Kevin Drum

The New York Times wrote today about a moderate Republican woman who loathed the Dobbs decision removing the constitutional right to abortion:

As Gov. Gretchen Whitmer prepared to kick off a round-table discussion about abortion rights at a brewery recently, Alisha Meneely sat at one corner of the table, feeling politically abandoned.

“This scares me a lot,” said Ms. Meneely, 43, who described herself as a “pro-choice Republican” in an interview shortly before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. A few days later, as many Republican officials embraced the far-reaching implications of the decision, she was unequivocal. “This,” Ms. Meneely said, “is not my party.”

Let's think out loud about this. Toss out a few guesses. Run some ideas up the ol' flagpole and see if anyone salutes.

The target for Democrats is obviously center-righties like Meneely. The true believers won't give us the time of day and will never vote for us. So what do we know about these people?

First of all, feelings about abortion are just those: feelings. Science is of no help here. Science can tell us that a human blastocyst is created by a human egg and human sperm. It can tell us when a heart starts beating. It can tell us when brain activity is detected. It can tell us when a fetus is viable outside the womb—although this changes as technology improves. But it can't tell us whether a fetus deserves the same full protection of the law given to a human who's been born. That's an issue for religion, the law, and public opinion.

So why do some people feel that abortion is wrong? We liberals are fond of saying that it's because conservatives are misogynists who want to control women's bodies and punish them for having unapproved sex. And that's probably of true of some of them. But among moderate conservatives, there are really only two things we know for sure:

• A large majority of moderates on both sides have feelings that are basically shaped by shape. That is, they don't think a little ball of cells looks human but they do think that a sonagram taken at 18 weeks does. That's why they mostly approve of Roe v. Wade. They don't care if it makes legal sense, they only care that it jibes with their intuition.
• When Dobbs was finally handed down—that is, when endless talk turned into a real, concrete attack on abortion—support for abortion rights went up. We political junkies all expected Roe to fall after Trump appointed three right-wing justices to the Supreme Court, but ordinary people didn't. They were shocked and surprised when it happened.

These seem like the natural points of attack for liberals who want to persuade conservatives to support broader abortion rights. But how? It's easy to imagine how we can take advantage of scary conservative ideologues. They're scary. But how do we take advantage of the shape thing? After all, it makes a lot of sense for a pattern-matching species like us. If it looks human, it probably is human.

I don't know. The obvious solution is to support abortion until, say, 18 weeks but not after. But that's not what progressives believe.

We could try to convince people that "looks like" isn't "is." But that's a pretty tough row to hoe. I'm not sure how we could go about it.

We could begin a campaign to emphasize how a 20-week fetus isn't like a newborn baby.

We could splash social media with pictures of the 2001 fetus, emphasizing how creepy and alien it is.

Anybody else have some ideas? I know that lots of people have been trying to figure this out for decades, but with Roe gone it gains a certain salience that it didn't have before. What's our best way of handling it?

As usual, the Woodbridge Village Association did its part to increase small particulate matter in the local ecosystem on July 4th. But at least their show was prettier than the one most PM polluters put on.

Every year I try to experiment with something different, and in 2022 I decided to (a) use a long exposure to catch more fireworks in a single image and (b) show other people watching the fireworks. But it turned out that the long exposure time had a benefit I hadn't counted on:

As you can see, the smoke in the background is nicely blurred out and less distracting than usual. However, this is an otherwise undistinguished picture, so here's another one that I like better.

In today's Wall Street Journal we learn why the Fed is so concerned about inflation:

At the root of [the Fed's aggressive interest rate increases] is the fear that households and businesses will come to expect high inflation to persist, which can cause it to do so. That would require the Fed to increase rates more than otherwise to break that mind-set.

....When unemployment is at its natural level, they think inflation is influenced strongly by public expectations, which can be self-fulfilling. If consumers expect prices to be higher in a year, they will buy now.

“If you were a landlord and you knew prices were going to go up, you’d demand higher rent right now. If you’re a worker and you knew prices were going up, you’d ask for a raise,” said John Cochrane, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. “What people think is going to happen in the future matters desperately for how they behave today.”

