Len Penzo

@MikhailPLoucks @tchaller1 @WallStreetApes "Buy a USED car." FIFY. The 2021 Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act made this technology required for every new car sold in the US starting in 2027. What that has to do with infrastructure or jobs is a good question, but the statists in Congress thought this was a great idea.

Then you have a choice to make. Again, solutions: 1. Buy a different car 2. Turn it off, and lose features 3. Keep it on 4. Work to convince the manufacturer to change it. Life is about choices, and every choice has ramifications and trade-offs. Take responsibility for your choices.

Subaru has released a new “EyeSight system” on their new vehicles Drivers who bought the cars are saying if you glance off the road for a second to look at the mountains, or change a song, the vehicle starts alerting It will also stop the car by using its ‘Emergency Stop Assist with Safe Lane Selection’ if it feels the situation is an emergency If the system detects you’re unresponsive, it warns with sounds, steering wheel vibrations If no response, it can automatically brake, slow the car and steer to the shoulder This kind of technology is what a police state dreams about. If the government got control of this they would have total control Technology is going way too far and becoming way to intrusive

The time capsule videos on YouTube are interesting to watch. One takeaway is that the further back in time you go the more calm people were. Everyone moves slower, speaks more slowly and deliberately, and everyone is far more present and less distracted. youtu.be/98VTC_k-10M?si…

@alifarhat79 Only thing missing are the cockroaches feasting on the egg.

@_LukeCSkywalker @TFTC21 We?

@TFTC21 Eating meat is "morally wrong" but infecting people with something that will literally kill some of them is totally cool. Seriously, wtf. We've gone off the deep end.

A peer-reviewed paper published last year in the journal Bioethics by two professors at Western Michigan University School of Medicine argues that it is "morally obligatory" to genetically engineer ticks to spread alpha-gal syndrome, a permanent condition that makes you violently allergic to red meat. The paper is called "Beneficial Bloodsucking." Their argument: if eating meat is morally wrong, then preventing the spread of a disease that forces people to stop eating meat is also morally wrong. Scientists should gene-edit lone star ticks to enhance their ability to carry alpha-gal syndrome and expand their range into urban environments to infect more people. They call this a "moral bioenhancer." They frame releasing genetically modified disease-carrying ticks as a "vaccination" that only "infringes" on your bodily autonomy rather than "violating" it. The distinction, apparently, is that a tick bit you instead of a government official holding you down. Alpha-gal syndrome is not mild. The CDC estimates up to 450,000 Americans are already affected. Cases have surged 100-fold in the last decade. Symptoms include anaphylaxis. There is no cure. Alpha-gal cases are exploding across the United States. The lone star tick's range is expanding far beyond its historical territory. And two academics at a medical school published a paper arguing this is a good thing that should be accelerated. At what point do we stop treating papers like this as fringe academic exercises and start asking whether anyone is already acting on them?

4 of 5 young adults say the US economy is bad or terrible. Join us as we discuss this – and much, much more – in our always wild & wacky weekend financial round-up. Fortified with Squirrel Can (After Dark)! lenpenzo.com/blog/id90981-b…

@elutel @christaljudd @LangmanVince @XX_Mad__Max_XX So... what's your solution, Canadian man? One thing is certain: The PROVEN grifters who have been running the city (and my state) into the ground for 20+ yrs support the status quo. One thing is certain: TPTB and the loons who support them are running scared. Good enough for me!

@christaljudd @LangmanVince @XX_Mad__Max_XX Right, but someone like Spencer isn’t going to do anything about that. When are people gonna learn what a grifter is and the clear signs of it

Spencer Pratt released another AI banger! 👏 This guy could win this thing!

@BernieSanders 🤡

Amazon cut 30,000 jobs & got a $7.8 billion tax break Meta cut 8,000 jobs & got an $8 billion tax break PayPal cut 4,800 jobs & paid $0 in federal income taxes Disney cut 1,000 jobs & paid $0 in federal income taxes Corporate tax breaks don't create jobs. They enrich the 1%.

@TheLazyEU @DeItaone "A large part of the Iranian navy is just speedboats." Well... it is now. 🤣

@DeItaone That sounds like cope. Yes. They will take a long time for their larger vessels. But a large part of the Iranian navy is just speedboats. How long does he think replacing a speedboat is going to take?

IRAN WILL NOT RETURN TO PRE-WAR NAVY FOR A GENERATION, SENIOR U.S. ADMIRAL SAYS

@WolfgangRichtEU @EndWokeness "Public underfunding." 🤣 They're spending $25K per year per student. That's $625K/yr per 25-student classroom; teacher salary & overhead should be a fraction of that. How much more do you need? We'd be better off putting $25K/yr in each kid's retirement acct until they turn 18.

