The Daily Parker

Earlier I mentioned Cassie and I had a fun weekend with lots of outdoor time. Unfortunately, the weekend wasn't as much fun for others:

• Contrasting the 5-million-plus No Kings demonstrators across the country with the desultory turnout to the Army's 250th birthday parade that the OAFPOTUS co-opted, Norman Eisen concludes that the OAFPOTUS "is a lousy dictator."
• The OAFPOTUS, disappointed that he didn't get loads of goose-stepping troops carrying his photo like the DPRK army on parade, predictably threw a tantrum, threatening to step up mass deportations in cities with large No Kings turnouts.
• Still, as Philip Kennicott reports, the Army comported itself professionally as the non-partisan organization it strives to be, on what was after all supposed to be their celebration. (This only made the OAFPOTUS angrier, of course.)
• And Yascha Mounk answers the question of whether we're headed towards dictatorship with some optimism: "Not today. Not tomorrow. But the danger is real. And the ultimate outcome, far from being predetermined, may not be knowable for decades to come."
• The Verge's David Pierce has a WTF? moment over the "Trump Mobile" T1 8002 (Gold Edition), the OAFPOTUS's latest scam.
• Jodi Kantor takes a look at Justice Amey Coney Barrett's rulings, speculating that she may indeed be the next Brennan.

Finally, and completely outside of politics, the Nielsen-Norman Group has a detailed analysis of the hamburger-menu icon. Though it's only about 10 years old, most people know what they are today. Fewer people know how usability experts criticized it when it emerged, and how it still has serious failings as a design element. But like the gearshift lever on the steering column, it persists because it persists.

Oh, and because today would have been Parker's 19th birthday...

I just finished 3½ hours of nonstop meetings that people crammed into my calendar because I have this afternoon blocked off as "Summer Hours PTO." Within a few minutes of finishing my last meeting, I rebooted my laptop (so it would get updated), closed the lid, and...looked at a growing pile of news stories that I couldn't avoid:

• Dan Rather calls tomorrow's planned Soviet-style military parade through DC a charade: "The military’s biggest cheerleader (at least today) didn’t serve in Vietnam because of 'bone spurs' and has repeatedly vilified our troops, calling them 'suckers and losers,'", Rather reminds us. "But when service members are needed for a photo op or to prop up flagging poll numbers, all is forgiven, apparently."
• Anne Applebaum reminds us of the history of revolutions, and what happens when the revolutionaries get frustrated that the masses don't agree with them (hint: ask Mao or the Bolsheviks.) "The logic of revolution often traps revolutionaries: They start out thinking that the task will be swift and easy. The people will support them. Their cause is just. But as their project falters, their vision narrows. At each obstacle, after each catastrophe, the turn to violence becomes that much swifter, the harsh decisions that much easier."
• James Fallows praises California governor Gavin Newsom (D) as "the adult in the room" for his response to the OAFPOTUS federalizing the California National Guard.
• Andrew Sullivan draws a straight line between the OAFPOTUS's behavior and an archetypical colonial-era caudillo.
• Timothy Noah, who may have his tongue planted firmly in his cheek, wonders aloud if the OAFPOTUS's incompetence relates somehow to his obsession with weight? (tl;dr: Narcissistic projection.)
• US Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) agrees with the OAFPOTUS on only one thing she can think of: the need to abolish the debt ceiling. (I also agree!)
• The US House of Representatives voted 214-212 yesterday to claw back $1.1 billion in funding for public broadcasting, which particularly imperils NPR stations in Republican districts.
• Slate looks into signs that exurban areas may finally be slowing down their car-centric sprawl as the economics of maintaining all that barely-used infrastructure finally take hold.

Finally, Politico describes the absolute cluster of the Chicago Public Schools refusing to close nearly-empty buildings that, in some cases, cost $93,000 per student to keep open. But don't worry, mayor Brandon Johnson, a former Chicago Teachers Union president and now the least-popular mayor in city history, is on the case!

Comrade OAFPOTUS! (h/t Paul Krugman)

I've had a lot to do in the office today, so unfortunately this will just be a link fest:

• I agree with Jeff Maurer that "I hate that when some dickhead sets a car on fire, we have to talk about it for a week."
• Journalist G. Elliott Morris argues that the Los Angeles protests have a higher probability of hurting the OAFPOTUS than helping him.
• Paul Krugman sighs that "we finally know what 'American carnage' was about."
• Russian emigrés Maria Kuznetsova and Dan Storyev have a list of Russian words to help explain the OAFPOTUS and his droogs.
• Former US Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), who served in the Wisconsin Air National Guard both here and in Afghanistan, has absolutely no patience for the OAFPOTUS militarizing the situation in Los Angeles.
• Jennifer Rubin similarly has no patience for referring to the first Defense Secretary who never served in uniform as a "warrior."
• Oh, and let's not forget the bill House Republicans passed a couple of weeks ago that, if the Senate passes it, would reshape American democracy in some pretty horrifying ways.
• Writer Michael Hirschorn thinks Democrats are missing a huge opportunity by staying away from bro-sphere podcasters like Joe Rogan.
• Both Google and Apple have reportedly added a time zone for Cape Breton Island after an article on a satirical Canadian site joked about the municipality creating an "even more annoying time zone between Atlantic and Newfoundland time."

