Kevin Drum 🕸

Yesterday morning I was wondering why I hadn't seen any new reporting about the prisoner swap the previous night. Charlotte Klein has the answer: For days, various media outlets had been aware — through their own reporting and as information trickled out elsewhere — that a prisoner swap involving American journalists and dissidents was in ...continue reading "Why did Bloomberg break the prisoner swap embargo?"

According to the Wall Street Journal, the key figure in the recent prisoner swap with Russia was German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. That's because the main sticking point was the release of Vadim Krasikov, a Russian assassin serving a life sentence in Germany for gunning down a Chechen exile in Berlin: During a meeting in Saudi ...continue reading "Putin’s prisoner strategy: Just keep kidnapping Germans until they give in"

This is Charlie pretending to go to sleep. He was fooling no one.

The American economy gained 114,000 jobs last month. We need 90,000 new jobs just to keep up with population growth, which means that net job growth clocked in at a meager 24,000 jobs. The headline unemployment rate jumped up to 4.3%. The number of unemployed workers increased by 352,000 in July while the number of ...continue reading "Net new jobs in July drops almost to zero"

Frank Bruni asks us today to spare a thought for Pete Buttigieg: In 2020, when he was still in his 30s and his main political credential was two terms as mayor of a Midwestern city with only about 100,000 people, he won the most delegates in the Iowa caucuses, placed a close second in the ...continue reading "Pete Buttigieg for veep?"

Are you curious about whether Democrats really are a party of childless cat ladies? We know that both women and cat owners are more likely to be Democrats, but how about childless people? Here you go: Childlessness has gone way up among Democrats over the past three decades while it's gone down among Republicans. I'm ...continue reading "Raw data: Childless families by political party"

LA Times columnist Anita Chabria ponders what Donald Trump was really up to in his disastrous interview with Black journalists yesterday: Trump offended his Black audience. Mistake or part of the plan? At best, Trump was grabbing headlines that in recent days have slipped out of his grasp.... At worst, the whole thing was meant ...continue reading "No, Trump’s insults yesterday weren’t deliberate"

This is a gigantic moth at the Schmetterling Haus in Vienna. It's appropriately called an Atlas moth, and it's too bad there's no obvious scale to see how big it is. From wingtip to wingtip I'd put it at nearly a foot. It's also a very lazy moth. It might as well have been a ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

Labor productivity in Q2 was up 2.7% compared to last year, which is a nice reading. That's four consecutive quarters of productivity growth well over 2%. But just to give you some perspective, here's labor productivity over the past three decades: As you can see, after a brief (and artificial) spurt during the pandemic, we're ...continue reading "Productivity grew nicely in Q2"

Construction spending fell in June for the second month in a row: This is hardly cause for panic, but it's the first time construction spending has fallen two months in a row since the end of 2022. It's the first time commercial construction has fallen two months in a row since 2021.

It turns out all the rumors were true: The United States, Russia, Germany and four other countries swapped at least two dozen people Thursday in the largest prisoner exchange since the height of the Cold War. Those released included American journalist Evan Gershkovich, former Marine Paul Whelan, Russian dissidents and others from the United States, ...continue reading "US prisoners released from Russia"

Raj Chetty and a cast of thousands have a new paper out that looks at economic mobility. In a nutshell, it finds that mobility has increased among Black families and decreased among white families. Similarly, it has increased among the rich and declined among the poor. For more details, the New York Times has a ...continue reading "Rich kids work less than the merely affluent when they grow up"

Here's the latest YouGov poll on the presidential race along with all the crosstabs: Kamala Harris is leading Trump 46% to 44%. Compared to two weeks ago, she's five points ahead of where Biden was and seven points ahead of where she was. Compared to Biden two weeks ago, Harris has picked up 3 points ...continue reading "Harris is way ahead of where Biden was two weeks ago"

If Donald Trump wants to lose the "weird" label, he needs to stop being.......not so much weird in this clip as just plain creepy:  "She was always of Indian heritage ... until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black." What kind ...continue reading "Yeah, Kamala Harris is Black"

Traffic jam on the Danube.

Can we please keep this simple? When Donald Trump told a bunch of evangelical Christians that after 2024 "you won't have to vote anymore," all he meant was: Just vote for me this year. I don't care what happens after that. That's it. Trump doesn't care about anything but himself. He doesn't genuinely care one ...continue reading "“You won’t have to vote again,” explained"

Today's big headline: Fed Opens Door Further to a September Rate Cut Officials held rates steady, but made an important pivot by highlighting a more equal focus on employment and inflation goals Fer chrissake. "Opens door"? An "important pivot"? What more does the Fed want? Every measure of inflation has been hovering between 2-3% for ...continue reading "Come on, Jerome, inflation is over"

The Wall Street Journal informs us today that inflation affects some household more than others. Their example is Nicole Lewis, a mother of three who lives north of Flint, Michigan: Pay raises since the pandemic helped Lewis and her husband, now a city manager, double their earnings to what had previously seemed unattainable: more than ...continue reading "Inflation is pretty much the same for all of us"

Watch this short clip of Kamala Harris at a campaign rally on Tuesday: Vice President Harris: Donald, I do hope you'll reconsider to meet me on the debate stage. As the saying goes, if you got something to say, say it to my face pic.twitter.com/5zykEnU3Dn — Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) July 30, 2024 What's important here ...continue reading "Kamala Harris is having a lot of fun"

I ignored this when I first saw it this morning: Black women make up less than 10% of the population, yet when it comes to killings by police, we make up a 3rd of them, with the majority unarmed. And that’s exactly what happened with Sonya Massey. #SayHerName#CRTSummmerSchool — Kimberlé Crenshaw (@sandylocks) July 30, 2024 ...continue reading "In the past three years, one unarmed Black woman has been killed by police"