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If DW is named the starter.

Shedeur has no future with the Browns.

IMO that would signal all systems go for the 27 draft.

If Shedeur is beaten out given the full picture of DW and his status with the Browns.

How on earth would SS be considered the future for the QB position?

Profit is not based on doubling your sale price.


For a simplified example:


If you buy/sell something as a supplier - and you buy a unit of "something" at $1 and sell it at $1.50 and you have an average of 20 cents of overheads (fixed and variable costs for staying in business) - you are making 30 cents of profit.

You don't need to increase the sale price by 100% (and all other factors remain the same - which they wouldn't in the real world) to double your profits. . . . In reality you could increase your price by approximately 30 cents to $1.80 and you would double profits.

That is really interesting.

I have never gotten into photography.

I have spent a lot of time outdoors. The best times of my life have come from my time outside.

The Merlin app opens up a new road. Time has slowed me down and this gives me a chance to do something at a pace that fits.

Thank you for posting that. I agree that AB has artfully danced around the cap issues that HE created...but he'd be/been toast without Jimmy's willingness to burn cash. The point that the cap goes up every year has always been odd to me as it goes up for every team. So there is effectively no real cap relief there when competing against the other 31 teams.

Spending money foolishly always has an impact. The dead cap is astonishing and must be dealt with...aka kicked down the road...and that's a long road. I'm not as doom and gloom as steve is about the cap...but he's not wrong. I don't see where cap hell has prevented us from getting/securing talent...but cap hell has certainly forced us to keep a guy we don't want on the 53 and clogged up the most important position room in the sport.

I am also excited to see Bond and with the changes we've made interested to see all the WR's - Jeudy as a #3 or #4 is a much more exciting prospect than Jeudy as a #1 ...

Bond has definitely flashed before - if he takes a significant step forward then that's very promising news. From what I had read Boston was the stand out performer during mini-camp ... more so than KC. But he would typically be more of the Y ... So potentially you would have: X - Jeudy or KC. KC if he shows enough consistent ability to beat his man off the line and consistently catch, his pre-draft concern was drops. Y - Boston. Z - Bond seems like like the perfect fit and if he is in motion a lot during camp, this seems like it is his position to lose. . . . If Jeudy is motivated and returns to his best form - KC may take over at the Z. But I'd imagine Bond getting of opportunities as WR4.

Tillman has been okey - but really you would think nothing special. We'll definitely have 5 WR on the roster, not sure if we have a developmental talent worth taking up a 6th slot when Fannin is something of a hybrid, or just a very good receiving TE.

With as bad as the OL was last year - the new configuration whatever it ends up being almost has to be an improvement. Potentially a significant one, even if as a whole they perform up to a "below NFL average" level. That will have a positive impact on the QB play which, even though no-one is expecting it to be good, will help the WRs. Regardless of wins and losses it would feel nice ending the season feeling like we have a minimum of 3 bonafide starting caliber WR.

ADDENDUM:

Term limits for all elected posts (Legislative Branch of the Constitutuion).
Term limits for all appointed posts (Judicial Branch of the Constitution).
...to coincide with existing term limits for the Executive Branch.

Details to be sorted out in debate...
...but Dear God, please let us extricate ourselves from this dysfunctional gerontocracy, and trust The Kids We Raised to sort out the future.

We've done enough for/to our time.
It's time to step aside.

"Oh give me the beat boys and free my soul. I wanna get lost in your rock and roll and grift away.".......................

Trump's Freedom 250 asks for another $10M in taxpayer funds

Congress approved $150 million for the country's 250th anniversary celebrations. The Trump administration is seeking an additional $10 million amid unanswered questions about its finances.

WASHINGTON – The Trump administration is seeking an additional $10 million of taxpayer money for Freedom 250’s grand celebrations honoring the country’s semiquincentennial, drawing fresh questions about how the group spent millions in previous public and private funding.

In a July 29 letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon, said Congress received the request earlier in the month for “an unspecified amount of funding” to help Freedom 250 “recoup costs” in a broader Trump administration budget request.

A meeting between Merkley’s office and the Interior Department later revealed that the agency was asking for $10 million to reimburse the National Parks Service for “routine costs” associated with events on the National Mall, including the Christianity-dominated Rededicate 250 prayer event, the Great American State Fair, and the July 4th Salute to America, Merkley wrote.

The request suggested that Freedom 250 already spent more than a $100 million in taxpayer and private dollars it previously received, Merkley said in his letter.

“Congress has already provided substantial funding for these activities,” he wrote. “It is unacceptable to ask the American people to bail out Freedom 250.”

Congress allocated $150 million for the Department of the Interior to distribute, as it saw fit, for the country’s 250th anniversary in the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Interior gave $50 million of that to America250, the congressionally created group tasked with planning the celebration, and $100 million to Trump’s Freedom 250 group.

