Michael Bates 🇺🇸🇬🇧🇦🇺🇳🇿🇮🇪🇮🇱

@CodyLibolt @nath_ormond @EstherOfReilly This is the operating principle of mainstream media now: Report only the news that motivates the correct public response. Suppress news that might raise doubts or undermine obedience.

Today is only the second time since March 19 that the Trib's once-vaunted opinion section has an editorial on the killing. And WTTW--the local PBS affiliate--does not have a SINGLE article on Gorman's murder. My latest for @RCPolitics: realclearpolitics.com/articles/2026/…

this guy let an AI agent handle his scam texts for a week a scammer asked him to buy a $500 gift card the agent spent 4 hours "driving" to target. sent status updates like "i'm at the red light now, there's a very handsome squirrel on the sidewalk. do you think he's married?" then it said "i forgot my purse, going back home. wait, this isn't my house" it sent a screenshot of a captcha to the scammer claiming its "eyes were blurry" and it couldn't see the buttons to wire money the scammer actually solved the captcha for the AI the scammer eventually typed: "please just stop talking. i don't want the money anymore. god bless you but leave me alone" total time wasted for the guy was 14 hours the script should be open source lol

A number of press reports have characterized our and other shareholders’ efforts on behalf of Fannie and Freddie (F2) as seeking a ‘gift’ or ‘handout’ from the government. We, the shareholders of F2, seek no such thing. Hundreds of financial institutions were bailed out during the GFC by the U.S. Treasury. Nearly all of the financial institution bailouts during the GFC involved an injection of capital in the form of senior preferred stock by Treasury at an interest rate of 5%, plus warrants to acquire common stock in an amount equal to 15% of the face amount of the preferred with an exercise price at the then-current stock price of the rescued institution. For example, Treasury’s preferred stock investment in Goldman Sachs was in an amount of $10 billion and, in addition, Treasury received warrants on $1.5 billion of GS' common stock at its then market price. The bailout terms for F2 were materially more burdensome and expensive, with a higher interest rate and substantially more warrant coverage, than that of every other financial institution (other than those of AIG whose terms were similar). Despite the F2 bailouts’ massively more burdensome terms, shareholders are not complaining about the original terms. Treasury invested $193 billion in F2 in the form of senior preferred stock (SPS), including funding for $2 billion of commitment fees, with a 10% coupon (twice that of the banks). Treasury also received warrants on 79.9% of both companies’ outstanding shares. Fannie and Freddie have since repaid Treasury $301 billion, which includes interest on the SPS at a blended rate of 11.6%, an interest rate which is 160 basis points more per annum, and have returned the entire $193 billion of outstanding principal, $25 billion in excess of what was contractually owed. In summary, the F2 SPS has been fully repaid according to its original contractual terms plus an extra $25 billion. Despite the fact that the SPS has been more than repaid in full, Fannie and Freddie have not accounted for these payments on their respective balance sheets, and the $193 billion of SPS remains an outstanding liability as if no principal payments had ever been made. How can it be, you might ask, if indeed F2 have repaid $301 billion to Treasury when only $276 billion was due could there be any remaining balance of the SPS on the F2 balance sheets? The answer relates to something called the ‘Net Worth Sweep (NWS).’ During the second term of the Obama administration, on August 12, 2012, two quarters after F2 returned to profitability, Treasury announced that it was unilaterally amending the terms of the SPS stock to provide that Treasury would take 100% of the profits of F2 each quarter in lieu of the 10% annual dividend rate. This was not a negotiated resolution with F2. It was a unilateral amendment of the original terms of the SPS that was done in bad faith. The supposed rationale for the amended terms of the SPS was akin to the IRS garnishing the wages of someone who will never be able to pay the taxes that they owe. That is, the Treasury said F2 will never be able to pay the 10% coupon, let alone the SPS’ $193 billion principal balance, so it decided instead to ‘settle’ for 100% of F2’s profits forever. In discovery, shareholders learned that the stated justification for the amendment was false. In mid 2012, the Obama administration had come to learn that both companies would soon be reversing tens of billions of reserves on their balance sheets as housing values had increased and the reserves taken during the GFC had been excessive. The NWS was instituted by Obama to forestall F2 from forever being able to recapitalize and be released from conservatorship. The NWS was not a ‘settlement’ for a lesser amount of future payments. It was the outright theft of the forever profits of both companies. Never before or since has the government ‘swept’ 100% of the profits of any company, let alone a financial institution in conservatorship, a form of government intervention where the goal is rehabilitation of the institution, and where the hierarchy of corporate claims has always been respected. The accounting for the NWS payments while it was in effect (until Secretary Mnuchin terminated the NWS in Trump’s