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.
Taking 90 minutes to finish a novel this afternoon doesn't seem to have lessened my fatigue from the last couple of days. And now I'm off to a "friend-raiser" for an organization I've supported in the past.
As I'm also dogsitting Butters again, there's a good possibility that I'll have cute beagle photos tomorrow. For the next few hours, though, I need to smile and shake hands. I hope the passed apps are good...
Well, mixed, really. It turns out Cassie isn't entirely healthy, though at the moment she's fine and will remain so for a few years at least without intervention. (I'll get that sorted in a couple of weeks and explain more about it this weekend.)
Also, there's all this crap:
- David Brooks argues that the OAFPOTUS's single strength—his audacity—can be turned into a weakness: "Lacking any sense of prudence, he does not understand the difference between a risk and a gamble. He does daring and incredibly self-destructive stuff — now on a global scale. A revolutionary vanguard is only as strong as its weakest links, and the Trump administration is to weak links what the Rose Bowl parade is to flower petals."
- Anne Applebaum has started a Kleptocracy Tracker on her blog, to catalog as many instances of the theft, grifting, and corruption that animates the Republican Party and this administration.
- Julia Ioffe has "notes on the Rubio re-org scandal."
- Jennifer Rubin celebrates "four undaunted individuals," including recently-resigned 60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens and the three SDNY prosecutors who quit rather than apologize for refusing to dismiss corruption charges against New York mayor Eric Adams (I).
- Dana Milbank wishes "there were a Yiddish insult that captured the missteps we’re seeing from the White House." (One comes to mind: putz mit zvey yegen.)
- Former US Representative "George Santos" (R-NY) was sentenced to 87 months in prison and ordered to pay $374,000 in restitution following multiple fraud convictions.
- Andrew Sullivan mourns Pope Francis I, who moved the Catholic Church closer to accepting homosexuality than any previous Pope.
Finally, Illinois has 4 of the highest property-taxing jurisdictions in the US (not including New York), because "we pay over $11 billion in interest on unfunded pension obligations." We don't pay the most in property taxes though, because our property values are lower than in other places. Still, as a percentage of property values, Chicago's property taxes are second-highest in the country. I feel this every February and August.
It was warm enough last night to leave a couple of windows ajar, which lets in fresh air along with every sound in the neighborhood. Also last night, an idiot cardinal found a convenient streetlight, stepped out of the shade, and said something like, "You and me, babe, how about it?" He started his serenade a little after 4 am, according to my Garmin sleep report, and continued well into the morning. I don't remember ever wishing for a cat as much as I did around 5.
Remember this little ode? Yeah. Really feeling it today.
I then had about 5 hours of meetings with various and sundry, with a vet visit sandwiched in for Cassie's annual wellness checkup. (She's in perfect health.)
I might have more creativity tomorrow. Anyway, I hope I do.
Yesterday Cassie and I took a 9 kilometer walk through the Lincoln Square and West Ridge community areas. If she got tired, she didn't admit it, at least not until we stopped for a beer:
Otherwise, not much to report, other than I started Agency, William Gibson's sequel to his novel The Peripheral. It's really good. I'm already a third the way done and should finish in a day or two.
Cassie and I are taking a moment after a visit to Horner Park, where she met a bunch of new friends:
Note that the woman in the photo is not the beagle's human, which the beagle finds irrelevant if she can get her snoot deeper into that bag.
We have stopped for a moment to enjoy a beer (Hazy Sunday IPA) and crack-soaked popcorn at Burning Bush near the park. I feel no urgency about anything at the moment. It's a good day.
Yesterday I had non-stop stuff from waking up until going to sleep. Today it's sunny and seasonably cool. In other words: as soon as I take a quick nap, I'm taking Cassie for a decent walk, then not doing anything productive until tomorrow.
Enjoy the weekend.
I completed two surveys related to my work conference this week. The first one included the question, "To confirm that you are still reading this, please select 'Disagree.'" The second one assigned point values to the multiple-choice questions, so that the three items I answered "Somewhat OK" instead of "Excellent" brought my grade down to a B-minus.
These are the kinds of things that make one wonder how valuable the survey data really is.
Meanwhile, I've got a ton of things to do today, including getting Cassie her lunchtime walk before a line of storms comes through around noon.
More later, including two Brews & Choos reviews from Nashville.
The Wednesday schedule for this work conference is always the fullest, so I don't have a lot of time to post. One of the teams I manage started the day at Nashville's best breakfast spot, Biscuit Love, which means I don't have to eat again until April. And since we met in the hotel lobby just 15 minutes after sunrise, I got to wake up to this:
Again, kudos to the conference organization staff and the hotel for giving me exactly the room that I wanted.
Meanwhile, Cassie seems to be doing all right:
I am planning no less than a solid hour of couch time tomorrow night, though.
Leading the hit parade of horrors this morning, London's Heathrow Airport completely shut down after an electric transformer caught fire yesterday, leading to over 1,100 flight cancellations so far. Flight operations have resumed, sort of, but Europe's busiest airport going offline will cause rippling failures throughout world aviation for a few more days at least.
Speaking of massive transport failures, we have yet more evidence that the Clown Prince of X knows dick about cars (or rockets or software or anything, really) as Tesla recalled nearly all of its Cybertrucks after people discovered the door panels can fall off. That's if they don't rust, or crumple, or warp, or cut your fingers off.
I Googled "how bad is the Tesla Cybertruck" and got so many responses I had to whittle the search down to just the last month, and it still took a couple of pages to find a source that most people trust: Consumers Union. And they don't like it at all. (I love this bit, too: "Unfortunately, we can’t ask Tesla any follow-up questions about the vehicle—even clarifying ones that could help us better understand it—because Tesla dissolved its media relations department in 2020, and the company did not respond when contacted through its press email." This is the guy now destroying the US government. You were warned, and you voted for the OAFPOTUS anyway.)
Time to walk the dog again, now that it's up to 9°C.