Kevin Drum
In other words, in the same way that mass incarceration surged because of a real thing, it's finally starting to ebb because of a real thing: the actual, concrete decline in violent crime that started in the early 90s and which appears to be permanent. America is simply a safer place than it used to be, and looks set to stay that way.Collection: Real
The fallout from the Supreme Court halfway killing Obamacare would likely be more serious than conservatives believe...Even their own base, which has been told relentlessly that Obamacare represents the end of the America they love, might start to demand a fix once it becomes clear just what they’re missing - and what all those blue states with their own exchanges are getting.Collection: Believe
There's no liberal equivalent of Donald Trump.Collection: Trump
Donald Trump lied about criticizing Mark Zuckerberg.Ben Carson lied about Mannatech.Carli Fiorina lied about the size of the tax code.Marco Rubio flatly refused to answer a question ("discredited attacks from Democrats") that I guess he didn't think he could just lie about. This is quite a debate.Collection: Lying
[Ronald]Reagan and[George W.] Bush were far more radical than other presidents.Collection: President
The folks who want to be left alone are the ones who actually get most of the work done, but they’re still mocked as drones or beavers or trolls. That’s bad enough, but now technology is helping the extroverts in their long twilight campaign against actually concentrating on anything.Collection: Twilight
If you don’t want your followers to give up in disgust, your inspiration needs to be in the service of goals that are at least attainable.Collection: Giving Up
Open office plans, cell phones, constant notifications: these are all things that fight against sustained attention on a task. For some people and some tasks, that doesn’t matter. But for a lot of important work, it matters a lot.Collection: Fighting
Smart hiring managers in the modern world should be asking, “How long can you concentrate on a task before you have to take a break?” I wonder how many of them do?Collection: Smart
The ability to focus on a single task for an extended period is a talent that’s underappreciated - especially by extroverts, who continue to exercise an unhealthy hegemony over most workplaces.Collection: Exercise
I don't support everything Bernie Sanders supports, but I support most of it: universal health care, reining in Wall Street, fighting climate change, reversing the growth of income inequality, and so forth. If we could accomplish all this in a couple of years, I'd be delighted. But we can't.Collection: Wall
Of course the system can be changed. Why would I bother spending 14 years of my life blogging if I didn't believe that?Collection: Believe
We stiffened the penalties for fraud, we extended nationwide efforts to make sure that payments are accurate and they closed a loophole in which people were gaming the system. We didn't change eligibility requirements or reduce the level of benefits.Collection: People
I hate the idea that we might lose even a few talented future leaders because they fell for Bernie Sanders's spiel and then got discouraged when it didn't pan out.Collection: Hate
If you want to make a difference in America, you need to be prepared for a very long, very frustrating slog.Collection: Differences
My fear is that having been promised a revolution, Bernie Sanders supporters will become disgusted and cynical when Hillary Clinton and the establishment win yet again and the revolution doesn't happen.Collection: Winning
Our system is a mess, but 90 percent of America has insurance coverage.Collection: America
If I could snap my fingers and import France's health care system today, I'd do it.Collection: Care
I'd like to see college debt levels drop by a lot, but I'm not quite sure what the best way to do that is.Collection: College
Rising inequality is a cultural and economic cancer on a lot of different levels.Collection: Cancer
I think liberals should accept that if we want big programs that significantly reduce inequality - and we should - it's going to require higher taxes on everyone. The rich can certainly do more, especially given their stupendous income increases since the Reagan era, but they can't do it all.Collection: Thinking
If Trump really opposed the war in Iraq, all he has to do is show us the evidence. It would take five minutes. He hasn’t done it. He’s lying.Collection: War
The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while.Collection: Media
We had Hillary Clinton try and do a reset. We had Hillary Clinton give Russia 20 percent of the uranium in our country. You know what uranium is, right? This thing called nuclear weapons, like lots of things, are done with uranium, including some bad things.Collection: Country
I watch CNN, it's so much anger and hatred and just the hatred.Collection: Cnn
You're more likely to vote Democratic if you hate Republicans than if you love Democrats, and vice versa.Collection: Hate
