The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

Knowing when to go

James Fallows contrasts the behavior of octogenarians US Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) and President Joe Biden:

It boils down to this:

—Sometimes what helps an individual hurts a larger cause. Things have come to that point for Senator Dianne Feinstein.

—Sometimes it works the other way, and an individual’s interests are aligned with a cause. I believe that applies to Joe Biden’s announcement that he is running for a second term.

Feinstein staying on, at age 89, increases problems for her party. Biden staying on, at age 80, reduces them. Here’s why.

Roger Federer stepped away, because of injury, at a point when our mental images are still of his grace. We are fortunate that Joan Baez and Paul McCartney are performing into their 80s, that Bonnie Raitt is sweeping the Grammys in her 70s, that Robert Caro is at work on his LBJ saga as he nears age 90.

The key difference between most of the people listed above, and these two senior Democratic leaders, is being in someone else’s way. Joan Baez can keep singing, and that doesn’t hurt Billie Eilish. The next novel by Joyce Carol Oates, in her 80s, will not stop writers in their 20s or 30s from making their mark.

But political figures like Joe Biden and Dianne Feinstein are unavoidably in other people’s way.

Fallows has an upcoming post on the US Supreme Court, where reports about the corruption of Associate Justice Clarence Thomas (R-$$) just keeps getting worse.

What did I do with all my free time before the Internet?

I think I wrote software and read a lot. You know, just what I do today. Stuff like this:

This afternoon we concluded Sprint 84 with a boring deployment, which makes me happy. We've had only one moderately-exciting deployment this year, and even that one didn't take long to fix, so I'm doing something right.

My domain name is 25 years old

On this day in 1998, I registered braverman.org, and just a few weeks later built the first draft of what became this blog. When I registered it, only about a million domain names existed, though 1998 turned out to be the year the Internet exploded worldwide. Just seven years earlier, only 100 .org names existed, so braverman.org may be one of the oldest .orgs out there. (For comparison, there are just about 350 million registered domain names today.)

Of course, the 25th anniversary of braverman.org hasn't yet become a global holiday, so a few other things happened in the last 24 hours:

  • The Democratic Party really wants US Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) to retire, as it has become painfully clear she can no longer perform her duties in the Senate, preventing us from confirming new judges. Seriously, ma'am, go.
  • We also want Justice Clarence Thomas (R) to go, especially after a new revelation that he sold property to the billionaire "friend" who has taken him on half-million-dollar vacations. Seriously, sir, go.
  • At least his colleagues on the Supreme Court all seem unimpressed with the "independent state legislature" bullshit espoused by some right-wing Republican state legislators.
  • New Republic's Timothy Noah thinks "remote work sucks," but (our hero writes from his open and airy home office just steps from his dog and refrigerator) not all of us do.
  • Paul Krugman explains how immigrants are saving America's economy.
  • The New York Times has a lot of good things to say about Chicago hosting next year's Democratic National Convention.
  • Your local, urban apiary might actually be hurting your neighborhood.

Finally, we have another gorgeous day in Chicago, a bit cooler than yesterday where I live thanks to delightful lake breeze, but still more like July than April. 

Toujours, quelque damn chose

But for me, it was Tuesday:

  • The Democratic National Committee has selected Chicago to host its convention next August, when (I assume) our party will nominate President Biden for a second term. We last hosted the DNC in 1996, when the party nominated President Clinton for his second term.
  • Just a few minutes ago, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg filed suit in the Southern District of New York to enjoin US Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) from interfering in the prosecution of the XPOTUS.
  • Speaking of the House Moron Caucus, Jonah Goldberg worries that the kids following people like Jordan and the XPOTUS have never learned how to behave in public, with predictable and dire consequences for public discourse in the future.
  • And speaking of, uh, discourse, New York Magazine features Stephanie Clifford (aka Stormy Daniels) on its cover this week, in which the actor describes her meeting in 2006 with a "pop-culture curiosity" years before destroying American democracy even entered into his dementia-addled brain. It...isn't pretty.
  • Jennifer Rubin thinks the Religious Right's "victory" in politicizing the Federal judiciary will cripple the Republican Party. (I believe she's right.)
  • Today I learned that Guthrie's Tavern did not die during the pandemic, and in fact will offer free hot dogs during Cubs home games to all paying customers (while supplies last).
  • Rishi Shah and Shradha Agarwal, the CEO and president of Chicago tech company Outcome Health, were convicted on 32 counts of fraud and other crimes for their roles in stealing investors' money.
  • The Hubble Space Telescope has detected a runaway black hole moving close to 1,000 km/s with a 200,000-light-year tail of baby stars following it. (Those baby stars happened because at that speed, it wasn't able to pull out in time...)
  • MAD Magazine cartoonist Al Jaffee, inventor of the Fold-In, died Monday at 102.

