10-20-25 - 9am - Migrant Use of Social Media and Gas Prices

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I saw a great definition of socialist over the weekend.
It's the person who wants everything you have except for
your job and your responsibilities.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Yeah, that is pretty good. Is that an indication that
talkback service is working again?

Speaker 3 (00:17):
No? No, I download them all as they come in,
and we, you know, being the show that we are
and the goober listeners that we have, they leave quite
a bit as the show goes on. I can all,
I can cannot always get to them all, which is
why on the podcast page you'll see daily pop daily talkbacks, right,
and there's you know, ten, twelve to fifteen minutes worth
of talkbacks now every day. So I'm just going through

(00:40):
what I have since we can no longer access the talkbacks.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
Okay, well, the reason I ask is goober number ninety
five four rights Mike. Now, we listeners know that the
talkback service is hosted on Amazon Web Service servers. Shame
on you.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
It could it could not be. It was working earlier,
it's not working now.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
I don't know, but I asked you doing the break.
I've never thought about our servers. I've always kind of
assumed that we had our own servers and that we
didn't rely on Amazon Web services or anything. Do you
have any idea?

Speaker 3 (01:20):
I have no freaking clue, but I say I heart
out front. So there's that.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
And we know that oftentimes it doesn't work. So there's that.
Amazon I thought had a fairly reliable note backbone, but
what'll I know? And then ninety two twenty four rightes
Mike to protect your talkbacks, maybe you should buy servers
and not depend on other web services. The new web

(01:48):
services depend on you, not Amazon or Microsoft, Microsoft or
any third party. I just don't know. I don't know
whether we're part of that meltdown overnight or not. But
what's interesting is let me refresh the page that's still
the lead story on Drudge and I really don't know

(02:08):
anything about it yet, So we'll see see what happens,
to see what comes of it. Three major three labor
unions filed a federal lawsuit last week. They accused I
swear I can just do I could do four hours
a day, five days a week, just do the weekday

(02:29):
program on nothing but just analyzing all the lawsuits filed
against either Trump himself or you know, one of his
cabinet members or one of the departments or agencies. It's
like Trump decides I went dyke coke with my cheeseburger
today and somebody files a lawsuit. Good grief, you know

(02:50):
what this one is. They're accusing the administration of violating
the constitutional rights of the labor unions through an artificial
intelligence powered surveillance program that monitors the online speech of

(03:12):
non citizens for extremism. I don't want to tell you
any other part of the story until I say this.
If you're engaged in online speech, you know you are.

(03:32):
By the way, thanks for everybody that followed me on X.
You know, the weekday program doesn't do a very good
job because I don't beg for your follows on X,
but the weekend program got me over the twenty two thousand,
two hundred mark over the weekend. So you gubers are

(03:55):
clearly slouches.

Speaker 3 (03:57):
Well, they just don't know any better yet.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
They don't know any better in what regard.

Speaker 3 (04:02):
The new beasts. They just the weekend people that they
just don't know you very well yet.

Speaker 2 (04:08):
Oh oh, I see, So they're still falling for the
for the crap of Hey, come and follow me on
X at Michael Brown USA.

Speaker 3 (04:15):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (04:16):
Well, let's see if we can't let's see if we
can't get some from this program. Let's see if we
can't find enough nerds out there. They haven't quite figured
this program out yet. Go follow me on X at
Michael Brown, USA. Let's get to twenty two to three. See,
well we'll do that. But if I go, if I
go post something on X, I well, in fact, I

(04:41):
know because some of them follow me. I don't think
for a moment that that's just like if I post
something on X, that dragon's the only one that reads
and he barely reads them. I post something on X,
I assume that some nerds sitting in Bangladesh, or sitting

(05:05):
in Yemen, or sitting in Texas, that little bizzant place
UH is reading it. I assume that if somebody that's
working at the NSSA wants to read what I post
on X, they can go read what I post on X.