....Current data suggest long-term inflation expectations are still anchored, “but there’s a clock running here,” said Mr. Powell. “It would be bad risk management to just assume that those longer-term expectations will remain anchored indefinitely in the face of persistent high inflation.”

So we have four things here. Three of them are guesses and one of them is a fact. If high inflation expectations set in, then:

• Consumers will buy now.
• Landlords will raise rents.
• Workers will ask for raises.
• Inflation expectations are still well anchored.

I see no evidence, for example, that consumers are "buying now." In fact, big box retailers are literally selling off appliances and other stock directly to discounters without ever putting it on the floor. That's because demand for these things has plummeted.

Landlords are raising rents, but that's largely because they were prohibited from doing so during the pandemic. Now they have three years of normal rent increases to make up in a year or two.

Workers are not asking for raises. Or, if they are, they aren't getting them. Real wages have been declining for over a year.

And yes, inflation expectations are currently pretty well anchored.

The big problem here is that today's core inflation was caused by problems in the past: supply chain headaches, pandemic restrictions, poor order management by big corporations, etc. The Fed can do nothing about any of that now, but they're panicking anyway because it turns out that these things affect inflation a little farther into the future than the FOMC thought they would. (Remember long and variable lags?)

Then, in addition to core inflation, there's fuel and food. But obviously the Fed can do nothing about the weather, nothing about feed shortages, and nothing about overseas wars. They're gunning for a recession that's completely unnecessary. The causes of inflation are either in the past or in areas outside of Fed control.

And keep in mind that the Fed is weighing these guesses against the certainty that a recession will put millions of people out of work. There have been cases where that tradeoff is necessary, but it's time to put both fear and veneration of the '70s away. It's been half a century, folks. Not every bout of inflation requires Volckerian zeal.

In the Atlantic today, Mitt Romney writes about our bipartisan refusal to address national (and global) crises:

Even as we watch the reservoirs and lakes of the West go dry, we keep watering our lawns, soaking our golf courses, and growing water-thirsty crops.

As inflation mounts and the national debt balloons, progressive politicians vote for ever more spending.

....When TV news outlets broadcast video after video of people illegally crossing the nation’s southern border, many of us change the channel.

And when a renowned conservative former federal appellate judge testifies that we are already in a war for our democracy and that January 6, 2021, was a genuine constitutional crisis, MAGA loyalists snicker that he speaks slowly and celebrate that most people weren’t watching.

What accounts for the blithe dismissal of potentially cataclysmic threats? The left thinks the right is at fault for ignoring climate change and the attacks on our political system. The right thinks the left is the problem for ignoring illegal immigration and the national debt. But wishful thinking happens across the political spectrum. More and more, we are a nation in denial.

I'm glad to see Romney write something like this, and I understand that he needs to pick on both sides in order to retain his conservative street cred. That makes me reluctant to nitpick his essay.

But I'm also really tired of people who try to retain a faux balance by desperately looking for bad behavior on both sides. I don't think it would be hard to find genuinely bad behavior by Democrats, but Romney's examples just aren't it. First off, here is recent national debt:

The national debt has gone up twice since 2000. The first spike was due to (a) Republican tax cuts, (b) deficit financed Republican spending for wars, national security, and Medicare, and (c) a housing bubble and bust that was egged on by a Republican Fed chair and made possible by light regulation of the financial sector. It had virtually nothing to do with Democrats.

The second spike was due to a global pandemic that was obviously nonpartisan. Again, Democrats had nothing to do with this aside from a single, smallish rescue component in March 2021.

The overall dynamic since the Reagan era has been for Republicans to cut taxes and raise spending when they're in office, and then for Democrats to pick up the pieces and try to rein things in when they assume power. Nor is this really controversial outside the confines of Fox News. Everyone knows it.

Now here's a look at immigration:

Romney is on firmer ground when he says that Democrats are softer on immigration than Republicans. Nevertheless, the five spikes in border crossings over the past two decades have been evenly split, three from Republican presidents and two from Democratic presidents. What's more, Democrats have twice been willing to sign up for comprehensive reform, but it's been scuttled by the extremist wing of the Republican Party. Democrats are considerably softer on immigration than Republicans today, but we only got here in the first place thanks to Republican intransigence.

