The Daily Parker

I put on a long-sleeved shirt to walk Parker this morning, and I'm about to change into a polo. It's a lovely early-autumn day here in Chicago. Elsewhere...

• In an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, former NSC adviser Alex Vindman calls the president "a useful idiot" and warns against complacency.
• Jonathan Chait argues that the president is a crook, and needs to be tried for his crimes. Jeff Wise points out the criminal case has already started.
• Steve Coll adds his voice to the chorus wishing an end to the electoral college.
• Osita Nwanevu wants to see an end to war-gaming the 2020 election.
• James Fallows calls for an end to the press treating this president like he's normal, lest they repeat the same mistakes they made in 2016.

Finally, the city received over 600 submissions from 13 countries on how to have outdoor dining in a Chicago winter.

Today is the last day of meteorological summer, and by my math we really have had the warmest summer ever in Chicago. (More on that tomorrow, when it's official.) So I, for one, am happy to see it go.

And yet, so many things of note happened just in the last 24 hours:

• Greg Sargent says the president's "vile tweetstorm" yesterday "reveals the ugly core of his 'law and order' campaign."
• On that point, lawyer Nick Carmody suggests that the civil unrest the president has fomented "is one of the greatest sources of narcissistic supply."
• Pediatrician Rhea Boyd warns that when police commit violence, children are watching.
• United Airlines has ditched its change fees for domestic tickets, but as Cranky Flier explains, another policy change may actually hurt customers who change flights.
• Hurricane Laura destroyed the Lake Charles, La., NWS doppler radar, around the time the weather station there recorded a 221 km/h gust.
• Wells Fargo has filed one of the largest foreclosure suits in Chicago history, to try recovering a $338 million debt that the owner of the Palmer House Hilton has not serviced since April.

Finally, Josh Marshall reminds everyone that Democrats are nervous about the upcoming election because we're Democrats. It's kind of in our blood.

All autocratic regimes suffer from endemic incompetence. It's easy to see why: if you can't contradict the autocrat, the government is only as competent as he is. When the autocrat is a pathological narcissist, you get another level of stupid on top. People work in governments like this for one reason only: to get rich. And they get rich by stealing from the public. Competence only gets in the way of the grift.

So here we find ourselves 65 days from an election in which the incumbent claims to have the ability to put out a fire that he started, who leads a party that has given up any pretense of governing in favor of supporting this circus clown no matter what he says.

And the president is a clown, a kind of malicious Zaphod Beeblebrox, whose only role as president of the galaxy was to distract from the people who really ran things.

I'm venting some frustration given two things that have come up in the last 24 hours. First, from the New York Times, an admission (of sorts) from the administration that demeaning the office of President of the United States by having a gauche campaign event on the lawn of the White House was all about owning the libs:

[The president's] aides said he enjoyed the frustration and anger he caused by holding a political event on the South Lawn of the White House, shattering conventional norms and raising questions about ethics law violations. He relished the fact that no one could do anything to stop him, said the aides, who spoke anonymously to discuss internal conversations.

Of course he did. The show is all that matters. Which, presumably, why he plans to visit Kenosha, Wis., on Tuesday (the second thing) so he can personally add gasoline to the fire burning there—a fire he started:

White House spokesman Judd Deere told reporters aboard Air Force One on Saturday that Trump will be meeting with law enforcement officers and “surveying” some of the damage from recent protests that turned destructive.

Joe Biden, and his running mate, Kamala Harris, have accused Trump of rooting for violence amid unrest in Wisconsin.

“He views this as a political benefit,” Biden said in an interview on MSNBC. “He’s rooting for more violence, not less. And it’s clear about that.”

Of course he is. The show is all that matters. All of this destruction and death is fun to a man like the president.

Meanwhile, 183,000 Americans have died of Covid-19 and another 1,000 die every day, while Europe gets to enjoy a normal autumn, because our incompetent, nihilistic, narcissistic president cares about nothing other than enriching himself by any means available.

There's a lot going on today, what with the Republican National Convention celebrating the apocalypse they desperately want, but a few things outside of that also happened:

• The Lake County Sheriff has arrested 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse for killing two people in a protest in Kenosha, Wis., last night. Eyewitness reports suggest Rittenhouse shot three people who tried to disarm him after he'd already shot at a few others.
• New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie has a pretty convincing explanation for why the Republican Party doesn't actually care about its platform.
• The University of Miami has a Covid-19 outbreak that couldn't in a million years have a connection to a dorm party last weekend.
• A group of four brothers managed to swindle Amazon out of millions by taking advantage of their automation.
• Want to feel old? Macaulay Culkin is 40.