Finally, Tupperware has warned its creditors and shareholders that it may go out of business in what I have to call...an uncontained failure of the company.

We'll take the wins

I thought that the two most important races near my house would take days to resolve because so many people voted by mail, but it turns out, people I like won both.

First, in Chicago, Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson defeated Republican former Chicago Public Schools chief Paul Vallas for mayor:

“Chicago, tonight is just the beginning,” Johnson said as he kicked off a emphatic victory speech, which aimed to strike a conciliatory and upbeat tone after a polarizing campaign against former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas to lead the nation’s third-largest city.

Johnson, a 47-year-old longtime Chicago Teachers Union leader, announced his candidacy for mayor in October by the Jenner Academy school building, where he started his career in education at the mostly Black elementary school that had served children who lived in the Cabrini-Green public housing complex next door.

The affable but gutsy Johnson first won public office in 2018 when he defeated Cook County Commissioner Richard Boykin, who earned the ire of organized labor by voting against Board President Toni Preckwinkle’s so-called pop tax. There, Johnson largely heeded Preckwinkle’s direction while passing some legislation of his own that focused on criminal justice. None of that work earned him substantial name recognition among Chicagoans during the early months of the race.

Tuesday, with roughly 99% of the city’s precincts reporting, Johnson was ahead with 51% of the unofficial vote to 49% for Vallas, who came close as ever but failed to shake off his history of never winning elected office.

Literally, the teacher beat the school administrator. Beautiful. I voted for Johnson in the February 28th primary election, and I'm happy to go 2-for-2 this cycle.

Just north of us, Milwaukee County judge Janet Protasiewicz beat former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly for the open seat on the same Court:

Protasiewicz, 60, defeated conservative former state Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly, who has now mounted two unsuccessful bids for a full term on the court. Kelly, 58, was appointed by Republican former Gov. Walker in 2016 to fill a seat vacated by a retirement, but was defeated by Jill Karofsky, the liberal candidate, in 2020.

Protasiewicz’s victory could be the start of a period of political upheaval in Wisconsin. In the weeks and months after she is sworn in, a flurry of lawsuits about highly contentious topics could be filed and work their way before the new liberal majority. That includes potential challenges to Wisconsin’s voting maps, the state law (Act 10) limiting the influence of public-sector labor unions and the decision outlawing unstaffed absentee ballot drop boxes.

A lawsuit already filed in Dane County challenging the enforcement of Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion ban is also expected to work its way before the Wisconsin Supreme Court. While Protasiewicz has said she hasn’t reviewed the case, she campaigned as an outspoken supporter of abortion rights, and her presence on the court makes the lawsuit, filed by Attorney General Josh Kaul and Gov. Tony Evers — both Democrats — more likely to succeed.

Kelly had the backing of several prominent anti-abortion groups, but said those endorsements were based on his judicial philosophy, not any commitment to rule a particular way.

Kelly said a lot of things like that during the campaign: "Oh, sure, never mind all the stuff I've written off the bench; I pinky-promise to remain totally impartial if you elect me. And the first thing I'll do is totally impartially criminalize women's health decisions."

Kelly also threw a tantrum in his concession speech, no doubt comforting the independent voters who might sympathize with some of his views but think he's another entitled, arrogant, old White guy who has never gotten elected to anything.

Imagine if we elected the US Supreme Court? Maybe not. But limiting them to a single 18-year term would reduce the pressure on the country, I think.

Following up on a few things

Perhaps the first day of spring brings encourages some spring cleaning? Or at least, revisiting stories of the recent and more distant past:

  • The Navy has revisited how it names ships, deciding that naming United States vessels after events or people from a failed rebellion doesn't quite work. As a consequence, the guided missile cruiser USS Chancellorsville (CG-62, named after a Confederate victory) will become the USS Robert Smalls, named after the former slave who stole the CSS Planter right from Charleston Harbor in 1862.
  • Author John Scalzi revisited whether to stay on Twitter, given its "hot racist right-wing trash" owner, and decides why not? It's not like Musk will ever benefit financially from the app.
  • Charles Blow revisited the (long overdue) defenestration of cartoonist Scott Adams, deciding it doesn't matter whether Adams was lazy or stupid, throwing him out the window was appropriate.
  • Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul revisited the Equal Rights Amendment, but the DC Circuit Court of Appeals decided yesterday not to.
  • WBEZ revisited the only other two Chicago Mayors who lost their re-election bids in the past century, Michael Bilandic and Jane Byrne.
  • A group of US intelligence agencies revisited Havana Syndrome, without finding sufficient evidence to blame either an adversary government or an energy weapon.

Finally, here's a delightful clip of US Representative Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) patiently explaining to Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) and her banana-republican party the difference between an adjective and a noun:

Dreary Monday afternoon

The rain has stopped, and might even abate long enough for me to collect Cassie from day camp without getting soaked on my way home. I've completed a couple of cool sub-features for our sprint review tomorrow, so I have a few minutes to read the day's stories:

Finally, Friends of the Chicago Harbor Lighthouse hope to tap into National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act funds to turn their organization's namesake into a museum. That would be cool.

