Kevin Drum 🕸

Here's an exceptionally nice photo of our local squirrel. He spends all his time chittering madly at both people and cats even though I keep telling him that nobody is even interested in his stupid pine cones. But he doesn't believe us. He probably never will.

Eurostat has issued a flash estimate of the euro area inflation rate for February: it will reach 5.8%, up from 5.1% in January. Here's how that compares to the US: There are a couple of takeaways from this. First, US and European inflation rates follow each other, so don't be surprised if the February number ...continue reading "European inflation spikes up in February"

The New York Times is getting dragged all over lefty Twitter for this fact check: We fact-checked President Biden's claim during the #SOTU about strong U.S. job growth. Follow our live analysis: https://t.co/wmEgwIYSOi pic.twitter.com/HwXEcia7IL — The New York Times (@nytimes) March 2, 2022 The Times deserves whatever they get for this. Given the lower US ...continue reading "Fact checking the president"

For the first time in a long while I watched the State of the Union Address like a normal person: only barely paying attention. Overall, I thought it was fine. President Joe was very much on his bipartisan schtick, starting off with lots of crowd-pleasing Ukraine stuff and then emphasizing things he thought everyone could ...continue reading "Biden’s SOTU wasn’t great, but it was pretty good"

Sen. Rick Scott got himself into the soup a few days ago by releasing a plan for the Republican Party that included, among other things, a tax proposal: All Americans should pay some income tax to have skin in the game, even if a small amount. Currently over half of Americans pay no income tax. ...continue reading "Rick Scott wants to raise taxes by thousands of dollars on poor families"

This is the Cathedra Petri in St. Peter's Basilica, directly behind Bernini's baldachin. It was built to house St. Peter's wooden throne, which Bernini enclosed in a typically massive bronze sculpture. The photo is (surprise!) a panorama stitched together to provide a good view of both the floor and ceiling.

Even though our sanctions regime against Russia specifically excludes oil and gas, energy traders are worried that Russia's crude oil shipments might suffer anyway. This has caused the price of Brent crude futures to soar, but not Russian oil futures: In a sign that demand for Russian oil has evaporated, prices for the country’s flagship ...continue reading "The price of oil is up. Or is it?"

I don't know a lot about sanctions, but I've learned two things over the past couple of decades: In general, unilateral sanctions don't work. They only work if they're backed by lots of countries. They take a while to work. Sanctions are sort of like a grinding medieval siege, something that's effective only if you ...continue reading "Our sanctions against Russia are tough but still probably won’t work"

What have Republicans done recently? They tried to extort Ukraine in return for military aid. They precipitated anti-mask/vaccine fervor, resulting in tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths. They defend the 1/6 insurrection as just an ordinary protest¹ and continue to support Trump's big lie about Democrats stealing the vote. They support efforts to allow red ...continue reading "Let us review the Republican record"

Nikki Haley has some advice for us: We need to become energy independent and we need to do it now. — Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) February 28, 2022 As it happens, we're already energy independent: We continue to import about a fifth of our energy for reasons of convenience and geopolitics, but we don't have to. ...continue reading "Let’s make Europe energy independent"

So it looks like Joe Biden will be giving his State of the Union address just as Russian troops are finally entering Kyiv. And make no mistake: despite Russian military clumsiness so far, they're going to take Kyiv and there's not much we can do about it. This puts Biden in a tough position. Will ...continue reading "This is a tough night for Biden to be giving a big speech"

Well, good news for me, anyway. As many of you know, there's been an explosion in recent years of what are called CAR-T treatments for blood cancers in general and for multiple myeloma in particular. Unlike ordinary chemo treatments, CAR-T involves taking T cells from a patient (e.g., me) and shipping them off to a ...continue reading "Good news today!"

For some reason, everyone seems to be missing the obvious reason why the US (and NATO more broadly) aren't attacking Russia directly: because we never have. Nor has Russia ever directly attacked us. This has been hard military doctrine in the nuclear era. Instead, both countries have fought lots and lots of proxy wars, the ...continue reading "We will not get into a hot war with Russia"

Showing support for Ukraine is the order of the day, but none of the pictures in my photo queue could be made to fit a Ukrainian theme of any kind. So instead I made my own. This is a Spanish needles daisy with the background converted to blue and then run through a Photoshop filter.

Patrisse Cullors, one of the founders of Black Lives Matter, wants us to take "Defund the Police" very, very seriously: Her new book, An Abolitionist’s Handbook, offers 12 steps in the form of a guidebook that everyday activists can use to fight for an abolitionist present and future—and her bold, humanistic approach can be previewed ...continue reading "Patrisse Cullors: Defund the police means just what it sounds like"

Why oh why? For the life of me I don’t understand why Dems aren’t falling over themselves to praise how Biden has handled things and express immense relief that he, rather than a fully compromised Trump, is leading the global response, but this delusional nonsense is what’s filling the void. https://t.co/0qBkAF2tRK — Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler) ...continue reading "Democrats need to back Biden more loudly on Ukraine"

The New York Times reports today on a pair of studies that conclude with high certainty that the COVID-19 virus originated at the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan, not at the nearby Wuhan virology lab. Here's an annotated map that provides a simple look at how the virus initially spread: I think it's possible that ...continue reading "New studies confirm that COVID-19 virus occurred naturally"

In the New York Times, Chris Miller says there's a reason that Vladimir Putin keeps winning wars: For the past decade, Americans have come to believe that Russia’s strength lies in hybrid tactics — cyberwarfare, misinformation campaigns, covert operations — and its ability to meddle in other countries’ domestic politics. Yet as we have searched ...continue reading "Why Putin wins: Obvious answers to obvious questions edition"

AFPAC is for conservatives who think CPAC has sold out to the woke liberals. In other words, their applause for Joe Arpaio last night was not just a misunderstanding: Joe Arpaio tells the crowd at AFPAC that he has been named the biggest racist in the country. The crowd erupts in applause. "What are you ...continue reading "AFPAC: We love us some good ol’ school racism"

I was roaming around in the vicinity of John Wayne Airport earlier today and decided to take a bunch of pictures of planes taking off. My goal was to find the best spot and then decide if it was good enough to merit coming back when the light was better. In a nutshell, it wasn't. ...continue reading "Can you identify these airplanes?"