Finally, only a few blocks from my house my neighbors have set up a Wee Free Library...of sticks...for dogs.

I'm taking a day off, so I'm choosing not to read all the articles that have piled up on my desktop:

• Tropical Storm Josephine has formed east of the windward islands, becoming the earliest 10th named storm on record. The National Hurricane Center promises an "extremely active" season.
• By tracking excess deaths in addition to reported Covid-19 deaths, the New York Times has concluded we've already surpassed 200,000 and could hit half a million by the end of the year.
• The General Accounting Office, a non-partisan Congressional watchdog, says Chad Wolf and Ken Cuccinelli are not legally qualified for their current positions, throwing into doubt all DHS actions under their leadership.
• CityLab sees parallels between Chicago's response to looting in the past few months and its response to the Lager Beer Riot of 1855.
• Has the European Central Bank "found a way around the lower bound on interest rates?"
• John Scalzi declaims, "Fuck you, I'm voting." ("You," in this case, means the Trump Administration, in case there was any doubt.)
• A former Google security engineer earned $50,000 for helping "a guy" get $300,000 in Bitcoin out of an old Zip file, thanks to advances in computing power and a flaw in the Zip implementation.

Finally, a "mania" set Stravinsky's Rite of Spring to Teletubbies footage, and it's horrifying.

Josh Marshall has a good summary of why things suck for parents, kids, and teachers right now:

But the plan [New York] city and most of [New York] state has come up with shows how limited this can be and how much we’ve made a fetish of in-school instruction. There are two big reasons to have in-school instruction. The first and most important is the educational, social and emotional development and well-being of children. The second is the impact on the economy. Many parents can’t work if their children aren’t in school and to the extent they can their children’s remote learning lacks the support it needs.

I think there is a real question whether in-school instruction on these terms is even worth it. At best kids will be in school 1/3 of the time – and it may be less – and under such straightened and perhaps nerve-wracking conditions that most of the educational and social benefit is actually lost. Watching the process as a journalist and a parent it seems to me that the school system and political authorities have been so focused on the absolute necessity of ‘reopening’ the schools that they’ve ended up with something that is not obviously better than full remote learning and called it success.

The truth is that we’re in a horrible situation. We have failed as a country to control the virus and because of that we’re forced into no-win situations and choices which are all bad. As much as anything we simply lack the kind of information that allows us to make informed, smart decisions. And yet September is less than four weeks away.

Meanwhile, Downtown Chicago suffered a coordinated attack of looters last night for no apparent reason, though police returning fire from a suspect and injuring him yesterday afternoon may have been the excuse. Since the looting took place across town and the looters came with U-Haul trucks I can't say I have any sympathy for them on this occasion. If it turns out that any of the looters were right-wing agitators, I will be disappointed but not surprised.

Oh, and the government of Lebanon resigned.

New York Attorney General Letitia James has filed suit to dissolve the National Rifle Association:

The lawsuit sets up a legal confrontation that could take years to play out and will leave the 148-year-old N.R.A. — long the nation’s most influential gun-rights lobby but recently hobbled by financial woes and infighting — fighting for its survival. The attorney general’s office previously presided over the dissolution of President Trump’s scandal-marred charitable foundation, but the N.R.A., with more than five million members, is a far larger organization that is expected to put up a more prolonged fight.

The lawsuit was swiftly followed by two others: The N.R.A. filed a suit against Ms. James’s office in federal court in Albany, claiming her action was politically motivated and violated the organization’s First Amendment rights. In addition, Karl Racine, the attorney general of Washington, D.C., filed suit against the N.R.A. and its charitable foundation, which is based in the city. Mr. Racine is seeking changes to the foundation and alleges that the N.R.A. misused millions of dollars of the foundation’s funds.

The suit accuses the N.R.A. and the executives of “violating numerous state and federal laws” by enriching themselves, as well as their friends, families and allies, and taking improper actions that cost the organization $64 million over three years. The attorney general has regulatory authority over the N.R.A. because it is chartered as a nonprofit in New York. She is also seeking to oust Mr. LaPierre and Mr. Frazer, and to bar all four men from ever serving on nonprofit boards in New York again.

The lawsuit, which was filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, is a civil action, and outlined a number of alleged tax violations. Ms. James said during a news conference that she was referring the matter to the Internal Revenue Service in addition to taking her own action, and did not rule out making a future criminal referral.

Never forget: the purpose of authoritarianism is theft. And very few organizations the size of the NRA represent authoritarianism so obviously. Never mind what they say; watch what they do. (Hey, Mr LaPierre, where were all your members when actual jack-booted government agents came to Portland and DC?)

