Kevin Drum 🕸

I'm catching up on the news, and I see that Steve Scalise has dropped out of the race to replace Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House. I think this is wise, but not for political reasons. As someone who's been through chemotherapy for multiple myeloma, I know that it gets worse as it progresses. ...continue reading "It’s time for Republicans to ask for Democratic help"

Yes, I'm traveling this week. Here's where I stopped for the night. Can you identify the city? UPDATE: leszekmp got it right: it's Flagstaff, Arizona, taken from an overlook on the road up to Lowell Observatory. We stopped in Flagstaff on our way to Durango, Colorado, where (a) we have friends, and (b) I will ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

After last month's big spike—mostly due to gasoline prices—inflation settled down a bit in September: But the news was mixed: CPI was down but core CPI edged up. That's both surprising and unwelcome.

Alex Tabarrok agrees that the "deaths of despair" narrative has been oversold. But he's not ready to give it up completely: I wouldn’t, however, throw out despair as an organizing principle. The evidence on “despair” goes beyond death to include a host of co-morbidities such as mental stress, marriage rates, labor force participation rates and ...continue reading "“Despair” doesn’t seem to have increased this century"

This is an LBB, a little brown bird. There's nothing special about him except for excellent lighting and exceptional sharpness. So he is your bird of the day.

Travel day today. I'm calling a lid.

Prosecutors in the case of Donald Trump's effort to overturn the 2020 election want to know if he plans to blame poor advice from his attorneys. But why do they care? The New York Times explains: Defendants who pursue advice of counsel arguments waive the shield of attorney-client privilege that would normally protect their dealings ...continue reading "Will Trump blame his lawyers for advising him to overturn the 2020 election?"

Matt Yglesias takes on the "Deaths of Despair" meme today. It originates with Anne Case and Angus Deaton, who wrote about it a few years ago, and, as Matt points out, it's somehow survived despite a series of statistical examinations that have left it in tatters. If you adjust for age, it becomes less dramatic. ...continue reading "Are “deaths of despair” really just about deaths from Oxy?"

The Atlanta Fed's GDPNow forecast continues to suggest that the economy was red hot in Q3: Their forecast of 5.1% growth is largely based on increases in consumer spending (2.5%) and net exports (1%). Those subcomponents are indeed looking good so far: The trade deficit is on track to be $20+ billion better than in ...continue reading "Third quarter GDP remains a very big mystery"

On Sunday night I decided to try again photographing our old friend the Wizard Nebula. This time I changed two things. First, I went up to Palomar Mountain instead of out to the desert. The sky there isn't as dark, but Palomar's 5,000-foot elevation provides clearer skies and cooler weather. Second, I used a 7 ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

A few days ago Benjamin Wallace-Wells interviewed Michael Mina, an immunologist and epidemiologist who argues that COVID-19 is a "textbook virus": the more times you're exposed the more protection you'll have. He's frustrated that we didn't acknowledge this from the start: This is a very different story about immunity than we were told through most ...continue reading "Get vaccinated! Again."

We've all seen the videos of organized gangs barreling into stores, grabbing armfuls of merchandise, and then escaping before stunned store workers can do anything. The National Retail Federation puts some numbers to this crime wave: Savvy, confident organized retail crime gangs — who steal billions of dollars worth of merchandise each year only to ...continue reading "Retail shoplifting is up slightly over the past decade"

Because it's the season for stories about teachers, here's the latest BLS report of public school employment for September:¹ Employment in 2023 is the highest it's been in the past 15 years, and the ratio of students per ed worker is down to 6.16, the lowest over that period. This is a pretty good year ...continue reading "Raw data: Public school staffing"

This is a lone sailboat in the late afternoon, taken from the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. There's nothing very special about this picture, but I'm accustomed to taking pictures of the Pacific Ocean, where I'm generally shooting into the sun. On the Atlantic coast you're shooting away from the sun, which certainly produces much deeper blues ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

Will Bunch on the stakes of the auto strike: "What Fain and the UAW are proposing isn’t just a nice little bump in next week’s paycheck, but a return to the day when a person from the assembly line could afford a fishing cottage — or to send their kid to college," writes @Will_Bunch.https://t.co/0KsHimntd1 — ...continue reading "Raw data: UAW pay over the past century"

Over at National Review, Andrew Stuttaford writes about the war against cars: Some of those directing climate policy genuinely believe that climate change poses an existential threat to our species, but many others see it as a way to force the construction of the kind of society that certain strains of the Left have long ...continue reading "The War on Cars™ is going very badly indeed"

Our latest Israeli-Palestinian war has me more depressed than I would have expected. Longtime readers with good memories will recall that I long ago lost all sympathy for Israel. I won't bother spelling out the entire list of their appalling behavior, but it's long and damning. But if it's possible to have negative sympathy for ...continue reading "The latest Palestinian war will end the same way as all the others"

I don't have anything in detail to say about today's surprise Hamas attack on Israel. Except this: what are they thinking? Hamas has never won a war against Israel and never will. They must know this. They'll inflict some pain, get crushed, and Gaza will end up even worse off than before. None of this ...continue reading "Gaza"

I turn 65 shortly, and yesterday I got a note from my doctor: I will no longer be allowed to use Ambien. Nor any other sleep med. Why? Because they...... ......make you drowsy. I'm not joking. All sleep meds carry a risk of keeping you drowsy longer than intended, and in old folks that increases ...continue reading "I am now forbidden from taking sleep meds"

My sister is back from a vacation to Merrie Olde Englande and she brings catblogging home with her. This is Budge, the resident cat at Norwich Cathedral. My sister reports that Budge is very sociable, though I'm sure he has a hidey hole somewhere when he doesn't want to be disturbed. He has an Instagram ...continue reading "Friday Cat Blogging – 6 October 2023"