After a year at Western Michigan, Anterio Thompson is back in the portal.
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Dumbass bastards:

House Republicans on Tuesday said their one-time colleague, former Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, should face a criminal investigation for her role on the select committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
A 128-page report from the House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight said Ms. Cheney should be investigated for witness tampering. It accuses her of colluding with Cassidy Hutchinson, the former White House aide who became the committee’s star witness as it examined Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The report — released as Mr. Trump, now the president-elect, has been promising retribution against his political enemies, including Ms. Cheney — accused Ms. Cheney of using the select committee as a tool to attack Mr. Trump. It was spearheaded by Representative Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, the chairman of the oversight subcommittee.
Ms. Cheney defended her work on the select committee in a detailed statement, and called the Republicans’ report “a malicious and cowardly assault on the truth.”
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She said the select committee had heard from “scores of Republican witnesses, including many of the most senior officials from Trump’s own White House, campaign and Administration” and produced “a highly detailed and meticulously sourced 800-page report.”
Ms. Cheney said Mr. Loudermilk’s interim report “intentionally disregards the truth and the Select Committee’s tremendous weight of evidence, and instead fabricates lies and defamatory allegations in an attempt to cover up what Donald Trump did.”

It is great to be an Iowa Wrestling fan.

Go Hawks!

It's coming and yes it will be GLORIOUS!


Trump has promised to deport millions of migrants and vowed to use the U.S. Armed Forces on domestic soil to do it, rhetoric which Homan has echoed.

The incoming “border czar”, meanwhile, told his Chicago audience Monday that the mass deportation plan will begin in America’s third most populous city.

“We’re going to start right here in Chicago, Illinois,” he said.


“Chicago’s in trouble because your mayor sucks and your governor sucks,” Homan said, which local outlet WBEZ reported was received with cheers from the Republican crowd.

Of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, he said: ““If he doesn’t want to help, get the hell out of the way. But if he impedes us—if he knowingly harbors or conceals an illegal alien—I will prosecute him.”

He called Johnson and Illinois Gov. J.B. Prizker “terrible” at the same time that he asked them to “come to the table” and work with him.

It is easy to forget how desperate things were on Jan. 20, 2021, when Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. became the 46th president of the United States.

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Just two weeks earlier, thousands of President Donald Trump’s supporters had stormed the U.S. Capitol in a violent attempt to keep Congress from certifying Biden’s election victory. The nation was at the height of the coronavirus pandemic; in that month, 3,000 Americans died daily from covid-19. There were newly developed, lifesaving vaccines, thanks to the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed — but there was no viable plan to distribute them. Schools and workplaces were shuttered; hotels and airlines had no customers; restaurants tried to survive by offering take-out. The U.S. economy and the world economy were on life support.



Four years later, the country is in vastly better shape, at home and abroad. The economy, though still recovering, is the envy of the developed world; U.S. stock markets are at or near all-time highs. Our political system has survived. We have made overdue investments in infrastructure and technology. And in a world full of conflict and danger, American troops are not at war for the first time in a generation.




History may fault Biden for the way his term in office ended. By any objective standard, however, he was a very good president whose accomplishments will benefit the nation for many years to come.
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Biden’s critics find it convenient to look past what may be remembered as his biggest success: He guided the country through, and ultimately out of, the pandemic. The virus has not entirely gone away, but getting vaccinated is as easy as dropping by one’s neighborhood pharmacy. And regardless of what Republican polemicists want us to believe, it was during Trump’s presidency when government officials imposed draconian anti-covid rules that sent us into dour isolation — and during Biden’s when we regained the freedom to go about our lives as we pleased.


On the economy, Biden’s record is remarkable. The pandemic shutdown in the spring of 2020 had caused unemployment to peak at 14.8 percent. When Biden became president, joblessness had eased considerably but was still elevated at 6.3 percent. Unemployment declined steadily during Biden’s first year in the White House until, in December 2021, it dipped to just 3.9 percent — and remained at or below 4 percent for 30 straight months. Biden’s was a “jobs, jobs, jobs” economy.
First Trump and then Biden opened the spigots of government spending to keep Americans afloat during the pandemic. To be sure, the resulting inflation was not as “transitory” as the Biden administration said it would be. But the independent Federal Reserve brought rising prices under control — and did so without sending the economy into a recession. Such “soft landings” are rare, and Biden has one on his ledger sheet.
In an era of bitter partisanship and polarization, Biden succeeded with Congress where his predecessors had failed. The Trump administration repeatedly promised an “infrastructure week” but never delivered; Biden won approval of a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill. Another major piece of legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, made the nation’s biggest investment ever in fighting climate change — more than $400 billion. Still another bill, the Chips and Science Act, marked $280 billion to boost scientific research and spur domestic manufacturing of cutting-edge semiconductors.


