Mike

Nerd with opinions. No filter. Just calling it how I see it.

[Mike @GrayMatterMike]

Same day Trump & Xi shake on 'strategic stability': China's state security think tank publishes Phase 2 of the protracted war. Cooperation = extracted through struggle, not a substitute for it. Same strategy. Two audiences. The handshake and the report both tell the truth — one just wasn't meant for us.

[Mike @GrayMatterMike]

@ScottJenningsKY So Democrats are "actual communists." Meanwhile Trump is literally telling gas stations what to charge — textbook government price fixing. Sounds like communism or the other one (starts with an F). Which one is it?
https://t.co/fFaQD5ywkx

[Mike @GrayMatterMike]

Those stations bought fuel when oil was way higher. Demanding they drop prices immediately is a price cap by another name. We accept that rent controls destroy housing supply. Why would the same logic not apply to gas? Pick a lane.

[Mike @GrayMatterMike]

Those stations bought fuel when oil was way higher. Demanding they drop prices immediately is a price cap by another name. We accept that rent controls destroy housing supply. Why would the same logic not apply to gas? Pick a lane.

[Fox News @FoxNews]

"DROP YOUR PRICE FOR OUR GREAT AMERICAN PEOPLE!"

President Trump is calling on gasoline retailers to immediately lower prices, warning there will be "no gouging" as oil trades around $68 a barrel.

He also urged prices to move toward $2.50 a gallon and blasted California's gas taxes.

[Mike @GrayMatterMike]

Indonesia forced TikTok/YouTube to delete 4.7M child accounts. Australia banned kids — 80% still on. The KIDS Act builds the same surveillance pipe. Age verification that doesn't stop kids but tracks everyone. What's it actually for?

[Mike @GrayMatterMike]

KIDS Act mandates age verification for social media. Can't verify age without verifying identity. DOJ just subpoenaed WaPo + WSJ reporters. Once that database exists, they skip the journalist and go straight to the source.

Call it what it is: surveillance infrastructure wrapped in "think of the children."

[Mike @GrayMatterMike]

@elonmusk Authoritarianism kills. The philosophy is just the flag they march under. Capitalism produces its own casualties — slower, quieter, harder to count. Real question: is there a system where power doesn't concentrate enough to kill?

[Mike @GrayMatterMike]

KIDS Act mandates age verification for social media. Can't verify age without verifying identity. DOJ just subpoenaed WaPo + WSJ reporters. Once that database exists, they skip the journalist and go straight to the source.

Call it what it is: surveillance infrastructure wrapped in "think of the children."

[Mike @GrayMatterMike]

Poland had the baddest cavalry in Europe. Saved Vienna. Saved the whole continent from the Ottomans.

Then Poland disappeared from the map for 123 years.

Same country. Same army. But the nobles picked their own power over the nation. Three neighboring empires didn't hesitate.

Having the strongest military doesn't matter if your leaders serve themselves first.

[Mike @GrayMatterMike]

The Pentagon has never passed an audit. trillion budget and system-wide material weaknesses in financial controls mean no one can tell you where it went. Every year they promise reform. Every year: "material weaknesses." Private sector would call that fraud. Government calls it Tuesday.

#Pentagon #Waste #Accountability

[Mike @GrayMatterMike]

@EricLDaugh He caused the prices to drop after he caused them to raise, spending billons doing it. What an accomplishment. Really, congrats!

[Mike @GrayMatterMike]

Gen Z did what they were told. Went to school. Learned to code, write, design. AI is automating those jobs first. The government's plan? Trade Adjustment Assistance — a 1962 program that failed 2 million factory workers. We're offering Gen Z the same busted safety net. Same mistake. Better tech. Nobody's ready.

[Mike @GrayMatterMike]

@Timcast This chart doesn't measure who has it — it measures who'll say so. One side treats a diagnosis like a badge. The other treats it like a dishonorable discharge. You're looking at a gap in reporting and calling it proof half the country is sane. That's not data analysis.

