Kevin Drum 🕸

The history of egg prices is the history of bird flu:

Here is Robin Abcarian on Atlanta DA Fani Willis: After watching her testify for nearly two hours on Thursday, I think she made a convincing case that she did not [do anything wrong]. If anything, she spent more money on him than he did on her. But by engaging in a romantic relationship with Wade ...continue reading "Why does anyone take the charges against Fani Willis seriously?"

We have finally reached the logical conclusion of the belief that life begins at conception: An embryo created through in-vitro fertilization (IVF) is a child protected by Alabama’s wrongful death act and the Alabama Constitution, the Alabama Supreme ruled on Friday. ....The Supreme Court held in a 7-2 decision that parents of frozen embryos killed ...continue reading "Alabama puts the IVF business out of business"

Here's the latest from our fully lucid and astute former president: Trump: Thousands and thousands of people coming from all over the world. Yesterday, they had many from the Congo. Welcome to the Congo people because and where do you come in the Congo? pic.twitter.com/qLLjn4b5HR — Acyn (@Acyn) February 18, 2024 Idiocy aside, there are ...continue reading "Donald Trump is mentally impaired, part 457"

The latest kerfuffle over Joe Biden's age reminds me of the power of the hack gap. Cast your thoughts back over a few recent high-profile incidents: In 2016, liberals supported Hillary Clinton during her email difficulties, but hardly wholeheartedly. They constantly wrung their hands over her "admittedly poor judgment," "adversarial communication style," and "habit of ...continue reading "The hack gap, again and again and again"

Last month, GAO audited the auditors. That is, they took a look at IRS audits of rich people to see how much, on average, they collected from them. Here are the results: Oddly enough, the enormous jump in 2022 is because of a Republican initiative. By 2020 audit rates of rich people had gotten so ...continue reading "Auditing the rich really pays off"

I suppose this is well known among a select group of people, but not to me. So here is Albert Einstein after visiting the United States in 1921, just after his general theory of relativity had been confirmed via eclipse sightings. The quotes are from a story that ran on page 9 of the New ...continue reading "Einstein on America"

A few weeks ago NBC News reported on a suicide crisis among Hispanics. What's the cause? A variety of the usual suspects: The pandemic hit young Hispanics especially hard .... parents don’t speak English .... poorer households .... cultural barriers .... cultural and systemic obstacles .... minorities face added economic and societal obstacles .... may ...continue reading "Hispanic suicides aren’t really a crisis"

Everyone is familiar with the Amber Alert system. It's for abducted children, and it's named after Amber Hagerman, who was kidnapped and murdered in 1996. For some reason, though, its original backers thought it would be better to have a more official name for it, so by the time it was legislated nationwide in 2003 ...continue reading "Amber, Blue, Silver, Yellow, Feather, Ebony"

Spring training is upon us, but since no actual games have been played yet we need something else to be outraged about while we wait. Tyler Kepner of The Athletic reports that it's baseball's new uniforms: they're a "fashion flop" and an "assault on the eyes." But even by the end of a thousand word ...continue reading "Baseball’s new uniforms are literally violence against fans"

Joshua Keating asks today, "what does deterrence even mean, really?" It's a good question for at least two reasons: (a) deterrence against what? and (b) what's the evidence? The first question is critical. The most famous case of deterrence is the MAD doctrine during the Cold War. It worked! But in the modern world deterrence ...continue reading "Does deterrence work?"

Apparently the damages against Donald Trump in his business fraud case have been accumulating interest at a 9% annual rate for several years: On profits from the sale of the Old Post Office: interest is owed since May 2022. On profits from the sale of Ferry Point: interest is owed since June 2023. On everything ...continue reading "CORRECTION: Trump actually owes about half a billion dollars"

Alex Tabarrok links today to an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal which has some good news: the T-Mobile/Sprint merger in 2020 wasn't anti-competitive! But this paragraph piqued my curiosity: Average monthly mobile subscription fees dropped sharply. In the three years before the merger, according to government price data, mobile charges declined in real terms ...continue reading "Here’s what really happened after the T-Mobile/Sprint merger"

The judge in Donald Trump's fraud case has returned a damage assessment of $355 million. That's a lot! This will be appealed, of course, so Trump won't have to pay anything soon. Still.

I'm not sure there's anything really new here, but today the New York Times reports on Donald Trump's view of abortion: Former President Donald J. Trump has told advisers and allies that he likes the idea of a 16-week national abortion ban with three exceptions, in cases of rape or incest, or to save the ...continue reading "Trump triangulates on abortion"

Here is Hilbert puffing his face out and sniffing the atmosphere way up on the second story. Everything in the world needs to be sniffed, over and over and over.

I was amused by this editorial choice in the LA Times today: The point of the piece is that we shouldn't stereotype Gen Z. So what's the illustration? A bunch of teen girls stereotypically absorbed in social media. Don't the editors at the Times know that a picture is worth a thousand words? But set ...continue reading "Teens seem to be in pretty good shape these days"

Every five years the Department of Agriculture releases a Census of Agriculture. The latest edition came out on Tuesday, and for some reason I thought it would be interesting to document the decline of the small family farm. Here it is: There's no decline at all. I've been hearing for practically my entire adult life ...continue reading "Small farms are booming"

Good ol' Fox News: Sean Hannity's Fox News show ran with this informant's claims in at least 85 separate segments last year, including 28 monologues. He said they proved Joe Biden engaged in "public corruption on a scale this country has never seen before.” https://t.co/5ziUvNOwt4 https://t.co/tzBXuJd1p4 — Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) February 15, 2024 The informant ...continue reading "Yet another Biden crime story goes up in smoke"

This is a little boat landing on the outskirts of Giverny. The stream is the Epte River, which runs along the entire southern edge of town. It doesn't look like much, but it's 70 miles long and empties into the Seine a few miles from this spot.