(05:25):
And if they want to use some program to search
for words that I use, like you know, f you
NSSA and I put that up there, that's somebody at
the NSA is probably going to see that. It's it's
like me going out with a megaphone standing out here

(05:45):
on the on the front drive. You know, screaming into
the into the in today's wind about whatever I'm going
to scream about. It's out there for whoever I can
hear it, can hear it. I you're suing because it
says surveillance program. The United Auto Workers, the Communication Workers

(06:07):
of America, and the American Federation of Teachers. Why I'm
glad they're You know, if you're a teacher and you're
spending your union dues and you can't you know, you
can't afford to buy a new car or whatever because
your union dues are so high, you should know that
they're going to pay lawyers so that they can sue
the administration because they're reading your x timeline or they're

(06:29):
looking through your Instagram, they're looking through your Facebook. Oh
holy crap. They filed this lawsuit on October sixteenth, just
into last week, in the Southern District of New York.
Does that sound familiar. Maybe they'll get Judge Ergowan again.
The lawsuit targets the Department of State Homeland Security, and

(06:49):
they claim that they're operating a surveillance system that flags
disfavor viewpoints on social media for immigration review. If you
don't want them now, First of all, operating a surveillance
system that flags disfavored viewpoints. Now it is. It's a

(07:09):
computerized artificial intelligence program that searches for keywords, and I
guess when the keywords get flagged, then they look at
your name and check to see if you're here legally
or not. Do you know how you can avoid that?
Don't post anything on X, don't say anything stupid or well.

(07:34):
That might be hard for some people to do. I
know that this seems counterintuitive, but when you exercise free
speech and you do it on one of these platforms,
you're not limiting it to anybody. It's no different than

(07:54):
writing a letter to the editor. If the newspaper decides
to publish your letter to the editor and you talk
about let's just say that I wanted to write a
letter to the editor and my letter to the editor
was just how bad I heeart is? I heart just sucks.
I heart won't give me new computers. I heart won't

(08:15):
clean up the studio, I heart won't do this. I
heart who I'm kind of doing that right now, aren't.
I'm just I'm kind of listening to things that I kind.

Speaker 3 (08:22):
A bit of Keep Keep going, yeah, keep.

Speaker 2 (08:23):
Going, Just keep going. If I write that in a
letter to the editor and then Brenda or Jojo or
or Temper read it, they I might get like a
visit through the studio. They might be like, hey, we
read your letter to the editor. Cool, look at your contract.
Let's see what your contract says. Oh, yeah, you disparaged

(08:44):
the company. Oh let's have a talk. In fact, here's
your check. Maybe we have your key card? Please too much?
I say, well, it doesn't work anyway, So what do
you want my key card for. I don't get why
people are so upset that something they publish on a
public available platform worldwide is being read by a bureaucrat

(09:05):
somewhere in the NSA or DHS or the state Department.
How stupid do you have to be? Well, I think
we know pretty damn stupid. The unions are arguing this
is their argument that the program is chilling free expression,
claiming that non citizens are now self censoring or avoiding

(09:27):
political and union activity to prevent any visa issues. Wait
a minute, if you have a visa issue, that's the problem,
not that you said something. The fact that you said
something is simply drawing attention to yourself so that you

(09:47):
know it would be like if if if I I don't,
I don't want to use that example because somebody, let's
just say that you're a you're a TV news anchor
and you're doing a story about taxes, and you say
on the news program, hey, guess what, I cheated my
taxes every year? I guess you know, I think that

(10:11):
you ought to just you know, cheat, cheat, cheat, cheat
on your taxes. And then suddenly the I R s
some IRS agent here's that, and goes, huh, maybe maybe
I should look at that person's returns. Well, that's just stupid.
Don't do that.

Speaker 3 (10:27):
It's it's like the bad guys after they robbed the bank,
showed a shoot a little selfie and posted on an
intag game going look at all this.

Speaker 2 (10:35):
Money, Yeah, look at it, and look at the nice
little bag I got at Central National Bank. Oh, by
the way, don't don't pay any attention to the red
dye on my fingers, the purple dye, whatever it is,
don't pay any attention to that. Just look at them.
I won the lottery at Central National Bank.

Speaker 3 (10:54):
How about you try not to publicize your crimes.

Speaker 2 (10:58):
BINGO. They're all concerned about Executive Order fourteen one, sixty one,
signed by the President on his first day in office, well,
actually the second day in office on the second term
January Trent one in twenty five, in which he directed
federal agencies to screen foreign nationals for hostile attitudes and

(11:18):
to expand inner agency efforts to identify ideological or cultural threats.
Now they say that, they say, the unions say, or
they allege that this order has led to these are
revocations based not on security concerns, but on what they

(11:38):
consider constitutionally protected speech, to which I would counter if
I were the lawyers in this case, I would say, yes,
you have constitutionally protected speech. You are here as a guest,
and you are free to exercise your speech all you want.
But when you say bad things about the country and

(12:01):
you're here as a guest, we have a program that's
going to show us what you said, and we're going
to look at it. And if you are here and
you've you know, maybe you lied on your visa application,
maybe you said that you're not a member of a
terrorist organization, But in further review, based on your constitutionally
protective speech, we discovered that you, oh, you're actually a