And then there's one other thing. I appreciate Romney's vote to impeach Donald Trump. I am entirely sincere about that. But more generally, Romney continues to be a good foot soldier for the modern, Trumpized GOP. That just doesn't jibe with claiming to believe that we're going through a world historical crisis right now.

Politically, Romney is probably doing the right thing in his Atlantic essay. He comes off as cool and bipartisan while I come off as edgy and partisan. Naturally I regret that. But the facts are still on my side.

Some of the most hardcore anti-abortion advocates are hoping to get state laws passed that would not only ban abortion in their own states, but would prohibit women from traveling to another state to get an abortion. A few of them even want to ban the right to speak about reproductive choice options in other states.

It hardly bears saying that this is ridiculous. As an example, consider a few things of varying legality in deep red Texas and deep blue California:

• In Texas it's illegal to purchase or consume recreational marijuana. But it's not illegal to travel to California and do it there.
• In California it's illegal to purchase a high-capacity magazine. But it's fine to travel to Texas and buy one there.
• In Texas it's illegal to engage in assisted suicide. But it's OK to travel to California and do it there.
• In California it's illegal to sell eggs from battery-caged chickens. But you can drive to Texas and eat them there.
• In Texas it's illegal to teach public high school students about the 1619 Project. But you can move to California and get as much 1619 righteousness as you want.
• In California it's illegal for kids to publicly drink alcohol. But it's not illegal to drive to Texas and drink in public if your parents are present.

And of course it's entirely legal in both states to talk about these things in any way you want. It's a massive overreach to try and ban either travel or speech related to abortion.

There are lots of things that are legal in one state but not another. States are the laboratories of democracy, and the Constitution explicitly says that "Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State." Even our current Supreme Court can't pretend otherwise.¹

¹Of course, if that's true it highlights the problem I discussed in the previous post: Republicans talk big, but a lot of people think it doesn't matter because someone always stops them from doing scary, ridiculous stuff. That makes it OK to vote for them.

It's a paradox: we want people to be scared of Republicans, but we don't want Republicans to successfully enact any of the stuff that might actually scare people. What to do?

As an aside in a recent email I mentioned that I thought Dobbs would "get better." What did I mean by that?

Let me make clear that my answer is speculation. And I'll admit up front that it's the kind of speculation liberals and progressives have engaged in for a long time without it coming true. But here it is anyway.

For a long time, Republicans have dreamed of a conservative Supreme Court that would give them everything they want. Now they have it. And they're going to blow it.

For years they've won the support of center-right voters who don't like Republican extremists and don't like Donald Trump but vote for them anyway. Partly this is because they prefer Republicans over Democrats on specific issues (spending, foreign affairs, crime, immigration, etc.) but partly it's because Republican extremists have been huffing and puffing for so long that nobody takes them seriously.

But in three specific areas the Supreme Court has now given them the green light to swing for the fences:

• Abortion (Dobbs)
• Black voting (Shelby County)
• Guns (Heller and New York State Rifle & Pistol)

There are smart Republicans out there who will counsel patience. Let this stuff settle for a while so that it doesn't get scary. Move slowly.

But there are too many conservative Republicans who have no intention of doing this. We're already seeing states try to pass draconian laws forbidding interstate travel to get an abortion or banning speech about reproductive rights.

Likewise, the last few years have already seen a bunch of red states passing obviously race-based gerrymandering bills as well as new election laws designed to give Republican legislatures the ability to turn elections their way based on little but paranoid suspicions.

Finally, we're also likely to see a lot more 2A lunatics carrying guns around everywhere, even in states that don't like this. Eventually one of them will touch off yet another massacre and police will make it clear that they knew there was a guy with an AR-15 hanging around outside the mall/school/courthouse but they were constrained from so much as approaching him. Hanging around a mall with an assault rifle is perfectly legal, after all.

I think this is going to happen because this is what always happens. I don't know how long it will take, but it will happen. And when it does, center-right voters will no longer dismiss conservative extremists as just blowing hot air. It will be obvious that the Republican Party is under the control of right-wing loons and they're scary as hell.

And then the backlash will come. Of course, this is the part that progressives are always predicting but never happens. The Republican Party keeps getting crazier and crazier and we say, "This time people won't put up with it." But they do. Ditto for Donald Trump and his increasingly lunatic pronouncements during the 2016 campaign. (Remember that?)

