Michael of 🇺🇦🌻Tesla, solar roofs & batteries

Retired, runs on Tesla renewables, invests in biotech and a clean future. Love reading history, drinking Whisky, and traveling. Union Now and Forever.

[Michael of 🇺🇦🌻Tesla, solar roofs & batteries @mwgjerde]

34 years ago today I met Susan driving up highway 5 in our separate BMWs. Now we travel the world together slightly differently.

[Michael of 🇺🇦🌻Tesla, solar roofs & batteries @mwgjerde]

This is a broader view!

[Jay L. Kerschner @jlkerschner]

@AlecStapp not this dumb thing again... here are the actual graphs through 2025

[Alec Stapp @AlecStapp]

https://t.co/8202LfvQkm

[Furkan Gözükara @FurkanGozukara]

🚨 BOMBSHELL! MS NOW confirms the FBI is actively terrorizing civil rights leaders.

Agents are showing up at homes without warrants, harassing volunteers in front of their children, and following them to work.

The Trump administration is running a fascist police state!

[Meanwhile in Ukraine @MeanwhileInUA]

Germany wants to produce Ukraine's Flamingo cruise missile on German soil. The reason: Trump cancelled the Tomahawks that were supposed to be there.

Diehl Defence - maker of IRIS-T - is in talks with Fire Point. Meetings planned in coming weeks. The German firm brings an upgraded guidance system. Ukraine brings the missile and the combat experience.

Fire Point produces 200 Flamingos a month at ~$500,000 each - a quarter of a Tomahawk's price.

Ukrainian weapons are filling the gaps American politics left behind.

[Nathan J Robinson @NathanJRobinson]

Instead of discussing how Elon Musk is now the world's first trillionaire, we should talk about how he killed hundreds of thousands of people through his dismantling of food and medical aid to poor countries
https://t.co/8kY171r5w1

[Ron Filipkowski @RonFilipkowski]

One year ago.

[Nicholas Drummond @nicholadrummond]

Sorry, but this needs to be said again and again, until it is fully understood and accepted:
🇷🇺 The Russian Army has been fought to a standstill in Ukraine - 1.4 million casualties with about 400K deaths. The sheer scale of human and equipment losses is staggering.
🇷🇺 It means Russia is not going to precipitate a second war anytime soon. However, the Russian economy has proved to be much stronger and more resilient than Western analysts expected. Military spending has sustained growth even if inflation is high and energy export income has fallen.
🇷🇺 It is entirely possible that a peace deal could be concluded within the next 12 months. Any such agreement will only be signed off by Putin if it gifts him a large chunk of Ukraine. This will allow him to declare victory and remain in power.
🇷🇺 When the conflict with Ukraine ends, Russia will not immediately revert to a non-wartime economy. Peace will give Putin a much needed breathing space which he will use to rearm and retrain his battered army. It is likely to take a decade before Russia regains any credible military strength while the economy recovers — and it is entirely possible that China will support Russia’s rearmament process. So we could see a Russian military resurgence within 5 years. This is the risk.
🇷🇺 Whatever happens, there is no inexorable path to war with Russia. But if we do nothing, if we refuse to bolster our defences when time is on our side, it’s the same as leaving the door unlocked — we will invite aggression, because Putin is strategically ambitious and opportunistic.
🇷🇺 A strong Europe, fully prepared, with potent and flexible capabilities, plus resilient and scalable economic production, would definitely deter aggression, just as NATO’s Cold War presence in Europe kept the peace for almost half a century.
🇬🇧 So,we have a straightforward binary choice: deter aggression through strength. Invite aggression through weakness. I do not want to send my children to fight a war that could have been be avoided. If you are a parent, I hope you will agree.

[Voices of WW2 @VoicesofWW2]

On June 12, 1944, every camera in the world was pointed at Normandy.

Which is exactly why almost nobody noticed the United States launching the operation that actually doomed Japan, on the other side of the planet, that same week.

Here is what the headlines missed.

While 9 divisions fought in the hedgerows of France, Task Force 58 was steaming toward the Mariana Islands: 15 aircraft carriers, over 900 aircraft, escorted by new fast battleships. It was the most powerful naval force ever assembled to that point, and the US had built it in under three years while also supplying the war in Europe.

On June 11 and 12, its planes hammered Saipan, Tinian, and Guam, destroying Japanese aircraft on the ground and in the air, and cutting the islands off from rescue.

Why these specific islands? One number explains everything: 1,500 miles.

That was the combat radius of the new B-29 Superfortress. From the Marianas, B-29s could reach Tokyo. Japan knew it. Their commanders called the islands the absolute national defense line, the wall that could not be allowed to fall.

So when US Marines hit the beaches of Saipan on June 15, just 9 days after D-Day, Japan did what the US Navy had been hoping for since Pearl Harbor. It sent its entire carrier fleet to fight.

