davemildenberg

Stunning result in N.C. politics businessnc.com/berger-concede…

Breaking: Charlotte has fired coach Aaron Fearne after three seasons, a source tells CBS Sports. 49ers went 17-17 this season and last made the NCAAs in 2005.

Google dropping another $1B in NC's Caldwell County data center. businessnc.com/google-plans-1…

North Carolina State University (@NCState) has filed a notice of intent to hire an H-1B Computer Systems Analyst Salary: $74,028 No American was qualified for this job.

Never, I repeat, NEVER in my life have I seen something quite like this… What an absolutely insane ending in this Iowa state girls basketball tournament… What in the world did we just see lol

Notable donor names in the latest campaign finance reports for Berger/Page: For Berger: Duke Energy CEO Harry Sideris, NC Chamber CEO Gary Salamido For Page: Bob Luddy of CaptiveAire/Thales Academy, former Democratic Sen. Allen Wellons #ncpol #ncga

College Sports are broken, and those who first made the mess and profit handsomely from the status quo do not want to fix it. Without meaningful change, opportunities for thousands and thousands of talented student athletes will disappear and women’s and Olympics sports programs will be canceled. A disjointed and disorganized revenue generation system is the root cause, and everybody in college sports knows it - including many members of the Big 10 and SEC, who have recently reported staggering and unsustainable athletic deficits and debts. Ironically, at least one of these two commissioners, who argue that the status quo is “just fine”, have simultaneously pursued onerous private equity and debt deals to paper over the overwhelming deficits many of their member institutions face. The situation is even more dire in the lower-revenue conferences, as is well known. Our primary objective is to provide athletic programs, both big and small, the tools they need to achieve financial sustainability and preserve all of their programs, scholarships, and roster spots. We want to grow the financial pie, and make it work for everybody - doing so in a way that doesn’t not punish or take revenue away from the “big boys”. Not only is this the right thing to do, it is also consistent with the President’s “Saving College Sports” Executive Order, that was issued last summer. The posture of these two commissioners indicates that they do not care about the fate of the other conferences or smaller schools, nor do they care about the life-changing opportunity provided to women and to athletes in our Olympic sports. It seems they have chosen to disregard the directives of the President and the will of the American people. Change is difficult, I get that, especially when it means dismantling a long-held, broken, backwards system. My sincere hope is that, instead of throwing up roadblocks to our congressional momentum, we can work together on solutions that put the student athletes first and preserves the viability of the great American institution of college sports.

Alabama's unemployment rate is 2.7%. Canada's is 6.5%. Alabama now manufactures nearly as many cars as Ontario. How did the one of the poorest states in the US start outcompeting us? The Globe went down there to find out. The short version: Alabama spent 30 years treating economic development like a serious strategy... landing investments, making it fast and easy to build, and clawing back incentives from companies that didn't deliver. Canada spent the same 30 years writing reports about competitiveness and then not acting on them. Eli Lilly just put a $6B pharma plant in Huntsville. That could have been Montreal. Alabama is no paradise. Life expectancy is 74 vs 82 in Canada, minimum wage is $7.25. But there's a line in the piece that stuck with me. In 2007, the Harper government commissioned a competitiveness report. The conclusion as to why it's difficult to take the actions needed to be more competitive: "Canadians do not perceive that there is an imminent crisis." The authors said you'd get the same answer today. I think they're probably mostly right. And as the Globe puts it: "If Canadians remain complacent, the rest of the world will eat our lunch." We're in a crisis, folks. An imminent one at that. Time to get seriously aggressive about the changes we need to make.

Perfect words by Supreme Justice Gorsuch.

Why doesn't @StephenAtHome Colbert interview Crockett on his show?

Sport shouldn’t mean amnesia, and the Olympic movement should help stop wars, not play into the hands of aggressors. Unfortunately, the decision of the International Olympic Committee to disqualify Ukrainian skeleton racer Vladyslav Heraskevych says otherwise. This is certainly not about the principles of Olympism, which are founded on fairness and the support of peace. I thank our athlete for his clear stance. His helmet, bearing the portraits of fallen Ukrainian athletes, is about honour and remembrance. It is a reminder to the whole world of what Russian aggression is and the cost of fighting for independence. And in this, no rule has been broken. It is Russia that constantly violates Olympic principles, using the period of the Olympic Games to wage war. In 2008, it was the war against Georgia; in 2014 – the occupation of Crimea; in 2022 – the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. And now, in 2026, despite repeated calls for a ceasefire during the Winter Olympics, Russia shows complete disregard, increasing missile and drone strikes on our energy infrastructure and our people. 660 Ukrainian athletes and coaches have been killed by Russia since the full-scale invasion began. Hundreds of our athletes will never again be able to take part in the Olympic Games or any other international competitions. And yet, 13 Russians are currently in Italy competing at the Olympics. They compete under “neutral” flags at the Games, while in real life publicly supporting Russian aggression against Ukraine and the occupation of our territories. And they are the ones who deserve disqualification. We are proud of Vladyslav and of what he did. Having courage is worth more than any medal.

