I have no special reason for posting this. It's a Google Maps picture of a small piece of Gaza City: Roughly speaking, this is about 1% of Gaza City, which itself is only about a tenth of the Gaza Strip. Multiply this by about a thousand and it's what "house-to-house" fighting looks like.
Hey, look what's happening in the auto industry: Honda Motor is giving many U.S. factory workers an 11% pay bump and making other improvements for these employees, a move that follows major gains secured by the United Auto Workers union in Detroit last month. The base wage increase is effective in January, according to a ...continue reading "The UAW won pay hikes for everyone in the auto industry"
Daoud Kuttab is a Palestinian journalist and a former professor of journalism at Princeton University. Here's how he thinks Gaza should be governed after the war is over: The answer for the question of what happens next should be clear. The Palestine Liberation Organization, which doesn’t include Hamas, needs to forge an agreement with Hamas ...continue reading "No, Hamas should not be part of the Palestinian government"
Tesla workers in Sweden are on strike because Tesla refuses to recognize their union. That's bad for Tesla, but things can get worse: If Tesla is still balking on a deal by November 20, postal workers will stop delivering letters and packages addressed to the company. Seriously? If the Swedish postal service disapproves of you ...continue reading "No more mail for Tesla in Sweden"
Ellen Weintraub, a member of the Federal Election Commission, has something she wants to say: The FEC has six members: three Democrats and three Republicans. Enforcement actions require a majority vote. Since all three Republicans refuse on principle to investigate violations by Donald Trump, it means he's effectively immune from all federal campaign laws.
How fast are sales of EVs growing? That depends. If you look at the full history of EV sales it looks like exponential growth: But if you look at growth since 2020 it looks linear: Take your pick. Sales in September were above trend either way you look at it. NOTE: This includes only full, ...continue reading "Raw data: Electric vehicle sales in the US"
Tim Lee takes a common shot at social media today: This obviously isn't an original observation but I still think almost everyone is underestimating how much the Internet drives polarization on every controversial topic. — Timothy B. Lee (@binarybits) November 9, 2023 I know how appealing this is, but most of the research points in ...continue reading "It’s not social media that has polarized us"
A couple of days ago a fire broke out at one of our historic World War II blimp hangars. By the time it was over the entire east side had been gutted. The two top pictures show what it looked like on the day after. The bottom picture shows the hangar in better days (the ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"
We are, once again, a week away from shutting down the government unless Congress passes a continuing resolution that, um, allows things to continue. Newly minted Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is the key player here: Some lawmakers say the most plausible scenario is that Johnson puts a relatively clean CR on the floor, ...continue reading "We are once again a week away from a government shutdown"
The actors strike is over: SAG-AFTRA did not immediately disclose terms of the agreement, but the committee said the three-year contract was “valued at over $1 billion.” The details are expected to be released after SAG-AFTRA’s national board reviews the contract on Friday. The proposed contract — which also still must be ratified by the ...continue reading "All the Hollywood strikes are over"
The moderators of tonight's Republican debate did pretty well! Despite Vivek Ramaswamy's best efforts to remain an asshole, they kept him pretty much under control. Everyone else, too. They mostly did this by asking questions instantly after each speaker had finished, a ploy that other moderators should emulate. So who did best? Not Tim Scott, ...continue reading "Debate roundup: Trophies for all!"
Moms for Liberty, the hard-right group best known for banning books in schools and opposing CRT, backed a bunch of candidates for school boards across the country during this election cycle. But over at Mother Jones, Kiera Butler reports that most of them lost. I've taken the liberty of summarizing her results in the chart ...continue reading "Moms for Liberty had a bad night on Tuesday"
Via Atrios, I see that Citibank has been fined for discriminating against.......Armenians: Citi treated Armenian Americans as criminals who were likely to commit fraud. From at least 2015 through 2021, Citi targeted retail services credit card applicants with surnames that Citi employees associated with Armenian national origin as well as applicants in or around Glendale, ...continue reading "Citibank hates Armenians?"
Ohio, these days, is a solidly red state. And yet, yesterday Ohioans went to the polls and approved an abortion rights initiative by 57-43%. What gives? The answer is simple, but maybe not obvious. Last year Ohio passed a law (currently in court) that bans abortion after six weeks. This is effectively a complete abortion ...continue reading "Effectively banning abortion just isn’t popular, even in red states"
Bad news! The number of workplace injuries increased from 2.2 million in 2021 to 2.3 million in 2022. However, the rate of injuries stayed the same: The most dangerous occupation in 2022 was transportation and warehousing. Finance had the fewest injuries:
The nanny state is at it again: 🚨 The federal government has mandated that all vehicles sold after 2026 must have a kill switch that can disable your vehicle based on your driving performance. My amendment to defund that unconstitutional mandate failed tonight. Here is the roll call:https://t.co/YWufj9BuMv — Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) November 8, 2023 ...continue reading "New cars will soon have technology to prevent drunk driving"
And that's that. In Virginia, Democrats have maintained control of the State Senate and flipped control of the House of Delegates away from Republicans: That makes tonight nearly a clean sweep for Democrats. Among major races, Republicans won only the governorship of Mississippi, and that was never really in serious doubt.
Peter Coy links today to a new paper that tries to untangle why educated voters identify so strongly as Democrats. This hasn't always been the case, and the paper's authors are able to identify the changing trend going back a very long way thanks to a massive database of polling that starts during World War ...continue reading "Chart of the day: The great education divide"
Ohio voters have decided to put a right to abortion in their constitution. Kentucky voters have reelected their Democratic governor. A Democrat won the Pennsylvania race for its Supreme Court. The Virginia legislature is still up for grabs. Texas voters are merrily voting for every single initiative on the ballot except for one that would ...continue reading "Election results looking favorable for Democrats"
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