The result, on June 19 and 20, was the Battle of the Philippine Sea, the largest carrier battle in human history. 24 carriers in one fight. It was so one-sided that American pilots named it the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot. Japan lost roughly 600 aircraft and 3 carriers in two days. American losses were a tiny fraction of that. Japanese naval aviation never recovered. It effectively died in those 48 hours.

The dominoes from this one week:

Saipan fell in July. The shock was so severe in Tokyo that Prime Minister Tojo's entire government resigned.

By November, B-29s from the Marianas were bombing Japan itself.

And in August 1945, a B-29 named Enola Gay took off from Tinian, one of the islands first hit in these June raids.

Think about that week in June 1944 again. The United States conducted history's largest amphibious invasion in France and simultaneously launched a second massive invasion 7,000 miles away in the Pacific, each one larger than anything any other nation could attempt alone.

D-Day gets the anniversaries. The Marianas got the verdict.

The war was decided in both oceans in the same seven days, and only one of them made the front page.

[Phillips P. OBrien @PhillipsPOBrien]

This might be hard for Americans to hear, but the USA getting humiliated by its abject failure as a power during this Iran War might be the best thing possible at this time. The country needs to understand there are consequences for electing a crook.

[VoteVets @votevets]

BREAKING: In a shocking maneuver, Senate Republicans just BLOCKED a Democratic effort to BAN federal troops from entering polling stations or seizing ballots or voting machines. Makes you wonder what they’re planning this November…

[MeidasTouch @MeidasTouch]

🚨EXCLUSIVE: A commercial airline pilot tells MeidasTouch they filed FAA and NASA safety reports after lighting from Trump’s UFC event at the White House allegedly flooded their cockpit on approach to Reagan National. The pilot called it “10 times worse than any laser illumination event” they’d ever experienced. https://t.co/L6taUKdgbG

[Michael of 🇺🇦🌻Tesla, solar roofs & batteries @mwgjerde]

God, Vance is an idiot!

[Praise @tufpraise]

Hitler killed himself and Germany surrendered. Japan got nuked. Do they teach history in Ohio?

[Neil Stone @DrNeilStone]

"Covid vaccines didn't work"

🤡🤡🤡

[Jon Favreau @jonfavs]

Elon Musk held up a chainsaw, fed USAID into the wood chipper, and at least 600,00 people have already died as a result - two-thirds of them children.

History's first trillionaire.

[Michael of 🇺🇦🌻Tesla, solar roofs & batteries @mwgjerde]

Shhh, don’t tell him Alaska is part of the USA! 🤣🤣🤣

[Suzie rizzio @Suzierizzo1]

Bye,Adios, Au Revior, Namaste,Sayonara,Adeus Hadet,Tot Ziens.Don’t let the door hit you in the rear on the way out.

[Michael of 🇺🇦🌻Tesla, solar roofs & batteries @mwgjerde]

In February 2022 a little thing called russias invasion of Ukraine hit the oil market hard. Biden didn’t do that either!

[Roman Sheremeta 🇺🇸🇺🇦 @rshereme]

When people still post memes like this, it tells me one thing: they have no ability to think critically. This is why education is so important, including at least a basic understanding of economics.

I was not a fan of Biden, but the price spike in 2022 was driven primarily by the post-pandemic economic recovery and Trump's OPEC deal in 2020. The spike in 2026 is being driven primarily by Trump's incompetence and his failed war against Iran.

Think, people, think! Don't just post idiotic memes. They do nothing for your credibility.

[Voices of WW2 @VoicesofWW2]

Everyone knows Dunkirk. 338,000 men rescued from the beaches, the "miracle" that saved Britain.

Almost nobody knows what happened 8 days later, 100 miles down the coast. This story was buried for years, and once you hear it you will understand why.

While Dunkirk was being evacuated, the 51st Highland Division was deliberately kept in France. Churchill wanted to prove to the French that Britain would not abandon them. So 10,000 Scotsmen kept fighting along the Somme while everyone else went home.

They fought well. Too well to retreat in time.

By June 10, Rommel's 7th Panzer Division, moving so fast the Germans called it the Ghost Division, had cut them off from every port. The Highlanders fell back to a tiny fishing town called Saint-Valery-en-Caux, with cliffs at their backs and the Royal Navy on the way.

A second Dunkirk. That was the plan. Operation Cycle, ships waiting offshore.

Then the fog rolled in.

The ships could not reach the beaches in the dark and mist. And by morning, Rommel had artillery on the cliffs above the town, firing down on anything that floated. Men climbed down cliff faces on ropes made of rifle slings trying to reach boats. Some fell. The rescue never came.

On June 12, 1940, Major General Victor Fortune surrendered the 51st Highland Division to Rommel. There is a famous photo of the two men standing together, Rommel grinning, Fortune staring into the distance like he is somewhere else.

10,000 men marched east into 5 years of captivity. In parts of the Highlands, nearly every family knew someone in the bag. They called it the lost division, and for decades many Scots quietly believed they had been sacrificed.

Two details worth knowing.

Fortune was offered better treatment as a general. He refused privileges and stayed with his men for the entire war, organizing care for the sick and keeping discipline in the camps. He was knighted from a hospital bed after liberation.

