaction in general.
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In a video for the online knowledge forum Big Think, Mr. Kreskin complained that “traditional culture is disintegrating” in ways that made it hard to communicate as a mentalist.
“People don’t hear each other anymore,” he said. “There are actually human beings, and this is going to seem incredible, who when they’re in a restaurant have a cellphone on the table and they’re looking into it.”
Fans mourning Mr. Kreskin might take some solace in a comment he made in 2015, suggesting that not even death could stop his work. It was during an interview with The Huffington Post, when the still-practicing mentalist was asked when he might retire.
“Exactly 10 days after I drop dead,” he replied.
A list of survivors was not immediately available.