The Daily Parker

We have warm (10°C) windy (24 knot gusts) weather in Chicago right now, and even have some sun peeking out from the clouds, making it feel a lot more like late March than mid-December. Winds are blowing elsewhere in the world, too:

• The German government collapsed today after Chancellor Olaf Scholz lost a confidence vote in the Bundestag.
• People think the OAFPOTUS transition team are doing a great job for the simple reason that most people don't follow this kind of thing.
• Josh Marshall points out that it makes logical sense that huge corporations would sell out their news divisions in what he calls "the great fluffening" ahead of the OAFPOTUS re-taking office, though it does mean that corruption has already gotten to 1870s levels again.
• Canadian Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland (Lib.—University-Rosedale) has resigned in spectacular fashion just hours before the government's fall economic statement, causing embarrassment to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
• LetsEncrypt has rolled out a new service that can update your TLS certificates every 6 days. This means, if your site has a breach, the attackers can do far less damage than they might if they had 90 days to do it.
• Amtrak's $400 million renovation of Chicago's Union Station will begin early next year, with new platforms, new waiting rooms, and many smaller improvements.
• Small towns with deep-sea ports have lost their patience with the ever-larger cruise ships that stop by from time to time.

Finally, the Washington Post says I read 628 stories this year on 22 different topics. That's less than 2 a day. I really need to step up my game.

Two stories I mentioned previously have updates today:

• After a Federal judge in Oregon and a state judge in Washington rejected the Albertsons-Kroger merger, Albertsons has filed suit against Kroger for breach of contract in the failed deal.
• A Federal bankruptcy judge in Houston has rejected the Onion's acquisition of Infowars in the estate dissolution of Alex Jones, citing a lack of transparency in the process.

As long as I've got five minutes before my next meeting, I also want to spike these two for reading later on:

• William Langewische goes deep into the Proud Prophet war game in 1983 that demonstrated the frightening speed that a conventional war in Europe could escalate into total nuclear annihilation.
• A bridge closure in Winnepeg, Man., has allowed the city to redirect some funds to other basic services that it struggles to pay for after years of sprawling infrastructure spending.

Time for my morning stand-up meeting.

Chicago-based humor magazine The Onion has won the bankruptcy auction to acquire Alex Jones's InfoWars Media:

The Onion said that the bid was sanctioned by the families of the victims of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, who in 2022 won a $1.4 billion defamation lawsuit against Mr. Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems.

The publication plans to reintroduce Infowars in January as a parody of itself, mocking “weird internet personalities” like Mr. Jones who traffic in misinformation and health supplements, Ben Collins, the chief executive of The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, said in an interview.

While the alliance between Everytown and The Onion may seem like an odd fit, the two organizations share an interest in curbing gun violence, said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown. Mr. Feinblatt said that mission was underscored with depressing regularity in the aftermath of mass shootings, when The Onion goes viral with its oft-shared headline: “‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.”

The Onion, of course, spun the purchase in its own way:

Founded in 1999 on the heels of the Satanic “panic” and growing steadily ever since, InfoWars has distinguished itself as an invaluable tool for brainwashing and controlling the masses. With a shrewd mix of delusional paranoia and dubious anti-aging nutrition hacks, they strive to make life both scarier and longer for everyone, a commendable goal. They are a true unicorn, capable of simultaneously inspiring public support for billionaires and stoking outrage at an inept federal state that can assassinate JFK but can’t even put a man on the Moon.

No price would be too high for such a cornucopia of malleable assets and minds. And yet, in a stroke of good fortune, a formidable special interest group has outwitted the hapless owner of InfoWars (a forgettable man with an already-forgotten name) and forced him to sell it at a steep bargain: less than one trillion dollars.

As for the vitamins and supplements, we are halting their sale immediately. Utilitarian logic dictates that if we can extend even one CEO’s life by 10 minutes, diluting these miracle elixirs for public consumption is an unethical waste. Instead, we plan to collect the entire stock of the InfoWars warehouses into a large vat and boil the contents down into a single candy bar–sized omnivitamin that one executive (I will not name names) may eat in order to increase his power and perhaps become immortal.

Alex Jones, according to my social media feed, vowed to keep broadcasting until a court ordered him to stop.

Well played, Onion. Well played.

The sky above Chicago has nothing but sun this morning. It won't last—the forecast for tomorrow night points to July-like atmospheric moisture and epic rainfall—but Cassie and I will enjoy it as much as we can.

