The Daily Parker

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.

Happy May Day! In both the calendar and crashing-airplane senses!

We start with two reports about how the Clown Prince of X has taken control over so much government data that the concepts of "privacy" and "compartmentalization" seem quaint. First, from the Times:

Elon Musk may be stepping back from running the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, but his legacy there is already secured. DOGE is assembling a sprawling domestic surveillance system for the Trump administration — the likes of which we have never seen in the United States.

President Trump could soon have the tools to satisfy his many grievances by swiftly locating compromising information about his political opponents or anyone who simply annoys him. The administration has already declared that it plans to comb through tax records to find the addresses of immigrants it is investigating — a plan so morally and legally challenged, it prompted several top I.R.S. officials to quit in protest. Some federal workers have been told that DOGE is using artificial intelligence to sift through their communications to identify people who harbor anti-Musk or -Trump sentiment (and presumably punish or fire them).

What this amounts to is a stunningly fast reversal of our long history of siloing government data to prevent its misuse. In their first 100 days, Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump have knocked down the barriers that were intended to prevent them from creating dossiers on every U.S. resident. Now they seem to be building a defining feature of many authoritarian regimes: comprehensive files on everyone so they can punish those who protest.

And from The Atlantic:

But what can an American authoritarian, or his private-sector accomplices, do with all the government’s data, both alone and combined with data from the private sector? To answer this question, we spoke with former government officials who have spent time in these systems and who know what information these agencies collect and how it is stored.

To a person, these experts are alarmed about the possibilities for harm, graft, and abuse. Today, they argued, Trump is targeting law firms, but DOGE data could allow him to target individual Americans at scale. For instance, they described how the government, aside from providing benefits, is also a debt collector on all kinds of federal loans. Those who struggle to repay, they said, could be punished beyond what’s possible now, by having professional licenses revoked or having their wages or bank accounts frozen.

These data could also allow the government or, should they be shared, its private-sector allies to target big swaths of the population based on a supposed attribute or trait. Maybe you have information from background checks or health studies that allows you to punish people who have seen a therapist for mental illness. Or to terminate certain public benefits to anybody who has ever shown income above a particular threshold, claiming that they obviously don’t need public benefits because they once made a high salary. A pool of government data is especially powerful when combined with private-sector data, such as extremely comprehensive mobile-phone geolocation data. These actors could make inferences about actions, activities, or associates of almost anybody perceived as a government critic or dissident. These instances are hypothetical, but the government’s current use of combined data in service of deportations—and its refusal to offer credible evidence of wrongdoing for some of those deported—suggests that the administration is willing to use these data for its political aims.

This is what the Republican Party has bequeathed us. Because they never wanted to govern; they have always wanted to rule.

• With reports of a major scandal in which it appears Florida governor Ron DeSantis (R) and his wife took money from Medicaid through a series of fronts, Josh Marshall sees how not investigating them could also corruptly benefit the OAFPOTUS.
• The Center for American Progress has a nice tool to see how many tens of thousands of people will lose health-care coverage in each Congressional district if the House passes its swingeing $880 billion in cuts to Medicaid.
• Krugman highlights a few stories that place the responsibility for the economy's imminent collapse squarely on the OAFPOTUS.
• Timothy Noah warns it's already happening in Seattle.
• A 120-year-old pavilion in Chicago's Jackson Park may finally get some TLC.

Finally, American Airlines plans to add flights to seven new destinations this fall, including (whee!) Sint Maarten. I haven't been to the island in 11 years and I've wanted to go back, but the frustrating schedule involving an early-morning flight from JFK or Miami made it inconvenient. But a non-stop from O'Hare? Oh, yeah.

