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Darnold was on his 5th team in 8 seasons before he won a SB. Nobody saw it coming and four teams gave up on him. I don't think even a crystal ball could have predicted that one.

Can you name a single NFL team that would have put up with all of those terrible seasons he had before he suddenly blossomed into a SB winner?

Top Teams in the 2026 NFL Draft

Ohio State Buckeyes: 11 players selected (including 4 in the first round)

Texas A&M Aggies: 10 players selected

Alabama Crimson Tide: 10 players selected

Miami Hurricanes: 9 players selected

Clemson Tigers: 9 players selected

Oklahoma Sooners: 7 players selected

Iowa Hawkeyes: 7 players selected

Washington Huskies: 7 players selected

It's not as hard to figure out as you're making it sound.

Against lesser teams good teams face less QB pressures. Against lesser teams the secondary coverage isn't as good. Against lesser teams the talent on both sides of the ball is inferior to highly ranked teams.

The best players are recruited by the best schools. Unless an athlete believes he isn't good enough to win the starting job at those better schools, he will go to one of them. If playing in the NFL is their goal, winning a starting job at a top tier school gives them the national exposure they desire to make an NFL career more possible.

Who would go to an unranked school if they could be a starter at a nationally ranked school?

There's a reason athletes go to Ohio University or Kent State instead of Ohio State.

Trump decries ‘communism’ while his government takes ownership of companies

By Jackie Calmes
July 9, 2026 3:11 AM PT

link

As a student years ago, I dove deep into the history of the Red-hunting McCarthy era and became familiar with the actor who emerged second only to Wisconsin Sen. Joe McCarthy as the villain of that insidious time: his shameless, conniving young lawyer, Roy Cohn. Never would I have imagined that a future president would count Cohn as a mentor and role model.

Then came Donald Trump.

Now, in Cohn-inflected McCarthyesque style, President Trump is channeling his tutor yet again, baselessly labeling his political enemies — all Democrats — as communists as he looks ahead to the fall’s midterm elections. Once more Trump shows that his catchphrase “Make America great again” means regressing, this time to Trump’s formative 1950s and the McCarthy era that sadly helped define it.

In recent speeches, including on the Fourth of July, Trump’s utterances of “communist” or “communism” reached double digits each time. (As that implies, the president didn’t set aside his divisive rhetoric even for the nation’s 250th birthday.)

“Our warriors did not fight communism on battlefields across the world only to have that menace rear its ugly head right back here in America,” Trump said late on the Fourth on the National Mall.

Trump couples his commie-baiting with a dash of his trademark xenophobia. “There is now a resurgence of the communist menace in our land, including by newcomers to our country who embrace ideas totally opposed to our way of life and our great success,” he said at Mount Rushmore a day earlier. (He’s got it backward, of course: Immigrants come here for the American way of life and promise of success.)

Here’s the irony: Trump’s actions in his second term make him look more like the commie. He’s projecting again.

Now that Trump is exploiting a few victories lately by left-wing democratic socialists in Democratic primaries to paint the entire party as communists, it’s time to review the record — his record.

A hallmark of communism is government ownership of companies and control of the economy, at the expense of private property and free markets. In just over a year, Trump has used billions of taxpayers’ dollars to buy shares for the government in a growing list of private companies — U.S. Steel, Intel, Westinghouse and more — citing national security. The companies don’t always welcome their new stakeholder; at a minimum, they rightly fear it for the demands the government could make about prices and production.

“It’s what Putin did,” the estranged Republicans at the Lincoln Project posted online Monday. “Trump is the closest we’ve ever come to communism.”

“What began as a populist revolt against so-called elites has become a program of state ownership, price fixing and top-down industrial control,” free-market economist Veronique de Rugy wrote in The Times last October of Trump’s actions. “The power to ‘partner’ with business is the power to control it.”

Comrade Trump’s first big government grab, and a model for those to come, was in June last year, when he wrested a permanent “golden share” in U.S. Steel in return for approving its sale to Japan’s Nippon Steel. The company’s charter was revised to give the U.S. president extraordinary veto power over nearly a dozen corporate activities, including closing or relocating plants, supply-chain decisions, even pricing.

“We have a golden share, which I control,” Trump told reporters at the time, in words I never thought I’d hear from a president of the party once associated with free markets.

Just last week, Trump boasted to CNBC how he’d extracted a 10% stake in beleaguered chip giant Intel last August, after first demanding that its chief executive resign. “Intel came in. They had a problem. I said, ‘I can solve your problem, but I want 10% of the company.’ … Somebody said that’s not very American. I said, ‘No, I think it is very American, actually.’ And I’ve done that with other deals.”

And so he has.

