I’ve Stayed Silent for Too Long: Opossums Deserve Our Love
How cute is this little angel?Shutterstock In the marsupial family, the opossum really got the short end of the stick: While their Australian cousins, including kangaroos, koalas, and wombats, are adored by the masses, opossums are outcasts. They’re the United States’ only native marsupial, but they’re virtually nobody’s favorite animal. They aren’t the star exhibit…
The Secret History of Why Soda Companies Switched From Sugar to High-Fructose Corn Syrup
Lemon_tm/iStock In a mesmerizing recent article, Mother Jones’ Tim Murphy recounts the surprising backstory of one of corporate marketing’s greatest flops: Coca-Cola’s quickly aborted 1985 effort to tweak its formula and convince consumers to accept “New Coke.” Tim Murphy is on this week’s episode of Bite, talking about New Coke and doing a blind taste-test:…
Donald Trump’s Approval Rating Is Set In Stone
The most remarkable thing about Donald Trump is how eerily stable his approval rating is. Here is 538’s chart over the past year: After the Republican tax cut passed in late 2017, Trump’s approval rating rose to 41 percent and it’s stayed within two points of that ever since. I don’t know if this is…
The Senate Intel Committee Just Released a Report Detailing Russia’s “Extensive” Meddling in the 2016 Elections
David Goldman/AP A new Senate Intelligence Committee report released on Thursday details the “extensive” Russian operation, dating back to at least 2014, to interfere with the 2016 US presidential elections. The bipartisan report says progress has been made in coordinating federal and local efforts to bolster election security. But it also points to ongoing vulnerabilities…
What Will Trump Do About Working Class Pensions?
Fun and games is great, but will Trump come through when truck drivers really need his signature? As we all know, Donald Trump is a champion of the common man, the truckers and miners and butchers and bakers who keep our great nation running. That makes it odd that he’s been so silent about this:…
Car Industry Goes Behind Trump’s Back, Cuts Mileage Deal
Kevin Drum Oh my, what will Donald Trump do now? Four automakers from three continents have struck a deal with California to produce more fuel-efficient cars for their U.S. fleets in coming years, undercutting one of the Trump administration’s most aggressive climate policy rollbacks. The compromise between the California Air Resources Board and Ford, Honda,…