Kevin Drum 🕸

CNN says inflation is skyrocketing in Russia: Butter, some meats, and onions are about 25% more expensive than a year ago, according to official data.... Inflation is being driven by the rapid rise in wages as the Kremlin pours billions into military industries and sends millions of men to fight in Ukraine. Hmmm. "Some" meats. ...continue reading "Inflation in Russia is . . . kind of normal"

Maybe I'm guilty of not paying attention, but lately I've noticed there's (apparently) considerable pushback to the notion that human sex is binary. But it is: Women have the capacity to produce eggs and men to produce sperm. At a biological level, that's pretty much all there is to it despite the existence of a ...continue reading "Sex vs. gender: I have a question"

I had a hamburger for lunch today! It was good! Well, it was OK. My taste buds aren't 100% back yet. I'd say maybe 80%. By next week I should be fully recovered from this horror show. SILVER LINING DEPARTMENT: I've dropped 20 pounds over the past six weeks. I'm now merely overweight, not obese, ...continue reading "Health update"

You've seen the exterior of Stephansdom in Vienna, now it's time to see the interior.

Here's the current overall valuation of the stock market: This is the value of all stocks compared to expected earnings over the coming year. I've grayed out the post-pandemic surge, which was mainly a statistical artifact, in order to give you a better idea of how today compares to historical levels. As you can see, ...continue reading "Raw data: The stock market is very frothy"

This should go over well with the Pentagon: Now, a 4 am post of "TRUE!!!" is not exactly a reliable policy pronouncement. But it's certainly suggestive. But can Trump do it? Both law and culture bar the military from engaging in domestic law enforcement. Trump could invoke the Insurrection Act, but that would trigger instant ...continue reading "Trump says he’ll use the Army to carry out mass deportations"

Just a quick reminder! Last year the US imported $3.1 trillion in goods from the rest of the world. If we imposed a 10% tariff on every last penny of that amount it would raise $310 billion per year. That's it. That's the cap even in theory. It's a tiny fraction of the annual federal ...continue reading "Tariffs won’t solve our budget problem"

If Republicans are looking for spending cuts to offset their huge tax cuts, the only big pot of money plausibly open to them is Medicaid. Guess what? President-elect Donald Trump’s economic advisers and congressional Republicans have begun preliminary discussions about making significant changes to Medicaid, food stamps and other federal safety net programs to offset ...continue reading "Republicans take aim at Medicaid"

Oh come on: Do we really have to play this game? Trump's appeal to the working class isn't based on the economy. It's based on cultural hot buttons and resentment of elites. Is this even controversial? I doubt that even blue-collar workers themselves would disagree. As president, Trump will: Raise tariffs, which hurt the working ...continue reading "No, Trump is not on the side of blue-collar workers"

The Wall Street Journal has a long piece tonight that goes on and on and on about how Joe Biden blew it by passing the $1.9 trillion ARP bill and firing up inflation. About halfway through the story, Nick Timiraos buries this single sentence: A separate analysis by the [San Francisco Fed's] economists estimated the ...continue reading "The Wall Street Journal admits Biden had almost no effect on inflation"

Here's an odd thing. I got curious today about just how many trans girls (i.e., biological males transitioning to become girls) actually compete in girls' sports. The answer is that nobody knows, but a very rough extrapolation from a few state-level numbers suggests perhaps 200 in high school and 50-100 in college. These numbers are ...continue reading "Wait. Trans athletes have won 890 medals in women’s sports?"

Pandemic inflation in the US and Europe was nearly—but not quite!—identical: Why was it nearly the same? Because in both places the underlying causes were the same: supply chain shortages combined with rescue packages that kept demand steady. Why was it a little different? Because the US passed a gigantic stimulus all at one time ...continue reading "Raw data: Inflation in the US and Europe"

Let me get this straight. While he was married (to his second wife) Pete Hegseth started an affair with a Fox producer. They had a child out of wedlock in August 2017. Two months later Hegseth had a drunken hookup with a third woman¹ who showed signs of rough handling and filed a complaint with ...continue reading "Pete Hegseth is a devout Christian"

This tweet from Don Jr. has gone viral: Make America Healthy Again starts TOMORROW. 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/LLzr5S9ugf — Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) November 17, 2024 The New York Post reported that RFK Jr. was "spotted" on Trump's plane "sheepishly posing with a McDonald’s Big Mac and a Coca-Cola." No. This was obviously a planned and very ...continue reading "Would you like an extra large side of public humiliation with your Big Mac?"

Atrios weighs in on the election dispute between progressives and moderates: A lot was going on in 2020, and an amazing thing about the Biden campaign (yes, I am praising it!) was that it did not go out there and start screaming about "thugs" and "freaks." To use the shorthand of the times, they pretty ...continue reading "Biden was a loud and proud centrist in 2020"

The Wall Street Journal reports on a strange corner of the current market frenzy: Dogecoin, a speculative coin backed by nothing, shot up after Trump revealed plans to create a government-efficiency department called DOGE, to be co-led by Elon Musk, a dogecoin evangelist. Its $55 billion market cap now tops that of Ford Motor. Not ...continue reading "Why did dogecoin rise 150% over the past week?"

As we continue to argue about why Kamala Harris lost, I want to remind everyone that only about 3% of the electorate switched from D to R this year—less in swing states. So regardless of whether you think the culprit was cultural issues or the economy or misogyny or Latino defections or a bad campaign—no ...continue reading "The 3% solution"

I was browsing around on an unrelated subject and happened to notice something about the nicknames of famous women who have led big countries: Golda Meir: Iron Lady Indira Gandhi: Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher: Iron Lady Benazir Bhutto: Iron Lady Angela Merkel: Iron Chancellor Is the United States ready for a woman president? Maybe we ...continue reading "America needs an Iron Governor"

Have liberals moved too far to the left culturally? Is that why we lost in 2024? This is hardly a new dispute. Thomas Frank wrote his seminal exploration of the question, What's the Matter With Kansas? in 2004, back when Democrats were considerably more moderate than they are now. But it seems newly relevant in ...continue reading "The choice between two scary extremes is usually a move to the right"

Lefty discourse has suddenly been filled with talk about The Groups—nonprofit organizations that apparently wield enormous veto power over Democratic politicians. Ezra Klein discussed this a couple of days ago with Michael Lind, starting off with an observation about routine opposition to big solar power projects from highly focused groups on the left: KLEIN: When ...continue reading "How much do Democratic politicians fear The Groups?"