The Daily Parker

I guess not all of the stories I read at lunchtime depressed me, but...well, you decide:

• Writing in the Atlantic, Rogé Karma weaves together the threads of white backlash to civil rights laws, the Democratic Party's cultural elitism, and a series of global crises, to explain why the US uniquely among its peer nations has made such a hash of the post-1970s economy.
• Georgetown public policy professor George P. Moynihan, who studies government bureaucracies, lays out how the XPOTUS intends to destroy the civil service if re-elected next year.
• A simian truck driver following GPS instead of looking outside her cab windows may have destroyed one of Illinois' last 19th-century covered bridges.
• Today I learned about the history of Gretna Green, Scotland, where people go to elope.

One happy(-ish) story, as I didn't have to travel this past weekend: the TSA reported that on Sunday they screened more people (2.9 million) than on any single day in history. And of the 100,000+ flights scheduled between Wednesday and Sunday, carriers cancelled only 201 (0.2%). Amazing.

I have tickets to a late concert downtown, which means a few things, principally that I'm still at the office. But I'm killing it on this sprint, so it works out.

Of course this means a link dump:

• The XPOTUS has a hate-hate relationship with life.
• After a damning ethics report, Rep. George Santos (R-NY) has announced he won't run again, which is too bad because it would have been an easy D pickup.
• Speaking of Republicans in Congress, why do they behave like adolescent boys all the time?
• Israel is seeing a rally-around-the-flag effect, with the odd wrinkle that everyone hates the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu (Likud).
• The Post has decided to show people the horrific things 5.56mm rounds do to a body, as their public editor explains.
• George Packer looks at why political writing, in general, sucks.
• Where do all the stolen catalytic converters go?
• A train crash at the Howard St El station injured 23 passengers, and somehow distracted the cops on the scene from a shooting a block away.
• It will take Caltrans 3-5 weeks to fix the I-10 freeway in Los Angeles after a fire last week, with about 300,000 vehicles diverting each day.
• After Elon Musk's latest anti-Semitic garbage, author John Scalzi has left Twitter for good.

I promise to write something substantial tomorrow or Saturday. Promise.

Despite the XPOTUS publicly declaring himself a fascist (again), the world has other things going on:

• Josh Marshall plots out how House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) knows he has to pass a budget that Democrats can stomach, but because he still has to placate the extreme right wing of his party, he's pretending he can pass something else. And the clown show continues.
• The US Supreme Court has published their new ethics rules, which look a lot like a subset of the rules the rest of the Federal courts have, minus any enforcement mechanism.
• Tom Nichols warns that many students protesting the Gaza war have turned to old canards of anti-Semitism, possibly without realizing it, but certainly without hesitation.
• The Economist reminds everyone that Lord David Cameron caused most of the problems current UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (Cons.) hired him back to fix.
• James Fallows advises journalists to report facts and analysis of current news, without distracting themselves and the public with prognostication that turns out wrong almost every time.
• The State of Illinois has finally stopped using my tax dollars to subsidize private and religious schools in addition to the public schools I already pay for, even though some parents make arguments to pity to get me to continue.

Finally, Google has built a new computer model that they claim will increase the accuracy of weather forecasts. I predict scattered acceptance of the model with most forecasters remaining cool for the time being.

Yesterday I linked to Michael Tomasky's reaction to the XPOTUS referring to his political enemies as "Ungenziefer vermin," which the troika of WWII-era dictators used to demonize and ultimately encourage people to kill their opponents. PBS NewsHour yesterday interviewed NYU historian Ruth Ben Ghiat, who explained plainly:

Props to Amna Nawaz for not mincing words about the XPOTUS's lies and fascist rhetoric.

When challenged on the similarities between the XPOTUS's rhetoric and 1930s fascist dictators, XPOTUS Gauleiter spokesperson Stephen Cheung confirmed the parallel by saying, "Those who try to make that ridiculous assertion are clearly snowflakes grasping for anything because they are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, and their sad, miserable existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House."

