The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

More wins in court, more losses in law enforcement

First, there is no update on Cassie. She had a quick consult today, but they didn't schedule the actual diagnostics that she needs, so we'll go back first thing Tuesday. She does have a small mast cell tumor on her head, but the location makes her oncologist optimistic for treatment. I'll post again next week after the results come back from her spleen and lymph node aspirations.

Meanwhile, in the real world, things lurch forward and backward as the OAFPOTUS's political trajectory slides by millimeters towards Buchanan levels of popularity and effectiveness:

I took half a day off of work because I didn't know how long Cassie's appointment would take, so after my 4pm meeting I will sod off for the rest of the day. There will be much walkies and much patting of the dog starting around 4:30.

Stories that seem like parodies but aren't

I encountered a couple of head-scratchers in today's news feeds. They seem like parodies but, sadly, aren't.

Exhibit the first: Former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss (Cons.—South West Norfolk), who got tossed from office in less time than it takes for a head of lettuce to rot because of her disastrous mismanagement of the UK economy, has an op-ed in today's Washington Post praising the OAFPOTUS and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent for the "herculean task ahead of them in turning around the U.S. economy and gripping the deep state that has promoted managed decline."

This comes just a day after economist Paul Krugman reminded the world exactly how Truss crashed the UK economy, and how the OAFPOTUS's big, awful bill would be worse. (Her funniest line: "I faced a barrage of criticism from establishment economists who claimed that these actions would stoke inflation and increase the deficit." Yes, because, you see, my dear Mrs Truss, the establishment economists can do arithmetic.)

Exhibit the second: The New York Times' real-estate section asks, "Is this Chicago suburb for you?" The suburb is Elmhurst, so I can tell the Times quite unequivocally that it isn't. I mean, if you're looking to trash some lovely old housing stock and build a McMansion hellscape, then maybe it's for you, like it is for this young couple:

Drew and Ariana Voelsch, a couple in their early 30s, moved to Elmhurst in 2023, from River Forest, a suburb just west of Chicago. They tore down a 1,176-square-foot farmhouse to construct their 5,000-square-foot dream home, a common practice among buyers in Elmhurst.

Why. Just, why. Anyone want to bet the 110 m² house they destroyed fit nicely on the lot and the 465 m² house their builders slapped together looks like an alien dropped it there from the Bizarro dimension?

Look, if you want a suburb with a variety of interesting housing stock, pretty tree-lined streets, and its own connection to the urban fabric of Chicago, might I suggest Evanston? Or if it has to be west of the city, how about Wheaton, which has a lovely downtown and a (mostly) walkable core around it? Or—I'm asking you, Mr and Mrs Voelsch—River Forest?

(I'll also call out Kate Wagner's post last month in Patreon that can't be missed: "The McMansionization of the White House, or: Regional Car Dealership Rococo: a treatise." Because some people need another reminder that the OAFPOTUS is what poor people think a rich person is like, and what an actual rich person thinks is hideous.)

I have to take Cassie to the vet now, but I will return to the absurd and troubling world around us when I get back.

Somehow, it's April again

We've had a run of dreary, unseasonably cold weather that more closely resembles the end of March than the middle of May. I've been looking at this gloom all day:

We may have some sun tomorrow afternoon through the weekend, but the forecast calls for continuous north winds and highs around 16°C—the normal high for April 23rd, not May 23rd. Summer officially starts in 10 days. It sure doesn't feel like it.

Speaking of the gloomy and the retrograde:

  • Former US judge and George HW Bush appointee J. Michael Luttig argues that the OAFPOTUS "is destroying the American presidency, though I would not say that is intentional and deliberate."
  • In a case of "careful what you wish for," FBI Director Dan Bongino can't escape his past conspiracy theorizing but also can't really escape the realities of (or his lack of qualifications for) his new position.
  • Writer Louis Pisano excoriates Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez for their "idea that billionaires can buy their way into virtue with just enough gala invitations, foundation launches, and pocket-change donations" in Cannes this week.
  • Adam Kinzinger shakes his fist at the OAFPOTUS-murdered Voice of America, now "subsidized by taxpayer dollars [to broadcast] Trump-aligned propaganda in 49 languages worldwide."
  • Jen Rubin, vacationing in Spain, explains how the country's centuries-long Catholic purges of Jews and Muslims drove their globe-spanning empire into irrelevance. "The notion that national defense required ethnic and religious homogeneity not only resulted in mass atrocities, it also deprived Spain of many of the people and ideas that had helped it become a world power," she concludes. (Not that we need to worry here in the US, right?)
  • Chuck Marohn shakes his head at the Brainerd, Minn., city council for ignoring his advice and building massive infrastructure they can't afford to maintain.
  • Metra has formally taken control of the commuter trains running on Union Pacific track, including the one that goes right past Inner Drive Technology WHQ.
  • The village of Dolton, Ill., has informed potential buyers of Pope Leo XVI's childhood home that it intends to invoke eminent domain and work with the Archdiocese of Chicago on preserving the building. Said the village attorney, "We don't want it to become a nickel-and-dime, 'buy a little pope' place."

