Kevin Drum 🕸

This is a Julia butterfly at the Schmetterling Haus in Vienna.

Hiring was down in October: To put this into context, hiring is still above its pre-pandemic average. At the same time, it's declined 1.1 million over the past three years. It's now down to about its 2017 level.

The other shoe has finally dropped: China said on Tuesday that it would begin banning the export of several rare minerals to the United States.... Sales of gallium, germanium, antimony and so-called superhard materials to the United States would be halted immediately on the grounds that they have dual military and civilian uses, China’s Ministry ...continue reading "China strikes back against US sanctions"

This is apropos of nothing in particular. I just happened to be poking around in the FBI's crime statistics: Since I assume prostitution itself isn't dying off, this means that apparently the police are hassling sex workers less. However, they're hassling customers slightly more. Since 2017, the ratio of prostitution arrests to customer arrests has ...continue reading "Raw data: Prostitution in the US"

Our story so far: Pete Hegseth has no qualifications to be secretary of defense. He's a Fox News weekend host who's written a book about how terrible our military is, and that's it. He's also been accused of sexual assault in an encounter he had while he was divorcing his second wife and had just ...continue reading "Pete Hegseth, conservative asshole"

Good ol' Democrats: Donald Trump extorted Ukraine, tried to violently overturn the 2020 election, pardoned every crony he could dig up, and has nominated for cabinet-level positions Matt Gaetz, Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr., and Kash Patel. The only one of these that has generated more than token opposition from Republicans is Matt Gaetz, ...continue reading "Democrats back down from a knife fight yet again"

Last week, Donald Trump tossed out a bombshell: he would impose massive tariff hikes against Canada and Mexico unless they addressed immigration and fentanyl to his liking. This produced a flurry of attention, including a phone call with Mexico's president and a visit from Canada's prime minister. Then the whole thing quickly disappeared. This week ...continue reading "Donald Trump and the bombshell presidency"

Just a quick note: In the end, Democrats will probably¹ pick up two seats in the House of Representatives and their nationwide vote share will be nearly identical to 2022. They received 48.54% of the vote compared to 48.60% two years ago. This is something to account for in any narrative about the lessons Dems ...continue reading "Wait. Democrats picked up two seats in Congress this year?"

I spared you this picture on Thanksgiving, but today your luck has run out. This is why Kamala lost: because Trump fans are nuts. The remarkable thing is that shrines like this aren't even uncommon. I see them regularly. There's something about Trump that makes a lot of people see him not just as a ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

From the AP: Russian President Vladimir Putin approved budget plans, raising 2025 military spending to record levels as Moscow seeks to prevail in the war in Ukraine. Around 32.5% of the budget posted on a government website Sunday has been allocated for national defense, amounting to over $145 billion. This is a little over 7% ...continue reading "Russia is spending record amounts on the Ukraine war"

Here's an interesting thing. When the pandemic hit and people started working from home, construction of office buildings fell. That makes sense. But it only fell a little bit: Despite sky-high vacancy rates, we're still putting up office buildings at the rate we did at the very peak of the housing bubble in 2007. Something ...continue reading "We’re still putting up a whole lot of new office buildings"

I'm out in the desert twiddling my thumbs while my telescope takes pictures, but I still have some internet access and I see that President Biden has pardoned his son Hunter. I'm not surprised. I'm only surprised that he didn't wait until January 19th. I suppose I'm required to have a take on this. Fine. ...continue reading "Biden pardons his son. World pretends to be shocked."

Today Bob Somerby happened to quote something Lisa Boothe said on Fox News yesterday: Joe Biden took a stage at the end of July [2021], CNN Town Hall, telling Americans that if you got the vaccine, you wouldn't get the virus. So we were lied to the entire time, and Dr. Fauci is corrupt and ...continue reading "A look back at what COVID was really like"

Marc Andreessen is the co-creator of Mosaic, the first commercial web browser, and one of the founders of Netscape, a pioneering dotcom company that was eventually sold to AOL for $4 billion. Then he became a legendary Silicon Valley venture capitalist, investing in the likes of Skype, Facebook, Twitter, Lyft, Slack, Pinterest, and many others. ...continue reading "What happened to Marc Andreessen?"

Has inflation reduction stalled out? Only partly: Inflation in goods went to zero two years ago and has stayed there ever since. However, nominal wage growth continues to play catch-up with overall inflation—and since the price of services is driven largely by wages this has kept services inflation high. Eventually these two will come down ...continue reading "When will inflation finally fall below 2%?"

According to the Wall Street Journal, shoppers are "fighting back" against retailers who have put more stringent rules in place for returns. But the new rules are no surprise. During the pandemic we were all encouraged to stay home and shop online with the promise that returns would be no problem. And we responded! The ...continue reading "Returns are killing the retail industry"

I've been wondering where the preposterous Kash Patel would land, and now we know: He's going to be director of the FBI. Aside from being a fanatic Trump loyalist, Patel naturally has precisely no qualifications for the job. He's worked as a trial attorney, and then as Devin Nunes' attack dog, and that's it. He's ...continue reading "A Trump attack dog will head up the FBI"

Here is Joey Politano's latest update of real GDP growth among the G7 group of rich countries: The US is on top, followed by Canada and Italy. Germany and Japan bring up the rear. But the best measure of economic growth is real GDP per capita. Let's take a look at that: The US is ...continue reading "Real GDP for real across the G7"

Congratulations, France, on Charles Kushner, your new ambassador from the United States. And don't think for a moment that this is nothing more than a bit of unusually rancid nepotism to benefit the father of Ivanka Trump's husband. He earned this. As for all those "other crimes" Kushner committed, Trump pardoned him for that stuff ...continue reading "Ivanka’s father-in-law is our new ambassador to France"

The Washington Post says homebuilders are super excited about Donald Trump's election: “The energy right now is just unbelievable,” said Greg Hardwick, president and owner of Hardwick General Contracting, a custom home builder in central Florida. “Among builders, among clients — anybody that is taking a risk in the housing market right now feels really ...continue reading "Home builders are swooning over Donald Trump"