Kevin Drum 🕸

Inflation slowed a bit in March from its February surge. On an annualized basis headline CPI inflation came in at 4.6%, down from 5.4% last month. Core CPI was unchanged at 4.4%. Groceries continued to show zero inflation in March. Transportation and medical care were up sharply. As usual lately, inflation in services was high ...continue reading "Inflation slows in March"

Every newspaper in the world is reporting today that California has spent $24 billion on homeless programs over the past five years. This is because the state auditor released a report saying: According to the Legislative Analyst’s Office, the State allocated nearly $24 billion for homelessness and housing during the last five fiscal years, or ...continue reading "California hasn’t spent $24 billion on homelessness"

Uri Berliner, a senior business editor at NPR, has written a buzzy article at the Free Press about how NPR has recently fallen apart. He attributes this to widespread changes following the murder of George Floyd in 2020: There’s [now] an unspoken consensus about the stories we should pursue and how they should be framed. ...continue reading "The peculiar tale of NPR’s decline and fall"

Today the Arizona Supreme Court ruled 4-2 that abortion in the state is completely illegal unless the mother's life is in danger. Because I like to torture myself, I read the opinion to find out what they based that on. If you also like to torture yourself, read on. Arizona has long had a law ...continue reading "Here’s why abortion is now illegal in Arizona"

A couple of weeks ago I was thinking about going out to take a picture of a SpaceX launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base. Not all the way out to Vandenberg, but maybe to Palos Verdes where I could get a clear view. But then the launch was delayed, and I never did it. On ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

Sigh. The prostate biopsy results came back this morning and I have prostate cancer. It's "large and aggressive," but still probably treatable via normal radiation therapy. We won't know for sure until I get a CT scan and a bone scan that tell us whether the cancer is limited to the prostate or has metastasized ...continue reading "Health update"

It's a miracle! Suddenly conservatives no longer believe in a national abortion ban. It should be up to each state: Fox’s stars are rallying behind Trump’s abortion message. The network is a pro-Trump propaganda outlet first and foremost, not an ideologically conservative one. https://t.co/7Y4QZGQEJr — Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) April 9, 2024 If abortion is murder, ...continue reading "Abortion? It’s no big deal anymore."

Sen. Lindsey Graham didn't like Donald Trump's abortion punt this morning and issued a statement saying so. Trump hit back with half a dozen vicious posts on Truth Social: “Many Good Republicans lost Elections because of this Issue, and people like Lindsey Graham, that are unrelenting, are handing Democrats their dream of the House, Senate, ...continue reading "Trump blasts Graham for staying firm on abortion ban"

Global sea temps should have passed their peak a couple of weeks ago. Somebody forgot to tell them:

Rich Lowry, editor-in-chief of National Review, says: Axios has a story up, headlined, “Trump, GOP plot 2025 criminal probe of Bidens.” I generally favor leaving former presidents alone, but, as I’ve noted before, it’s hard to see how one side can violate this norm and not expect the precedent to be turned against it. A ...continue reading "National Review editor: Biden should fully expect to be criminally tried if Trump wins"

Here in Southern California we got only a partial total eclipse, but the good news is that we actually got to see it. The skies were clear as a bell. So behold our mighty sun being eaten by our mere moon. But it would soon have its revenge.

A team of researchers at UC Berkeley and the University of Chicago has performed yet another version of a familiar experiment where they send identical resumes to different companies with only one difference: some resumes have distinctively white names (Misty, Brandon) and some have distinctively Black names (Latisha, Tyrone). Then they tally up the number ...continue reading "Here are 108 companies, graded from most to least racist"

Max Boot says Joe Biden deserves credit for his tough but restrained response to the killing of three US soldiers at a base in Jordan a couple of months ago by an Iranian-backed militia: On Feb. 2, U.S. forces dropped more than 125 precision munitions on 85 targets in Iraq and Syria belonging to Iran’s ...continue reading "President Biden forced Iran to back down"

Ha ha ha. Donald Trump has betrayed his pro-life supporters even harder than anyone figured. Today he declined to support any national abortion ban at all. Not 6 weeks, not 16 weeks, not anything. Just leave it up to the states. "Whatever they decide must be the law of the land," he said in a ...continue reading "Trump caves completely on abortion"

Just in the past few days, Donald Trump has said the following: Billionaires can trust him to keep their taxes low. Joe Biden was probably jacked on cocaine during his State of the Union address. Ukraine should just give Russia the territory it wants. I'm gonna keep smearing the judge's daughter even if I go ...continue reading "Half a dozen things Trump has said lately"

The Washington Post reports today on Donald Trump's "secret" plan to end the Ukraine war: Trump’s proposal consists of pushing Ukraine to cede Crimea and the Donbas border region to Russia.... That approach, which has not been previously reported, would dramatically reverse President Biden’s policy, which has emphasized curtailing Russian aggression and providing military aid ...continue reading "Trump: Just surrender to Russia"

According to COGAT, the Israeli agency that coordinates humanitarian aid for Gaza, 322 aid trucks entered Gaza today:¹ This is a direct result of Joe Biden's pressure following the destruction of the World Central Kitchen convoy last week. More routes into Gaza have been opened up, and aid is now getting to northern Gaza. If ...continue reading "Update: More aid getting into Gaza"

How much are illegal immigrants paid on average compared to native-born Americans? As you can imagine, this is not an easy question to answer. It's not as if the BLS has a handy hourly wage time series for undocumented workers. They're undocumented! The best answer I could find comes from a paper written in 2018. ...continue reading "Raw data: Wages and employment of native-born Americans"

As we all know, Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928. However, he could produce only tiny amounts. It wasn't until World War II that we figured out how to mass produce it: After a worldwide search in 1943, a mouldy cantaloupe in a Peoria, Illinois market was found to contain the best strain of mould ...continue reading "Facts about penicillin"

Last week Jonathan Martin wrote a column criticizing Joe Biden for not trying harder to get support from never-Trump Republicans: I reached out to every current Republican lawmaker who has refused to commit to Trump in the general election. Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) Mitt Romney (Utah), Todd Young (Indiana), Bill Cassidy (Louisiana) and Lisa Murkowski ...continue reading "“Republicans for Biden” gets its first start"