The Daily Parker

Welcome to stop #128 on the Brews and Choos project.

Brewery: Black Lung Brewing, 115 Nippersink Rd., Fox Lake
Train line: Milwaukee District North, Fox Lake (Zone 4)
Time from Chicago: 105 minutes
Distance from station: 750 m

Fox Lake isn't the farthest station from downtown Chicago on the Metra system. At 110 km, that honor goes to Harvard; Fox Lake is only 80 km out. And yet, as I discovered yesterday, it can take almost 3 hours to get back to Union Station if the aging-but-repainted SD70MACH locomotive can't go backwards. (Thank you, America, for strangling public transit for decades and wondering why it sucks!)

Regardless, I don't regret the trip. Because just a 10-minute walk from the Fox Lake station along the lake shore you will find the Black Lung Brewing taproom and its pleasant beer garden.

Despite the overcast skies and Canadian wildfire smoke, and despite my train arriving 45 minutes before the brewery opened, I sat by the lake and read my book and didn't want to leave. If Metra had an option for returning to the city between 4:25 pm and 8:37 pm, I would have stayed for a while longer, but I didn't want to get home after 11 pm.

The beer was not bad. I started with the Trampled By Sliders Pale (5.5%, SRM 6), "brewed in collaboration with the Grayslake Youth Baseball Association." It had a nice bitter/malt balance and short finish, with a good flavor. The Maui Wowie Hazy IPA (6.5%, 25 IBU) had lots of hops right off the bat without being overwhelming, a smooth mouthfeel, and a long finish. A bit less Citra flavor than expected. And thanks to bartender Joanie for a half-pint lagniappe when the keg kicked on her first draw.

It is a very long way to go, unfortunately. And yet I think I'll stop by again this summer—perhaps even this weekend, since I had already planned a Brews & Choos expedition to the hardest-to-reach brewery in the Metra system tomorrow.

One other thing: in addition to their production facility and taproom in Round Lake Beach, Black Lung has taken over the Light the Lamp space in Grayslake and plans to open in August. When I get out there in the fall, why not stop at the Fox Lake taproom as well?

Beer garden? Yes
Dogs OK? Outside only
Televisions? Yes, avoidable
Serves food? Full pub menu
Would hang out with a book? Yes
Would hang out with friends? Yes
Would go back? Yes

Because I'm about to hit my PTO cap at work, I'm taking the next few Friday afternoons off. Today I've planned a Brews & Choos trip out to the wilds of Lake County. Check back tomorrow for the result!

Meanwhile, I have more meetings...

First, an update on Cassie: her spleen and lymph cytology came back clean, with no evidence of mast cell disease. That means the small tumor on her head is likely the only site of the disease, and they can pop it out surgically. We'll probably schedule that for the end of June.

I have had an unusually full calendar this week, so this afternoon I blocked off three and a half hours with "No Meetings - Coding." Before I dive into finishing up the features for what I expect will be the 129th boring release of the product I'm working on, I am taking a moment to read the news, which I have not had time to do all day:

• Inae Oh reminds everyone that, while the Clown Prince of X may have departed his blatantly unlawful role in the White House after failing to achieve any of his stated objectives, he has nonetheless made everyone's life worse.
• Sherron Watkins and Cynthia Cooper, the two whistleblowers who blew up the spectacular frauds at Enron and WorldCom in 2001, warn that the GOP plans to make spectacular fraud great again by eliminating the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.
• Jennifer Rubin laments the OAFPOTUS's foreign policy malpractice.
• The administration's shift of national-security assets toward Stephen Miller's pogrom against immigrants has hobbled our efforts to combat domestic terrorism, forcing the states to make do with far fewer resources.
• David Ignatius believes that "the way to end the Gaza war has been clear for nearly a year," but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refuses to stop fighting for purely domestic political reasons.
• King Charles III's visit to Canada this week was "an audaciously disjunctive event," writes The Guardian's Martin Kettle. "[T]he modern British monarchy has stood up and demanded to be counted, doing something new and perhaps genuinely consequential."
• NPR's Steve Inskeep remarks on how his interviews with polarizing figures like US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Republican über-troll Steve Bannon have been received by other media outlets.

