Value of $3.08 from 1946 to 2024
$3.08 in 1946 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $49.62 today, an increase of $46.54 over 78 years. The dollar had an average inflation rate of 3.63% per year between 1946 and today, producing a cumulative price increase of 1,511.15%.

This means that today's prices are 16.11 times as high as average prices since 1946, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer price index. A dollar today only buys 6.207% of what it could buy back then.

The inflation rate in 1946 was 8.33%.

Kamala Harris has failed her way upward farther than any other 59-year-old woman, with the help of a few male politicians she smarmed. She is attractive to many and non-threatening.

At heart, however, Harris is a radical leftist who’s left no detectable trail of actual accomplishments anywhere – except getting elected in predictably Democrat California.

She’s shown no signs of even mediocre management skills; more than 90 percent of her staff has quit since 2021.

Her 2020 primary bid cratered before a single vote was cast. She reportedly does little to no homework for public appearances. It shows. She looks unserious.

Harris’ judgment is seriously suspect for a wannabe leader of the free world. When the prime minister of Israel, America’s main Mideast ally confronting Iran, visited the White House last week, Harris chose instead to speak to a sorority convention in Indiana. //

Harris’ speaking style comes from the Prof. Irwin Corey School of Rhetoric. Her remarks are replete with impressive words assembled in nonsense order, pauses as if she’s crafting deep thoughts, big hand gestures to distract from empty words, and a laugh that resembles something else.

She also often relies on condescension. (That means talking down to people like this.) //

Trump has called Harris “a lunatic,” which she isn’t. He needs to leave the cheesy attack stuff to JD Vance and outline his own recharged vision for the country’s future, which conveniently would enhance his presidential stature to swing voters.

And be careful in his public remarks. There is a double standard in U.S. politics that is not fair but very real. While women have long encountered a glass ceiling in politics, they also need to appear respected in confrontations with men, even if it's undeserved.

Bullying is counter-productive, and condescension can be lethal. //

Even after four years of covering for a failing man who kept calling her the president, what Harris has going for her is a fresh face, her age (59), and not being Donald Trump.

Harris even handed the worrisome age issue back to Republicans. Trump would be 82 at his term’s end, older than Biden now.

Trump revulsion remains strong among millions. It was key to Biden’s win four years ago. With a flailing Biden atop the 2024 ticket, Democrats likely gave up hope of finally terminating Trump’s presence inside their heads. Many would have thrown away their vote on a third party or stayed home on Election Day, which would cripple down-ticket Democrats.

Not anymore. No one should disregard or underestimate the power of that energizing factor. It could fade. Or endure. //

What ought to concern GOP strategists is that right now, even after the messy coup and before the anticipated big bounce, Harris is surprisingly close to Trump, perhaps ahead.

Use of arsenic sulfides for yellow, orange/red hues adds to artist's known pigment palette. //

Since 2019, researchers have been analyzing the chemical composition of the materials used to create Rembrandt's masterpiece, The Night Watch, as part of the Rijksmuseum's ongoing Operation Night Watch, devoted to its long-term preservation. Chemists at the Rijksmuseum and the University of Amsterdam have now detected unusual arsenic-based yellow and orange/red pigments used to paint the duff coat of one of the central figures in the painting, according to a recent paper in the journal Heritage Science. It's a new addition to Rembrandt's known pigment palette that further adds to our growing body of knowledge about the materials he used.

As previously reported, past analyses of Rembrandt's paintings identified many pigments the Dutch master used in his work, including lead white, multiple ochres, bone black, vermilion, madder lake, azurite, ultramarine, yellow lake, and lead-tin yellow, among others. The artist rarely used pure blue or green pigments, with Belshazzar's Feast being a notable exception. (The Rembrandt Database is the best resource for a comprehensive chronicling of the many different investigative reports.)

When running in kernel mode rather than user mode, security software has full access to a system's hardware and software, which makes it more powerful and flexible; this also means that a bad update like CrowdStrike's can cause a lot more problems.

