Kevin Drum 🕸

I'm sitting in a hospital bed tonight after my first chemo injection and I have nothing to do. So let's play a game of AITA. Before I checked in, I had already decided to make a nuisance of myself over two things. The first is that I wanted to wear my street clothes instead of ...continue reading "AITA? Hospital version."

John Lanchester says today that the inflation rate, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, "has for a century described economic reality, shaped political debate and determined the fate of presidents." Amen to that. I wish we could staple the CPI to the forehead of every adult in America.

This is a example of Zephyranthes in our front yard. According to Wikipedia, there are now about 200 species of this flower "following the expansion of the genus in 2019." Also: The name is derived from Ζέφυρος (Zephyrus), the Greek god of the west wind, and ἄνθος (anthos), meaning flower, referring to the slender stalks. ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

Did you know that Joe Biden held a cabinet meeting on Friday? Probably not. Why would you? But wait. Did you know that Joe invited Jill Biden to speak to the cabinet about the White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research? Probably not that either. Did you know that Jill sat at the head of ...continue reading "BREAKING! Joe Biden is too feeble to run a cabinet meeting."

My PSA score is now well into the normal, healthy range: I was somehow expecting something even lower, but I don't know why. According to the Kaiser test portal, anything below 4.5 is normal, so this is a very good result. I'm now down to only one cancer, for which I'll be getting a new ...continue reading "Health update"

Melania Trump is hawking a $600 gold necklace these days while Donald is peddling a Trump commemorative coin—to go with his sneakers, his picture book, his NFT, his Bible, and pieces of the suit he was wearing during his debate with Joe Biden—to go with pieces of the suit he wore at his mug shot ...continue reading "What’s up with all the Trump merch?"

This is a sad story in the Wall Street Journal today. Michael Bloomberg wanted to help bright but disadvantaged kids get into good colleges, so he teamed up with two outfits, CollegePoint and the American Talent Initiative: Billionaire Michael Bloomberg has spent more than $140 million over the past decade to get tens of thousands ...continue reading "It’s not easy to get more poor kids into college"

This week New York magazine has a long profile of Ta-Nehisi Coates that reminds once again of why I'm puzzled that he's held in such extraordinary esteem. It all started with "The Case for Reparations," his first big hit, which struck me as sort of a bloated term paper mostly cribbed from Wikipedia—and which fizzled ...continue reading "The miseducation of Ta-Nehisi Coates"

What are Kamala Harris's economic plans? For that matter, what are Donald Trump's? To start, we can assume Trump has ordinary Republican opinions and Harris has ordinary Democratic opinions. Beyond that, here are their specific major proposals: Trump Harris Taxes Extend 2017 tax act 20% tariffs across the board Reduce corporate tax rate Tax-free Social ...continue reading "Trump vs. Harris on economic policy"

The FBI released full-year crime figures for 2023 today, and officially they say murder was down 11.6%. However, if you look at the murder rate, it's down 12.3%. The Crime Data Explorer has also gotten a makeover and now shows crime figures monthly: (The 2021 figures are grayed out because they're unreliable.) All the numbers ...continue reading "The murder rate dropped 11-12% in 2023."

This is another sand dune at the Cadiz Dunes Wilderness in the Mojave Desert. I've got a bunch more, so don't worry that I'll be running out anytime soon.

Ben Dreyfuss tweeted last night about a study showing that Democrats and Republicans were equally likely to believe in conspiracy theories. This struck me as historically unsupported, but who knows? Maybe it's true today. So I took a look at the study and discovered something odd. The top three conservative conspiracy theories are COVID, climate ...continue reading "Republicans and their conspiracy theories"

Let's start out the week with a brief reminder of what the federal government spends its money on: Your goal is to find $1,700 billion in either spending cuts or tax increases to balance the budget. Generally speaking, most people agree there should be no cuts to defense, Social Security, Medicare, or veterans, which leaves ...continue reading "Can you balance the federal budget?"

I like this passage from a Washington Post article yesterday about the insane chaos now surrounding the Trump campaign: By early last week, Trump and his No. 2, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), found themselves trying to reverse-engineer evidence of Haitians eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio, arguing they were simply trying to draw attention ...continue reading "The GOP is a reverse engineering virtuoso"

After failing to pass a stopgap spending bill because of opposition within his own party, Republican Speaker Mike Johnson has bowed to the inevitable: Pressed closer against the Sept. 30 shutdown deadline — and mired with disputes within his conference — Johnson brokered a deal with Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House ...continue reading "Republicans cave in yet again on the budget"

Inspired by a story in the Wall Street Journal today, here are all the spots in California where the wholesale price of electricity is currently negative: The Journal explains that this is all due to the rise of renewable energy, mostly solar and wind, which is already widespread in Europe: The changes sweeping Europe’s electricity ...continue reading "“Too cheap to meter” is finally getting close"

I don't really understand how you can conduct a poll in a place like Gaza, but the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research says they can do it. Here's one result from their latest survey: After nearly a year of the most brutal pummeling imaginable, only 28% of Gazans still think Hamas can win ...continue reading "Gazans are starting to give up on the war"

Here's the growth of mobile cellular subscriptions in a few selected countries: Note that this is per 100. Most rich countries have more cell subscriptions than they do people. The top region is Hong Kong at 292 (China as a whole clocks in at 125). The United States is a hair above the world average ...continue reading "Raw data: Cell phone subscriptions"

Here is the number of murders each year in Springfield, Ohio, both before and after the large-scale arrival of Haitian immigrants: Daniel Driscoll, the Republican top prosecutor in Clark County, adds this: During the time that I’ve been with the prosecutor’s office, which is 21 years now, we have not had any murders involving the ...continue reading "Raw data: Homicides in Springfield"

Here's a funny thing. The Wall Street Journal, searching for a trend based on Kamala Harris's debate revelation that she owns a gun, says that Democrats are suddenly buying lots of guns. Their data for this comes from NORC at the University of Chicago, but so does mine and it's not the same: According to ...continue reading "No, Democrats aren’t suddenly gun nuts"