Maybe I should stay away from these news stories until the rain starts for real:

• Michelle Goldberg reminds all you Hannah Arendt fans that fascism takes time to establish itself, so we have perhaps a couple of years to emigrate if the XPOTUS takes power in January: "The transition from democracy to autocracy is a process, not an on-off switch."
• Jay Willis shakes his head that "Jeff Bezos doesn't understand that he is the problem:" "[T]he possibility that Americans might also not care for a rich guy leveraging his power to compromise political coverage in the middle of an up-or-down vote on fascism seems not to have occurred to him."
• Dylan Byers takes to Puck to muse about Bezos's side of the argument: "Ultimately, Bezos wants to own, and Lewis wants to manage, a paper staffed by a team that supports their vision for semi-nonpartisan, future-proofed profitability."
• Jeff Jarvis explains in the Columbia Journalism Review why liberals are infuriated with the media: "Journalists like to say they write the first draft of history. Too often that means they ignore history. Today I urge journalists to reread Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism so as to understand her historical antecedents."
• Inae Oh expands on why people not already in the bag for the XPOTUS might hate election coverage right now: "Trump’s menacing language—a constant for almost a decade—rarely draws the notice that Garbage-gate has received. To call this imbalance typical both-sidesism fails to adequately convey the failures of the media in 2024."
• Robert Wright congratulates Elon Musk on becoming America's first true oligarch: "Musk is far and away the most dramatic example of concentrated power. By virtue of his undeniable intelligence, creativity, and drive, he has wound up with an impressively diverse portfolio of influence."
• Micky Horstman, writing an op-ed in Crain's, wants public transit in Chicago that people actually want to use: "Other cities have figured out how to run a transit agency post-pandemic. Chicago can, too."

But after all of this, yesterday Jennifer Rubin made "the case for election optimism." So I'll end this post with her argument:

Americans need to retain perspective, muster up patience, let the vote counting proceed, avoid bestowing MAGA legal challenges credibility they do not deserve and insist on bipartisan recognition of the winner. We can do this, America.

Yes, we can.

In a decision that literally no one liked (except the XPOTUS's re-election campaign), Washington Post and Amazon owner Jeff Bezos killed the Post's endorsement of Kamala Harris last week. As of today, the Post has lost 200,000 subscribers—about 10% of them—and Bezos has responded to his critics:

Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election. No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, “I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.” None. What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one.

When it comes to the appearance of conflict, I am not an ideal owner of The Post. Every day, somewhere, some Amazon executive or Blue Origin executive or someone from the other philanthropies and companies I own or invest in is meeting with government officials. I once wrote that The Post is a “complexifier” for me. It is, but it turns out I’m also a complexifier for The Post.

Josh Marshall calls bullshit:

In Bezos’ case he has multiple companies that do extensive government contracting. When Trump was President, Amazon very credibly sued the Trump administration for choosing Microsoft’s cloud hosting service over Amazon’s for a major Pentagon contract. He also owns the Blue Origin space delivery company. Needless to say, Amazon is a walking, talking advertisement for anti-trust enforcement. You may want the DOJ to crack down on Amazon’s practices. But that’s not the point. It’s a massive cudgel hanging over Bezos’ company and wealth.

Bezos addressed many of these issues in the op-ed he published late yesterday in the Post. I found the piece uncomfortable to read. He was refreshingly candid on certain points and he made some good points. Everything I’ve heard about his decade as owner backs up his claim that he’s given the paper complete freedom to report on his various companies. The whole thing was pretty good except for the rather central fact that his explanation for why he made the decision he did was entirely unconvincing. Not even close.

[A] lawless authoritarian government can up the ante way beyond contracts and regulatory enforcement. But a future Trump administration likely doesn’t need to. With someone like Jeff Bezos, it can do all sorts of damage under the general cloak of discretionary authority. There’s no right to a government contract and proving political interference must be quite difficult. Indeed, the way the Supreme Court now interprets the law, it’s not entirely clear to me why the President wouldn’t be at liberty just to overrule a contracting decision because he doesn’t like the owner of the company.

Or, as New Republic writer Timothy Noah pointed out, "the Post, along with other institutions and people that allow themselves to get intimidated into silence, invite a second Trump administration to intimidate them further. That’s how bullying works."

We have seven days to kick the XPOTUS to the curb. Let's see the back of him, once and for all.

PS: As a bonus, Anita Hill has an op-ed in yesterday's New York Times worth reading.

I filled out my ballot yesterday and will deliver it to one of Chicago's early-voting drop-offs today or Monday. Other than a couple of "no" votes for judicial retention (a bizarre ritual we go through in Illinois), I voted pretty much as you would expect. I even voted for a couple of Republicans! (Just not for any office that could cause damage to the city or country.)

