Kevin Drum 🕸

This is a golden breasted starling at the LA Zoo. They have a whole cage full of these things, half of them hanging upside down like bats showing off their bright yellow chests.

Quick question: at this point, does anyone truly think Donald Trump doesn't want to get jailed for contempt? He's obviously angling pretty hard for it, and he likely thinks it would be a big campaign boost. He'd be just like Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr.! The MAGA base would swoon over Donald heroically ...continue reading "Does jail await Donald Trump?"

This is a little out of left field, but does anyone know why Jim Jordan is never mentioned as a possible running mate for Donald Trump? The guy is a total attack dog; he's super conservative; he's an election denier and overall Trump sycophant; he's a winner, election-wise; and he looks the part, something we ...continue reading "Is Jim Jordan on Trump’s list of VP candidates?"

Vox reports that CRISPR gene editing technology is great, but it has a problem: Most of the available reference genomes are representative of white Europeans. That’s a problem because not everybody’s DNA is identical: Recent sequencing of African genomes shows that they have 10 percent more DNA than the standard reference genome available to researchers. ...continue reading "Race is a social construct except when it’s not"

I'm on vacation again, so let's play "Where am I?" again. Where am I on this drizzly, overcast morning?

Negotiations between Israel and Hamas are going great: Netanyahu refused to send a delegation to Cairo for ceasefire talks and spent the weekend trying to ratfuck the deal, and now Israel is complaining it didn't know what was happening with said talks and spinning a story about America stabbing it in the back https://t.co/VAAtTrT0sG — ...continue reading "Benjamin Netanyahu is no ally"

This is M16, the Eagle Nebula, taken from Palomar Mountain. As usual, I wish I could pick up more colors in my astronomy photos, but the reds usually overwhelm everything else. I'd need to do multiple exposures with four different filters to really pick up all the colors, and that's both expensive and time consuming. ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

Hamza Abdelrahman and Luiz Edgard Oliveira, the gurus of savings levels, report that excess pandemic savings are finally gone: I'm not sure how much real-world difference this makes, since excess savings have been nearly zero for awhile outside of the affluent, but it's still a milestone. From this point on, the economy is on its ...continue reading "Pandemic savings have all been spent"

The Wall Street Journal reports that consumers are fed up with rising food prices: Now, some consumers are hitting their limits. Restaurant chains and some food manufacturers are reporting sliding sales or slowing growth that they attribute to consumers’ inability—or refusal—to pay prices that are in some cases a third higher than prepandemic times. ....U.S. ...continue reading "Screwing their customers reaches a limit for food companies"

Another headline this morning: It turns out that "historians confirm" means two (2) historians say there's a lot of stuff going on right now.

So far I've heroically ignored the ongoing saga of Kristi Noem shooting her 14-month old dog, but seriously, what the hell is going on with her? Noem really, really needs to STFU about this. How many dogs does she have her sights on?

Young people are TIRED! Young people are TIRED. They’re tired of growing up with forever wars, with no healthcare, with crumbling infrastructure. Young people have every right to demand better from their leaders. It’s their job to. pic.twitter.com/aCqrVLZESi — Rep. Jamaal Bowman Ed.D. (@JamaalBowmanNY) May 3, 2024 Just stop it. Joe Biden ended the Afghanistan ...continue reading "Stop telling everyone life is horrible"

A reader comments on generational views of Israel: I see three generational views. My parents, who see Israel as it was in the 1960s and 1970s: constantly at risk of annihilation. Then there's my generation, that sees Israel as a strong democratic island in a sea of totalitarian neighbors. And the younger generation, that sees ...continue reading "Israel through young, old, and in-between eyes"

The number of cases decided by the Supreme Court has plummeted over the past 50 years:

LA Times culture critic Mary McNamara is oddly angry about the fact that Ozempic can sometimes make women more fertile. I say "oddly" because this is just one of the hundreds of side effects of popular drugs and no one even knows if it's very common. Most of the evidence so far is from TikTok, ...continue reading "Do women get the short end of the health care stick?"

Opinion about the Gaza protests at college campuses obviously differs between Muslims and Jews and between Republicans and Democrats. But the key difference is this one: The experience of older Americans was shaped by an era in which Israel was repeatedly attacked by Arab states (and nonstates) and was forced to defend itself against relentless ...continue reading "Israel through young and old eyes"

Charlie has been under the weather a bit, so we finally took him to the vet and shot him up with antibiotics. He perked up immediately and, as you can see, is looking fine now. However, the whole affair was traumatic for Hilbert. As soon as he saw us put Charlie in the cat carrier ...continue reading "Friday Cat Blogging – 3 May 2024"

The American economy gained 175,000 jobs last month. We need 90,000 new jobs just to keep up with population growth, which means that net job growth clocked in at 85,000 jobs. Yuck. The headline unemployment rate ticked up to 3.9%. Average weekly earnings dropped 1.1% in April on an annualized basis. Adjusted for inflation, that's ...continue reading "Job growth slows in April"

Things that are fake according to Donald Trump: Crime statistics from the FBI. Job figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 2020 election results from half a dozen different state officials. Reports that he continually falls asleep during his hush money trial, confirmed by numerous eyewitnesses. The trial itself, being conducted by the state of ...continue reading "Everything is fake, according to Donald Trump"

This is a California bush sunflower nestled in a sea of green provided by our recent rainshowers.