Finally, while Graceland Cemetery in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood doubles as an arboretum and a great place to walk your dog, right now a different set of canids has sway. Graceland has temporarily banned pet dogs while a litter of coyote pups grows up. They are totes adorbs, but their parents have behaved aggressively towards people walking dogs nearby.

Cassie and I took a 7 km walk from sleep-away camp to Ribfest yesterday, which added up to 2½ hours of walkies including the rest of the day. Then we got some relaxing couch time in the evening. We don't get that many gorgeous weekend days in Chicago—perhaps 30 per year—so we had to take advantage of it.

Of course, it's Monday now, and all the things I ignored over the weekend still exist:

• Josh Marshall digs into the OAFPOTUS's attack on the state of California, noting that "all the federalizations [of the National Guard] during the Civil Rights Era were over the refusal of segregationist state governments to enforce federal law under court order. Trump’s argument is...[that] the President [has the right] to decide when a state government isn’t protecting or enforcing civil order to his liking and to intervene with federalized National Guard or the U.S. military to do it at the point of a bayonet. ... The crisis the administration insisted it needed to solve was a crisis of the administration’s creation."
• Philip Bump puts the encroaching fascism in broader context: "What’s important to remember about the fracture that emerged in Los Angeles over the weekend is that it came shortly after reports that President Donald Trump was seeking to block California from receiving certain federal funding. ... The point was that the Trump administration wanted to bring California to heel...."
• The Guardian highlights how Chicago has led the way in resisting the OAFPOTUS's xenophobic mass-deportation program, as part of our long history of respecting immigrant rights.
• Anne Applebaum looks at last week's election in Poland and feels a chill that "every election is now existential."
• Lisa Schwarzbaum, a former film critic for Entertainment Weekly, likens the OAFPOTUS's style of governing to Mutual of Omaha's "Wild Kingdom."
• Ezra Klein expresses surprise at who has objected the most to the recommendations in his recent book Abundance, and the left-wing emphasis on messaging: "Democrats aren’t struggling primarily because they choose the wrong messages. They’re struggling because they fail to solve problems. ... [Brandon] Johnson is the most proudly left-wing big-city mayor in the country. ... He’s also the least popular big-city mayor in the country and may well end up as the least popular mayor in Chicago’s history. Policy failure breeds political failure."
• Oh, by the way, Meta and Yandex have started to de-anonymize your Android device by abusing how your Internet browser works.

Finally, a community group on the Northwest Side has launched an effort to build a 5-km rails-to-trails plus greenway project to connect the Bloomingdale Trail with the North Branch Trail. This would create a direct connection between the southern flank of Lincoln Park and the Chicago Botanic Garden in suburban Glencoe. It's still early days, though. I'd love to see this in my lifetime. I'm also waiting for electrified railroads around Chicago, but this project would be a lot cheaper.

I have had no more than 15 consecutive minutes free at any point today. The rest of the week I have 3½-hour blocks on my calendar, but all the other meetings had to go somewhere, so they went to Monday.

So just jotting down stories that caught my eye:

• Ukraine's masterful and crippling strike against the Russian Air Force over the weekend has changed warfare forever, writes Max Boot.
• Jen Rubin wants to end the creeping normalization of the OAFPOTUS and his droogs because, as she says, they're all nuts.
• Because they want to nominate obviously unqualified people to the Federal judiciary, the Justice Dept will no longer ask the American Bar Association to vet them.
• Michael Tomasky explains why the Republican Party runs up massive deficits while complaining about massive deficits.
• Why does the MAGA right hate New York City, wonders Paul Krugman?
• Writer Anne Lamott cautions against "putting Biden's head on a spike."
• The oldest company in North America, the Hudson's Bay Co. founded 355 years ago, will permanently close its doors this summer.

Finally, the Illinois House failed to pass a budget bill that included funding the Regional Transportation Authority. Despite regional transport agencies facing a $770 million funding shortfall later this summer, the House couldn't agree on how to pay for it, in part because downstate Republicans don't want to pay for it at all. The Legislature could return in special session this summer, but because of our hippy-dippy 1970 state constitution, they need a 3/5 vote to pass a budget after June 1st. If they can't pass the budget soon, the RTA may have to cut 40% of its services, decimating public transport for the 7 million people in the area.

