The Daily Parker

First: the difference between how Garmin handled a global outage that lasted 5 days, and how SendGrid managed one that lasted 5 hours. SendGrid handles billions of emails per day, including for Microsoft and other massive companies. So SendGrid going down didn't inconvenience a few athletes and pilots; it crippled Fortune-500 companies' marketing departments. (And it delayed a scheduled release on my own team.)

Within about an hour of their outage, SendGrid created an incident response page to which they posted updates every half-hour. They clearly stated what was going on and how they were trying to fix it, even as they were discovering for themselves what had happened:

Contrast that with Garmin, who still haven't really explained what happened or why it took so long to resolve the outage. (They finally declared their remediation "complete" yesterday, almost 6 days after the outage started.)

Second: the difference between how Germany (and other rich countries) have handled Covid-19 and how we have. Josh Marshall looked into the numbers:

The head of Germany’s equivalent of the CDC told reporters today that he’s “very concerned” about the rising case numbers in the country and accuses Germans of becoming “negligent” in their adherence to mitigation measures. He has good reason to be concerned.

Today Germany reported 638 new cases of COVID. That comes out to .76 cases per 100,000 residents. Let’s round that up to 1 new case per 100,000 for good measure. (The need for round numbers will become clear.)

Today New York State had 3 cases per 100,000. So Germany is concerned by 1/3 the number of cases as we have in New York state, a state which is probably controlling the disease as well as any other state in the country.

Florida today had 43 cases per 100,000. Florida’s outbreak is more than forty-three times the size relative to population.

To state the point baldly, Germany is very concerned about a rise in cases that would still be dramatically better than any other part of the United States. They’re ramping up border restrictions to get things back under control and chiding the population to redouble its collective efforts.

[S]eeing this as, "well, look, everyone’s having problems." Or "we’re not the only ones having new outbreaks" or "we can’t go back to shutdowns…" ... only captures how Americans are having a hard time grappling with just how many universes away we are from what is happening in other countries which are comparably affluent, industrialized and able to mount an effective response.

We’re failing that badly.

Anthony Fauci was on BBC just now, struggling not to call the president out on his criminal negligence. Only 98 days until we can vote the bastard out.

It has cooled off slightly from yesterday's scorching 36°C, but the dewpoint hasn't dropped much. So the sauna yesterday has become the sticky summer day today. Fortunately, we invented air conditioning a century or so ago, so I'm not actually melting in my cube.

As I munch on some chicken teriyaki from the take-out place around the corner, I'm also digesting these articles:

• James Fallows points to the medieval alcohol-distribution rules in most states as the biggest threat to craft brewing right now.
• Greg Sargent thinks Fox News and its effect on the president's already-fragile psyche may hasten his downfall.
• Jonathan Last dissects the Trump campaign ad that featured a photo of a 2014 pro-democracy protest in Ukraine. It gets better.
• Scientists and shipping companies both study Arctic sea-ice, which continues to recede faster than earlier models predicted.
• The Chicago Tribune reports on the history of redlining and how it continues to affect minorities today.
• The BBC debunks a few fantasies about vaccination.

Can you believe we're only 99 days from the election? How time flies.

I kind of got into the flow today, so things to read later just piled up:

• Illinois found 1,532 new known Covid-19 cases as of today, with four downstate, bright-red counties now getting warned that their numbers are rising quickly.
• The GOP failures on containing this disease keep mounting.
• Greg Sargent points out that "Trump's authoritarian crackdown is so bad that even some in the GOP are blasting it."
• Maeve Higgins finds that her American passport just doesn't work anymore.
• Garmin's entire production app suite remains offline, but someone found time to rearrange their status page.
• QANTAS has retired its last Boeing 747, and gave it a lovely sign-off.

And wait—you can make risotto in an Instant Pot? I might have to try that.

A friend and I plan to go to a local beer garden this weekend—one on the Brews and Choos list, in fact—so we had to make a reservation that included a $7.50-per-person deposit. Things are weird, man. And if you read the news today, oh boy, the weirdness is all over:

• Alex Shephard calls Chris Wallace "the only person who's figured out how to interview Trump." About the same interview, Peter Wehner concludes "Donald Trump is a broken man."
• In his last long-form essay for New York Magazine, Andrew Sullivan looks at historic plagues and how they changed the world. In the same issue, Jonathan Chait wonders why the Republican response to the pandemic has been "so mind-bogglingly disastrous."
• The Guardian interviews Anne Applebaum, who "can make a convincing case that the right betrayed her."
• Via TPM, Portland-based journalist Robert Evans reports on "the Battle of Portland."
• The BBC's Reality Check column looks at the QAnon conspiracy nonsense.

Finally, closer to home, 4,400 restaurants in Chicago have closed because of the pandemic, 2,400 permanently. The Chicago Tribune has a list of the more notable closures. 

