The Daily Parker

Now that we're four days from Apollo After Hours, of which I'm the committee chair, and given that I still have work to do at work, the articles I need to catch up on keep piling up:

• WaPo columnist Greg Sargent points out that President Trump is flailing simply because Americans hate his agenda. It's not rocket surgery.
• Meanwhile, 538 points out that there are six pretty big blocs arrayed against Trump, any one of which would be a formidable challenge to a competent person.
• Via CityLab, a precinct-level map of the 2016 election, which is really really cool.
• TPM points to New York Times writer Noam Scheiber's explanation of how Uber uses psychological tricks to game its drivers to show why we need a stronger safety net for workers. (This might be why Trump is flailing; see above.)
• Deeply Trivial is doing the A-to-Z Blogging Challenge this month, starting with Alpha (Type 1 errors) and Beta (Type 2 errors). Good stuff.
• Closer to home, the Tribune has a story on the rebuilding and renovation of the Wilson Avenue El stop.

OK, back to the mines...

Security expert Bruce Schneier weighs in on the ridiculous airplane laptop ban the Trump administration and the British government imposed last week:

This current restriction implies some specific intelligence of a laptop-based plot and a temporary ban to address it. However, if that's the case, why only certain non-US carriers? And why only certain airports? Terrorists are smart enough to put a laptop bomb in checked baggage from the Middle East to Europe and then carry it on from Europe to the US.

Why not require passengers to turn their laptops on as they go through security? That would be a more effective security measure than forcing them to check them in their luggage. And lastly, why is there a delay between the ban being announced and it taking effect?

One analysis painted this as a protectionist measure targeted at the heavily subsidized Middle Eastern airlines by hitting them where it hurts the most: high-paying business class travelers who need their laptops with them on planes to get work done. That reasoning makes more sense than any security-related explanation, but doesn't explain why the British extended the ban to UK carriers as well. Or why this measure won't backfire when those Middle Eastern countries turn around and ban laptops on American carriers in retaliation. And one aviation official told CNN that an intelligence official informed him it was not a "political move."

In the end, national security measures based on secret information require us to trust the government. That trust is at historic low levels right now, so people both in the US and other countries are rightly skeptical of the official unsatisfying explanations. The new laptop ban highlights this mistrust.

But to the Trump team, distrusting government is a feature, not a bug. They just may not have thought through all the consequences.

Despite controlling two of three branches of government and most of the third, the Republican Party suffered a humiliating defeat this week when Paul Ryan couldn't muster enough votes to destroy health care in the U.S. We can all breathe a little easier:

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, facing a revolt among conservative and moderate Republicans, rushed to the White House Friday afternoon to inform President Trump he did not have the votes to pass legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act and to decide whether to pull the bill from consideration.

The president and the speaker faced the humiliating prospect of a major defeat on legislation promised for seven years, since the landmark health legislation was signed into law. President Trump had demanded a vote regardless, which has been scheduled for Friday afternoon. But House leaders were leaning against such a public loss.

[Ryan] said 30 to 40 Republicans planned to vote “no”; House leaders can afford to lose only 22 votes and still pass the bill.

So 24 million Americans get to keep health insurance, and we can actually move a little closer to parity with the rest of the developed world.

The Washington Post chronicles how President Trump's difficult relationship with the truth extends even to trying to correct the record:

President Trump had a remarkable interview with Time magazine on March 22 about falsehoods, in which he repeated many false claims that have repeatedly been debunked.

Trump consistently astounds us with his inability to acknowledge that he repeatedly gets facts wrong and consistently misleads the American public with inaccurate, dubious claims. He earns Four Pinocchios for this interview.

Not surprisingly, it's a pretty long fact-check article.

Apparently we're now frightened of everything:

Passengers on foreign airlines headed to the United States from 10 airports in eight majority-Muslim countries have been barred from carrying electronic devices larger than a cellphone under a new flight restriction enacted on Tuesday by the Trump administration.

Officials called the directive an attempt to address gaps in foreign airport security, and said it was not based on any specific or credible threat of an imminent attack.