@bradcarryvc We’ve had over 53M people hit this page since the spot ran. 1.32M in the last 15 minutes. Beyond any expectation we could have had. @MrBeast is an absolute genius. ❤️

I left the Washington Post 12 years ago. An editor told me Jeff Bezos would gut the paper and I wouldn’t have a job very long. The motto when I left, before they changed it to ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness,’ was “For and about Washington.” They changed it to communicate the diminished ambitions of a once grand paper. Anything that didn’t directly impact the Bethesda or Fairfax reader had already been cut. The newsroom had dwindled to 600 or 700 reporters after many buyouts. The Graham family strategy was to become a local paper, free from the cost of international bureaus and expensive teams. Marty Baron was brought on to execute this local strategy (we called it managed decline) before the surprise Bezos purchase changed everything. Bezos did the opposite of what the newsroom assumed he would do: he poured obscene amounts of money into a cash incinerator. He gave the Post a fancy new building. He subsidized every section of the paper, even the ones with no readers. He expanded international. He financed experiments in video and podcasting. He gave the newsroom a blank check for over a decade. Rather than pursuing a strategy based in reality, the Post newsroom became very accustomed to a billionaire patron giving them everything they wanted in perpetuity. In retrospect, this was a terrible business decision because it made the young reporters and editors delusional. The old ones who remembered the cuts and the pain of the business before Bezos— when they finally took the free coffee away—they had all been fired or left the industry. The “For and About Washington” strategy was also a loser, because it retained the most expensive parts of the newsroom while diminishing its reach. Sports is expensive. Metro news is expensive. And as pretty much every other local newspaper in the country has learned, the old local paper model is broken and has been since the internet arrived. The Post’s brand was and is Washington politics. It’s the seat of American power. It should be focused on covering politics from its premier perch in DC. It should have never been distracted by anything else— it only ever needed this product. It lost sports to the Athletic. It lost International to The Times. There’s no reason to compete on those products. The Post can still own politics, and every story, feature and reporter should be focused on covering it. But it needs to stop pretending that the world didn’t change 20 years ago and start listening to its readers again. There are solid media companies being built for the future and the Post can become one of them. But the old Post died many decades ago. Pretending Bezos killed it isn’t true.

@andyinrok @peterbakernyt I agree Andy. Zero. But Post is a uniquely important DC institution no matter one’s politics. DC & fed govt benefit with a free, well capitalized private sector press. Bezos knew that when he bought it. We’ll never know if others could have managed it better .

@peterbakernyt What part of the increase in his wealth came from profits at the Washington Post? It is a business, not a charity case.

Jeff Bezos wealth in 2024: $194 billion Jeff Bezos wealth in 2025: $215 billion Jeff Bezos wealth today: $249.4 billion Net increase in Bezos wealth since 2024: $55.4 billion Cost of Bezos’s 417-foot superyacht: $500 million Amazon investment in "Melania": $75 million Original Bezos purchase price of the Washington Post in 2013: $250 million Bezos net worth in 2013: $25.2 billion Net increase in Bezos wealth since buying the Post: $224.2 billion Last reported annual losses of Post: $100 million Number of years Bezos could absorb those losses with what he makes in a single week: 5 @JeffBezos

Joe Rogan on why he goes to church. “When I was younger, I was very cynical about religion, and then I've gotten older…” “One of the things that I always say is, if there was a pill that could make you as nice as the people that I go to church with, everybody would be on it.” “They are the nicest f*cking people you will ever encounter. When we leave church, they're kind…” “If you get just to the teachings of Christ, I can't find any faults in it.”

America is grateful for every nation that answered the call after we were attacked on 9/11 and served with our forces on the frontlines in Afghanistan. Their sacrifices should never be forgotten. UK 457 Canada 159 France 90 Germany 62 Italy 53 Poland 44 Denmark 43 Australia 41 Spain 35 Georgia 32 Romania 27 Netherlands 25 Turkey 15 Czech Republic 14 New Zealand 10 Norway 10 Estonia 9 Hungary 7 Sweden 5 Latvia 4 Slovakia 3 Finland 2 Jordan 2 Portugal 2 South Korea 2 Albania 2 Belgium 1 Bulgaria 1 Croatia 1 Lithuania 1 Montenegro 1

In the last 4 years YouTube has paid creators over 100 BILLION dollars. They’ve paid more to creators than ALL other social media platforms combined have. Crazy

@garrisonvnews @RepTimMooreNC @FTA_DOT Thanks Joe and Mark. Any of the state and local politicians in those photos could have tipped off media about this. Craven, Driggs, Anderson, Lyles, Etc. Who pays for all this?

@RepTimMooreNC @FTA_DOT What a joke! He threatened to pull federal money for the poor security, then comes to town and a big burley security guy rides with him. While everyday passengers never see anything but poorly trained unarmed rent-a-cops. And the media kept away from your good “friend”.

Today, I was glad to welcome my friend and @FTA_DOT Administrator Marc Molinaro to Charlotte. We rode the LYNX Blue Line with Mayor Vi Lyles and local leaders, then held a roundtable focused on making transit safer and more reliable. As Charlotte grows, we need transit systems that keep up and give folks a safe, dependable way to get where they need to go.

Speaker Mike Johnson’s address to the U.K. Parliament is an opportunity to bolster the joint British-American effort to free newsman Jimmy Lai from his Hong Kong prison cell. wsj.com/opinion/mike-j…