Kevin Drum 🕸

Here are the UN reports on Gaza's food situation for two months ago compared to today: Apparently the situation has improved. In May OCHA reported that 1.1 million Gazans were projected to face the worst level of famine. Today it's 495,000. Likewise, the number facing Level 4 famine is down by 100,000. Virtually all of ...continue reading "The food situation in Gaza has improved"

*It's remarkable how fast Republicans have pivoted from Biden is decrepit and brain dead to Biden was ousted in a coup by anti-democratic elites! I mean, I would have figured it would take at least a few days. But no. No matter how cynical you get, Republicans can keep surprising you.

Here is the employment rate for Black men and women during (a) 2019 and (b) the past 12 months: For both men and women, employment has been higher over the past year than it was during the final pre-COVID year of Donald Trump's presidency.

Here's some good news: After three weeks of radiation and a couple of months of hormone therapy my PSA level has dropped to 3.2. This is almost normal and indicates that my prostate cancer is on the run. My testosterone level has dropped from 375 to 9, which is very, very low—even lower than the ...continue reading "Health update"

After seemingly endless speculation around weird mini-primaries and town halls moderated by Oprah, it took Kamala Harris a grand total of 24 hours to lock up virtually every important endorsement, a majority of Democratic delegates, and somewhere around $100 million in new donations. She has no competitors and is now the presumptive nominee. This reminds ...continue reading "Kamala Harris is now the Democratic nominee for president"

Liberal myths . Myth: "Crisis" talk is just conservative scaremongering. Reality: Illegal immigration has skyrocketed under Joe Biden. Both Obama and Trump averaged about 35,000 migrants per month. Biden has averaged nearly 200,000 per month. Myth: There is broad support for liberal immigration laws. Reality: This used to true, but not anymore. In Gallup polls, ...continue reading "Liberal and conservative myths about illegal immigration"

wtf? Vance: I had a Diet Mountain Dew yesterday and one today. I'm sure they will call that racist. pic.twitter.com/z3ra8Y5F2f — Acyn (@Acyn) July 22, 2024 Mountain Dew has been a Pepsi product 60 years, long before J.D. Vance was born. What the hell is he talking about? I dunno. These guys can't help themselves. ...continue reading "Is it racist to drink Mountain Dew?"

Moonrise over the Mojave Desert. This picture was taken about ten minutes after sunset, which is what makes the moon so bright and ruddy.

At dinner last night the subject of fast food prices came up. We all agreed that prices seem to have skyrocketed recently, which I said was kind of mysterious. After all, the federal government tracks fast food prices, just like they track everything else, and the numbers are easy to find. Here they are: Since ...continue reading "Fast food prices haven’t spiked recently"

I'm beginning to think of the Wall Street Journal as the Daily Mail of the financial press: They are constantly printing stories about big new trends that are either flatly false or based on the flimsiest possible cherry-picked evidence. Here is today's: This chart isn't wrong per se. Interest debt has indeed gone up. But ...continue reading "American families have no serious debt problems"

This didn't seem worth mentioning a couple of days ago, but last week's YouGov poll happened to ask about voting intentions for both Trump vs. Biden and Trump vs. Kamala Harris. The results were interesting. Biden has two points more support than Harris, but that's due entirely to responses from Democratic voters. They were 88% ...continue reading "Kamala Harris will poll as well as Biden by next week"

So Biden is out, but he didn't resign. He'll be president until January. If Democrats are smart, they'll quickly coalesce around Kamala Harris and be done with it. She may not be perfect, but on short notice she's the best they have. But then, when have Democrats ever been smart? UPDATE: Hold on. In a ...continue reading "Biden withdraws"

I (sort of) said I wasn't going to fact check Donald Trump's speech on Thursday night, and I'm not. I promise! Oh, who am I kidding? The thing is, Trump's speech wasn't just his usual string of garden variety lies and exaggerations. He said some genuinely weird stuff that I assumed were lies, like everything ...continue reading "What the hell is Donald Trump talking about?"

Last night Donald Trump's confused mind burped up the following: They built eight chargers at a certain location, toward the Midwest. Eight chargers for $9 billion? Think of them as a tank for filling up your gas. Think of it. They spent $9 billion on eight chargers, three of which didn’t work. Idiot. He couldn't ...continue reading "No, we haven’t spent $9 billion on eight EV chargers"

Cat and squirrel. Charlie will never catch a squirrel, but he's become unfortunately skilled at catching birds. Stupid birds.

I'm now halfway through the radiation treatment. Only 14 weekdays to go. I have to pee constantly and I wake up four or five times a night. Hilbert loves this. There are no other side effects yet.

Holy hell. Half the computers in the world¹ can be bricked by a single automated update from a security service? And for some reason the update can't be automatically rolled back? MQAGA. Make QA Great Again. ¹OK, not half. But a lot.

I ended up watching most of Donald Trump's endless speech tonight, and it was remarkable. I mean, the guy not only promised immediate peace and prosperity worldwide, he literally said he was going to cure cancer and Alzheimer's if he was elected. I'm not making that up. I feel sorry for the poor reporters assigned ...continue reading "Donald Trump talks for 90 minutes, says two true things"

Over at Mother Jones, Artis Curiskis writes about old police guns used to commit crimes: It took seven long years to pry one staggering number from the hands of the federal government: that 52,529 weapons once owned by police were recovered at crime scenes across the country from 2006 to 2021. In that period, an ...continue reading "A tiny number of police guns are used to commit crimes"

How dangerous would a second Trump term be? The conventional wisdom says that after learning his lesson during his first term, Trump would be unleashed in a second term to do anything he wants with no one to push back against him. Maybe so. But I've never been too sure about this. For starters, keep ...continue reading "A realistic look at a second Trump term"