Kevin Drum 🕸

The Washington Post informs us that Millennials are screwed: Homeownership — the main driver of wealth for most Americans — is out of reach for large swaths of the population. But the pinch is most pronounced for millennials, who are buying homes at a slower pace than those before them. ....Those born between 1981 to ...continue reading "Millennials are doing fine, part XXXVII"

In newspaper articles about court cases it's now routine to name the president(s) who appointed the judge(s) involved.¹ The reason is simple: it tells you everything you need to know. Hell, if they put this information in the lead you could skip the whole rest of the story. Democratic appointees reliably deliver liberal results and ...continue reading "Lower courts are the most reliably partisan in the country"

A common meme is one where you suggest that kids these days are unfamiliar with some item or activity from the past. The usual suspects are things like dial telephones, stick shifts, cursive handwriting, and so forth. But this is ridiculous. There's so much period TV available that kids are familiar with practically all this ...continue reading "Spam, glorious Spam"

This is Hilbert relaxing in our front yard. He's taking a little me time. Just a cat alone with his thoughts.

David Weiss has been investigating Hunter Biden for five years, ever since Donald Trump appointed him US Attorney for Delaware. Apparently he requested special counsel status on Tuesday, and today Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that he had granted it. This is a very strange story. Last month Weiss wound up his investigation and agreed ...continue reading "Why did David Weiss suddenly rejuvenate the Hunter Biden investigation?"

The producer price index is our glimpse into the future: Changes in the PPI are usually reflected in the consumer price index a few months later. July's PPI wasn't good news: The overall PPI was up 3.6% in July compared to -0.5% in June. The component indexes were also up. We can hope for better ...continue reading "Producer price index up 3.6% in July"

We keep asking when driverless cars will "really" be here, but it's an odd question. They already are: California regulators agreed on Thursday to the expansion of driverless taxi services in San Francisco, despite the safety concerns of local officials and community activists. In a 3-to-1 vote, the California Public Utilities Commission, which regulates self-driving ...continue reading "Driverless cars are here"

This is a panoramic view of the Orangerie, part of the gardens of Versailles, looking southwest from the palace toward the Swiss Lake. It's certainly an impressive bit of craftsmanship, but I can't bring myself to love it. Even to my OCD-inflected mind, it seems just a little too overplanned and sterile. But I guess ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

From Vox today: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is tripling down on his state’s newly approved social studies curriculum guidelines that erroneously teach students that enslaved people “developed skills” that they could use for “personal benefit.” I've had enough of this. There are plenty of problems with Florida's Black history curriculum,¹ but the "skills" passage isn't ...continue reading "Some American slaves really did earn money from skills they developed"

ProPublica today provides us with the fullest accounting yet of the endless largesse provided over the years to Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas from his cadre of billionaire friends: Their gifts include: At least 38 destination vacations, including a previously unreported voyage on a yacht around the Bahamas; 26 private jet flights, plus an additional ...continue reading "ProPublica: Clarence Thomas accepted yet more millions from billionaires"

Adjusted for inflation, the BLS measure of average hourly earnings increased last month at an annualized rate of 3.3%. However, average hours worked continued its downward trend: As a result, weekly earnings were flat from last month: Weekly earnings have been flat for the past year and are now 0.4% above their pre-pandemic level from ...continue reading "Weekly earnings remain flat in July"

The BLS released its July CPI numbers today, and they're down a smidge from last month: On a month-over-month basis, headline CPI is at 2.0% and core CPI is at 1.9%. On a trend basis, headline CPI is at zero. This is two months in a row that core CPI has been below the Fed's ...continue reading "Inflation stays at 2% in July"

I was puttering around looking for some abortion stuff when I ran across a 2018 Wall Street Journal editorial confidently proclaiming that abortion rights were safe no matter who Donald Trump appointed to the Supreme Court: The reason is the power of stare decisis, or precedent, and how conservatives view the role of the Court ...continue reading "In 2018, the Wall Street Journal insisted that abortion rights would never be overturned"

I have now figured out the timeline and details for the Twitter contempt saga. Here it is: January 17: Special counsel Jack Smith gets a warrant ordering Twitter to turn over all records for Donald Trump's account. Marcy Wheeler guesses that it's because Smith is trying to figure out which January 6 tweets Trump himself ...continue reading "A brief timeline of the Twitter contempt fiasco"

This is an (extremely) abandoned gas station in Desert Center, an abandoned town on Interstate 10 about halfway between Indio and Blythe. I'm not sure what the history is here, but I suspect that a better question than "why was it abandoned?" is "why was it ever built in the first place?" In any case, ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

According to a USDA report released on Monday, the number of unauthorized crop pickers on US farms has gone down substantially since 2007: The is largely because the number of guest workers has skyrocketed: Add this all up, and the share of foreign-born workers on US farms (including US citizens) has dropped from 75% to ...continue reading "Raw data: Unauthorized farmworkers in the US"

The latest on Twitter: The special counsel served Twitter with a warrant for Trump's account information in January. Twitter resisted, and was fined $350,000, an appeals court ruling reveals. — Ken Dilanian (@KenDilanianNBC) August 9, 2023 This is fairly misleading. Twitter had no problem producing the information but objected to a nondisclosure order that prevented ...continue reading "Twitter fined $350,000 because it was three days late"

Well, I see that Ohioans have overwhelmingly rejected the right-wing attempt to change referendums from simple majority vote to needing 60% to pass. This means that November's abortion rights referendum will be decided by a normal majority vote. So why the huge rejection? Is it a harbinger of the abortion vote? Or is it just ...continue reading "Ohio rejects right-wing attempt to rig referendums"

Today I came across a reference to something I hadn't heard of before. It was some kind of conservative meme about how "the Biden family" had created 20 shell companies that funneled $10 million their way, mostly during the time that Joe was vice president. What was this all about, and how had I missed ...continue reading "Hunter Biden was not only sleazy, he was inept"

Politico reports that Rep. Matt Rosendale is ruining the GOP's strategy to beat Sen. Jon Tester in Montana by making plans to run in the Republican primary: GOP leaders launched a concerted campaign to box out Rosendale and clear the path for Tim Sheehy, a Navy SEAL-turned-business executive who launched a Senate bid in June. ...continue reading "Republicans are set to blow yet another winnable election"