Kevin Drum

Here's some good news:

After three weeks of radiation and a couple of months of hormone therapy my PSA level has dropped to 3.2. This is almost normal and indicates that my prostate cancer is on the run.

My testosterone level has dropped from 375 to 9, which is very, very low—even lower than the normal response to Lupron. I suppose that's good? The lower the better, since testosterone is a food source for prostate cancer. Obviously I'm not going to be starring on The Bachelor anytime soon.

After seemingly endless speculation around weird mini-primaries and town halls moderated by Oprah, it took Kamala Harris a grand total of 24 hours to lock up virtually every important endorsement, a majority of Democratic delegates, and somewhere around $100 million in new donations. She has no competitors and is now the presumptive nominee.

This reminds me of 2020, when various marginal candidates won the first few Dem primaries and then Joe Biden won South Carolina. Within 24 hours all the chatter stopped and it suddenly became clear that everyone had wanted Biden all along. He sailed to victory after that. It's funny how reality intrudes on fantasy with such regularity.

Liberal myths

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Myth: "Crisis" talk is just conservative scaremongering.
Reality: Illegal immigration has skyrocketed under Joe Biden. Both Obama and Trump averaged about 35,000 migrants per month. Biden has averaged nearly 200,000 per month.

Myth: There is broad support for liberal immigration laws.
Reality: This used to true, but not anymore. In Gallup polls, support for increased immigration rose steadily for many years, reaching 34% in 2020. Since then it has plummeted. Support for increased immigration is currently at 16% compared to 55% who want it decreased. 86% think illegal immigration is a serious problem. Support for building the wall has risen above 50%.

Conservative myths

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Myth: We are currently in the middle of a migrant crime wave.
Reality: There's no evidence for this. Crime has declined substantially over the past few years, and multiple studies have found that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native borns.

Myth: Central American countries are emptying their prisons and mental institutions and sending their inmates to the US.
Reality. This is flatly made up. There is no evidence this is happening.

Myth: Illegal immigrants are taking jobs away from Americans who need them.
Reality: The employment rate of native borns remains near pre-pandemic highs. Generally speaking, illegal immigration rises when there are labor shortages in low-wage jobs that Americans don't want. These are typically jobs that require no English and can be paid under the table. Natives and legal immigrants work almost exclusively in conventional jobs that require English skills.

Myth: Illegal immigrants don't pay taxes and will eventually bankrupt Social Security.
Reality: Illegal immigrants pay sales taxes, property taxes (via rent), and even some income taxes and payroll taxes. However, they are not generally eligible to receive Social Security, so they make the program stronger, not weaker. Likewise, they are ineligible for most welfare benefits. They are eligible for schooling and emergency medical care, but the taxes they pay makes this roughly a wash. Overall, illegal immigration is a (small) net positive for the US economy.

wtf?

Mountain Dew has been a Pepsi product 60 years, long before J.D. Vance was born. What the hell is he talking about?

I dunno. These guys can't help themselves. Then again, maybe this was a shoutout to an old ad campaign that was widely viewed as racist. It was about a goat who loved Mountain Dew, but the punch line involved a woman who was asked to pick the goat out of a lineup where everyone else was a Black man.

If that's that case, then congrats to Vance for being woke! If it's anything else, then congrats to Vance for being an asshole.

Moonrise over the Mojave Desert. This picture was taken about ten minutes after sunset, which is what makes the moon so bright and ruddy.

At dinner last night the subject of fast food prices came up. We all agreed that prices seem to have skyrocketed recently, which I said was kind of mysterious. After all, the federal government tracks fast food prices, just like they track everything else, and the numbers are easy to find. Here they are:

Since 2021, fast food is up 23%, which is a little more than general inflation but only by a few percentage points. That's about six points more than average wage growth.

Maybe prices have gone up more in Southern California, where we happen to live? The BLS doesn't track fast food specifically for LA and Orange Counties, but they do track eating out in general. It turns out that Southern California's overall restaurant inflation is slightly less than the national average, so its fast food inflation probably is too.

So it's weird. I too feel like some of the common fast food items I eat are substantially higher priced than they were a few years ago. As in 50% higher or even more. And yet BLS statistics say I'm wrong. What's going on?