The Pentagon is now the largest stockholder in struggling MP Materials, a large rare-earth mine in California, and guarantees a 10-year price floor for its output that stunned competitors. The administration has since taken shares in other rare-earth companies. The Commerce Department took an option for an 8% stake in Westinghouse, to spur construction of nuclear reactors, and has the right to 20% if the government decides the company should go public. The government takes a 15% cut of Nvidia’s and Advanced Micro Devices’ AI chip sales to China.

As much as anything he does, Trump’s direct intervention in private enterprise invites the question “What if Biden/Harris/Obama did that?” The answer, of course: Trump and Republicans would cry “Communist!”

Trump’s actions are the sort Americans generally have only seen during economic emergencies or major wars, and then rarely. I covered the frenzied and ultimately successful response to the near-collapse of the global financial system and the U.S. auto, insurance and housing industries. Behind the scenes in the Obama White House (and George W. Bush’s at the outset) was constant, angst-filled debate about any actions smacking of government takeovers and a determination that interventions be temporary, unlike Trump’s schemes. (For all the still-lingering unpopularity of the banking bailout, the Treasury — the taxpayers — got all the money back and then some, and exited the business.)

Trump’s economic big-footing isn’t the only way in which he resembles the commies Americans know best, and whom he so admires: Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jung Un. There are also the images of himself everywhere, monuments planned, drearily long and self-adulating speeches and interference in the nation’s cultural, educational and legal spheres and — worst of all — in elections.

At Rushmore, Trump closed with a demand that Congress pass his so-called SAVE America Act to restrict voting. “We do that and we’re not going to lose an election for 100 years,” he said, speaking of course about Republicans.

One-party rule through central government election finagling? Now that’s a communist.

Bluesky: @jackiecalmes
Threads: @jkcalmes
X: @jackiekcalmes

Supreme Court rejects Trump mail ballot restrictions ahead of midterms

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday rejected President Donald Trump’s bid to restrict mail ballots for the midterm elections, capping a flurry of last-minute legal action with voting already underway.

The decision allows states to continue sending out mail ballots under the same processes they’ve used for years and have accounted for nearly a third of votes cast.

It represented a stark defeat for Trump on an issue he consistently has emphasized as vital to ensuring election integrity even though there is virtually no evidence of fraud with mail ballots.

The Supreme Court majority wrote that the administration’s push to implement the restrictions this year is likely to lose in court, though the brief emergency order didn’t detail its reasoning. Two justices, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, publicly dissented.

The Trump administration had asked the justices, once again at the center of a roiling political controversy, to clear the way for restrictions before the pivotal November contests for control of Congress.

Alito wrote in his dissent that the Postal Service “has broad authority to regulate the mail” and likely does have the power to enforce Trump’s restrictions.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, meanwhile, agreed that the restrictions should not go into effect for the midterms but indicated he might rule in favor of the Trump administration if the issue comes back before the court at a later time.

Mail ballots are already being sent to voters

Election officials have said there was simply no way to carry out a complete overhaul in the weeks before the midterms. Indeed, Alabama, North Carolina and Wisconsin began sending mail ballots to voters over the past week while the new system was still not active.

The Trump administration plan would require states to adopt a uniform envelope style and submit lists of eligible voters to an online portal. The Postal Service could refuse to deliver ballots to states that didn’t comply.

The administration’s efforts had the potential to be especially disruptive in states that send out ballots entirely by mail. Washington’s Secretary of State Steve Hobbs, a Democrat, said the decision means work “to carry out a safe, secure, and accurate election” can continue ”without having to upend our election processes to meet unrealistic ballot mail requirements.”

In Arizona, another largely vote-by-mail state, Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said “it is crucial for us to continue rejecting the notion that access and security are mutually exclusive when it comes to running strong elections.”

Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, a Republican serving as the state’s chief election officer, said on social media that the Supreme Court’s decision means “Utahns can have confidence that the 2026 election will proceed as normal.”

The White House and Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment, but have in the past framed the restrictions as commonsense changes aimed at keeping elections secure.

State officials and voting rights groups pushed back

Democratic state officials and voting rights groups challenged the restrictions in court, arguing that the president has no constitutional authority to set election rules that would “virtually eliminate mail voting on the eve of a major election.”

A whistleblower report, meanwhile, said the postal system’s requirements could lead to millions of mail ballots never being sent, because problems with the not-yet-operational portal meant a single bar code error could result in an entire batch of ballots being tossed out.

Some states don’t have the infrastructure to quickly pivot back to in-person voting, according to court documents.

The League of Women Voters, a plaintiff in the case, called the proposed restrictions “an extraordinary attempt to interfere with voting” and said it would have thrown elections into chaos. “Voters should never be caught in the middle of a political power warfare,” said CEO Celina Stewart.

Lower courts agreed to block Trump’s plan, including a preliminary injunction issued by a judge nominated by the president.

