THE TYPICAL INCOME NO LONGER BUYS THE TYPICAL HOUSE: Americans need a six-figure salary to afford a typical home in nearly half of U.S. states. “A combination of high mortgage rates, rising home prices and low housing inventory over the last two years is pushing homeownership further out of reach for would-be homeowners, especially first-timers. To afford a median-priced home of $402,343, Americans need an annual income of $110,871, according to a new Bankrate analysis. That’s nearly a 50 percent increase in just the last four years.”
Author Archive: Stephen Green
April 2, 2024
THE NEW SPACE RACE: Russia has a plan to ‘restore’ its dominant position in the global launch market.
It has been a terrible decade for the Russian launch industry, which once led the world. The country’s long-running workhorse, the Proton rocket, ran into reliability issues and will soon be retired. Russia’s next-generation rocket, Angara, is fully expendable and still flying dummy payloads on test flights a decade after its debut. And the ever-reliable Soyuz vehicle lost access to lucrative Western markets after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Yet there has been a more fundamental, underlying disease pushing the once-vaunted Russian launch industry toward irrelevance. The country has largely relied on decades-old technology in a time of serious innovation within the launch industry. So what worked at the turn of the century to attract the launches of commercial satellites no longer does against the rising tide of competition from SpaceX, as well as other players in India and China.
Through the first quarter of this year, Russia has launched a total of five rockets, all variants of the Soyuz vehicle. SpaceX alone has launched 32 rockets. China, too, has launched nearly three times as many boosters as Russia.
However, Russia has a plan to reclaim the dominance it once held in the global launch industry. In a recent interview published on the Roscosmos website (a non-geo-blocked version is available here) the chief of the Russian space corporation, Yuri Borisov, outlined the strategy by which the country will do so.
The first step, Borisov said, is to develop a partially reusable replacement for the Soyuz rocket, called Amur-CNG. The country’s spaceflight enterprise is also working on “ultralight” boosters that will incorporate an element of reusability.
“I hope that by the 2028–2029 timeframe we will have a completely new fleet of space vehicles and will be able to restore our position in the global launch services market,” Borisov said in the interview
A completely new fleet within five years? Not gonna happen.
Plus: “This may all play well with a domestic audience in Russia, but let’s be real. Russia’s launch industry is a pariah in the West, and the country is likely a decade away from deploying a vehicle that might be competitive with the Falcon 9.”
SpaceX is less than a decade away — probably a lot less — from making the Falcon 9 obsolete.
RICHARD FERNANDEZ: The Ghost Problem. “Conquerors and Prophets are among the two most powerful forces in history. The principal difference between the two is the time scale of their message. “
April 1, 2024
FLASHBACK: When the AP Fell for an April Fool’s Joke.
THEY’LL NEED A REPUBLICAN CINC: 38 Chaplains Ask Supreme Court To Stop U.S. Military From Punishing Their Faith.
ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Who Will Vote for a Walking Corpse?
AND SHE’S THE ONE GETTING SUED: Property owner stunned after $500,000 house built on wrong lot: ‘Are you kidding me?’
DON’T GET COCKY: Here’s What Biden Doesn’t Want You to Know About His Fundraising Numbers. “Some of Biden’s fundraising advantage has been a mirage because he has been jointly fundraising with the DNC since he launched his campaign while Donald Trump only secured the Republican nomination this month. But, even if we ignore that, a deeper dive into Joe Biden’s fundraising numbers points to big trouble for his campaign.”
POINT MADE:
Iranian colonial proxy in Gaza butchered over a thousand, forcing Israelis to flee south, where another Iranian colonial proxy just fired at them–while a third Iranian colonial proxy in the north forced the evacuation southward of over 60,000 Israelis. Time to make a point. https://t.co/rurDFfP41f
— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) April 1, 2024
IT ISN’T THAT THE MEDIA IS BIASED, IT’S THAT THEY’RE SO LAZY, STUPID, AND OBVIOUS ABOUT IT: NBC News Brings Out the Big Guns Against Florida, Shoots Self in Foot.
