Kevin Drum 🕸

Earlier today I came across a tweet from Kristen Soltis Anderson about a Pew Research poll asking people which federal agencies they viewed favorably.¹ Her primary takeaway is that between 2019 and 2023 Republican views of nearly every federal agency have cratered. I was noodling around with this, and finally decided that much of it ...continue reading "Raw data: What Democrats and Republicans think of federal agencies"

Despite all the rain, it doesn't seem like we're in for a poppy superbloom this year. But the sunflowers are looking terrific. Here's a few of them out in the desert near Indio.

As we all know, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis took revenge on Walt Disney Co. last year after its CEO dared to criticize DeSantis's anti-gay stance. Unfortunately for DeSantis, he didn't really think things through. First he decided to get rid of the special assessment district that Florida granted to Disney World back when it was ...continue reading "Ron DeSantis is not a smart man"

We have a few months to go before we hit the federal debt ceiling and the United States goes up in smoke because it can't pay all its debts. Republican leadership agrees that we shouldn't let the country go up in smoke and that increasing the debt ceiling is therefore imperative. There's an obvious way ...continue reading "A conversation about the debt ceiling with my GPT twin"

Here is Tucker Carlson following the mass shooting in Nashville at a Christian school: The trans movement is the mirror image of Christianity and therefore its natural enemy. How appalling does Carlson have to get before Rupert Murdoch finally pulls him off the air? Is there literally nothing he can say that crosses the line ...continue reading "Tucker Carlson descends ever further into the muck"

Reed O'Connor is the go-to judge if you want to get a ruling against Obamacare. O'Connor hates Obamacare. As near as I can tell, he'll rule against it no matter what's at stake or what the legal justification is. So guess what? A federal judge in Texas said Thursday that some Affordable Care Act mandates ...continue reading "Obamacare hating judge rules yet again against Obamacare"

You've all seen plenty of punditry about GPT-4, almost all of it based on the generic version available to plebs like us. But that's nothing. There are also dozens of companies that have been building specially trained versions of GPT-4 for different industries ("vertical markets," or "verticals," if you want to sound like you know ...continue reading "GPT-4 will (almost) be your next doctor"

This is the St. Martin Canal in the 10th arrondissement of Paris. I believe the view is looking north from the bridge at Rue Léon Jouhaux.

The Dominion lawsuit against Fox News is the gift that keeps on giving. New stuff keeps dripping out every week that's catnip for both ordinary media and social media alike. Ironically, this is the usual Republican MO for things like Hillary's emails or the IRS jihad against tea party groups: they leak tidbits relentlessly to ...continue reading "Fox News CEO: Stop with the fact checks. Our viewers hate them."

A new AP/NORC poll includes one of our favorite questions: Which government programs do we spend too much on? Here are the results: The only program that a majority wants to cut back is good ol' foreign aid, which now has a thousand-year streak of being disliked even though it accounts for—let's see here—0.9% of ...continue reading "Americans are pretty satisfied with federal spending priorities"

News reports based on leaks from the Fed have said that Silicon Valley Bank was called out in 2021 for some poor governance practices but that warnings about financial risk didn't come until late 2022. However, testimony yesterday by Michael Barr, the Fed's vice chair for supervision, paints a slightly different picture: Near the end ...continue reading "Yesterday we got a little more detail about the Fed’s supervision of SVB"

This is how it starts: A woolly mammoth meatball has been created from the animal’s DNA — 4,000 years after the beast went extinct. It gets worse: Vow, the Australian company that created the food, made the meat by isolating genetic material found in mammoths that gives flavor to red meat and filled in gaps ...continue reading "Mammoth meatballs—no, wait—meatballs *from* mammoths, are on the menu"

This is a picture I took in the Tuileries in Paris. In France, even the pigeons are elegant looking creatures.

I made this chart for an odd reason and didn't end up using it for anything. But as long as I made it, I might as well share it. Isn't that the kind of stochastic¹ mind dump that blogging is famous for? ¹Fancy word for "random."

Just kill me now: House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan sent a letter Monday to IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen seeking an explanation for why journalist Matt Taibbi received an unannounced home visit from an IRS agent. ....The bigger question is when did the IRS start to dispatch agents for surprise house ...continue reading "Joe Biden orders IRS to jerk Matt Taibbi’s chain. Maybe. Just asking questions here, folks."

Michael Barr, the Fed’s vice chair for supervision, testified before Congress this morning about the failure of Silicon Valley Bank: SVB was flagged in a presentation to the Federal Reserve Board on the risks created by rising interest rates weeks before its stunning March 10 collapse....“Staff relayed that they were actively engaged with SVB but, ...continue reading "Why did the tech community panic over Silicon Valley Bank?"

From the LA Times this morning: Three inmates died in Los Angeles County jails in just over a week Three Los Angeles County inmates died in an nine-day period this month, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, a grim milestone. ....To people paying close attention to the county’s lockups, the cluster of deaths ...continue reading "Jail deaths have dropped by a third in Los Angeles"

A few years ago the good people of Kentucky elected a Democrat governor. That's bad enough, but with Mitch McConnell in the hospital Republicans are now in a positive tizzy. They're afraid that McConnell might die or have to retire, leaving the governor free to appoint a Democrat to fill out his term. Naturally this ...continue reading "Calvinball needs to stop"

Today the Washington Post asks, "Why Americans are so pessimistic about their finances?" After presenting three stories of families at different income levels, their conclusion is that the price of eggs is up. Unfortunately, their data doesn't really back this up, since household income has increased more than spending. So they take a different tack, ...continue reading "Financial anxiety got you down? It’s probably more to do with savings than inflation."

I went out to the desert on Friday to do some astronomy, but in order to avoid traffic I left the house early and took the scenic route. In Banning I turned off the interstate and took Highway 243 up to Idyllwild and then back down to Indio. By the time I got to the ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"