John

"Find out what the world is doing and do the opposite, and there you'll find success." --Micah Fink's dad

Watch how John Mayer turning a Pearl Jam classic into a songwriting masterclass.

Today I’ll be covering the 2026 @MHSAA wrestling state finals at Ford Field.

@EGuzmanreports @MHSAA Please update us on Alpena’s Stenz in the girls at 125lbs.

@robprogressive How shall we pay for armies, roads, and bridges?

Income tax is wrong. Earning a living shouldn’t come with a fine Property tax is wrong. Owning a home shouldn’t mean permanent rent to the government Sales tax is wrong. Buying something shouldn’t require a toll Capital gains tax is wrong. Building wealth through risk for your family's future shouldn’t be penalised Inheritance tax is wrong. Dying shouldn’t trigger one final confiscation

@BBCRosAtkins Disappointed in official statements that don’t match up with this report.

We've added to our reporting on the shooting of Alex Pretti. This video looks in further detail at bystander video footage - and analyses the Trump administration's description of the events that day. It's produced with my colleagues at BBC Verify. bbc.co.uk/news/world/us_…

@ktumulty Profound. I love this.

My late cousin, who I adored and miss every day, once said to me: Never make fun of someone for mispronouncing a word. It means they learned it by reading.

Profound.

@SenDuckworth JD Vance has turned into a caricature. #grotesque

Forrest Gump ran toward danger in Vietnam. Your boss ran to his podiatrist crying bone spurs. Petty insults at the expense of people with disabilities won't change the fact that you're risking troops' lives to boost Chevron's stock price. It's my job to hold you accountable.

I JUST CRUNCHED THE NUMBERS ON TRUMP'S VENEZUELA OIL PLAN And there's a huge problem. Everyone's expecting Venezuela to pump 3M+ barrels per day and crash oil prices. But here's what nobody's talking about: The infrastructure is DEAD. 30 years of socialist mismanagement destroyed everything. PDVSA (Venezuela's state oil company) went from world-class operator to complete disaster. Refineries are rusting. Pipelines are leaking. Equipment is ancient. The realistic cost to fix it? $100-180 BILLION over 10-15 years. Nobody has that kind of money. Especially not for a country that just stole billions from foreign investors. The Exxon Problem: Venezuela owes $60 billion in unpaid arbitration awards. Exxon, ConocoPhillips, and others got their assets seized in 2007. They won in international court. Venezuela never paid. Now Trump's calling oil execs saying "invest in Venezuela." Their response: "Show us rule of law first." Translation: We're not putting billions into a country that might nationalize us again. The Chevron Reality Check: Chevron's the ONLY major still there. They're operating under special US license. Best case scenario with their current setup? Add 200-500k barrels per day. That brings Venezuela from 900k bpd to maybe 1.1-1.5M bpd. Still 50% below their historical peak. And that's the OPTIMISTIC scenario. The Orinoco Problem: Venezuela's oil is heavy crude from the Orinoco Belt. It's thick, sulfurous, expensive to extract. Needs special refineries to process. At current oil prices, the margins are horrible. Why would any company invest billions for 8-12% returns when they can get 15-20% in US shale? They wouldn't. And here's the part that kills me: Trump keeps saying he wants $50 oil. But $50 oil DESTROYS the investment case for Venezuelan production. You can't spend $180 billion rebuilding infrastructure if oil prices are suppressed. The economics don't work. So either: 1. Oil stays at $50 and nobody invests in Venezuela 2. Oil rises to $80+ and Venezuela becomes viable but prices don't crash anyway Trump can't have both. So even IF someone could rebuild the infrastructure... Venezuela's political situation is still a mess. Maduro's supposedly leaving. But to who? Maria Corina Machado? Another strongman? Nobody knows what the government will look like in 12 months. Major oil companies don't invest billions into that level of uncertainty. They need 10-year stability guarantees. Venezuela can't provide that. The US Shale Comparison: Meanwhile, Trump's threatening to cut oil prices. US rig count is already falling. Shale producers are pulling back on new drilling. If you artificially suppress oil prices, you REDUCE future supply. Not just in Venezuela. Everywhere. Low prices = less investment = tighter supply later. It's basic economics. The Realistic Timeline: Absolute best case with Chevron's existing operations: - 18-24 months to add 200-500k bpd - Total Venezuelan production hits 1.1-1.5M bpd - Still nowhere near the 3M bpd everyone's expecting That's not a game-changer for global oil markets. My Take on Energy Stocks: I don’t see much downside in oil prices from here (geopolitics providing a floor), and I believe energy stocks remain attractive on the cycle. But Trump's $50 oil talk is exactly that - talk. The gap between political promises and physical reality has never been wider. You can't tweet oil fields into existence. You can't executive order decades of infrastructure neglect away. And you definitely can't rebuild a collapsed petro-state while simultaneously crashing the price of its only export. Energy reality > political promises Every. Single. Time.

@tedlieu @JDVance Ted, I wondered how to respond to his question. Nice reply.

