Kevin Drum 🕸

I want to highlight this excerpt from the Trump indictment: What's interesting to me is not the obvious obstruction of justice, which we know is a core part of the indictment, but Trump's obsession toward "my boxes." His sense of possession is palpable: even though he knows better, he's convinced they are "my" boxes and ...continue reading "Donald Trump and his obsession with “my boxes”"

Self-driving cars are here! Sort of. Mercedes will sell a car in 2024 that can drive on highways with no hands on the steering wheel. But there's a catch: The 'DRIVE PILOT' system can only operate on highways during daylight at speeds not exceeding 40 miles per hour, the DMV said. Mercedes-Benz said in a ...continue reading "True autonomous highway driving is (sort of) here"

As near as I can tell, there are three primary defenses of Donald Trump coming from Republicans: Trump didn't sell any of the documents, destroy or alter any documents, or give them away. So how bad can it be? Hillary did it too. DOJ and the FBI are corrupt and have been weaponized against Trump. ...continue reading "The Republican defenses of Donald Trump"

Are we in the middle of a great moral decline? It's a common belief. But it turns out it's always been a common belief. Every year for the past 70 years, anyway. A new study tests the belief in moral decline by examining survey items conducted since 1949: Typical items included: “Do you think that ...continue reading "Belief in moral decline is widespread, popular—and wrong"

The indictment against Donald Trump in the classified documents case has been unsealed. It includes 37 separate counts: The bulk of the charges in the 49-page indictment, unsealed Friday afternoon, relate to willful retention of national defense information — a violation of the Espionage Act that pertains to whether individuals broke the rules for the ...continue reading "Unsealed indictment charges Trump with 37 counts of illegal behavior"

What exactly was Donald Trump talking about in his recorded conversation about secret documents and Mark Milley, his Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff? And what document was he waving around during this conversation? Here's the background. In the middle of 2020 Milley nearly resigned because he believed Trump was "doing great and irreparable ...continue reading "Here’s what Trump was talking about in that taped conversation"

Yesterday we had a bunch of city workers on the street outside our backyard, and they had lots of machines that made loud noises as they dug up the roadway. This is why Hilbert looks a little startled in this picture. He wanted to play in the backyard, but he wasn't really sure about all ...continue reading "Friday Cat Blogging – 9 June 2023"

By an odd chance, today brings yet more evidence that young people are becoming more conservative. A PRRI poll asked whether people believed there were only two gender identities (man and woman) and Gen Z respondents showed a huge increase over the past two years: Every age group showed an increase, which is yet another ...continue reading "Yet more evidence for the growing conservatism of Gen Z"

Startup companies in the US raised only $37 billion in venture capital during the first quarter of 2023. That's less than half what they raised during the tech boom a year ago: Part of the reason for the slowdown is simply that booms don't last forever. Another part is that lots of current startups are ...continue reading "Raw data: venture funding has plunged over the past year"

CNN has a transcript of a 2021 conversation in which Donald Trump is complaining that Gen. Mark Milley said Trump wanted to attack Iran. Then he waved around a document that apparently says the opposite: This totally wins my case, you know. Except it is like, highly confidential. Secret. This is secret information....As president, I ...continue reading "Trump admits he can’t declassify secret documents"

On Monday Ron DeSantis released a campaign video that included images of Donald Trump hugging and kissing Dr. Anthony Fauci: Three of the images in this collage are real. The three that show Trump hugging Fauci are AI fakes. DeSantis's excuse? He refuses to comment. However: A person with the DeSantis campaign told CNN that ...continue reading "DeSantis attacks Trump with fake AI images"

Donald Trump has been indicted on criminal charges related to the classified documents he withheld from investigators after taking them to his home in Mar-a-Lago when he left office: The Justice Department took the legally and politically momentous step of lodging federal criminal charges against former President Donald J. Trump, multiple people familiar with the ...continue reading "Trump indicted in classified documents case"

For technical reasons, the normal rent inflation measure from the BLS lags actual rent by 6-12 months. BLS has been investigating how to fix this, but in the meantime they've come up with an alternative measure that looks only at the rent paid by new renters. This index is released quarterly and leads the normal ...continue reading "Rent inflation is down to zero"

Yesterday I posted evidence from GSS that young men became suddenly more conservative between 2021 and 2022. Here's a follow-up from a Gallup poll released today: This is quite different. Young people have spiked upward in their conservatism, but middle-aged people have spiked up even more. And this is for both sexes, not just men. ...continue reading "Conservatism jumped in 2022—and then even more in 2023"

A springtime bloom of yellow alstroemeria in our backyard.

Eurostat has revised its Q1 estimate of eurozone GDP based on weaker results for Germany. Instead of a slight increase, Q1 GDP fell -0.4% on an annualized basis. This is the second quarter in a row of negative growth: Negative growth in Europe won't affect the US economy hugely, but it certainly won't do us ...continue reading "Raw data: Europe is officially in recession"

Here is the latest reading of my M-protein level from Monday (Day 41 after the CAR-T infusion): It's now down to 0.39, which is a bit of a slowdown from previous readings. However, this probably means nothing. My doctor had already warned me that measurements from Kaiser Permanente—where I'm now getting tested—deviate slightly from measurements ...continue reading "Health update"

Alabama has seven congressional districts and about 27% of its population is Black. Under normal circumstances you'd expect the Black vote to prevail in two districts, but Alabama has never been normal. In 1992 it got its first Black district since Reconstruction, and it's been limited to one Black district ever since. In late 2021 ...continue reading "Supreme Court rules Alabama redistricting is racially prohibited"

As we all know, a week ago Ron DeSantis flew a group of migrants from Texas and dumped them in Sacramento. But there are a couple of things I don't get about this affair. First, California Attorney General Rob Bonta says the migrants were picked up in El Paso: Bonta, who met with some of ...continue reading "Two questions about Ron DeSantis’s migrant abduction stunt"

From the Wall Street Journal: Investors are bracing for a flood of more than $1 trillion of Treasury bills in the wake of the debt-ceiling fight, potentially sparking a new bout of volatility in financial markets. Some on Wall Street fear that roughly $850 billion in bond issuance that was shelved until a debt-ceiling deal ...continue reading "$1 trillion in Treasury borrowing is not a big deal"