Kevin Drum 🕸

Everybody seems to agree that the Supreme Court is likely to uphold the TikTok ban: Chief Justice John Roberts said the court couldn’t ignore congressional concerns that Beijing could use TikTok to spread propaganda and stockpile sensitive user data on Americans. “It seems to me that you’re ignoring the major concern here of Congress, which ...continue reading "It looks like TikTok is doomed"

Over at the Free Press, the editors use the LA wildfires as an excuse to run that most tedious of genres: how California went from being great to being a progressive hellhole that spends all its money on woke frivolities: But they’ve neglected the basics: crime (the murder rate is up more than 15 percent ...continue reading "California is doing fine, thank you very much"

The American economy gained 256,000 jobs last month. We need 90,000 new jobs just to keep up with population growth, which means that net job growth clocked in at 166,000 jobs. The headline unemployment rate dropped slightly to 4.1%. There were no gotchas in the December report. Employment was up and unemployment was down. It ...continue reading "Net jobs up 166,000 in December"

Apparently the Trumpies don't plan to bother making even a pretense of following the law: And they really are looking. Immigration hardcase Stephen Miller is in charge of this operation, and even before COVID hit he apparently tried to use a minor outbreak of mumps to justify a border shutdown. That didn't fly, so he ...continue reading "Trump says we’re in the middle of an epidemic. But an epidemic of what?"

Donald Trump has lost his last appeal. He will be sentenced tomorrow in his hush money/business fraud case and officially become the first convicted felon to hold the US presidency.

The LA wildfires are already the third costliest fire disaster in recent history: The current estimate of around $55 billion is almost certain to increase, which will place LA in second place all time. That's in three days. The only bigger disaster, the 2019 Australian bushfires, lasted five months.

The Laken Riley Act requires ICE to detain illegal immigrants who have committed theft, burglary, or shoplifting. I suppose that's fine. But the Republicans who wrote the bill weren't satisfied with just that: The bill also authorizes state governments to sue for injunctive relief over certain immigration-related decisions or alleged failures by the federal government ...continue reading "Here’s the fine print in the Laken Riley Act"

Sunset over the Mojave Desert.

Apparently the Fed has grown a little skeptical of inflation indexes that rely partly on "imputed" measures of things like rent. Instead, they're starting to look at pure market-based indexes: This is a 3-month rolling average, partly just to smooth things out and partly because it's my favored measure. In November, the plain old monthly ...continue reading "A different measure of inflation tells us it’s over"

Here's the latest from Elon Musk about the LA wildfires: Every single thing on this list is either badly misleading or flat-out wrong: Reservoirs and emergency water tanks were all full before the fires started. The fire budget was increased by $50 million. The donations to Ukraine were in 2022 and included only small amounts ...continue reading "Elon Musk is the new emperor of misinformation"

Another note about the Pacific Palisades fire. You may have seen pictures of roads choked with cars and wondered why there wasn't better evacuation planning. Maybe there should have been, but here's what the Palisades looks like: There just aren't very many ways out. Aside from tiny Bowdoin St., there's Sunset Boulevard running through the ...continue reading "Nobody died during the evacuation of Pacific Palisades"

How do you get water up to high elevations in order to fight fires? Answer: build big water tanks even higher up. This is what Los Angeles does, and its network of tanks includes three million-gallon tanks near Pacific Palisades, site of the worst of LA's massive wildfires. The tanks were all filled last week, ...continue reading "Why did LA firefighters run out of water?"

Politico reports on the politics of LA's enormous fires: Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass faced mounting criticism Wednesday for her handling of deadly wildfires that continued to rage across the region, taking blame from influential city figures as she traveled back from a trip to Africa. Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles ...continue reading "Being there is not all it’s cracked up to be"

Here's another picture of a horse. It's from the same place as my Thanksgiving horse, but it's a different horse. It was very sociable, this horse.

In the American Time Use Survey, there are three big categories of time spent with non-family members (other than work): civic/religious activities, volunteering, and socializing.  Here's what that looks like over the past 20 years: Time spent with others is fairly flat until 2010. Since then it's been declining rapidly, helped along by a big ...continue reading "Raw data: Time spent with others"

Brandon Gill attended Dartmouth, where he headed the infamously conservative Dartmouth Review. After graduation he founded the D.C. Enquirer. He's married to Dinesh D'Souza's daughter. A couple of years ago he moved from New York to Texas in order to run for Congress. In November he won. He's young conservative royalty. Rep. Brandon Gill: "President ...continue reading "Quote of the day: “This is the light of America expanding”"

This paper has been making the rounds lately: Let's assume this is true. Los Angeles has roughly two million apartment units and adds about 10,000 new ones each year. If, through some herculean effort, LA managed to increase this by 20x, it would amount to 200,000 new units. This in turn would.... ....reduce rents by ...continue reading "The rent is going to stay too damn high"

I went out to buy some eggs this afternoon but my local Ralph's didn't have any. Not at any price. Bird flu is hitting hard here in California. But then I went to my local Gelson's and picked up a dozen eggs for $6.49. Using the rule of thumb that everything at Gelson's is overpriced ...continue reading "Semi-raw data: The price of eggs is lower than you think"

In North Carolina's Supreme Court race, Democrat Allison Riggs beat Republican Jefferson Griffin by 625 votes. Griffin demanded a recount, and Riggs expanded her lead to 734 votes. So it's over? Riggs won? By no means: Griffin has also filed election protests against 60,000 ballots in all 100 counties that could extend the race indefinitely. ...continue reading "North Carolina Republicans can’t abide even a single Democratic win"

When I was out in the desert last week taking a picture of the Heart Nebula, I also did another test run of the Milky Way with my regular camera. To give you an idea of what I photographed, here's a diagram of our galaxy: During the summer, Earth is pointed toward the galactic core ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"