Meanwhile, former presidential aide Stephen Himmler Miller can't stop daydreaming about building concentration camps for immigrants—and, one must assume, everyone else he doesn't like:

That second-term agenda would revolve around what the New York Times calls “giant camps.” While detention centers already exist, the Times reports that Trump and adviser Stephen Miller envision a vastly expanded network that would facilitate the deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants, including longtime residents with deep ties to communities.

Those camps would also enable Trump to dramatically scale up detention of people seeking asylum, which would be subject to shocking new limits. Trump would reinstate his ban on migrants from majority-Muslim countries, invoke new legal authorities to pursue mass expulsions and enlist the military to help carry them out.

Few voters are familiar with the finer points of asylum policy. Nor do most harbor strong ideological opposition to immigration; large majorities have generally regarded legal immigration as a good thing through both presidencies.

Instead, all indications suggest that voters think the border should be managed and don’t understand why that’s not happening. Under both presidents, imagery of disorder and migrant suffering filled the media, creating the powerful impression that the executive was failing to handle the situation. Naturally, in both cases, majorities disapproved of that handling of it.

So with House Republicans refusing to work with the Democratic President and Senate on any meaningful immigration reform, things continue to look bad for the incumbents, but the GOP wants it to look bad. So they win either way. And Reichsleiter Miller and his boss get closer to their utopian dream of absolute power.

The Republican strategy since 1994 has been simple: destroy government while in power, and try to destroy it when out of power. Because good government is the enemy of authoritarian rule, which is the modern Republican Party's goal. The XPOTUS has given them their best hope yet of undoing 240 years of democracy in America.

The 2024 election could not have higher stakes, as will every election until the Republican Party can no longer compete without adapting to the real world, or until we don't have them anymore.

I closed a 3-point story and if the build that's running right now passes, another bug and a 1-point story. So I'm pretty comfortable with my progress through this sprint. But I haven't had time to read any of these, though I may try to sneak them in before rehearsal:

• The XPOTUS has started using specific terminology to describe his political opponents that we last heard from a head of government in 1945. (Guess which one.) Says Tomasky: "[Republicans] are telling us in broad daylight that they want to rape the Constitution. And now Trump has told us explicitly that he will use Nazi rhetoric to stoke the hatred and fear that will make this rape seem, to some, a necessary cleansing."
• Writing for the Guardian, Margaret Sullivan implores the mainstream print media to explain the previous bullet point, which she calls "doing their fucking job."
• The average age of repeat home buyers is 58, meaning "boomers are buying up all the houses." My Millennial friends will rejoice, no doubt.
• Bruce Schneier lists 10 ways AI will change democracy, not all of them bad.
• The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution says not to worry, the Gulf Stream won't shut down. It might slow down, though.
• The Times interviewed Joseph Emerson, the pilot who freaked out while coming off a 'shrooms trip in the cockpit of an Alaska Airlines plane, and who now faces 83 counts of attempted murder in Oregon.
• Author John Scalzi got to see a band he and I both listened to in college, Depeche Mode, in what will probably be their last tour.
• The Times also has "an extremely detailed map of New York City neighborhoods," along with an explainer. Total Daily Parker bait.

Finally, a firefighter died today after sustaining injuries putting out a fire at Lincoln Station, the bar that my chorus goes went to after rehearsals. Given the description of the fall that fatally injured him—he fell through the roof of the 4-story building all the way into the basement—it sounds like the fire destroyed not only the restaurant but many of the apartments above. So far, the bar has not put out a statement, but we in the chorus are saddened by the fire and by Firefighter Drew Price's death. We hope that the bar can rebuild quickly.

We have unusual wind and sunshine for mid-November today, with a bog-standard 10C temperature. It doesn't feel cold, though. Good weather for flying kites, if you have strong arms.

Elsewhere in the world:

• The right wing of the US Supreme Court has finally found a firearms restriction that they can't wave away with their nonsense "originalism" doctrine.
• Speaking of the loony right-wing asses on the bench, the Post has a handy guide to all of the people and organizations Justice Clarence Thomas (R) and his wife claim have no influence on them, despite millions in gifts and perks.
• NBC summarizes the dumpster fire that was the XPOTUS and his family lying testifying in the former's fraud sentencing hearings.
• Alexandra Petri jokes that "having rights is still bewilderingly popular:" "Tuesday’s election results suggest that the Republican legislative strategy of 'taking people’s rights away for no clear reason' was not an overwhelming success at the ballot box."
• Earth had the warmest October on record, setting us up for the warmest year in about 120,000 years.
• Could the waste heat from parking garages actually heat homes?
• John Scalzi has a new film review column for Uncanny Magazine, with his first entry praising the storytelling of the Wachowski's 2008 Speed Racer adaptation.