@EndWokeness Dear End Wokeness, Public underfunding of schools is horrible. Increase taxes to increase teacher and administrative wages. All the best, Wolfgang

@Degen_Bagholder @KobeissiLetter 🤣

@KobeissiLetter Who would have thought a war with Iran, oil soaring and hot inflation reports would have been the catalyst.

BREAKING: The S&P 500 extends its historic rally into record high territory, now up +18% since its March 30th bottom. That's +$10.2 TRILLION in market cap added in just 6 weeks.

Robert Reich forgot the 6th and most common way: 6) Build something millions of people actually want

@RBReich Somehow, you "forgot" to mention the most common way (by far). But that's not a surprise, considering your statist ideology. 🤡

There are basically 5 ways to accumulate a billion dollars: 1) Profiting from a monopoly 2) Insider-trading 3) Political payoffs 4) Fraud 5) Inheritance Don’t believe the self-made myth.

That's a 6% print. You ain't seen nothing yet. keep selling gold

@ChrisRMcGuire Oh, the irony. Coming from you, this is hilarious. 🤡

President Trump is bringing leading U.S. CEOs to China so they can work their magic, and help Make China Great Again.

@JoeTracey55827 @elonmusk It's been that way for almost two decades now.

@elonmusk Clearly the Oscars is more political than artistic now The socialists have corrupted so so much

True

@SalMarinello @DailyCaller @RoadMN Yes. Yes, it is. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

@DailyCaller @RoadMN Now it’s MAGA to not want your city to be a 💩hole? I guess it’s consistent with saying your candidate with a Nazi tattoo isn’t a Nazi, just a guy who went through tough times…

Spencer Pratt’s PRICELESS reaction when Nithya Raman dismisses him as a ‘MAGA Republican’

In 1967, Indira Gandhi appealed to Indians: “Don’t buy Gold.” The reason was that India’s foreign exchange position was under stress, imports were becoming difficult, and the currency system needed people to show “national discipline.” But what followed? One of the biggest Gold bull markets in history. From the late 1960s to 1980, Gold exploded higher globally, and in rupee terms the move was even more brutal. This is the real lesson: When governments tell citizens not to buy Gold, they are usually not worried about your jewellery. They are worried about pressure on the currency, pressure on reserves, and pressure on the financial system. Gold doesn’t become important when everything is normal. Gold becomes important when the system starts asking you not to buy it.

@EchoesOfHarambe @zerohedge 🤣

@zerohedge That's okay. Most of them maxed out their credit cards and left the country

Seriously delinquent credit card balances about to surpass financial crisis record

@1therhino @RnaudBertrand 🎯

@RnaudBertrand I think you forgot to mention the Atlantic is viscerally anti Trump. More then it’s pro globalist if that is possible. So there’s that