(12:24):
member of AMAS, or you're a member of Hesba law,
or you're a member of al Qaeda, or you've got
you know family in Tehran that' said you know the
that's the brother of one of the mulas or something.
Can we by looking to your visa a little further,
you're calling attention to yourself. You're just being a dumb ass,
dumb dumbass in doing so, right, it's crazy. Galnall's fucking

(12:49):
galnas Fokhem me Faukimi, who's the legal director of Muslim Advocates,
one of the Yahoosa supporting the lawsuits, says this, the
administration is hunting online for an ever growing list of
disfavored viewpoints. Huh now. The State Department, in response to that, says,

(13:13):
we will continue to revoke the visas of those who
put the safety of our citizens at risk. Crazy the
International Union, United Automobile, Airspace and Agriculture implement Workers of
the United of America at all versus the United States
Department of State at all. Now it could have significant
legal ramifications. It is expected to test the extent of

(13:38):
First Amendment protections for foreigners and the constitutionality of you
listen closely. I think this is the key issue. The
constitutionality of using digital surveillance in immigration enforcement. I think
that's perfectly legitimate. If if you can use artificial intelligence,

(14:00):
or you can just open the laptop.

Speaker 1 (14:04):
Go through.

Speaker 2 (14:06):
You know, you've got a list of people, Mike Michael,
here's your list today of student foreign visas. UH go
check out their social media accounts, see what they say.
What's the difference between me doing that as a bureaucrat,
as a as an Immigration and Customs enforcement officer, as

(14:26):
a State Department employee, or a DHS employee. And I've
been given a list of student visas to review. See
if they are violating the law. See if they are,
you know, saying bad things about the country, See if
there is you know, if they are actively engaged in
the support of a terrorist organization. I think one of
the easiest things to do to see whether or I

(14:48):
want to dig further into somebody's visa is to go
look at their social media profile. What are they saying?
Are they also are they giving a big cardboard check
made out to Hamas for you know, one million dollars
and they're presenting it while they're over in in Gazza somewhere. Yeah,
then I might dig further in there. Six thousand, six

(15:14):
thousand student visas so far this year and we're almost done.
Six thousand student visas have been revoked so far this year.
So once again I get that it's constitutionally protected free speech,
and you are allowed to go engage in that speech,

(15:34):
just as you are allowed to go falsely shout fire
in the theater. You're just going to suffer the consequences
if falsely shouting fire in the theater causes death or injury,
then you're going to be held liable for it. Now,
if you want to go out and you want to
vocally support a designated terrorist organization who has vowed to

(15:57):
bring down the United States of America, and you are
offering financial or otherwise you know, substance ee support to
that terrorist organization, you can talk about it all you want.
You're free to post about it, tweet about it, put
pictures up on Instagram, whatever you want to do, but
you'll suffer the consequences of it. In other news, I

(16:22):
filled up with gas yesterday. Premium unleaded at Sam's Club
was two dollars and ninety three cents a gallon. I
actually did a double take. I mean, I'm not kidding.
I thought maybe I misread it. I thought, me, I
didn't think it was like three ninety three, but I
thought maybe it was. You know, it was like three something.

(16:43):
I just missed it. So I've been over because the
sun was shining on it just right, and sure enough,
two ninety three for premium unleaded. I wanted to get
a sticker of Donald Trump that says I did that
and put it up there, and when we get back,
I'll explain why. I do believe that. Oh, Trump's energy
dominant strategy and the gods a piece deal. I think

(17:08):
that's leading to the plunge in gas prices.

Speaker 3 (17:19):
Michael, Just think who the president was in the early nineties,
President moral, I mean Clinton. Watch out for those cigars.

Speaker 2 (17:30):
Okay, I don't think that I'm part of the group
that needs to worry about the cigars. I think that's
over there on the other side. Two dollars ninety three cents.
I was ecstatic Trump's push to boost energy output is

(17:55):
actually delivering savings to consumers. Gas prices across the country
or nearing their lowest point in four years. So all
those Biden stickers about I did that, Yes, he did
do that. Triple A forecasts the national average for regular
gasoline to drop below three dollars a gallon. That's a

(18:16):
level unseen since twenty twenty one. Now go over to
gas buddy. Prices are decreasing in almost every state, some
regions possibly getting below two dollars a gallon. Two dollars
below a gallon in the week's ahead. It's a downward
trend line, and that downward trend line has held steady