first term) was also unusual. The NWS was treated by F2 as a quarterly adjustment to the dividend rate on the SPS such that the dividend amount owed was made equal to the after-tax profits of F2 for that quarter with no limitation. In other words, regardless of the amount of profit F2 generated for the quarter – whether or not it was in excess of the original 10% annual dividend – the dividend payable under the NWS was made equal to the quarterly profit. The absurd terms of the NWS sweep therefore made it impossible for any partial or full repayment of the SPS to take place as every dollar paid to the Treasury on the amended terms of the SPS was considered a dividend payment, even if the amount was massively in excess of the original contractual SPS terms. The absurdity of the NWS was made clear just two quarters after the NWS went into effect. Fannie Mae generated a profit of $59 billion in the first quarter of 2013, and the SPS dividend rate for that quarter was set at $59 billion so the entire amount was swept to the government, more than 10 times the contractual dividend rate. I had the opportunity to discuss F2 and the NWS with Warren Buffett about a decade ago and he said that he “couldn’t believe what the government had done.” In short, the shareholders of F2 are simply asking the government to respect the original and highly burdensome terms of the SPS. There is no dispute that Treasury has received more than the original 10% coupon and full repayment of principal of the SPS, that is, an extra $25 billion. We and the millions of other shareholders of F2 are simply asking the administration to honor the original SPS terms and properly account for the $301 billion of payments, thereby eliminating the SPS liability from both companies’ balance sheets. Shareholders have not asked for the extra $25 billion to be returned to the two companies. Treasury can decide whether to keep those funds or return them to the companies. Accounting for the repayment of the SPS has other important implications. Namely, it is critically important that conservatorships respect the rule of law, in particular, the contractual terms of corporate instruments and the hierarchy of claims. Otherwise, no financial institution that gets into trouble will be able to raise rescue capital in the private markets. Notably, the treatment of F2 in conservatorship explains why Silicon Valley Bank and other recent large bank failures since the GFC were unable to raise private capital and avoid government intervention or a forced sale to J.P. Morgan. If the government with the stroke of a pen during conservatorship can at a whim wipe out common and preferred shareholders, no one is going to step in to try to save a financial institution that gets into trouble, and only the top few banks will be possible rescuers of big banks that fail. Furthermore, because of F2’s history, their reputation in the capital markets has been greatly damaged. F2 raised $22 billion of preferred stock in the year or so prior to conservatorship as the government pressed both companies to raise capital. Institutions were willing to invest billions of dollars of capital into both institutions before they failed because, based on all precedent conservatorships, the contractual terms of all financial instruments and the hierarchy of claims had been preserved. Unfortunately, in light of the precedent of the net worth sweep, no investor can be confident that they won’t be wiped out in a future conservatorship so none has been willing to take the risk. Some have proposed that Treasury simply convert the SPS into junior preferred and common stock and massively dilute shareholders. Putting aside the potential legal challenges to this approach, the result will be that Treasury will at best own something approaching 95% of both companies rather than 79.9%. While the government’s percentage ownership stake would be larger in the SPS conversion approach, the value of the government’s larger stake would be considerably lower as the companies would become un-investable. Who would invest in F2 alongside the government when they just wiped out the previous owners? In the SPS conversion scenario, the government’s stake, at best, if it could be sold, would trade at a massively discounted valuation, well below the value of the government's stake if Treasury retained only its contracted for 79.9% stake and respected the original terms of the SPS. In other words, a slightly smaller ownership stake of much more highly valued companies would equate to considerably more value for Treasury and taxpayers. In a public letter to Rand Paul after his first term in November of 2021, President Trump recognized that the net worth sweep was theft from the shareholders of Fannie and Freddie. He wrote: “Another Obama/Biden scam in legal trouble was when they allowed the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) to steal the retirement savings of hardworking Americans who had invested in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac…The idea that the government can steal money from its citizens is socialism and is a travesty brought to you by the Obama/Biden administration. My Administration was denied the time it needed to fix this problem because of the unconstitutional restriction on firing Mel Watt. It has to come to an end and courts must protect our citizens.” I couldn’t have said it better than President Trump. Now that you have the time, Mr. President, let’s Stop the Steal!