Finally, Citylab lays out the history of San Francisco's Ferry Terminal Building, which opened 125 years ago. I always try to stop there when I visit the city, as I plan to do early next month.

We've switched around our RTO/WFH schedule recently, so I'm now in the office Tuesday through Thursday. That's exactly the opposite of my preferred schedule, it turns out. So now Tuesdays feel like Mondays. And I still can't get the hang of Thursdays.

We did get our bi-weekly build out today, which was boring, as it should be. Alas, the rest of the world wasn't:

• The XPOTUS has vowed revenge on everyone who has wronged him, pledging to use the US government to smite his enemies, as if we needed any more confirmation that he should never get elected to any public office ever again.
• Meanwhile, the XPOTUS looked positively deranged in his fraud trial yesterday, as the judge continued to question him about things that cut right to his fraudulent self-image.
• Walter Shapiro thinks comparing President Biden to Jimmy Carter miss the mark; Harry Truman might be a better analogy.
• Lawyers for former Chicago Alderperson Ed Burke have asked that a display in the Dirksen Federal Building celebrating the US Attorney's successes securing public-corruption convictions be covered during Burke's public-corruption trial.
• Adams County, Illinois, judge Robert Adrian faces discipline from the state Judicial Inquiry Board after reversing the conviction of a man who sexually assaulted his girlfriend because the teenaged assailant's 148 days in jail was "plenty of punishment."
• In a move that surprised no one, WeWork filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection yesterday, after failing to "elevate the world's consciousness" through "the energy of We."
• Josh Marshall relays some of his thoughts about the Gaza War, with one in particular I want to call out: "Nothing that has happened in the last month constitutes genocide, either in actual actions or the intent behind those actions. Not a single thing." Worth repeating. But also: "there is a media and propaganda war about this conflict on TikTok and it is one Israel is losing."
• Kevin Dugan relishes the exposure of Sam Bankman-Fried as a common criminal, and not a very original one at that.
• Via Schneier, eminence gris Gene Spafford reflects on the Morris Worm, which chewed its way through most of the 100,000 machines connected to the Internet 35 years ago last week.

Finally, let's all tip our hats to George Hollywood, a parakeet who lived off the land in my part of Chicago for the better part of summer. He didn't exactly blend in with the pigeons, but as the photos in the news story show, he sure tried.

We officially had our first freeze last night as the temperature at O'Hare dipped to -1°C. At Inner Drive Technology World HQ it only got down to 0.1°C, barely above freezing, but still cold enough to put on ear muffs and gloves taking Cassie to day camp this morning. It'll warm up a bit this weekend, though.

Meanwhile, I'm writing a longer post about propaganda, which I may post today or tomorrow. And that's not the only fun thing happening in the world, either:

• Ukraine has had a lot of success blowing up $2 million Russian tanks with $400 drones. Good.
• The XPOTUS keeps making fun of the President's age, which, like everything else he does and says, turns out to have a pretty large element of projection. (Remember: to figure out what the XPOTUS wants to do, listen to what he says our lot are doing.) Bad.
• Chicago house prices have risen faster than in any other major US city lately, but only because they still lag almost every other US city. Mixed.
• BlueTriton, the parent company of Poland Springs-brand bottled water, not only sells one of the worst products for degrading our natural environment, but also has engaged in ballsy corruption to "persuade" the Maine legislature to let it continue doing so. Bad.
• HackRead reports a 587% increase in "quishing" attacks, where bad guys get you to scan bogus QR codes to steal your credentials. Very bad.
• Paleontologists have published evidence that the dust layer kicked up by the Chicxulub impact 66 million years ago may have persisted for 15 years, shutting down photosynthesis entirely for up to 24 months. Bad for the dinosaurs, good for the paleontologists.