Freedom 250 also solicited donations from private corporations, including Exxon Mobil, Mastercard, Deloitte, and Palantir. Those efforts came under scrutiny this year after Democrats questioned whether the administration was offering preferential policy treatment in exchange for contributions.

America250 declined to comment on whether it had received all of the $50 million. "We have received a portion of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act funds to date, and remain in conversations with Congress for our funding requests," the organization said in an emailed statement. As of February, America250 said it had only received $25 million of the funds.

In an email to USA TODAY, the Interior Department said the request for additional funds reflects expenditures related to an “elevated security posture” at events after the security breach at the White House Correspondents' Dinner in April and other high-profile threats.

Public disclosures of Freedom 250's finances, the amount raised in private donations and how it spent that money will not be available until after the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.

The Trump administration created Freedom 250 as a subsidiary of the National Parks Foundation, a congressionally-chartered nonprofit. The structure of the organization allows it to bypass traditional, immediate disclosure laws federal agencies must abide by.

Freedom 250 has spent at least $10 million retrofitting tractor-trailer trucks into mobile history exhibits that have been accused of presenting an inaccurate, Christian-focused depiction of the country’s past. It also paid Event Strategies Inc., the group that planned President Donald Trump’s Jan. 6, 2021, rally, hundreds of thousands of dollars to plan 250 events.

Members of Congress, including Merkley, have asked the Department of Interior on multiple occassions for information about how Freedom 250 spent the $100 million in taxpayer funding, private donor information, and costs incurred related to 250 events.

As of July 30, Interior has not yet publicly responded to those requests.

When reached for comment about the funding request, Freedom 250 spokesperson Danielle Alvarez said "Democrats are trying to make America's 250th birthday about partisan politics."

"Their divisive rhetoric forced Freedom 250 to increase security at these events, but we won't let them stop us from honoring our country's milestone," she said. "This is just another attempt to divide us, and it won't work."

Freedom 250 has two more events left before the end of the year: the Patriot Games, a nationwide high school athletic competition on Aug. 9-11 at Spire Academy in Ohio, and an IndyCar race around the National Mall on Aug. 22-23.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/usa250/2026/07/30/freedom-250-10-funding-request/91107162007/

Need a good outing tonight. He always scares me

well deserved for Grant too. He's been solid for us

Unconscious Mitch McConnell Scores Higher Approval Rating Than Conscious Version

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In an unprecedented political comeback, the entirely unconscious Mitch McConnell has garnered a vastly higher approval rating than the conscious version, a new poll revealed on Monday.

According to the poll, a whopping 78 percent of voters “strongly agreed” with the statement, “The USA would be in much better shape today if Mitch McConnell had been unconscious for the entire four decades of his congressional career.”

Voters pointed to progress on guns, the environment, and a host of other issues that could have been achieved if only McConnell had not been sentient.

Capitalizing on his newfound popularity, McConnell’s office issued the following statement: “The senator continues to be motionless and unresponsive, and the pile of legislative work near his hospital bed has gone completely untouched.”

I'll take this opportunity to post probably the sickest plays I ever had the privilege to watch live. Even watching the replay felt like my mind playing tricks on me. 🔥

This particular story has already been discussed in this forum. Only 400 out of those 6600 actually voted. No New jersey election was decided by 400 votes. Actually none where closer than several thousand votes.

So him posting that in response to "Can you specifically name one rigged election result" is just pure BS. But then again that's to be expected.

One thing I am sure of is that the executive branch, mainly the president holds far to much power. How much power a president has is not the same as the time of the founding fathers. It has evolved and increased greatly over time. And that's not isolated to which party or who is president. As of today we see executive orders being written on an unprecedented level pushing the boundaries of the constitution and being overturned in our courts.

I'm certainly not going to say that I agree with everything they stand for. Yet I do understand when one side goes off the rails you will get a pushback that goes off the rails as well in reaction to that.

And that's where we are now. Extremism is taking over on both sides and we are all worse off for it. Surely you must have seen something like this coming in response.

Big money QBs make plays that win games or close-out games...big money DEs should do that as well...but realistically less-often.

My memory of MG will be much more of him jumping offside on 3rd/4th and short...and getting 2+ sacks in games that were essentially blowouts...rather than frequent plays that impacted the outcome of the game.

The Ravens might have the most talent, but we'll see how Minter does in his first year.


It feels like the Bengals better figure things out on D and the OL before Burrow is wasted

It sure ain't 'fancy' but it caught my attention...

My daughter just received a PhD.

Her dissertation was on large scale AI integration and scalable AI integration.

She built her own AI to handle her intellectual property at UGA.

I have begun messing around with it and it blows my mind. I feel like I am living the future.

I came from when people sold encyclopedias door to door.

IMO he was one of the truly great actors.

Even when he had small roles like in Sling Blade. He made a mark.

He had a way to capture the essence of the role.

Tender Mercies was an incredible movie. It was like watching real life. The ability to be natural is what great actors do.