But the Trump administration appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that federal control of the Postal Service allows them to set rules for mail ballot handling and that compliance was possible.

The federal government won an early procedural decision at the Supreme Court, but the justices pointedly did not decide the legality of the plan.

Trump has long opposed mail voting and falsely blamed it for his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden, even though he often uses that method to cast his own ballot, including as recently as this year.

A report by the Brookings Institution published in 2025 found that mail voting fraud occurred in only about four cases out of every 10 million mail ballots cast.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-ma...lawsuit-78a4fbeb48d9c5fd27d1c865529fc65f

And of course trump is having his usual temper tantrum melt down on his Truth Social account because he didn't get his way. AKA- Another typical day.

Prosecutor brought in to lead investigation of Trump foes tells AP that he has resigned his position

WASHINGTON (AP) — An ally of President Donald Trump said Thursday that he has resigned from his post leading a Justice Department investigation into whether former law enforcement and intelligence officials conspired against the Republican president.

The departure of Joe diGenova injects instant tumult into an investigation targeting former government officials who have scrutinized Trump over the last decade, including in connection with Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and his retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.

“I did in fact resign,” diGenova told The Associated Press, calling it an “honor and a privilege” to serve Trump and the Justice Department.

Though diGenova declined to comment to the AP on the circumstances of his resignation, a person familiar with the matter who insisted on anonymity to discuss a personnel decision said the departure came amid mounting frustration from the Justice Department and White House over the pace and management of the probe.

In an interview later with The New York Post, diGenova responded to criticism of his management of the investigation by saying, “If you want indictments where there’s no evidence, you have an ethical problem.”

When reached again by the AP, diGenova said the comments were taken out of context, adding: “There’s plenty of evidence in all of these cases to prove the theories of prosecution. It just takes time to get there, and some people want to get there a little faster than others — and you can’t do that.”

The investigation has always been something of a tall order, aiming to present separate and unrelated inquiries of the president as part an anti-Trump conspiracy by law enforcement and intelligence professionals. Though promoted by the White House, and seized on by Trump supporters looking for accountability against what they see as “deep state” intelligence community actors, the conspiracy investigation has proceeded in fits and starts since its inception a year ago.

The 81-year-old diGenova served as the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia during the Reagan administration and for years has been a prominent Trump ally, including backing his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss and publicly and repeatedly claiming that the president was the victim of an intelligence community conspiracy.

He was brought back to the Justice Department in April and given the reins of the loosely defined investigation.

Five months later, no charges have been brought and it remains unclear whether any will be, or what information has been gathered to support any basis for the idea of a plot against Trump by the government officials who investigated him.

Investigators have sought interviews related to the 2022 FBI search that recovered classified documents from Mar-a-Lago and have also focused intensely on one of Trump’s chief grievances: a U.S. intelligence community assessment that Russia interfered on his behalf in the 2016 presidential election. The assessment has long infuriated the president, along with a Justice Department special counsel investigation into Russian election interference that shadowed him during his first term.

That special counsel investigation identified widespread Russian interference in the election but did not find evidence to prove a criminal conspiracy between Moscow and the Trump campaign. Multiple other government inquiries, including by the Justice Department inspector general, have identified significant errors and omissions in the FBI’s handling of the Trump-Russia probe but did not find evidence of criminal conduct by senior law enforcement officials.

The yearlong conspiracy investigation has hit stumbles before. Last April, a lead national security prosecutor in the investigation of former CIA Director John Brennan was replaced on the team after raising questions about the strength of the case. Days later, diGenova was sworn in.

Brennan has been investigated on allegations that he lied to Congress about the creation of the intelligence community assessment, which he and his lawyers have vigorously denied. In July, he sued the Justice Department for a court order requiring the preservation of all records from the investigation, forecasting plans to challenge any potential indictment of him on vindictive prosecution grounds.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-justice-russia-probe-5741c227d76e813c01923df943b8544e

LMAO - Jon Stewart is dumb? Because he's been pointing out the hypocrisy and stupidity Trump and MAGA fanboys for years? . . . Or is he dumb because that's such an easy target and not challenging?

Yes, Trump is a steaming pile of evidence.

Yet, lacking a stench doesn't mean there aren't other piles hidden elsewhere despite your insistence on sniffing the obvious pile.

The nationwide average price of diesel has reached an all-time record high, climbing to approximately $6.16 per gallon, according to AAA data.The nationwide average price of diesel has reached an all-time record high, climbing to approximately $6.16 per gallon, according to AAA data.

This is the fuel used to ship everything we buy.

Garrett is out. Now, it's time for Watson to fall in line.

nailed it.

9/11 goes back to a time where we didn't get instantly alerted to breaking news. I was in college. Had a 2 hour lecture that morning. I didn't know anything had happened until 10:30 when I went down to the lab and saw everyone huddled around a TV.