Meanwhile, the world continues to turn:

• Matt Yglesias makes "a positive case for Kamala Harris:" "[A]fter eight tumultuous years, Harris is the right person for the job, the candidate who’ll turn the temperature down in American politics and let everyone get back to living their lives. ... [I]f you’re a normal person with some mixed feelings about the parties, I think you will be dramatically happier with the results that come from President Harris negotiating with congressional Republicans over exactly which tax breaks should be extended rather than a re-empowered Trump backed by a 6-3 Supreme Court and supportive majorities in Congress."
• Eugene Robinson excoriates CNN (and by implication a good chunk of the MSM) for covering the XPOTUS as if he were a normal political candidate and not, you know, an election and a Reichstag fire from crippling the modern world: "Oops, there I go again, dwelling on the existential peril we face. Instead, let’s parse every detail of every position Harris takes today against every detail of every position she took five years ago. And then let’s wonder why she hasn’t already put this election away."
• Ezra Klein spends 45 minutes explaining that what's wrong with the XPOTUS isn't just the obvious, but the fact that no one around him is guarding us from his delusional disinhibitions: "What we saw on that stage in Pennsylvania, as Trump D.J.’d, was not Donald Trump frozen, paralyzed, uncertain. It was the people around him frozen, paralyzed, uncertain. He knew exactly where he was. He was doing exactly what he wanted to do. But there was no one there, or no one left, who could stop him."
• James Fallows, counting down to November 5th, calls out civic bravery: "There are more of us than there are of them."
• Fareed Zakaria warns that the Democratic Party hasn't grokked the political realignment going on in the United States right now: "The great divide in America today is not economic but social, and its primary marker is college education. The other strong predictors of a person’s voting behavior are gender, geography and religion. So the new party bases in America are an educated, urban, secular and female left and a less-educated, rural, religious and male right."
• Pamela Paul points out the inherent nihilism of "settler colonialism" ideology as it applies to the growing anti-Israel movement in left-wing academia: "Activists and institutions can voice ever louder and longer land acknowledgments, but no one is seriously proposing returning the United States to Native Americans. Similarly, if “From the river to the sea” is taken literally, where does that leave Israeli Jews, many of whom were exiled not only from Europe and Russia, but also from surrounding Muslim states?"
• Hitachi has won a $212m contract to—wait for it—remove 5.25-inch floppy disks from the San Francisco MUNI light-rail network.
• American Airlines has rolled out a tool that will make an annoying sound if a gate louse attempts to board before his group number is called. Good.
• SMU writing professor Jonathan Malesic harrumphs that college kids don't read books anymore.

Speaking of books, The Economist just recommended yet another book to put on my sagging "to be read" bookshelves (plural). Nicholas Cornwell (writing as Nick Harkaway), the son of David Cornwell (aka John Le Carré), has written a new George Smiley novel set in 1963. I've read all the Smiley novels, and this one seems like a must-read as well: "Karla’s Choice could have been a crude pastiche and a dull drama. Instead, it is an accomplished homage and a captivating thriller. It may be a standalone story, but with luck Mr Harkaway will continue playing the imitation game." Excellent.

Well, here we go: the only real debate between the candidates for President of the United States during this election cycle. We have 8 weeks to go until November 5th. Both candidates are, for reasons passing understanding, neck and neck in the polls. (Don't read the polls!) Just remember what President George HW Bush said during the 1988 campaign: "It's no exaggeration to say the undecideds could go one way or the other."

I'll update this post throughout the event. I'm watching the PBS broadcast on YouTube, if it matters.

All times are local to the event site, Eastern Daylight Time:

21:03: "We're looking forward to a spirited...debate."

21:04: "Are we better off than four years ago?" You mean, during the darkest time of the pandemic?

(I'm adjusting my monitor, because those two people can't possibly have the same skin color. One of them might be wearing way too much makeup.)

21:05: Harris labels the 20% tariffs a "sales tax," which it is.

21:05: The XPOTUS really doesn't understand how tariffs work. Tariffs are paid by the country imposing them.

21:07: "Inflation like no one has ever seen before." Harris is laughing at him. Then "Jobs are being taken from African-Americans" and she rolls her eyes, which I almost missed because I was rolling mine.

21:08: "What we have done is clean up [the XPOTUS's] mess. ... You're going to hear from the same old tired playbook."

21:10: Maybe appealing to the authorities of the Wharton School and Morgan Stanley might not be her best appeal to the voters. But then again, he doesn't actually know the name of the school where he got his MBA.

21:11: WTF is "run, spot, run?"

21:12: He just does not get what tariffs do. It's sad, really.

21:13: OK, he's starting to yell now. (DUDE, HE'S NOT THE PRESIDENT.)