Recent versions of macOS have deprecated third-party kernel extensions for exactly this reason, one explanation for why Macs weren't taken down by the CrowdStrike update. But past efforts by Microsoft to lock third-party security companies out of the Windows kernel—most recently in the Windows Vista era—have been met with pushback from European Commission regulators. That level of skepticism is warranted, given Microsoft's past (and continuing) record of using Windows' market position to push its own products and services. Any present-day attempt to restrict third-party vendors' access to the Windows kernel would be likely to draw similar scrutiny. //

For context, analytics company Parametrix Insurance estimated the cost of the outage to Fortune 500 companies somewhere in the realm of $5.4 billion.

Jason Foster
@JsnFostr
True,
@ChuckGrassley
is not intimidated by anyone.

Trust me. The
@FBI
has tried and is better at it than the
@SecretService
.

TL;DR Summary of one example — https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2014/f140331.pdf —

FBI: Senator, just want you to know that we know you are linked to a bad guy we’re investigating. Just a heads up.

Grassley: No I’m not, and what possible legit reason would you have to tell me that? Are you trying to intimidate me?

Inspector General: Hey FBI, Grassley’s right. That was totally not legit.

FBI: Y’all can go jump in a lake. We ain’t gonna discipline anyone. But we’ll talk internally and try not to be so stupid next time.
Susan Crabtree
Quote
Susan Crabtree
@susancrabtree
·
Jul 23
😂‼️NOW THIS IS GOOD. Apparently, @ChuckGrassley is not intimidated by the social media post circulating within the Secret Service community (both CURRENT and former agents and employees) that I posted about earlier and have attached below essentially telling @SpeakerJohnson and x.com/susancrabtree/…
Show more
9:50 PM · Jul 23, 2024

Cannon ruled Smith’s appointment violates the Appointments Clause and granted the motion to dismiss the indictment against Trump. //

Judge Aileen Cannon on Monday threw out the lawfare prosecution against former President Donald Trump for allegedly mishandling classified documents after finding the Biden administration unconstitutionally appointed Special Counsel Jack Smith. //

“None of the statutes cited as legal authority for the appointment … gives the Attorney General broad inferior-officer appointing power or bestows upon him the right to appoint a federal officer with the kind of prosecutorial power wielded by Special Counsel Smith,” the ruling states.

Cannon ruled Congress is granted via the Constitution a “role in determining the propriety of vesting appointment power for inferior officers.”

“The Special Counsel’s position effectively usurps that important legislative authority, transferring it to a Head of Department, and in the process threatening the structural liberty inherent in the separation of powers,” Cannon ruled. “If the political branches wish to grant the Attorney General power to appoint Special Counsel Smith to investigate and prosecute this action with the full powers of a United States Attorney, there is a valid means by which to do so.” //

“If there is no law establishing the office that the Special Counsel occupies, then he cannot proceed with this prosecution. A private citizen cannot criminally prosecute anyone, let alone a former President,” Thomas opined.

P219B Bank 2 Air/Fuel Ratio Imbalance

OBD II fault code P219B is a generic trouble code that is often defined as, “Bank 2 Air/Fuel Ratio Imbalance”, and is set when the PCM (Powertrain Control Module) detects an imbalance between the air and fuel components of the air/fuel mixture on Bank 2. On V-type engines, Bank 2 is the bank of cylinders that does not contain cylinder #1.

