Kevin Drum 🕸

Film critic Richard Zoglin takes to the Washington Post today to echo one of my pet peeves. It happened on an outing to see Napoleon: I counted a dozen commercials, for everything from Hyundai to M&M’s, before the Regal voice of God told us to silence our cellphones and “enjoy the show” — after which ...continue reading "Let us complain today about modern corporate suckitude"

Rep. James Comer and the rest of the idiots on the House Oversight Committee are continuing their jihad against Hunter Biden apace. I know that's not news. But today Politico reports this: House GOP investigators said they were given no heads up that Hunter Biden would not attend their deposition — though his attorney, in ...continue reading "It’s just endless lying from the Hunter Biden fanatics"

This is a picture of turtles and.......fish? ready to spout at the Latona Fountain in the gardens of Versailles. No, wait: turtles and lizards, to celebrate the myth of Latona, who got pissed off at the Lycians and had them turned into frogs and lizards. Frogs? So why does the fountain have turtles and lizards? ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

The Daily Mail recently conducted a poll asking people what they thought of Joe Biden and Donald Trump. They made a word cloud of the most popular responses, and Trump was so proud of his that he posted it on Truth Social: Apparently Trump loves the idea that people associate him with power, revenge, dictatorship, ...continue reading "Donald Trump, the revenge president"

Oh come on: As 2023 comes to a close, holiday shoppers offered yet another sign that the U.S. economy will roar into the new year. On Tuesday, fresh retail sales data from Mastercard showed that consumers spent big on gifts, meals and apparel in November and December.... U.S. retail sales between Nov. 1 and Dec. ...continue reading "Holiday sales were flat this year"

Every year or two there's a plagiarism scandal that makes the front page. The latest one concerns some stuff written a long time ago by Claudine Gay, president of Harvard University. I am, as usual, unimpressed. With only occasional exceptions, these things are always the same: the culprit has been caught taking a sentence here ...continue reading "Most “plagiarism” is a nothingburger"

Here's a typical paean to the school system in Finland written in 2018: 10 reasons why Finland's education system is the best in the world No amount of pontificating will change what we already know. The American education system needs to be completely revamped — from the first grade to the Ph.D. ....Finland is the ...continue reading "The US education system is one of the best in the world. And one of the worst."

From a Vox piece about food delivery companies: Last month, a New York judge ruled against the delivery companies as they tried to fight against a $19.96-per-hour minimum wage for delivery workers.... Ligia Guallpa, executive director of the Workers Justice Project, the advocacy organization behind Los Deliveristas Unidos, a union for delivery workers, told me ...continue reading "Food delivery in NYC is expensive"

Tyler Cowen asks: How Were So Many Economists So Wrong About the Recession? Maybe they were wrong. Maybe the fabled soft landing will happen. Maybe it will turn out that high interest rates don't always slow down the economy. But I would still counsel patience. Economists have been wrong so far, but that doesn't mean ...continue reading "Economists might have been wrong about a recession. So far."

Happy Boxing Day! I have no pictures of boxes, but to make up for it here's a picture of the box-like Segerstrom Hall, crown jewel of the Orange County Center for the Performing Arts. A nighttime picture is here.

Did you know that the average body temperature has been steadily dropping since the early 1800s? It has: In 1800 the average body temperature was about 99°F. Today it's about 98°F. How about that? And why has body temp declined? Basically, better health: Change in the population-level of inflammation seems the most plausible explanation for ...continue reading "Factoid of the day: Body temperature is going down"

Can someone explain to me why this is national news? This was a minor incident. The kid was never lost, was always under supervision, and was quickly reunited with his family. It produced some understandable, short-lived panic in the boy's family, but why was it even a local news story, let alone a national one? ...continue reading "BREAKING: Child briefly sent to wrong city"

Atrios notes today that New York City spent $155 million on police overtime this year in the subway and got little in return except lots of arrests and citations of fare dodgers. But it's actually even worse than that. Transit crime so far this year is down 2.3%. Overall serious crime excluding auto theft, which ...continue reading "NYPD spent $155 million on transit overtime and got nothing"

 

As you probably know, a Democrat recently won election to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, giving them a majority. They immediately took up a lawsuit challenging the state's infamously gerrymandered legislative maps and ruled yesterday that the maps had to be redrawn. Bob Somerby is confused by what happened, and that naturally got me curious. It ...continue reading "Here’s the legal issue at stake in the Wisconsin redistricting decision"

Was our recent bout of inflation "transitory"? That depends on how you define it. But since a picture is worth a thousand words, let's look at a picture of core PCE, the Fed's favored measure of inflation: The inflationary surge we typically associate with 1980 actually started in the late '60s and didn't fully recede ...continue reading "Yep, Team Transitory was right all along"

Here's an interesting chart showing post-Brexit immigration into the UK: Apparently the Brexiteers promised a new immigration system that favored skilled workers, and they delivered. After it went into effect immigration from the EU (i.e., plumbers from Poland) plummeted while immigration from the rest of the world (doctors from Delhi) tripled. Overall immigration has increased ...continue reading "After Brexit, immigration to Britain is up"

This is just one person, but I thought it was worth sharing. It came in response to my question about antisemitism on college campuses: I recently just started working on a college campus, and the question I get all the time now (including earlier today) is “What’s up with all the antisemitism on campus? Are ...continue reading "Antisemitism at universities: A response"

Nothing new to report on the border. The stream of immigrants continued to be very high in November: Total encounters in November came to 242,000, the same as October. Of those, about 50,000 were asylum seekers processed at border stations. The other 192,000 were caught crossing illegally between ports of entry.

New York will not be joining California as a state that bans noncompete agreements in employment contracts: Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) will veto a bill to ban employee non-competes in New York, after facing intense pressure from Wall Street, hospitals, and business groups that opposed the measure, according to sources familiar with the matter. This ...continue reading "New York governor foolishly allows noncompetes to continue"