Kevin Drum 🕸

Sure enough, Hunter Biden has been found guilty in the gun case. But I still expect a very mild sentence.

Bill Gates is excited about today's groundbreaking for a Gen IV nuclear reactor¹ in Wyoming: The plant was designed by TerraPower, a company I started in 2008. But my nuclear journey started several years earlier, when I first read a scientific paper for a new type of nuclear power plant. The design was far safer ...continue reading "Cool new Gen IV nuclear plants still produce hot old nuclear waste"

This chart has been making the rounds from immigration hawks: This seems damning, but I knew there had to be something dodgy about it. I just didn't know what. So I started poking around in the numbers. The first thing I did was check that the figures in the chart are correct. They are (using ...continue reading "Has native-born employment really dropped 300,000 over the past year?"

Last week I said that I wasn't going to take another crack at photographing Rho Ophiuchi, but on Wednesday I happened to glance at the weather forecast and it said the sky was looking great on Palomar Mountain. So I suddenly decided to go out there and try again. I don't mean all of Rho ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

The Hunter Biden gun case wraps up today and will go to the jury probably tomorrow. For the record, I assume they'll find him guilty because, you know, he is guilty. He's basically admitted it. Abbe Lowell is a good lawyer, but there's only so much even a good lawyer can do. However, I also ...continue reading "Hunter Biden case heads to the jury"

A Wall Street Journal piece today describes the battle that ensued after the Israeli army rescued four hostages in Gaza this weekend. There were two targets, and the rescue went smoothly at one of them. At the other, Hamas militants attacked as the rescuers tried to get out: A shootout that started Saturday in one ...continue reading "Inside the Gaza hostage rescue"

Apropos of nothing in particular, here's how different professions fared during the early days of the pandemic. This is from 2020, so it's pre-vaccination.

Speaking of elections, here's the latest poll from CBS News: This is only one poll and they don't tell us which states count as battlegrounds. Still, it's the first time I've seen Biden ahead of Trump in any grouping of battlegrounds. Seems like promising news.

The news today from overseas is all about the big wins notched by far-right populist parties in elections for the European Parliament. How did they do? European Parliament groups that hold a nationalist, anti-immigrant agenda will now likely control about 130 seats, a better showing than the last election in 2019. That's suspiciously vague. How ...continue reading "Far right wins modest gains in European elections"

Zeynep Tufekci says in the New York Times today that "delays, falsehoods and misrepresentations" from government scientists have eroded public trust in expert advice: Remember the rule that we should all stay at least six feet apart? “It sort of just appeared,” Fauci said during a preliminary interview for the subcommittee hearing, adding that he ...continue reading "It’s not COVID that killed trust in experts. It’s politics."

Here are three charts showing fiscal discipline for every president since Ronald Reagan. They show three things. First, Republicans raise a lot less revenue than Democrats. Second, Republicans blow up spending while Democrats keep it under control. Third, as a result, deficits generally get worse under Republicans and improve under Democrats. There's a bonus fourth ...continue reading "Three charts about presidential taxing and spending"

A couple of days ago I mentioned that auto sales over the past year were the same as their pre-pandemic average. A surprising number of people saw that and wanted to know what per capita sales looked like. As it happens, I had already done that but decided not to use the chart. Here it ...continue reading "Raw data: Vehicle sales per capita in the US"

The Washington Post writes today about Trump whisperer Russ Vought: Trump loyalist pushes ‘post-constitutional’ vision for second term “We are living in a post-Constitutional time,” Vought wrote in a seminal 2022 essay, which argued that the left has corrupted the nation’s laws and institutions. Last week, after a jury convicted Trump of falsifying business records, ...continue reading "Post-constitutional? Yeah, about that."

I came across this while I was looking for something else. A study done a few years ago analyzed different federal agencies for partisanship and found, for example, that workers in the Department of Education tend to be Democrats while workers in Homeland Security tend to be Republicans. Then, using the party affiliation for individual ...continue reading "Federal procurement officers work harder for a president of the same party"

There's been a lot of chatter lately about stuff we got wrong during the COVID pandemic. Fair enough. Nearly everyone worldwide got some or all of the same things wrong, though, so I'm not super inclined to hate specifically on Dr. Fauci or the CDC or WHO about it. It was just a really hard ...continue reading "The lessons of COVID: We need better masks"

A lot of people see Elon Musk's tweets, so you might have seen this one: Wow https://t.co/T3KWq01m1S — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 8, 2024 This is not from the American Academy of Pediatrics, the main professional group of pediatricians in the US with nearly 70,000 members. It's the American College of Pediatricians, a small, socially ...continue reading "No, pediatricians aren’t suddenly opposed to gender affirming care"

Are illegal immigrants taking away American jobs? Tim Carney says it doesn't show up in the unemployment rate, but Mickey Kaus suggests this might not be a reliable measure: Lay person here: So a native-born worker is in his 60s. Migrants surge into his sector, wages fall (in part because they're willing to work for ...continue reading "Are illegal immigrants stealing all our jobs?"

Another headline today: Really? Naturally this got me curious, especially since I was pretty sure I knew the answer. Here are new vehicle sales: From 2000 through the beginning of 2020, unit sales clock in at an annualized rate of 16.13 million. For the last 12 months sales have averaged 16.15 million. There's no decline. ...continue reading "Car sales are just fine"

Atrios points me today to a piece in the American Prospect about Long COVID. I know several people with Long COVID and it's no fun. The author of the Prospect article, Maureen Tkacik, also has Long COVID, and it sounds like hers is especially acute. But the focus of the piece is the incompetence of ...continue reading "The problem with Long COVID"

Here is Charlie in a little nest he's made on our unmade bed. Notice the lack of judgment: made, unmade, whatever. That's totally different from you lot, who are probably thinking, "Hmmm, only one side of that bed is unmade. I wonder whose side it could be?" And sure, it's mine. But that's because Marian ...continue reading "Friday Cat Blogging – 7 June 2024"