SpaceX saw its Starship system explode on Tuesday in a test flight, the third consecutive setback for Elon Musk’s rocket maker.
There's a far less biased presentation here:
Wednesday, May 28, 2025
The lead actor in the sequel to the Grace Commission didn't realize it was just a show
... “I was, like, disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly,
which increases the budget deficit, not just decrease it, and
undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk said in a clip the program shared on social media platform X. ... “I think a bill can be big or it could be beautiful, but I don’t know if it could be both,” Musk said in the clip. ...
In an interview with The Washington Post published Tuesday, Musk said that the federal bureaucracy is “much worse than I realized” and that DOGE became “the whipping boy for everything.”
Tuesday, May 27, 2025
At 65.6% in 2024, the homeownership rate in the United States matches the 1980 rate, which was an historical high water mark not exceeded until 1997
For all the justified complaining about not being able to afford a home, the homeownership rate in 2024 is historically pretty good, one of just twenty years since 1963 at the level of 65.6% or higher. 66% of the time the homeownership rate has been lower than it was in 2024.
In 2023 housing affordability in the United States bounced off the 2022 low but is still 9.15 points off the more affordable levels of the 1980s
The median income in 2022 bought just 17.22% of the median house, the all-time low in the most up-to-date data.
In 2023 that rose to 18.89%.
Peak affordability in the data was in 1984 at 28.04%.
The decline of worker hours in America
In 1966 all the hours worked by all the full time and part time workers divided by the civilian employment level peaked at about 35.35 hours per worker per week. That's full time level work. That's prosperity.
The flood of Baby Boomers, especially Baby Boomer women under the influence of feminism and the social revolution of the 1960s, and also foreign born workers after the Immigration Act of 1965, into the labor markets after the mid-1960s reduced hours per week per worker by almost 11%, not forming a new stable bottom until the 1980s at about 31.5 hours per week.
Increased labor supply = fewer hours to go around = less prosperity.
By 1999, when peak Baby Boom had passed 40 years of age, hours per week had risen as high as 32.68 per worker per week. That was the end result of the good times kick-started by Ronald Reagan twenty years prior, which hit in four waves: 1984-85, 1989, 1995, and 1999.
But the whole subsequent period 2003-2019 inclusive fell apart.
Many, many troubles reduced hours worked per worker by almost 7% between 1999 and 2009, not the least of which were admission of China to the World Trade Organization in 2001, and the Great Recession.
Hours per week per worker have risen again as of 2022, but only to the old bottom, at around 31.57 per week.
Median real earnings per week are up just $38 since 1979.
Will that be As Good As It Gets?
Monday, May 26, 2025
Putin pummels Kyiv for a third consecutive record night, makes a fool of Trump and his naive peace overtures and Friedrich Merz's promise of cruise missiles if elected in Germany
The West is supine before a third world dictator equipped with gas stations and nuclear weapons.
... The Russian bombardment on Sunday night included 355 drones, Yuriy Ihnat, head of the Ukrainian air force’s communications department, told The Associated Press.
The previous night, Russia fired 298 drones and 69 missiles of various types at Ukraine in what Ukrainians said was the largest combined aerial assault during the conflict. From Friday to Sunday, Russia launched around 900 drones at Ukraine, officials said. ...
Russia has this month broken its record for aerial bombardments of Ukraine three times. ...
Sunday, May 25, 2025
Canes mortui sunt
Russia hits Ukraine with the largest drone-and-missile attack of the war so far, killing at least 12
... The scale of the onslaught was stunning — Russia hit Ukraine with 367
drones and missiles, making this the largest single aerial attack of
the more than three-years-long war, according to Yuriy Ihnat, a
spokesperson for Ukraine’s Air Force.
In all, Russia used 69 missiles of various types and 298 drones, including Iranian-designed Shahed drones, he told The Associated Press. ...
Ivan Fedorenko, 80, said he regrets letting their two dogs into the house after the air raid siren went off. “They burned to death,” he said. “I want to bury them, but I’m not allowed yet.” ...
Nearly 50,000 Americans died of COVID-19 in 2023 according to the CDC, and ABC News thinks 300 a week is a headline in 2025
Why are more than 300 people in the US still dying from COVID every week?
The 350 a week rate from April is the equivalent of 18,200 annually.
Slow news day.
Wastewater analysis shows infection levels near their all-time lows.
Saturday, May 24, 2025
The Trump Energy Department's Chris Wright saves 1,450 megawatts of electric generating capacity by stopping closure of Michigan coal plant operated by Consumers Energy
... The plant was originally set to close on May 31, which would have been 15 years before its lifespan was scheduled to end.
More.
The green lunatic running the Michigan Public Service Commission is furious. Common sense people from the area are no doubt relieved.
Friday, May 23, 2025
If ivermectin ever made a difference to COVID-19 outcomes in Africa, it sure didn't in Latin and South America
Wide distribution of ivermectin in Africa to combat river blindness does not appear to have had anything to do whatsoever with low death rates from COVID-19 in places like Angola (62 deaths per million of population), Kenya (120), and Nigeria (16).
It turns out that ivermectin was widely distributed in eight Latin and South American countries from June, August, and December 2020, but all of them had steeply higher death rates from the disease:
Peru 6,945
Brazil 3,396
Mexico 2,654
Panama 2,089
Bolivia 1,974
Guatemala 1,222
Honduras 1,165
El Salvador 652.
Exposure to fresh air and full spectrum sunlight with its infrared and ultraviolet radiation has been shown to speed recovery from the disease:
Secular real return from stocks since investing at the August 2000 high compared with investing at the September 1929 high, twenty-four years out
August 2000-August 2024 and September 1929-September 1953 both fall far short of 8.74% per annum real return September 1953-August 2000.
Real per annum return from January 1871-September 1929 was 8.34%.
The complaisance is amazing, we are the French
Yes mon ami, there are Muslim-controlled no-go zones in gay Paris, but what can we do? 🤷
Thursday, May 22, 2025
Paper tiger Donald Trump March 2018: I will never sign another bill like this again
He's signed them ever since lol. Nothing's changed.
Trump signs $1.3 trillion spending bill into law despite being ‘unhappy’ about it
... Trump slammed the rushed process to pass the more than 2,200-page bill released only Wednesday. Standing near the pile of documents, the president said he was “disappointed” in the legislation and would “never sign another bill like this again.” ...
House GOP votes for tax breaks for rich Democrats from Blue states like New York, New Jersey, and California lol
... Enacted via the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, or TCJA, of 2017, there’s currently a $10,000 limit
on the SALT deduction, and raising that cap has been a priority for
certain House lawmakers in high-tax states like New York, New Jersey and
California. Filers must itemize deductions to claim the tax break for
SALT.
If the House provision is enacted, the SALT cap would rise to $40,000, up from $30,000 in the previous plan, and phases out over $500,000, according to revised language released by the House Rules Committee. The provision would go into effect in 2025. ...
“Any changes to lift the cap would primarily benefit higher earners,” Garrett Watson, director of policy analysis at the Tax Foundation, wrote in an analysis on Tuesday.
With an income phaseout over $400,000, the top 20% of taxpayers “would be the only group to meaningfully benefit,” Watson wrote. ...
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