Kevin Drum 🕸

America's manufacturing construction boom continued apace in January: This is mostly due to a series of federal government initiatives: the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the CHIPS Act. In total, manufacturing construction has more than doubled over the past two years, from an annual rate of $90 billion in late 2021 to ...continue reading "Raw data: Manufacturing construction in the US"

Here is Hilbert on the bed with me getting his head scratched. You can't hear it, but he was purring his furry little face off while this was going on.

Finally: The U.S. military will be conducting airdrops of humanitarian aid into Gaza in the coming days amid tense negotiations for a pause in the fighting between Israel and Hamas, President Joe Biden announced on Friday. The mission is designed to increase the flow of humanitarian assistance into Gaza as Palestinians struggle to get food, ...continue reading "US to airdrop aid to Gaza"

Michael Flynn tonight: “If we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one religion. One nation under God, and one religion under God.” pic.twitter.com/ShGVrsQ9hW — Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) November 13, 2021

Ranked-choice voting has been gaining popularity lately, and that's sparked a MAGA backlash. But why? There's no obvious reason it would benefit either Democrats or Republicans. Nevertheless, conservative groups have launched a large number of very well funded and coordinated attacks on RCV. Alaska, for example, approved RCV in 2020 but opponents have now gathered ...continue reading "Why does MAGA hate ranked-choice voting?"

Talk about your low-hanging fruit. The IRS is finally starting to send letters to people who make $400,000+ but haven't filed a tax return: One thing nonfilers haven’t had to fear, until recently, was hearing about their shortcomings from the IRS. The agency generally knows who should be filing a return but hasn’t had the ...continue reading "The IRS would like you to pretty please file a tax return"

"Check out this video of Biden at the border," says Rich Lowry, so I did. It's 25 seconds long and there's no sound, just Biden walking along stiffly thanks to his arthritis. So what's the big problem? Answer: "Most people are simply not going to feel comfortable with a president who walks this way," says ...continue reading "Joe Biden has arthritis"

I keep hearing about how Mitch McConnell was a terrible person because he stacked the Supreme Court and enabled Donald Trump. That's fair enough, but it's hardly McConnell's biggest achievement: These days you often hear reporters and commentators saying matter of factly that legislation requires 60 votes in the Senate. This is truly McConnell’s greatest ...continue reading "Mitch McConnell’s real legacy is anarchy"

Sunset near the south entrance to Grand Canyon National Park.

This effect may or may not be permanent, but a team of researchers in England has found that long COVID significantly reduces cognitive ability—and the longer the COVID the more it hurts: Six IQ points is no joke, though this loss is found only in the most extreme cases. On the other hand, these are ...continue reading "Long COVID is wrecking our IQs"

Has the internet destroyed reading? Not really: Reading for pleasure has declined by an average of six minutes per day in the internet era, but the truth is we never read very much in the first place. Twenty years ago TV outpaced reading by 7:1. Today it's nearly 11:1. We really love our televisions.

TikTok is a Chinese surveillance and propaganda tool. Chinese-made cranes in US ports are a national security threat. Huawei routers and 5G infrastructure contain backdoors that allow the Chinese government to monitor and disrupt US phone and internet services. Consumer hobbyist drones made in China could provide sensitive images and geographical data to Beijing. Chinese ...continue reading "How big a threat is Chinese tech?"

PCE inflation spiked upward in January: On a conventional year-over-year basis, PCE inflation was up 2.4% in January and core PCE was up 2.8%. This spike is all about services. Goods inflation was negative, at -2.0%, while services inflation came in at 7.4%.

Here's a question for you. Suppose Joe Biden had a change of heart and decided it was essential to broker a ceasefire in Gaza. What could he do? Is there any pressure he could bring to bear on Bibi Netanyahu to force him to stop fighting? Be creative, but be realistic too and stay within ...continue reading "What could Biden do to stop the fighting in Gaza?"

Over at Mother Jones, Noah Lanard comments on the 13% "uncommitted" vote in yesterday's Michigan Democratic primary: The results in Michigan are another sign the president’s team underestimated the level of outrage that its war response would provoke. The New York Times’ Peter Baker reported Tuesday that the president’s advisers had been hoping the war ...continue reading "Israel isn’t hurting Joe Biden"

This is an iris alstroemeria in our front yard, taken at dusk with fill flash. I don't especially like the look, but it's still interesting occasionally to see the difference between artificial and natural lighting.

Mitch McConnell is stepping down as Republican leader in the Senate. Good riddance to him. Still, his departure reminds me of the resignation/firing of Jeff Sessions as attorney general in 2018. When Sessions was initially appointed he seemed to us liberals like pretty much the worst, most ultra-conservative, quasi-racist attorney general imaginable. Then he got ...continue reading "Can we do worse than Mitch McConnell?"

*Not really. But he does say he can't post his $454 million bond unless he sells off some property: Donald J. Trump offered a New York appeals court on Wednesday a bond of only $100 million to pause the more than $450 million judgment he faces in his civil fraud case, saying that he might ...continue reading "Donald Trump says he’s broke*"

Klarna is a Swedish e-shopping site that I had never heard of until yesterday. I remain slightly unsure of what they actually do, but they claim to handle 2 million transactions per day for half a million merchants. This means they employ a lot of customer service agents in their call center. At least, they ...continue reading "Ecommerce giant now using AI for most customer service"

In our last episode, the Alabama Supreme Court effectively abolished in-vitro fertilization by ruling that frozen embryos are human beings, thus making the loss of any embryo a potential murder or manslaughter. Now, in our latest episode, the Alabama legislature is fighting back. Embryos are still human beings, as any God-fearing Alabamian knows, but new ...continue reading "Alabama is loco"