Arabs, Slavs, Africans, Scandinavians, et al. share design elements that reflect their shared history and kinship - it is completely natural and normal for British countries to do the same. How are people still bringing up these ignorant arguments in 2026?

@elonmusk @Oilfield_Rando Tis real @elonmusk — Bobby knows … youtu.be/LsL3eCWsEz8?si…

Months ago, @dustinkittle reached out to me to tell me how our farmers are losing their farmland and the government is allowing it to happen. Dustin was one of the inspirations for starting my show in the first place because I thought to myself, "if people only knew." Last week I drove down to Tennessee to film this episode of him telling his story. I know I am a very small fish, but I hope this reaches the right people to make a difference to save our family farms. Dustin is not just a farmer, he is also a very successful lawyer. If he can't stop this, our small farms have no chance. We need President Trump and congress to step in immediately. --- 01:18 Dustin’s Background 03:30 Buying a Farm 07:35 What is Farm Credit? 09:27 Farm Credit Administration 12:34 Getting a Loan 22:37 Farm Credit Goes After His Mom 41:09 Extortion 47:22 File Complaint with FCA 58:51 What the FCA Did 01:05:47 Why is this Happening? 01:10:38 Foreclosure 01:19:21 After the Loan was Paid 01:25:08 FCA Releases Findings 01:31:21 Dustin Kittle Sues the President 02:02:25 What can we do? 02:06:56 Why Dustin was Targeted 02:21:05 Keeping People Quiet 02:22:51 What can Farmers Do? 02:25:38 Farm Credit Sues Dustin 02:29:35 Threats Against Dustin 02:34:20 Suing Biden and Not Trump 02:36:32 Foreign Governments Buying Farmland 02:37:46 What Farm Credit Does with the Land 02:43:14 What can we do - continued Quick Hitters 02:51:52 Thoughts on Brooke Rollins 02:56:35 Subsidies 03:01:54 Bird Flu 03:08:34 Country of Origin Labeling 03:10:32 Pesticide Immunity

Imagine how many billable hours went into this one, to end up 9-0. I bet Sony wishes it could have settled the case when it had a billion-dollar verdict in hand, and now gets nothing.

@LinchCharity A lot of time and passion goes into platform writing under the mistaken hope that it can shape reality. That would only work if the same people who wrote the party platform controlled who got the party nomination, and that's not how it works.

@LinchCharity If a candidate was asked about, say, a plank calling Mexico a Communist country, his safest answer is, "I haven't read the platform, and I wasn't involved in writing it." He wants to push the issues that will help him win and not be forced off-message.

Oklahoma has a majority Republican?! One sitting Republican said the Republican platform is irrelevant. More on that today. Our platform is our values. When they don’t feel that is relevant, why are they claiming to be Republican? Oklahoma does not have a Democrat problem. We have a RINO problem. Working on that….

I ride the Metro-North and the NYC Subway every day. And frankly, I don't always feel like sitting next to anyone else. I don't take an Uber every day. And wouldn't. I want the option to take my wife to work, so that SHE doesn't have to get on a bus full of the mentally ill savages whose existence YOU enable. Because individualism disgusts and scares you, having MY own car is something YOU'RE trying to remove from existence. Like Neo said in the Matrix Reloaded (2003), "Choice. The problem is choice." And there it is. YOU and the rest of your fellow urbanist degenerates want to take that choice from me. Yes, ME. A Black man; a blue-collar Union worker. You HATE me. You hate the fact that I exist. You hate the fact that men like @progressiveact exist. You would take away my right to individual movement AND abolish private property in one stroke, because you're a filthy fucking Communist. You are hostis humanae generis. And you must be stopped.

@johnkonrad What is the deal with generals selling off / decommissioning useful assets? Is it that the short-term savings look good on their record? Is it to feel that they're making an impact?

