Blog Profile / Kevin Drum
| URL : | http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum | |
|---|---|---|
| Filed Under: | Politics / US Politics | |
| Posts on Regator: | 4280 | |
| Posts / Week: | 36.3 | |
| Archived Since: | February 16, 2011 | |
Blog Post Archive
Wolfram|Alpha Confirms All Our Ageist Stereotypes
Via Andrew Sullivan, Stephen Wolfram reports on the results of the Wolfram|Alpha Personal Analytics for Facebook project. Basically, it's an analysis of a million Facebook users, and the vast bulk of Wolfram's post is about the basic demographics of their sample space. Show More Summary
Quote of the Day: Quantifying the Idiocy of the U.S. Congress
From Matt Steinglass, on the recent spate of proposals to defund funny-sounding research: The most urgent research priority for American social science is the question of why so many congresspeople are boastful ignoramuses. But would...Show More Summary
The Price of Healthcare Success: Losing Your Funding
This came out over the weekend, but Ezra Klein has an interesting long piece up about the next frontier in health management. Just as control of infectious diseases was the story of the 20th century, control of chronic diseases may be...Show More Summary
Friday Cat Blogging - 26 April 2013
I'm told that this quilt is an Amish pattern and uses Amish colors. However, it's the one quilt in the house that Marian didn't make herself (she won it as a door prize, I think), so we're not sure. In any case, the colors are so Domino-like that you might not even know she was there if I hadn't used Photoshop to brighten her eyes a bit. Now then. Show More Summary
Cap-and-Trade in Europe is Working Just Fine
Several years ago Europe instituted a continent-wide cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions called ETS. It was decidedly imperfect, and has gone through several revisions since it started. Recently, however, energy demand has declined, which has left Europe awash in carbon permits. Show More Summary
Pigford II and the Eternal Problem of How to Prove Discrimination
The New York Times has an epic piece today about fraud in a government program originally designed to compensate black farmers who had been unfairly denied Agriculture Department loans in the 80s and 90s. The original compensation program,...Show More Summary
Chart of the Day: Unfortunately, GDP Growth is Right on Target
Analysts were hoping that GDP would grow about 3.5 percent last quarter. Instead, it grew 2.5 percent. Should we be surprised? Take a look at the chart below and decide for yourself.
Today in Conservatism
Apparently this is serious, not just some weird leftover from April 1: The Heritage Foundation and Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity presented the second annual Breitbart Award to Michelle Malkin, syndicated columnist...Show More Summary
Keep it Short
They say brevity is the soul of wit. Austin Frakt says it's also the soul of persuasion. To prove it, he points us to Tim Harford, who summarizes an experiment in which various versions of a letter were sent to people who might qualify...Show More Summary
I Am Tired of People Calling Me On the Phone
I've been getting a ton of telemarketing calls lately. They're all over the map: some are from people I've done business with before, some are cold calls, some are illegal robocalls, some are from opinion pollsters, etc. But one wayShow More Summary
George Bush Was No Dummy, But How About if We Leave it at That?
Thanks to the opening of his presidential library, this is officially "Be Nice to George Bush Week," and we've had quite a few entries in an ongoing competition among conservatives to persuade us that Bush was really a whole lot better than we used to think he was. Show More Summary
The Real Problem With Obamacare
Last night I read a Politico article about Congress trying to exempt itself from Obamacare. I couldn't make heads or tails of it. Obamacare doesn't even apply to big employers, so what's to exempt? Well, it turns out that Congress wrote...Show More Summary
Banks Continue to Scaremonger Over Nonexistent Down Payment Requirements
Are banks refusing to make loans unless buyers put up a big down payment? Apparently so. Will this hurt the recovering housing market? Maybe. Is this all due to restrictive Dodd-Frank rules that ought to be discarded? Nope. Read on for the real story. It turns out that Dodd-Frank allows banks to make any kind of loans they want. Show More Summary
Finally, Congress Finds Something to Agree About
Congress is finally being roused to do something about the sequester. Part of it, anyway: Complaints about air-travel delays in recent days have prompted Democrats in Congress to reconsider their strategy for dealing with across-the-board spending cuts. ...."We have to admit that some things are very problematic," said Sen. Show More Summary
Why Obama Fails to Get Republican Votes, Part Infinity
Today, Dave Weigel reads Olympia Snowe's upcoming memoir so we don't have to. In particular, he highlights just how hard President Obama worked to win her support for Obamacare: As woe-is-the-Republic texts by retired moderates go, it's...Show More Summary
Washington Post Wastes $125! News at 11!
Here's the lead headline at the Washington Post right now: Feds spend at least $890,000 on fees for empty accounts This kind of stuff drives me crazy. Should agencies be more careful about shutting down bank accounts they no longer use? Sure. Show More Summary
House Republicans Introduce Yet Another Cunning Plot to Destroy Obamacare
Ed Kilgore points us today to the latest state-of-the-art healthcare thinking from conservatives. House Republicans have a plan to take money away from Obamacare implementation and shift it to a high-risk pool that's currently underfunded. Show More Summary
Sunnis Are Awakening Once Again in Iraq
The latest from Iraq: Security forces for the Shiite-led Iraqi government raided a Sunni protest camp in northern Iraq on Tuesday, igniting violence around the country that left at least 36 people dead. The unrest led two Sunni officials...Show More Summary
SEC Asked to Require Companies to Disclose Political Donations
The New York Times reports today on a petition asking the SEC to require public companies to disclose their political donations. Needless to day, business lobbying groups are unamused: Earlier this month, the leaders of three of Washington’s most powerful trade associations — the U.S. Show More Summary
Would You Rather Walk a Mile or Walk For 30 Minutes?
Aaron Carroll reports today on a recent study about the effect of calorie labeling on restaurant menus. Four different menus were randomly assigned to different diners: (1) a menu with no nutritional information, (2) a menu with calorie...Show More Summary