News Vérité

After being announced in 2017 — with $50,000 deposits being accepted — the Tesla Roadster, with ambitions to lift off the ground and reach zero to 60mph in less than a second — is still nowhere near completion. Elon Musk and team, however, this week called a meeting to show off a prototype of the Roadster. The firm now claims the vehicle should be ready in 2028. The production date announced in 2017 was 2020. A little behind schedule, fellows. I don’t claim to understand all the details divulged about the Roadster in its McGregor, Texas, unfolding, but I know it is electric-powered and has wings. I’m not sure whether it can lift off the ground, but I’ve heard those rumors. The main point is, this vehicle seems to be taking a long time to come to fruition. SpaceX rockets seem to come into the next generation more quickly than the Tesla Roadster.

I’m old enough to have grown up during the Vietnam War when a song by Barry McGuire included the unforgettable lyric: “The Eastern world, it is explodin’, violence flarin’, bullets loadin’ / You’re old enough to kill, but not for votin’.” If you substitute Middle Eastern for Eastern, the lyric seems to apply as much today as it did in the 1960s. Ask the Saudis, whose airports are being shuttered and whose travelers are being killed by Iranian-backed Houthis and their missiles. Meanwhile, Trump claims that U.S. forces have opened the Strait of Hormuz to oil tanker transit, but Iran says otherwise. In fact, two cargo liners went down near the Strait yesterday. And, according to the head of the Islamic Republican Guard Corps (IRGC), Ali Ozmaei: “If the Americans think the Strait of Hormuz is open, let them come closer. We are impatient to sink American warships…. We are waiting for U.S. warships to approach the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz so we can sink them. We are counting down every moment until this happens.” The song lyric can stretch over to the Western World as well, as Ukraine and its energy resources continue to be hit by

Maybe because he wants to be one himself, but Donald Trump has this thing about dictators like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping  — they can do no wrong. The only thing he seems to want from either Putin or Xi is a U.S.-favorable trade deal. Chalk that up to Trump’s business background. The latest incident of Trump delusions about dictators came yesterday when he claimed that neither Russia nor China was aiding Iran in its conflict with the U.S. This despite reports of both countries aiding in electronic intelligence and even in supplying war needs for the Islamic Republic. In light of those media claims of assistance to Iran, Trump wrote on Truth Social: “I see so many comments from the Radical Left Morons and Lunatics that China and Russia are helping the ‘wonderful’ Islamic Republic of Iran…. If they are, it’s at a very low level, but I don’t believe they are at all. They have too much to lose, and we would know about it, and know about it very fast!” I guess Trump’s Secretary of Defense/War, Pete Hegseth, is also a moron and lunatic. In July, he testified before the Senate that both countries were “at different