The Post has more:

James said at a news conference Thursday that she is seeking to dissolve the NRA because of the brazenness of the group’s violations of law.

“The corruption was so broad and because they have basically destroyed all the assets of the NRA,” she said. “Enough was enough … No one is above the law, not even the NRA.”

The lawsuit also claims LaPierre failed to report large sums of personal income to the IRS. James’s office said it found that the NRA chief funneled personal expenses through an outside public relations firm, allowing him to avoid reporting hundreds of thousands of dollars of personal income.

In response, the NRA said Thursday that it was filing its own lawsuit against James, alleging that the New York attorney general has violated the group’s free speech rights.

“This was a baseless, premeditated attack on our organization and the Second Amendment freedoms it fights to defend,” NRA President Carolyn Meadows said in a statement. “You could have set your watch by it: the investigation was going to reach its crescendo as we move into the 2020 election cycle."

Waaaaah. Another thing authoritarians hate: being called on their wrongdoing.

Do I think the lawsuit will succeed in dissolving the NRA? No, sadly. And anyway, gun manufacturers would simply create a new trade and propaganda association to continue making the Second Amendment a parody of itself.

But with this suit, and the deepening investigation into the Trump Organization's finances, also in New York State, I think the era of right-wing over-reach may have reached its conclusion. Don't expect them to go quietly, however.

I'm waiting for a build to finish so I can sign off work for the day, so I've queued up a few things to read later:

• The Atlantic's cover this month will be "How the Pandemic Defeated America" by Ed Yong.
• In a filing today, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr suggested his office is investigating the president for all kinds of bank fraud. Pass the popcorn.
• Charles Blow accuses the president of forecasting his own election fraud.
• Recreational weed sales in Illinois topped a record $61m last month, a 28% jump over June.
• Chicago-based GCM Grosvenor, a company I've worked with twice in my career, is going public.
• CityLab looks at an effort on the South Side of Chicago to "reinvent the corner store."
• Illinois had one of the hottest Julys on record.

Looks like the build is done, and all the tests passed. (I love green pipelines.)

This is my 55th post this month, and the fifth month in a row in which I've posted over 50 times. That brings my 12-month total to 581, the third record in a row and the fifth record this year. I guess Covid-19 has been good for something.

Here's what I'm reading today:

• Authorities in Tampa have charged 17-year-old Graham Clark with masterminding last month's massive Twitter hack.
• The Atlantic's David Graham says the president is trying to destroy the election's legitimacy.
• George Will points to the relationship between authoritarianism and emotion.
• Two large restaurant groups in Chicago and 40 smaller restaurants have sued 19 insurance companies for not paying claims related to state-ordered closings.
• The New Yorker's Masha Gessen believes "Homeland Security was destined to become a secret police force."
• New Republic's Jake Bittle bemoans "the Right's increasingly unhinged fight against Black Lives Matter."

I'm excited to add a notch on the Brews and Choos project in a few hours. Check back tomorrow.

First, this chart:

And yet, there are so many other things going on today:

• NPR has the clearest take-down on the president's election-postponement trolling I've seen today, noting in particular that "Trump's tweet came about 15 minutes after news of the worst-ever-recorded quarterly performance of the American economy." Josh Marshall just says "don't cower."
• Republican political consultant Stuart Stevens believes people like him "lost the battle for the Republican Party's soul long ago:" "I feel like the guy working for Bernie Madoff who thought they were actually beating the market."
• Politico's Shia Kapos and Tina Nguyen explain why allies of the president want to inflict Federal troops on Chicago.
• TNR's JC Pan outlines how increasing inequality, particularly between the top-20% and everyone else, continues to shape our pandemic response.
• The Atlantic's Derek Thompson says "hygiene theater is a huge wast of time."
• The City of Chicago will start fining people up to $500 per day for failing to self-quarantine after entering the city from any of the 22 states now on the list of places where disease incidence has exceeded 15 per 100,000. And with Illinois heading into that zone, our governor has cancelled most school sports for the fall.
• Mercy Hospital, one of the oldest and most-needed medical facilities on the South Side, will close by May 31st.
• The US Trade Representative, for no reason I can see, wants to increase tariffs on European whiskies, wines, and other spirits, in some cases to 100%.

The one bit of good news? Evanston-based Sketchbook Brewing, who make delicious beers and whose taproom inspired the Brews and Choos project, will open a huge new taproom in Skokie tomorrow evening. And guess what? It's only 4 blocks from an El stop.