The Daily Parker

Just queuing a few things up to read at lunchtime:

• From tavern-style communion pizza and Malört to the horrific discovery that the Pope is a White Sox fan, Chicagoans have gone nuts for Leo XIV. Catholics everywhere are finally safe from ketchup with their Eucharist.
• Former US Supreme Court Justice David Souter has died, aged 85. He "pulled a Brennan" by drifting left during his term on the court, much to the annoyance of the Republicans who elevated him.
• Political scientists Steven Levitsky, Lucan Way, and Daniel Zilbatt warn that a descent into competitive authoritarianism—the ruling style of autocrats like India's Modi and Türkiye's Erdoğan—shows up most clearly as an increasing cost of opposing the government.
• Josh Marshall reports on how the OAFPOTUS's droogs are cutting off medical research grant payments without explicitly (if illegally) cancelling the grants, hoping they won't get caught until it's too late.
• Molly White and Paul Krugman provide their regular reminders that crypto is a scam, now with added corruption.
• James Fallows, who usually tries to get people to calm down about aviation mishaps, wants the press to be more alarmed about the air traffic control blackouts in Newark. (Another one happened just this morning, in fact.)
• Yascha Mounk looks at the Democratic Party and shrugs that, for good or ill, "the resistance is gonna be woke," even if it costs us the next two elections.
• ProPublica's David Armstrong dug into why his cancer drugs cost more than an iPhone for each dose.
• Charles Marohn points out the lie in a recent Times op-ed by reminding anyone who can do math that sprawl is a Ponzi scheme, not a solution to our housing problem.

Finally, Chicago's ubiquitous summer street fairs have found it much more difficult to sustain their funding in the years since the pandemic. The city prohibits charging an entry fee for walking down a street, so the fairs have to rely on gate donations. But even with increasing expenses, people attending festivals have stopped donating at the gate, putting the fairs in jeopardy.

When I go to Ribfest in four weeks, I will pay the donation every day, because I want my ribs. This will be the festival's 25th year. I will do my part to get them another 25.

As a devout atheist, I'm not especially concerned with the election this afternoon of Robert Prevost as Pope Leo XIV, though I am tickled he's a South Sider from Chicago. (Next up: Malort for communion!)

I'm less tickled that about the "deal" that the US and UK have reached on trade as it appears to be nothing more than "concepts of a plan" that leaves in place a 10% tax on UK goods. As Krugman explains,

Nobody knows what will eventually come out of it, but we can be sure of one thing: It won’t lead to any significant opening of the British market to U.S. goods. Why? Because that market was already wide open before Trump stomped in.

So should we celebrate the trade deal that will be announced today? No. It won’t solve any of the problems Trump has created. It will, if anything, offer Trump the temporary illusion of success, encouraging him to create even more problems.

For all that we know now about President Biden's decline in the last two years of his term, shouldn't we be more alarmed by the OAFPOTUS's divorce from reality?

Cincinnati mayor Aftab Pureval (I) will face Republican Cory Bowman in the November election after the two won 83% and 13%, respectively, of yesterday's primary vote. Bowman is the half-brother of Vice President JD Vance, whose endorsement of Bowman appears to have led to Pureval's enormous vote total. When you're the least-popular vice president in history, no one wants your endorsement, dude.

Also, today is the 80th anniversary of Nazi Germany's surrender to the Allies in Reims, France. What that has to do with Vice President Vance is left as an exercise for the reader.

Meanwhile:

• No, the OAFPOTUS can't simply reopen Alcatraz as a prison.
• George Will scoffs at the "art" of the OAFPOTUS's dealings with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
• Greg Sargent digs into how many jobs making Barbie dolls would actually add to the US economy, and how crappy those jobs would be.
• The OAFPOTUS has pressured the Postal Board into making a FedEx board member the next Postmaster General. What could possibly go wrong?
• Jennifer Rubin is relieved that judges the OAFPOTUS himself appointed have no tolerance for his authoritarian power-grab. (Except for Aileen Cannon and Matthew Kacsmaryk, of course.)
• Robert Wright finds it fascinating that Open AI plays up China as a threat while simultaneously begging for government money.
• Jeff Maurer wonders if DNC Vice Chair David Hogg ("a contemptable little twerp," according to James Carville) might actually have one good idea.

Finally, United Airlines has pledged to buy up to 200 JetZero Z4 airplanes, which employ a blended-wing design that has never been used in civil air transport before. It's really cool-looking, and offers some interesting interior possibilities. I might miss the windows, though. JetZero expects a first flight in 2027.

Radley Balko, who has spent his career examining police policy and law-enforcement mission creep, elucidates the latest authoritarian trolling from the White House:

Donald Trump says he wants to “unleash” the police.

The [latest executive order] is more virtue signaling than policy — more an expression of Trump’s mood than a serious proposal. And, when it comes to conventional crime, Trump’s mood is right where it’s always been: fearful, demagogic, and perpetually stuck in 1988.