Before I go through the stories from the last day about how we live in the stupidest timeline, here's a photo of the Milwaukee Intermodal Station I snapped heading to my return train on Friday:

Elsewhere in the stupidest timeline, where maximizing corruption is the defining goal of the Republican Party:

• James Fallows takes us through Harvard's big "fuck you" to the OAFPOTUS's demands that the university install minders in its HR and academic departments, as does Josh Marshall.
• Jennifer Rubin reminds everyone that a functioning center-left party opposing a rogue authoritarian party does not constitute "polarization."
• A memo from the Office of Management and Budget outlines the OAFPOTUS's plans to gut climate and weather research, bringing a fresh new anti-intellectual, anti-science mission to NOAA.
• Paul Krugman outlines how cuts to the IRS will enable the rich to steal even more from everyone else.
• A whistleblower at the National Labor Relations Board says the DOGE children have enabled Russian hackers to gain access to NLRB data.
• Coders using large language models to write code have given attackers an enormous opportunity to introduce malicious code into your favorite apps through supply-chain attacks.

Finally, take a few minutes to read Chuck Marohn's Strong Towns series on how municipalities in the US and Canada routinely hide (or simply don't know) their long-term obligations so as to make building new infrastructure look like a better financial strategy than repairing existing infrastructure. I can tell you that you get no better view of the shitty state of American roads than riding a Divvy down almost any Chicago street, because Americans seem allergic to maintenance spending.

I know we need to put the fire out in Washington before we can fix anything else. But the long-term damage the OAFPOTUS continues to inflict on us will include more failing roads, bridges, and trains. So if you voted for him, you voted for the US becoming a third-world country in our lifetime.

Cassie and I found a 20-minute gap in the rain this morning so she could have a (slightly-delayed) walk. Since around 9 am, though, we've had variations on this:

Good thing I have all these heartwarming news stories to warm my heart:

• Dane County, Wis., Judge Susan Crawford beat Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel 55% to 45% for the vacant seat on the Wisconsin state Supreme Court, despite the $25 million the Clown Prince of X donated to Schimel's campaign. The CPOX himself drew laughs from people with IQs above 80 by claiming he didn't really try to buy the seat for the right-wing Schimel.
• Paul Krugman reminds the credulous that "there's no plan, secret or otherwise" behind the OAFPOTUS's tariffs. ("Does he really believe that Canada is a major source of fentanyl? Worse, does he believe that fentanyl smugglers pay tariffs?") Timothy Noah concurs.
• Scholar Larry Diamond lays out the ways we can get through the constitutional crisis the OAFPOTUS has created.
• A Federal judge has dismissed corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Johnson, but enjoined the US Attorney from threatening more charges. It's only a partial win for corruption in the US, but still a win.
• The Times looks at Brightline's success and asks, "What's so hard about building trains?" After pointing out that "in Florida, Brightline has proved that it can operate reliable, well-designed passenger trains that people want to ride," they fail to project that it will probably get bailed out at least once in the next 25 years by state and federal money.
• The Onion imbues the Chicago Transit Authority with "an unconscious fear of success manifesting through self-sabotage." They're not wrong.

Finally, Bruce Schneier and a colleague published a paper yesterday lauding "Rational Astrologies and Security." In the paper, the authors analyze beliefs like "Nobody every got fired for buying IBM" and "It's always been done this way" as rational, and how security professionals can use them. The timing of the paper's publication in no way affects the soundness of these conclusions, of course.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who you should remember as a Fox News presenter with no knowledge of the military, added Atlantic Editor in Chief Jeffrey Goldberg to a group chat on the only-kind-of-secure messaging app Signal:

On Tuesday, March 11, I received a connection request on Signal from a user identified as Michael Waltz. Signal is an open-source encrypted messaging service popular with journalists and others who seek more privacy than other text-messaging services are capable of delivering. I assumed that the Michael Waltz in question was President Donald Trump’s national security adviser. I did not assume, however, that the request was from the actual Michael Waltz.

Two days later—Thursday—at 4:28 p.m., I received a notice that I was to be included in a Signal chat group. It was called the “Houthi PC small group.”

A message to the group, from “Michael Waltz,” read as follows: “Team – establishing a principles [sic] group for coordination on Houthis, particularly for over the next 72 hours. My deputy Alex Wong is pulling together a tiger team at deputies/agency Chief of Staff level following up from the meeting in the Sit Room this morning for action items and will be sending that out later this evening.”