I'm beginning to think of the Wall Street Journal as the Daily Mail of the financial press: They are constantly printing stories about big new trends that are either flatly false or based on the flimsiest possible cherry-picked evidence. Here is today's:

This chart isn't wrong per se. Interest debt has indeed gone up. But interest is a fairly small part of total debt, and every possible indicator suggests that household debt in the US is not a problem. Here is debt as a percent of disposable income:

It went down during the pandemic and then up afterward. It is currently lower than it was at the end of 2019 (9.8% vs. 10%). Here is household debt as a percent of GDP:

It's the opposite: it went up during the pandemic and then back down. It is currently lower than it was at the end of 2019 (76.2% vs. 77.7%). And if we want to back out mortgage payments, here are credit card balances:

Down during the pandemic and then up afterward. Total credit card balances today are precisely the same as in the final quarter of 2019.

There are a few specific indicators that are slightly troublesome—with an emphasis on slightly. The vast bulk of the evidence, however, shows nothing very worrisome at all. Excess savings from pandemic stimulus bills have been depleted, but that's entirely expected and says nothing about financial health. On that score, American families continue to do well.

This didn't seem worth mentioning a couple of days ago, but last week's YouGov poll happened to ask about voting intentions for both Trump vs. Biden and Trump vs. Kamala Harris. The results were interesting.

Biden has two points more support than Harris, but that's due entirely to responses from Democratic voters. They were 88% in favor of Biden but only 82% in favor of Harris, with the balance going to RFK Jr. and Not Sure.

This is almost certain to change once Harris becomes the presumptive nominee. At that point she'll start polling at least as well as Biden among Democrats and possibly better depending on how things go. This will still leave Trump with a small lead, but far from an insurmountable one.

So Biden is out, but he didn't resign. He'll be president until January.

If Democrats are smart, they'll quickly coalesce around Kamala Harris and be done with it. She may not be perfect, but on short notice she's the best they have.

But then, when have Democrats ever been smart?

UPDATE: Hold on. In a second Twitter post, Biden endorsed Harris:

I (sort of) said I wasn't going to fact check Donald Trump's speech on Thursday night, and I'm not. I promise!

Oh, who am I kidding? The thing is, Trump's speech wasn't just his usual string of garden variety lies and exaggerations. He said some genuinely weird stuff that I assumed were lies, like everything else he says, but I wasn't sure. I finally got curious enough to check them out, but once I started they turned out to be endless. As a result the following list is long, but even at that it's not complete. After a while I just gave up on some of his weirdness because I couldn't figure out what he was talking about. I wonder if any of his fans realize that his standard stump speech is simply an invented fantasy from beginning to end?

Anyway, here it is:

They also gave up Bagram [in Afghanistan], one of the biggest bases anywhere in the world.... And you know who has it now? China has it now.

There were rumors back in 2021 about the Taliban giving China access to Bagram, but it never happened.

Russian warships and nuclear submarines are operating 60 miles off the coast in Cuba. Do you know that? The press refuses to write about it.

Last month a Russian sub visited Havana for a few days. It was nuclear powered, but carried no nuclear weapons. It was widely reported.

Israel has an Iron Dome. They have a missile defense system. Three hundred forty-two missiles were shot into Israel, and only one got through a little bit.... We’re going to build an iron dome over our country, and we’re going to be sure that nothing can come and harm our people.

Iron Dome, which protects Israel from short-range missiles, was largely funded by the US and some of it was co-produced by the US. In short, we already have it and it's deployed in the Red Sea (among other places), which is why all 342 of those Iranian missiles and drones were shot down. As for a bigger version, a la Ronald Reagan's SDI, that's for ICBMs, not short-range missiles. We've continued working on that since the '80s, but the technology remains problematic.

We’re going to get to the bottom of it. You remember [Biden] said we’re going to find a cure to cancer; nothing happened. We’re going to get to the cure for cancer and Alzheimer’s and so many other things. We’re so close to doing something great. But we need a leader that will let it be done.

We are nowhere near cures for cancer or Alzheimer's. This has nothing to do with political leadership and there is nothing to get to the bottom of.

We have to produce massive amounts of energy.... A.I. needs tremendous — literally, twice the electricity that’s available now in our country, can you imagine?

No. There are various forecasts, but none of them are anywhere near this. Goldman Sachs, for example, projects that AI will consume about 1% of US power by 2030.