(18:37):
over the past week, month, and year, And obviously that's
welcome relief to drivers, which means we can go drive more,
we can burn up more hydrocarbons. I believe that this
trend line is linked directly to record high domestic oil production,
delivered or driven in part by Trump's drill baby, drill

(18:59):
energy strategy, by the stabilization of the geopolitical situation in
the Middle East with his facilitation of that Gazza deal
we talked about earlier, and the end of the Israeli
Iranian conflict at least the time being. Mark shield Drop,
a spokesman for the Triple A Northeast, highlighted that the

(19:20):
oil and gas markets are anticipating a potential global surplus
of oil that expectation follows Opek and their member country's
commitment to increase production through the winter, again under partly
in the Trump's influence. So the price of a barrel
of domestic crude oil fell below sixty bucks of barrel
last week, and its crude prices drop. The cost of

(19:43):
producing gasoline also decreases. But it was interesting because as
I was looking through Lexis Nexus last night and looking
for stories about this, none of them talked about the
ripple effect of it. Maybe that's because I looked if
it costs less to deliver your bud Light to the

(20:05):
grocery store, at some point, bud Light, in order to
increase share, may you know, start dropping their prices. The
same is true for everything that shows up at one
of the malls or the shops that you know, ends
up in a department store, ends up at the pet
food store, whatever it might be. Those costs of production,

(20:27):
the cost of transportation, all of those costs start to drop.
May not happen overnight, but the trend line's going in
the right direction. And as long as the trend line's
going in the right directions, then I'm fine with that,
because well, that's good news for both you and me
speaking of talking about who is president when or Bill Clinton?

(20:56):
I started reading. I didn't buy the book, don't you.
I did not by the book, But according to some
excerpts toward the end of the book titled one hundred
and seven Days, written by Kamala Harris, there's something called

(21:17):
the check Up Podcast. Though she was meant to be
having a short interview about Bobby Kennedy Junior, the host
suddenly asked if the then vice president could talk on
the hoof a bit about some of her star issues
healthcare costs, women's health, healthy meals for kids. Apparently, at

(21:42):
least according to these excerpts, Harris funtain, I shouldn't say.
According to the excerpts. According to the reports about the excerpts,
Harris fumbles for her briefing sheet. She's suddenly trying to
find a piece of paper with talking points on how
do I answer the question? For any media appearance. Harris

(22:05):
required one of those sheets listing the questions to be
asked and the answers to every single question. It's not there.
She can't find it. After the interview, she apparently screams
at her staff. The Romans the ancients used to warn

(22:27):
that a republic would lead to the rule of silver tongue.
A democracy, in particularly a democracy, or this is the
right word, a democracy would lead to the rule of
demagogues who would promise the mob anything. In fact, it's
been a good deal worse than that. What often seems
like the closing years of on liberal democracy on the

(22:48):
constitutional Republic have instead given us a garrison of politicians
with neither an eye for detail nor a gift of gad. Instead,
it's just been a series of shuffling figures with no
discernible agenda.

Speaker 3 (23:03):
I thought a.

Speaker 2 (23:04):
Lot about that over the weekend doing show prep, thinking
about what's going on. We talked earlier about the shuffling
going on in communist China, the problem with them re engineering,
trying to re engineer a chip from TSMC and then
being unable to put it back together, reaching out to
the company in Netherlands to come, hey, can you come

(23:25):
and help us fixate quote broken ship, and then they
get there and realize it's not broken, so they informed
TSMC that, oh no, they were trying to re engineer
this thing. All of these things that are going on
in the world, what's been the biggest change of all
and compare and contrasts that to what it might be

(23:48):
like under Harris presidency, and compare and contrast what's going
on now to indeed what it exactly was like during
a Biden presidency. We slept walk, We walked in our
sleep through those four years, that mumbling, bumbling old fart

(24:12):
had no clue what was going on. And that's when
the world blew up. Inflation, the wars breaking out, all
of the conflicts, all of the denigration of our society
starting with George Floyd, and going through all of those riots,
everything that occurred. It seems like ancient history, but it's

(24:35):
so important. In reading these excerpts about the story and
thinking the book one hundred and seven days and then
thinking about the Biden administration, she had more than one
hundred and seven days. She had four years because at
any moment, particularly considering what we know now about his

(24:58):
mental and physical condition, he could have dropped off asleep
and never woken up. At any moment. She never did
anything to get prepared. She didn't do anything. She could
have taken on any number of issues and taken them
on as her portfolio in order to prepare to become

(25:19):
and run for president. But I think she's one. I
think she's stupid. I really do believe she's stupid. Second,
I think she's lazy. I don't think she really wanted
to do the work. She just wanted the title. Hey,
I'm the vice president. I can go talk to kids
about Oh, look up at the stars, look at this guy.
We put a man on the moon. Blah blah blah blah.
She's that kind of idiot, an airhead, if you will.