My party wants to govern, and understands that government needs to provide a service that millions of people who depend on even if people who don't use the service have to contribute. I mean, some of my taxes go to Republican farm subsidy programs, and I accept that's part of the deal. Republicans no longer think our needs matter. They need to be careful what they wish for.

Because I'm about to hit my PTO cap at work, I'm taking the next few Friday afternoons off. Today I've planned a Brews & Choos trip out to the wilds of Lake County. Check back tomorrow for the result!

Meanwhile, I have more meetings...

First, an update on Cassie: her spleen and lymph cytology came back clean, with no evidence of mast cell disease. That means the small tumor on her head is likely the only site of the disease, and they can pop it out surgically. We'll probably schedule that for the end of June.

I have had an unusually full calendar this week, so this afternoon I blocked off three and a half hours with "No Meetings - Coding." Before I dive into finishing up the features for what I expect will be the 129th boring release of the product I'm working on, I am taking a moment to read the news, which I have not had time to do all day:

• Inae Oh reminds everyone that, while the Clown Prince of X may have departed his blatantly unlawful role in the White House after failing to achieve any of his stated objectives, he has nonetheless made everyone's life worse.
• Sherron Watkins and Cynthia Cooper, the two whistleblowers who blew up the spectacular frauds at Enron and WorldCom in 2001, warn that the GOP plans to make spectacular fraud great again by eliminating the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.
• Jennifer Rubin laments the OAFPOTUS's foreign policy malpractice.
• The administration's shift of national-security assets toward Stephen Miller's pogrom against immigrants has hobbled our efforts to combat domestic terrorism, forcing the states to make do with far fewer resources.
• David Ignatius believes that "the way to end the Gaza war has been clear for nearly a year," but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refuses to stop fighting for purely domestic political reasons.
• King Charles III's visit to Canada this week was "an audaciously disjunctive event," writes The Guardian's Martin Kettle. "[T]he modern British monarchy has stood up and demanded to be counted, doing something new and perhaps genuinely consequential."
• NPR's Steve Inskeep remarks on how his interviews with polarizing figures like US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Republican über-troll Steve Bannon have been received by other media outlets.

Finally, the city of Chicago has started formal negotiations with the Union Pacific Railroad to acquire an abandoned right-of-way on the Northwest Side—that Cassie and I walked on just a week ago and that my Brews & Choos buddy and I used to get to Alarmist back in November 2023. The project still requires a few million dollars and a few years to complete. Still, the city also is talking about building a protected bike lane along Bryn Mawr Avenue in the North Park and Lincoln Square Community Areas, which would connect the Weber Spur with the North Shore trail just east of the Chicago River. For the time being, the UPRR doesn't seem to mind people walking on their right-of-way, though technically it's still private property. But that trail will be really cool when completed.

And now, I will finish this feature...

On some days, I have more meetings than others. Today was a more extreme example, with meetings for 6 of the 8½ hours I put in. Somehow I also managed to read some documentation and get some other things accomplished. I also can't say that any of the meetings was a waste of time, either. Welcome back to management.

Unfortunately, that meant I could only put these stories in a queue so I can read them now:

• William Finnegan wonders if he or Homeland Security Secretary Kristi "Dead Puppies" Noem is brain-damaged.
• Chicago's animal shelters report a surge in surrenders as people discover pets cost a lot of money (I'm looking at you, Cassie).
• Does it make sense for the CDC to recommend that healthy children and pregnant women not get a covid booster? Yes, with some pretty big caveats, and a reminder that corruption and incompetence make it really hard to trust what comes out of the executive branch these days.
• With only a couple of days left until the Illinois legislature lets public transit in Chicago fall off a cliff, a bill is slouching towards the governor's desk to reorganize our multiple transit agencies into one big one.

OK, Cassie is sitting next to me and staring into my eyes with an intense "feed me" vibe, so off I go. I really hope I have fewer meetings tomorrow.

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:

• Despite (or perhaps because of) his obvious mental illness and dementia, the OAFPOTUS is really a predictable negotiator who our adversaries have figured out how to manipulate easily.
• Voters may not like the OAFPOTUS, but they don't like us either. Still, the OAFPOTUS has Republicans squirming more and more each day.
• Speaking of dislike, the Qatari airplane bribe is different because "morons understand it." (Morons and MAGA Republicans, Jennifer Rubin clarifies.)
• Oh, and the Republican tax bill will come down particularly hard on the same people, too.
• Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson (D) complains that he hasn't done enough to convince people he's doing a good job. Perhaps--and let me just suggest something wild here--like actually doing a good job?
• Google has rolled new security features for Android phones, which you should turn on.
• The first bridge linking Michigan Avenue across the Chicago River opened 105 years ago today.

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.

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.