Kevin Drum 🕸

We won! Hooray!

This is an extremely rare picture of Hilbert keeping his eyes open while I take a flash photo of him. It's a bounce flash aimed at the ceiling, so it barely even registers when I press the shutter button. But Hilbert doesn't like it anyway. It's just another annoyance that humans can't seem to be ...continue reading "Friday Cat Blogging – 11 November 2022"

This happened: KFC’s German branch has apologized for seeming to encourage its customers to mark the anniversary of Kristallnacht — the notorious Nazi pogrom against Jews — by eating chicken, saying that a promotional message was sent in error as a result of an automated push notification. Say what? A promotional message was "sent in ...continue reading "Kristallnacht turns out to be a bad excuse for eating at KFC"

The student loan forgiveness program has run into another speed bump: A federal judge in Texas has struck down President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program, declaring it illegal. ....“The program is [] an unconstitutional exercise of Congress’s legislative power and must be vacated,” wrote Judge Mark Pittman, who was nominated by then-President Donald Trump. ...continue reading "Student loan forgiveness program yet again in hot water"

Atrios comments today on racism and the toleration of racism within the Republican Party: I do think one of the political journalist beliefs is that Republicans are too gentlemanly to go full racist (and similar), but they always CAN and if they do the Dems are totally screwed. ....The Republican extended universe is actually quite ...continue reading "Should Democrats loosen up some on anti-racism?"

It's been raining around here, so here's a picture of a raindrop in our front yard garden.

If you don't follow Kieran Healy, you should: Today is Exit Poll Crosstab Storytime day. — Kieran Healy (@kjhealy) November 10, 2022 I used to do this, but not anymore. Even back in the day, I knew that exit polls were probably not good enough to rely on, but I shut my eyes and did ...continue reading "Friends don’t let friends rely on exit polls"

Here's the latest from the New York Times on the Kari Lake vs. Katie Hobbs contest for governor in Arizona: Hobbs is winning in the two biggest counties, while Lake is winning in 10 of the 13 smaller counties. And some counties have more votes already counted than others. How will that net out? I ...continue reading "I predict that Kari Lake will lose in Arizona"

Everyone agrees that Donald Trump was the big loser last night. The candidates he endorsed lost. The candidates he attacked won. The secretaries of states who were big election deniers mostly lost. As early as midnight, a tsunami was building among Republicans who were demanding that the party move on from Trump, pronto. But you ...continue reading "Betting markets lost big on Tuesday"

Twitter is full of people talking about a huge uptick in youth turnout in Tuesday's midterm election. This is typical: The story about last night's unusually high under-30 turnout is not "young people showed up to save democracy." It's "young people were treated as a constituency with valid needs, so they finally had a reason ...continue reading "Youth turnout this year definitely wasn’t up. But it might not have been down either."

The Senate race in Nevada is tightening while they're not even bothering to count votes in Arizona. I guess the old image of vote counters toiling through the night has been relegated to the ash bin of history. In any case, the latest numbers have improved the odds of Democrats winning the Senate even without ...continue reading "Democrats inch toward winning the Senate. Republicans inch toward losing the House.*"

The BLS announced CPI figures for October today, and the month-over-month headline rate was slightly higher than last month while the core rate was down substantially: On a year-over-year basis, headline inflation came in at 7.7%, half a point lower than last month. Core CPI rang in at 6.3%, a little lower than last month. ...continue reading "Core CPI, the number to care about, plummeted this month"

You've probably heard that Russia is withdrawing from Kherson—the city of Kherson, that is, not the entire oblast. Here's how the New York Times showed it on a map: Is this a big area or a small one? Where is it, really? The tiny little detail map in the bottom right kinda sorta tells you, ...continue reading "Where is Kherson, precisely?"

Just to make things simple, I figure Republicans have already won a Senate seat in Alaska and Democrats have won in Arizona. That makes the Senate 49-49. All that's left, then, is Nevada plus a runoff in Georgia. Right now it's looking like Republicans will win Nevada, so that leaves only the Georgia runoff on ...continue reading "Georgia! It’s Georgia again."

Catching a smoke on 7th Street in Long Beach.

Last night, as we were watching the election returns, I was given a homework assignment: How many utility-scale solar plants in California are built with battery storage so they can provide power after the sun goes down? The short answer is that 58% of new solar projects were paired with battery storage in 2021. The ...continue reading "Battery storage for electric power is skyrocketing in California"

I have avoided jumping aboard the "Elon Musk is an idiot" train mainly because he is, plainly, not an idiot. Beyond that, it's obvious that he recognizes Twitter was a dumb, impulsive purchase. He's only running it because a court wouldn't let him wriggle out of it. But counsel for the prosecution begs to disagree ...continue reading "A brief history of Twitter’s infamous blue check"

The LA Times says that here in California we value accuracy over speed in vote counting. Fine. I'm all for that. Still, I just looked at the LA mayor race and as of 9 am this morning we've counted 14% of the vote. That seems a mite slow even for the accuracy obsessed, doesn't it?

Well, that could have been a lot worse, couldn't it? However things ultimately turn out, there sure wasn't any sign of a red wave this year. The downside, of course, is the House. As a friend reminded me, even a narrow Republican win means two years of investigations, hearings, "oversight," debt ceiling brinkmanship, and government ...continue reading "Democrats pull out a squeaker"

I'm basically in favor of anyone with a D by their name tonight. Still, we all have certain races that we care about more than others. Some of them are local. Some just feature people who personally piss you off. Here are mine: Los Angeles County sheriff. Alex Villanueva is not only a bad sheriff, ...continue reading "Here’s what I’m watching for tonight"