The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

Let the duping begin!

Now that Kim Jong Un has gotten everything he always wanted from the United States for free, thanks to the truly amazing negotiating skills of President Trump, it turns out—wait for it—he lied the whole time:

U.S. intelligence agencies believe that North Korea has increased its production of fuel for nuclear weapons at multiple secret sites in recent months — and that Kim Jong Un may try to hide those facilities as he seeks more concessions in nuclear talks with the Trump administration, U.S. officials told NBC News.

The intelligence assessment, which has not previously been reported, seems to counter the sentiments expressed by President Donald Trump, who tweeted after his historic June 12 summit with Kim that "there was no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea."

Analysts at the CIA and other intelligence agencies don't see it that way, according to more than a dozen American officials who are familiar with their assessments and spoke on the condition of anonymity. They see a regime positioning itself to extract every concession it can from the Trump administration — while clinging to nuclear weapons it believes are essential to survival.

I wonder if Trump believes, as a lot of the people he duped, screwed over, or stole from over the years must have believed, that he was too smart a guy to get taken in by a con. Well, as it turns out...

California may move to UTC-7 year-round

Governor Jerry Brown approved AB 807, which would put to the voters in November an initiative to go to "year round Daylight Saving Time:"

Wrote Brown in a signing message: "Fiat Lux!" (Let there be light.)

Assemblyman Kansen Chu, D-San Jose, who authored Assembly Bill 807, has called the practice of changing clocks twice a year, in the fall and the spring, "outdated." He argues altering the time by an hour has adverse health affects, increasing chances for heart attacks, workplace injuries and traffic accidents.

The ballot measure would overturn a 1949 voter-approved initiative called the Daylight Savings Time Act, which established Standard Pacific Time in California.

Should voters approve the ballot measure, the Legislature would then decide how the state's time should be set. Congress would have to sign off on Chu's main goal of establishing year-round daylight saving time.

If it passes, L.A. and San Francisco would see sunrises at 7:44 and 8:09, respectively. But sunsets would be 17:44 and 17:51. So...if you live in California, how would you vote?

It's grim, but we've been here before

Josh Marshall says that, despite what will probably come from a hard-right Supreme Court over the next few years, this isn't the end of the left:

Elections have consequences. Often they are profound consequences stretching years or decades into the future from their inception point. Trumpism is civic poison. There is a temptation to think that this is another reverse coming after Trump’s election, the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord, the reversal of DACA protections and more. I don’t see it that way. These jolts are really only absorbing, fully recognizing the consequences of what happened in November 2016. Once we ingested it into the body politic all sorts of outcomes became either inevitable or possible. [Trump appointing a second conservative justice] is just one more of them, though perhaps the most consequential yet.

Jeffrey Toobin says Roe v Wade will be overturned and abortion in 20+ states within 18 months. This is far from the only change we are likely to see in short order. The most visible, high-profile Court issues tend to be those centering on questions like abortion rights, LGBT equality, religious liberty. Far less visible, though no less consequential, are the issues I expect a new Court to focus on most: using the scaffolding of the law to block legislatures from addressing key economic questions facing our society, much as the Court did in the late 19th and early decades of the 20th century. They are all important; they’re all down by six runs in the 9th inning.

How do we react? I wrote yesterday that we can’t expect the courts to save us. That was clear with yesterday’s decisions. It’s even more overwhelmingly clear today. Litigation remains critical. But the fight for voting rights, for instance, will be won at the ballot box. Change will come through robust political coalitions — at the local and state level, building to the federal level. Everything else must follow the same path. We are on our own, left to our own devices. The history, whatever mistakes, misfortunes and interventions, is simply the terrain we now grapple with.

Remember, the American populace will continue to look less white and less conservative as the years go on. And the Supreme Court will, with its coming 5-seat right rump, make decisions that more and more Americans find distasteful. The Republican Party have chosen the losing side, but like all people, they will fight harder to keep what they have than they fought to get it in the first place.

We've seen startlingly rapid reversals in American history, even when things looked the worst. The Court blocked FDR's first attempts to fix the economy in 1933-1935, but ultimately relented in the face of overwhelming popular support, which contributed to us getting out of the Great Depression.

