Kevin Drum 🕸

I'm bored, so I finally decided to find out what the Caitlin Clark kerfuffle is all about. I clicked on a Fox News story because, hey, if I'm going to dive in I might as well do it in the deep end, right? But first, here's what she said, complete and unabridged: Going into the ...continue reading "Caitlin Clark says Black women are pretty good basketball players"

From the New York Times: Trump’s Treasury Pick Is Poised to Test ‘Three Arrows’ Economic Strategy Mr. Trump’s Treasury secretary pick, Scott Bessent, has mapped out a three-pronged approach to jump-starting a U.S. economy that has been saddled with inflation and sluggish output. The concept, which he billed during the campaign as his 3-3-3 plan, ...continue reading "Trump’s economic goal: Do almost as well as Biden"

This is Charlie hiding behind the drapes. Earlier this week he was there having a staredown with our local squirrel. I don't know what the deal is with this. The squirrel loves to sit at a distance and chirrup wildly at the cats as if they're invading his territory, not the other way around. The ...continue reading "Friday Cat Blogging – 13 December 2024"

Remember the scare over black kitchen utensils? Andrew Gelman points to this piece about it in the National Post: The study estimated that using contaminated kitchenware could cause a median intake of 34,700 nanograms per day of Decabromodiphenyl ether, known as BDE-209 . . . [which] “would approach” the reference dose given by the United ...continue reading "Your black kitchen utensils are fine"

OK, here's our final ACS chart: I did this one out of my usual curiosity about whether it would gibe with the rise of working from home during the pandemic. It's still hard to tell. Clearly, commutes in big cities did go down when the pandemic started. But not by much: a grand total of ...continue reading "Commuting dropped (slightly) during the pandemic"

In my previous post I said that someone should publicize claim denial rates for Obamacare more widely. Why not me? It's a great big chart with 162 insurers, but I guess I've got the room.

I'll have our last ACS chart later, but in the meantime I happened to run across some actual data about health insurer claim denial rates, the topic du jour since UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was gunned down in broad daylight, allegedly in part because of his company's astronomical denial rate. These figures come from ACA ...continue reading "Claim denial rates from health insurers have been declining (maybe)"

Here's yet another ACS chart. It shows the percentage of "disconnected youth," which means late teens who aren't in school and aren't working: This one isn't as surprising as the other two (I don't know how they're going to turn out until I grab the numbers from FRED). Basically, fewer kids became unmotivated slackers during ...continue reading "Slacker teens are in shorter supply these days"

Bob Somerby wrote today about a CNN interview with North Dakota Sen. Kevin Cramer. Wolf Blitzer wanted to know why Cramer supported Kash Patel to be FBI Director, and Cramer replied that it was all about the FBI's search for Donald Trump's classified documents: [I] want to get to the root of how is it ...continue reading "Here’s the simple truth about the FBI"

I've been waiting for this shoe to drop: NEW: Reps. Adrian Smith and Chuck Edwards wrote Trump a letter today urging him to terminate the IRS’s new free tax filing service, otherwise known as Direct File, on “day one” through an executive order. It’s co-signed by 27 House Republicans. https://t.co/jEsifotrbd — Benjamin Guggenheim (@ben_guggenheim) December ...continue reading "Republicans ask Trump to kill the IRS’s great new Direct File app"

Here is today's next selection from the ACS data dump. It's an odd statistic called the Racial Dissimilarity Index, which measures the percentage of white folks who would have to move in order to have the same racial distribution everywhere. In other words, lower is better. It means a city is less segregated. For a ...continue reading "Self-segregation is easing a bit in big cities"

This is an okapi at the Los Angeles Zoo, reaching for a juicy tree leaf belonging to one of the 100 varieties of tree leaves they consume. Yummy!

On Tuesday I wrote about my hundredth post on how America is much better off than we think. You know the drill: incomes are high, crime is low, drug use is down, etc., etc. This produced some of the usual pushback: I'm a retired, upper-middle-class guy living in Irvine who just doesn't get how badly ...continue reading "The economy really is great. So what’s the problem?"

I might as well show you my fabulous view under every possible light, right? Lotsa glare on my phone camera! By the way, everything is fine so far. No side effects except for a sleepless night thanks to the dex. I blame Joe Biden.

National leaders who make big promises usually can't keep them. Their favorite dodge is to pretend that after weeks of intense study they now realize the opposition left them a far worse mess than they had imagined. So, you know, we probably need to lower expectations. Donald Trump doesn't really have that option. The US ...continue reading "Trump starts the long, arduous process of reneging on his promises"

The Census Bureau released a pile of 2023 data from the American Community Survey today. Some of it is kind of surprising. Unfortunately it's all by county, so the best I could do was an average of the ten biggest counties to get an overall sense of what things are like in urban America. The ...continue reading "Rent burdens have eased considerably since 2010"

So far no cytokines are releasing and my brain is clear. But the meds come with a dose of dex, which means I'll probably be up all night. So here's a nighttime picture of the view out my window.

Does a pardon "necessitate" a confession of guilt? “[A] pardon at some unspecified date in the future ... would not unring the bell of conviction,” federal prosecutors argued in a Jan. 6 case before U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols. “In fact, quite the opposite. The defendant would first have to accept the pardon, which necessitates ...continue reading "Does a pardon require you to admit guilt?"

Um, what? A sudden infusion of $30 million into Donald Trump's nascent cryptocurrency venture from a Chinese billionaire sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly defrauding investors could potentially deliver an eight-figure payday to a company associated with the president-elect. Let's break this down: Weird Chinese billionaire and possible crook Justin Sun invested ...continue reading "How to get away with bribery: do it in broad daylight"

Montana has once again put on hold a new law banning gender-affirming care for trans teens: Montana’s ban on gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors has been temporarily blocked by the state supreme court on grounds that it is likely to violate the right to privacy enshrined in the state’s constitution. ....Montana’s supreme court justices ...continue reading "Red states shouldn’t be banning gender-affirming care. But there’s a but."