NOTE: The word “often” used above is rather important, since at least 12 carmakers, including Jeep, Ram, Chrysler, GMC, as well as GM and Ford (and their related makes) use varying definitions for this code. While all known variations describe an air/fuel mixture problem on Bank 2 as the result of largely identical causes, the sometimes wildly different wording used by some carmakers to define/describe this code can and often does, create some confusion about the actual meaning of the code.

late Friday afternoon came the announcement that the Department of Justice has formally settled the claims brought against it by former FBI agent Peter Strzok and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, asserting that the release of their text exchanges in relation to the investigations into Hillary Clinton's emails and the "Russia Collusion" hoax regarding former President Donald Trump violated their privacy. //

Mary Katharine Ham
@mkhammer
·
Follow
A Friday night news dump F you. Brazen stuff. These people have no privacy on government devices. Their messages belong to us. The worse you behave, the more you get paid as long as it’s in service of the correct side. Disgraceful.
(((tedfrank)))
@tedfrank
Biden administration launders $1.2M payment to Peter Strzok (and likely a similar payment to Lisa Page) through settlement of likely-doomed lawsuit.
7:56 PM · Jul 26, 2024 //

That's right — our federal government will be dispensing $2 million in taxpayer dollars to settle claims by former government employees who exchanged messages on government-issued devices that the disclosure of said messages — which went directly to the heart of investigations in which they played critical roles — violated their privacy. //

Hans Mahncke
@HansMahncke
·
Follow
Strzok had no case. So the only way the Strzok payment makes any sense is that the Biden regime has started handing out hush money on its way out. Expect a lot more of this in the coming months.
10:42 PM · Jul 26, 2024 //

Right, so the government employees who played politics with the lives of the entire country bemoan playing politics when it affects them personally. Well, that's rich. And now, so are Page and Strzok.

Activists with Reform Pharma, an initiative of the nonprofit Children's Health Defense, descended onto ComicCon in San Diego on Friday and Saturday. The group was adorned in pop culture costumes and distributed free copies of a full-color comic book based on the true events of the discovery of an illegal biolab last year, a story extensively reported by RedState. Over two days, activists held signs and handed out 10,000 copies of the new comic outside of the convention center.

The Reedley incident unfolded in this small Central Valley town near Fresno, where city code enforcement Officer Jesalyn Harper uncovered a clandestine bio-lab. Harper, a central figure in the comic book adaptation titled "The Known Unknown," along with other officers, discovered violations and suspicious activities in what was supposed to be a vacant warehouse. The illegal operation was linked to a group of Chinese nationals, including a fugitive.

Inside the lab, authorities found nearly 1,000 lab mice and a range of biohazardous materials, including unlabeled vials containing potentially infectious agents such as COVID-19. //

Additionally, the nonprofit has made the 16-page comic book available online to view, download, and share. https://reformpharmanow.org/comic/

We're standing by for news on NASA's decision on what to do about Orion's heat shield. //

The central piece of NASA's second Space Launch System rocket arrived at Kennedy Space Center in Florida this week. Agency officials intend to start stacking the towering launcher in the next couple of months for a mission late next year carrying a team of four astronauts around the Moon.

The Artemis II mission, officially scheduled for September 2025, will be the first voyage by humans to the vicinity of the Moon since the last Apollo lunar landing mission in 1972. NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian mission specialist Jeremy Hansen will ride the SLS rocket away from Earth, then fly around the far side of the Moon and return home inside NASA's Orion spacecraft. //

NASA's inspector general reported in 2022 that NASA's first four Artemis missions will each cost $4.1 billion. Subsequent documents, including a Government Accountability Office report last year, suggest the expendable SLS core stage is responsible for at least a quarter of the cost for each Artemis flight.

The core stage for Artemis II is powered by four hydrogen-fueled RS-25 engines produced by Aerojet Rocketdyne. Two of the reusable engines for Artemis II have flown on the space shuttle, and the other two RS-25s were built in the shuttle era but never flew. Each SLS launch will put the core stage and its engines in the Atlantic Ocean. //

Artemis III's launch date is highly uncertain. It primarily hinges on SpaceX's progress in developing a human-rated lunar lander and Axiom Space's work on new spacesuits for astronauts to wear while walking on the Moon.

NASA spent $11.8 billion developing the SLS rocket, and its debut was delayed five years from an original target date in 2017. But for Artemis II, the readiness of the Orion spacecraft is driving the schedule, not the rocket.

