Kevin Drum 🕸

Bob Somerby objects to my headline saying that Donald Trump "is losing it": We're sorry, but no. Donald Trump isn't "losing it" at the present time. He plainly lost it long ago, but our politically hapless blue tribe doesn't seem to know how to convince enough voters of that fact, and so we've decided to ...continue reading "Voters need to be more scared of Donald Trump"

Ten years ago California banned lightweight single-use plastic bags in supermarkets. Since then, the gross tonnage of plastic bag waste has increased 47%. Huh? Long story short, supermarkets switched to heavyweight plastic bags that are theoretically reusable but not really. These bags are about three times heavier than old school thin plastic bags, so even ...continue reading "California has more plastic waste than ever"

You may have heard about the atmospheric river that recently passed over Southern California and flooded the whole place. It also dumped lots of snow on our mountains, and Saturday was a beautiful, clear day to capture them. This picture was taken a few minutes walk from my house.

Here was Donald Trump a couple of weeks ago when an American base was attacked by an Iranian proxy drone: This brazen attack on the United States is yet another horrific and tragic consequence of Joe Biden’s weakness and surrender…. This attack would NEVER have happened if I was President.... This terrible day is yet ...continue reading "Donald Trump plays a tough guy on TV"

In the past few days and weeks, Donald Trump has: Pointed at Matt Gaetz and repeatedly called him Rick Gates. Confused Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi. Claimed that Obama was still president. Said that Russia should feel free to attack NATO if they "don't pay." Posted an endless stream of unhinged rants on Truth Social. ...continue reading "The real Donald Trump is losing it"

The overall death rate for drug overdoses in the US is about 0.3%, but the death rate among regular drug users is naturally much higher. Here's an estimate for different drugs: Among ordinary drugs like heroin, cocaine, and meth, regular users run about a 1-2% chance of overdosing in a given year. Among regular fentanyl ...continue reading "Raw data: Death rates in the US from drug overdoses"

This month brings more good news. It's sort of trivial, but that's never stopped me before. In January I told you that my cancer levels had dropped to a level that qualified as a "complete" response. But there's an even better category labeled a "stringent complete" response that has to do with something called the ...continue reading "Health update"

Sometimes it feels like you need a PhD in Trumpology to figure out what the guy is blathering on about. But it's not so hard! Let's go through a few examples. First up is this: Trump on Haley: Where's her husband? Oh, he's away. He's away! What happened to her husband? What happened to her ...continue reading "Deciphering Donald Trump"

I've already said that Special Counsel Robert Hur was out of bounds in his final report when he made derogatory remarks about President Biden's memory, which had nothing to do with the actual case he was investigating. But it turns out it's much worse than that. Marcy Wheeler lays out the problem at length here. ...continue reading "Robert Hur’s final report is worse than I thought"

Yesterday I put up a chart showing that average GDP growth under Donald Trump was 4.1% while Joe Biden's has been more than double that at 8.3%. How come no one ever shows this comparison? The answer is simple: it's not adjusted for inflation. Here are the real numbers: I had two points to make. ...continue reading "Revisited: GDP growth under Trump and Biden"

If this is confirmed it's big trouble for UNRWA: Hidden deep below the headquarters of the United Nations’ aid agency for Palestinians here is a Hamas complex with rows of computer servers that Israel’s armed forces say served as an important communications center and intelligence hub for the Islamist militant group. ....Israeli military officials assert ...continue reading "Israel says Hamas center was hidden directly below UNRWA headquarters"

My memory has always been the Sargasso Sea of storage devices, but I got a disturbingly concrete reminder of this a few days ago. Like many of you (probably) I enjoyed Cixin Liu's trilogy The Three-Body Problem. So when I saw that Amazon had made a series out of it I headed right over. It ...continue reading "My memory sucks"

You've heard endlessly that the Fed has raised interest rates by five percentage points since 2022. And that's true. But remember: always adjust for inflation! There's a big difference between 5% interest rates when inflation is running at 9% and 5% interest rates when inflation is down to 3%. The Fed effectively raised rates nearly ...continue reading "Real interest rates are quite high"

The best way to assess Joe Biden's mental condition would be to sit down and have a talk with him. Unfortunately, most of us never have that opportunity. White House staffers do, but obviously they're biased and can't necessarily be trusted. But it turns out that "most of us" doesn't include Paul Krugman: As it ...continue reading "Who’s visited Joe Biden recently?"

You may be surprised to know that opioid use hasn't increased in recent years. SAMHSA has tracked overall opioid use since 2015, and the number of regular users has declined 26% since then: Most of this is heroin and cocaine. Fentanyl use in 2022 was only about 10% of the total. The reason drug overdose ...continue reading "Raw data: Opioid use in the US"

Both the New York Times and Washington Post reported today on a $2 billion Medicare scam. The way it worked was simple: Scammers buy a few small medical supply companies (seven, to be exact). The companies send Medicare bills for millions of phony catheters. That's it! But how did they get away with it? The ...continue reading "$8 catheters add up fast if you bill for millions of them"

You've probably all seen those pictures of a gang of migrants beating up a pair of cops in Times Square. It's pretty disturbing, and there's no excuse for it. Nonetheless it's instructive to see what really happened. The cops say the migrants were told to move because they were blocking the sidewalk. But bodycam footage ...continue reading "Here’s the whole story behind the Times Square melee"

Special counsel Robert Hur's obviously partisan report on President Biden has raised a question: why are special counsels always Republicans? And they really are all Republicans. In the past 30 years not a single Democrat—or even someone with "Democratic ties"—has been a special counsel or independent prosecutor. It's no mystery why this is. Democrats appoint ...continue reading "Why are special counsels always Republicans?"

According to Politico, the big Republican pushback against Bidenomics is that, sure, inflation is lower, but the price of food hasn't gone down. For the record, this hasn't happened a single time in the past 50 years: Food prices never go down. Sometimes they only go up a little bit—as in 2010 and 2016—but never ...continue reading "What’s left for Republicans to complain about the economy?"

Here's a skycam view of Charlie and Hilbert snuggling up together on the living room sofa. This is a fairly rare occurrence these days.