Mike B

@Boldyboy1975 Looks the same coming out, just faster

My dad said Indian food was the best he ever tasted. Those were his Dying words.🥴🤪🤣🤮

John Thune has become a punching bag for good reason but there is a more insidious force at play nobody can talk about. Let me explain… The staffers in Thune’s office have been asking Trump Naval and Maritime appointees questions about me before confirmation hearings. I doubt John Thune knows who I am. His staff absolutely does. They track me. They hate me. And they will quietly bleed pushing out any appointee I’m friends with. Someone close to PPO told me a Trump staffer commented that “Konrad should be a HBS case study on someone every in the administration respects but has zero chance of any appointment.” It’s probably because I’ve called out congressional staffers numerous times before. This is how Congress actually works. It’s always the staffers. When we first floated the SHIPS Act, Mike Johnson’s hometown delegation were strong supporters. The minute he became Speaker, his hometown people got bulldozed by the Speaker of the House staff he inherited. Same man, different staff, different priorities. Why do you think they wanted Mitch McConnell propped up after the freezing episodes? It wasn’t McConnell. It was the cartel of people on his staff who needed his chair filled by someone they already controlled. Members can’t read their own bills anymore. Thirty years of capped staff, frozen pay, and brain drain to K Street has left rank and file senators functionally illiterate on the legislation they vote on. Leadership staff fill the vacuum. They are not entrenched because they are corrupt. They are entrenched because nobody else in the building can move a 1,500-page must-pass bill through conference. That is the cartel. And it has rules. If you want anything in the NDAA, the omnibus, the CR, or any vehicle that actually moves, you do not piss them off. You do not name them. Break either rule and you do not get a second omnibus. I’m not even willing to name individual staff. John Phelan is the case study nobody is reading correctly. Phelan was not fired because he was a bad secretary. Phelan was fired because his chief of staff Jon Harrison had deep knowledge of the pentagon that Phelan lacked. Without him, Phelan was walking around the Pentagon naked and he knew it. He pulled back from media events and became too cautious. Then there is Susie Wiles. I don’t know her. Never met her. From everything I can piece together she is doing a great job. The point is not Susie. The point is the Vanity Fair article. It’s not even the article itself, that article contained a lot of BS, it was the reaction that came after. Every single republican & a few democrats stood behind her. Now contrast that with the flood of negative articles about Mike Waltz, Kristi Noem or Pam Bondi. When a politician is the subject of a hut piece is dragged over the coals, the system shrugs. But when it’s a senior staffer, the system closes rank. It is safer to trash Trump in print than to be perceived as trashing Susie. Trump is used to it. Susie controls the schedule, the access, and the door. Multiply Susie by every leadership chief of staff, every NDAA conference staffer, & you have the machine. It is not partisan. Schumer’s staff & Thune’s staff protect each other from outside critics more reliably than they protect their own bosses from each other. Leaders come and go but leadership staff is entrenched. Congress is broken because leadership staff on both sides want it to remain broken. A Congress that can only legislate through 2,000-page must-pass bill is a Congress where the staff who draft the bill run the country. Regular order is their extinction event. They will never let it come back voluntarily. You can call out politicians all day. They are used to it. Call out the staff and you don’t get frozen out of one bill. You get frozen out of every bill, by every office, on both sides, for as long as the cartel decides to remember your name. They remember mine. Now you know why.​​​​​​​​​​​​​ even Luna can’t vall them out.

Democrats had a meltdown over a rodeo clown wearing a mask and got him fired and banned. They gnashed teeth and got a staffer fired for commenting on an Obama daughter’s outfit. None of you now saying “chill out, it’s just a joke” are sincere.

@RepJeffries You lie so easily.

Gas prices are out of control, community-based hospitals are closing in rural America and the Trump Tariffs have made your life more expensive. Things aren’t going well in this era of far right extremism. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Your government has no right to control your car Your government has no right to control your car Your government has no right to control your car Your government has no right to control your car Your government has no right to control your car

Today’s raids by state and federal law enforcement happened because our state agencies caught irregular behavior and reported it. That’s how the system is supposed to work, and our agencies will keep at it as long as there are fraudsters around to put behind bars.