Just a few things have cropped up in the news since yesterday:

• President Trump has threatened to send federal agents to "assist" with Chicago's efforts to curb gun violence, which no one except the Trump-supporting head of our police union wants. Michelle Goldberg calls the presence of federal agents in Portland a harbinger of fascism, while the ACLU calls it "a constitutional crisis" and has filed suit to reverse the policy.
• Also in Portland, an unidentified woman wearing only a hat and face mask nonchalantly walked in front of a row of federal police and danced for them. Said the LA Times, "She stood calmly, a surreal image of human vulnerability in the face of an overpowering force that has been criticized nationally by civil rights advocates." (Nudity is constitutionally-protected speech in Oregon.)
• The BBC also digs in and reports that the 1807 Insurrection Act prohibits this kind of federal intervention. Notably, the last time a president invoked the law against the express wishes of the state was in 1957, when Eisenhower sent troops to Arkansas to protect black children from white mobs.
• St Louis Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner's office filed felony charges against Mark and Patricia McCloskey for unlawful use of a weapon, but the Republican governor of Missouri has already promised to pardon the couple.
• The FBI arrested Republican Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and three others in connection with a $60 m bribery case.
• The Boeing 747 has become the latest casualty of Covid-19, with only one airline continuing to fly the jet in passenger service.
• The Chicago Transit Authority has started round-the-clock construction on the $2.1 bn Red-Purple Modernization Project, which my alderman acknowledged would cause "massive disruption."

Finally, the Covid-19 mitigation rollback announced yesterday has led to Guthrie's Tavern closing permanently. Guthrie's, which opened in 1986 and featured board games and good beer, will pour its last pint on Thursday.

Philip Bump puts in black-and-white terms why the president should perhaps shut up about his cognitive test results:

I'll get to the final head-to-head comparison between my Garmin Venu and Fitbit Ionic later today. Meanwhile:

• The Dept of Homeland Security plans to deploy 150 agents to Chicago, and no one will say why.
• Could Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan finally face consequences for his career-spanning corruption?
• Charles Blow asks: where's the outrage?
• Bruce Schneier explains and hypothesizes about the Twitter class break last week.

And finally, because our Covid-19 numbers have started creeping up, indoor bar service will halt on Friday.

Oregon Public Broadcasting is reporting this morning that last night, two Federal agencies using unmarked cars have started pulling people off the streets:

Federal law enforcement officers have been using unmarked vehicles to drive around downtown Portland and detain protesters since at least July 14. Personal accounts and multiple videos posted online show the officers driving up to people, detaining individuals with no explanation of why they are being arrested, and driving off.

The tactic appears to be another escalation in federal force deployed on Portland city streets, as federal officials and President Donald Trump have said they plan to “quell” nightly protests outside the federal courthouse and Multnomah County Justice Center that have lasted for more than six weeks.

Officers from the U.S. Marshals Special Operations Group and Customs and Border Protection’s BORTAC, have been sent to Portland to protect federal property during the recent protests against racism and police brutality.

But interviews conducted by OPB show officers are also detaining people on Portland streets who aren’t near federal property, nor is it clear that all of the people being arrested have engaged in criminal activity. Demonstrators like O’Shea and Pettibone said they think they were targeted by federal officers for simply wearing black clothing in the area of the demonstration.

Charlie Pierce calls this "being softly Pinochet'ed in broad daylight" (despite the arrests happening at night):

LEO’s in camo? Unmarked vehicles? Disappearing people off the street without charge? Detention in something far too close to a police black site? (Ask some folks in Chicago how those work out.) I always knew I missed something not growing up in Santiago.

Why in the hell is this not a bigger story? A major American city is being softly Pinochet’ed in broad daylight. And, if we know one thing, if this president* and his administration* get away with this, it will only get worse. You’d have to be out of your mind—or comatose since the Fall of 2016—not to suspect that this could be a dry run for the kind of general urban mobilization at which the president* has been hinting since this summer's protests began.

Also on Thursday, press secretary Kaleigh McEnany took a moment out of her briefing to call Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot a “renegade mayor” because Lightfoot refuses to ask for the National Guard to come into her city. (To her credit, Lightfoot snapped right back.) The White House is on record several times as trying to delegitimize Muriel Bowser as mayor of Washington, D.C.

Portland may be a dumbshow for dummies, but it also looks like a dress rehearsal. This is not an "authoritarian impulse.” This is authoritarian government—straight, no chaser.

The good news, if we can call it that, is that 56% of Americans and 55% of likely or registered voters disapprove of the administration.

Happy tax day! And now, we're off to the races:

• Jeff Sessions lost the Republican US Senate primary in Alabama.
• What the hell was the president talking about yesterday?
• George Will explains the differences, such as they are, between 
• Illinois governor JB Pritzker announced a tightening of the state's re-opening rules, while Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot warned we're dangerously close to shutting down again.
• Oklahoma governor Kevin Stitt tested positive for Covid-19.
• Author John M. Barry, who wrote about the 1918 influenza pandemic, says our current pandemic will get much, much worse.
• Lauren Martinchek says the Lincoln Project are not our friends.
• The NSA has a good set of rules to follow to secure your VPN.

Finally, Bloomberg takes a backward glance at the rise and fall of the Segway.

Today's interesting and notable news stories:

• This week marks the 25th anniversary of Chicago's deadly heat wave in July 1995, during which 700 people died and we hit a record 41°C with a 52°C heat index.
• Watergate prosecutor Nick Akerman sees the Trump Administration's corruption as far worse than Nixon's.
• In a recent interview with CNN, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos repeated, without coherently explaining the how or why of it, that children should go back to school this fall.
• DeVos' inherently-stupid recommendation aside, internal documents show we don't have enough PPE right now, let alone when millions of kids and teachers get sick.
• Regardless of whether he lied or not, President Trump's recent claim that he threatened Seattle with Federal intervention to clear the CHOP should make you uncomfortable.
• The Chicago Tribune has a fact sheet on voting by mail in Illinois.

Finally, Lawrence Wright explores how historical plagues, particularly the European one in 1347, can sometimes spark radical social change.