The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

Open season for scammers

The OAFPOTUS's principal motivation has always been self-enrichment. He has scammed and grifted his whole life, though he sucks at it so hard he managed to burn through so much of his inheritance that he'd have been better off stuffing it in a savings account.

So it should come as no surprise that the first few weeks of his second term have seen remarkable gifts to other grifters and scammers worldwide, not to mention our adversaries:

In other stupidity directly attributable to the OAFPOTUS:

But hey, he's really intelligent, isn't he? He's the Weave-Meister! The Weave-o-Matic! Weavy Wonder! And he really does inspire all the people with sub-100 IQs out there that, someday, they too could be president.

The damage he's done in the last three weeks to our standing in the world is a gift to Russia, China, and everyone else who wants to end Pax Americana. As Krugman said yesterday, "what we’re seeing is what you’d expect if China and Russia had somehow managed to install people who wanted to sabotage America’s international position at the highest levels of the U.S. government."

It's also a testament to the Republican Party's 50-year endeavor to destroy public education. Makes me proud to be an American.

Here we go again

The good news is that there will be a different President in only 1,461 days. The bad news is that we could have up to 1,460 days of the Once Again Fucking POTUS before he finally goes away. His second inaugural address—the longest in modern history—made his first one sound like an ASMR video:

The 47th president’s 29-minute address on Monday, just after noon, painted an even bleaker portrait of a country in disarray, one seized by “years of a radical and corrupt establishment,” with the pillars of society “broken and seemingly in complete disrepair.” America, he said, “cannot manage even a simple crisis at home, while at the same time stumbling into a continuing catalog of catastrophic events abroad.”

It was a misleading and incomplete assessment of a country that has a growing economy, with falling inflation, slowing illegal immigration, a record-breaking stock market, the lowest levels of violent crime in years and a military that has limited engagement in conflicts around the world.

There will be only two genders in America, he said, male and female. There will be no preferences for electric vehicles. There will be no escape from tariffs for other countries. And there will be no misunderstanding when it comes to the mission of the military. The Panama Canal will be taken, with the implication that he will do so by force if necessary. And the Gulf of Mexico will be renamed the Gulf of America, he claimed.

Like I've said many times, we need to oppose what he does and ignore what he says. I am not going to get exercised over us invading the Panama Canal Zone until the Navy blockades Colón.

Jason Linkins recommends we "shove the presidency down [his] throat:"

The most recent entry in the “good advice for Democrats” canon comes from occasional TNR contributor and Bulwark writer Jonathan V. Last, who wrote, “The job of the Democratic party comes in two parts. First: Do not help Republicans. Not in any way. Second: Make Donald Trump own every bad outcome that happens, anywhere in the world.”

Rather than exert so much energy trying to thrust Trump out of the presidency, liberals would be well served to spend their time thrusting the presidency upon Donald Trump. Instead of searching for illusory quick fixes for the existence of the Trump administration, start demanding the Trump administration fix everything quickly.

Krugman also urges us to hold him accountable:

Trump ran a campaign based entirely on lies, and his victory doesn’t make those lies true. No, the price of bacon didn’t quadruple or quintuple. No, America isn’t experiencing a vast wave of crime driven by immigrants.

[Y]ou should resist the temptation to engage in truthwashing, a close cousin to the sanewashing that may not have been decisive but certainly helped Trump win.

I see that temptation all around — commentators who want to seem relevant starting to say “Well, maybe Trump has a point about migrant crime/seizing Greenland/annexing Canada/whatever.” Before going there, look at yourself in the mirror.

So keep calling out lies, even if — especially if — they’re coming from people in power. I’d like to promise that the truth will win in the end, but I can’t. All I can promise is that those who continue to tell the truth as they see it will find it easier to live with themselves than those who don’t.

How to reconcile that advice with The Daily Parker's approach of not paying attention to what he says? Let me revise and extend: I won't pay attention to what he says about the future, but I will damn well hold him to account for his lies about his own actions.

Josh Marshall agrees:

The Trump people have been signaling for days that they’re going to hit the ground running with what they describe as an executive ‘shock and awe’. I don’t see any reason to be shocked or awed. I don’t say this in any grand metaphysical sense. I mean that I’ve seen headstrong winners of close elections high on their own supply before. As I wrote a couple weeks ago, all of this is meant to hit you with so much sensory stimulus that you become overwhelmed. But the images you see wrapped around you in an iMax theater aren’t real. It’s still a movie.

Everyone is so spun up on themselves, hungry for the killer strategy or tactic to get back in the political driver’s seat. That’s natural. But desperation doesn’t lead to clear or good thinking. When you have time – and I would argue that at the moment, paradoxically, you do have time – the best place to start is to think clearly about what you’re actually trying to achieve in your own small role in politics.

The role of a political opposition is to oppose. Oppose everything. That’s especially the case in a situation like this when all the power is in Republican hands. They have majorities in both houses of Congress. Whatever happens is entirely a conversation and decision among Republicans. Again, an opposition’s role is to oppose. Putting forward an alternative program becomes relevant at the next election. At the moment the role is simply to highlight the corruption, highlight the empowerment of the wealthy few over everyone else and be the vehicle of opposition. This is their high watermark. Impassivity. Patience. Focus. They’re not as big as they look.