21:14: Harris is controlling this debate. He's completely on defense. She's openly laughing at him now.

21:16: Hey, XPOTUS, what about your complete flip-flop on abortion? "They have abortion in the 9th month! The baby will be born and we'll execute the baby!" Whaaaaa? "Execution after birth is OK!" What in the name of hell...?

21:19: "There is no state in the country where it is legal to kill a baby after it's born. VP Harris?" Linsey Davis isn't having his bullshit either.

21:21: Why is he harping on the lie that everyone wanted abortion back in the states?

21:23: "I didn't discuss it with JD. ... She'll never be able to get [the abortion law]. So it doesn't matter." And back to the lie about going back to the states.

21:25: "What you are putting her through is unconscionable." True. "I have been a leader on IVF!" False.

21:28: "The people of this country need a leader. ... Attend one of his rallies. He'll talk about Hannibal Lecter, about windmills. People leave out of exhaustion and boredom."

21:29: Oh, marvelous, he took the bait on the rallies.

21:30: "They're eating the dogs, eating the cats, eating the pets!" Whaaaaa...?

21:31: "This is one of the reasons why I have the endorsement of 200 Republicans. ... When we listen to this kind of rhetoric, when the issues are not being addressed, the people deserve better."

21:34: How would you deport 11 million undocumented immigrants? "They allowed criminals! Terrorists! Dogs and cats, living together! Mass hysteria!"

21:36: According to the FBI, the "murder rate fell by 26.4%, reported rapes decreased by 25.7%, robberies fell by 17.8%, aggravated assault fell by 12.5%, and the overall violent crime rate went down by 15.2%" in the first 3 months of 2024.

21:37: "They're the ones that made them go after them! Joe Biden was found guilty on the documents case! My hand-picked judge, that I appointed after I lost the election, threw my case out!"

21:39: NYT Pitchbot: "Harris seems a little overprepared for this debate."

21:42: "A true leader understands the value of building people up, not beating people down." "My father only gave me a small fraction of that $400 million..." Wow, he's chasing every dog treat she throws at him. "I'm talking now. Does that sound familiar?" And there go the suburban women.

Wow, does this old man need a nap:

21:45: A long-time Daily Parker reader texts, "He's making faces like an orangutan." And the entire island of Borneo lodges a complaint.

21:47: My entire Facebook feed is about people eating their pets.

21:48: "I was in the capitol, bub. Don't piss on my head and tell me it's raining." And let's not forget Charlottesville, and "fine people on both side." "We're not going back. It's time to turn the page."

21:50: Using Laura Inghram and Sean Hannity to say something is debunked? They build the bunks. They are bunkies. But whatever.

21:51: Old man is getting angrier. It's at this point where the bouncer comes over and says, "OK, Donnie, keep it down or we're going to have to go outside for a minute."

21:52: "I got more votes than any sitting president!" Yes, but your opponents got more votes both times.

21:53: Now he's shouting at the moderators. The bouncer looks at the bar manager and shrugs, but moves closer.

21:54: "World leaders are laughing at [the XPOTUS]. ... It leads one to believe [you] do not have the temperament, and the ability not to be confused." And he responds with Victor Orbán's endorsement.

21:55: "I ended the Nord Stream 2 pipeline!" Uh, no, Ukrainian Special Forces did. Unless...was he in the Ukrainian Special Forces?

21:59: Cassie has a comment about the debate:

22:02: Apparently, I don't get half of what he's saying because I don't read 4Chan.

22:09: OK, we're back, with a drink, because oh my god. "It's worse than the numbers you're getting and they're fake numbers." Whaaa...?

22:10: He still doesn't understand how NATO funding works. It's always transactional, and always someone else pays, and always it's not his fault.

22:11: Did he just admit to a violation of the Logan Act by meeting with Putin? And wow, his jaw is working hard. 

22:12: "Tell the 800,000 Polish Americans right here in Pennsylvania how you would give up to the dictator who would eat you for lunch."

22:14: "Putin would have been sitting in Moscow, and he wouldn't have lost 300,000 men. ... And maybe he'll use [nuclear weapons]." WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK. WHAT. THE. FUCKING. FUCK. But he didn't say whether he wants Ukraine to win.

22:17: "I agreed with President Biden's decision to pull out of Afghanistan. ... The first time this century no American soldier is on combat duty anywhere in the world."

22:19: "And this...[meaningful pause]...former president invited [the Taliban] to Camp David." Wow.

22:22: "Let's remember he was investigated for not renting to Black families. ... The Central Park Five full-page ad. ... Birther lies about the first Black president. The American people want better than this." And he defended his choice to slander the Central Park Five.