I have never seen a breach quite like this. It is not uncommon for national-security officials to communicate on Signal. But the app is used primarily for meeting planning and other logistical matters—not for detailed and highly confidential discussions of a pending military action. And, of course, I’ve never heard of an instance in which a journalist has been invited to such a discussion.

Josh Marshall points out that these people using Signal instead of a secure channel likely means they are violating recordkeeping laws as well: "How many of President Trump’s conversations with foreign leaders are happening on these apps? It’s the obvious place for bribes, various kinds of criminal conduct, asking foreign governments to do dirty jobs, maybe against American citizens, that Trump doesn’t dare try himself."

Incompetent, malevolent, and corrupt. We have another 16 months of this crap before we can even get Congress back. Marvelous.

Even better: Former US Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) pointed out that one of the members of the group chat was physically in Moscow at the time. It just keeps getting worse.

Before getting to the weather, I don't anticipate any quiet news days for the next couple of years, do you?

• Someone who owns at least 16 rooms and condos in the OAFPOTUS's Wabash Ave. building in downtown Chicago has sued, alleging that—wait for it—the organization running the building is bilking investors. I mean, how preposterous!
• Speaking of corruption flowing from the OAFPOTUS like toxic waste from a Union Carbide plant, Molly White mourns the end of SEC oversight of the crypto industry.
• Former US Representative Adam Kitzinger (R-IL), the last sane Republican, calls the "desperate, weak, and ultimately meaningless bluff" that the OAFPOTUS won't honor President Biden's pardons.
• James Fallows steps through the "correlation of forces" that defines the struggle between the OAFPOTUS and the Constitution.
• Jennifer Rubin interviews Illinois Governor JB Pritzker (D), "a man refreshingly candid about his disgust with the current administration's policies and its lack of humane leadership."
• Yascha Mounk thinks "the World Happiness Report is a scam," just a pile of elite misinformation.
• A sophisticated supply-chain attack may have put 20,000 GitHub projects at risk of subtle but far-reaching security problems.

Finally, the snow that covered Chicago and parts north and west has indeed melted in the past few hours, even though we've barely gotten above 2°C:

The temperature at Inner Drive Technology WHQ just hit 17.5°C, which it hasn't hit since 5:54pm on November 5th. That's almost 125 days, quite a while to go without wearing a jacket outside.

Unfortunately, spring weather isn't the only thing in the news today:

• Philip Bump asks, how low can the OAFPOTUS's approval rating actually go?
• Paul Krugman decries our current "government by QAnon."
• Radley Balko lays out three things Democrats can do right now.
• Ezra Klein uses the example of California's high-speed rail failure to argue for a politics of abundance, not scarcity.
• Malware infecting WordPress sites installs four back doors, all of which should be closed immediately.

Finally, Metra is seeking public input on a plan to rename the heavy-rail lines around Chicago. Right now, each line has an historic name and a different color. The favored proposal would be to give each line a letter signifying the direction from downtown, plus a number. For example, the Union Pacific North line that goes by my house would be renamed N1. And all the lines departing from a single downtown station would get the same color (green in the case of the three UP lines). I think this is a good proposal, and would bring Chicago in line with international cities like Berlin and Paris.

The US meeting with Russia and not Ukraine to discuss the fate of Ukraine seems unmistakably similar to the Molotov-Ribbentrop discussions in August 1939 that divvied up Poland between the Nazis and Stalin's Russia. The meeting in Riyadh between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov seems more focused on a colonial-style mineral extraction concession for the US than on Ukrainian sovereignty. This comes just days after Vice President JD Vance channeled UK Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (a known Nazi sympathizer) in a speech in Munich just before meeting with actual Nazis.

