STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC

because none of this is as easy as it looks.

and moms gave up a lot

and passed many rigorous selection processes

to get to the point where they could protect you

“no paw-parrazi”

It’s time for the knockout punches. From Andrew Korybko at korybko.substack.com:

The five objectives that are enumerated in this piece encapsulate what Russia nowadays aims to achieve after over two years of intense proxy warfare with NATO.

Zelensky claimed on Friday that Russia’s long-awaited offensive had finally begun following its fresh push into Kharkov Region from which it tactically pulled back in September 2022. This precedes him likely clinging to power on legally dubious pretexts once his term expires on 21 May and aligns with the Ukrainian Intelligence Committee’s prediction of political-military troubles heading into his summer. Here are the five objectives that Russia arguably aims to achieve in view of the conflict’s larger context:

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1. Create The Conditions For Russia To Control The Entirety Of Its New Regions

Russia’s increasingly frequent gains in Donbass over the past month speak to how serious Ukraine’s conscription and logistical crises have become, thus enabling Moscow to push them to the breaking point by opening up a new front at this precise moment in time. This is meant to facilitate a military breakthrough for expelling Ukrainian forces from the entirety of Russia’s new regions, with any collapse of the front lines consequently paving the way for achieving additional military-political goals.

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Pay attention or get your ass kicked. From Tarik Cyril Amar at swentr.site:

The latest scuffle over provocations which tested Moscow’s red lines shows that simply brushing off the Kremlin won’t work anymore

©  Sputnik / Sergey Guneyev

We have been through an intense, if muffled crisis in the ongoing political-military confrontation between Russia and the West by way of Ukraine. The essence of this crisis is simple: Kiev and its Western supporters have lost the initiative in the Ukraine proxy war and may be on the verge of defeat, as high Western officials increasingly admit.

In response to this self-inflicted quandary, several important Western players have threatened further escalation. Most prominently, Great Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Cameron publicly encouraged Kiev to use British Storm Shadow missiles to strike inside Russia. French President Emmanuel Macron continued to threaten a direct – not covert, as at present – intervention by French, that is, NATO, troops (In addition, an intriguing and much-discussed article reported that a deployment of 1,500 troops from France’s Foreign Legion had already begun. While its sources were hard to assess, its claims appeared too plausible for easy dismissal.)

Moscow, in return, issued a set of stark warnings, laying down – or highlighting – red lines. It announced drills with tactical nuclear weapons. Belarus did the same; in Minsk’s case, the weapons in question are, of course, also Russian. In addition, the British and French ambassadors received extremely straight talk about the risks their respective governments were running.

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It doesn’t matter what happens in Gaza. Israel and the Jewish lobby have many members of the Congress by the short hairs and they’ll do as they’re told. From Patrick Lawrence at unz.com:

“Not in my lifetime,” I used to think when contemplating America’s decline and fall—a decline and fall I eagerly anticipate as a prelude to remaking our crumbly republic such that it stands for the ideals it professes to uphold but unreservedly ignores. Blind justice, disinterested leaders and institutions, tolerance of others, freedom of thought and speech, a Jeffersonian respect for reason and knowledge: Those who come after me will see the imperium’s collapse and will begin the work of restoration, but not I.

So I long assumed. And so does the pace of events suggest I may well be wrong. Things I used to think would take, maybe, 20 years now occur in five or six or seven. If I reckoned some turn of history’s wheel was a decade out, what do you know but that it now seems hard upon us.

Decline and fall. It is not pleasant to live in such a time as ours, but it is, as the Chinese are credited with saying (or was it the Arabs?) interesting. Let us not, as we accept our fate, lose sight of the optimism within the apparent pessimism.

On May 2 the House passed a bill that, broadly speaking, defines as “antisemitic” any criticism of Israel, or—heaven forbid!—disapproval of Israel as a “Jewish state.” The kookier House members have been trying to get this rationally disconnected piece of legislation to the floor for eight years. The House now sends the Antisemitism Awareness Act to the Senate on a 320–to–19 vote.

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With the money its losing on EVs, Ford could fund a fair number of promising startups. From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:

Ford just announced it is “cutting back” on battery orders for its battery powered devices – i.e., its electric vehicles – because it is costing Ford $100,000 to “sell” each device it makes.