The key term in the executive order is unleash, and it’s worth delving into what exaclty he means when he uses it. The literal definition is to remove from a restraint. In the context of law enforcement, it conjures images of cops siccing police dogs on suspects and protesters. Metaphorically, we tend to associate the word with starker imagery: we unleash fury, wrath, and retribution. Trump wants to project both.

He believes in projecting strength, and believes strong leaders demonstrate strength with violence. This is why he has often suggested that police officers will attack his enemies if called upon, and why the Capitol Police who defended Congress from his supporters received so much of MAGA’s wrath.

Yet you can’t unleash something that has never been restrained in the first place. And in the U.S., the police have never been restrained.

In other words, this version of reality in which police officers are hamstrung by overly restrictive rules, activist judges, and woke prosecutors only really exists in Donald Trump’s mind, and in the minds of his followers.

In the end, Donald Trump doesn’t really want to unleash the police. He just wants to be sure he’s the one holding the lead.

I mean, you can't have an authoritarian police state without balaclavas, can you?

The world has rightly reacted in horror to the OAFPOTUS's self-defeating tariff regime. But as economists Paul Krugman and Bobby Kogan point out, the tariffs are distracting us from the even more horrific Republican budget proposal:

PAUL KRUGMAN: So, it’s been a pretty amazing hundred days, but almost all of my focus has been on tariffs and other things like DOGE and all of that. But meanwhile, there's a much more sort of conventional Republican plan of huge tax cuts and big benefit cuts. There is a legislative push which in normal times would have been occupying all of our attention and maybe should be getting some of it. And you know more about this certainly than I do or than anybody I know.

So I thought I would get you to talk about what's happening. And so, where are we, what is actually happening on the budget right now?

BOBBY KOGAN: What we are seeing is an enormous tax cut bill that would spike the deficit by—depending on the version we're seeing—three-ish to five-ish trillion dollars partially offset by huge cuts to Medicaid and huge cuts to food assistance and some other things. So the net package will be a huge deficit increase while taking away people's health care and people's food.

PAUL KRUGMAN Yeah, anyone who thinks that Trump is being populist should have in mind that this is sort of the most aggressively un-populist, anti-populist legislation. How big are we talking about? The tax cuts, I think, it's a very big budget number. How serious are the cuts that we're talking about to Medicaid and basically food stamps?

BOBBY KOGAN Yeah, so they are shooting for $1.5 to $2 trillion of spending cuts. We haven't seen the Medicaid proposal yet. I think no matter what they're doing, it will be the largest Medicaid cut in history. And the only question is, by how much, right? Are we talking $500 billion of Medicaid cuts, 600, 700, 800? They gave the Energy and Commerce committee an $880 billion instruction. But some of that will be things that aren't Medicaid. The majority of that will be Medicaid.

On food stamps, they're looking at cutting it in quarter. Basically, there was a Biden-era reassessment of the thrifty food plan that kind of Reworked it already. Anyway, that doesn't matter. They want to undo that. Right now the average benefit is a little bit more than $2 per person per meal. So already very meager. Already incredibly meager, they want to take it down to a buck sixty-seven per person per meal. Really pinching pennies from hungry families.

Remember how the US used to lead the world in science? Yeah, that's gone too. Peer-equivalent health care outcomes? Forget those. Jobs? Them too.

And, of course, cutting all these things will create opportunities for private businesses to go after your money more directly. Why get weather reports for free if you can pay someone for them? Free enterprise! Too bad all those people have to die for corporate profits to increase.

Former Illinois governor George Ryan (R) died earlier today in hospice. He, like half of the Illinois governors who served in my lifetime, spent time in prison for corruption, stemming from a time when, as Secretary of State, he would issue commercial drivers licenses in exchange for bribes. The scandal went national when an unqualified driver crashed into a family car, killing six kids.

He also single-handedly blocked Illinois from ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment in 1982, but as governor he didn't do nearly as much damage as his successors Rod Blagojevich (D) and Bruce Rauner (R).

...and it's Star Wars trivia tonight at Spiteful Brewing, so I'll just have to save some links to read tomorrow:

• Matt Bai shakes his head at the Clown Prince of X nakedly cashing in on the trade war.
• Yascha Mounk says the OAFPOTUS "has a genuine mandate," but can't get past his own narcissism and grievances to use it.
• Jennifer Rubin agrees, saying "doubling down with a pair of deuces isn't a winning strategy."
• Jeff Maurer shares his thoughts on the OAFPOTUS's "first hundred years in office."
• Former US Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) calls out the dangerous corruption of betting on political outcomes.

Finally, WAPO has a list of 35 "definitive rules of train travel." Definitely Daily Parker bait. 

The OAFPOTUS took office for the second time 99 days ago, which means we already have a few 100-days stories to mention.

First, from Canadian prime minister Mark Carney (Lib.–Nepean), whose party won yesterday's election and has formed a 4th consecutive government:

"As I've been warning for months, America wants our land, our resources, our water, our country," Carney told supporters Monday night. "These are not idle threats. President Trump is trying to break us so America can own us. That will never ... ever happen."