If you commit fraud in Minnesota you’re going to get caught — and that’s exactly what we saw today. We catch criminals when state and federal agencies share information. Joint investigations work, and securing justice depends on it.

@tylerblack32 Obama was in another state when the shots were taken at the Whitehouse. LOLOLOL Damn, did the guy shoot a cruise missile, ya fucking dummy!

Obama: 11, including a guy who fired 25 rifle rounds at the White House. Biden: 5, including one arrested 4 miles from his house with an AR-15 and a checklist ending "execute." Harris: 2 federal prosecutions. Clinton: a pipe bomb intercepted at her home and a militia.

@Zigmanfreud I support every one of these points. Well said!

Here are the top 10 cultural developments over the past generation or so which have left our society vulnerable to eventual collapse, especially in the age of AI: -The definition of loyalty shifted from what someone has done for you in the past, to what they might be likely to do for you in the future -Lying went from being unforgivable and resulting in public shame, to being acceptable and, often, fully expected/accepted -Liberty & Freedom went from being at the core of our nation’s mission statement, to being seen as often a bothersome negative that should be curtailed (COVID Panic) -We went from a society dominated by male values, to one dominated by female values -Parents went from automatically supporting educators in conflicts with students, to usually doing the opposite, causing teachers/coaches to have no real power/control -We exchanged the important goal of racial and gender equality of opportunity, for the ill-advised pursuit of equity of outcome -Our media, which used to be a mostly unifying cultural influence, fragmented into a thousand pieces, thus dividing us along political and demographic lines, while allowing everyone to choose their own “truth” -We somehow managed to fundamentally mess up the dating/mating/marriage process, creating a situation where it is now almost a miracle for a family to be created and maintained with multiple children, and two married adults of different genders -In a remarkably short amount of time, we flipped our value of aging upside down, going from a society where your “prime” years were after 60 and where experience was highly valued, to one where the prime of life seems to be from 5-25 and where inexperience/immaturity seems to now be a virtue -The American Dream went from building a family, home, business/career, to finding yourself in a situation where you are viably able to sue a very rich entity for millions of dollars, ideally without having suffered much real/permanent damage It is very doubtful that any society in human history has ever experienced so much radical cultural change in such a short amount of time, or could ever survive such developments still intact if they had.

@mehdirhasan Somebody send this guy's beeper a message.

They literally don’t understand comedy or free speech. We are governed by snowflake morons.

@Emilio2763 @jimmykimmel She looks trans.

I Mean if We’re Being Honest @jimmykimmel and His Wife are So Toxic and Rotten they Couldn’t Even Produce a Kid Without it Being Defective…

Wordle 1,774 5/6 🟨⬛⬛⬛🟨 ⬛🟨🟨🟨⬛ 🟩🟩🟩⬛⬛ 🟩🟩🟩⬛⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 #TEMWC @EdMorrissey

This should lead to immediate removal from congress. You cannot be this stupid and be permitted to hold elected office.

18 bizarre/suspicious media behaviors in the Russini - Vrabel scandal. Did I miss anything? 1.) ESPN (10% NFL owned) virtually ignored it for 2 weeks 2.) Crickets at NFL Network 3.) CBS ignored it for 11 days 4.) Dan Lebatard says the story makes him "uncomfortable" 5.) Scott Zolak insinuates he would lose his job if he covers the story 6.) Two WEEI radio hosts in Boston do lose their job after covering it 7.) USA Today fires Crissy Froyd after she's critical of Russini 8.) TMZ originally turned the story down because it didn’t want to “police the bedroom”, but now covering it 9.) The Athletic originally stands firmly behind Russini, then investigates her 10.) ESPN doesn’t tweet its own eventual story on the scandal, instead having an account with 8k followers tweet it very late on a Friday night 11.) Adam Schefter 3+ hours late (after midnight) tweeting the news about Vrabel missing the NFL draft 12.) Kid Gloves - Failure by several outlets to cover the 2015 Russini incident, tampering angle, or COTY voting conflict of Interest 13.) First Take: "We didn't want to talk about it on this show" 14.) AP still no comment on Russini’s status as awards voter - even after getting called out by PFT 15.) Media figures attacking influencers who shine light on #12 16.) AP writes a story about Russini resigning, doesn’t mention she is one of their AP awards voters 17.) ESPN's 50M+ X account only tweeted the word "Vrabel" once since April 1st despite a controversy with his RB over a bible tweet, 2 press conferences, and 4 photo dumps by TMZ and others 18.) The same sports media outlets who were obsessed wih the "ColdPlay couple" (Even though it's not a sports story) are ignoring the Russini - Vrabel scandal completely.