Not just yet.

Wow! Thanks for posting that.

Wow. What an incredible connection to Brian’s spirit, eh?

For eleven years, we watched him handle unimaginable hardship without a single complaint or 'woe is me' attitude. Outwardly, his body went through so much, but inwardly, his light only grew brighter. His mantra that 'every day is a good day' was proof that he was looking past that pain toward something much bigger. Pain is temporary... but his legacy, and his peace, are eternal.

Thanks for sharing.

Oh, the irony.

Nope. He has to be Bub "Refried" Means first, then graduate to "Means Business". At least that's how it worked with Natrone. 😉

Guards are now only one half game out of first in the Central.

Attorney General Todd Blanche on Sunday did not commit to acting independently of President Trump, but he claimed the president has not and will not ask him to prosecute specific individuals.

Trump publicly pressured AG Bondi to take action against Democratic Senator Adam Schiff, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and former FBI Director James Comey. Trump directed the DOJ and FBI to investigate Democrats tied to Jeffrey Epstein, including former President Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, and Reid Hoffman. Trump, in an executive order signed Thursday, directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate allegations that Republicans have raised that ActBlue allows illegal campaign donations.


“There’s a big difference between saying we will always do our job and investigate any case and act independently of the White House. No, I’m not going to pledge that. And no attorney general should ever pledge that,” Blanche told host Kristen Welker on NBC News’s “Meet the Press.”

He later said, “If I were to pledge, I will be independent of the White House, what that means is that if President Trump says, ‘I want the Department of Justice to go after every violent criminal in this country’ — which is what he has said — what you’re saying to me is I should say, ‘No, sir, I’m not going to do it.’”

That would simply be him asking you to do your job. Not go after his political enemies or make purely political decisions and prosecutions based on politics alone.

Blanche also said he would “of course” take the president’s view into consideration before taking action, noting he hoped “every attorney general in history would not answer that question differently.”

Since taking over at the Justice Department in an acting capacity, Blanche has overseen the department’s prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey — who was fired by Trump during his first term — over an alleged threat to the president.

Comey, a frequent critic of Trump, denied threatening the president via his Instagram post of a photo depicting “86 47” written out in seashells on a beach.

Blanche also signed off on the creation of a $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund as part of the president’s settlement agreement with the IRS.

Under that agreement, Blanche ordered the IRS to never again probe the taxes of Trump, his family members or his businesses — despite the tax agency falling under the Treasury Department. A federal judge has since reopened the president’s lawsuit against the IRS.

The Justice Department scrapped the fund amid bipartisan backlash on Capitol Hill, with Blanche officially rescinding his initial order earlier this month in exchange for Republican Sens. John Cornyn (Texas) and Thom Tillis (N.C.) supporting his confirmation.

The Senate confirmed Blanche via a 50-49 vote last weekend, and Trump’s former personal attorney was sworn in as the full-time attorney general on Aug. 10.

When Welker asked Blanche what he would do if the president asked him to cross an “ethical or legal line,” the attorney general dismissed the possibility.

“The president will never ask me to do something unethical or illegal. He never has. He never will,” Blanche said Sunday.

The attorney general later remarked, “The president does not expect any of his leaders, including me, to just say yes to him no matter what he says. And so of course, there’s vigorous back and forth with every Cabinet member of the president of the United States, which is exactly what President Trump expects.”

“Again, there is this extraordinarily false narrative that the president wakes up in the morning and calls me and says, ‘Todd, go prosecute X or Y.’ He does not do that. He has never done that. He will never do that,” he added.

Once again......
Trump publicly pressured AG Bondi to take action against Democratic Senator Adam Schiff, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and former FBI Director James Comey. Trump directed the DOJ and FBI to investigate Democrats tied to Jeffrey Epstein, including former President Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, and Reid Hoffman. Trump, in an executive order signed Thursday, directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate allegations that Republicans have raised that ActBlue allows illegal campaign donations.

The president previously urged Blanche’s predecessor, former Attorney General Pam Bondi, to speed up the prosecutions of multiple of his perceived enemies last year.

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/6032206-blanche-rejects-independence-pledge/

I thought something was up. That post didn't sound like you at all. Hope everything gets worked out.

In August, had an historical event in Colorado Springs. The National museum of World War 2 Aviation hosted 3 SB2C Helldivers. The only 3 in the world that fly. They did a sunrise flight along with a B-25, then a second flight around noon. Seeing 4 WW2 planes startup, taxi and sit in line waiting for takeoff was quite a sight.

https://fantasy.espn.com/football/l...eId=3bf1749d-3621-4a2a-b127-a6a586f72c52

that one should work ... sorry new to this

Lmao… politicians would have to pass this. Find one on either side that never lies.