Kevin Drum 🕸

Here's an interesting thing. Samuel Perry recently posted a chart from his 2022 book about Christian nationalism. It basically asks if you'd be OK with manipulating election laws to ensure that your side has an easier time winning. By far the biggest agreement came from Christian nationalists: Curiously, the second highest agreement came from their ...continue reading "Who wants to cheat at elections?"

Yesterday I mentioned in passing the Producer Price Index. Here's the latest: PPI is the inflation rate of inputs to consumer goods. It's what corporations pay for the raw materials used to make the stuff they sell to us. As you can see, for a full two years PPI has averaged less than it did ...continue reading "Wholesale inflation has been low for two full years"

This is from John Wahl, the chair of the Alabama Republican Party: The mainstream media wants us to think of ourselves as a democracy because that leads to socialism.... Even our Republican elected officials call us a democracy far too often, and we are not. This is interesting, but not for the obvious reason. What's ...continue reading "Democracy and socialism"

Tonight's press conference was plainly not the catastrophe the CNN debate was. That said, it's unlikely that Joe Biden quieted fears about his mental capacity. Earlier in the day he introduced President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as President Putin before catching himself. A minute into the press conference he talked about how he wouldn't have selected Vice ...continue reading "Biden holds a press conference and does OK"

Chris Hayes responds to today's good inflation news: I'm gonna bang this drum until it tears, but this has been the best macro-economic stewardship of any administration *and Fed chair* of my lifetime. https://t.co/x7T6yaZSEO — Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) July 11, 2024 I don't seriously disagree with any of this, but there's an irony here. The ...continue reading "The greatest economy ever?"

A couple of years ago it was fashionable among CEOs to blame bad results on supply chain disruptions, even in cases where supply chains clearly had nothing to do with it. Later on, they blamed price hikes on inflation long after the Producer Price Index had settled down to normal. Today, the go-to excuse for ...continue reading "No, consumers have not slowed down their spending"

I don't have a fourth picture for astronomy week, but this is close. It shows the sun—an astronomical body—setting behind a Joshua tree that's near the location I ended up at for my telescoping last week. Enjoy.

Headline CPI came in at -0.7% in June: Now can we please cut interest rates? It sure seems like inflation is well under control. Maybe too much under control? In conventional year-over-year terms, headline inflation in June clocked in at 3.0% and core inflation was 3.3%.

The Guardian describes Donald Trump's latest rally: It was a standard Trump stump speech, full of evidence-free claims that his 2020 election defeat was fraudulent; baseless accusations that overseas nations were sending to the US “most of their prisoners”; and a laughable assertion that a gathering of supporters numbering in the hundreds was really a ...continue reading "Yes, Donald Trump even lies about bacon"

Here's the latest hotness on the economy: Desperate fast food chains are being forced to offer cheap meal deals to lure back customers who have abandoned them due to high inflation. Maybe so. But first take a look at this: This goes through Q1 and it's for all restaurant spending, not just fast food. But ...continue reading "Fast food chains are doing fine"

Astronomy week continues! I finished up my most recent shoot around 4 am and had everything packed up and ready to go by 4:30. Then, just as I was getting into my car, I looked north and saw a string of eight or nine stars in an eerily perfect line. I'm not much of a ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

According to YouGov, here's the latest breakdown of how partisans plan to vote: Since the CNN debate, Trump has gained four points among Republicans while Biden has lost two points among Democrats. This is a fairly remarkable performance from Democrats. There are two possibilities here. The first is that most of them are like me: ...continue reading "Joe Biden has lost only 2 points among Democrats"

I'm now one-fourth of the way through my radiation treatment. No ill effects yet, as expected. The worst is yet to come. I've already warned Marian that I plan to whine endlessly when the pain starts. But maybe I'll give her a break once in a while and whine to you guys instead. Something to ...continue reading "Health update"

Business Insider says human beings are behind the scenes of Tesla's AI-driven cars: The company relies on a small army of human "data annotators" who continuously improve how the cars drive by reviewing camera footage from thousands of Tesla drivers and teaching the vehicle how to behave like a human driver, like deciding when it's ...continue reading "Tesla’s AI has a single main customer"

Various reports say that NATO is about to announce that Ukraine is on an "irreversible" course to gain membership just as soon as they get their corruption under control. So out of an alleged fear of NATO encirclement, Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine and got (a) Sweden in NATO, (b) Finland in NATO, (c) NATO members ...continue reading "Vladimir Putin, Russia’s geostrategist extraordinaire"

Donald Trump today: We will rebuild our capital city so it is no longer a nightmare of murder and crime.... Right now if you leave Florida — "Oh, let's go darling, let's go look at the Jefferson Memorial" ... and you end up getting shot, mugged, raped. Uh huh. Washington DC has always been a ...continue reading "Crime in Washington DC is down a lot since Trump left"

Donald Trump keeps saying that he's the guy who reduced the price of insulin, not Joe Biden, and he repeated this claim yesterday. What's up with that? It's a bit like claiming that Henri Poincaré really invented the Theory of Relativity, not that Einstein fellow.¹ It isn't true, but there's a little something there. Here's ...continue reading "Donald Trump and insulin: A brief history"

I think I'll just make this astronomy week. The second picture I took last Friday was another crack at the Milky Way, but it didn't turn out even as good as my first try. There's a long and fascinating story behind this. I had decided to try a different location in hopes of finding an ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

Seriously? One of the fastest-spreading corporate buzzwords in recent years, “double-click” is both polarizing and pervasive. Particularly on Wall Street, the figure of speech is now being used as a shorthand for examining something more fully, akin to double-clicking to see a computer folder’s contents. Some, like Roy, find the idiom obnoxious or twee. Double-click ...continue reading "A deep dive into double clicking"

Matt Yglesias has a bit of an odd cri de couer today about Joe Biden's mental state. Except that it's actually more about Matt's mental state: I really don’t enjoy being wrong. But looking back on Biden’s disastrous debate with the benefit of some time away, I have to admit that I was wrong.... I’ve ...continue reading "There’s no embarrassment in getting something wrong"