Tiki | July 27, 2024 at 7:29 pm
Robert Conquest’s Three Laws of Politics:

Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.

Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.

The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.

John Derbyshire adds this:

Of the Second Law, Conquest gave the Church of England and Amnesty International as examples.

Of the Third, he noted that a bureaucracy sometimes actually is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies — e.g. the postwar British secret service.

John Moore thinks the third law is almost right; it should read “assume that it is controlled by a cabal of the enemies of the stated purpose of that bureaucracy.”

On Tuesday, journalist Julie Kelly posted court documents on X showing Special Counsel Jack Smith “admitted the FBI added cover sheets to alleged classified documents found at MAL and took photos for evidence.”

“This confirms my report from last month that the FBI doctored evidence to produce stunt photos of classified documents at [Mar-a-Lago],” Kelly said. //

The FBI purchased glossy cover sheets to use in photos of authorities’ unprecedented raid of former President Donald Trump. //

Prosecutors admitted to mishandling the evidence triggering the delay demanded by the judge which now threatens the possibility for Smith’s team to go to trial before the November election.

According to Kelly on Tuesday, the FBI’s colored cover sheets were included in “classified discovery” implicating prosecutors’ desire to keep the details of the added documents concealed from the public.

“The FBI brought colored classified cover sheets to the raid under the guise of using them to substitute classified documents found within Trump’s boxes,” Kelly wrote on X. “Instead, FBI agents attached the scary looking sheets to various files and took photos.”

The images published by prosecutors became emblematic of the former president’s apparent irresponsibility illustrated from the raid.

A stack of one trillion one-dollar bills would reach the Moon and back four times. Janet Yellen is proposing to spend a stack, not a fistful, of dollars that would reach to the Moon and back twelve times. That's the scale of spending she's talking about - it is, literally, astronomical. And she wants to spend this money on the nebulous idea of anthropogenic climate change.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Saturday that the global transition to a low-carbon economy requires $3 trillion in new capital each year through 2050, far above current annual financing, but that filling the gap is the biggest economic opportunity of the 21st century.

Jonathan Turley
·
7h
@JonathanTurley
·
Follow
Not long after I ran a column criticizing NewsGuard, the company came knocking to ask about my revenue sources and why I do not notify people that I write from what it views as a conservative or libertarian perspective...
thehill.com
The most chilling words today: I’m from NewsGuard and I am here to rate you
Jonathan Turley
@JonathanTurley
·
Follow
...Apparently from where NewsGuard reviewers sit, I am a de facto conservative or libertarian who needs to wear a digital bell to warn others...
7:29 AM · Jul 28, 2024

But I pay not to have advertising, and the closest I come to financial support would be my wife, since we live in a community property state. If NewsGuard wants to blacklist me with my wife, it is a bit late. Trust me, she knows. //

NewsGaudians are the new brownshirts. It is well-funded and relentless. What to do about fact-checkers who cannot spell Res ipsa loquitur, let alone understand its meaning, when the meaning is defined for them?

I will follow Professor Turley’s lead:

This is why my book calls for a number of reforms, including barring federal funds for groups engaged in censoring, rating or blacklisting sites.

What do I expect? In about 2 weeks, some guardian goon from NewsGuard will show up at my “online” door:

“Show me your papers. Please tell me why the 'H' in Thompson is silent. What are you trying to hide, sir?"

William Sheridan Allen

MORGAN: Well, there is, but I don't think that all of these protesters are pro-Hamas. I think you're making...

MURRAY: Right, and the difference is whether you have a large artillery behind you.

MORGAN: You don't honestly think they're all pro-Hamas, these people.

MURRAY: Well, well, I think that anyone who for instance chants things like From the River to the Sea is, in fact, what I described and is criminally ignorant. Oh, well they are, there were masses of idiots marching past Westminster Abbey last week saying exactly that.

MORGAN: Yeah, but they're not all doing it (crosstalk) I've watched the videos. There are some who are chanting and some who aren't.