Finally, as you sniffle and snort this winter, it might not comfort you to know that you have two noses that can get congested and runny. Bad.

Last weekend I made approximately 5 liters of chicken soup due to an unfortunate decision midway through the process to add more salt. Given the saltiness of the soup I put in mason jars, I recommend a 3:2 ratio of soup to water, meaning I effectively made 8 liters of soup. Most of it is in my freezer now, in convenient 250 mL jars, one serving apiece.

Suffice it to say I have had chicken soup for lunch 3 times this week. It is, however, very delicious. Except for over-salting it (which is easily corrected and preventable in future), I know what I'm doing.

Elsewhere in the world, things are not so delicious:

• Alex Shepard says the real reason House Republicans can't elect a speaker—Jim Jordan (R-OH) just failed for the third time in as many days—is because they don't have "any actual objectives beyond stymying the Biden administration and blocking liberal priorities."
• Andrew Sullivan throws up his hands at a party unfit for government.
• Dana Milbank chuckles at the Republicans wanting to "go to Gettysburg or something," which most people remember as the place the slave-owning South effectively lost their rebellion. "Washington isn’t broken," he writes. "The House of Representatives is broken — because you and your Republican colleagues broke it."
• Possibly related to the House GOP, Arthur Brooks outlines the "Dark Triad" type of malignant narcissist, and how to avoid them.
• Possibly related to that, Molly White continues her coverage of the SBF trial, today focusing on the confusing defense his lawyers have outlined.
• Speaking of malignant narcissists, which I guess would have to include all the preceding bullet points, Jeffrey Toobin (yes, that Jeffrey Toobin) warns that the XPOTUS is going to get someone killed. (Does Toobin not remember insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt?)
• Continuing with today's theme, Paul Krugman looks at Elon Musk's destruction of Twitter as a model of how an economic nexus dies.
• I don't usually go in for celebrity stuff, because things like the Post's review of Britney Spears' memoir remind me how horrible celebrity actually is.
• Moving off the narcissism theme: Sky News explains why workers have hung a bale of hay from London's Millennium Bridge.
• Chicago's Metropolitan Brewing has filed for bankruptcy, so the Brews & Choos Project will try to stop in for one last lager on Sunday.

Finally, today is the 50th anniversary of both the Sydney Opera House opening and Nixon's (and Bork's) Saturday Night Massacre. One of those things endures. The other does too, but not in a good way.

Sadly, my doctor did not tell me to try to have fun no matter what I do, though we did have a brief conversation about which Bourbons we both like. Nope, he just said I'm perfectly healthy: I exercise enough, I eat right, I don't drink too much, my vital signs are perfect, and I get enough sleep. Doctor visits should be like software releases: boring.

If only that were true elsewhere:

• Israel has given the 1.1 million residents of Gaza City until tonight to evacuate to the southern part of the territory as it prepares to invade.
• Michelle Goldberg dismays over left-leaning Americans' apologies for Hamas, seemingly indifferent to the human suffering the war has already brought and will continue to bring: "No cause, righteous or otherwise, excuses the killing of children."
• US Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) (the self-proclaimed "[KKK leader] without the baggage]") lasted all of 24 hours as the Republican Party's nominee for Speaker of the House before the rest of his caucus decided democracy doesn't apply anywhere when they lose.
• The XPOTUS granted clemency to a fellow charlatan on his way out the door, but Philip Esformes's crimes were so egregious that the Justice Department will re-try the six of 12 counts Esformes's jury deadlocked on in his first trial.

Finally, for those of you just tuning in, Chicago-based Motorola invented cell phones. And today marks (only!) the 40th anniversary of David Meilahn making the world's first commercial cellular telephone call from Chicago's Soldier Field. Meilahn won a race to get his phone turned on and dialed in order to get that bit of recognition.

On a more serious note, I haven't commented on the war in Gaza yet because I haven't sifted through all the propaganda and disinformation enough. Julia Ioffe said a lot of what I'm thinking on Monday, but right now, no one can hear us moderates. I plan to address it soon. Maybe my lone center-left voice will end 3,000 years of conflict peacefully, who knows?