Cutting back?

How about cutting bait?

Ordinarily, that’s what Ford – that’s what any car company – would have done already. It is why Ford stopped trying to sell Edsels, which did actually sell. Just not very well. Ford stopped making Edsels because it wasn’t selling enough of them to make it worth making more of them. Similarly, GM isn’t making Pontiac Azteks – or Pontiacs – anymore, either.

But never before has it cost this much to “sell” a vehicle.

A 2024 Ford F-150 Lightning lists for $54,995 (to make it sound better than $55,000). If Ford loses $100k on each “sale” of this device after recovering the $55k someone paid to buy the device then the true cost of making this device is in the range – so to speak – of $155,000.

Put another way, to make a modest 3 percent profit on this device, Ford would have to price it closer to $160,000 – and that is something more than merely a money-flush. It is what detectives call a clue as to what this is ultimately all about. That being to price almost everyone who cannot afford to spend six figures on a device out of driving.

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Some American universities have supposedly become the second coming of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. The screams of antisemitism are meant to divert attention from Gaza, whose inhabitants are undergoing deprivation and misery orders of magnitude greater than anyone is on American campuses. From Caitlin Johnstone at caitlinjohnstone.com:

“It’s like responding to warnings of another holocaust by babbling about Sauron.”

One of the most frustrating things happening in the world right now is the way people of conscience are doing everything they can to bring a stop to Israel’s US-backed atrocities in Gaza, and Israel supporters are responding to this by pointing at an epidemic of “antisemitism” which has no existence outside their own imaginations — but we’re all expected to pretend it’s real and worthy of respect.

TV’s “Dr Phil” McGraw flew to Jerusalem to give war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu an hour-long platform on which to justify his genocidal violence in Gaza to an American audience, shamelessly assisting the Israeli prime minister’s apologia with common hasbara talking points of his own.

The duo spent lot of time smearing anti-genocide protesters at US universities as evil Jew haters. At one point Netanyahu went so far as to advance the ridiculous suggestion that this sudden wave of support for Palestinians has nothing to do with Israel’s actions in Gaza at all, but is solely due to a massive “explosion” in antisemitism which just so happens to coincide with those actions.

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Weaponized medicine insists dogma and propaganda are science. From Paul Rosenberg at freemansperspective.com:

Whether or not we can express it clearly, or even perceive it clearly, I think nearly every adult grasps that medicine is now being used as a weapon. 

I am not a doctor, but I’ve been surrounded by medical professionals since my youth, beginning with my mom, who was not only an RN, but Head Nurse at two different hospitals. I’ve also been involved with science for a long time.

I’ll be brief, making just five primary points. But we’ve been losing science and we’ve been losing medicine; that is flatly unacceptable.

#1: Science is not consensus. Ten, one hundred, or a million people, all draped in lab coats and saying the same thing, does NOT make it so. In fact, it matters not at all. It’s nothing but theater, and it’s anti-science.

All science is, really, is a process of testing ideas; it is not an organization, it is not based upon authority (it’s inherently anti-authority), and it is very certainly not allied with power. All that matters in science are verifiable results.

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As always, government has been a wise steward of the money its stolen. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

When people gripe about paying taxes and the government being a poor the absolute worst possible capital allocator, this is what they are talking about: $7.5 billion in investments for electric vehicles has – in two years – produced just 7 charging stations across four states. 

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, signed by Biden in November 2021, allocated $7.5 billion for EV charging, the Washington Post writes. Of this amount, $5 billion went to states as “formula funding” for the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program to establish a network of fast chargers along major highways.

Today, there’s seven chargers with a total of just 38 parking spots. And, come on: when the Post is calling it out, you know the results have been horrible. 

The Post added that with the Biden administration’s new emissions rules requiring more electric and hybrid vehicles, the slow pace of charging infrastructure development could hinder the transition to electric cars. Twelve additional states have awarded contracts for charging station construction, while 17 states have yet to issue proposals.

Alexander Laska, deputy director for transportation and innovation at the center-left think tank Third Way, told The Post: “I think a lot of people who are watching this are getting concerned about the timeline.”

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