Kevin Drum 🕸

Donald Trump keeps digging himself into an ever deeper hole in the Cemeterygate scandal: Trump claimed that he didn’t know “anything about” the use of the images on his campaign social media. “We have a lot of people, we have TikTok people,” he said. “You know, we’re leading the internet.” Pressed on it again, Trump ...continue reading "Trump blames families for Arlington debacle"

I see that Donald Trump has finally decided how he's going to vote on an initiative that would repeal Florida's six week abortion ban. He doesn't like six weeks, but he's voting No anyway. Why? Because Democrats in other states are crazy. OK, sure, whatever. In reality, the Florida initiative would allow abortion until viability, ...continue reading "Trump will vote for 6-week abortion ban"

Today brings another edition of Wall Street Journal Watch™. The topic this morning was people who have to work two jobs to stay afloat: Sam Lalevee was scraping by in his job at a call center in Raleigh, N.C., when his rent jumped to $1,000 a month from $800. So he got a second job ...continue reading "There is nothing unusual about the number of people with multiple jobs"

I've finally gotten around to watching the entire CNN interview with Kamala Harris. For the record, it was half an hour long. It struck me as fairly ordinary, with Harris performing just fine. She didn't make any waves, but neither did she stumble or have trouble with any of the questions. Nor did she filibuster. ...continue reading "Rating the CNN interview(er)"

Charlie would like you to please admire his lovely, furry tummy. Thank you.

What was the original idea behind Donald Trump's visit to Arlington Cemetery? Was it just intended as an excuse to bash Biden and Harris for not showing up? I don't know. But Fox News is sure making it seem plausible: Biden, who skipped Arlington event for vacation, trashed Trump in June for declining cemetery visit ...continue reading "Fox News: Biden “skipped” Arlington “event”"

Welp, it only took 50 years, but here we are: In a milestone breakthrough, more than half of Caltech’s incoming undergraduate class in the fall will be women for the first time in its 133-year history. The class of 113 women and 109 men comes 50 years after Caltech graduated its first class of undergraduate ...continue reading "Caltech has come a long way since 1976"

PCE inflation remained subdued this month, with both core and headline numbers right around 2%: On a conventional year-over-year basis, headline PCE clocked in at 2.5% and core PCE at 2.6%.

I caught a few minutes of the commentary after CNN's broadcast of the Kamala Harris interview and got annoyed all over again by Scott Jennings blathering about "Biden's inflation." I realize that I'm going to convince approximately no one, but it wasn't Biden's inflation. It was Trump's inflation. Our recent surge in prices was not ...continue reading "Just stop it. It wasn’t “Biden’s inflation.”"

Josh Marshall says that Donald Trump's campaign event at Arlington Cemetery was even worse than you think: The idea was to lay a wreath honoring the 13 members of the U.S. military who were killed during the evacuation of Kabul in 2021 and film a political ad. They would distribute the video and attack Vice ...continue reading "Trump’s secret Arlington Cemetery plan"

Here's another poll of swing states, this time from Bloomberg/Morning Consult: This is even more optimistic than this morning's Emerson College poll, though note that the margin of error is about 4% in each state. NOTE: We're close enough to the election that from now on I'll be reporting the results of likely voters whenever ...continue reading "Maybe Kamala Harris is actually ahead in swing states"

Donald Trump must be desperately afraid that abortion is going to lose the election for him. A few years ago he was so anti-abortion he said that women should be jailed for getting an abortion. But now? First he announces that he's in favor of banning abortion only after 15 weeks. Then he writes on ...continue reading "Donald Trump is a woman’s best friend"

This is a Joshua tree lit by the setting sun at Joshua Tree National Park. I have to confess that Joshua trees don't do much for me, and I've never been entirely clear on why a thousand square miles of scrub and Joshua trees became a national park. But I'm sure it has a unique ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

I noticed yesterday that the Atlantic's Yoni Appelbaum has a new book coming out next year called Stuck. It asks, "How did America cease to be the land of opportunity?" Obviously I haven't read it yet, but it got me curious. Has America ceased being the land of opportunity? My own suspicion is that America ...continue reading "Is America still the land of opportunity?"

Here are the latest swing state results from Emerson College Polling: It's close to a dead heat in the battleground states. Aside from Arizona, Kamala Harris is either ahead or within 1% in every state. Fingers crossed.

The Army has finally released a statement about Donald Trump's vulgar and illegal behavior on Monday at Arlington National Cemetery: New: The Army is now rebuking Trump campaign staff over the Arlington National Cemetery incident. "Participants in the August 26th ceremony and the subsequent Section 60 visit were made aware of federal laws, Army regulations ...continue reading "Army: Trump knew the rules at Arlington and broke them anyway"

The previous post got me playing again with the Google Ngram viewer, which is a total time suck if you let yourself get dragged into it. But writing about stress got me curious about the use of the word crisis. Here it is: Look at the left edge of the chart. We managed to get ...continue reading "We have a crisis of crises"

Vivek Murthy, fresh off his advisory about the dangers of social media, has a new advisory telling us that parents in America are distraught: Surgeon General: Parents Are at Their Wits’ End. We Can Do Better. The stress and mental health challenges faced by parents — just like loneliness, workplace well-being and the impact of ...continue reading "Stress in America: A deeper look"

This is a snow leopard waking up from a nap at the LA Zoo. It's a very impressive yawn.

This is just a single poll and doesn't show what the trend is, but it's interesting nonetheless: Nearly all Americans believe that financial goals—money, retirement, homeownership—are essential to the American Dream. But only about 60% say the same about marriage and kids. I don't know how that compares to the past, but I'll bet it's ...continue reading "Marriage and kids just aren’t that important anymore"