We also left behind $85 billion dollars’ worth of military equipment [in Afghanistan], along with many American citizens were left behind. Many, many American citizens.

We didn't "leave behind" anything. The Afghan military was armed by the US over the course of 20 years, and after our withdrawal the Taliban took ownership of those weapons. Their value amounted to about $7 billion. As for the evacuation, we rescued 6,000 US citizens, about 90% of the total in country. The remainder mostly declined to leave, but we have nonetheless brought home several hundred in the two years since. No one knows how many remain—or whether they even want to leave—but it almost certainly amounts to less than 100-200 people.

We defeated 100 percent of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, something that was said to take “five years, sir, it’ll take five years, sir.” We did it in a matter of a couple months.

By the time Trump took office ISIS was about two-thirds defeated. It took two more years to finish the job.

The greatest invasion in history is taking place right here in our country.... They’re coming from prisons. They’re coming from jails. They’re coming from mental institutions and insane asylums.

There is no evidence this is happening.

Our crime rate is going up, while crime statistics all over the world are going down.

No. Crime in the US has dropped during every year of the Biden administration.

The other countries weren’t accepting [MS-13 gang members] back. And I called up and I said tell them that we’re not giving them economic aid any more.... And the next day I was called by everybody, I couldn’t take all the calls.

“Sir, sir, what’s the problem?”

I said, “You won’t take your killers back that you sent in caravans into America. You won’t take them back.”

“Well sir, if you’d like us to, we would give very serious consideration to doing that.”

In 24 hours, they were being taken back. For years and years when I first came in, they said President Obama tried to get them to go back and they wouldn’t accept them.

I can't even fact check this. Deporting gang members has been a bipartisan priority for decades. It's true that in 2019 Trump cut off aid to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras and later restored it, but that was related to his "safe third country" policy, not deportation of gang members.

Probably the best trade deal was the deal I made with China where they buy $50 billion of our product. They were buying nothing. They buy $50 billion worth.

The agreement was for $200 billion and China never made good on it.

Right now as we speak, large factories, just started, are being built across the border in Mexico. So, with all the other things happening at our border, and they’re being built by China to make cars and to sell them into our country, no tax, no anything.

To the extent this is happening, it will be done under the terms of the USMCA treaty, which Trump calls "the best trade deal ever made."

They want to raise your taxes four times. Think of it.... This is the only administration that said we’re going to raise your taxes by four times what you’re paying now. And people are supposed to vote for them?

This bears no relation to reality. Nobody has any plans to quadruple taxes on anyone, or anything even close to that.

Americans are being squeezed out of the labor force and their jobs are taken. By the way, you know who’s taking the jobs, the jobs that are created? One hundred and seven percent of those jobs are taken by illegal aliens.

When Joe Biden took office the employment level of native born workers was 123 million. Today it's 131 million. That's an increase in the employment rate from 56.5% to 59.4%.

We’ve suffered the worst inflation we’ve ever had.

It's the fifth worst in the postwar era and it lasted only two years. The CPI has been barely above 3% for the past year.

Inflation has wiped out the life savings of our citizens, and forced the middle class into a state of depression and despair.

No it hasn't.

I told China and other countries, “If you buy from Iran, we will not let you do any business in this country, and we will put tariffs on every product you do send in of 100 percent or more.” And they said to me, Well, I think that’s about it. They weren’t going to buy any oil.... And [Biden] took off all the sanctions, and they did everything possible for Iran and now Iran is very close to having a nuclear weapon, which would have never happened.

Chinese oil purchases from Iran increased under both Trump and Biden. Iran is close to having a nuclear bomb because Trump unilaterally pulled out of Obama's nuclear treaty, which had limited Iran's ability to enrich uranium.

We’ve got Right to Try.... They’ve been trying to get that approved for 52 years, wasn’t that easy.... So I got everybody into an office.... We got them to sign an agreement. They agreed to it, where they’re not going to sue anybody.... We’re saving thousands and thousands of lives. It’s incredible.

Trump is talking about a bill that allows terminally ill patients to try new drugs that are still in testing. It's true that Congress passed a right-to-try bill under Trump, but (a) most states already had right-to-try laws, (b) the FDA already approved 99% of all requests from terminally ill patients anyway, and (c) best estimates suggest that only a tiny number of people have ever used the law.