Conservative leader Pierre Polivievre and New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh both lost their seats as well.

Former US Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) decries "100 days of disaster:"

In just his first 100 days, Trump has issued more than 130 executive orders, throwing the economy, higher education, the legal system, and much of the federal government into chaos. He pardoned 1,600 insurrectionists who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. And most damaging of all, he declared a trade war with China — and pretty much the rest of the world — sending us hurtling toward a severe recession.

If there’s one thing Trump has proven in his first 100 days, it’s that he’s consistently bad at this job.

Former US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg asks, "are you better off than you were 100 days ago?"

In every presidency, the 100-day milestone is a key moment to check on the status of an administration and of the country. Today, Americans are experiencing an administration marked by historic shows of incompetence, cruelty, and confusion, and a country that is measurably worse off than just a hundred days ago.

At this 100-day mark, I’d encourage you to do everything you can think of to make clear how you feel, not just to your Member of Congress but to people in your life. This is a time to talk with friends and family, even or especially if they have different political views than you do. It’s a moment to listen to any doubts and concerns they may be having - as millions of Americans clearly do - with interest and empathy while sharing your own sincere convictions.

James Fallows takes the moment to laud the people standing up to the OAFPOTUS's clown show:

Mariann Edgar Budde had no way of calculating the risks she might be taking on. Soon after the service, Trump was attacking her by name (as “nasty” and dumb) on social media. A GOP congressman “joked” that she should go onto the ICE deportation list. Other threats were not in jest.

But she stood up and spoke.

Let us remember the story of Bishop Budde, 99 days ago. And remember the people fighting for decent values in all these days ahead.

Jonathan Chait calls it "an unsustainable presidency:"

Historians tend to rate presidencies by the breadth of their accomplishments, on a scale ranging from ineffectual to transformative. The classic measuring stick for 100-day achievements is the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The frenetic first stretch of the New Deal featured a raft of major legislation that established new financial regulations and ambitious public-works projects, helping the economy begin to recover from the Great Depression.

Judged against Roosevelt’s record, the first 100 days of the second Trump term can be deemed a miserable failure. The president has passed no major legislation, and his economic interventions have had the opposite effect of Roosevelt’s, injecting uncertainty into a healthy recovery and seeding an economic crisis.

Trump and his inner circle have consciously patterned themselves after Viktor Orbán’s regime in Hungary, which seized control of the commanding heights of government power to suppress opposition, while permitting its president and his family to siphon vast corrupt fortunes. The Orbánization project has advanced like clockwork.

But one detail seems to have escaped the attention of Trump and his allies: Hungary, outside of its tiny parasitic elite, is a relatively poor country. That ought to have been a sign that, whatever benefits the Orbán model presented to the right-wing ruling class that would carry it out, it held little promise of helping to usher in the “golden age” of prosperity Trump offered the country.

Orbán’s economy has suffered a brain drain as the regime’s cronyism drives its great minds to work in freer societies. Trump’s policies have shown early signs of producing a similar outcome, as would-be international students must now consider whether pursuing an American degree is worth risking getting detained by ICE or having their visa revoked abruptly over minor legal infractions.

Trump’s first 100 days have set the country on an unsustainable course. The clash between the president’s determination to rule and his inability to govern has generated two opposing forces: a weaponized, illiberal state, and a smoldering political backlash. One of them will have to break.

Well, he's only got another 1,362 days to screw everything up even more. How bad can it get?

As I'm not at all expert on Canadian election law, and I have readers in Canada, I will refrain from making any political commentary until tonight. I should note that Canadians really do not like the OAFPOTUS, so a lot of them are seeing red—many more than you'd expect. As everyone knows, Canadians are very polite, which explains why so few of them are going blue today.

Politico called the final pre-election polling "strange," but they predict that fear and loathing of the OAFPOTUS has completely shifted Canadian politics in only five weeks. Of course, it could just be that Canadians got sick of former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (Lib.–Papineau) and find centrist Mark Carney (Lib.–Nepean) much more palatable.

Also, I do appreciate the Liberal Party having two back-to-back Gen X leaders.

I'll be watching this all day.

Not a lot to post today, as the weather is nearly perfect (for April) and I need a nap.

First, let's take a moment to acknowledge that the OAFPOTUS has the lowest approval rating (39%) of any president at the 100-day mark since polls began. That's quite an accomplishment. Until now, the record for lowest approval rating after 100 days was...well, the OAFPOTUS, at 42% in April 2017.

Second, how about this day? Cassie and I covered 6 kilometers around Uptown and Edgewater, including through Lakewood-Balmoral:

This is after Butters went home, which happened about 10 minutes after she decided that laying quietly in the sun was worth getting repeatedly smacked in the face by Cassie's tail:

That's par for Butters' course. She likes sleeping, after all. And she's one of the only dogs I've met who can throw shade in her sleep:

There you are, beagle photos as promised.