Kevin Drum 🕸

This is Charlie sniffing the most interesting branch in the world. When he was done, I believe he moved on to a different branch.

Benjamin Netanyahu may not be popular in Israel these days, but his war is. Among Israeli Jews: Only 37% support a negotiated end to the war, even on favorable terms. 68% oppose the transfer of humanitarian aid to Gaza, even if UNRWA isn't involved. 83% say there's little chance of ever reforming the Palestinian Authority. ...continue reading "Israeli Jews strongly favor all-out war in Gaza"

Against all odds, it appears that conservatives are having a recreational sex moment. They're against it: I hate to be "that guy," but, um, recreational sex is not a recent invention. It's not even an ancient invention. And it's certainly not responsible for anything new and different about modern society. Just thought I'd point that ...continue reading "Recreational sex is the oldest recreation of all"

I want to take this opportunity to say that all this "golden years" stuff is a crock. I'm only 65 and I've got multiple myeloma; degraded hips that make it hard to walk; diabetes (almost); peripheral neuropathy; possibly prostate cancer;¹ moderate chronic depression; and now a very painful hemorrhoid.² Plus high blood pressure and high ...continue reading "Health whining"

This is the San Juan River as it flows through Pagosa Springs, about 50 miles east of Durango.

District Court Judge Cormac Carney has tossed charges of assault against a pair of white nationalists because it was unfair not to prosecute some lefties too: An Orange County federal judge has dismissed criminal charges for the second time in five years against accused members of a Southern California white supremacist group suspected of inciting ...continue reading "Right-wing judge dismisses charges against white nationalists"

Takeoff from John Wayne Airport over the 405 freeway. On windy days planes take off to the north, rather than heading out south over the ocean as they usually do.

It begins: The University of Alabama at Birmingham health system has paused in vitro fertilization procedures following an Alabama Supreme Court decision due to fear of criminal prosecution and lawsuits, a spokeswoman said. ....“We must evaluate the potential that our patients and our physicians could be prosecuted criminally or face punitive damages for following the ...continue reading "Alabama starts to lose its IVF centers"

We now know that: Alexander Smirnov lied to prosecutors about Burisma paying $5 million bribes to Hunter and Joe Biden. These lies started in June 2020. Smirnov began an extensive series of meetings with Russian intelligence officials in 2019. Republicans made Smirnov's accusations a centerpiece of their corruption charges against the Biden family. Draw your ...continue reading "What did Republicans know and when did they know it?"

I was pondering this afternoon over the question of just how much ordinary people really care about Joe Biden's age. I know there are polls out there showing high rates of concern, but that doesn't tell us much about salience. Is it strong concern or just one of many concerns? What if people aren't specially ...continue reading "How much are people interested in Joe Biden’s age?"

Today I learned that the San Francisco Fed performs daily tracking of economic news sentiment. Here it is since the end of the Great Recession: The index is currently at 0.17, roughly equal to the peaks between 2014 and 2020. However, it only rose above zero about three months ago. It took a long time ...continue reading "Media coverage of the economy has finally broken into positive territory"

As long as we're talking about Gaza, here's an updated set of fatality figures: The cumulative death toll as of today is just over 29,000, about 1.3% of the total population of Gaza. Dead and injured come to just under 100,000, or 4.3% of the total population. On a population basis, that's six times the ...continue reading "Raw data: The death toll in Gaza"

Why oh why does the US keep vetoing UN resolutions calling for a ceasefire in Gaza? Are we really that brutal and heartless? Oh come on. This isn't complicated. It's because these immediate ceasefire resolutions never demand that Hamas immediately release its hostages. That's a loud tell that the resolution backers aren't really serious about ...continue reading "Why do we keep vetoing UN resolutions over Gaza?"

This is Joe Biden's schedule today after landing at LAX:

A street performer in Laguna Beach.

Unless someone gets run over by a bus, the two candidates for president this year are Joe Biden and Donald Trump. That's it, like it or not. So can everyone please start dealing with reality on this? The endless pissing and moaning about Earth-2 scenarios is really starting to grate on me.

OpenAI recently released an AI video creator, and its ouput, though amazing, isn't perfect. Atrios comments: Not an expert on video/image editing, but I suspect editing out the 6th finger is a lot more work than it's worth. And, sure, these things will always get better, but some things need to be better than pretty ...continue reading "AI video isn’t perfect yet. So what?"

It's sad to see what's happened to the Hugo Awards, but I don't think this is right: really, the long and short of it is that just like elections, vaccines, vehicles, football, taylor swift, climate change, coffee, budweiser, gaming, journalism, polling, and everything else, The Hugo Awards got eaten by social media, and I'm not ...continue reading "The Hugo Awards are too small for a big world"

Moonset over the Sheephole Mountains.

By chance, I happened to mention exactly this to a friend of mine last night: Are you aware how much the constant threat of violence, principally from MAGA sources, is now warping American politics? If you wonder why so few people in red America seem to stand up directly against the MAGA movement, are you ...continue reading "Violence is at the core of MAGA nation"