Dear @JDVance: As a congressional democrat, I will answer your question. The reason investigations are conducted before reflexively making a judgement is because no one knows all the facts in the immediate aftermath of a tragedy. You unfortunately have already concluded, without all the evidence, that the victim was a deranged leftist trying to run the officer over, and that the officer was defending himself. New evidence, however, suggests the victim was a U.S. citizen, a mother of three, a Christian and had recently dropped her child off at school. Additional video footage also suggests the second and third shots fired by the officer occurred when the officer was to the side of the vehicle as the car was driving away. Under the law each firing of the gun is analyzed separately. Witness testimony also suggests one of the ICE agents told the driver to MOVE, MOVE, MOVE. The driver may have been trying to comply with potentially conflicting instructions from different agents. Slow motion video from various angles also shows the vehicle appears to have been turning when the officer fired the first shot, and certainly that was the case by the second and third shots. Your reflexive never admit wrong approach is not only based on zero investigations, it also leads to increased risks to federal officers. The American people will get increasingly agitated and angry if they believe the Trump Administration will never hold anyone accountable ever. If you want to bring down the temperature, if you want to reduce the risks of violence against federal officers, then you need the American people to believe that you and the Administration will make decisions based on facts and will comply with the rule of law. It is also highly suspicious that the Administration is refusing to cooperate with local and state officials as they conduct their investigations. There is no reason to make the American people think there is some sort of coverup. Allow all the investigations to be conducted fairly and with transparency. So I respectfully request that you and the Administration stop pre-judging this case, and stop making incendiary or smear the victim comments that appear to be contradicted by additional new evidence. I also request that the federal officials cooperate with all the state and local officials. That is the American way, and will help calm the situation down.

From NPR. A reminder that social media sucks. AI and social media… a dangerous combination.

@RobertMSterling I’ve never voted for Trump and never will, but I do respect this. (I don’t respect the lies that come out of his mouth, however.)

Donald Trump sat for a two-hour interview with the New York Times last night. With not just one reporter or two. But four. No handlers at his side screening out hard questions. No note cards with softball questions written down in advance. Just two hours with four hostile reporters. Biden and Kamala never did this. It’s laughable to think about them trying. Their press aides had them locked down like Fort Knox, and even sympathetic reporters (which were most of them) never got unfiltered access. Whether you love Trump or hate him, you’ve got to respect this. There’s no one else like the guy, and there probably never will be again.

@mattmfm Time for a national discussion about how we enforce immigration violations.

Must watch: NYT just released a damning forensic analysis of the ICE shooting in Minneapolis. It flatly refutes Trump administration claims — confirming the motorist was driving away, not toward the officer, and the officer was not hit by the vehicle. nytimes.com/video/us/10000…

@jeremykauffman My guess is you are not a Christian.

For most of history, it was legal to shoot a fleeing criminal Only in the civil rights era has the standard shifted to "immediate threat"

@davidsenra 100% support capitalism. Also, clearly see a widening gap between the wealthy and the commoners. Interested in the shared prosperity and how to increase that.

"Capitalism created the possibility of the win win win. It used to be a zero sum game where somebody won, somebody else lost. The biggest mistake people make, intellectuals in particular, they still think we're in a zero sum world. They're obsessed with some billionaires because Bernie Sanders thinks that Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk somehow stole the money from the people. They don't understand that it's this prosperity machine that's creating more, not just for those billionaires, but for everything that they're touching. They're creating value for their customers, they're creating value for their employees. Their suppliers are flourishing, their investors are seeing their capital go up. It can be reinvested and compound. All philanthropy ultimately comes from business. That's where the profits are. Where does all the taxes come from? It ultimately comes from business as well. This is the engine that's lifting humanity out. The entrepreneurs are the drivers of that engine. Somebody like Elon Musk, he gets a very, very, very tiny sliver of the value that he creates for the whole world." —@iamjohnmackey

@EndTribalism This is a pretty insightful post. I agree with your action items: ICE pull back, call for calm and non-violence, and investigate the incident thoroughly.

Two unpopular opinions on the Minneapolis shooting: 1. The woman who died was at fault. She was acting erratically, inserted herself into a dangerous situation, and behaved in a way that put both herself and others at serious risk. 2. The ICE agent acted on instinct and fired too quickly. He should not have escalated to lethal force in that moment. We need full body cam footage to understand exactly what he perceived, but based on the video available, it does not appear his life was in immediate danger as the vehicle was moving away. The left is already calling this blatant murder. The right is already claiming the woman was trying to kill the agent. Neither narrative is accurate. The woman who died acted dangerously and recklessly, and the ICE agent drew and fired his weapon too fast. If both sides don’t pause the political posturing and focus on de-escalation, Minneapolis is headed toward another night of chaos just like George Floyd. ICE should temporarily pull back from the community, and leaders on the left need to clearly and forcefully call for calm and nonviolence. There’s almost no chance both of those things happen, which means this situation will likely get ugly and Minneapolis could burn again. I know this take won’t make me popular with either side but it’s just my initial thoughts on situation.

It is important to know the difference between a protest and a riot.

@epkaufm Trump and Hegseth made it clear oil is a factor. They are saying this, not conspiracy theorists. The only question is… are the American people good with it? I think they will be fine with it.

3 things can be true: The US violated the norm of state sovereignty, which is bad for world order. Maduro is a dictator, and there is now hope for his people. The idea the US did this for oil is conspiratorial nonsense.

This is going to stick with me forever