Kevin Drum 🕸

Jeffrey Goldberg has a long piece in the Atlantic today about Donald Trump's enduring contempt for the military. But maybe you're too busy to read the whole thing. So how about just the quotes? About the funeral for a soldier killed at Fort Hood: “It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a fucking Mexican! Don’t ...continue reading "Donald Trump’s contempt for the military, quote by quote"

Two weeks to go. There aren't a lot of undecided voters left at this point, but there are some—and they might end up being decisive if they can be turned against Donald Trump. So I keep wondering: What could we tell them about Trump that they don't already know? In other words, forget about the ...continue reading "What arrows are left in the anti-Trump quiver?"

College Board has just published its latest university tuition figures, which gives me an excuse to post one of my favorite charts. This time I'll just look at the past decade: Average tuition actually charged after standard discounts has dropped 2% since last year and has gone down 40% over the past ten years. For ...continue reading "College tuition is down 40% over the past 10 years. That’s not a typo."

The price of gasoline has dropped 14% over the past six months.

Two views of St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna. The top one is a panoramic shot taken from about ten feet away—or so it seemed. The square surrounding the cathedral is a very tight space. I shopped the image massively to eliminate keystoning (converging vertical lines from aiming the camera upward). The bottom image was taken ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

From an Emerson poll a few days ago: “Voters who made up their mind in the last month or week break for Harris, 60% to 36%,” Kimball said. “The three percent of voters who said they could still change their mind currently favor Harris, 48% to 43%.” This gibes with my belief that most people ...continue reading "Kamala Harris leads Trump by 24 points among recent deciders"

One of the key questions about gender-affirming care among teenagers is: do they regret it later? A new study of both puberty blockers and hormone therapy shows that regret rates are extremely low a few years after the treatment has begun: The data analyzed survey responses from more than 200 people who are part of ...continue reading "New study tells us little about trans regret rates"

Megan McArdle picks at a scab of mine today: It’s hard to pick just one favorite form of internet insanity, but, if I had to, it would definitely be shoplifting denialism. Over the last few years, shoplifting has clearly become a bigger problem. We’ve seen videos of brazen shoplifters casually walking off with goods while ...continue reading "Shoplifting is up. Or maybe it’s down. Or maybe neither."

New York Times reporter Jeremy Peters said today that Kamala Harris has a clarity problem. Liberal Twitter is aghast: I get it: Trump is famous for long, meandering paragraphs of word salad that are sometimes incomprehensible. But even if Peters is wrong in a technical sense, he's right in every practical sense that matters. Trump ...continue reading "Yes, Kamala Harris really does have a clarity problem"

The FTC has been busy as the Biden presidency winds down. A few days ago they finalized "Click to Cancel," which requires businesses to make it as easy to cancel an order or subscription as it is to purchase one in the first place: 1. Too often, businesses make people jump through endless hoops just ...continue reading "FTC bans fake reviews"

This is Lake Fulmor, a few miles away from Idyllwild on Highway 243. The mountain in the background is Black Mountain.

Three weeks ago, Florida's general counsel sent a letter to local TV stations ordering them to stop broadcasting a commercial in favor of Proposition 4, which creates a right to abortion. A few days ago a judge told them bluntly to knock it off. It was a plain violation of the First Amendment. Today we ...continue reading "Florida’s First Amendment threat came straight from Ron DeSantis"

What happened to the confident march of progressivism that inspired lefty politics for the past couple of decades? It seems to have died out, replaced by a budding rightward movement in American politics. The explanation is simpler than most observers think: This is what always happens. Episodes of progressivism are rare in American history and ...continue reading "The progressive era is over. Again."

Homes are expensive these days, but that doesn't seem to be stopping anybody. Among young families, the homeownership rate is currently 35%, higher than it's been anytime in the past 30 years outside of the housing bubble years.

Elon Musk, as part of his jihad against FAA red tape, has been telling this story lately: SpaceX had to do a study to see if Starship would hit a shark. I'm like "It's a big ocean, there's a lot of sharks. It's not impossible, but it's very unlikely." OK fine, we'll do it, but ...continue reading "Did Elon Musk really have to study whether his rockets might hit sharks and whales?"

Donald Trump worked at a McDonald's today! This is a Norman Rockwell painting pic.twitter.com/5a6u0ssttE — Lee (Greater) (@shortmagsmle) October 20, 2024 It's heartwarming to see Trump serving the little people, sort of like Jesus did. But you will be unsurprised to learn that it was all staged. The store itself was shut down for the ...continue reading "Trump fakes a stint at McDonald’s today"

Here's why, in the face of everything, I think Kamala Harris is likely to win in November: My guess is that Trump's ceiling lies in his favorability rating: around 44-45%. Conversely, Harris's ceiling is everyone who doesn't view her unfavorably: around 52-53%. My reasoning is simple: Trump is a very well-known quantity. The only people ...continue reading "Here’s the simple reason I think Harris will win"

Happy Birthday to me! I was born 66 years ago at 8:02 pm, a Sunday, just as the Ed Sullivan Show came on with musical guests Tony Martin, Roger Williams, and Xavier Cugat. The top charting song on my birthday was Ricky Nelson's "Poor Little Fool." On the following Sunday Pan Am launched the first ...continue reading "Will you still love me when I’m . . . 66?"

The Wall Street Journal asks Donald Trump how he would persuade Xi Jinping to leave Taiwan alone: “Oh, very easy,” the former president says.... “I would say: If you go into Taiwan, I’m sorry to do this, I’m going to tax you”—meaning impose tariffs—“at 150% to 200%.” He might even shut down trade altogether. Mr. ...continue reading "Trump: Xi Jinping knows I’m fucking crazy"

During his rally today at Arnold Palmer Regional Airport in Pennsylvania, Donald Trump opened with a long, rambling story about.......Arnold Palmer. For your weekend viewing pleasure, here are the last 37 seconds: Trump’s closing argument is about the size of Arnold Palmer’s dick pic.twitter.com/eP5w0UXOKo — Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) October 19, 2024