SANCTUARY, YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG: Denver warns new migrants to leave sanctuary city and move elsewhere.
A Denver city official begged migrant families to move on to other sanctuary cities like New York and Chicago, warning them that a lack of resources in Colorado would cause them to ‘suffer.’
In a clip first obtained by 9NEWS, Communications Liaison Andres Carrera urges a group of recent arrivals inside a migrant shelter to look for support in other places.
‘The opportunities are over,’ Carrera says in Spanish. ‘New York gives you more. Chicago gives you more. So I suggest you go there where there is longer-term shelter. There are also more job opportunities there.’
I’m reminded of Winston Smith in Room 101, begging O’Brien to “Do it to Julia!”
RABBI MICHAEL BARCLAY:Why a Rabbi Wants Biden to Stop Taking Jesus Out of Easter.
DEPRECIATION: Oh, Cool, Our $69K Fisker Ocean Is Only Worth $21K Now.
We bought a 2023 Fisker Ocean Extreme for our long-term test fleet in January — as in, two months ago. At the time, we paid $69,012 for a pretty loaded example of Fisker’s electric SUV, with the promise of over-the-air enhancements to come.
But following a brunt of bad news for Fisker, Inc. this week — including rumors of bankruptcy and a mega price drop on 2023 model-year Oceans in an effort to boost cash flow — we thought it wise to have our Ocean appraised at our local CarMax store. (Full discolsure: Edmunds is a division of CarMax.) The appraisal we received was shocking, to say the least.
Yep, you read that correctly: Our 2-month-old Fisker Ocean with 4,220 miles on the odometer is worth $21,000, according to CarMax. That’s a depreciation of 69.6%.
For context, experts say most new vehicles depreciate an average of 20% in their first year of ownership, with subsequent 15% decreases in the years after. On that timeline, we’ve experienced more than five years’ worth of depreciation in just two months. Two months.
Ouch.
SOD OFF, FED: FBI Agent Says He Hassles People ‘Every Day, All Day Long’ Over Facebook Posts.
The FBI spends “every day, all day long” interrogating people over their Facebook posts. At least, that’s what agents told Stillwater, Oklahoma, resident Rolla Abdeljawad when they showed up at her house to ask her about her social media activity.
Three FBI agents came to Abdeljawad’s house and said that they had been given “screenshots” of her posts by Facebook. Her lawyer Hassan Shibly posted a video of the incident online on Wednesday.
Abdeljawad told agents that she didn’t want to talk and asked them to show their badges on camera, which the agents refused to do. She wrote on Facebook that she later confirmed with local police that the FBI agents really were FBI agents.
“Facebook gave us a couple of screenshots of your account,” one agent in a gray shirt said in the video.
“So we no longer live in a free country and we can’t say what we want?” replied Abdeljawad.
“No, we totally do. That’s why we’re not here to arrest you or anything,” a second agent in a red shirt added. “We do this every day, all day long. It’s just an effort to keep everybody safe and make sure nobody has any ill will.”
Read the whole thing.
I DON’T KNOW, I CAN IMAGINE QUITE A BIT: ‘Equity-Based Algebra’ Is as Bad as You Imagine It to Be.
WEIRD, BECAUSE THEY TOLD ME INFLATION WAS TRANSITORY, A HIGH-CLASS PROBLEM, AND OVER ALREADY: Inflation Victory Is Proving Elusive, Challenging Central Banks and Markets.
The decline in inflation from highs of around 9% to 10% across advanced economies in 2022 represent the easy gains, as supply-chain blockages eased and commodity prices, especially for energy, normalized.
The “last mile” is proving tougher. Underlying inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, slowed to 3% in the second half of last year across advanced economies but has since moved up to 3.5%, according to JP Morgan estimates.