With all the attention on the Russini/Vrabel affair, there has not been nearly enough focus on the the role of @nytimes @TheAthletic and @espn… Journalistically, it is astonishing and extremely telling that the New York Times initially fully backed the lies of Russini. This was strange when the story first broke, but now that a mountain of evidence has been uncovered, and she resigned on her own, even eventually deleting her social media, it is clear the NY Times completely failed when it came to basic journalistic instincts and investigative skills. They were probably also influenced by their arrogance because the story first broke in the @nypost which the NY Times looks down upon. It is now clear that the NY Times was exposed as completely clueless when it came to evaluating their own journalistic standards, and it should be a black mark on their record forever, making people fundamentally question their basic judgment. The ESPN situation is perhaps even more interesting and telling because of their history when it comes to covering stories of alleged sexual improprieties and supposed organizational cover ups. It has been the height of hypocrisy and journalistic malpractice that, to this date, even with the story having HUGE significance because it has impacted the NFL Draft, one of ESPN’s biggest events of the year, that ESPN has not reported AT ALL on the photos indicating that Russini was having an affair with Vrabel while she was a key reporter for ESPN and he was the coach of the Titans. Incredibly, they haven’t even released a substantive statement as of yet. When you compare this total silence to how ESPN immediately decided in November 2011, with ZERO actual evidence/logic, that Joe Paterno and Penn State had obviously been engaged in a cover up of Jerry Sandusky’s presumed crimes, going literally wall to wall with coverage until Paterno was eventually fired, it is extremely enlightening. While the stories are obviously not totally analogous, at the core of ESPN’s Penn State coverage was their fervent belief that it would be impossible for Sandusky to be engaged in the behavior alleged (even as a FORMER employee of Penn State) without Penn Stare knowing about it. It was also assumed by ESPN that Penn State had a huge incentive to cover up the story (which, since Sandusky was a former employee at the time of the key allegation, never made any sense). Based on ESPN’s own precedent/standard, it is more than fair to presume that it would be impossible for ESPN to not realize that one of their primary NFL reporters was engaged in an affair with an NFL head coach (especially given all the hints Russini was leaving publicly). It would also be totally reasonable to presume that ESPN was more than willing to cover up this information because they were clearly benefiting from Russini’s unique “access” to news. It would not even be a stretch to presume, using the standard that ESPN used in the Penn State case, and in other similar moral panics, that this type of behavior from their female reporters was systematic and essentially approved of by ESPN as a effectively a legitimatized (or at least somewhat accepted) “journalistic” practice. While there has been some effort by sports news outlets to force ESPN to act responsibly here, there has not yet been nearly enough to force action. ESPN must be held to their own standards of evaluation and accountability in these types of situations. But since the news media in general, and the sports media in particular, are currently completely broken, I won’t be holding my breath for this to actually happen.

Making this mistake betrays a deep ignorance of American culture. It’s not a mistake that anyone with a passing knowledge of or interest in our history could possibly make. That’s a problem.

This is why your healthcare sucks. Most of the money is being used to create fake jobs for parasites.

Dear car manufacturers, You thought sales were bad when they forced you into EVs. Wait for total bankruptcy when you install kill switches and biometrics. Good luck.

@JenSiebelNewsom you F'd Harvey Weinstein

My family and I watched the 60 Minutes interview with Donald Trump and Norah O’Donnell last night, and we were shocked. Seeing a president speak to a woman journalist with that level of contempt — and a clear allergy to facts — is disturbing, though at this point not unexpected given his pattern of behavior. But that is the problem. Because when that level of disrespect from the highest office in the country repeats itself, it starts to trickle down into our culture and define what power looks like, shaping how boys and plenty of men see women and girls and what they come to accept as normal behavior.

@Mennosiebassie @waglyvibes You mean there really wasn't a camera in her face every time she cried at the cage. LOL. Garbage AI

@waglyvibes Check the bars of the cage. 0:25

My heart goes out to her 😥😥😥😥