Kevin Drum 🕸

Language nerds have long railed against the use of podium to refer to the thing you stand behind when you're talking to people. That's a lectern, dammit. But no, language nerds! According to the folks at Merriam-Webster it's perfectly OK to call that thing a podium, and has been for half a century. Why do ...continue reading "A quick weekend primer on Podiumgate"

For some reason, this question has suddenly become the new hotness among economists. But why? Paul Krugman notes that bond yields were pretty steady for a while in late 2022 and early 2023: Over the past few months, however, the bond market has, in effect, capitulated, sending the signal that investors expect rates to stay ...continue reading "Will interest rates stay high forever?"

It looks like there will be no government shutdown. Kevin McCarthy caved in at the last minute and submitted a "clean" 45-day continuing resolution in the House. Clean enough, anyway. Every Democrat but one voted for it and it passed by a huge margin, 335-91. Now it goes to the Senate, where it should pass ...continue reading "Government shutdown averted as McCarthy caves"

A regular reader asks if I can post a chart of gasoline prices over my lifetime. Of course. In fact, I can do better: I was born right in the middle of that warm postwar summer of ever-declining gasoline prices—which ended abruptly in 1973 with the first oil embargo. And then again in 1979 with ...continue reading "Raw data: Gasoline during my lifetime"

New York City is suffering through yet another thousand-year flood.¹ They sure seem to happen more often than once every millennium, don't they? Based on some probably unreliable googling here and there, here's how many we've had recently in the US: Take a look at the trendline: In a very short time the number of ...continue reading "New York is the third “Thousand-Year” flood in 2023 (so far)"

Things haven't been going well for Team Trump in the Georgia election fraud case. Several attempts to move the trial into federal court have failed, and today one of the co-defendants broke ranks and agreed to a plea deal: Scott Hall, a 59-year-old bail bondsman from the Augusta area who prosecutors alleged played a wide-ranging ...continue reading "In Georgia, one down and 18 to go"

Over at National Review, Jeffrey Blehar says he's stunned at how decrepit Joe Biden has become. It was bad enough two years ago, but: That was in 2021 — the man practically looks whipcrack-smart and youthful by comparison with today. The decay from that day to now (even just the public collapse from early 2023 ...continue reading "Joe Biden sounded fine during his speech yesterday"

Here is Charlie on the landing of our stairway. He likes to sit here so that he can keep track of everyone who goes up and down.

Back in 2015 Jake Tapper moderated a Republican primary debate in which nearly every question was framed in terms of something "Donald Trump recently said..." And this was back when Trump wasn't even leading in the polls and certainly wasn't a former president. Today there's way more justification for doing this, but instead it's disappeared ...continue reading "Trump shills should be forced to defend Trump"

The Washington Post tells us today about Jennifer Petersen, a Virginia mother who's a serial book challenger. She has so far challenged 73 books in the Spotsylvania school district, all for sexual content. The Post confirmed that this had nothing to do with race or sexual orientation: Petersen objects to any book containing graphic descriptions ...continue reading "Sexually explicit YA books lead to . . . less teen sex?"

If it's PCE inflation day, it must also be PCE spending day. So how much did consumers spend last month? Spending was up 0.6% from the previous month on an annualized basis. It was up 2.3% from the previous year. So spending continues to increase. Not by much, though.

We have some pretty good news on inflation today: The headline rate of PCE inflation spiked up to 4.8%, which was fully expected due to rising gasoline prices, but the core rate dropped to 1.8%. The core rate is (say it with me) the Fed's preferred measure of inflation, and it's no longer "heading toward ...continue reading "Core PCE inflation dropped below 2% in August"

Yesterday I ran across an item about the high murder rate in Washington DC. I also happened to remember this, based on the research of Marc Edwards: Beginning in the year 2000, Washington DC experienced an episode of lead contamination in its drinking water that wasn't discovered until 2004. For five years, DC's kids were ...continue reading "Lead and crime in Washington DC"

This chart is making the rounds on Twitter: A paper from a few years ago breaks this down in more detail. After a big pile o' math, here's what it tells us: Note that the bottom figure is a chart of mortality, so higher is worse. And what it shows is that our middle-aged mortality ...continue reading "Rising mortality is mostly limited to white high school dropouts"

As predicted, an appellate judge has tossed out Donald Trump's lawsuit against the trial judge in his business fraud case: The appeals court, in a terse two-page order Thursday, effectively turned aside for now a lawsuit Mr. Trump filed against the trial judge, Arthur F. Engoron. The lawsuit had sought to delay the trial, and ...continue reading "Appeals court tells Trump to buzz off"

Here's our final dome of the week, the dome of Sacré Coeur in Paris. Luckily tomorrow is catblogging day, because this is the last dome I have in my queue.

I suppose no one cares, but last night Doug Burgum said this: China controls 85 percent of the Rare Earth minerals. They’re called Rare Earth, because they’re measured in parts per million. Nah. They're measured in grams or kilograms, just like everything else. They're only called "rare" earths because they were rare 200 years ago ...continue reading "Rare earths aren’t rare"

Republicans revved up their impeachment inquiry against Joe Biden today. So how's it going? Keep in mind that these are not a bunch of spear carriers for the Biden crime family. They are the Republicans' own witnesses. 2 of GOP's witnesses at impeachment inquiry hearing say there isn't enough evidence against Joe Biden Dubinsky "More ...continue reading "Republican impeachment inquiry not going well"

Our long national nightmare is over: S. Res. 376, clarifying the dress code for the floor of the Senate, was adopted by unanimous consent. — Senate Press Gallery (@SenatePress) September 27, 2023 Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman will no longer be allowed to wear shorts and a hoodie on the floor of the Senate. Our weeklong ...continue reading "You gotta wear a tie in the Senate"

This is crazy: The Atlanta Fed's GDPNow model is still forecasting that GDP growth in Q3 will be a red hot 4.9%. It was one thing to dismiss this early in the quarter, but as the model gets more and more data to work with it becomes more accurate. At this point, Q3 is just ...continue reading "Has the economy really grown 5% in the third quarter?"