That is forcing investors to rethink bets that inflation would steadily decline to central banks’ targets, generally around 2%. There are even concerns it could surge again, mirroring the second wave that characterized the high inflation of the 1970s.
Economists’ and central banks’ forecasts of sustained falling inflation depend on “strong gravitational forces that are not yet validated in global labor costs, short-term expectations, or in recent signals from commodity markets,” JP Morgan wrote in a note. Services inflation remains elevated while goods prices, which had fallen last year, are now moving higher, it noted.
Central bankers say they expected the last mile of falling inflation to be bumpy. Yet they are also signaling their willingness to wait before cutting interest rates.
What Washington really need to do is cut spending and borrowing but don’t hold your breath.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Fake Catholic Joe Biden Tried to Cancel Easter, but Jesus Won. “Easter is the holiest day of the year for Christians, and Biden choosing to wax on about a lunatic leftist agenda ‘holiday’ instead is disgusting. That he chose Good Friday to do it shows that he isn’t really Catholic at all and that he doesn’t have any real people of faith in his inner circle. That was beyond tone-deaf. It was a display of contempt for Christians.”
UNEXPECTEDLY: Female Inmate Sexually Assaulted By Violent Trans-Identified Male At Washington Women’s Prison.
Speaking to Reduxx, a source within WCCW has said that the Department of Corrections (DOC) is largely in denial about the issues surrounding trans-identified male inmates being housed with women.
“They present it as a historic and successful arrangement. They did a trial run on some new bras they want to make available to order and they picked as many trans inmates as women. They have hired a ton of expensive staff to help the trans population and created a special orientation packet for them,” he says.
“They hint that there have been ‘some challenges’ but mostly present this as a success. Staff and inmates are in agreement that it’s a horrible thing.”
The source has previously informed Reduxx that there are currently almost one dozen male inmates at the facility. Of the 11 names provided for review, 9 were convicted of crimes against women or children. The source states that this reveals the extent of the problem.
“These incidents further show the women at WCCW that they don’t matter, and that their safety isn’t as important as making the trans inmates happy,” he says. “DOC is clearly running scared of groups like Disability Rights Washington that are always threatening a lawsuit. Meanwhile the trans inmates are playing DOC for fools.”
Well, they are.
CRISIS BY DESIGN: El Paso judge orders release of migrants accused of ‘border riot.’
Presiding Magistrate Judge Humberto Acosta made his ruling on Sunday, March 31, during an online teleconference bond hearing where he accused the El Paso District Attorney’s Office of not being ready to proceed with detention hearings for each defendant. Another hearing for more defendants is expected Monday.
“It is the ruling of the court is that all the rioting participation cases will be released on their own recognizance,” Acosta ordered.
The arrests were made by the Texas Department of Public Safety in connection with a March 21 stampede of asylum-seeking migrants — mostly men from Venezuela — who torn down razor wire along the Rio Grande and rushed the border fence at Border Safety Initiative Marker No. 36 in the Riverside area of El Paso’s Lower Valley.
Some migrants face charges of assault of a public servant for knocking down National Guard troops before order was regained. The migrants had sought to surrender themselves to U.S. Border Patrol in bids for asylum.
That’s a helluva way to ask for asylum.
Plus this: “Court officials noted that undocumented migrants will stay jailed if there is a federal immigration hold blocking their release.”
That was a joke, right?
March 29, 2024
FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: The Naked Truth About the Naked Arsonist. “It’s time for your much-needed break from the serious news and this week we have the arsonist who really couldn’t help herself, our first stolen ambulance story for 2024, and the zombie apocalypse comes to California because of course that’s where it starts.”
NOT TO BE TOO PARANOID BUT I’VE BEEN HAVING THOUGHTS ALONG THIS SAME LINE: October Surprise In March/April? Is the invisible hand of the Dark Powers working to install a Democrat House Majority before the November election?