Month: December 2024

This is a Julia butterfly at the Schmetterling Haus in Vienna.

Hiring was down in October:

To put this into context, hiring is still above its pre-pandemic average. At the same time, it's declined 1.1 million over the past three years. It's now down to about its 2017 level.

The other shoe has finally dropped:

China said on Tuesday that it would begin banning the export of several rare minerals to the United States.... Sales of gallium, germanium, antimony and so-called superhard materials to the United States would be halted immediately on the grounds that they have dual military and civilian uses, China’s Ministry of Commerce said. The export of graphite would also be subject to stricter review.

China has only two critical exports to the US: pharmaceuticals and various key metals. It was sort of inevitable that China would eventually respond to our export controls with one of its own.

But I don't know how big a deal this really is. The US has moderate stockpiles of most critical metals, including rare earths, and they're also available from other countries. They just cost more than Chinese supplies. In the longer term, we're working on reopening domestic production. And the Chinese ban applies only directly to the US, not to countries that make intermediate products which end up back in China for eventual export to the US (like iPhones).

Still, the supply chain war is now well and truly on. Buckle your seatbelts.

This is apropos of nothing in particular. I just happened to be poking around in the FBI's crime statistics:

Since I assume prostitution itself isn't dying off, this means that apparently the police are hassling sex workers less. However, they're hassling customers slightly more. Since 2017, the ratio of prostitution arrests to customer arrests has gone down from about 10:1 to 3:1.

Our story so far: Pete Hegseth has no qualifications to be secretary of defense. He's a Fox News weekend host who's written a book about how terrible our military is, and that's it. He's also been accused of sexual assault in an encounter he had while he was divorcing his second wife and had just had a baby with his then mistress (now third wife).

Then, shortly after his nomination, we learned all about the Christian tattoos that cover his body—which also just happen to be popular with white nationalist groups.

Then, a couple of days ago we learned that his own mother thought he was a huge asshole during this period, someone who "belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego." She now says she regrets saying that.

And then last night Jane Mayer broke the news that former colleagues at organizations he ran "characterized Hegseth as a predatory racist with a substance abuse problem who badly mismanaged the only two organizations he ever led." A report written nine years ago said he was "repeatedly intoxicated while acting in his official capacity—to the point of needing to be carried out of the organization’s events."

Ladies and gentlemen, this is your next secretary of defense: boorish, abusive, racist, incompetent, and unqualified. It's so bad that Republicans might even dither a bit before confirming him.

Good ol' Democrats:

Donald Trump extorted Ukraine, tried to violently overturn the 2020 election, pardoned every crony he could dig up, and has nominated for cabinet-level positions Matt Gaetz, Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr., and Kash Patel.

The only one of these that has generated more than token opposition from Republicans is Matt Gaetz, and that's only because everyone hates his guts. It has nothing to do with how he would have run the Justice Department.

But Joe Biden pardons his only surviving son—very plausibly because he was the target of naked partisan attacks and Biden was afraid of what might continue to happen with folks like Pam Bondi and Kash Patel in charge of law enforcement—and Democrats go cowering in the corner.

And sure, maybe that's the "right" thing to do. On the other hand, sometimes it takes an ex-Republican like John Dean to understand how to fight back against Republicans:

“Let Biden give a safe harbor for some of his people who’ve done nothing but follow the process,” Dean said. “He could do it with specific people like Jack Smith and company. He could do it with [Robert] Mueller and company. He could do it with blanket pardons, where you would have a class of people who are just engaging in political behavior, and if Trump went after them, they could say: Hey, this isn’t subject to criminal investigation.”

I don't know if I'm agreeing with Dean or just venting. But sometimes the hack gap becomes a full-on abyss and it's a little hard to care about some earnest liberal definition of what's right.

Last week, Donald Trump tossed out a bombshell: he would impose massive tariff hikes against Canada and Mexico unless they addressed immigration and fentanyl to his liking. This produced a flurry of attention, including a phone call with Mexico's president and a visit from Canada's prime minister. Then the whole thing quickly disappeared.

This week Trump suddenly threatened to impose massive tariffs against BRIC countries if they tried to promote their currencies in foreign trade as a replacement for the dollar. This didn't even make sense, but it produced another satisfying round of attention and op-ed thumbsuckers.

This is likely to be a harbinger of the next four years. Trump will constantly toss out unexpected bits of lunacy and watch with satisfaction as everyone scrambles to respond. Then he'll drop the whole thing and move on. I can hardly wait.

Just a quick note: In the end, Democrats will probably¹ pick up two seats in the House of Representatives and their nationwide vote share will be nearly identical to 2022. They received 48.54% of the vote compared to 48.60% two years ago.

This is something to account for in any narrative about the lessons Dems need to learn from their loss this year. If the public has really turned against them, whether because of immigration or wokeness or policy feebleness or working class angst, why didn't this show up in congressional races?

There are potential answers to this question. But it needs to at least be addressed.

¹Adam Gray is likely to win his razor-thin race in California's 13th district, which would give Democrats a two-seat pickup. But it's still too close to call for sure.

I spared you this picture on Thanksgiving, but today your luck has run out. This is why Kamala lost: because Trump fans are nuts. The remarkable thing is that shrines like this aren't even uncommon. I see them regularly. There's something about Trump that makes a lot of people see him not just as a Republican politician, but as the savior of the nation. It's crazy.

From the AP:

Russian President Vladimir Putin approved budget plans, raising 2025 military spending to record levels as Moscow seeks to prevail in the war in Ukraine. Around 32.5% of the budget posted on a government website Sunday has been allocated for national defense, amounting to over $145 billion.

This is a little over 7% of GDP. The US outspends Russia 6-to-1, but this still amounts to only 3% of GDP:

Can Russia sustain this level of spending? We did it during the Korean and Vietnam wars, so I suppose Russia can do it for the Ukraine war. But it still must be a helluva strain.