The Daily Parker

Ah, ha ha. Ha.

Today is the first full day of the Once Again Felonious POTUS, who wound everyone up yesterday with a bunch of statements of intent (i.e., executive orders) guaranteed to get people paying attention to him again. Yawn.

But that isn't everything that happened in the last 24 hours:

• Jonathan Last argues that maybe the OAFPOTUS just doesn't like Americans.
• Jennifer Rubin reminds everyone to remain vigilant that the OAFPOTUS's mangling of the English language has consequences.
• Jeff Maurer is flabbergasted that the fanatical left wing has left behind "free speech, color-blindness, and meritocracy" on the playing field so that the right could pick it up at their leisure.
• Connor Echols worries that the US has developed a "total security" problem, with the impossible goal of making everywhere safe for Americans.
• In an unusual nontechnical post, The Daily WTF points out that "everything looks like a conspiracy when you don't know how anything works."
• Bruce Schneier worries that we don't have the tools to deal with the kinds of mistakes AI LLMs will make.
• The 606 Trail, which runs along an abandoned railway right-of-way through several Chicago north side neighborhoods, won't get its promised eastern extension until at least 2027.
• Cartoonist Jules Feiffer, who illustrated one of my favorite childhood books, The Phantom Tollbooth, died age 95.

Finally, while Chicago has almost no snow on the ground, which probably helped prevent the overnight temperature from going below -20°C at Inner Drive Technology WHQ, the same weather system has already dumped more snow on the Gulf Coast cities of Mobile and Pensacola than they have ever recorded. Right now at Pensacola International, they have snow and -4°C temperatures. Climate change science didn't predict this specific event, but it did predict the weakening of the circumpolar jet stream that made this possible. This is not normal (temperatures in Fahrenheit):

Oh, FFS. I tried to avoid the inauguration entirely, but since we're dealing with the OAFPOTUS again, I couldn't. Especially because of 3rd grader Elon Musk.

The OAFPOTUS's second inaugural address was the longest in modern history. If you really want to read the text, the New York Times has annotated it, but I wouldn't recommend it. James Fallows read it so you don't have to:

Donald Trump, as 5th-grader. Sometimes Trump’s formal speeches are “written,” in the sense of trying to have “eloquent” or “fine writing” passages. But these “fancy” parts of a speech—related to the parts we remember as the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, or Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall—are clearly tough sledding for Trump. You can tell that he plods his way through these obligatory passages, in the fashion of a fifth-grader called upon to read to the classroom from an assigned text. Halting, not sure of the words, pausing from time to time at a passage he’d never seen before, as if to say, “Hey, that’s interesting!”

The absolutely stupidest part of this speech was this. Any other public official would be embarrassed even to say something of this sort:

We are going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.

If your second grader gave you this thought, you’d be having a little talk about how history and geography worked.

But second prize for stupidness goes to this, about Panama.

The speech did not get better. Shortly afterward, Elon Musk did this:

Well, that was certainly a departure from the usual nihilism of the incoming administration. Walter wasn't completely wrong, either. But yeah, Musk heiled the crowd:

Back in the first Trump presidency Trump’s critics spent an inordinate amount of time trying to get Trumpers to admit they’d done this or that, to apologize, whatever. This was always a mistake. I don’t need anyone to validate what I saw. I saw it. I don’t care what the explanation is. These are just twisted anti-American degenerates. We know this. Just what level of exuberant disinhibition led Musk to this moment or why this unmistakable gesture came so naturally to him … well, that’s really not my problem. Everyone knows what they saw here.

Then, shortly after that, the OAFPOTUS pardoned or commuted the sentences of 1,500 insurrectionists who invaded the US Capitol and killed cops:

At the time Trump issued the pardons, there were about 700 defendants who either never received prison sentences or had already completed their sentences, meaning pardons or commutations would have little practical impact on them, beyond restoring voting rights and gun rights for those who were convicted of felonies.

More than 600 people were sentenced to incarceration, but only a small fraction of them are still behind bars. Many of those who are in the custody of the federal Bureau of Prisons were convicted of violent attacks on police officers protecting the Capitol during an assault in which Jan. 6 defendants were armed with firearms, stun guns, flagpoles, fire extinguishers, bike racks, batons, a metal whip, office furniture, pepper spray, bear spray, a tomahawk ax, a hatchet, a hockey stick, knuckle gloves, a baseball bat, a massive “Trump” billboard, “Trump” flags, a pitchfork, pieces of lumber, crutches and even an explosive device.