So why am I dumb enough to believe that this time, for sure, it really is going to happen? Because it's no longer just talk. Republicans now have the power to actually fulfill some of the most extreme fantasies of their MAGA wing. And that, finally, is going to scare people in purplish states into voting for Democrats.

Needless to say, all of this presumes that adults aren't able to rein in the GOP's MAGAnauts and Democrats are able to rein in their extreme progressive wing and present themselves as a temperate, reassuring alternative. That's not a sure thing. But I can hope.

The top picture today is Juno Beach, site of the Canadian landing on D-Day. The bottom picture shows a circle of flags whipping in the stiff breeze that followed us around the entire day.

Why show you Juno Beach on July 4th? Because that's where our particular tour took us.¹ Besides, Friday was Canada Day and we should be generous about acknowledging our comrades in arms. Mind you, not so generous that we skip catblogging, but generous nonetheless. I'm sure our neighbors to the north understand.

¹We actually had a choice of Juno Beach or Omaha Beach. The Juno Beach tour won because (a) we already know the American side of things pretty well, and (b) the Juno Beach tour included a stop at the Bayeux Tapestry, which one of our family members really, really wanted to see. No pictures allowed, though!

Last night I was chatting with some friends about all the recent problems with air travel. This led to someone mentioning the lack of workers to fully staff flights and then to the usual denouement of conversations like this: "No one wants to work anymore. They just want to sit at home and collect unemployment/stimulus checks/etc."

I responded, of course, for all the good it did me. (1) The unemployment rate is currently 3.6%, which is as low as it's been since before I was born. (2) The Labor Force Participation Rate among prime age workers is 82.6%, the best it's been in a decade aside from a few months at the end of 2019. (3) Real wages have been declining for the past year, which suggests there is not really a huge demand for more workers. (4) The raw employment level is just above 158 million, the same as it was before the pandemic. All of these things point in the same direction: we are at or near full employment. People are not sitting at home on their butts (at least, no more than usual).

As for airlines, here are the numbers:

Commercial airlines have more workers today than they did before the pandemic. And just in case you're curious, here are the numbers for restaurants:

Restaurants are one of the sectors that was hardest hit by the pandemic, and it's also the one that most visibly seems to be short of workers. But even at that employment is only down by 5% compared to the pre-pandemic era. That's not nothing, but it's also not a massive shortage.

Now I want to show you yet another way of looking at the employment level. This chart shows the number of workers required to produce $1 million in GDP:

This is my usual favorite way of looking at things: draw a trendline using only data through March 2020, extend it to the current month, and then see how it compares to reality. When reality is above the trendline, the economy is strong (as during the Clinton and Obama years). When it's below the trendline, the economy is in trouble (as during the jobless recovery of the aughts and the Great Recession of 2008-11).

For the past year, however, the number of workers has been right on trend, and at the moment it's a bit above. Given the amount of goods and services we're producing, we have exactly the number of workers you'd expect.

Now, maybe if we had more workers we could produce more and GDP would be higher. Maybe. But GDP is generally demand driven. If demand was there, wages would go up and non-workers would be drawn off the sidelines. But that hasn't been happening and still hasn't.

We're more or less at full employment right now. We can quibble over the last percent or so, but people are working, and they're working at about the level we'd expect. We don't have a "lazy butts on sofas playing video games" problem.

Of course, if the Fed has its way they'll engineer the recession they so desperately want and then we really won't have enough people working. But that will be Jerome Powell's fault, not anyone else's.

Oh thank God:

We can now return to our normal lives. All is well.

Last weekend I did some night sky photography that, unfortunately, turned out to be mostly a dismal failure. But there was a silver lining: Photography failures often eat up a lot of time, so when I was finally finished it was getting on towards dawn. This meant that it was possible for me to see the five-planet alignment that everyone has been talking about.

Almost, anyway. The picture below shows Venus (bottom left), Mars, and Jupiter. Mercury wasn't yet visible and I didn't feel like waiting around for it, and Saturn is somewhere beyond the top right corner. But at least you get to see a three-planet alignment.