Kevin Drum 🕸

Here's a timeless story about the way a widely cited pseudo-statistic managed to worm its way into the discourse. It all starts with a brief funding request 20 years ago that describes the outcome of a program among the Kalinga and Umili peoples in the Philippines: 2004: "From 1990-1996, a total of seven indigenous communities ...continue reading "How a fake biodiversity statistic took over the world"

The whole Haitian cat-eating hoax has highlighted one of the most stunning things about the Trump era: whenever Trump makes up a story, even one that's absurd and quickly debunked, his allies immediately start up a desperate attempt to prove that he was right anyway. In the case of Springfield, we get a picture of ...continue reading "Donald Trump is always right, even when he isn’t"

Here's the uninsured rate during the Trump and Biden presidencies among the non-Medicare population: Despite a good economy, the uninsured rate rose 1.0 percentage points under Trump even if you give him credit for the pandemic decline. Under Biden, the uninsured rate has declined 1.5 points so far.

Time for something weird. Springfield, Ohio, as you know, is currently famous as the site of the Haitian cat-eating hoax being promoted by Donald Trump and J.D. Vance. This has turned out to be a fabrication, but there's broad agreement about the background story: Springfield was a dying town until 2014, when local leaders began ...continue reading "How many Haitian immigrants really live in Springfield? Maybe 2,000?"

Kamala Harris sat down yesterday for an interview with Brian Taff of Philadelphia’s Action News. He asked her this: When you talk about bringing down prices and making life more affordable for people, what are one or two specific things you have in mind for that? Harris is getting a lot of flak for not ...continue reading "Kamala Harris talks about prices"

The Wall Street Journal has a story today about consumers becoming delinquent in paying their bills. The story isn't wrong: both credit card and auto loan payments have transitioned into delinquency (30 days late) at increasing rates over the past couple of years. The data comes from a quarterly Fed report, and the problem is ...continue reading "How’s your credit? Signals are mixed these days."

Ezra Klein put up an interview yesterday with our real border czar, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas. It was interesting. Mayorkas talked about several causes of increased illegal immigration, the prime one being the evolution of highly professionalized smuggling organizations. He also mentioned wars and crime surges in certain Central American countries, which have ...continue reading "Why has illegal immigration gone up and down so much?"

I'll confess up front that I have no idea if this is legit: Just plotted the new @OpenAI model on my AI IQ tracking page. Note that this test is an offline-only IQ quiz that a Mensa member created for my testing, which is *not in any AI training data* (so scores are lower than ...continue reading "Latest AI almost has an IQ of 100"

From Donald Trump, asked if he plans to sell Truth Social stock when his lockup period ends a week from now: No, I’m not selling. I’m not leaving. I love it. I think it’s great. Well, that's that. He's selling.

J.D. Vance has let slip Donald Trump's secret plan for peace in Ukraine: Mr. Vance said Mr. Trump would sit down with Russians, Ukrainians and Europeans and say, “You guys need to figure out what a peaceful settlement looks like.” Um, OK. Gotta say, though, that I expected a little more from the master of ...continue reading "Trump wants Ukraine to surrender to Putin"

Donald Trump is on an insult tour of California, and today he stopped by his 17-hole championship golf course for an impromptu press conference.¹ Here's the news the New York Times doesn't report but the LA Times does: Trump said if he is elected, he would stop sending California federal firefighting aid unless Gov. Gavin ...continue reading "Trump to California: Toe the line or I’ll take away your wildfire money"

In the year after the Supreme Court banned affirmative action at universities, Black enrollment has plummeted at elite universities: This data comes from a tracker run by Education Reform Now. It includes whatever universities have reported enrollment data so far, so it will change over time. So how did this affect white enrollment? Precisely not ...continue reading "Raw data: University enrollment by race"

This is Charlie sitting innocently next to a tree in our backyard. A few seconds after I took this he galloped up the tree, jumped onto the wall, and made his escape. He showed up shortly afterward in our neighbor's backyard. This is the first episode of catblogging taken with my new camera. Did I ...continue reading "Friday Cat Blogging – 13 September 2024"

I don't know whether to laugh at this piece from Politico or to be disgusted or something else: Whenever Vice President Kamala Harris mentions Project 2025 — the Heritage Foundation’s now-toxic blueprint for the next Republican administration — blood starts throbbing in the temples of certain conservative Heritage veterans.... “I cannot think of a study ...continue reading "What’s the matter with Project 2025?"

The BLS released its August report on import prices today. They were down 0.3%, or 3.7% on an annualized basis. But here's a more interesting long-term look at import prices adjusted for overall inflation: Why do we buy so many imported goods? Because they're cheap! The price of imported goods, after adjusting for overall inflation, ...continue reading "The price of imported goods continues to plummet"

If we give away welfare to poor people with no work requirements attached, does this make them lazy and indolent? It's hardly a nonsensical idea, though there's not much evidence that it happens in real life. More importantly, however, is that nearly all of our big means-tested welfare programs do have work requirements. The main ...continue reading "Most welfare programs already require the able-bodied to work"

When I show crime rates I normally use the FBI's figures, which are tallied up from police reports. An alternate source is the National Crime Victimization Survey, which calls up people and asks them if they've been the victim of a crime in the past year. The NCVS figures for 2023 were released today, but ...continue reading "New crime figures show decline in 2023"

Today Peter Coy takes on our habit of measuring inflation as the total over the past 12 months. He says this is like ignoring a football play that just happened and instead announcing only the results of the past 12 plays: Can’t blame the government for this. The headline on the news release from the ...continue reading "For most Americans, inflation is well under 2%"

The Pac-12 lives! Sort of. It's now the Pac-6. Washington State and Oregon State, which never found new homes after the conference collapsed last year, have recruited Boise State, San Diego State, Colorado State and Fresno State to form the nucleus of a new and reinvigorated Pac-something. Moneywise, it's all stupid. The other Pac-12 schools ...continue reading "West Coast football is reborn"

Here's a pretty little yellow wildflower. I'm too lazy to try and find out what it is, but maybe someone in comments can identify it?