Kevin Drum 🕸

We live in the United States, so it's only natural that we're mostly concerned about American public opinion. But in the case of the Gaza War, Israeli public opinion is obviously more important. And among Israeli Jews, it's hawkish: 90% of Israeli Jews approved of last week's assault against Hezbollah in Lebanon. And what's the ...continue reading "The Israeli public wants war"

The California Aqueduct near Victorville on a bright, sunny afternoon.

A few minutes ago I suddenly got curious about Greece. What's happened in the years since their great financial crisis of 2009? Here you go: It's been 14 years since the Greek economy collapsed under the weight of loans they couldn't repay and they still aren't close to full recovery. Meanwhile, Germany, which loaned them ...continue reading "Raw data: The Greek financial crisis"

J.D. Vance is a slicker, glibber liar than Donald Trump—a low bar—but in the end he's no less deceitful. He made himself look like a reasonable guy last night, but only by misstating things at almost every turn. A few examples: Climate change is "weird science," and the way to fight it is to make ...continue reading "The sweet, reasonable deceit of J.D. Vance"

Sunset in the Mojave Desert.

I'm not sure why I did this, but something from last night got me curious about the effect of immigration on the economy in the broadest terms. That is, can we tease out any effect at the highest levels of economic activity? Here are naturalizations compared to GDP: Naturalizations rose steadily through the mid-90s and ...continue reading "Does the economy care very much about immigration?"

According to our friends at YouGov, nothing much happened this week. Kamala Harris continues to have a 3-point national lead over Donald Trump. But just for fun, here's a simple linear extrapolation of how they're doing: Don't take this seriously in any way. Not that it matters. If things really do end up with Harris ...continue reading "Harris maintains 3-point lead over Trump"

One of the weirdest claims in the Trump-Harris debate was Trump's lengthy declaration that he sucked it up and did his best to save a flailing Obamacare because it was the best choice for the American people. J.D. Vance repeated the claim tonight. It's beyond even Trumpian levels of bizarreness. He campaigned on repealing Obamacare. ...continue reading "What’s the deal with Trump and Obamacare?"

In tonight's vice-presidential debate, J.D. Vance obviously made a calculated decision tonight to tone the rhetoric way down and introduce himself to America as a friendly, reasonable guy. On some important issues he backed way down. Deport 25 million illegal immigrants? How about a million criminals and then we'll think about the rest. Ban abortion? ...continue reading "In a nice vs. nice debate, nobody won and nobody lost"

As long as we're on the subject of interviewing presidential candidates: Former President Trump turned down a "60 Minutes" offer of back-to-back conversations with both presidential nominees, with his campaign saying he didn't want interruptions for fact checks. https://t.co/yVRNAHsDop — Axios (@axios) October 1, 2024 Trump refuses to submit himself to a fact check. Could ...continue reading "Donald Trump’s entire campaign is now untethered from consensus reality"

At the New York Times, Bret Stephens and Gail Collins take up their weekly conversation: Bret: I’m still where I was last week: waiting for Harris to persuade me to vote for her. What’s wrong with asking her to sit down for a one-on-one interview with a serious journalist who will ask some tough but ...continue reading "Let us hold Donald Trump to normal standards of conduct. Please."

Iran's "sharp escalation" today involved less than 200 missiles and, apparently, zero casualties. It's barely conceivable that this wasn't intensely deliberate. Twice now, Iran has lobbed missiles at Israel, and both times they've done it with plenty of warning, small numbers, and ineffective targeting. They might as well be wearing a sandwich board announcing that ...continue reading "Iran hoists a white flag"

With the port strike in the news, you may be wondering how much money unionized longshoremen really make. It turns out this is not so easy to suss out. Pacific Coast shippers are represented by the PMA, which publishes a relatively straightforward list of average annual earnings. East Coast shippers are represented by the USMX, ...continue reading "Raw data: Average earnings of unionized port workers"

The chimpanzee is keeping an eye on you.

As long as we're on the subject of disasters, here is NOAA's estimate of the cost of large disasters over the past half century: Both the number of big disasters per year and the cost per year have gone up about 6x since the '80s.

Three weeks ago: Republicans in disaster-prone states, eager to present a united front during government funding talks, are shrugging off a disaster aid cliff — even as a storm barrels toward the Gulf Coast. ....“Disasters happen,” said Florida Republican Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart, chair of the State-Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee, when asked about Johnson's continuing resolution.... ...continue reading "Disaster relief in Republican-land"

Intelligent.com is a college prep company that, among other things, promises to "equip students with the tools they need to smoothly transition from academic life to professional success." Guess what? In a recent report, they say that recent college grads are unprepared for work and and getting fired in vast numbers. They need help from ...continue reading "How many people get fired each year? How come we don’t know?"

We have generative AI that can write a PhD thesis or create a photorealistic video of a protein unfolding, but this is what we use it for: New: In his negative ad against @mccormickforgov, @braun4indiana’s campaign altered this image from @SBTribune. The original on the left. The altered one on right. pic.twitter.com/BQVzuUHqHt — Adam Wren ...continue reading "Today all my opponents wear teal"

We've all been there: You check into Twitter, find some roiling meme in full fury, and say to yourself, "ffs, what now?" You shouldn't be forced to care, but because I'm bored; and it's the start of a long, dull dex night; and I'm just not a nice person, here's the latest: Another FAKE and ...continue reading "BREAKING: Trump says Kamala is a FAKER"

"This is hard to watch," says Noah Rothman at National Review. Give me break. A reporter yelled out a question over a noisy tarmac that President Biden couldn't make out, hearing only the word "strike." So he said a few anodyne words about using collective bargaining to settle the looming port strike and then walked ...continue reading "Presidents do not direct emergency response"