Kevin Drum 🕸

Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison today for his role in the collapse of crypto broker FTX. Here's what John Ray, the guy hired to clean up the mess after FTX declared bankruptcy, had to say about him a few days ago: Vast sums of money were stolen by Mr. Bankman-Fried, and ...continue reading "Sam Bankman-Fried is off to prison"

GDP and GDI are supposed to be identical: just different ways of measuring the same thing. But a gap opened up in late 2022 and has grown ever since. GDP is now about half a trillion dollars bigger than GDI. wtf?

Electric vehicle sales dropped to 82,000 in February, pulling down the 3-month average to 96,000. Plug-in hybrid sales rose to 28,000 units.

The BLS began collecting unemployment data by race in 1972. Since then, the lowest Black unemployment rate ever recorded was in 2023. The second lowest was in 2022.

This is a rhinoceros hornbill at the LA Zoo. I assume the name comes from its big yellow horn, which looks sort of rhinoceros-like. I wonder what its evolutionary purpose is?

Here's the latest in defamation suits against right-wing zealots who think they can say whatever shit pops into their brains. This time it's Kari Lake, who ran for governor in Arizona: Stephen Richer, the top election official in Maricopa county, sued Lake, her campaign and an aligned Pac last year after she lost her gubernatorial ...continue reading "Update on the end of right-wing terrorism"

Via Adam Ozimek, it appears that even the betting markets are starting to lose faith in Donald Trump: Last month Trump's lead was 21%. Today it's 5%. This is probably the closest thing you can get to a pure vibes take on the election.

According to TheRighting, which tracks right-wing websites, traffic in 2024 is way down compared to the last presidential election cycle in 2020: Traffic compared to 2023 was also mostly down: Traffic tanked to most right wing websites for the sixth straight month. Only five right wing news websites posted gains in YOY unique visitors. For ...continue reading "Right-wing websites are hemorrhaging traffic"

A few days ago I mentioned that Joe Biden had pulled ahead of Donald Trump in national polling. Today brings news that he's doing better in swing states too: Joe Biden had some good news on Tuesday as polling showed him gaining on Donald Trump in six battleground states, seven months before the presidential election. ...continue reading "Biden gaining on Trump in swing states"

A Democrat won a landslide victory in an Alabama state legislature race tonight: In the Huntsville AL area, Democrats have flipped state House District 10 tonight. In 2022, Marilyn Lands (D) lost by about 7 points. This time, she won by almost 25%, sweeping nearly everything. This was a stronger margin here than Doug Jones's ...continue reading "Pro-choice Democrat wins big in Alabama special election"

You all remember Christopher Rufo, don't you? He's a right-wing activist who made his bones as an opponent of Critical Race Theory, DEI, wokeness, systemic racism, LGBT "grooming," and, in general, liberalism's "long march" to take over America's most powerful institutions. Just recently he was largely responsible for getting Christine Gay to step down as ...continue reading "A conservative takes on right-wing social media"

This is some hot buying and selling action at the Montreuil Flea Market in Paris. It's one of the three big flea markets in the city, but it was a disappointment: basically just a bunch of ordinary goods like this being sold at arguably ordinary prices. Are all the Paris flea markets like this? Or ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

A sign of the times: Last night I saw a post on Twitter that displayed a video of the Francis Scott Key bridge in Baltimore collapsing. I did a quick check of a couple of news sites and saw nothing about it, so I assumed it was some kind of AI joke and moved on. ...continue reading "A fake bridge collapse? Nope."

After 20 years of fighting, Visa and Mastercard have agreed to lower their swipe fees. Check it out: In the deal, the credit-card networks and banks will lower the fees that merchants pay to accept credit cards. There is a range of these fees, typically referred to as swipe fees or interchange fees, with an ...continue reading "Credit card companies agree to lower swipe fees by 0.04%"

We all know that Donald Trump loves the Bible. No one has ever loved the Bible more than Trump. He even loves both the Corinthians. But it turns out that Trump especially loves one particular Bible: the large-print King James "God Bless the USA Bible" from singer Lee Greenwood, which can be yours for only ...continue reading "Only one special Bible is endorsed by Donald Trump"

Good news today: The Supreme Court on Tuesday seemed unlikely to limit access to a key medication used in more than 60 percent of U.S. abortions and first approved more than two decades ago. A majority of justices from across the ideological spectrum expressed skepticism that the antiabortion doctors challenging the government’s loosening of regulations ...continue reading "Mail-order mifepristone likely to stay fully legal"

How much is Donald Trump's social media company, Truth Social, really worth? It's never made money, so you can't judge it that way. But lots of startup companies are unprofitable in their early years, and venture capitalists figure out values for them anyway. The most common alternative is to look at net sales. Generally speaking, ...continue reading "Why is Truth Social trading at 100 times its actual value?"

It's long been a truism in hard right-wing circles that the harder you hit the better. This has produced a culture in which they believe they can say anything they want with impunity. What are you gonna do? Sue 'em? Actually yes. Over the past year or so a whole bunch of right wing actors ...continue reading "The era of random right-wing terrorism is over"

A new study published in JAMA shows that the informal health care network¹ increased its provision of abortion pills following the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision. Here's a summary of their findings: The average provision of abortion pills increased by about 4,500 per month nationally following the Dobbs decision. But this is not what interests me. ...continue reading "Abortion pills are on the rise post-Dobbs"

This is a picture of the Christmas Tree Cluster and the Cone Nebula (upside-down at at the top), jointly catalogued as NGC 2264. It's a star-forming region containing both young and old stars. I took this picture last month and it plainly didn't have enough exposure time. I had planned to do it over when ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"