Kevin Drum 🕸

With a heavy heart, I have to tell you that after a long battle with cancer my husband Kevin Drum passed away on Friday, March 7, 2025. No public memorial services are planned. In lieu of flowers, please donate to the charity or political cause of your choice. A Facebook page, 'In Memory of Kevin ...continue reading "Health Update"

Everything is getting worse: Other counts are getting worse and I feel terrible. Nonetheless they're slow walking the immunoglobulin treatment, which I think is my only chance. These guys are going to kill me before they figure out what's wrong.

The LA Times has finally activated its long-awaited, AI-powered "bias meter," announced last December by its owner, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong. It appears at the bottom of all opinion pieces and looks like this: Color me a little unimpressed. Practically everything was labeled center left, and that's all it does. Meh. Just below is a "Perspectives" ...continue reading "LA Times “bias meter” goes live"

It's official: The U.S. will pause all military aid to Kyiv until President Trump determines that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is making a good-faith effort toward peace negotiations with Russia, according to a White House official. Trump's revenge is now complete.

Construction data was released today, and once again I don't get this: Following the pandemic, everyone was supposedly working from home. Downtowns were hollowed out. Vacancy rates were 50%. And yet, construction of office buildings has never fallen below its pre-pandemic peak. We're putting up new office buildings like gangbusters. What's going on?

The other shoe drops: The Trump administration has stopped financing new weapons sales to Ukraine and is considering freezing weapons shipments from U.S. stockpiles, moves that threaten Kyiv’s ability to fight at a critical time in its battle against Russian forces, current and former U.S. officials said. The shutdown of financing new weapons sales began ...continue reading "Trump plans to halt arms to Ukraine, sanctions on Russia"

The soda wars, begun they have: At both state and federal levels, the Kennedy-led Make America Healthy Again movement is backing efforts to prevent people from spending food-aid benefits on sugary, carbonated beverages.... But the U.S. Agriculture Department, which oversees the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, has rejected the requests for more than 20 ...continue reading "We don’t need to tell the poor what to eat"

Holy cow: My inflammation is still going up despite massive doses of steroids. What the hell is going on?

Republicans love smoke-and-mirrors budgeting. They're laying off thousands of workers chaotically even though salary costs are a tiny fraction of the federal budget. Elon Musk is pretending to save far more money than he really is. Now Senate Republicans are trying to hide the cost of extending the 2017 tax cuts using a new wheeze ...continue reading "Smoke-and-mirrors budgeting is everywhere"

Donald Trump plans to levy 25% tariffs across the board on Canada tomorrow:¹ The result, an overwhelming majority of economists agree, would be inflation and supply disruption in the United States, while Canadian industries could face large-scale layoffs. Inflation in the US and unemployment in Canada! Sounds great. And whole factories will shut down: Because ...continue reading "Destruction of Canada begins tomorrow"

For some reason MAGAnauts are suddenly highlighting a Gallup poll from October about trust in media. "Americans' Trust in Media Remains at Trend Low," reads the headline. But that's dead wrong. As usual, trust in media is fine among Democrats. The only true statement is "Republicans' Trust in Media Remains at Trend Low": Nobody should ...continue reading "Republicans have lost trust in the media"

Our economic betters speak their wisdom: Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Sunday that government spending could be separated from gross domestic product reports in response to questions about whether the spending cuts pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could possibly cause an economic downturn. “You know, that governments historically have messed with GDP,” ...continue reading "Howard Lutnick believes in GDP fairies"

A conversation about airline safety in the era of DOGE and Elon Musk: Rolling Stone: FAA Officials Ordered Staff to Find Funding for Elon Musk’s Starlink James Fallows, longtime private pilot: Corrupt? Sure. But also directly dangerous? And how! FAA has done careful, long testing /study of new tower-communication system. Now a rush to switch ...continue reading "So how’s it going in the friendly skies these days?"

I admit that the contest for stupidest idea of the Trump administration is heated and contentious. But surely this must be strongly in the running: Crypto prices surged Sunday after President Trump said he would move forward on a U.S. crypto strategic reserve that will include bitcoin and ether, as well as three smaller and ...continue reading "Dumbest. Idea. Ever."

Here's the plan: Put me back on high-flow oxygen. Slam me with IV steroids. Quadruple the dose and administer every six hours. If that doesn't work, slam me with antibiotics. If that doesn't work, intubate me and do a broncoscopy. There are further options after that, but not good ones. Bottom line: doctors just don't ...continue reading "Health update 2"

For the next few days, my new favorite chart is for C-Reactive protein: Still going up. What a disaster. I'm huffing and puffing a storm.

About a month ago a fellow named Luke Rosiak, author of a book on the Deep State, decided to tweet about 18F, "GSA's tech arm, a far-left agency that viciously subverted Trump during his first term." He followed up with stuff like this: What did diverse hiring mean in practice? The government tech arm turned ...continue reading "Trump kills elite tech group because it’s too woke"

Donald Trump signed an executive order today making English the official language of the US. But it was surprisingly diffident: Nothing in this order, however, requires or directs any change in the services provided by any agency. Agency heads should make decisions as they deem necessary to fulfill their respective agencies’ mission and efficiently provide ...continue reading "English is now our official language"

A pair of DOGE bros want access to IRS data to check for benefit cheating: Kliger and Corcos, according to records obtained by The Post, specifically mentioned investigating eligibility and fraud within student loan and grant programs and SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program formerly known as food stamps, which serves nearly 42 million Americans. ...continue reading "DOGE wants to check if you’re really eligible for the vast riches of SNAP"

I've had a bit of a setback. Normally, physical therapy means walking over to a chair and sitting for an hour. This produces a small amount of huffing and puffing, but it goes away quickly after I get back in bed. Not yesterday. I got back in bed and my breathing never caught up. I ...continue reading "Health update"