Kevin Drum 🕸

DOGE has published a "Wall of Receipts" claiming to have saved taxpayers $55 billion. The New York Times isn't buying it: The math that could back up those checks is marred with accounting errors, incorrect assumptions, outdated data and other mistakes.... Some contracts the group claims credit for were double- or triple-counted. Another initially contained ...continue reading "DOGE has saved taxpayers about 0.33% of the federal budget"

Donald Trump has now fired seven senior military officers, including the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff; the Chief of Naval Operations; the Commandant of the Coast Guard; the vice chief of the Air Force; and three judge advocate generals (Navy, Army, and Air Force). All were apparently fired for being a little too ...continue reading "Trump fires diverse military officers"

As we all know, if there's a natural origin for the COVID virus there needs to be an intermediate host. That is, the virus needs to have passed from a bat, where it originated, to some other animal, where it finished evolving into a form deadly to human beings. Today Nature published a longish piece ...continue reading "Are raccoon dogs key to the origin of the COVID virus?"

Inflationary expectations among consumers have skyrocketed since November: Thanks to Trump's tariffs and other economic illiteracies, inflation expectations have gone up 1.7 percentage points since Election Day, from 2.6% to 4.3%. Aside from the 2022 inflationary surge, this is the highest that consumer expectations have been over the past decade.

Remember the huge fuss Republicans made over Joe Biden's alleged interference with social media platforms? Naturally they took it to court, where a Louisiana judge went stone nuts: Mostly his opinion is a long, familiar conspiracy-esque recitation of right-wing hobbyhorses about efforts from public health officers to highlight COVID misinformation, with a bit of Hunter ...continue reading "Elon Musk is extorting ad companies"

You've probably seen Donald Trump's precipitous fall in four recent polls: But did you know that the all-time record holders for the poorest early approval ratings are Donald Trump and . . . Donald Trump? It's true: Right now Trump is doing slightly better than he did during his first term, but I doubt that ...continue reading "Trump is dropping fast in the polls"

The Senate passed a budget resolution last night: $175 in new spending on border security. $150 billion in new defense spending. $15 billion in new energy production. No framework for extending 2017 tax cut. And now for a look at the House budget proposal: $4.5 trillion to extend 2017 tax cuts. $880 billion in spending ...continue reading "The House and Senate are light years apart in their budget proposals"

Trying to figure out how much we spend on defense is a dog's breakfast. However, once you account for nukes and some other stuff it comes to $895 billion according to CBO and would increase 2% over the next four years for a total of $913 billion by 2029. Republicans worked hard during the budget ...continue reading "Pete Hegseth wants to cut $300 billion from the Pentagon"

The truth is that I'm not sure how I'm doing. But there's this: My oxygenation level is consistently high. That's good, but my breathing is still pretty shallow if I move around even a little bit. My colon virus seems to be gone. This is based on a lack of bowel movements lately. But I'm ...continue reading "Health update"

Donald Trump fired a few thousand Park Service workers, but apparently Doug Burgham has decided to hire them back. Efficiency! However, the one maintenance guy at Yosemite who has the keys to unlock people from the bathrooms remains fired. Elon Musk got mad at Danish astronaut Andreas Morgensen and called him "fully retarded." The contretemps ...continue reading "Folie à deux in the White House"

Before Trump was elected, I figured there were a a range of possibilities if he won. On one end: he's a blowhard. He says lots of stuff he never follows up on. On the other end: He's dead serious this time. He's going to deport millions; put tariffs on everyone; take a sledgehammer to DEI; ...continue reading "Madness"

Not a good day. Nothing is improving and my breathing is very shallow. Still waiting for the immunoglobulin stimulant to kick in. That might start a recovery. If not, we're running out of options.

Pneumonia appears slightly better today. Maybe. Hard to tell for sure. My oncologist finally showed up this afternoon and finally agreed my immune system was shot. A multiple myeloma specialist tells me this is a common side effect of bispecific therapies like Talvey. Oh. So we've agreed on a treatment that spurs regrowth of immunoglobulins. ...continue reading "Health update"

Fading fast. Pneumonia worse. Ventilator next. Not looking good. Take care of Donald Trump for me.

Too tired to blog.

It's been a while since we've checked in on the Trump meme coin scam, but today the New York Times checked in for us: As of the middle of this week, more than 810,000 wallets had lost money on [$Trump].... The total losses are almost certainly much larger: The data does not include transactions that ...continue reading "(Almost) everyone is getting torched by the Trump meme coin"

I forgot to mention this, but as threatened, I'm back in the hospital. So far we've duplicated every single test from seven days ago and gotten the same results as before. The only thing new is that my pneumonia is either a little better or a little worse depending on whether you believe the X-ray ...continue reading "Health update"

When history is written, the first few months of Trump 2.0 will go down as the most craven and prostrate in the history of the Republican Party. We are living in a country ruled by fantastic conspiracy theories and personal revenge, and not a single Republican is willing to stand against it. Not one.

This would be something: Draft Exec Order wld halve FDA staffing, slash NIH, eliminate CDC. WH being warned of impact on public health, biopharma industry, science. OPM back to work starts at FDA March 17. https://t.co/FvA1ul50W5 — steve usdin (@steveusdin1) February 7, 2025 This may or may not happen, or the draft EO might get ...continue reading "Trump wants to wipe out medical research"

Good news and bad news this morning. The DOGEbros have been banned from accessing Treasury's payment systems: Judge Engelmayer ordered any such official who had been granted access to the systems since Jan. 20 to “destroy any and all copies of material downloaded from the Treasury Department’s records and systems.” He also restricted the Trump ...continue reading "DOGE is being steadily reined in"