Kevin Drum 🕸

A few months ago Donald Trump sued Hillary Clinton in federal court for— Well, for being mean to him, I guess. This is decidedly not a federal crime, but Trump hoped to get a favorable hearing anyway by filing his suit in a Florida district where the only judge was Aileen Cannon, the Trump appointee ...continue reading "Here are the five best lines from today’s dismissal of Donald Trump’s latest idiocy"

Even in sad times, you always have to keep a lookout for giant cats. When you least expect them, there they are.

Remember last week that Michigan Republicans were refusing to put an abortion-rights initiative on the ballot because of supposed problems with "formatting and spacing"? This was as ridiculous as it sounds, little more than a fuck you to liberals. Well, the Michigan Supreme Court has put the initiative on the ballot by a vote of ...continue reading "Michigan Supreme Court throws out “formatting and spacing” complaint"

Larry Summers makes the case on Twitter that inflation is stubbornly here to stay unless the Fed takes aggressive action. He has six arguments: Inflation expectations may still be anchored, but this is largely based on the belief that we're headed toward a recession. Core inflation is robust and the labor market is tight. The ...continue reading "Let’s analyze Larry Summers"

From the Consumer Expenditure Survey, here is the growth rate of every product category from 2019 through 2021: A little surprisingly, there are several categories that are still way below their pre-pandemic levels: restaurants, apparel, personal care, and education. I understand why restaurants and education might still be trying to claw their way back up, ...continue reading "Raw data: What products have recovered best from the pandemic?"

Queen Elizabeth II has died, which means that Prince Charles finally becomes King Charles. But what number will he be? We've already had King Charles I, who got into a fight with the Trumpists of his time and was eventually beheaded by their rump in 1649. After a few years had gone by the Brits ...continue reading "Queen Elizabeth II dies, leaving Britain awash in code names"

This picture was taken at La Defense in Paris. Stop me if I'm wrong, but it's the starship Enterprise, right? And it's connected to the building via part of the Starfleet emblem. Or am I losing my mind?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released the 2021 version of the Survey of Consumer Expenditures today. It's not complete, but it has all the major categories. The chart below shows the growth of consumer expenditures in 2019, 2020, and 2021: Income was down 1% in 2021 while total expenditures were up 4.2% Both figures are ...continue reading "In 2021, income was down 1% while expenditures were up 4%"

This morning Marian and I made our first trip to City of Hope to get things rolling on my CAR-T treatment. It was an adventure. I'll spare you the routine griping and get straight to our meeting with the doctor. We were running late so he launched into his spiel right away, explaining how Abecma ...continue reading "Health Update"

This is one of the tree-lined paths at the Rodin Museum in Paris. It's really a beautiful place.

How's our crystal ball working these days? Let's roll the tape: August 12: Kevin says the "nuclear secrets" taken from Mar-a-Lago were probably "intel about other countries' nuclear programs." September 6: The Washington post reports that the FBI had found a document "describing a foreign government’s military defenses, including its nuclear capabilities." Always trust Kevin ...continue reading "Crystal ball update"

I know it's Wednesday, but better late than never: The price of gasoline dropped another dime last week. Life under President Biden just keeps getting better and better!

Here is the price of natural gas in the US and Europe: Until February, the US and European prices of natural gas were generally within a few dollars of each other. Today, the US price is $9 and the average price in Europe is about $70. Much of this is because Europe is trying to ...continue reading "Raw data: The price of natural gas in the US and Europe"

During our stay in Paris a pair of wood pigeons came and sat together outside our window every evening around dusk. They seemed quite attached to each other, cooing softly for a couple of hours before flying off somewhere else for the night. They were lovely companions in the ruddy light of the setting sun.

This is off the beaten path, but this tweet reminded me of something: horoscopes are obviously BS, Meyers-Briggs is silly, I don't even understand what the enneagram is, but shared generational characteristics are as real as gravity — Suderman (@petersuderman) September 1, 2022 The Myers-Briggs personality test gets a lot of abuse, and mostly for ...continue reading "What can a popular personality test teach you?"

Here's a chart someone linked to on Twitter yesterday. It shows housing prices in various cities: The basic idea here is that if you put up more regulatory barriers to building new housing, the price of housing goes up. I don't really doubt this. How could it be otherwise, in fact? That said, take a ...continue reading "Why is housing more expensive in LA than Riverside?"

I'm not quite sure what set me off this time, but something I read prompted me to make a couple of charts illustrating US economic performance compared to our large peer countries in Europe. Here is GDP since the start of the pandemic: Thanks to the $3 trillion in relief spending that was passed almost ...continue reading "The American economy is a model for the rest of the world"

Congratulations to the new and improved Trojan football team, which crushed the doughty Rice Owls on Saturday, 66-14. How did we do it coming off a 4-8 record last year? Easy! In the off season we bought ourselves a new coach, a new quarterback, and a few miscellaneous running backs and wide receivers via the ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

Bob Somerby was not happy with President Biden's speech last week: Biden defined a group of Others without taking care to explain exactly who he was talking about. He kept describing the views and ambitions of "MAGA Republicans"—but who did he mean by that? Was he talking about Republican leadership cadres? Was he talking about ...continue reading "Who wrecked the Republican Party?"

I headed out to a local semi-darkish spot in Trabuco Canyon last night, mostly to test my autoguiding software. Sadly, it continued not to work. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. The sky in Trabuco Canyon is not great (it's still Orange County, which is swamped by the Los Angeles light dome) but it's ...continue reading "The Andromeda Galaxy"