Kevin Drum 🕸

Joe Biden is resorting to some old school politics today. If members of Congress won't approve aid to Ukraine on the merits, maybe they'll do it just to selfishly bring home dollars to their districts: This is all great, but just remember who your friends are, Joe. California only gets $18 per person while Texas ...continue reading "Raw data: How much your state profits from Ukraine aid"

Today's edition of little-known facts features the son of Mao Zedong: Mao Anying, a Chinese military officer, was killed by US bombers on 25 November 1950 during the Korean war. A persistent but frequently denied rumour says he was trying to cook egg fried rice instead of taking shelter, and the smoke from the fire ...continue reading "Egg fried rice can be a dangerous dish"

Graphyte is a company that buys biomass byproducts and compresses them into bricks which are then buried. This prevents the carbon in the biomass from being released into the atmosphere. On its website it says: Graphyte is focused on working with partners responsibly to ensure our solution is not used as a replacement for direct ...continue reading "Can we solve climate change by burying plant waste?"

According to estimates from CMS, the average premium for an Obamacare health policy has dropped about 10% since 2020 after adjusting for inflation. The average net cost after subsidy is down about 50%. Here are figures for the past five years. The top chart shows the average for all enrollees. The bottom chart shows the ...continue reading "Raw data: The cost of Obamacare is going down"

Media Matters points out today that Donald Trump's "vermin" comment of a few days ago got way less press attention than Hillary Clinton's "basket of deplorables" remark during the 2016 campaign: That's a pretty dramatic difference, though in fairness the election is still a year away. Hillary Clinton made her comment two months before Election ...continue reading "Nobody cares very much what presidential candidates say"

This is our local Great Blue Heron. He just showed up one day at a nearby park and stood around quietly. He didn't fly off when I got close or when pedestrians walked by. He just calmly took it all in. Very unusual.

Today the Wall Street Journal asks, "Why Is Everyone So Unhappy at Work Right Now?" An excellent question! But only if people are, in fact, really unhappy at work right now. But they aren't: This is not "data" from some outfit like Qualtrics or BambooHR, it's from the GSS, which has been asking exactly the ...continue reading "Sigh. Workers are about as happy as they’ve ever been"

Rep. James Comer, the Inspector Javert of the House Oversight Committee, wants Hunter Biden to give testimony before his committee. Today Biden agreed, but only if his appearance is public. Comer naturally turned him down. Naturally? Yes indeed. What use is it to have Biden come in unless Comer can then selectively leak bits and ...continue reading "Republicans turn down Hunter Biden’s offer of public testimony"

Last month the good folks of Louisiana elected Republican Jeff Landry to be their next governor. Landry is a MAGA conservative and Trump admirer, with all the right-wing baggage that goes along with that. But here's something I didn't know. Apparently Landry is at war with his state's biggest city, New Orleans: He has threatened ...continue reading "Louisiana governor wants to prosecute women who seek abortions"

The Wall Street Journal suggests the Fed will make a U-turn on interest rates soon: Twenty months after the Federal Reserve began a historic campaign against inflation, investors now believe there is a much greater chance that the central bank will cut rates in just four months than raise them again in the foreseeable future. ...continue reading "Is the Fed finally about to lower interest rates?"

I like Vox. It could use a little more editing to get word lengths down, but they often run interesting pieces with plenty of detail and backup data. However, they are also the online home of wokeness—and sometimes it's just too heavy-handed to ignore. Today, for example, I was reading a lengthy piece about falling ...continue reading "Here is the new dictionary definition of woke"

This is US 160 just east of Tuba City in Arizona.

Jean Guerrero, a columnist for the LA Times, recently took her iPhone in for service: As I drove around to various errands, I awoke to details of the real world that I’d long ago stopped noticing: the faces of strangers in cars behind me at traffic stops, my steering wheel’s leather, the ethereal whiteness of ...continue reading "Detox from social media sounds great!"

A few days ago the Wall Street Journal asked a bunch of college students to write about why we don't trust science anymore. Why? Beats me, but apparently they poll the youth of America every week on some subject or another. In any case, pretty much everyone agreed that the answer was COVID. But they ...continue reading "It isn’t true that “we” have lost confidence in science"

Only a third of Republicans think that COVID-19 vaccines are safe. But then again, they're also skeptical of flu and RSV vaccines. They just don't seem to trust vaccines much.

I got pointed to a Washington Post editorial today which suggests that political polarization is hurting marriage rates because young women are considerably more liberal than young men. I'm not so sure that's a big issue, but what really drew my attention was this: A growing number of young women are discovering that they can’t ...continue reading "Young men are doing fine. Really."

How much does it cost to "fill up" an electric car? That depends on two things: the efficiency of the car and the cost of electricity. Assuming that 300 miles equals a "full tank," here's the cost for a sample of cars and states: This was inspired by a friend who was complaining about the ...continue reading "Raw data: The cost to charge an EV"

Emily Hand, a 9-year-old Irish girl, was released by Hamas yesterday. The taoiseach of Ireland released a statement: Twitter went nuts. This girl wasn't "lost"! She was kidnapped! Held hostage! How dare the leader of Ireland insult Israel this way!?! Here's the next paragraph: This is typical of the discourse these days. The LA Times ...continue reading "BREAKING: Sometimes things on the internet are misleading"

The good news for Nikki Haley is that she's risen from 5% to 10% in the polls: The bad news is that in September she was 47 points behind Trump. Today, with Trump doing barely anything aside from writing unhinged posts on Truth Social, she's 49 points behind.

I know this is hardly a brilliant insight, but I continue to be sort of stunned by how absolutist Americans are—or seem to be, anyway—on the subject of Israel and its enemies. It hardly requires a scholar's dedication to nuance to understand that both sides have acted horrifically at various times over the past century. ...continue reading "Israelis and Arabs have both acted abominably over the years"