It will be a long two or four years. So don't waste energy on trivia.

Now, with even more chaos!

The OAFPOTUS probably didn't care one whit about the compromise spending bill Congress looked set to pass earlier this week, and probably didn't understand how difficult it was for the tiny Republican majority to pass it knowing they'd need Democratic votes in the Senate. Worlds-griftiest-man Elon Musk didn't care either, which didn't stop him from throwing a grenade into the Speaker's office and putting the government at risk of shutting down in (checks watch) 9½ hours.

I won't say much more except to link to a few reactions in the press:

Oh, and one other thing. After shoving a stick into the spokes in the US, Musk promptly endorsed the far-right, Nazi-in-all-but-name Alternative für Deutschland party. Really, he just needs an underground lair to become a true Bond villain.

We're still 30 days from the OAFPOTUS taking office again, and we're already back to late-2020 levels of idiocy. It's going to be a long four years.

Who could have predicted this?, non-endorsement edition

In a decision that literally no one liked (except the XPOTUS's re-election campaign), Washington Post and Amazon owner Jeff Bezos killed the Post's endorsement of Kamala Harris last week. As of today, the Post has lost 200,000 subscribers—about 10% of them—and Bezos has responded to his critics:

Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election. No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, “I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.” None. What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one.

When it comes to the appearance of conflict, I am not an ideal owner of The Post. Every day, somewhere, some Amazon executive or Blue Origin executive or someone from the other philanthropies and companies I own or invest in is meeting with government officials. I once wrote that The Post is a “complexifier” for me. It is, but it turns out I’m also a complexifier for The Post.

Josh Marshall calls bullshit:

In Bezos’ case he has multiple companies that do extensive government contracting. When Trump was President, Amazon very credibly sued the Trump administration for choosing Microsoft’s cloud hosting service over Amazon’s for a major Pentagon contract. He also owns the Blue Origin space delivery company. Needless to say, Amazon is a walking, talking advertisement for anti-trust enforcement. You may want the DOJ to crack down on Amazon’s practices. But that’s not the point. It’s a massive cudgel hanging over Bezos’ company and wealth.

Bezos addressed many of these issues in the op-ed he published late yesterday in the Post. I found the piece uncomfortable to read. He was refreshingly candid on certain points and he made some good points. Everything I’ve heard about his decade as owner backs up his claim that he’s given the paper complete freedom to report on his various companies. The whole thing was pretty good except for the rather central fact that his explanation for why he made the decision he did was entirely unconvincing. Not even close.

[A] lawless authoritarian government can up the ante way beyond contracts and regulatory enforcement. But a future Trump administration likely doesn’t need to. With someone like Jeff Bezos, it can do all sorts of damage under the general cloak of discretionary authority. There’s no right to a government contract and proving political interference must be quite difficult. Indeed, the way the Supreme Court now interprets the law, it’s not entirely clear to me why the President wouldn’t be at liberty just to overrule a contracting decision because he doesn’t like the owner of the company.

Or, as New Republic writer Timothy Noah pointed out, "the Post, along with other institutions and people that allow themselves to get intimidated into silence, invite a second Trump administration to intimidate them further. That’s how bullying works."

We have seven days to kick the XPOTUS to the curb. Let's see the back of him, once and for all.

PS: As a bonus, Anita Hill has an op-ed in yesterday's New York Times worth reading.

The externalities of cryptocurrency

Other than having absolutely no real value except to scammers and thieves, cryptocurrency has no real value. But a lot of money gets laundered through crypto these days, so people will spend gobs of real currency building data centers to generate more cryptocurrency. These data centers efficiently dump nearly all the externalities of crypto mining onto their neighbors, except for the externalities crypto already dumps on just about everybody else. Oh, don't let me forget that simulated artificial intelligence also needs big data centers:

Across the country, from Indiana to Oregon, companies such as Amazon, Meta and Microsoft are building data centers on sites that can stretch over 1,000 acres, ringed with guard towers and razor wire fences.

People who live near one Northern Virginia center have complained that the mechanical whir of the fleet of industrial fans needed to cool the sensitive computer equipment inside can sound like a leaf blower that never turns off. Cooling the heavy equipment also diverts great volumes of water even in places where it’s scarce. And some of the costs of powering the centers are shouldered by utility customers, in the form of hundreds of dollars a year added to household energy bills.

Local leaders who run interference on behalf of tech giants often play up the benefits, particularly the jobs and advanced technical training opportunities they tout. Recently, a small but growing number of officials have begun to question these deals. In Georgia, where electricity demand and energy grid strain from more than 50 data centers pushed residential utility bills up almost $200 a year on average per household, state senators passed a bill earlier this year that would pause tax incentives for data center development for the next two years.

One thing Cooper doesn't suggest: increasing penalties on public officials who benefit personally from their offices. But that would undermine American-style democracy, wouldn't it?

What does Dorval Carter actually do?