The Department of Homeland Security said the restricted items included laptop computers, tablets, cameras, travel printers and games bigger than a phone. The restrictions would not apply to aircraft crews, officials said in a briefing to reporters on Monday night that outlined the terms of the ban.

The new policy took effect at 3 a.m. E.D.T. on Tuesday, and must be followed within 96 hours by airlines flying to the United States from airports in Amman, Jordan; Cairo; Istanbul; Jeddah and Riyadh in Saudi Arabia; Kuwait City; Casablanca, Morocco; Doha, Qatar; and Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.

Because, hey, if it's illegal for the administration to block people coming from those countries, maybe we can simply make them not want to come here? Oh, right. This is only going to stop people who need to work on those long flights; i.e., people we probably want to come here.

Great work, DHS. Nice.

No. Just no.

That's what Irish officials visiting Washington are saying today, after American politicians made a cringe-worthy series of gaffes on St. Patrick's Day:

“Top of the morning,” said Vice President Pence, as he hosted Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny at his residence for breakfast Thursday.

Really? The reaction by Irish on social media was palpable.

“Literally just shouted ‘NOBODY SAYS THAT’ at the TV,” a journalist in Ireland tweeted. “I’ve literally only ever heard that said by Americans,” another person said.

At [a] luncheon, Trump shared what he claimed was an “Irish proverb.”

“As we stand together with our Irish friends, I’m reminded of an Irish proverb — and this is a good one, this is one I like, I’ve heard it for many, many years and I love it,” Trump said. “Always remember to forget the friends that proved untrue, but never forget to remember those that have stuck by you.”

Irish tweeters immediately displayed skepticism.

These guys have attitudes about fellow Americans that would embarrass Roger Taney, so is anyone really surprised they get it all wrong with everyone else too?

Josh Marshall takes a moment to reflect on the fact that President Trump gets a lot of money from Russia. Even if the explanation is completely innocent, it's still a pretty big deal:

Many people look at this arc of growing dependency on money from the former Soviet Union and look for that moment when Trump becomes so dependent on money from Russia that he's forced to cut a deal with Vladimir Putin; or perhaps his business partners catch him in a compromising situation and then he's owned by nefarious forces in Russia. I do not rule out the possibility that some less lurid version of one of these scenarios did happen. But what many of us see as the smoke, which must somewhere lead to fire, is actually the story itself. The smoke is the story! Or to put it differently, the deep business ties provide a compelling explanation and I think likely sufficient explanation of Trump's persistent coziness and affection with top figures in Russia and Russian geopolitical interests.

We can also see the impact of the Crimea crisis of 2014 - which is the fulcrum of so much of the Trump/Russia story. If Trump had been getting a substantial amount of his buyers and investors from Russia, the imposition of sanctions in 2014 created a major obstacle to his way of doing business. (The big dip in the global oil market likely had a similar impact.) Remember, what's bad for Trump is wrong. That's the rule of thumb. Not just bad for Trump but wrong, stupid, terrible. And it wasn't just bad for Trump, it was clearly a very bad development for many people in his business orbit. Bad for Trump, Bad! Bad for Trump's friends, Bad! Bad for Trump's friends who keep the money flowing, Especially Bad!

I don't deny that we may eventually find a needle in this haystack. There are parts of the story which remain difficult to piece together based on what I've called this "innocent explanation." There are so many sleazy characters, so many connections to figures in the Russian criminal underworld that I'm sure there are at least a few sub-needles there. But haystack itself is a very, very big story.

He's seriously the most corrupt person ever elected to that office, and I'm including the guys from the 1880s and Warren Harding.

First, two unidentified have discovered malware on 38 Android devices that could only have been installed after manufacture but before distribution to retailers:

An assortment of malware was found on 38 Android devices belonging to two unidentified companies. This is according to a blog post published Friday by Check Point Software Technologies, maker of a mobile threat prevention app. The malicious apps weren't part of the official ROM firmware supplied by the phone manufacturers but were added later somewhere along the supply chain. In six of the cases, the malware was installed to the ROM using system privileges, a technique that requires the firmware to be completely reinstalled for the phone to be disinfected.