Speaking of cashing in on the Chicago Pope, Burning Bush Brewery has just released a new mild ale called "Da Pope." Next time Cassie and I go to Horner Park, we'll stop by Burning Bush and one of us will try it. (Un?)Fortunately, we won't have time to get there by 11pm Friday, so we'll miss the $8 Chicago Pope Handshake special (a pint of Da Pope and a shot of Malört). Dang.

Catching up on the news

I spent a lot of time outside over the weekend until the temperature started to slide into the single digits (Celsius) last night, so I put off reading online stories in favor of reading real books. I also failed to mention that we had an honest-to-goodness haboob in Northern Illinois on Friday, the first significant one since 1934. Because hey, let's bring back the 1930s in all their glory!

  • Adam Kinzinger rolls his eyes at the world's oldest toddler: the OAFPOTUS himself, the biggest champion of the 1930s we have right now.
  • Josh Marshall shakes his head at the people in our party who think the electorate is waiting with bated breath to find out which nonessential policies we're going to go with in 2026.
  • Jeff Maurer draws similar parallels, this time between HBO/Max/HBO Max/whatever's branding problems and those of the Democratic Party.
  • Paul Krugman slaps the GOP hard for its "incredibly cruel" budget—which is their point: "Its cruelty is exceptional even by recent right-wing standards."
  • Speaking of cruelty, Jack Goldsmith picks apart Stephen Miller's trolling about habeas corpus, and pleads with journalists to stop falling for this stuff.
  • Michael Tomasky says that Kamala Harris's race and gender weren't the problem with her candidacy—it's that the party stopped all conversation about her fitness for the presidency because of her race and gender.
  • Tyler Austin Harper agrees, saying that the King Lear analogy with President Biden postulated in Jake Tapper's Original Sin doesn't quite work: his core advisers and his wife bear a lot more responsibility for our 2024 loss than they get credit for.
  • Oh, and hey, did anyone in North America notice that the PKK lay down their arms and have ended their 40-year insurgency against Türkiye? It's kind of a big deal.
  • In one bit of good news, the critically-endangered piping plovers nesting at Montrose Beach a few hundred meters to the east of where I'm sitting have laid an egg. Good luck, Imani and Sea Rocket!
  • The UK has asked if the US Federal Aviation Administration might possibly do their jobs a bit better regulating the Clown Prince of X's rockets, which keep blowing up over the UK's Caribbean territories and littering their beaches with debris.

Finally, Scottish writer Dan Richards looks across the Atlantic and sees that the infrastructure choices we've made have driven us to having only two bad options: slow cars or polluting airplanes. Europe made investments throughout the last 30 years that gave them sleek and comfortable overnight trains.

I last took an overnight European train in September 2013, on what may be my best visit to the UK ever. The Caledonian Sleeper leaves London Euston at 22:30 and gets to Edinburgh at 08:00, for about £250 per person. Put that price against a flight and a hotel, or even an daytime express train and a hotel, and it's not a bad deal. Plus you get a wake-up call with hot tea before arriving.

Quick hits before it starts to rain

Just a couple of eye-rolling stories. First, Charlie Warzel mocks the OAFPOTUS's "tactical burger unit:"

We now inhabit a world beyond parody, where the pixels of reality seem to glitch and flicker. Consider the following report from Trump’s state visit to Saudi Arabia this week, posted by the foreign-affairs journalist Olga Nesterova: “As part of the red-carpet treatment, Saudi officials arranged for a fully operational mobile McDonald’s unit to accompany President Trump during his stay.” A skeptical news consumer might be inclined to pause for a moment at the phrase fully operational mobile McDonald’s unit, their brain left to conjure what those words could possibly mean.

