Kevin Drum 🕸

District Court Judge Cormac Carney has tossed charges of assault against a pair of white nationalists because it was unfair not to prosecute some lefties too: An Orange County federal judge has dismissed criminal charges for the second time in five years against accused members of a Southern California white supremacist group suspected of inciting ...continue reading "Right-wing judge dismisses charges against white nationalists"

Takeoff from John Wayne Airport over the 405 freeway. On windy days planes take off to the north, rather than heading out south over the ocean as they usually do.

It begins: The University of Alabama at Birmingham health system has paused in vitro fertilization procedures following an Alabama Supreme Court decision due to fear of criminal prosecution and lawsuits, a spokeswoman said. ....“We must evaluate the potential that our patients and our physicians could be prosecuted criminally or face punitive damages for following the ...continue reading "Alabama starts to lose its IVF centers"

We now know that: Alexander Smirnov lied to prosecutors about Burisma paying $5 million bribes to Hunter and Joe Biden. These lies started in June 2020. Smirnov began an extensive series of meetings with Russian intelligence officials in 2019. Republicans made Smirnov's accusations a centerpiece of their corruption charges against the Biden family. Draw your ...continue reading "What did Republicans know and when did they know it?"

I was pondering this afternoon over the question of just how much ordinary people really care about Joe Biden's age. I know there are polls out there showing high rates of concern, but that doesn't tell us much about salience. Is it strong concern or just one of many concerns? What if people aren't specially ...continue reading "How much are people interested in Joe Biden’s age?"

Today I learned that the San Francisco Fed performs daily tracking of economic news sentiment. Here it is since the end of the Great Recession: The index is currently at 0.17, roughly equal to the peaks between 2014 and 2020. However, it only rose above zero about three months ago. It took a long time ...continue reading "Media coverage of the economy has finally broken into positive territory"

As long as we're talking about Gaza, here's an updated set of fatality figures: The cumulative death toll as of today is just over 29,000, about 1.3% of the total population of Gaza. Dead and injured come to just under 100,000, or 4.3% of the total population. On a population basis, that's six times the ...continue reading "Raw data: The death toll in Gaza"

Why oh why does the US keep vetoing UN resolutions calling for a ceasefire in Gaza? Are we really that brutal and heartless? Oh come on. This isn't complicated. It's because these immediate ceasefire resolutions never demand that Hamas immediately release its hostages. That's a loud tell that the resolution backers aren't really serious about ...continue reading "Why do we keep vetoing UN resolutions over Gaza?"

This is Joe Biden's schedule today after landing at LAX:

A street performer in Laguna Beach.

Unless someone gets run over by a bus, the two candidates for president this year are Joe Biden and Donald Trump. That's it, like it or not. So can everyone please start dealing with reality on this? The endless pissing and moaning about Earth-2 scenarios is really starting to grate on me.

OpenAI recently released an AI video creator, and its ouput, though amazing, isn't perfect. Atrios comments: Not an expert on video/image editing, but I suspect editing out the 6th finger is a lot more work than it's worth. And, sure, these things will always get better, but some things need to be better than pretty ...continue reading "AI video isn’t perfect yet. So what?"

It's sad to see what's happened to the Hugo Awards, but I don't think this is right: really, the long and short of it is that just like elections, vaccines, vehicles, football, taylor swift, climate change, coffee, budweiser, gaming, journalism, polling, and everything else, The Hugo Awards got eaten by social media, and I'm not ...continue reading "The Hugo Awards are too small for a big world"

Moonset over the Sheephole Mountains.

By chance, I happened to mention exactly this to a friend of mine last night: Are you aware how much the constant threat of violence, principally from MAGA sources, is now warping American politics? If you wonder why so few people in red America seem to stand up directly against the MAGA movement, are you ...continue reading "Violence is at the core of MAGA nation"

The history of egg prices is the history of bird flu:

Here is Robin Abcarian on Atlanta DA Fani Willis: After watching her testify for nearly two hours on Thursday, I think she made a convincing case that she did not [do anything wrong]. If anything, she spent more money on him than he did on her. But by engaging in a romantic relationship with Wade ...continue reading "Why does anyone take the charges against Fani Willis seriously?"

We have finally reached the logical conclusion of the belief that life begins at conception: An embryo created through in-vitro fertilization (IVF) is a child protected by Alabama’s wrongful death act and the Alabama Constitution, the Alabama Supreme ruled on Friday. ....The Supreme Court held in a 7-2 decision that parents of frozen embryos killed ...continue reading "Alabama puts the IVF business out of business"

Here's the latest from our fully lucid and astute former president: Trump: Thousands and thousands of people coming from all over the world. Yesterday, they had many from the Congo. Welcome to the Congo people because and where do you come in the Congo? pic.twitter.com/qLLjn4b5HR — Acyn (@Acyn) February 18, 2024 Idiocy aside, there are ...continue reading "Donald Trump is mentally impaired, part 457"

The latest kerfuffle over Joe Biden's age reminds me of the power of the hack gap. Cast your thoughts back over a few recent high-profile incidents: In 2016, liberals supported Hillary Clinton during her email difficulties, but hardly wholeheartedly. They constantly wrung their hands over her "admittedly poor judgment," "adversarial communication style," and "habit of ...continue reading "The hack gap, again and again and again"