In other news, the Center for Popular Democracy Action and the city of Newburgh, New York are accusing the Trump regime of deliberately underfunding the 2020 Census to produce an undercount of minorities in a federal lawsuit. This is a story we'll have to watch.
Meanwhile, American pork producers say exports to China could grow to up to $25 billion per year in the next 10 years, but only if Trump ends his trade war and opens up duty-free access to China. So, that's never going to happen.
Finally, a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found that working-age Americans considered to be in their "prime" are dying at younger and younger ages, mostly because we're all under too much stress, have no health care, and drink too much/use more drugs as a result.
The twin trends — an increased probability of death in midlife and a population-wide reversal of longevity — set the United States in stark contrast to every other affluent country in the world. [...]
Between 1999 and 2017, the rate of drug overdose deaths among Americans between 25 and 64 increased about fourfold, from 6.7 per 100,000 in this age group to 32.5 per 100,000. Rates of suicide in these Americans began to rise in the early 1990s, increasing 38.3% (from 13.4 per 100,000 to 18.6 per 100,000) between 1999 and 2017.
Midlife death rates also increased for illnesses that are strongly linked to drug use and alcoholism. Between 1999 and 2017, midlife deaths from alcoholic liver disease grew 40%. Deaths from liver cancer in this age group bucked a trend of decline in virtually all cancer deaths to grow 60%. And alcohol poisoning deaths among those 25 to 64 rose almost fourfold.
I can only imagine how much worse these numbers are going to look for the 2017 to 2020 or 2024 period. How many hard drinking MAGAs voted for Trump only to see virtually everything get worse under him? Trump's trade war is driving suicides in farm country. And he's not done! He has at least another year if not four more to fuck everything up.
Programming note... I was planning to write more today, but honestly there's not a lot going on and I don't like churning out "content" just for sake of it. Trump is currently pardoning a couple turkeys as I write this while Congress is out of town and newsrooms go skeleton crew.
Enjoy Thanksgiving and, if you don't celebrate that, have a good weekend. Be careful on the roads tomorrow if you're traveling. I'll see you all on Monday.