How late can abortions be performed in the US? A few facts:
There are only seven states where abortion is legal in the third trimester.
There are only 14 clinics in those states that perform abortions in the third trimester. They are expensive and time consuming.
Based on extrapolations of CDC surveillance data, there are probably only about 1,000 third-trimester abortions performed each year. The vast majority of these are between 24-28 weeks. .
There are no records for the number of abortions performed in the last two months of pregnancy, but it's almost certainly close to zero and exclusively done in cases of severe fetal abnormality or danger to the mother.
Needless to say, no abortions are performed after birth anywhere in the country.
The New York Times must have been pretty desperate to find a few fact checks on Kamala Harris:
It wasn't $1 trillion, it was $700 billion. Seriously? This is misleading?
Another fact check dings Harris for saying they've created 800,000 manufacturing jobs when the real number is 739,000. Another upbraids her for saying correctly that US oil production is at an all-time high because, um, she shouldn't take credit for it. Yet another disputed her careful statement that there are no Americans in active duty in a war zone—which is true—because there are still US soldiers on station in dangerous places.
I guess you have to find something to balance the fire hose of Trump lies. Gotta stay objective, after all.
CNN says Kamala Harris thumped Donald Trump in their debate last night. In their flash poll, 63% said Harris won vs. 37% for Trump. The Washington Post says this is the fifth biggest victory out of 25 debate polls dating back to 1984. Perhaps even more interesting is that Harris's favorability rating shot up six points while Trump's fell two points:
It's a little mysterious to me why Harris continues to avoid interviews. It's obvious that she's perfectly good at them, so why not do more? Perhaps they seem like a no-win proposition: a good performance doesn't help but a bad performance can hurt. Still.
Here in Orange County we're battling a huge fire in Trabuco Canyon, a semi-rural area in the southeastern part of the county. The canyon itself is highly populated, but luckily the fire moved uphill from where it started and is mostly burning in uninhabited areas.
It's called the Airport Fire due to California's inscrutable naming system for fires, apparently because it started next to an airfield used by hobbyists to fly RC planes. This is not an "airport" by any stretch, but I guess that doesn't matter.
I went out yesterday to take pictures, and they're sort of ho-hum. Needless to say, I couldn't get anywhere near the fire itself, so I had to settle for very long telephoto shots.
September 10, 2024 — Near Trabuco Canyon, California
My beloved YouGov poll suggests the presidential race is now dead even:
This confirms the Morning Consult poll that showed Harris losing a bit of support in swing states compared to a couple of weeks ago.
However, it turns out the entire change in this week's poll is due to Harris losing support from Hispanic voters, dropping from 59% to 50% in the past week. How likely is that? Coming on the back of last week's sudden 9-point drop among Black voters—which reverted to normal this week—I'm starting to have some doubts about YouGov's mechanics.
Here's something to worry you if you're the worrying sort:
You've probably heard that it's bad news when the yield curve inverts—that is, when long-term interest rates become lower than short-term rates. This is not a normal state of nature. However, the real danger signal is when the yield curve inverts seriously and then heads back up to positive territory. If recent history is any guide, it means a recession is no more than months away.
Well, it just happened after the biggest inversion since 1980. Let's hope that history isn't much of a guide, OK?
This is up a bit from July but still well controlled. It should cause no problems for the Fed.
On a conventional year-over-year basis, headline inflation was up 2.5% and core inflation was up 3.2%.
The inflation rate for groceries has been under 1% since the beginning of the year. Grocery prices have risen a grand total of 1.2% since January 2023 and 0.9% over the past year:
Who won the debate? I think it was Kamala Harris, but I would say that, wouldn't I?
But I really think she did. I was impressed by her fluent command of facts, many of them a bit obscure. Her delivery was excellent. She chose not to respond to much of Trump's blizzard of lies, which had me yelling at the TV but then immediately wondering if maybe it was the right thing to do. Perhaps constantly calling out Trump's lies as lies doesn't work well with the average viewer.
Trump, I thought, was angrier than usual, which is saying a lot. He was in a rage practically the entire time and his lies were relentless. Kamala will ban all your guns. Kamala wants to kill babies after birth. Kamala negotiated with Putin. Kamala let millions of criminals into the country and they're eating pets in Springfield. Kamala will ban fracking. Kamala hates Israel (and Arabs!). Kamala has sent America into decline.
David Muir, one of the moderators, pushed back on some of these things, which surprised me. It didn't slow down Trump, but it was still more real-time fact checking than I can ever recall in a debate.
Kamala Harris laughing at Donald Trump during one of his many sprees of blather and lying.
Trump was a little more coherent than he was in the last debate. He flitted from subject to subject as usual, but most of the time his segues were at least decodable.
Harris relied on a strategy of relentlessly staying positive and selling her "opportunity economy" story. I wish she had pushed back more on Trump's falsehoods, but she did that only occasionally—partly because of the moderators. Whenever Harris attacked Trump, he insisted on an immediate response. But it seemed to me that they often didn't give Harris the same opportunity.
Harris spent a lot of time trying to convince viewers that Trump was an extremist nutcase—but without directly calling him a nutcase. I can't tell if that worked. I understood all her references, but I'm not sure if the average viewer did.
In the end, Harris projected vibes of confidence and energy. Trump's vibes were angry and defensive. That's probably the single most important takeaway.
This highlights a problem either with journalists or with economists. I can safely say that economists aren't "skeptical" of Trump's tariff blather. They think it's straight up bullshit.
So is the problem that economists are too polite to say so when a Times reporter calls? Or that the Times reporter feels an obligation to tone down what they say in order not to seem anti-Trump?
The truth is pretty simple:
Tariffs don't "tend" to be borne by US businesses and households. They just are. They're collected by the customs service from American importers.
Tariffs would not "likely" generate less than the trillions of dollars Trump promises. They wouldn't, period. On net, they might even generate negative revenue.
Retaliatory tariffs wouldn't "probably" do little to affect the dollar's role as a reserve currency. They would almost certainly make the dollar less attractive. The whole idea of using harsh tariffs to protect the dollar is "a bit nuts," says Brad Setser.
"Most economists" don't say that Trump's tariffs would increase inflation. They all do.
I understand the obligations reporters are under to appear evenhanded. Language has to be restrained. Everything has to be sourced. You can't just state things on your own authority.
And yet, an ordinary person who managed to plow through the entire Times piece would probably come out of it thinking that tariffs are kind of complicated and it's not really clear if Trump is right or not. This is simply not correct.
We still haven't figured out how to cover someone who lies and blusters the way Trump does. When he says that tariffs on China are paid by China, he's either lying or he's a moron. That's it. Those are the choices. But you can't say that in the New York Times.
