Kevin Drum Quotations

Obviously, the first big step was to get the courses open. We've got nearly 90 percent open. I have a big no vacancy sign on the second subject. Obviously, our big issue is rooms.

I feel very good about the future. My concern is this month and next month. Everything is positive about the future.

Let me say this flatly: Leaks are good. They are the way we hold paranoid and secretive governments accountable. Historically, leaks have virtually never harmed national security in even a minor way, despite plenty of shrill commentary to the contrary. Reporters should be allowed to print them without fear of being tossed in jail.

I've long believed that having multiple official languages makes it very hard to sustain a united polity.

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.

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.

They [Republicans] assume that military action always shows strength, while avoiding military action always shows weakness. That's just crazy.

Like it or not, war is not always the answer. The better part of wisdom is to stay out.

Donald Trump says he's going to change the no-guns policy at his resorts. I can't wait to see that.

We didn't create ISIS. ISIS created ISIS.

On the Medicare side, they limited their cuts to far in the future, and to providers.

Apparently the Republican base got radicalized first, and Democrats picked up the ball later. Or something.

Democrats are awfully sensitive to losing power for a few years. I report, you decide.

Republican voters already hated Democrats so much that [Bill] Clinton and [Barack] Obama didn't really have much impact.

If Robert Heinlein is more to your taste than George Lucas: "If you are part of a society that votes, then do so. There may be no candidates and no measures you want to vote for, but there are certain to be ones you want to vote against." That's certainly true of me. Over my lifetime, the Republican Party has done far more to repulse me than the Democratic Party has done to appeal to me. But the result in the voting booth would be about the same either way.

You're more likely to vote Democratic if you hate Republicans than if you love Democrats, and vice versa.

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.

The WHO took care to explicitly say that processed meat didn't rank alongside smoking when it comes to cancer risk.

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.

Carli Fiorina is really annoying. Hell, they're all annoying. But Fiorina doesn't even pretend to offer up policy answers. She just gives mini stump speeches about how bad everything is.

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?

We need to cut regulations. Apparently this will make everyone a little more socially responsible?

Marco Rubio turns a question about missing Senate votes into an attack on the mainstream media.

[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.

[Donald] Trump had the opportunity to go after [Hillary] Clinton's emails at length if he wanted to, but he didn't.

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.

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.

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.

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.

So many theories. But all of them have one thing in common: They demonstrate that although [Donald] 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?

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.

[Ronald]Reagan and[George W.] Bush were far more radical than other presidents.

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-& what all those blue states with their own exchanges are getting.

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.