The Daily Parker

"It is difficult to get a man to understand a thing when his salary depends on his not understanding it."—Upton Sinclair.

We lead our news roundup today with the biggest Chicago transit story of the year, with the major players acting just as Sinclair would predict:

• Chicago's three transit-agency chiefs don't see their complete lack of coordination on top of impressive administrative bloat as any reason to consolidate into one metropolitan agency. (So why doesn't Chicago have a Clipper Card yet, then?)
• The Sun-Times, quickly becoming the paper of record (as the Tribune gets hollowed out by the hedge fund that owns it), calls bullshit on them.
• Unsurprisingly, Chicago-area residents overwhelmingly support consolidating transit agencies, because where's my Clipper Card?!
• The CTA train operator injured when he missed a signal and slammed his Yellow Line train into a maintenance train had a blood-alcohol level of 0.06, according to the NTSB.
• Like me, James Carville isn't losing too much sleep over the election, for three reasons he outlines in his New York Times op-ed today.

Finally, Mike Post is sad that most television shows no longer have theme songs. So am I. But now I have the Quincy ME theme song in my head...