Finally, the city of Chicago has started formal negotiations with the Union Pacific Railroad to acquire an abandoned right-of-way on the Northwest Side—that Cassie and I walked on just a week ago and that my Brews & Choos buddy and I used to get to Alarmist back in November 2023. The project still requires a few million dollars and a few years to complete. Still, the city also is talking about building a protected bike lane along Bryn Mawr Avenue in the North Park and Lincoln Square Community Areas, which would connect the Weber Spur with the North Shore trail just east of the Chicago River. For the time being, the UPRR doesn't seem to mind people walking on their right-of-way, though technically it's still private property. But that trail will be really cool when completed.

And now, I will finish this feature...

A three-judge panel at the US Court of International Trade has granted summary judgment to a group of states and organizations, ruling that the OAFPOTUS's reliance on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 is unconstitutional, and thus nearly all of the administration's tariffs are unlawful:

On Wednesday, the Court of International Trade, the primary federal legal body overseeing such matters, found that Mr. Trump’s tariffs “exceed any authority granted” to the president by the emergency powers law. Ruling in separate cases brought by states and businesses, a bipartisan panel of three judges essentially declared many, but not all, of Mr. Trump’s tariffs to have been issued illegally.

It was not clear precisely when and how the tariff collections would grind to a halt. The ruling gave the executive branch up to 10 days to complete the bureaucratic process of ending them. The Trump administration immediately filed its plans to appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

A White House spokesman, Kush Desai, sharply rebuked the court, saying ... “It is not for unelected judges to decide how to properly address a national emergency.”

The USCIT agrees with you, Mr Desai: Congress should decide how to properly address tariffs. And there is no emergency.

There were, naturally, a few reactions this morning.

Krugman: "Is there a dignified legal way, preferably in Latin, to say 'Holy Shit?' ... [I]t has been obvious all along that Trump’s use of the 1977 International Economic Emergency Powers Act to justify Smoot-Hawley level tariffs was a massive abuse of power. I mean, since when are 4 percent unemployment and 2.5 percent inflation an emergency justifying the reversal of 90 years of policy?"

Marshall: "So is this all over? I suspect it may be. There are laws which grant the President the power to impose tariffs for specific reasons. But this particular law doesn’t even mention tariffs as something the President can do under this act. So I don’t think as a legal matter it’s a terribly close call."

Zoe Williams: "The observer could file all this under 'government: harder than it looks.' Moving fast and breaking things doesn’t work. Borrowing and spending while slashing and burning in a formless, ad hoc fashion doesn’t work. Billionaires with fragile egos, trying to cooperate while reserving the right to say whatever they like about each other, well, this has never worked. It would be the gravest imaginable mistake, though, to think that just because the wheels are coming off it this bus is losing its destructive power."

I'm surprised to discover, however, that none of my other usual suspects reacted. "Flooding the zone with shit" does work, to an extent, because they can produce alarming quantities of feculence quickly. But so far, the OAFPOTUS has lost every one of his major initiatives in court. Well, district court, and one or two circuit courts of appeal. We have a long way to go before the bus actually stops moving.

On some days, I have more meetings than others. Today was a more extreme example, with meetings for 6 of the 8½ hours I put in. Somehow I also managed to read some documentation and get some other things accomplished. I also can't say that any of the meetings was a waste of time, either. Welcome back to management.

Unfortunately, that meant I could only put these stories in a queue so I can read them now:

• William Finnegan wonders if he or Homeland Security Secretary Kristi "Dead Puppies" Noem is brain-damaged.
• Chicago's animal shelters report a surge in surrenders as people discover pets cost a lot of money (I'm looking at you, Cassie).
• Does it make sense for the CDC to recommend that healthy children and pregnant women not get a covid booster? Yes, with some pretty big caveats, and a reminder that corruption and incompetence make it really hard to trust what comes out of the executive branch these days.
• With only a couple of days left until the Illinois legislature lets public transit in Chicago fall off a cliff, a bill is slouching towards the governor's desk to reorganize our multiple transit agencies into one big one.

OK, Cassie is sitting next to me and staring into my eyes with an intense "feed me" vibe, so off I go. I really hope I have fewer meetings tomorrow.

Cassie spent yesterday morning at the local veterinary oncology clinic getting poked. The ultrasound looked good, so we're just waiting for results from her spleen and lymph cytology. They said she was a model patient, although they did give her a light sedative so she wouldn't squirm during the ultrasound.