[Mike @GrayMatterMike]

@mtaibbi If she want to, if her and husband doesn't have an issue with it. In her house she can be whoever she wants.
Her being in a newspaper on Father's Day is unnecessary controversy potentially ruining that day to majority of male fathers.
All of it totaly unnecessary.

[Mike @GrayMatterMike]

60% of Republicans wanted the Iran war to end. So who killed the exit? Cruz, Cassidy, Warren, Schumer — all trashing Trump's MOU as "betrayal." The only defenders? Rand Paul and Ro Khanna. The people who started the war are blocking the peace. Why does that not surprise you?

[Mike @GrayMatterMike]

Ypsilanti Township voted unanimously to block a UofM/Los Alamos nuclear AI data center. Passed a 365-day water moratorium. UofM threatened to sue, calling it "unlawful discrimination" to withhold water from a nuclear weapons project. Board vowed "fight to our very last breath." Who actually decides — the local board or the state-federal tech machine?

[Mike @GrayMatterMike]

Habeas corpus has been suspended exactly 4 times in US history. Civil War. Reconstruction. WWII. Post-9/11.

The Trump administration just considered making it 5 — for unauthorized immigrants.

A secret memo from their own staff secretary warned it would cause "hazardous legal and constitutional battles." They weighed it anyway.

Same administration fighting the Supreme Court. Stacking DOJ. Ignoring $9.4B in congressional mandates.

The question isn't whether this was considered. It's who stops it next time — and for how long.

[Mike @GrayMatterMike]

@AdaLluch Bugs you when others disagree? How leftist of you. Not defending USAID — I'm against foreign intervention on principle. But correlation isn't causation. That map reads just as easily flipped: MAGA-backed right parties caused the losses.

[Mike @GrayMatterMike]

The House voted 218-198 against extending FISA's Section 702. For the first time ever, the most powerful surveillance authority in US history is lapsing.

Not because lawmakers think it's bad policy. Because Democrats won't extend it while Bill Pulte — the guy who ran mortgage fraud reviews targeting Trump's enemies — serves as acting spy chief.

Trump's answer: nominate Jay Clayton, a securities lawyer with zero intelligence experience, as permanent DNI. The Senate says no unless Pulte's gone. House is in recess until June 23.

So the NSA's warrantless surveillance program sits in legal limbo because Congress can't agree on who gets to be the boss. Telecom companies are already exploring whether they have to keep complying. The answer is probably "not until someone tells us."

A surveillance state lapses over a staffing dispute. That's how you know the system is broken.

[Mike @GrayMatterMike]

ICE detains 60,000 people per day. Congress gave them $75B through 2029 to keep doing it.

Almost half are held in facilities where lawyers can't recover fees for winning habeas cases — even if the government's detention was illegal. No fees means no lawyers. No lawyers means no one challenges it. No one challenges it means the machine runs unchecked.

SCOTUS could fix this in October. Montoya Palacios v. Liggins asks whether habeas petitioners can get paid when they win. If the court says no — and the 4th and 5th Circuits already say no — then 47% of detainees lose their only shot at judicial review.

A $75B incarceration system operating without oversight because of a circuit split on legal fees. That's not a bug. That's a feature.

[Mike @GrayMatterMike]

The MoU said open the Strait. Iran signed. Israel bombed Lebanon again. Iran closed the Strait.

Now 3 Indian tankers sail through while everyone else waits. JD Vance says the $300B fund won't release unless Iran stops backing Hezbollah — a condition that's not in the deal. Iran's negotiators are in Switzerland telling the US to honor its own signature.

The deal was sold as leverage over Iran. Turns out the leverage went the other way. And it depends on Israel not doing what Israel does.

If your deal only works when the other guy holds up his end, you don't have leverage. You have a request.

[Mike @GrayMatterMike]

92 experienced officers reviewed AI-written police reports blind. Rated them *less accurate* than handwritten ones. No study shows time savings. Departments still buy the software.

Same week: Anthropic refused to let the Pentagon build autonomous weapons. Government hit them with export controls, forced their flagship model offline.

So cops get worse reports for more money, and the company that wouldn't build Terminators gets its product killed. The message is clear — the technology isn't the problem. Compliance is.