The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

The indictment

I've just read the indictment against the XPOTUS and his "body man" Walt Nauta. Wow. As a FBI agent in The West Wing once remarked, "In 13 years with the Bureau I've discovered that there's no amount of money, manpower or knowledge than can equal the person you're looking for being stupid." And wow, was the XPOTUS stupid.

I'm not a practicing lawyer but I can read an indictment. If the US Attorneys can prove any of these facts—and I have no doubt they will—he's going to get convicted of a felony. Oddly, under our Constitution, he can still run for a second term if that happens, though he won't be able to vote for himself in Florida. But as Josh Marshall points out, the larger issues just distract from the utterly banal issues:

I wanted to share one thought.

That is the sheer ordinariness of the whole story. That may seem like a odd thing to say: ex-President facing multiple federal felony indictments for the first time ever, the bizarre details of this antic clown’s Florida Villa-cum-Hotel stuffed with banker’s boxes of classified documents, the bathroom chandelier, the power glitz jammed together with gaudy dime store aesthetic. But we grant Trump too much by lavishing, wearying too much in the purported weightiness of the moment. It’s very normal. Yes, powerful people get away with a lot. But if you commit crimes repeatedly and brazenly you’re very likely to get charged with one or more crimes, particularly if you’re in the public spotlight.

We hear endlessly how everyone not thoroughly in Trump’s thrall wants to ‘move on’ from the man. The first and most important part of that is shaking free of the reality distortion field that surrounds the man, as much for his foes as his followers. He’s hit with charges with evidence of his guilt that is clear and overwhelming and he jumps to the front to declare no one ever thought this could happen or be possible. He didn’t do it … but of course he was perfectly entitled to do it, even though he chose not to. Remember, he could have but chose not to. Got it? He attacks, defames. People get caught up in the frenzy of his seeming invulnerability and transgressive nature, the entertainment and the confusion. They’re wondering what he’ll do next. They’re baffled and suddenly the obvious ceases to be obvious.

Don’t be baffled. You may be thinking somehow there’s no way he’ll actually get convicted of anything. You’re wrong. He probably will. Maybe not. That happens too. That’s normal. It’s all normal.

I lived in New York in the late '80s and late '90s, and we always thought that the XPOTUS would never survive first contact with law enforcement. It took a while, but eventually his narcissism, unaccountability, and yes, his tiny little hands mind would eventually lead us here.

One more thing. John Scalzi called out all the remaining XPOTUS supporters to "get off the train," but hit on the reason they won't: "no one who is still on the Trump train at this point in 2023 is there for logical or rational reasons, you’re probably...stuck too far down in the grift to ever admit you’re the chump." But wow, the national security implications of this indictment alone should have every rational person in the country running from this guy.

That CNN town hall...

I did not watch the CNN town hall with the XPOTUS on Wednesday night. I do feel bad for the journalists who had to, starting with the Post's fact-checker Glenn Kessler:

For more than an hour, former president Donald Trump sent forth a torrent of false and misleading claims during a CNN town hall. Here’s a roundup of some of the more notable ones, arranged by subject matter.

“I took in hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes from China.”

Through the end of his presidency, Trump-imposed tariffs garnered about $75 billion on products from China. But tariffs — essentially a tax — are generally paid by importers, such as U.S. companies, who in turn pass on most or all of the costs to consumers or producers who use Chinese materials in their products. So, ultimately, Americans footed the bill for Trump’s tariffs, not the Chinese. Moreover, the China tariff revenue was reduced by $28 billion in payments the government made to farmers who lost business because China stopped buying U.S. soybeans, hogs, cotton and other products in response.

“I had every right to under the Presidential Records Act. You have the Presidential Records Act. I was there and I took what I took and it gets declassified … it says you talk, you negotiate, you make a deal. It’s not criminal, by the way.”

As Collins noted, this is not what the PRA says. Under the PRA, a president has a lot of leeway to deem something a presidential paper while he is president. But the possibility of such give-and-take ended when the clock struck noon on Jan. 20, 2021. “Upon the conclusion of a President’s term of office, or if a President serves consecutive terms upon the conclusion of the last term, the Archivist of the United States shall assume responsibility for the custody, control, and preservation of, and access to, the Presidential records of that President,” the law says.

