Notes From All Over, Part 1 -- February 16, 2020

First things first: Air Force One has landed at Daytona. NASCAR race starts at 1:30 p.m. CT. Rumor: pace car -- Trump-Pence 2020 Camaro -- Chevrolet, making America great. How big is this. The Daytona 500 today is sold out. But look at this. In three decades of watching NASCAR, I've never seen a full-page "ad" in The Washington Post "advertising the Daytona race

The Daytona race: I've never seen so many Mike Bloomberg ads on Fox. But no matter how much he spends on ads, the visual will be Trump:

• Air Force One fly-over and landing;
• Trump-Pence 2020 pace car;
• Trump: first time a sitting president is a NASCAR grand marshall

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Back to the Bakken 

MDU: buys another company. Link here.

• Oldcastle Infrastructure Spokane, the Washington-based prestressed-construction business previously owned by Oldcastle Infrastructure
• the Spokane operation produces precast and prestressed concrete components for projects throughout Washington, Idaho and Oregon. It has become part of Knife River Corporation, the construction materials subsidiary of MDU Resources. The acquisition complements and expands Knife River's existing precast/prestressed operations in Oregon, Alaska and the growing Pacific Northwest.

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Non-Bakken Items

Ride-hailing: Uber, Lyft killed "Super Shuttle" airport service across the USA. That was just the start. From the weekend edition of "Exchange," The Wall Street Journal: "The Ride-Hail Utopia Got Stock in Traffic."

Predicted on the blog many, many years ago that this would happen.

From the full-page article that covers the front page of "Exchange":

• 2.2 mph: average slowdown in speed in downtown San Francisco due to ride-hailing apps
• 77%: share of ride-hailing trips that are requested for one party only, rather than pooled, Chicago
• 40%: the share of time ride-hailing cars in California and NYC cruise without passengers
• 309%: the rise in ride-hailing trips starting or ending in down Chicago between 2015 and 2018

Remember this prediction five years ago:

"If every car in San Francisco was Ubered there would be no traffic," Travis Kalanick.

What a doofus. I said that back then -- five years ago -- and voila (or as the French say, voilà).

Second things second: Another doofus: Amy Klobuchar, this week, was unable to name the president of Mexico. After that debacle, she doubled down, declaring that English should not be the national language of the US. Has she been to Miami?

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Lego Friends

I won't see Sophia today. She is with her mom at "Six Flags" just a couple of miles south of us.