(25:42):
And then you combine that with the old fart who's
sleeping through most of the day, and so the world
goes to crap. We see that, and so what do
we do. We say, Okay, our choice is same old,
same o, except probably worse an airhead. And now we've

(26:04):
got Trump back again. And Trump's campaigning like the energizer bunny,
going into places that other candidates, other Republican candidates, would
have just written off, totally written off, but instead he
goes into the belly of the beast, and he ends
up winning those That's the backlash. That's why Democrats today

(26:27):
are without any sort of message. Go back to the
book for a moment, the hours when you read these excerpts,
the hours in that administration, based on her description and
the excerpts that I've read, if the hour feels late,

(26:49):
not just because of the looming election, decisions are being
made by these brokers, by these staffers in hidden rooms,
rooms that you know. The hero the wan to the hero.
Kamala Harris is seldom in by her own admission, a
cipher for her advisers, who feed her treats or Dorrido's

(27:13):
when she pleases them. Harris gains the nomination for the
presidency through a palace intrigue. After Biden's infirmity is finally exposed,
her first thought is that his advisors should have done
a better job at concealing it. And there's all the
van glorious talk from then Outspeaker Pelosi and others about

(27:33):
how Biden has no obligation to debate a convicted felon
like Donald Trump. That's kind of odd, isn't it. Is
it because he has no obligation to debate a convicted
fellain like Donald Trump? Or is it because they knew
that that would expose him, and by exposing him, that

(27:54):
would cause what ultimately did happen, his downfall and we
would end up with her. It's all a very strange,
surreal world that somehow manages to be both deeply cynical
deeply naive. And it's fitting that this vague and giggling figure,
this cackle woman, should be the final spokesman for that era.

(28:19):
By the middle of the Biden presidency, the world is
in decay, absolute decay, and many people and here's what
most people, I think have a hard time grasping. They
want the decay. That's the Cloward pivot strategy. Give us
the decay so that we can step in and save

(28:40):
the world. And what happened? Once again, just like in
twenty fifteen sixteen, Trump steps in and messes up the planet.

Speaker 1 (28:50):
Great video of RFK Junior and Cheryl Hines boarding a
flight over the weekend. And where are they sitting on
the plane? Oh economy. But remind me again who takes
private chets? Oh, that would be Bernie Sanders AOC and
Elizabeth Warren and those three are talling you to go

(29:11):
protest No King's Day. It is so hypocritical.

Speaker 2 (29:16):
It's so delightfully such delicious hypocrisy. News is just breaking
that China is now accusing the NSA of conducting cyber
attacks on China's National Time Service Center. That's a facility
that's critical to China's communications, their financial systems, and all

(29:41):
their defense infrastructure. According to the Chinese Ministry of State Security,
the NSA allegedly used forty two types of what they
describe as special cyber attack weapons to infiltrate the National
Time Services Center's internal networks between twenty twenty three and
t twenty four. The allegations released in the public statement

(30:04):
have not been backed by verifiable evidence. We've not issued
a response. That organization provides vital systems, including satellite navigation,
power grids, comms networks. China State Broadcaster warned that such
attacks could disrupt key national timing systems, compromise operations and substations,

(30:26):
blah blah blah, blahlah blah. Interesting that the timing of
their app accusations coincides with the large scale aullage at
Amazon web Services, the cloud computing division of Amazon. Amazon
Web Services, which began on this day sometimes overnight affected
their web services in the Eastern Region, disrupted Snapchat, Fortnite

(30:51):
signal Robinhood, Venmo and AWS confirmed the disruption was due
to increased error rates, latencies, and reported that the issue
it was fully result later in the day. They say
that China's claims have drawn international attention. The US is
repeatedly blamed Chinese state backed actors first cyber operations targeting

(31:14):
our infrastructure. In this past December, the Treasury Department confirmed
that hackers linked to China exploited a vulnerability through a
third party security vendor and gained access to unclassified Treasury workstations.
Same thing happened in May of twenty twenty four, the
Chinese infiltrated targeted water facilities. Of this year, Microsoft revealed

(31:38):
that Chinese hackers exploited a zero day vulnerability to breach
multiple organizations, including the National Nuclear Security Administration. So little
tit for tat going on, maybe, and maybe when we
did the tit for tat back from them attacking us,
maybe we overstepped. Maybe we kind of messed up.