There’s no overstating how extraordinary this Atlantic article is, given the author and the outlet. As a reminder Bob Kagan is: - The co-founder of Project for the New American Century, probably the single most imperialist Think Tank in Washington (which is quite a feat) - A man who spent his entire life advocating for American military interventions, especially in the Middle East, and a vocal advocate of the Iraq war. He started advocating for intervention in Iraq before 9/11, which speaks for itself... - The husband of Victoria Nuland, an extremely hawkish former senior U.S. official (a key architect of U.S. policy in Ukraine, with the consequences we all witness today) - The brother of Frederick Kagan, one of the key architects of the Iraq surge In other words, we ain’t exactly looking at some sort of anti-imperialist peacenik. This is quite literally the guy Dick Cheney called when he needed a pep talk. And the man is writing in The Atlantic, the most reliably pro-war mainstream media outlet in the U.S. (also quite a feat). So when HE writes that the U.S. “suffered a total defeat” in Iran that has no precedent in U.S. history and can “neither be repaired nor ignored,” it’s the functional equivalent of Ronald McDonald telling you the burgers aren’t great: it means the burgers really, really aren't great. Extraordinarily (and somewhat worryingly, for me), his arguments for why this is such a defeat are virtually the same as those I laid out in my article “The First Multipolar War” last month (open.substack.com/pub/arnaudbert…). Here they are 👇 1) Vietnam/Afghanistan were survivable, this isn't He agrees that this war - and the U.S. defeat - is fundamentally different in nature from previous U.S. interventions. Where I wrote that the wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan didn’t change the equation much in terms of power dynamics (“in the grand scheme of things, the giant walked away with little more than a bruised ego”), Kagan writes that “the defeats in Vietnam and Afghanistan were costly but did not do lasting damage to America's overall position in the world.” And when I wrote that “it’s painfully obvious that the Iran war is of a qualitatively different nature” from these, he writes that “defeat in the present confrontation with Iran will be of an entirely different character.” Same point. 2) Iran will never relinquish Hormuz and uses it as selective leverage When I wrote that Iran has turned “freedom of navigation” on its head by establishing “a permission-based regime” through the Strait of Hormuz, Kagan arrives at the same conclusion: “Iran will be able not only to demand tolls for passage, but to limit transit to those nations with which it has good relations.” He also agrees that “Iran has no interest in returning to the status quo ante,” when I myself cited Iran’s parliament speaker Ghalibaf in my article, saying: “The Strait of Hormuz situation won’t return to its pre-war status.” Same point and virtually the same words. 3) Gulf states will have to accommodate Iran He agrees that most Gulf states will have no choice but to accommodate Iran, effectively making Iran into a, if not THE, dominant regional power. Kagan writes “the United States will have proved itself a paper tiger, forcing the Gulf and other Arab states to accommodate Iran.” On my end, I wrote that “the Gulf monarchies will eventually have to choose between two security propositions. One where they stay aligned with a distant superpower that [can’t protect them]. The other proposition being: make peace with the regional power that just proved it can hit [them] whenever it wants.” Which is not much of a choice… 4) Military impossibility to reopen Hormuz Kagan writes that “if the United States with its mighty Navy can't or won't open the strait, no coalition of forces with just a fraction of the Americans' capability will be able to, either.” On my end, in my article I cited Germany’s defense minister Boris Pistorius: “What does Trump expect a handful of European frigates to do that the powerful US Navy cannot?” The exact same argument. 5) Global chain reaction Kagan agrees that this is a global strategic failure that fundamentally changes the U.S.’s position in the world. As he puts it: “America's once-dominant position in the Gulf is just the first of many casualties… America's allies in East Asia and Europe must wonder about American staying power in the event of future conflicts.” You’ll have guessed it, I wrote essentially the same thing: “Think about what it says if you’re Saudi Arabia, quietly watching your American-built defenses fail to protect your own refineries. Or any European country now facing the worst energy shock since 1973, caused not by your enemy but by your ally, and realizing that said ‘ally,’ supposedly in charge of ‘protecting’ you, couldn’t even protect Israel’s most strategic sites - when it’s the country with which it’s joined at the hip. I’m not even speaking about China or Russia who are seeing their worldview being validated on almost every axis simultaneously.” 6) Weapons stocks depleted, credibility shattered Kagan: “just a few weeks of war with a second-rank power have reduced American weapons stocks to perilously low levels, with no quick remedy in sight.” Me: “America’s most advanced weapons systems are much more vulnerable than previously thought - not theoretically, but in actual combat.” Kagan: “America's allies… must wonder about American staying power in the event of future conflicts.” Me: “The U.S. security guarantee has been empirically falsified in real time.” ----------- So, yup, Bob Kagan and I agree on nearly everything. I need a shower 🤢 Reassuringly though, we still differ on a few fundamental aspects. First of all, arguably the most important one, the moral aspect. In typical neocon fashion, his article contains not a word about the human cost of this war - not the 165 schoolgirls, not the devastation inflicted on Iranians during 37 days of bombing, not the toll this war is taking on the entire world through its devastating economic consequences (the economic devastation on ordinary people worldwide is referenced only as a political problem for Trump). For him, this is purely a strategic chess problem, morality and people don’t figure in his mental map. For me, the moral bankruptcy of this war isn't separate from the strategic failure - it is the strategic failure. Much like Gaza can only be a failure because of its sheer abjectness. Secondly, there is not an instant of reflection in the article on how we got there. Which is unsurprising because he personally, alongside his wife, his brother, and every co-signatory of every PNAC letter, spent a generation pushing for exactly this kind of confrontation. The man spend 30 years advocating for military dominance in the Middle East and hostility towards Iran, thereby forging them as an adversary and facilitating this very war that he now says has “checkmated” America. I know introspection has never been the neocon forte but at some point you have to stop setting houses on fire and then writing op-eds about how surprising the smoke is. Last but not least, we differ on what should be done. This is the funniest part of Kagan’s article - showing that the man is decidedly beyond salvation. On one hand he calls this a “checkmate” by Iran, and a U.S. defeat that can “neither be repaired nor ignored,” yet an the other hand his solution for it is… surprise, surprise… a bigger war still! He writes that what’s to be done is “engage in a full-scale ground and naval war to remove the current Iranian regime, and then to occupy Iran until a new government can take hold.” The arsonist's solution to the fire is a bigger fire ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ For my end, this was the conclusion of my previous article: "There is almost a Greek tragedy quality to U.S. actions lately where every move taken to escape one’s fate becomes the mechanism that delivers it. The U.S. went to war to reassert dominance - and proved it could no longer dominate. It demanded allies send warships - and revealed it had no real allies. It waged forty years of maximum pressure to break Iran before this moment came - and instead forged the very adversary now capable of meeting it. It started the war in part to have additional leverage over China - and handed the world the spectacle of begging China for help. The prophecy was multipolarity. Every American action to prevent it reveals it instead." I wouldn’t change a word. The only thing that's changed since I wrote it is that even the arsonists now smell the smoke. Src for the Atlantic article: theatlantic.com/international/…