These initiatives will produce returns in the years and decades to come. When future presidents smile for the cameras at ribbon-cuttings, remember that it was Biden who laid the foundations.
In foreign policy, too, Biden and his team have ably acted in the national interest with an eye toward the future. Begin with the bottom line: For the first time in two decades, there are no U.S. troops deployed in combat anywhere in the world. President George W. Bush got us into wars; Biden finally got us out of them.
Without question, the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 was chaotic and tragic. Thirteen American service members were killed in a terrorist attack amid a sudden collapse of public order in Kabul that Biden and his planners should have anticipated.

That mistake cost Biden dearly in public support. It also obscured the administration’s subsequent foreign policy successes.

Without putting boots on the ground, the United States and its allies fortified Ukraine with the arms and intelligence it needed to fight invading Russian troops to a stalemate. Effectively, Biden forced Russian President Vladimir Putin to pay a much bigger price in manpower and materiel than he had anticipated — weakening the Russian military at minimal cost to the United States.
Taking a broader view, prior administrations had talked about making a foreign policy “pivot” toward Asia as a way to counter the rise of China as a superpower. Biden actually executed the maneuver.

Two new alliances — the AUKUS security partnership, among Australia, Britain and the United States, and the Quad partnership, among the United States, Australia, India and Japan — greatly boost American influence in the region. Biden’s diplomatic envoys also helped reinforce the United States’ relationship with the Philippines and forge closer ties between South Korea and Japan, both of which are U.S. allies.

Chinese President Xi Jinping might still be considering an invasion of Taiwan, but now he has to recalculate the risk.
Many in Biden’s own party are sharply critical of his handling of the war in Gaza. The Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack and hostage-taking were atrocities, and Israel had the right to respond. Killing tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians and reducing their homes, schools and hospitals to rubble are also atrocities. The fact is that U.S. officials have limited influence over how Israel conducts its military operations — and much less influence over Israeli public opinion, which generally supports the way Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been waging war.

It is true that the world has become messier on Biden’s watch. But he has kept us out of wars, strengthened our alliances and created obstacles for our strategic adversaries. Those count as successes.

Why, then, does Biden have an approval rating that struggles to reach 40 percent? Why did he have to end his campaign for reelection, abandoning a race he still thinks he could have won? What was his unforgivable sin?
Actually, there were two. One sin was political: Biden failed to address the crisis at the southern border — failed, even, to recognize it as a crisis — until far too late. By the time he finally took executive action that calmed the chaos, the immigration issue had become a millstone he could never remove.

The other sin was actuarial: Biden got old. Worse, he showed his age, reaching the point where he walked and talked unsteadily. None of that said anything about his thinking, but no matter. Voters had the right to decide he looked and sounded too feeble to be president for four more years.

But I am confident that historians, with the clarity of hindsight, will focus less on Biden’s softening voice and tentative gait — and more on all that he managed to achieve in a single term. He was a consequential and farsighted president who leaves the nation much better off than he found it.

When Andy Kotelnicki was OC at Kansas the offense was brought back to life. PSU poached him away and they’re in the CFB in just one year.

We need to go after guys like this before someone else grabs them.

Never again. I have given them a couple second chances in the last 6 months or so but tonight is the last straw. I’ve been up since 11:00. …. I’m serious this time goddamn it!!

First the toy stores and not Party City. Once Amazon is all we have, the prices will go through the roof.

Party City is going out of business​

A Party City in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Paul Weaver/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images
New YorkCNN —
Party City is closing down all of its stores, ending nearly 40 years in business, CNN has learned.
CEO Barry Litwin told corporate employees Friday in a meeting viewed by CNN that Party City is “winding down” operations immediately and that today will be their last day of employment. Staff were told they will not receive severance pay, and they were told their benefits would end as the company goes out of business.
“That is without question the most difficult message that I’ve ever had to deliver,” Litwin said at the meeting, which was held on a video conference call.