Like it or not, war is not always the answer. The better part of wisdom is to stay out.Collection: War
They [Republicans] assume that military action always shows strength, while avoiding military action always shows weakness. That's just crazy.Collection: Crazy
Apple is happy to allow users more control over their devices as long as it also happens to benefit Apple. If it doesn't, then tough.Collection: Apples
Apple has never allowed ad-blocking software on the iPhone or iPad. This is one among many reasons that I ditched both. Not because I hate ads all that passionately, but because it's an example of the obsessive corporate control Apple maintains over its environment.Collection: Hate
Carli Fiorina says companies are consolidating because it's the only way to compete with big, corrupt government. "This is how socialism starts." Is that also why she bought Compaq when she was CEO of Hewlett-Packard?Collection: Government
We need to cut regulations. Apparently this will make everyone a little more socially responsible?Collection: Cutting
The plain fact is that recent college grads aren’t in massive pain. They suffered during the Great Recession like everyone else, but all told, they probably suffered a little less than most other groups.Collection: Pain
Promising a revolution that’s simply not feasible really does have the potential to create cynicism when a couple of years go by and it hasn’t happened.Collection: Couple
Black crime rates fell more steeply than white crime rates, and now black incarceration is falling more steeply than white incarceration.Collection: Fall
Because prison sentences in America tend to be long, de-incarceration lags falling crime rates by a fair amount, but eventually it does catch up.Collection: Fall
The younger you are, the more likely you are to have grown up in a (mostly) lead-free environment, and that means you're less likely to have committed a felony or gotten sent to prison.Collection: Mean
So many theories. But all of them have one thing in common: They demonstrate that although Trump isn’t much of a businessman, he is rich enough to hire good tax attorneys who will hand over huge stacks of forms for him to sign blindly. That’s a helluva qualification for president, isn’t it?Collection: Hands
When Donald Trump disingenuously demands to know why [Hillary] Clinton never tried to close the loopholes he used, the answer is: She did. And if there had been any way to make it retroactive, she probably would have voted for that too.Collection: Answers
The FBI released its report on [Hillary] Clinton's emails. It exonerated her almost completely, but a few days later Matt Lauer obliviously spent a full third of his interview with Clinton on the emails anyway. Lauer was widely pilloried for this.Collection: Email
I think [Hillary] Clinton owes the press some thanks for going so far overboard on the emails and the Clinton Foundation over the past year.Collection: Thinking
[Donald trump] was steamed about [Hillary] Clinton's suggestion that he might not be as rich as he says. So he ditched the email stuff and instead spend a couple of minutes defending the greatness of his income, his company, his debts, his bankers, his buildings - and then sort of forgot what he was talking about and wandered off into a riff about how terrible our infrastructure is.Collection: Couple
[Donald] Trump had the opportunity to go after [Hillary] Clinton's emails at length if he wanted to, but he didn't.Collection: Opportunity
I read quite a few complaints last night about Lester Holt’s choice of debate topics. Liberals wanted to know why climate change didn’t come up. Conservatives thought there should have been a question about abortion.Collection: Night
Ben Carson says his flat tax will be around 15 percent. And by God, if he ever shows you the details, you'll see how awesome and deficit-killing it is.Collection: Ben Carson
Marco Rubio turns a question about missing Senate votes into an attack on the mainstream media.Collection: Media
I've long believed that having multiple official languages makes it very hard to sustain a united polity.Collection: Long
The reporting is fake. Look, look...You know what it is? Here's the thing. The public isn't - you know, they read newspapers, they see television, they watch. They don't know if it's true or false because they're not involved.But I'm involved. So I know when you're telling the truth or when you're not. I just see many, many untruthful things.Collection: Fake
Note to conservatives: sometimes you just have to give up. Do you really care that much about killing lots of bad guys as opposed to letting them rot in prison for the rest of their lives? It might be time to let go and save your energy for other battles. This one is getting absurd.Collection: Letting Go
I can't fault [Donald] Trump for firing [Craig] Deare. Then again, I also can't fault Deare for going berserk. Sometimes a marriage just doesn't work.Collection: Faults