More than 140 police officers were injured and several Trump supporters died during the attack, including one who was shot trying to breach the House Speaker's Lobby and another who died in the middle of a brutal battle at the lower west tunnel, where some of the worst violence of the day took place.

Like I said, I don't really care about the OAFPOTUS's lies and bullshitting. I do care what he does, and what his toadies do when they have actual power. The first few hours of this presidency did not instill confidence.

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.

We woke up this morning to frigid -17°C air (with sun though!), with an official overnight low of -19°C at O'Hare. We get cold like this almost every year; in fact, it got down to -23°C just 371 days ago.

No, the record low temperature for this day was also the coldest temperature ever recorded in Chicago, on Sunday 20 January 1985: -32°C. It was so cold that morning that my high school cancelled classes the next day—the only time they did so in my four years there.

Chicago historian John R Schmidt also remembers:

The winters had been getting colder in Chicago. The previous record low temperature had been -31°C, posted only three years ago. A new Ice Age seemed to be on the way. Both Time and Newsweek had predicted it in cover-stories.

Some experts claimed that Chicago temperatures weren’t really setting records. In 1970 the city’s official weather station had been moved from Midway to O’Hare. Everyone knew that the readings were usually a few degrees lower at O’Hare.

The day moved on. By noon the mercury had climbed to -27°C. Now more people were venturing out. A young man on State Street was heading for a movie. “I got tired of staying in,” he said. “What can you do except watch reruns on television?”

Remember, kids: this was five years before Tim Berners Lee invented the World Wide Web and 16 years before the current century. We had to read books, or in my case, study for final exams.

More relevantly, though, is what happened to the predicted ice age. Going by astronomical cycles that have governed Earth's climate for millions of years, we should be moving into a cooler period, and indeed temperatures have declined overall since about 4000 YBP. Yet since around 1800, global average temperatures have instead gone up, increasing even more rapidly in the last 40 years than in any other time than we have detected in the million-year ice record.

There is no guarantee that Chicago will never experience a colder temperature than we did 40 years ago today. But with the OAFPOTUS bringing his kakistocratic, climate-denying clown car back into power in just two hours, we will probably break more heat records than cold records.

I hope we live long enough to see.

So much to read...tomorrow morning, when I wake up:

• Fallows and the Post have solid takes on President Biden's farewell address.
• Kim Lane Scheppelle shakes her head at how authoritarians use playground taunts keep their opponents off balance.
• John Scalzi does not expect much from the incoming administration.
• The Daily Overview has an amazing post today on the Los Angeles fires, and other fires in the recent past.
• Arwa Mahdawi calls out United HealthCare for going "villain mode."
• Heather Souvaine Horn asks, "what if the Los Angeles fires were a turning point?"
• Jeff Maurer sticks his tongue firmly in his cheek, pleading not to ban TikTok "just because it's a flaming planet of dinosaur shit..." and then, today, laughing at China for inviting "our dumbest young people."
• A family on Prince Edward Island captured an actual meteor strike on their doorbell camera, which astronomers believe is the first time this has every happened.

Finally, Block Club Chicago wonders why coyotes seem to be everywhere right now? I have two explanations: first, because it's mating season; and second, because of confirmation bias. We had two coyote sightings in strange places last week, and people are seeing more coyotes in general because they want to get laid. So that leads to more articles on coyotes. QED.

Today marks the middle of winter, when fewer days remain in the (meteorological) season than have passed. Good thing, too: yesterday we had temperatures that looked happy on a graph but felt miserable in real life, and the forecast for Sunday night into Monday will be even worse—as in, a low of -20°C going "up" to -14°C. Fun!.

(Yesterday's graph:)

Elsewhere in the world:

• Israel and Hamas have reached a cease-fire agreement, with the US and Qatar signing off.
• OAFPOTUS Defense Secretary nominee, former Fox News pretty boy, and all-around fundamentalist crackpot Pete Hegseth sat before the US Senate Armed Services committee yesterday, whose Republican members asked him about "your wife that you love" and whose Democratic members asked him about unlawful orders and the numerous allegations of wrongdoing against him. My combat-decorated junior Senator, Tammy Duckworth (D), flatly called him "unqualified." (She was being polite.)
• Jennifer Rubin calls Hegseth "the greatest DEI disaster ever:" "Considering Hegseth, election denier Attorney General Pam Bondi, WWE exec Linda McMahon for secretary of education, and vaccine denier, brain-worm victim Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. for Health and Human Services, one must conclude Republicans are not sending us their best. (Or, the more alarming alternative…they are sending their best.)" Ruth Marcus also piled on.
• Author John Scalzi shares his thoughts on the allegations against and admissions of author Neil Gaiman published in New York this week.
• Chicago's Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) has proposed $1.5 bn in spending to improve transit for the entire area.
• Chicago lost another coyote yesterday when a plane taking off from O'Hare ran him over. (Neither the FAA nor United Airlines has confirmed that the coyote died, but I think we can make an inference here.)
• Last year was the second-warmest on record in Illinois, continuing a long-term warming trend that began after the coldest winters ever in the early 1980s.

Finally, as of today I've had a private pilot certificate for 25 years. When I last posted about this anniversary, I hoped to resume flying later that spring. Alas, something else was in the air. I still want to fly again, though. All I need is a winning lottery ticket.

We've gotten about 4 cm of snow so far today, with more coming down until this evening. Cassie loves it; I have mixed feelings. At least the temperature has gone up a bit, getting up to -0.6°C for the first time since around this time on Monday.

Elsewhere:

• Federal Judge Aileen Cannon (R-SDFL) got overruled again, this time after her corrupt effort to block Special Counsel Jack Smith from releasing his report on January 6th.
• George Will bemoans Congress ceding so much of its authority to the office of the President, especially given who will take that office in ten days.
• Just three corrupt Chicago cops will cost the city almost $34 million in settlements, making me wonder why we don't pay those settlements out of the police pension fund.
• Pamela Paul objects to historians opining about politics, which is actually one of the things they've always done.
• Five years after the pandemic began, we still haven't gotten back in the habit of being out in public, according to Derek Thompson at The Atlantic.

Finally, Maplewood Brewing has started expanding its Logan Square taproom into the other half of the building it occupies. I don't get there often, but I enjoy going back. Can't wait to see what their restaurant looks like when it's done. I also need to get to Cherry Circle Room or the CAA Drawing Room soon, as it looks like the management transition from Land & Sea to Boka may change some things.

Once again, in the aftermath of the OAFPOTUS's demented press conference yesterday, I need to remind everyone to ignore what he says and watch what he does. He's not as harmless as the guy at the end of the bar who everyone avoids talking to, but he's just as idiotic.

Meanwhile, in the real world:

• Block Club Chicago interviewed Mayor Brandon Johnson in the wake of the City Council barely passing his 2025 budget by a vote of 27-23.
• Perry Bacon Jr. blames President Biden's overconfidence for the failures of his presidency.
• Brett Stephens thinks about how he'll be remembered.
• Josh Marshall never thought Meta's content-moderation scheme was anything other than a scam.
• Anne Applebaum warns of the anti-science mysticism afflicting more and more of the world.

Finally, the temperature in Chicago dipped below freezing just before 2 am on January 1st and hasn't risen above freezing since then, with no relief in the forecast. Even though we don't expect any seriously cold weather in the next two weeks, it would be nice to have one day above freezing.

I keep thinking of this clip from Remains of the Day:

The "gentleman diplomacy" conducted by British nobility in the 1930s exemplifies the maxim "any sufficiently-advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice."

Because Christmas came on a Wednesday*, and my entire UK-based team have buggered off until Monday in some cases and January 6th in others, I'm off for the long weekend. Tomorrow my Brews & Choos buddy and I will hit three places in Milwaukee, which turns out to be closer to downtown Chicago by train than a few stations on the Union Pacific North and Northwest lines.

Meanwhile, read some of these:

• John Adams had some nuanced and deep thoughts about aristocracy and oligarchy that we should keep in mind as the OAFPOTUS forms his cabinet of billionaires, for billionaires.
• Despite my recurring reminder not to give the OAFPOTUS's verbal flatulence any mind at all, Krugman dismantles the argument that nations gain from conquest in the post-industrial age.
• New research adds weight to the theory that our ancestors were prey, not predators, with implications for understanding how we react to threats.
• Krebs is warning about a new scam that uses Google Forms to convince you that the attack is really an official Google security action.

Enjoy the weekend. I'll have three Brews & Choos Reviews up before the end of the year, plus the 2025 sunrise chart for Chicago.

* That was also The Daily Parker's 9,500th post since the "modern" blog began in November 2005.