Kevin Drum 🕸

Here is Charlie using his IEEE-standard petabit-per-second NoseLink to gather information about his brother. Apparently everything checked out.

This week the Economist wrote about the way American trust in institutions has collapsed over the past couple of decades. This is not news. However, this is a very interesting comparison: Collapse of trust in government is a purely American phenomenon. Why? Because we have Fox News and the others don't. Oh, they have tabloids ...continue reading "Fox News has destroyed American confidence in itself"

The Ukraine aid bill has finally passed the House Rules Committee so it can come to the floor for a vote: The House Rules Committee is pretty much what it sounds like: a committee that formulates the rules of debate before a bill is allowed on the floor. Back in the day, the chairman of ...continue reading "Democrats shatter the rules to pass Ukraine aid through the Rules Committee"

I want to highlight something I posted yesterday that might have gotten lost: Up through 2014, teen suicide among girls was no different from suicide among adult women. Then, in 2015, it suddenly shot up, opening up a huge gap in only three years. This is very unusual. Very often, when you see a sudden, ...continue reading "What happened to teen girls in 2015-17?"

I was thinking some more about yesterday's comment that Joe Biden had given Israel 95% of what it wanted. So what's the other 5%? It's certainly not any kind of concrete support, which Biden has never even momentarily withheld. It's mostly just some occasional mild requests. In the approximate order he made them, here they ...continue reading "What has Biden asked from Israel?"

Politico reports: Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle aired outrage Thursday after a POLITICO report that the Chinese embassy lobbied members of Congress on legislation that would force the sale of TikTok by its Beijing-based parent company. Let me get this straight. Members of Congress are allegedly outraged because Chinese diplomats told them in ...continue reading "Congress is supposedly mad about something"

I got my bone scan a couple of days ago and the results were back in a couple of hours. Would you like to see them? Impression: Evidence for abnormal activities in the spine ribs and pelvis and questionably long bones. A PSMA PET scan is recommended for correlation Findings: There is suspicious increased radiotracer ...continue reading "Health update"

In case you're curious, first quarter GDP will be released next week, which means we're close enough that the GDPnow forecast from the Atlanta Fed is probably pretty accurate. Here it is: Not bad. If this pans out it would be slightly down from 3.4% in the fourth quarter of 2023.

In the past few months I have gotten an: MRI Ultrasound CT scan Full-body bone scan PET scan (in a few weeks) This will mean I've been scanned by: Radio waves High-frequency sound X-rays Gamma rays Positrons (though really just gamma rays again) That's a lot of things to be scanned by. Are there any ...continue reading "How many ways are there to scan a person?"

Charlie Cooke has good words for Speaker Mike Johnson: “I’d like to praise Speaker Johnson,” Charlie says, “who, I think last night . . . effectively said at a press conference that he was done catering to the fringe, that he was not going to spend his time worrying about one or two members using ...continue reading "How good is “better late than never”?"

Have you been keeping track of the brutal civil war in Sudan? No? Here are the basics: Central government vs. paramilitary group. Check. Millions forced to flee their homes. Check. On the brink of mass famine. Check. Atrocities by both sides. Check. Woefully insufficient aid from the US and the rest of the West. Check. ...continue reading "A quick rundown on events in Sudan"

I just ran across someone remarking on the suicide crisis among teen girls and it immediately struck me as wrong. Didn't I just recently say that the suicide rate had grown about as much for both adults and teens? Yes, but it turns out that's mainly because of men, whose suicide numbers are far higher ...continue reading "Raw data: The suicide rate among teen and adult women"

Sunset over Dana Point.

Over at National Review, Philip Klein comments on Mike Johnson's plan to force a vote on Ukraine/Israel/Taiwan aid: It appears that House Speaker Mike Johnson is at his breaking point. Like prior Republican leaders in his position, most recently Kevin McCarthy, Johnson was willing to humor the pugilistic members of his caucus for a certain ...continue reading "Running the House of Representatives is like running a kindergarten class"

This tweet was posted a few days ago: Half of U.S. homeowners and renters (49.9%) sometimes, regularly or greatly struggle to afford their housing payments—and many are making big sacrifices to cover their costs, per Redfin and Axios: pic.twitter.com/pFLPhLuOEl — unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) April 15, 2024 Matt Darling reposted it but then added: These numbers are ...continue reading "Don’t believe everything you see on the internet"

Sales of existing homes took a big tumble last month: That's a 4.3% decline from February. However, even though these numbers are seasonally adjusted, it looks like every year sales peak in January or February and then drop off the following month. So this might just be normal seasonal behavior.

Donald Trump and a host of other scared Republicans would like Arizona to repeal its brutal 1864 ban on abortion. Here is the text of the legislation introduced in the state Senate: Now that's a clean bill. However, while it has a chance of passing the Senate, it's already failed four attempts to pass the ...continue reading "Today in politics: abortion is in, immigration is out"

CBP released border numbers last Friday and they were once again about the same as last month: Total encounters in February came to 189,000, of which 44,000 were migrants who made appointments for asylum through CBP's mobile app. The number apprehended crossing illegally was 137,000.

The modern Trump empire is built mostly around licensing Trump's name to midrange Asian hotels and overpriced Bibles. So why not do the same in politics? As Trump struggles to close his own fundraising gap with Biden, his campaign sent out a letter this week asking down-ballot candidates for 5% of the proceeds when they ...continue reading "Trump shakes down the neighborhood for a 5% cut"

Look at this cute little guy. It's a peninsular pronghorn, and he looks like he wants me to offer him a bit of kibble or something. Sadly, I don't know what pronghorns eat, peninsular or otherwise. Plus I didn't have any food anyway. And the zoo doesn't want you to feed the animals. The deck ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"