And for the next couple of weeks she'll have a naked belly:

The sedative had quite an amusing effect. I've only seen her stoned once before. Yesterday she acted more like she'd just come from a Playing Dead ("No, man! Play Floyd!") concert than the inert blob she was last time.

More info when the cytology comes back. Plus all the news stories that have accumulated while I've been in meetings all day.

The OAFPOTUS is blatantly selling pardons now:

[Paul] Walczak, a former nursing home executive who had pleaded guilty to tax crimes days after the 2024 election, submitted a pardon application to President Trump around Inauguration Day. The application focused not solely on Mr. Walczak’s offenses but also on the political activity of his mother, Elizabeth Fago.

Ms. Fago had raised millions of dollars for Mr. Trump’s campaigns and those of other Republicans, the application said. It also highlighted her connections to an effort to sabotage Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s 2020 campaign by publicizing the addiction diary of his daughter Ashley Biden — an episode that drew law enforcement scrutiny.

[W]eeks went by and no pardon was forthcoming, even as Mr. Trump issued clemency grants to hundreds of other allies.

Then, Ms. Fago was invited to a $1-million-per-person fund-raising dinner last month that promised face-to-face access to Mr. Trump at his private Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla.

Less than three weeks after she attended the dinner, Mr. Trump signed a full and unconditional pardon.

Imagine if any other president had done this—and I mean, any other president—he'd be impeached and convicted by the end of June.

The Republican Party has embraced corruption in all its forms. Selling a pardon doesn't even make them blink.

Like yesterday, today I took Cassie somewhere she'd never been before, giving her an amazing array of new smells and rodents to chase. We went up to the Green Bay Trail in Winnetka, covering just under 5 km, and passing a somewhat-recognizable house along the way:

We'll spend more time outside today, though it really hasn't warmed up yet (current temperature: 15°C). She doesn't mind.

Cassie and I took an hour-long walk through the LaBagh Woods and Forest Glen this afternoon:

It's still a very nice day, so I might have to take her on another half-hour walk soon.

The OAFPOTUS signed a batch of executive orders yesterday announcing the administration's support for building more nuclear power, a policy that on its face sounds great:

One order directs the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the nation’s independent safety regulator, to streamline its rules and to take no more than 18 months to approve applications for new reactors. The order also urges the agency to consider lowering its safety limits for radiation exposure, saying that current rules go beyond what is needed to protect human health.

The Trump administration also set a goal of quadrupling the size of the nation’s fleet of nuclear power plants, from nearly 100 gigawatts of electric capacity today to 400 gigawatts by 2050. One gigawatt is enough to power nearly 1 million homes.

In recent years, more than a dozen companies have begun developing a new generation of smaller reactors a fraction of the size of those at Vogtle [a plant under construction in Georgia]. The hope is that these reactors would have a lower upfront price tag, making them a less risky investment for utilities. They might also be based on a design that could be repeated often, as opposed to custom-built, to reduce costs.

OK, so what's the problem? Nuclear power is cleaner and safer than fossil-fuel power, especially over the long term. Despite disasters in Ukraine (1986) and Japan (2011), civilian nuclear power has killed orders of magnitude fewer people than coal mining and emissions from fossil-fuel power generation, for example.

So why am I skeptical? Because I don't trust the OAFPOTUS to tell me the time of day without trying to steal my watch, let alone to pass a major policy initiative on the merits. It's telling that the signing event included comments about building small-scale reactors to power crypto mining, for example. And given the thoroughly demonstrated lack of competence in the administration, and their desire to destroy the regulatory state entirely, I worry that the lack of oversight will lead to a nuclear disaster that will set the industry back another few decades. (Remember, a spectacular accident that kills 10 people is far scarier to most of us apes than the ongoing loss of millions of years of human lifespans from fossil-fuel pollution and resource extraction.)

I'm willing to give the administration and the Republican party support when they do the right thing. But their behavior over the last 10 years has been to (a) design policies to enrich themselves instead of providing for the general welfare and (b) screw up the implementation, whether through incompetence or malice, to render them worse than doing nothing. I hope this nuclear initiative will work out, or at least give my party some runway to fix it when we return to power. Yet neither the OAFPOTUS nor the Republican Party as a whole fill me with confidence that this time will be different.