It’s worth emphasizing that all of this is pretty embarrassing. Multiple news outlets, including Fox News, framed the truck as an act of burger diplomacy; the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia pandered to a mercurial elderly man, ostensibly to guarantee that a slender beef patty was never far from his lips. As with all things Trump, it’s hard to know exactly what to believe. Is the burger unit a stylized but mostly normal bit of state-visit infrastructure, or is it a bauble meant to please the Fast-Food President? In a world where leaders seem eager to bend the knee to Trump’s every impulse, even the truly ridiculous seems plausible. The mere fact of all of this is unmooring. When strung together, the words fully operational mobile McDonald’s unit overwhelm my synapses; there could be no funnier or dumber phrase to chisel out of the English language.

All hail Meal Team Six!

I also wanted to call out today's Times story about the declining fortunes of ride-share drivers at Los Angeles International Airport:

In the early years of app-based platforms like Uber, Lyft and DoorDash, people flocked to sign up as drivers. The idea of making money simply by driving someone around in your own car, on your own schedule, appealed to many, from professional chauffeurs looking for extra work to employees working in the service industry who realized they could break free of the 9-to-5 grind.

And in the early years, wages were high. Drivers would regularly take home thousands of dollars a week, as Uber and Lyft pushed growth over profits, posting quarterly losses in the billions of dollars. Then, when they became public companies, profitability became a focus, and wages gradually shrank.

Now, earnings have fallen behind inflation, and for many drivers have decreased. Last year, Uber drivers made an average of $513 a week in gross earnings, a 3.4 percent decline from the previous year, even as they worked six minutes more a week on average...

This is simply an overabundance of drivers chasing a declining population of travelers. This is the whole reason taxi regulations came into being: to ensure that taxi drivers could make a fair living doing their jobs. It's a pretty glaring display of the tragedy of the commons, too.

I'll have more to say about this soon.

Things should calm down next week

As Crash Davis said to Annie Savoy all those years ago: A player on a streak has to respect the streak. Well, I'm on a coding streak. This week, I've been coding up a storm for my day job, leaving little time to read all of today's stories:

Finally, Ernie Smith, who also had a childhood pastime of reading maps for fun, examines why MapQuest became "the RC Cola" of mapping apps. Tl;dr: corporate mergers are never about product quality.

Another busy day

I had a lot going on today, so I only have a couple of minutes to note these stories:

  • Not only is the OAFPOTUS's "new" (actually quite well-used) Qatari Boeing 747-8 a huge bribe, it will cost taxpayers almost as much as one of the (actually) new VC-25B airplanes the Air Force is currently building, as it completely fails to meet any of the requirements for survivability and security. (“You might even ask why Qatar no longer wants the aircraft," former USAF acquisitions chief Andrew Hunter said. "And the answer may be that it’s too expensive for them to maintain.”)
  • The Economist analyzes county-level data and finds that Republican areas are outperforming Democratic areas on a couple of measures—for now.
  • Rolling Stone criticizes Ezra Klein's Abundance for playing into the oligarchs' plans, though I wonder if I'm reading the same book they did? (I'll have more to say when I finish the book.)
  • Elaine Kamarck and William Galston, on the other hand, have some pretty good ideas about how the Democrats can get their mojo back, and "oligarchy" doesn't come up once. (For the record, I think Kamarck and Galston have a better take than Rolling Stone.)
  • Times reporter Molly Young went to the "world's happiest country" in February and was not the world's happiest reporter.

Finally, a late-night club in Lincoln Park that the city closed down after shootings and other crime in 2017 will reopen at the end of May as a doggy day spa. Pup Social, at 2200 N. Ashland Ave., will offer off-leash play, a coworking lounge (presumably for humans), and a bar (also presumably for humans). The fees will start at $99 per month.

Exhausting weekend, in a good way

Cassie and I walked 14 km yesterday, giving her almost 3 hours of walks and 8 hours continuously outside with friends (including Butters). The walk included a stop at Jimmy's Pizza Cafe. (It's possible Cassie got a bit of pizza.)

She's now on the couch, fast asleep. I would also like to be on the couch, fast asleep, but it is a work day.

I also wish some of the people in today's stories were asleep on the couch instead of asleep at the switch:

Finally, the Economist draws attention to all the ways that my generation continues to suffer because of the two much larger generations on either side of us. The Boomers want to use up Social Security and the Millennials want all the resources for child-raising that we didn't take. It's out lot in life.

I have more coding to do now. Though I really, really want a nap.

Shifting gears after a morning of meetings

Just queuing a few things up to read at lunchtime:

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.