RIP Dolly

Singer, actor, philanthropist, and all-around great person Dolly Parton has died at the age of 80. She will truly be missed.

In other news:

• The OAFPOTUS has picked a fight with Canada that we will lose because, as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney (Lab.-Nepean) pointed out in a delightfully Canadian way¹, our administration is incompetent. (And no, we're not going to rename Lake Ontario.)
• This shouldn't surprise anyone as we're also losing a war we didn't need to Iran, because the administration is stupid.
• Speaking of stupid and incompetent, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is applying reverse-DEI by firing general and flag officers who aren't white men, with predictably bad outcomes.
• The administration has decided that a shipment of tainted beef rejected by China is just the thing we need to reduce beef prices while sickening people and bankrupting the farmers that voted for them. Trifecta!
• Religious nutters in Idaho keep letting their kids die because while the power of Christ compels Satan, only antibiotics compel bacteria.
• A new group has proposed a high-speed, battery-powered O'Hare to downtown shuttle with 15-minute service between Terminal 2 and the Old Main Post Office along an under-used freight route. It could work!

Finally, while tipping our hats to Dolly, let us also mourn the entirely evitable decline of a Chicago institution: Heileman's Old Style. Fifty years after Heileman Brewery salesmen gave free "Old Style" signs to Chicago bars after signing a deal with Wrigley Field, it's getting harder to find a can. You can't even get it at Wrigley since 2014. But the signs are still there, and still mean "this is a neighborhood dive bar."