Yesterday I rode 80 km (50 miles) in some of the most beautiful weather Chicago can have. It started off cool and got pleasant but not hot, with a light breeze and low humidity. If every day were like this, I thought, we'd be in Santa Barbara.

It rained a little last night (here, anyway; a collossal thunderstorm charged through the Western suburbs), so new we have even better weather than yesterday, if such is possible. If my legs were not still rubbery right now I would go for a bike ride.

Stupid post, I know, but that's what this weather does to me.

This will interest just about no one but those people who, out of blind love for me, set braverman.org as their home page. I've made a minor change to it, adding my biking stats. To save you the click-through, here they are.

A long-awaited report concludes that Chicago police tortured and brutalized suspects for decades, but the huge issue consuming the city council is: fat.

It's like the U.S. Congress writ small.

"If we don't do anything about this, it could be our next pandemic," [48th Ward Alderman Eugene] Schulter said, referring to widespread obesity. "No question about it, [fast-food chains] are causing a major health problem."

(Heh. "Widespread" obesity. Heh.)

Seriously, though: perhaps the obesity, um, pandemic might have to do with, um, over-eating? I don't blame fast-food restaurants for my girth, mainly because I choose not to eat in them. Which, by the way, probably helped me avoid girth in the first place.

On the other hand, I do blame the police for kicking the snot out of suspects in a dirty, windowless south-side interrogation room. Maybe the alderman should beef about that instead.

Today was the hottest July day ever in London: 35°C (95°F). At this writing it has cooled somewhat, to 34°C (93°F)—but it's still 36°C (97°F) in Paris where the Health Ministry is blaming the heat on nine deaths (French). The Times of London reports:

Today has been the hottest July day ever with temperatures eclipsing 36 degrees (97°F) in Surrey—surpassing the previous record which has been held since 1911.

At 3pm, Charlwood in Surrey was the hottest place in the country, with Heathrow close behind, recording 35 degrees, and extreme heat also felt in Oxfordshire, Wilkshire and Hampshire.

The full results will not be analysed until tomorrow morning, but it seems unlikely now that temperatures will be higher than the all-time record, 38.5 degrees (101°F) reached in Faversham, Kent, in August 2003.

For comparison, the hottest day in Chicago this year was yesterday (36.1°C, 97°F), and the hottest day of the past four years was last July 25th (38.9°C, 102°F). (Fortunately for me, on that particular day Anne and I traveled from Galway to Killarney, Ireland, where it was 20°C (68°F) and delightful.)

More on the fight being more important than the win: a Congressional report today found that 20 out of 23 federally-funded pregnancy information centers lied about the risks of abortion.

I had a great time at Wrigley Field yesterday, except for two things. First, the field temperature was 33°C (92°F) at game time. Second, the sixth inning...well...look...

First, I'd like to gloat that Anne and I had dinner last night at Charlie Trotter's, to celebrate our anniversary. Wow. I mean, wow. We've decided to save up to go again, which we hope we can do before our children graduate college.

Now back to the program.

Frank Rich (sub.req.) today reminds us that, despite the new story making the rounds about how the Administration (919 days, 3 hours) is trying a new foreign policy, the fact remains the Administration does not have now and has never had a foreign policy of any kind:

The only flaw in this narrative—a big one—is that it understates the administration’s failure by assuming that President Bush actually had a grand, if misguided, vision in the first place. Would that this were so. But in truth this presidency never had a vision for the world. It instead had an idée fixe about one country, Iraq, and in pursuit of that obsession recklessly harnessed American power to gut-driven improvisation and P.R. strategies, not doctrine. This has not changed, even now.

And yesterday, Josh Marshall summed up the differences between Republicans and Democrats:

Democrats seem to have a highly evolved (and perhaps misplaced) sense of sportsmanship: magnanimous in victory; chastened in defeat. Whereas Dems will rise to a political fight when they deem circumstances warrant, Republicans consider politics nothing but a fight, with peace the exception, not the rule.

I think this hypothesis has legs. We Democrats want to live in peace and not be bothered, pretty much. The Republicans claim the same things, but to them, the fight is never done. Even if they got everything they wanted, they'd still fight, because that, more than the things they're fighting for, is more important.

Fortunately, I think most people just want to be left alone, which is why the Republican strategy always over-reaches.

Finally, I'd like to complain that Chicago weather has taken a turn for the worse, with temperatures expected today around 37°C (99°F). This will not stop me from going to Wrigley Field this evening.