Big sprint release, code tidy imminent

I released 13 stories to production this afternoon, all of them around the app's security and customer onboarding, so all of them things that the non-technical members of the team (read: upper management) can see and understand. That leaves me free to tidy up some of the bits we don't need anymore, which I also enjoy doing.

While I'm running multiple rounds of unit and integration tests, I've got all of this to keep me company:

Finally, you may not want to know what the CBP beagle squad has found in baggage at O'Hare.

SOTU reactions

Yeah, I know President Biden gave the State of the Union address on Tuesday night (while I had a rehearsal, it turns out). But I didn't get to hear it until yesterday afternoon, and I didn't get to read it until today. I'm sorry; it was a great Biden speech.

Some reactions. First, from one of President Carter's speechwriters, James Fallows:

Joe Biden’s State of the Union address last night was effective—for him, for his policies, for his party, and I think for the country.

Biden’s whole presentation last night seemed rushed, as if hurrying through the speech. It led to several mis-reads from the prompter, and some hard-to-understand slurred-together words.

I think that in context this was fine rather than a problem. Anyone open-minded knows that Biden has had a life-long stutter. Maybe this was one of his ways of coping. Everyone knows these addresses are long, and would not want him to draw it out. I think he gained more in “getting to the point” than he lost in “pausing for dramatic emphasis.” I note some of those moments below.

He has the entire speech, annotated. He notes the key moment for those who enjoy watching children finally get scolded by their parents, but he left the exegesis of that moment to others. Charlie Pierce summarizes how the President let the foamy-mouthers heckle themselves into a trap:

President Joe Biden freight-trained his whackadoo Republican opposition in his State of the Union address. He also flipped the very idea of the State of the Union address on its head by turning it into an American equivalent of the prime minister's Question Time in the British Parliament. He wrapped them in a bear hug so warm that they didn't realize they were being smothered. He took on hecklers like a veteran of a Catskills resort. He smiled, he laughed, he bellowed when it was called for. He had the only microphone in the room, and he used it like a hammer.

The real party piece came when he dared to mention that the Republicans want to gut Social Security and Medicare—which in the case of Social Security has been a Republican goal since “The Shadow” was on the radio. He baited them and baited them, and they went for it like starving carp.

Then, right on cue, the Republicans launched into a tantrum. The president has not been in politics since god was a boy to miss an opportunity like that one.

The Post fact-checked the speech (mostly favorably), while columnist Eugene Robinson praised the President's "vigor, humor, and command:"

The president took advantage of the national television audience the speech always draws to make the case that his worldview has been proved correct: Even at a time of extreme polarization, bipartisanship is not only possible but also necessary. He said there is “no reason we can’t work together and find consensus in this Congress.”

The president’s point was that despite all the hyperpartisan, apocalyptic rhetoric, the federal government has been functioning. Progress is messy, halting and incremental, but it does happen — inch by inch, step by step, mile by mile.

There have been times the past two years when Biden looked and acted his age — moments in which he seemed tired, lost his place in a speech or went off on some obscure tangent. But not on Tuesday night. Biden is 80, and it is legitimate to ask whether he is too old to seek another term. With this speech, he gave an answer. He sure sounded like a man who’s running.

You know, if he continues like this, he might stay President until he's 88.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to prepare for a polar vortex.

Slash and burn for sanity

Even though I'm president of a medium-sized non-profit organization who understands the importance of keeping in touch with constituents, I have run out of patience. For the last couple of weeks, I have mercilessly unsubscribed from every mailing list that sent me more than two emails a week. I might wind up missing a couple of them, but my dog, some of them just would not shut up.

The worst offender was my undergraduate university. In the last week, until I finally unsubscribed from them just now, they've sent me about 20 emails asking for money. "Last chance!" "Really last chance!" "Our matching fund expires in two hours!" "Our matching fund expires in 30 minutes!" "Our matching fund expired just now but send us a couple of bucks anyway!"

Actually, that's not true: the worst offender—even post-election—is my political party, because I've given to so many campaigns over the years. Listen, swing-state Senator: I gave you $100 in 2018, you won, stop bothering me. I'm not giving you more money until 2024. And I'm annoyed you've sent me about 825 emails on behalf of every other member of the Democratic Party in your state.

STFU. Just, STFU.

My organization decided not to send a Giving Tuesday email this year, and we've limited email blasts to two on behalf of partner organizations promoting actual performances and one for ourselves promoting Messiah (tickets still available!). Even then, our unsubscribe rate hit record levels this week. Maybe there's a correlation?

I know fist-hand how difficult non-profit organizations have it this year. But please, guys, stop with the emails. Just. Stop.

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