And in September 1944, the rebuilt 51st Highland Division was given one specific assignment, at the request of its commander. They liberated Saint-Valery-en-Caux. The pipers played in the same square where their brothers had surrendered four years earlier.

Dunkirk got the movie. These men got the long war.

Worth remembering them today.

[Michael T. Lester @MichaelTLester]

Trump is once again talking about Kharg Island and saying we can take it "at a time of our choosing."

He's not wrong. We can get troops on that island.

But he's not telling you what happens next.

Kharg Island is 16 miles off the Iranian coast. Iran has every square foot of it registered for artillery and rocket fire. They've spent the last three months laying anti-personnel mines on the beaches, pre-deploying shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, and moving IRGC troops into hardened positions. They know we might be coming.

Every one of our ships in our assault force is 47 seconds from an Iranian anti-ship cruise missile. Every Marine on that island is within rocket artillery range of a coastline that runs 1,500 miles. We can't suppress that effectively even if we used all of our forces

I flew CH-53E helicopters in Desert Storm, and I know what it means to put troops in a fixed position on a small island with no room to maneuver and no friendly territory within reach. The military term for that is a kill box. The political term is leverage. The human term is a body bag.

The analysts are being careful in how they are framing it. Ryan Brobst and Cameron McMillan of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which is about as hawkish as think tanks get, wrote in March that a seizure and occupation "is more likely to expand and extend the war than it is to deliver any sort of decisive victory." Former CENTCOM commander Joseph Votel said troops on the island would be "very vulnerable" and would require massive logistical backup. Malcolm Davis of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute put it more plainly: "I think the Iranians can probably sit back and attack Americans on Kharg Island, and casualties will mount up."

That's the politically correct version.

Here's what they're not saying out loud: Iran has FPV drones. The same camera-equipped drones being used by the millions in Ukraine. If our troops land on that island, Iranian drone footage of American casualties will be on every screen in the world within hours. Trump will own every frame of it.

Iraq bombed Kharg Island for four straight years during the Iran-Iraq War. From 1982 to 1986, but they never put a single soldier on it. They couldn't. The Iranians rebuilt and kept exporting oil. That's the historical record on what "taking Kharg" actually means.

And here's the part that makes even less sense: seizing the island doesn't open the Strait of Hormuz. Kharg is 300 miles from the strait. The Iranians mine the strait from their southern coastline. You'd have to suppress 1,500 miles of Iranian coast to fix that problem. Kharg is just a political symbol, not a solution.

We can bomb it into rubble. We've already struck over 90 targets there. Trump can destroy every oil facility on that island from the air, permanently. That's a real option with real consequences for Iran's economy and real consequences for global oil markets.

But putting Americans on the ground 16 miles from the Iranian coast, surrounded by water, within range of everything Iran has left?

That's not a strategic or tactical military operation. That's just a sacrifice of American lives.

Are you OK with that?

[Brown Eyed Susan @smc429]

👇

[RC deWinter @RCdeWinter]

OK, we need a joke. You might need to be a boomer to get it.

A Viking was out shopping when he saw an old woman in a wheelchair crying.

"What's wrong?" asked the Viking.

"Well," the woman said, wiping her tears, "I’ve been living on my own for many months now. Today my daughter at last came to visit me and took me on this shopping trip & it's the first time I've been out & about since losing the use of my legs but it’s so disheartening.”

"I'm very sorry to hear that," said the Viking. "But at least your daughter is here! That should help to dry your tears.”

"Yes," said the old woman, "but I really wanted to get something to surprise my daughter while she’s in a shop trying on clothes and with this wheelchair I can't get around like I used to. I was hoping to find an extra special cake or pie to celebrate their visit," she sobbed. "I can't even bake my classic egg and bacon tart anymore, and I know she always looks forward to that.”

“You're in luck then. That place over there is the finest bakery in the country!" said the Viking, pointing.

"So I hear," said the woman, "but the first floor is just breads and such. The fancy sweets and pies are all up on the second floor and I can't get up there with my chair."

The Viking thought for a moment and said, "Not a problem. I shall carry you!"

With that, he lifted her from her wheelchair, hoisted her onto his back and trudged into to the bakery.

After carrying her up the stairs and all about the display cases he helped her bring a selection of delicious treats to the counter. She even found her family favorite.

The Viking then carried the woman and her purchases back to her waiting chair below.

"I can't thank you enough! I'm so much happier now!" replied the old woman. "Who are you, kind sir?"

But the Viking simply smiled, waved and walked off without a reply.

As he turned the corner out of sight the woman's daughter appeared at the bakery entrance.

“There you are, Mom!" she exclaimed with relief. "I was worried sick when you weren't where I left you. What have you been doing in there?"

"Oh!” exclaimed the woman. "I've been through the desserts on a Norse with no name. It felt good to get our Quiche Lorraine.”

A Horse With No Name
America
https://t.co/P8lNpW0NwW