Kevin Drum 🕸

This is a late afternoon look toward the San Jacinto mountains a few miles west of Palm Springs.

Here is J.D. Vance on the fentanyl crisis: Thanks to these policies that Biden and other out-of-touch politicians in Washington gave us, our country was flooded with cheap Chinese goods, with cheap foreign labor— and in the decades to come, deadly Chinese fentanyl. Joe Biden screwed up, and my community paid the price. Let's roll ...continue reading "Donald Trump and the fentanyl crisis in the US"

Joe Biden appears to have lost the support of pretty much every leading Democrat. Few of them have publicly called for Biden to drop out of the race, but multiple reports say that privately at least four leading Dems are urging him to exit: Barack Obama Chuck Schumer Hakeem Jeffries Nancy Pelosi In addition to ...continue reading "Biden has lost essentially all support from top Dems"

Here's the latest Trump-Biden polling: It's impressive that Joe Biden has durably sustained only a 2-point drop since the debate. That's not good enough to maintain a serious chance of winning, but it's still kind of remarkable.

Need another reason to stay up to date on your COVID vaccination? Here are the results of a new study on the incidence of long COVID: You are about half as likely to get long COVID if you've been vaccinated. If that's not sufficient motivation, I don't know what is. BY THE WAY: It turns ...continue reading "Vaccination reduces chance of long COVID by half"

I watched some of J.D. Vance's speech tonight at the Republican convention, and it was full of all the usual red meat about Democrats and Joe Biden. That's pretty normal for a convention speech and nothing to get too riled up about. But there was one small bit that truly threw me for a loop. ...continue reading "Do you remember the Iraq War? I do."

Would you like something to take your mind off of politics? I've got just the thing. You've probably noticed that lots and lots of cars are white today. But how many? And has it really increased lately? Here's my best guess at an answer for North America: The '70s were an era of colorful cars, ...continue reading "Raw data: The popularity of white cars"

I recently bought a couple of minor new doodads for my telescope, but they were just—barely—important enough that I figured I should test the whole setup and make sure everything still worked. So I hauled everything into the backyard and connected it. On a scale of Bortle 1 to Bortle 10, I live in approximately ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

California has 11.7% of the nation's population. It has 10% of the votes in the Electoral College. Just saying. If we switched to a straight popular vote for president, big states would have only slightly more influence than they do now.

Under ordinary circumstances, Joe Biden's latest speaking gaffe wouldn't be a big deal. But these aren't ordinary circumstances:  It doesn't matter if Biden had trouble reading the teleprompter. Maybe he needs glasses. Who cares? But he shouldn't need a teleprompter to know that his own policy, which he was announcing for the first time, ...continue reading "Biden displays yet another mental lapse"

In the last quarter, the earnings of men working full time suddenly skyrocketed 8.9% at an annual rate. Earnings of women dropped 4.3%. Perhaps this is some kind of artifact? No obvious reason comes to mind for men's wages to have gone up so much.

The stock market isn't the economy, but it does represent a big part of the economy. And it's going gangbusters: Even after accounting for inflation, the S&P 500 is 25% above its level when Donald Trump left office and is growing at a faster pace.

Let's tally up the score so far. Joe Biden's Department of Justice has now secured convictions against two Democrats: The president's son, thanks to pressure from Republican lawmakers. Robert Menendez, a Democratic senator from New Jersey. In addition, they have indicted one other Democrat: Henry Cuellar, a Democratic member of Congress from Texas. Meanwhile: A ...continue reading "Lawfare roundup"

This is an Andean condor at the LA Zoo. It's the largest flying bird in the world.

As long as we're all doom scrolling our days away anyway, here's something else to worry about: We might be about to find out there are worse Republican leaders than Mitch McConnell. Whatever else you can say about him, McConnell is an institutionalist. He believes in Senate rules, and in particular he believes in the ...continue reading "Will Mitch McConnell’s replacement ban abortion?"

Retail sales declined slightly in June, continuing their downward trend of the past two years. However, they're still above their pre-pandemic trend: Retail sales are now 5% below their level of mid-2022 but 10% above their level of January 2020.

This is getting to be sort of old news, but a few weeks ago some professors from the University of Reading published the results of a comparison they did between students and GPT-4 on a set of psychology exams. Others have done similar things, but these guys went whole hog: the professors had AI produce ...continue reading "Yes, AI is already better than undergrads and it’s undetectable"

In the wake of President Biden's executive order banning asylum for people who cross the border illegally, total border encounters continued to drop substantially in June: CBP recorded 130,000 crossings in June, down by more than 40,000 from May. Of those, 88,000 were illegal crossings and 42,000 were asylum requests, mostly scheduled via the CBP ...continue reading "Illegal immigration plummets in June"

It's a truism that nobody ever gets fired from a government job. But is it actually true? I was curious. The BLS tracks job separations for both private industry and the federal government, but unfortunately they don't break layoffs and discharges apart. This makes comparison difficult since the federal government doesn't really have layoffs. But ...continue reading "Raw data: The number of people fired each year"

This is Peterskirche in Vienna. It's not an especially famous church, but it's impressive for the sheer amount of Baroque festoonment that adorns it. Highly recommended for a short visit.