Things look bad. But they always do right before they get better.

Wieners Circle closing?

The owner of the property that houses Chicago's infamous Wieners Circle hot-dog stand has put it up for sale:

The Wieners Circle, that Lincoln Park institution known as much for its late-night insults as its hot dogs, may soon have to take its shtick somewhere else.

The hot dog stand's longtime landlord has hired a broker to sell the Clark Street property and an apartment building next door, potentially setting the stage for a developer to raze the 36-year-old restaurant and put up apartments or condos in its place.

"Obviously, a 700-square-foot, single-story restaurant is not the highest and best use for that lot," said Jeff Baasch, senior vice president at SVN Chicago Commercial, the brokerage marketing the property to investors.

Under current zoning, a developer could renovate the five-story apartment building, which "needs work," Baasch said, and also put up a building with ground-floor commercial space topped by about six residential units on the Wieners Circle site.

That's too bad. The Wieners Circle is a Chicago legend. And here, via Conan O'Brian, is a glimpse through the doors:

Elections matter

In a pair of 5-4 decisions today, the Republican Party's theft of Merrick Garland's seat on the Supreme Court paid dividends again.

The modern-day Taney court, with the Roberts minority plus Gorsuch voting one way and a majority of the country voting the other, ruled that President Trump's ban on immigration from Muslim countries was constitutional, but found that California's law requiring unlicensed "crisis pregnancy centers" to post a notice that they aren't licensed was not constitutional.

Add those to their decisions on Ohio's voter roll purge, American Express's gag orders, and mandatory workplace arbitration, and the Republican program to empower business at the expense of individuals continues apace.

Meanwhile, Michelle Goldberg says "we have a crisis of democracy, not manners," and says Trump Administration officials deserve public shaming.

One might hope that June 2018 will be the high point of right-wing retrenchment, but no, it'll get worse before it gets better. Enjoy.

You know this crap will keep happening

Now that ICE and CBP feel like they have carte blanche to "do their jobs," stories like this will only become more frequent:

The coast of White Rock, British Columbia, in western Canada looks to be an ideal place for a run, with its sweeping views of the Semiahmoo Bay to the west and scores of waterfront homes and seafood restaurants to the east. That's what 19-year-old Cedella Roman thought when she went jogging along the area's smooth beaches — in a southbound direction, notably — on May 21.

Roman, who lives in France, had been visiting her mother in nearby North Delta, British Columbia. During Roman's run, she was admiring the scenery when she unwittingly crossed the border from Canada into the United States, Roman told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.

On May 22, Roman was taken to ICE's Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Wash., about 140 miles south of the border point where she had been arrested. She remained detained until June 5 when, after two weeks of paperwork and processing, Roman was taken back to the border “and removed to Canada,” Cutrell said.

Two weeks in detention—basically, a kidnapping—because she didn't have her French passport with her while jogging. CBP commented:

If an individual enters the United States at a location other than an official port of entry and without inspection by a Customs and Border Protection officer, they have illegally entered the United States and will be processed accordingly. It is the responsibility of an individual traveling in the vicinity of an international border to maintain awareness of their surroundings and their location at all times to ensure they do not illegally cross the border.

Here's what the border looks like just 4 kilometers from where Roman was arrested:

That's what almost our entire border with Canada looks like. That's because, since its founding in July 1867, Canada has remained the United States' closest friend and ally.

Arresting visitors to Canada who accidentally jog across an invisible line and holding them for two weeks is not how you treat a friend. But this was a discretionary arrest and detention; the CBP agents had the authority to shoo her back across the border without an incident.

This is what happens when the guy at the top gives people at the bottom permission to behave like assholes: some of them will.

Busy weekend; lunchtime reading

This past weekend included the Chicago Gay Pride Parade and helping a friend prepare for hosing a brunch beforehand. Blogging fell a bit on the priority list.

Meanwhile, here are some of the things I'm reading today:

Back to debugging service bus queues...

Late afternoon reading

Meetings and testing all day have put these on my list for reading tomorrow:

And with that, it's the weekend.