Kevin Drum 🕸

I got my sample ballot yesterday and it was about a hundred pages long. wtf? We're voting for a president, a senator, and a couple of other smaller offices. What's all this stuff for? It turns we have a lot of people who want to be your next president: I don't know who any of ...continue reading "California has a very long sample ballot for a very simple election"

How smart were we back in the olden days? You're probably familiar with the Flynn Effect, which suggests that people gained about 3 points of IQ per decade over a period of 50 years during the 20th century. That's about 15 points total. This suggests that before World War II we were all roaming around ...continue reading "People was dumb in olden times"

The jury in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case against Donald Trump has been kept anonymous. This is to keep Trump's vengeful MAGA hordes from terrorizing them. But now that the trial is over the jurors are free to do whatever they want. However, it's appropriate that on the 50th anniversary of Cher's "Dark Lady," ...continue reading "Judge to Trump jury: go home and hide"

I didn't quite realize this until Dean Baker pointed it out today, but US health care spending has been basically flat for over a decade: Health care spending was 17.2% of GDP in 2009 and was slightly lower in 2022, coming in at 16.9%. We are more than 3 percentage points under the old pre-2009 ...continue reading "Raw data: Health care spending in the US"

On Twitter a couple of days ago Nate Silver pointed out that confidence in the press has plummeted. This is true, but I added that confidence in everything has plummeted. The press wasn't any kind of outlier. But then I wondered if I was remembering that correctly. So I went off to the General Social ...continue reading "Has confidence in the press plummeted?"

Last year, a jury found that Donald Trump had libeled E. Jean Carroll and ordered him to pay $5 million in damages. That made Trump mad, so he kept on libeling her. Today a jury ordered him to pay another $83 million—most of it just for being a malicious asshole. The Washington Post passes along ...continue reading "Trump hit with $83 million in libel damages"

It is January 26 and the Border Patrol finally released its official apprehension figures for December. This is the latest it's ever been. Is it a traditional Friday night news dump for bad news? Maybe! Because it was definitely bad news. As expected, CBP reported a whopping total of 302,000 encounters on the southern border: ...continue reading "Illegal immigration skyrockets in December"

Here's Charlie, cone free and hanging out in his favorite place now that we've let him outside. Whenever we call his name, he hops out of hiding in the bushes and races in.

I'm not sure if this is unexpected or not, but the International Court of Justice has basically ruled in Israel's favor in South Africa's genocide case against it: In a series of near-unanimous votes, the world court on Friday ordered Israel to ensure that its military not violate the Genocide Convention, and that it punish ...continue reading "Court rules Israel isn’t committing genocide. Yet."

Spending figures are released along with inflation figures, so today we got the December numbers for consumer expenditures. They were up 6.7% from November and 3.2% from a year ago. However, since I said this morning that I like quarterly figures these days, here's the quarterly growth rate: Very respectable. The holiday season was strong ...continue reading "Spending was up 2.8% in the final quarter of 2023"

Both the headline and core PCE inflation rates remained subdued in December: On a conventional year-over-year basis, headline PCE inflation came in at 2.6% and core inflation was 2.9%. I've lately become attracted to quarterly rates for everything: it's a good compromise between the volatility of monthly figures and the staleness of year-over-year figures. The ...continue reading "PCE inflation stays cool at 2.0%"

I don't generally like to go back and forth on a single argument too much. After both sides have had a couple of chances to have their say, I usually feel like that's enough. Further bickering just ends up going down a rabbit hole. But today is an exception because it gives me a chance ...continue reading "Just how bad are things, really?"

Alabama, having exhausted its other alternatives, executed Kenneth Eugene Smith tonight by fitting him with a mask and then pumping it full of nitrogen: Witnesses saw Smith struggle as the gas began flowing into the mask that covered his entire face. He began writhing and thrashing for approximately two to four minutes, followed by around ...continue reading "Alabama finally figures out how to kill someone"

Donald Trump went medieval on Nikki Haley after he beat her in New Hampshire. Rich Lowry says this was dumb: She is appealing to the Republicans and Republican-leaning independents that Trump needs to substantially bring home in November to beat Biden. Killing her with kindness would make much more sense for Trump than, in irate ...continue reading "The method to Donald Trump’s madness"

Three days ago I called Rep. James Comer a big fat liar. Since then, we've been on the edge of our seats wondering if I was right. Did he, in fact, lie about the testimony of Kevin Morris in the Hunter Biden affair? Of course he did. A transcript of Morris's testimony was released on ...continue reading "Yep, James Comer is a big fat liar"

Hanging out in Laguna Beach as the sun dips into the Pacific.

Barbie got nominated for Best Picture but Greta Gerwig was snubbed in the Best Director category. Snubbed! It's an outrage! Oh, calm down. This whole "snubbed" meme has always been idiotic, and it's maybe even more idiotic this year than before. Greta Gerwig likely missed out for a couple of banal reasons: There are ten ...continue reading "Barbie!"

Tyler Cowen links today to a (long) post about AI written by Alex Irpin, an AI researcher at Google. I recommend it for possibly vain reasons: As I read it, I was genuinely startled by how close it was to my own thinking. I swear, I almost felt like this guy could be my twin ...continue reading "Here’s an update on AI that’s worth reading"

Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman have a new book coming out next week, but bits and pieces are being leaked already. First up is Sen. Lindsey Graham's grand jury testimony in late 2022: A new book reveals that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) “threw Trump under the bus” during Graham’s secret grand jury testimony in the ...continue reading "And now for more dirt on the prosecution of Donald Trump"

From Elon Musk, after Tesla announced weak results yesterday: Tesla is currently between two major growth waves. You betcha. But not everyone bought it: Dan Ives, a tech analyst with Wedbush Securities, said executives failed to address short-term concerns, even though he remains sold on the company’s long-term value. “We were dead wrong expecting Musk ...continue reading "Quote of the day: Tesla suffers a flesh wound"