Kevin Drum 🕸

Here is average household spending on gasoline: The figures through 2020 come from the Consumer Expenditure Survey. The extrapolation for 2021 is based on retail sales of gasoline, which increased 36% compared to 2020. The extrapolation for 2022 is based on the price of oil, which has increased 70% since the beginning of the year ...continue reading "Raw data: US spending on gasoline"

Is this cheating? Am I getting a bonus catblogging day by putting up a picture of a random cat that I took a picture of last week? Probably. This particular cat was up on a roof in a section of town called Orange Park Acres, a little chunk of unincorporated land surrounded by the city ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

This won't come as big news to readers of this blog, but it's worth posting just for the headline alone: A new study calculates that exposure to car exhaust from leaded gas during childhood stole a collective 824 million IQ points from more than 170 million Americans alive today, about half the population of the ...continue reading "Raw data: We’ve lost 824 million IQ points!"

In the 2002 presidential election in France, Jacques Chirac ended up in a runoff with Jean-Marie Le Pen, the odious founder of the racist National Front party. Many French voters found themselves in a tough position: not really liking Chirac, but knowing that they couldn't support the loathsome Le Pen. The French electorate did the ...continue reading "Maybe Democrats should ask Republicans only for the “loan” of their vote"

Former attorney general William Barr illustrates a big problem for Democrats: Asked by NBC News' Lester Holt whether he considered Trump "responsible" for the violence at the Capitol, Barr said: "I do think he was responsible in the broad sense of that word, in that it appears that part of the plan was to send ...continue reading "Meme of the day: Trump is a dangerous stain on humanity, but of course I’d still vote for him"

Axios is a news site founded by the founder of Politico, and it's famous for presenting the news in a short, bullet-pointed, and easily mockable format. However, I know all about that, so I wasn't very interested in today's New York Times feature about Axios. But I read it anyway, and I'm glad I did. ...continue reading "Axios wants to teach the world how to write like PowerPoint"

Today the New York Times published an op-ed by Emma Camp, a senior at the University of Virginia. The topic was stifling wokeness on campus, and as you can imagine it was not well received on lefty Twitter. But it provides an interesting object lesson. David Roberts tweeted that the op-ed wasn't just bad, but ...continue reading "Today brings yet another masterly discussion about wokeism on campus"

This is the Hollywood/Vine subway station on the LA metro's Red Line, aka the B Line. The top photo is the . . . foyer? Lobby? Whatever. It's a large space with a couple of old-timey movie projectors and some art deco palm trees. The bottom photo provides a closer look at the walls as ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

For the past 50 years, spikes in the price of crude oil have been associated with economic recessions. Big spikes are followed by big recessions and small spikes are followed by small recessions: We are now approaching a very large spike in oil prices thanks to the Ukraine war. If this is merely a short-term ...continue reading "Raw data: Oil spikes and recessions"

COVID hospitalizations are continuing to plummet everywhere: I'm not sure why France is such a laggard, but even their hospitalization rate is declining rapidly. Within a couple of weeks, the US hospitalization rate should be at an all-time low.

Behold the strategic genius of Donald Trump: Trump mused to donors that we should take our F-22 planes, "put the Chinese flag on them and bomb the shit out" out of Russia. "And then we say, China did it, we didn't do, China did it, and then they start fighting with each other and we ...continue reading "Donald Trump, master great power strategist, has an idea"

Do ordinary Russians support the Ukraine war? No one can say for sure, but a best guess is that most of them do. Why is this? It's not so hard to figure out. First off, as background, Russians spent centuries resenting the cultural and economic dominance of the West. They especially resented it because it ...continue reading "Most Russians probably support the Ukraine war. Here’s why."

Here is a chart from Ryan Burge: The most interesting part of this is that every single white Christian group feels closer to Republicans than Democrats. That includes not just white evangelicals, but white mainstream Protestants and white Catholics. It's only the white atheists and non-Christians who feel closer to Democrats. Also interesting: Every white ...continue reading "White Christians of all types prefer Republicans to Democrats"

According to the Washington Post, China's annual work report is a little more militant than usual about "resolving" the Taiwan issue. The change from previous annual reports is the addition of “in the new era,” which I interpret as "taking over Taiwan before Xi Jinping dies." But that's just a cynical guess from someone who ...continue reading "China plans to ease up on COVID-19 restrictions"

This edition of Health Update is a little less cheery than previous ones. First off, my M-protein levels continue to rise: My doctor reduced the dosage of my chemo med yet again, so this isn't surprising. But still not welcome. On the bright side, the smaller dosage does seem to have helped to keep my ...continue reading "Health Update"

This week's picture captures a short break from the bedtime follies that we endure every night. As you can see, toys are sprinkled all over the bed, and the cats compete with each other to attack them. Charlie usually wins. This picture also shows how photogenic Charlie is. He looks great, just like he does ...continue reading "Friday Cat Blogging – 4 March 2022"

Over at Vox today we have yet another piece about "America’s housing crisis." The author proposes a "radical" solution (land taxes) that's not especially radical, but put that aside. The real issue here is that America doesn't have a housing crisis. I'm not sure why, but I find the new urbanists one of the most ...continue reading "Here is my gripe with progressive urbanists"

The New York Times reports today on tax season: Decades of Neglect Leave I.R.S. in Tax Season ‘Chaos’ "Neglect" is the opposite of what's happened, as the body of the story makes clear: Tax-averse Republicans, who have spent years cutting the agency’s budget, have seized on the I.R.S.’s problems as proof it should not be ...continue reading "The IRS has not been “neglected” for decades. Quite the contrary."

The American economy gained a stellar 678,000 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 588,000 jobs. The headline unemployment rate fell yet again to 3.8%. There's no bad news in this report. Employment increased by more than 500,000 ...continue reading "Chart of the day: Net new jobs in February"

There is something peculiar about the photojournalism of the Ukraine war. I've seen pictures of missiles arcing through the sky. I've seen pictures of blasted out buildings. I've seen pictures of refugees piling into trains. I've seen pictures of Russian soldiers walking through the empty streets of Kherson. I've seen satellite pictures of Russian convoys. ...continue reading "Where are the pictures of the Ukraine war?"