Party City’s “very best efforts have not been enough to overcome” its financial challenges, he added, resulting in the company’s collapse. Litwin said the company struggled to contend with inflation, which sent the company’s costs higher and dragged down consumer spending.
“It’s really important for you to know that we’ve done everything possible that we could to try to avoid this outcome,” Litwin said. “Unfortunately, it’s necessary to commence a winddown process immediately.”
Also on Friday, some of Party City’s store employees received letters that the company would close down stores on February 28, at which point store staff would be terminated.
“Although Party City believes these closings are in the best interest of the company, we regret that we have had to take this step and thank you for your valued contributions and service to the company,” the letter stated.

Bankruptcy and collapse​

The New Jersey-based company announced Litwin as its new CEO just four months ago. In a LinkedIn post he wrote when he was hired, he said the company’s “main priority is to strengthen our financial health, and there is work ahead of us.”
Party City exited bankruptcy a month after Litwin’s arrival. It had declared bankruptcy in January 2023. The company had struggled to pay off its $1.7 billion debt load, and it was able to cancel nearly $1 billion in debt by going bankrupt. It also managed to keep most of its more-than 800 stores open, although it closed more than 80 locations between the end of 2022 to August 2024, according to its most recent financial documents.
But it still had more than $800 million in debt to overcome, which strained earnings this year.

An emotional ending​

The news of the company’s impending collapse began to trickle out among the company’s corporate staff over the past couple weeks.
Party City’s product development team was recalled two weeks ago from its yearly trip with vendors and told to return home immediately, according to a former Party City corporate office employee, who wished to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak to the media. The team was told the company believed the trip posed a safety risk, because Party City had stopped paying its suppliers.
All corporate employees were sent home on December 10. Security at corporate headquarters locked the doors to the front entrance. In an email sent to staff on December 11, the company’s security team told employees they needed to provide a one-day heads up to gain access to the building, and they were instructed: “Do not allow anyone to tailgate when entering the building” to avoid letting people in the door who did not have badge access.
On internal Microsoft Teams chats shared with CNN, employees Thursday expressed fury at the lack of communication as news spread of the recalled product development staff. Others had learned that notifications were sent out to store managers that all Party City locations’ doors would be shut in February.
Employees were caught off guard, because management hadn’t mentioned any potential financial trouble at recent town hall meetings. The employee said management had expressed optimism about Party City’s overall business.
On the call with staff Friday, Litwin apologized for the lack of communication.
“We recognize the flow of communication has not been how we typically handle sensitive matters like this,” Litwin said.
Detailing corporate employees’ benefits and severance, Party City’s Chief Human Resources Officer Karen McGowan broke down in tears several times on the short video conference call.
“I certainly know this is a lot to take in,” McGowan said before she paused and teared up. “My apologies.”

Party’s over​

Party City is the largest party supply store in the United States. The company had approximately 6,400 full-time and 10,100 part-time workers as of 2021.
The company, which sells balloons, Halloween costumes and other party goods, has stumbled in the face of growing competition from e-commerce sites and pop-up concepts like Spirit Halloween. Competition from big-box retailers like Amazon, Walmart, Costco and others also crushed smaller chains.
It also had to contend with rising costs during the pandemic and a helium shortage, which hurt its crucial balloon business.
The chain joins a growing list of retailer bankruptcies this year as customers cut back on discretionary spending amid the rising cost of living. Notably, Big Lots announced Thursday it was starting “going out of business” sales at all of its locations after a plan for a private equity firm to rescue the bankruptcy retailer failed.
Major chains are on track to close the highest number of stores in 2024 than in any year since 2020, according to Coresight Research.

I realize we have the Rex Chapman thread but half of that is broken twitter links, it seems. Let's make this the thread for funny memes you come across while experiencing the interwebz.
OP's mom memes are fair game, btw.

I'll start:

It appears as though she has been hiding since election day.

Iowa MBB ends its holiday break tonight and wraps up non-conference play with a home game against New Hampshire.

Not a lot to say about this one -- New Hampshire is 2-12 this season with wins only over a pair of non-Division I teams. The Wildcats are ranked 359th in KenPom.

Even by cupcake standards, New Hampshire is a pretty lousy-looking team.

Iowa is a -32.5 point favorite over the Wildcats tonight.

Tip-off is at 6 PM CT with TV coverage from BTN.

Most countries, 2 weeks before a new leader takes office his world is busy with cabinet appointments, selecting a staff, policy meetings and the like…..But in America, two weeks before taking office, MY President (elect) is busy harassing judges and trying to get his sentencing date “delayed”! What a COUNTRY!
I’m gonna have me some fun the few years observing and commenting on what America has wrought upon itself! Remember folks…..”Only the best!”

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#winning

2026 class already, McGregory, teammate of Zay Robinson could be one of the big offers of the class.

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