Kevin Drum 🕸

I have good news and bad news. The good news is that I've ramped up to the final dosage and Talvey has not produced any serious neurological side effects. I'm probably out of the woods on that. And some more good news: unless I'm badly mistaken, Talvey doesn't require dexamethasone after the ramp-up period. In ...continue reading "Health update"

I've been crashed out all day and woke up a while ago to eat dinner and watch Jeopardy! The room TV has no guide, so afterward I just surfed a bit and ended up on Fox News. I lasted a minute. The hospital TV must be on satellite or something, because I was getting the ...continue reading "Fox News is lying about FEMA"

I happened to see a local political ad a few minutes ago for some people I've never really heard of, but the gist was that one of them supported the allegedly odious George Gascón and was therefore unfit for office. For you non-natives, Gascón is an ex-LA cop who eventually became San Francisco district attorney ...continue reading "Raw data: Crime in Los Angeles"

Suppose you are walking through an airport at a steady 2 mph. You get onto a slideway that's also moving 2 mph. You're now moving 4 mph. Nope. Your speed is 3.999999999999999964 mph. That's about 4 minus one-quadrillionth of a mile per hour. Welcome to our universe.

We live in the United States, so it's only natural that we're mostly concerned about American public opinion. But in the case of the Gaza War, Israeli public opinion is obviously more important. And among Israeli Jews, it's hawkish: 90% of Israeli Jews approved of last week's assault against Hezbollah in Lebanon. And what's the ...continue reading "The Israeli public wants war"

The California Aqueduct near Victorville on a bright, sunny afternoon.

A few minutes ago I suddenly got curious about Greece. What's happened in the years since their great financial crisis of 2009? Here you go: It's been 14 years since the Greek economy collapsed under the weight of loans they couldn't repay and they still aren't close to full recovery. Meanwhile, Germany, which loaned them ...continue reading "Raw data: The Greek financial crisis"

J.D. Vance is a slicker, glibber liar than Donald Trump—a low bar—but in the end he's no less deceitful. He made himself look like a reasonable guy last night, but only by misstating things at almost every turn. A few examples: Climate change is "weird science," and the way to fight it is to make ...continue reading "The sweet, reasonable deceit of J.D. Vance"

Sunset in the Mojave Desert.

I'm not sure why I did this, but something from last night got me curious about the effect of immigration on the economy in the broadest terms. That is, can we tease out any effect at the highest levels of economic activity? Here are naturalizations compared to GDP: Naturalizations rose steadily through the mid-90s and ...continue reading "Does the economy care very much about immigration?"

According to our friends at YouGov, nothing much happened this week. Kamala Harris continues to have a 3-point national lead over Donald Trump. But just for fun, here's a simple linear extrapolation of how they're doing: Don't take this seriously in any way. Not that it matters. If things really do end up with Harris ...continue reading "Harris maintains 3-point lead over Trump"

One of the weirdest claims in the Trump-Harris debate was Trump's lengthy declaration that he sucked it up and did his best to save a flailing Obamacare because it was the best choice for the American people. J.D. Vance repeated the claim tonight. It's beyond even Trumpian levels of bizarreness. He campaigned on repealing Obamacare. ...continue reading "What’s the deal with Trump and Obamacare?"

In tonight's vice-presidential debate, J.D. Vance obviously made a calculated decision tonight to tone the rhetoric way down and introduce himself to America as a friendly, reasonable guy. On some important issues he backed way down. Deport 25 million illegal immigrants? How about a million criminals and then we'll think about the rest. Ban abortion? ...continue reading "In a nice vs. nice debate, nobody won and nobody lost"

As long as we're on the subject of interviewing presidential candidates: Former President Trump turned down a "60 Minutes" offer of back-to-back conversations with both presidential nominees, with his campaign saying he didn't want interruptions for fact checks. https://t.co/yVRNAHsDop — Axios (@axios) October 1, 2024 Trump refuses to submit himself to a fact check. Could ...continue reading "Donald Trump’s entire campaign is now untethered from consensus reality"

At the New York Times, Bret Stephens and Gail Collins take up their weekly conversation: Bret: I’m still where I was last week: waiting for Harris to persuade me to vote for her. What’s wrong with asking her to sit down for a one-on-one interview with a serious journalist who will ask some tough but ...continue reading "Let us hold Donald Trump to normal standards of conduct. Please."

Iran's "sharp escalation" today involved less than 200 missiles and, apparently, zero casualties. It's barely conceivable that this wasn't intensely deliberate. Twice now, Iran has lobbed missiles at Israel, and both times they've done it with plenty of warning, small numbers, and ineffective targeting. They might as well be wearing a sandwich board announcing that ...continue reading "Iran hoists a white flag"

With the port strike in the news, you may be wondering how much money unionized longshoremen really make. It turns out this is not so easy to suss out. Pacific Coast shippers are represented by the PMA, which publishes a relatively straightforward list of average annual earnings. East Coast shippers are represented by the USMX, ...continue reading "Raw data: Average earnings of unionized port workers"

The chimpanzee is keeping an eye on you.

As long as we're on the subject of disasters, here is NOAA's estimate of the cost of large disasters over the past half century: Both the number of big disasters per year and the cost per year have gone up about 6x since the '80s.

Three weeks ago: Republicans in disaster-prone states, eager to present a united front during government funding talks, are shrugging off a disaster aid cliff — even as a storm barrels toward the Gulf Coast. ....“Disasters happen,” said Florida Republican Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart, chair of the State-Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee, when asked about Johnson's continuing resolution.... ...continue reading "Disaster relief in Republican-land"