Great, they get free power from free solar panels.

It sounds like an effort to lower the high demand period when people come home from work and turn on lights and air conditioners. If it works and lessens the strain on the system great, though I still say it isn't "free".

What do you call it when the trump administration takes taxpayer money and invests roughly $26.7 billion across 30 equity or quasi-equity deals with private companies and corporations?

The U.S. government invested $27 billion in corporate stakes. Good luck finding them

The Trump administration has invested roughly $26.7 billion across 30 equity or quasi-equity deals, headlined by a 9.9% stake in chipmaker Intel that's now worth $42 billion.

Others include $400 million into rare-earth miner MP Materials to loosen China's grip on magnet supply chains, the "golden share" in U.S. Steel retained as a condition of its sale to Japan's Nippon Steel, or the flurry of stakes in quantum computing firms.

But with all that dealmaking, those wary of government's corruptive tendencies—and of President Donald Trump's own trading—might want to see some transparency. The portfolio, however, is nowhere to be found.

There is no consolidated ledger of the government's holdings; the stakes sit scattered across at least four agencies: 17 deals through Commerce, seven through Defense, six through the Development Finance Corporation, two through Energy. Only one of those, the Development Finance Corporation, has clear statutory authority to own equity at all, under a framework Congress built in 2018 for development deals abroad.

The White House did not immediately respond to Fortune's request for comment. A Treasury spokesperson said agencies report equity interests "in different ways" depending on the legal authority behind each stake.

Some of the "stakes" are signed agreements, while others, including nine quantum computing deals Commerce announced in a single week, remain more ambiguous, closer to term sheets. The most complete public accounting of Washington's portfolio is kept by the Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank.

"The deals that have been announced to date are only the tip of the iceberg," Jonathan Hillman, the Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow who maintains that tracker, told Fortune, "and the real test will be whether Washington can build a system to effectively manage its growing portfolio of investments over the long run."

The best-documented stake in the portfolio is the biggest one. Intel's August 2025 securities filings name the shareholder: the United States Department of Commerce, counterparty to a "Warrant and Common Stock Agreement" covering 433.3 million shares at $20.47 apiece. It's a passive stake, with no board seat or information rights, and the government has agreed to vote with Intel's board on most matters.

Yet some aspects of the deal, in the filings, look strange. Roughly two-thirds of the shares were delivered to Commerce when the deal closed; the rest sit in escrow to be released as Intel hits milestones under a Pentagon chip program, meaning a slice of the government's marquee holding is not yet in the government's hands. The claw-back and profit-sharing provisions attached to Intel's earlier $2.2 billion CHIPS Act grant were also eliminated. Grants have strings that these stocks don't.

In addition, ethics filings revealed that accounts held in the president's own name began buying Intel in March, months after his administration's stake sent the stock soaring. No insider trading has been alleged, and the White House says his assets sit in a trust managed by his children; but Trump's personal holdings are unprecedented for the modern presidency.

For the government's stakes in private companies—such as Vulcan Elements, xLight, and others—no public securities filings with the SEC exist at all.

Even where the shares can be found, the money is tricky to follow. Federal budget rules, mostly designed for grants and loans, treat an equity purchase as an outlay—money out the door—with very little mechanism for recognizing what comes back, according to research by William Henagan, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. That means the Intel position's rise from $8.9 billion to $42 billion appears in no budget document.

The Development Finance Corporation, established by Congress in 2018 to make equity investments abroad, is one exception. But the framework has a narrow lens: it was designed for financing ports in developing countries. Yet now it is the closest thing Washington has to a legal template for owning chipmakers.

A DFC spokesperson told Fortune it records its equity postions as investment assets and manages the ownership on a case-by-case basis.

The federal government has held corporate equity at scale once before, and it did so under supervision. The Troubled Asset Relief Program, the $700 billion rescue fund Congress created in October 2008 at the height of the financial crisis, came with a statutory special inspector general who filed quarterly reports to Congress, plus a congressional oversight panel and standing GAO audits to boot.

But even that apparatus was judged insufficient: in 2009, the program's own inspector general told Congress that taxpayers weren't being told what recipients were doing with their money.

Today's sprawling portfolio has none of that. The administration, for its part, has never claimed otherwise; it has hinted the stakes are the start of something bigger.

"It's like a down payment on a sovereign wealth fund, which many countries have," Kevin Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council, told CNBC after the Intel deal was announced.

https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/policy/articles/u-government-invested-27-billion-120000768.html

This was obvious all along but it's still quite surprising they would openly admit it. Which begs to question....


............... if they are willing to openly admit to this, what in the hell are they trying to hide in the discovery process?

Money money money money… money


I don’t think he has cared to this point, but now he’s playing for a contract. My hope is that his arm remains sore, he is limited in training camp and Monken sets him aside.

Let’s get ready for the season with Shedeur and see what happens.