"This finding proves that, even if a user is extremely careful, never clicks a malicious link, or downloads a fishy app, he can still be infected by malware without even knowing it," Check Point Mobile Threat Researcher Daniel Padon told Ars. "This should be a concern for all mobile users."

Padon said it's not clear if the two companies were specifically targeted or if the infections were part of a broader, more opportunistic campaign. The presence of ransomware and other easy-to-detect malware seems to suggest the latter. Check Point also doesn't know where the infected phones were obtained. One of the affected parties was a "large telecommunications company" and the other was a "multinational technology company."

But malware and password stealing doesn't always need software. Sometimes it just needs a suspicious border guard:

Data provided by the Department of Homeland Security shows that searches of cellphones by border agents has exploded, growing fivefold in just one year, from fewer than 5,000 in 2015 to nearly 25,000 in 2016.

According to DHS officials, 2017 will be a blockbuster year. Five-thousand devices were searched in February alone, more than in all of 2015.

The more aggressive tactics of the past two years, two senior intelligence officials told NBC News, were sparked by a string of domestic incidents in 2015 and 2016 in which the watch list system and the FBI failed to stop American citizens from conducting attacks. The searches also reflect new abilities to extract contact lists, travel patterns and other data from phones very quickly.

But the officials caution that rhetoric about a Muslim registry and ban during the presidential campaign also seems to have emboldened federal agents to act more forcefully.

"The shackles are off," said Hugh Handeyside, a staff attorney with the ACLU's National Security Project. "We see individual officers and perhaps supervisors as well pushing those limits, exceeding their authority and violating people's rights."

Expect a lot of litigation and very unhappy travelers. Plus some other Fourth Amendment issues that go unreported.

Happy cell phoning!

Some stories from today:

• Andrew Sullivan sees Trump's insane Obama tweet as one more way to de-legitimize truth in general. Peter Beinart saw that too.
• President Trump, meanwhile, continues to claim credit for things that he had nothing to do with, like February's job numbers.
• There's new corroborating evidence that James Comey basically got Trump elected.
• Bruce Schneier calls for regulation of the Internet of Things.
• Peter Moskowitz sees gentrification as a long-term disaster for cities.
• Jeff Atwood reminds us that password rules are (still) bullshit.
• Tom Philpott thinks recipes are bad for you.

And, hey! It's Friday afternoon already.

Jeet Heer says no:

[T]he very nature of our modern world, and the United States’ supremacy, makes it impossible to dismiss an American president’s word. The U.S. is a nuclear-armed superpower, with a commander in chief who presides over the world’s largest economy. Millions of people all over the world pay careful attention to what a president says, making their own plans based on the words coming out of the White House—and they will continue to do so whether or not the press corps and political class in Washington somehow agree en masse to ignore Trump’s tweets.

“Toyota Motor said will build a new plant in Baja, Mexico, to build Corolla cars for U.S. NO WAY!” Trump tweeted in January. “Build plant in U.S. or pay big border tax.” Toyota’s stock promptly fell, as has the stock of other companies caught in Trump’s Twitter crosshairs. Because his tweets move markets, businesses are developing strategies for how to handle a presidential social media attack. There’s even an app that lets you know when Trump has tweeted negatively about a publicly traded company, so you can sell quickly if needed. Another company created a lightning-fast Twitter bot that automatically short sells such stocks. It’s called “Trump and Dump.”

“Mr. Trump’s Twitter posts, viewed with amazement outside the West Wing bubble, often create crises on the inside,” the Times reported. “That was never truer than when Mr. Trump began posting from his weekend retreat at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida shortly after sunrise on Saturday. His groggy staff realized quickly that this was no typical Trump broadside, but an allegation with potentially far-reaching implications that threatened to derail a coming week that included the rollout of his redrafted travel ban and the unveiling of the Republican plan to replace the Affordable Care Act.”

The more one watches this clown, the more one wonders just how much he's a genius, or, you know, something else?