MURRAY: Okay, well here's a challenge, Piers. If you decided to go on some kind of march and in week one you discovered that you had the BMP calling, for instance, for the murder of all black people, would you not wonder whether or not you should go on week two? Would you not drop out by week three? I would have thought so, I would.

MORGAN: That's a good question...yes, I would. //

There's a lot said in the exchange, but Murray's primary push was to point out that Hamas and its supporters are not just oppressed individuals who can be reasoned with. They aren't a population you can import and assimilate with the hope that they'll respect and become a viable part of Western civilization. Hamas and those chanting "from the river to the sea" are sustained by death and destruction. It is their very identity, and we are seeing that play out in Western cities across the globe.

As Murray explains, even the Nazis attempted to hide their atrocities. Hamas sympathizers are proud of theirs and proclaim them publicly. Because of that, they should be seen as at least as barbaric as Hitler's movement was. In fact, it's reasonable to say that Hamas is simply a modern extension of Nazism. Instead of reacting accordingly, police forces from London to New York City are standing idly by as the violence escalates. Why? Because those perpetrating it are intersectional and thus untouchable.

How does that end? How does Western civilization survive when hundreds of thousands of people are marching through the streets calling for genocide while the authorities only enforce the law against those who would stand against them?

The West is paralyzed by fear. //

The waters are being tested right now.

Astronauts on the ISS tend to favor spicy foods and top other foods with things like tabasco or shrimp cocktail sauce with horseradish. “Based on anecdotal reports, they have expressed that food in space tastes less flavorful. This is the way to compensate for this,” said Grace Loke, a food scientist at the RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia.

Loke’s team did a study to take a closer look at those anecdotal reports and test if our perception of flavor really changes in an ISS-like environment. It likely does, but only some flavors are affected.

Boeing won't start flying operational crew missions with Starliner until a year from now. //

The astronauts who rode Boeing's Starliner spacecraft to the International Space Station last month still don't know when they will return to Earth.

Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have been in space for 51 days, six weeks longer than originally planned, as engineers on the groundwork through problems with Starliner's propulsion system.

The problems are twofold. The spacecraft's reaction control thrusters overheated, and some of them shut off as Starliner approached the space station June 6. A separate, although perhaps related, problem involves helium leaks in the craft's propulsion system. //

MHStrawn Ars Scholae Palatinae
11y
1,142
Subscriptor
Emon said:
The competent engineers and managers were driven out long ago, or they bailed because they were sick of the nonsense.

They're probably working at a variety of competitors or other companies in and around aerospace.

Brain drain is real and Boeing's useless manchild execs either don't understand, don't care, or more likely, both.
So much this.

Boeing going from a company run by engineers whose purpose was to build safe, reliable aircraft to a company run by MBAs whose purpose is to maximize shareholder value was one of the worst developments of the last 50 years in the aerospace industry.

Rev. Ben Johnson
@TheRightsWriter
In 1878, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, warned that ministers had become apostles of Marxist doctrine.
“German rationalism, which has ripened into socialism, may yet pollute the mass of mankind,” he said. “Deadly principles are abroad, and certain ministers are spreading them.”

“I would not have you exchange the gold of individual Christianity for the base metal of Christian socialism,” Spurgeon exhorted his congregation 11 years later.

Any efforts to build a utopian kingdom on earth, overseen by fallen men, would prove futile. “To attempt national regeneration without personal regeneration is to dream of erecting a house without separate bricks,” he said.

https://acton.org/publications/transatlantic/2018/07/10/video-rush-limbaugh-clergy-who-accept-socialism
10:50 PM · Jul 26, 2024

Argentina's Javier Milei is setting a great example for all world leaders. It's too bad most of them aren't paying attention. //

Times have been hard in Argentina, and the economically-minded libertarian Javier Milei ran for president of that South American nation on a platform of reducing regulations, reducing taxation, and shrinking government to make things better. And it's starting to work.