Kevin Drum 🕸

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.

Here's a comparison of GDP growth under Presidents Trump and Biden. I have deleted the last three quarters of 2020 since Trump can't be held responsible for the pandemic. Nobody ever shows this comparison. Is that fair? Why or why not?

Josh Marshall annotates the New York Times for us: Now compare this to the print edition: In the print edition, there's only one front page piece about the special counsel's report. It occupies less than 10% of the A1 real estate. It's not the top story. There's no accompanying art. And the headline is pretty ...continue reading "Web vs. print: A mini case study"

The latest from Gaza: The Israeli military is drawing up plans for both the evacuation of civilians from Rafah and a “massive” military operation.... More than a million displaced people are crowded into Rafah, and aid groups have warned against military action there. The United States “would not support” a major Israeli military operation in ...continue reading "Israel plans massive attack in Rafah"

Joe Biden continues to have problems enunciating certain sounds, and I also think that "angry" Joe Biden doesn't work for him. That said, here's his entire press conference this afternoon. It's only 13 minutes long. Watch for yourself and decide if, speech issues aside, he seems in any way cognitively limited. As usual, it strikes ...continue reading "Here is Joe Biden’s press conference. Watch for yourself."

A couple of years ago Microsoft stunned the AI world with a $10 billion investment in OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT. That's a lot of money! Or, maybe it's chickenfeed. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, has apparently decided the world needs a lot more chipmaking capacity and he's just the guy to get it off ...continue reading "Sam Altman wants $7 trillion"

A dozen years ago Rand Simberg wrote a piece that said climate scientist Michael Mann had "molested and tortured" data to produce his famous hockey stick analysis of rising global temperatures in the 20th century. National Review's Mark Steyn agreed, adding explicitly that Mann's conclusions were "fraudulent." This all happened a couple of years after ...continue reading "Michael Mann wins libel suit against climate skeptics"

Special Counsel Robert Hur has cleared President Biden of willfully keeping classified documents in his home after he left the vice presidency. As usual with these things, however, he also wrote a "damning" doorstop report to go along with it. Don't they all? The whole case turns primarily on the word "willfully." Hur seems to ...continue reading "Special counsel clears President Biden in documents case"

Tyler Cowen points today to a 2021 study that investigates whether liberals or conservatives are more likely to believe viral misinformation. The researchers removed their own bias by using a third-party service to track the 20 most viral news stories (ten true and ten false) on a biweekly basis. At the same time they surveyed ...continue reading "The truth has a liberal bias"

Pelicans hanging out at sunset on the jetty at Dana Point.

The only thing wrong with this Wall Street Journal headline is that it doesn't say "Investors Are Almost Always Wrong," full stop. My keen observation about investors is that they think (a) whatever is happening now will keep happening, and (b) high things will come down and low things will go up. Of course, they're ...continue reading "Investors have no idea what they’re doing"

The February schedule for BLS releases includes something called "Occupational Requirements in the United States," and I've been waiting to find out just what this is. Today the 2023 edition was released and it turns out to be about.......occupational requirements. But not just education or experience. Are you OK with heights? Is the job outdoors? ...continue reading "Does your job require people skills?"

The LA Times reports that California's Central Valley residents are excited that they'll soon have access to high speed rail. For example, here's Domaris Cid, a student at Fresno City College: “It kind of sucks how I would have to move out of the valley to ... have an education that I want,” said Cid, ...continue reading "California’s train to nowhere is such a dumb waste of money"

Apropos of nothing in particular, here's a summary of how many people were deported in 2023 following a hearing in immigration court: Nicaraguans are packed off nearly two-thirds of the time. Cubans are nearly never sent away. Overall, about a third of immigrants who get hearings are deported. The balance of hearing outcomes fall mainly ...continue reading "Raw data: About one-third of illegal immigrants are deported"

Here's a great story about cybersecurity company Fortinet Inc.: A widely reported story that 3 million electric toothbrushes were hacked with malware to conduct distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks is likely a hypothetical scenario instead of an actual attack. ....Fortinet, who was attributed as the source of the article, has not published any information ...continue reading "You are safe from your toothbrush . . . for now"

A CBO report published today says that economic growth over the next decade is likely to be higher than previous projections. Why? Mostly because of the surge in immigration over the past couple of years. So hooray for immigration? Not really. I suspect CBO's estimates of net immigration are too high, but even if they're ...continue reading "Does immigration really boost GDP?"

A friend of mine told me today that 60 Minutes ran an episode on Sunday about a gap in the border wall near Jacumba Hot Springs. Here's what it looked like: The implicit question from the 60 Minutes piece is, why can't the government fill this four-foot gap "between the 30-foot steel border fence and ...continue reading "What’s up with that gap in the border fence?"

This is Bovard Hall on the USC campus at dusk. It is also Bovard Auditorium and the Bovard Administration Building. Take your pick.

Pew Research released some survey results today about voting. The partisan divides were mostly unsurprising, but there were a couple that were unexpected: It looks like liberals have lost the battle on voter ID: even 69% of Democrats think it's a good idea. At the same time, conservatives have lost the battle on felon voting. ...continue reading "Even Republicans think it’s fair to let felons vote"

Greg Ip says today that tariffs haven't reduced "trade links" with China much. But year-end trade figures were released today, and if you look at imports of goods from China it sure looks like they had an impact: Ip says this is a bit of a mirage because imports from places like Mexico and Vietnam ...continue reading "Imports from China are down . . . sort of"