Here's a weird story. You may recall that a few months ago someone—we don't know for sure who—leaked a hacked dossier of information about JD Vance. The dossier had been compiled by the Trump campaign while they were vetting Vance and was relatively uninteresting. We know that because every single news outlet that received the ...continue reading "Twitter banned the JD Vance dossier because Trump asked them to"
Today New York Times reporter Lulu Garcia-Navarro asked JD Vance over and over and over whether he believed Donald Trump won the 2020 election. Naturally he refused to answer: Vance's refusal to answer doesn't really bug me. Whatever. What does bug me is his smug cleverness in pretending that the real issue is that ...continue reading "JD Vance thinks he’s a clever boy"
What's going on with Truth Social stock? It was steadily declining and then abruptly turned around on September 24. What happened on September 24 to suddenly rekindle the hopes of the faithful?
Behold the top of the New York Times front page at this moment in time: It's not that all the Trump stories are positive. They aren't. It's that Trump is allowed to set the agenda for political coverage almost single-handedly. Do they even know they're doing it? I wonder sometimes. It's like Steve Jobs's infamous ...continue reading "It’s Trump, Trump, Trump all the time"
How's that $20 minimum wage for fast food workers working out in California? Today Michael Hiltzik points to a couple of new studies that have some early data. Both conclude, unsurprisingly, that wages have gone up for fast food workers. But what about prices and employment? The first study, from the Institute for Research on ...continue reading "How is California’s $20 fast food wage working out?"
Poor Charlie. He brushed up against a thorn or something and opened up a wound on his back leg. Naturally he wants to lick it to death, so he's confined to the cone for a while. Charlie is weirdly afraid of the camera now that he has the cone on. I don't know why. In ...continue reading "Friday Cat Blogging – 11 October 2024"
Tyler Cowen asks today, "Why are fewer men going to college?" This is a common belief, but it's really a myth. Male enrollment in college has been stable for the past 30 years: It's true that the number of women enrolling in college has gone up substantially during this period. It's also true that male ...continue reading "Men are still going to college"
Mehdi Hasan tweets about the conservative retreat from reality: I did @bbcquestiontime with a live audience including Trump voters in Philly this week. The Trump voters booed and laughed sarcastically at every official statistic mentioned from the stage: unemployment, inflation, even Border Patrol stats on border crossings. They don’t believe anything. It’s scary. And dangerous ...continue reading "Republicans hate Republican presidents"
It looks like the market has rendered a verdict on Elon Musk's big cybertaxi announcement last night: Musk told the audience that anyone who didn't believe in Tesla's driverless future shouldn't be an investor in the company. It looks like they took him at his word. It's just the usual Musk vaporware, same as always. ...continue reading "Tesla’s cybertaxi vaporware didn’t impress anyone"
The Wall Street Journal reports that not only is inflation under control, in some areas prices are actually dropping: Businesses that sell a range of products from IKEA sofas to Air Jordan sneakers have said in recent weeks that they have lowered prices this year. In part, that is because many companies increased prices rapidly ...continue reading "Some prices really are coming down"
Here is Donald Trump tonight, rambling about Elon Musk's reusable rockets: And they're coming down very slowly, landing on a raft in the middle of the ocean someplace with a circle. Boom. It reminded me of the Biden circles that he used to have, right? He'd have eight circles and he couldn't fill them up. ...continue reading "Biden’s eight circles?"
The American Association of University Professors has issued a new policy that supports the mandatory use of "DEI statements." These are written accounts by faculty members of how they advance the goals of diversity in the workplace, often used as part of the decision to promote or grant tenure: Since the 1990s, many universities and ...continue reading "University DEI statements are a demeaning charade"
Over at New York, John Herrman voices a common complaint: Twitter used to be a decent place to get news about breaking events but it's now just a cesspool. If, yesterday, you found yourself in the path of Hurricane Milton or were concerned about friends or family in Florida, you might have logged on, out ...continue reading "Just how bad is Twitter, really?"
Let's see. In his grand giveaway tour, Donald Trump has now casually proposed making the following tax free: Tips Overtime Social Security benefits Auto loans "Double taxation" of overseas income How about no taxation of crypto profits? Or lottery winnings? That's not fair, is it? Or maybe yard sale profits? Or anything sold on eBay? ...continue reading "It’s time to raise taxes, not cut them"
According to the Census Bureau, the average household income of the poorest quintile is roughly $23,000. According to the Congressional Budget Office, that increases to $49,000 after you account for taxes and government benefits. This compares to about $80,000 for the average middle-class household.
Along with CPI, we also got September readings for real wages today. Hourly wages were up slightly, but because hours worked dropped there was a fall in weekly wages: All employees in September (adjusted for inflation) Hourly: +2.2% (annualized) Weekly: -1.2% (annualized) Blue-collar workers in September (adjusted for inflation) Hourly: +1.2% (annualized) Weekly: +1.5% (annualized)
A quick note on inflation: my favorite measure happens to be quarterly CPI, which smooths out a bit of the monthly volatility but still provides a more current measure than the usual year-over-year reading. The downside, of course, is that you only get a quarterly update every three months—although there are times when I think ...continue reading "Quarterly CPI plummets in Q3"
CPI inflation fell slightly in September to 2.2%: Core CPI increased a bit to 3.8%. On a year-over-year basis, CPI came in at 2.4% and core CPI at 3.3%.
Back in the day—i.e., 2022—crypto in politics was all about Sam Bankman-Fried, who lavished his millions on politicians under the guise of altruistic giving. It was a lie, of course, but everyone pretended to accept it for a while. Bankman-Fried is warming a prison cell these days and the crypto industry has moved on. Alexander ...continue reading "Crypto is spending wildly in the 2024 race"
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