22:24: I'm just going to leave this Tweet from Betty Bowers right...here.

22:29: "So, just a yes or no, you still do not have a plan?" Oh, Linsey, you are wonderful.

22:32: "Access to health care should be a right, and not just a privilege for those who can afford it."

22:34: I have to say, as someone who lived through the 1980s and 1990s, there's some frission hearing that an American presidential candidate has the endorsement of Sinn Féin. Sorry, Sean Fain. See what I mean? (Gerry Adams could not be reached for comment.)

22:36: What is the old man yelling about now? Joe Biden getting paid by the mayor of Moscow's wife? OK, viejo, time to pay your tab and go home.

22:41: "Two visions ... the future, and the past ... and we're not going back. ... Having a plan. Understanding the aspirations, the hosts, the dreams ... Giving hardworking folks a break and bringing down the cost of living ... Sustaining American's standing in the world ... Protect our most fundamental rights and freedoms ... "

21:43: "They've had 3½ years ... why hasn't she done it? She should leave right now ... You believe in things like 'we're not going to frack' ... Germany tried that and within one year they were back to building normal energy plants ... We're a failing nation ... serious decline ... all over the world they're laughing at us ... we're not a leader ... we don't have any idea what's going on ... Because of nuclear weapons, the power of weaponry ... allowing millions of people to come into our country ... the worst president." Literally nothing at all about what he would do.

Well, the XPOTUS's campaign did not get Uncle Fluffy today, did they?

And will someone let that poor deranged old man have a nap?

A few weeks ago I planned a PTO day to take a 25 km walk tomorrow along the North Branch Trail with pizza at the end. (I'll do my annual marathon walk in October.) Sadly, the weather forecast bodes against it, with scattered thunderstorms and dewpoints over 22°C. But, since I've already got tomorrow off, and I have a solid PTO bank right now, I'll still take the day away from the office. And autumn begins Sunday.

Good thing, too, because the articles piled up this morning, and I haven't had time to finish yesterday's:

• Ruth Marcus indicts the Roberts court for its idiotic presidential immunity ruling, and how that required prosecutor Jack Smith to contort the new charges against the XPOTUS.
• Oh, goody: Mayor Brandon Johnson's 2025 budget for the City of Chicago will have nearly a $1 billion deficit.
• Despite having spent billions of euro to upgrade the scanners at major European airports, the EU will (temporarily) go back to a 100-mL limit for carry-on liquids on Sunday.
• Timothy Noah celebrates the mediocrity of late August.

Finally, Washington Post reporter Christine Mi spent 80 hours crossing the US on Amtrak this summer. I am envious. Also sad, because the equivalent trip in Europe would have taken less than half the time on newer rolling stock, and not burned a quarter of the Diesel.

The Democratic National Convention opened today here in Chicago, so naturally that's the main topic in today's lunchtime roundup:

• I can barely wait until Thursday when I get to see the sparkling-clean O'Hare CTA station, freshened up for the convention.
• The DNC projected fun messages onto the XPOTUS's eponymous Tower from their hotel across the river. (No comment from the XPOTUS.)
• Vice President Kamala Harris continues to climb in the polls as people come to realize that she's the real deal and the XPOTUS can't deal.
• Ezra Klein highlights one thing the XPOTUS did well: he "turned the Democratic Party into a pitiless machine" that wins elections.
• James Fallows really wishes the press would cover the issues Americans want covered, especially that the big media outlets would report on the XPOTUS's obvious cognitive decline.

Well, that about covers it, until later this afternoon at least. I may have to walk Cassie a couple more times because it's 24°C and sunny, which we don't get a lot in August.

The problem with having 8 billion people on Earth is that every single one of us has different ideas and opinions. If there's an opinion out there so fringe and so bizarre that only 1/10th of 1% of us share it, that's still about a quarter of the population of Chicago.

I thought of that because of how much news we have. And I imagine that from the ancestral environment thousands of years ago until the last century, we just didn't have all that much. I don't think that's entirely because of light-speed communications since the telegraph informing us of more things than the horse-drawn post could do before the 1840s. I also think we've just got so many more people, with so many more crazy people.

How much has happened in the last 50 years, for example? And by "50 years" I mean exactly that, since this speech on 8 August 1974:

That got me thinking about the relentlessness of news in the telecommunications era, and how we didn't evolve like this. Even Aldous Huxley thought our downfall as a culture would be drugs and sex, simply because in 1932 no one looked at screens all day. (I have always thought that he, and not Orwell, got the overall prediction correct—at least as regards the Anglosphere.)

Anyway, I have to debug a new feature and not worry about the Post.