Trump is NOT escalating this into a major ground war. Let me spell this out with crayons. I’m a US Merchant Marine Captain, O6 (not O3) equivalent. We are a tiny forgotten service with one MF overarching specialty: moving escalatory armies overseas. It’s true a general like McChrystal has far more knowledge about what to do AFTER his tanks roll off our ships. But BEFORE those tanks roll off? They are OUR cargo. We are the specialists. We climb all around those tanks. We secure them, move them, deliver them. Our Commandant, who I talk to every single week, is in charge of that lift. Not whatever general is waiting on the pier. Right now we are in the BEFORE stage. I absolutely 💯 know more about this than any general because I have spent decades training and living the life for THIS MOMENT. When generals want to move escalatory army divisions overseas, they call us. We don’t specialize in every branch. Naval, Air Force, USMC, Special Forces movements have their own lift pipelines. We can help, but that’s not our core mission. But if you want to escalate a war with heavy ground forces? I get a call. The Air Force has already called us to move more bombs into theater. So yes, the air campaign can escalate. But there are ZERO plans to escalate this into a large scale ground invasion. ZERO. This cannot be done by airlift. The USAF can’t even get their own bombs overseas right now, let alone divisions of army units. And if I do get the call, it will be months before we are landing tanks.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ So I repeat… this CAN NOT turn into a major war without my phone ringing. You can send Marines and air assault units without tanks to do raids but a major landing force like McChrystal is talking about just is not happening. Not yet. Not for months, if ever. And when it does happen I will tell you because you can’t move Army divisions in secret. Not since the Army, in a moment of idiocy, sold off its Merchant Marine preposition fleet last year.

Why do new buildings seem, on average, uglier than old buildings? We discuss some options: - Survivorship bias: only the beautiful old buildings have survived (we reject this option); - Cycles of taste: everyone always finds new buildings uglier (we mostly reject this too); - Ornament became too expensive because of rising labour costs (we reject this); - Ornament became too cheap because of mechanisation and then became low status (we reject this); - Some sort of Protestant or Puritan anti-beauty inheritance (we are doubtful); - Some kind of elite status game, perhaps a response to democratisation or elite overproduction (we think there is promise here, but serious work is needed on the details). I discuss this and more with @Aria_Babu and @bswud. Apple podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/did… Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/2pIka6… Youtube: youtube.com/watch?v=qvueKt…

It's not just phonics: Schools have failed to teach reading because they ignore 50+ years of findings in cognitive psychology that reading depends on general knowledge. ED Hirsch has been banging this drum for a long time but Ed Schools shut their ears because the whole idea was unromantic & had a vaguely right-wing aroma. Now he joins with Dan Willingham to make a strong case that kids can't read if they don't have the background knowledge that makes sense of the rarer vocabulary, allusions, and understandings that allow us to read between the lines - which all reading requires. educationnext.org/rediscovering-…

Those wheels you’re looking at are 0.75 millimeters thick. That’s half the thickness of a US dime. Each one was carved from a single block of aluminum, and NASA sent six of them to Mars knowing they’d eventually shred. Curiosity was built for a 2-year mission. It landed in August 2012, and by December that year NASA had already extended the mission indefinitely. Thirteen years and 35.5 kilometers later, the rover is still going, but the wheels started cracking just 14 months in. The damage came faster than anyone at JPL predicted. Sharp embedded rocks were punching straight through the skin between the treads. So NASA assembled a Wheel Wear Tiger Team (a crisis problem-solving tradition that goes back to Apollo 13) and got to work. In 2017, they uploaded a traction control algorithm from Earth that adjusts each wheel’s speed in real time based on the terrain, reducing force on the front wheels by 20%. They rerouted the rover to softer ground and started driving backward when possible, because pulling wheels over rocks produces less force than pushing them into rocks. The wildest part: if enough treads snap off, Curiosity is designed to find a sharp rock on Mars and use it to deliberately rip out the damaged inner section of its own wheel. JPL tested this on a replica rover and found Curiosity can keep driving on just the outer third. They predict this won’t be needed until around 2034. Every 1,000 meters, the rover pulls over and uses the camera on its robotic arm to photograph its own wheels so engineers on Earth can count every crack. Each wheel also has tiny holes that spell “JPL” in Morse code, which Curiosity uses to measure distance by photographing its own tracks in the dirt. These photos directly changed the next rover. When NASA built Perseverance, engineers 3D-printed about 70 different tread designs before landing on 48 curved treads instead of Curiosity’s 24, with thicker skin. They tested the new wheels over 60 kilometers and got zero damage by Curiosity’s original failure definition. “A boring graph with no data on it,” as one JPL engineer put it. A $2.5 billion machine doing self-surgery with rocks on another planet because the mission outlasted its design by 6x.

Trump shared the report