("'I never thought leopards would eat my face,' sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party."—Adrian Bott)

Meanwhile, back home:

• The State Department has decided to cancel most of its news subscriptions, because why would our diplomats need to know what's going on in the world?
• Fortunately (for now), the OAFPOTUS violently dismantling the US government's bureaucracy has gotten in the way of him dismantling the regulations that he claims to hate, further showing (a) how fundamentally stupid he is and (b) how it has nothing to do with regulations.
• Apparently jealous of the OAFPOTUS's successful raiding of public funds for his own benefit, Argentine president Javier Milei and his friends appear to have raked in close to $100 million in what looks like a classic memecoin rug-pull.
• The Chicago City Council may vote today on a proposal to borrow $830 m in an issue that would not pay back principal until 2045, a structure that (a) would result in a constant cash-flow to the private investors of something like $80 m per year and (b) cost the city $2 bn once we finally pay it all back. It would be the dumbest thing the city's government has done since the parking-meter scam.
• Researchers have determined that both work-from-home and return-to-office have drawbacks and benefits, and that mandating all of one or the other isn't great for any company. (But we knew that, even if some CEOs didn't.)
• Beware anyone asking you to send a code that you see on the screen; this is a device-code authentication attack, which is increasing in popularity among your finer criminals.

Finally, one of my least-favorite Brews & Choos stops has threatened planned to open a new brewpub in Irving Park. Crust Brewing in Rosemont wants to bring the same hellish experience to the former Leader Bar at 3000 W Irving Park Rd. Yes, this is a B&C-qualifying location, but no, I won't review it until I run out of other things to review.

Security expert Bruce Schneier can't believe the damage that Elon Musk's team have already done to US national security, and worries it will get much, much worse:

In the span of just weeks, the US government has experienced what may be the most consequential security breach in its history—not through a sophisticated cyberattack or an act of foreign espionage, but through official orders by a billionaire with a poorly defined government role. And the implications for national security are profound.

What makes this situation unprecedented isn’t just the scope, but also the method of attack. Foreign adversaries typically spend years attempting to penetrate government systems such as these, using stealth to avoid being seen and carefully hiding any tells or tracks. The Chinese government’s 2015 breach of OPM was a significant US security failure, and it illustrated how personnel data could be used to identify intelligence officers and compromise national security.

The Treasury’s computer systems have such an impact on national security that they were designed with the same principle that guides nuclear launch protocols: No single person should have unlimited power. Just as launching a nuclear missile requires two separate officers turning their keys simultaneously, making changes to critical financial systems traditionally requires multiple authorized personnel working in concert.

This approach, known as “separation of duties,” isn’t just bureaucratic red tape; it’s a fundamental security principle as old as banking itself. When your local bank processes a large transfer, it requires two different employees to verify the transaction. When a company issues a major financial report, separate teams must review and approve it. These aren’t just formalities—they’re essential safeguards against corruption and error. These measures have been bypassed or ignored. It’s as if someone found a way to rob Fort Knox by simply declaring that the new official policy is to fire all the guards and allow unescorted visits to the vault.

The implications for national security are staggering.

The OAFPOTUS and his enablers have already crippled the United States internationally. How do Republicans in Congress not see this? Does Musk have to personally give Vladimir Putin a thumb drive with our nuclear codes before someone in the cult wakes up? 

As we end the work-week, we can start our weekend with these little nuggets of horror and amusement:

• The UK Home Office has demanded that Apple create a back door into its cloud storage system to allow the UK government to snoop on everyone's content worldwide, which, if I correctly understand Apple's ADP architecture, is technically impossible.
• ProPublica has compiled a list of the people Elon Musk has enlisted to capture the government of the United States. Paul Krugman calls Musk's efforts an "attempted autogolpe."
• Gen-Z writer Olivia Julianna doesn't think the OAFPOTUS is exceptional—he's what the entire generation has known all their lives.
• The NTSB has released its final report on the fatal CTA Yellow Line accident in November 2023, largely exonerating the train's driver and finding a CTA decision to disable automatic braking as one of the probable causes.
• Kate Wagner takes a look at Neuschwanstein Castle and sees an 1870s version of the McMansions she's crusaded against for years.

Finally, Chicago has only gotten 251 mm of snowfall this season, just 3 mm more than the record-lowest 1920-21 season and only 26% of our normal 975 mm. Granted, we still have three more weeks of winter, but nothing in the forecast suggests we'll get a significant snowfall before March 1st. We may get 10 mm or so Saturday night, depending on when the temperature falls below freezing, but the 10-day forecast doesn't have a lot of precipitation in it. I hope we get some good rainfall this spring, though.