Our lead story today concerns empty suit and Chicago Transit Authority president Dorval Carter, who just can't seem to bother himself with the actual CTA:

From the end of May 2023 to spring 2024, as CTA riders had to cope with frequent delays and filthy conditions, Carter spent nearly 100 days out of town at conferences, some overseas, his schedule shows.

Most of Carter’s trips between June 2023 and May 2024 were for events related to the American Public Transportation Association, a nonprofit advocacy group he chaired in 2022 and 2023. Carter spent a week in Pittsburgh and another in Orlando, six days in Puerto Rico and five days in Washington, D.C. He also took trips to Spain, New Zealand and Australia.

In total, Carter was out of town for 97 of the 345 days Block Club reviewed, according to his schedule. That means he spent 28 percent of that period outside of Chicago.

Block Club previously reported that Carter used his CTA-issued card for rides just 24 times between 2021 and 2022. CTA records show the number of times Carter swiped his work pass increased to 58 in 2023, according to a July op-ed piece in the Tribune.

Spain, I should note, has possibly the best train network in the world outside Japan, so maybe he learned something there? But as is typical with municipal barnacles, grifting along in high-profile city jobs, his office won't say.

In other news:

Finally, Pamela Paul imagines how the RFK Jr campaign looks from inside his head—specifically, to the worm encysted in his brain.

Slow news day yesterday, not so much today

Lunchtime link roundup:

Finally, People for Bikes has consistently rated Chicago the worst major US city for biking, principally because of our 50 km/h speed limit. If only we'd lower it to 40 km/h, they say, Chicago would immediately jump in the ratings to something approaching its peers.

Long day and long week

For Reasons, we have the dress rehearsal for our Saturday performance on Saturday. That means poor Cassie will likely go ten hours crossing her paws between the time I have to leave and when I'm likely to get back. Fortunately, she should be exhausted by then. Tonight's dress rehearsal for our Sunday performance won't put her out as much, thanks to Dog Delivery from my doggy day care. Still, I'd rather have a quiet evening at home than a 3-hour rehearsal and an hour-long car trip home...

Meanwhile, in the world of things that appear to matter more but actually will matter less in a year...

Finally, perhaps the reason the Chicago Transit Authority has so many problems is that its governing board has only one member who actually understands public transit? (Welcome to Chicago: where the head of the CTA has a chauffeured car, and the head of the Chicago Teacher's Union sends her kids to private school.)

Saturday morning miscellaneous reads

I don't usually do link round-ups on Saturday mornings, but I got stuff to do today:

  • Josh Marshall is enjoying the "comical rake-stomp opera" of Nikki Haley's (R-SC) primary campaign.
  • The Economist pokes around the "city" of Rosemont, Ill., a family-owned fiefdom less than 10 km from Inner Drive Technology World HQ.
  • The New York Times highlights the most informative charts they published in 2023.
  • The Chicago Tribune lists some of the new Illinois laws taking effect on Monday. My favorite: Illinois will no longer bar marriage licenses for out-of-state same-sex couples whose home jurisdiction prohibits same-sex marriages.
  • The CTA plans to build out 10 blocks (2 km) of "community space" under the new Red/Purple Line trestle under construction in Uptown and Edgewater.

Finally, two restaurants in Chicago—well, one restaurant and one infamous hot-dog stand—have joined forces to create the Chicago Croissant, which "features a char-dog rolled into a pastry lined with mustard, relish and onions. Definitely no ketchup. It’s topped with poppy seeds and celery salt and garnished with a tomato, pepper and pickle." This, they claim, is a breakfast food.

In other crimes...

May your solstice be more luminous than these stories would have it:

  • Chicago politician Ed Burke, who ruled the city's Finance Committee from his 14th-Ward office for 50 years, got convicted of bribery and corruption this afternoon. This has to do with all the bribes he accepted and the corruption he embodied from 1969 through May of this year.
  • New Republic's Tori Otten agrees with me that US Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) is the dumbest schmuck in the Senate. (She didn't use the word "schmuck," but it fits.)
  • Texas has started flying migrants to Chicago, illegally, in an ongoing effort to troll Democratic jurisdictions over immigration. This came shortly after they passed a manifestly unconstitutional immigration law of their own.
  • Millennial journalist Max Read, a kid who took over the Internet that my generation (X) built from the ground up, whinges about "the kids today" who have taken it over from his generation. (He thinks a gopher is just a rodent, I'd bet.)
  • Hard to believe, speaking of millennials, that today is the 35th anniversary of Libya blowing up Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

Finally, a court in California has ordered one "Demeterious Polychron" to destroy all extant copies of what I can imagine to be a horrific example of JRR Tolkien fanfic that the court found infringes on the Tolkien estate's copyrights. Note that Polychron (a) put his self-published fanfic for sale on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, (b) after sending it to them with a letter call it "the obvious pitch-perfect sequel" to The Lord of the Rings, and then (c) suing them when they allowed Amazon to produce its own prequel, Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power. Note to budding novelists: if you're writing fanfic, don't sue the underlying material's copyright owner for infringement.