Kevin Drum 🕸

I get letters: It’s flabbergasting to me that such a thoughtful thinker and talented writer would use this imbecilic expression “nothingburger.” Thanks! Thoughtful and talented are great things to be. But what about nothingburger? Is it imbecilic? Or is it a great slang term? I think there's no way to resolve this except by polling ...continue reading "A quick nothingburger quiz"

A 34-year-old Navy lieutenant is currently serving a three-year term for manslaughter in a Japanese prison. Here is a Wall Street Journal editorial explaining how he got there: Lt. Ridge Alkonis, assigned to the guided-missile destroyer the USS Benfold in Yokosuka, was driving his family back from a trip to Mt. Fuji in May 2021 ...continue reading "The Wall Street Journal has a problem with the truth"

Here's the impact of the first bill that Republicans passed today: I'm just kidding, of course. The real name of the bill is the Family and Small Business Taxpayer Protection Act. Because why not? Republicans can call it anything they want regardless of what it actually does. And what it does is simple: It repeals ...continue reading "First Republican act of the new Congress is to blow up the deficit"

Over at National Review, Dan McLaughlin joins the throng of conservatives who are crowing today over a new study that owns the libs big time. Remember all that Russian influence that helped Donald Trump get elected in 2016? Never happened: Today, however, the Post‘s own cybersecurity columnist Tim Starks offers a reality check: "Russian influence operations ...continue reading "Was Russian influence on the 2016 election just a big nothingburger?"

This is about right: GOP’s first week in majority under McCarthy: -pass rules package with secret concessions to insurrectionists -eliminate the House Ethics Committee -create committee to attack investigations of Trump -pass $168B bill to repeal IRS funding to investigate billionaire tax cheats — Sawyer Hackett (@SawyerHackett) January 9, 2023 Why is defunding the IRS ...continue reading "Top Republican priority in 2023: Tax cuts for the rich, of course"

This is sunset on the Seine, shortly after we left from our pier near the Eiffel Tower. I think we were passing near La Defense (off to the left) at this point.

Kaiser Permanente has been really good lately about delivering all my test results quickly and efficiently. Little did I know that they have no choice: Congress was full of good intentions when it directed the Department of Health and Human Services to make sure patients get their test results as soon as they’re available. But ...continue reading "How fast should doctors provide test results?"

Ezra Klein thinks J. Storrs Hall's Where Is My Flying Car? is simplistic and obtuse: But Hall’s book is worth struggling with because he’s right about two big things. First, that the flattening of the energy curve was a moment of civilizational import and one worth revisiting. And second, that many in politics have abandoned ...continue reading "Intelligence and energy are all we need"

About a century ago, Willa and Charles Bruce were forced to sell a small strip of beach property that they had developed a few miles south of Los Angeles. The municipal authorities claimed they wanted to develop a park on the land, but the real reason they forced the sale is that the Bruces were ...continue reading "Reparations hit a road bump in Southern California"

For some reason they waited until a couple of days after the anniversary of 1/6 to do it, but their inspiration is obvious. Thanks, Donald.

Alan Blinder, a Real Economist™, says that inflation is way down: Over the past five months (June to November 2022), inflation has slowed to a crawl. Whether measured by the consumer-price index, or CPI, which most people watch, or the price index for personal consumption expenditures, or PCE, which the Federal Reserve prefers, the annualized ...continue reading "An economist tells us to listen up: inflation is now low"

I was browsing through some other stuff and came across a set of four economic predictions I made last April. Let's see how I did: 30-year fixed mortgages will break 5%. . Home prices will stop rising and might even drop 10% by the end of the year. . Gasoline prices will drop 40-50 cents ...continue reading "A look back at my predictions for 2022"

It only took 15 rounds of voting, but Kevin McCarthy finally managed to convince four holdouts to vote present instead of voting for someone else. So he never got the 218 votes he needed, but with four missing votes he only needed 215—which he already had. It was an epic victory.

For those who want some basic data for the national debate that's likely to unfold once we finally have a Speaker of the House, here is federal spending over the past few years, both before and after the pandemic. As usual, the trendline is for spending prior to the pandemic, extended to the current day ...continue reading "Raw data: Federal spending"

Things are getting a little more concrete. I'm scheduled for my leukopheresis, where they extract T cells from my blood, on February 15th. It takes about a month for the lab to perform its magic, which means the actual CAR-T procedure will likely take place on March 15. Then I have four to six months ...continue reading "Health Update"

Jeez, I take a nap and we're up to 13 votes. And Kevin McCarthy has convinced most of his skeptics to switch sides and support him. He's up to 214 votes now. Only four more to go! asdf

Charlie is such a camera hog.

Our local gas company is alerting us in advance that January is going to be rough: The warning Southern California Gas Co. issued to its customers was unusually blunt: “There’s no easy way to put this,” the company said. “January bills are likely to be shockingly high.” Anyone who heats their home with natural gas ...continue reading "Natural gas prices skyrocketed this month in Southern California"

The American economy gained 223,000 jobs last month. We need 90,000 new jobs just to keep up with population growth, which means that net job growth clocked in at 133,000 jobs. The headline unemployment rate declined to 3.5%. This is a pretty good jobs report. The topline number is only so-so, but the number of ...continue reading "Chart of the day: Net new jobs in December"

Hum de hum: Massive crypto lender Genesis Global Trading Inc. laid off 30% of its staff and is considering filing for bankruptcy, according to people familiar with the matter, the latest sign of financial turmoil at the crypto lender. It's not Binance, but it's the third of the top ten crypto firms to go belly ...continue reading "A third huge crypto firm is about to croak"