Pages and pages of this follow. That poor reporter. Tom Nichols sees a silver lining:

Watching Trump for any extended period of time is enervating and deeply uncomfortable. The man is a quivering bag of weird verbal and physical tics. And when he gets rolling, listening to a Trump speech is like standing nearby while someone throws a match into a box of cheap bottle rockets: When the fusillade of annoying noise, misfires, duds, and smoke is over, all that’s left is a general stink in the air.

This discomfort is exactly my point: If you want to stop Donald Trump from returning to power, putting him on TV is the way to go. But doing so requires either that you hand him a microphone and let him immolate himself, or that you sit him down with a reporter who will not let up on calling out his lies and fantasies until he melts down.

Last night, however, CNN chose one of the worst possible options. Instead of a candidate interview, CNN Chairman Chris Licht apparently thought it would be a great idea to cast Trump in a remake of The Jerry Springer Show, complete with vulgar jokes, hooting fans, and a mild-mannered host—in this case, the CNN correspondent Kaitlan Collins—stuck with the thankless of job of trying to intervene in the shouting and angry finger-pointing. Instead of an important one-on-one interview with a dangerous and malevolent demagogue, CNN presented another episode of Trump’s ongoing reality show.

The Economist's Lexington agrees:

And so american politics came to this: the day after a jury concluded in a civil case that Donald Trump had committed sexual abuse and then defamed his victim, he preened on national television as the front-runner for the presidential nomination of the party of family values and law and order, of American greatness and American pride. Mr Trump’s gall should not surprise anyone, of course, not after his success for seven years in defining Republican values down. Yet what a degrading spectacle it was.

But, unfiltered by his aides, Mr Trump damaged himself in the town hall for purposes of a general-election campaign. Mr Biden was fundraising off the event as it ended (“Do you want four more years of that?” he asked on Twitter) and within half an hour his team released an ad interleaving Mr Trump’s musings about the beauty of January 6th with images of violence that day. Should Mr Trump win the nomination, his boasts about overturning abortion rights would haunt him, along with many other remarks, some of which may also enhance his growing legal jeopardy.

The Times expands on that last point:

Mr. Trump described for Ms. Collins how he had apparently taken materials from the White House not only on purpose, but in plain view of the public.

“When we left Washington, we had the boxes lined up on the sidewalk outside for everybody,” he said. “People are taking pictures of them. Everybody knew we were taking those boxes.”

Mr. Trump’s attempts to play down or explain away his handling of the documents came at a moment when Mr. Smith’s office was increasingly homing in on the key question of whether the former president sought to hide some of the documents in his possession after the Justice Department issued a subpoena last May demanding their return.

Finally, James Fallows indicts CNN for its complicity in this nonsense:

—The least cynical explanation for why CNN offered Trump this opportunity is that they are trying to ingratiate themselves with Trump and his GOP. Perhaps a “re-centered” CNN could occupy the space opened by chaos at Fox?

—The more cynical explanation is that for CNN’s leadership the difference between spectacle and news was meaningless. A live Trump show would draw an audience and make headlines. Which is part of the defense its new CEO, Chris Licht, reportedly offered on a staff call today.

Fallows includes a bit from his 2016 interview with primatologist Jane Goodall, which really sums up the CNN town hall and, in fact, anything that the XPOTUS does in public:

“In many ways the performances of Donald Trump remind me of male chimpanzees and their dominance rituals,” Jane Goodall, the anthropologist, told me shortly before Trump won the GOP nomination. “In order to impress rivals, males seeking to rise in the dominance hierarchy perform spectacular displays: stamping, slapping the ground, dragging branches, throwing rocks. The more vigorous and imaginative the display, the faster the individual is likely to rise in the hierarchy, and the longer he is likely to maintain that position.”

In her book My Life With the Chimpanzees, Goodall told the story of “Mike,” a chimp who maintained his dominance by kicking a series of kerosene cans ahead of him as he moved down a road, creating confusion and noise that made his rivals flee and cower. She told me she would be thinking of Mike as she watched the upcoming debates [between Trump and Hillary Clinton].

Yes. The XPOTUS has normalized chimpanzee behaviors in American politics.

So, who else is excited for the 2024 election?

Donald Trump is a sexual abuser

Let me repeat that: Former President Donald Trump sexually abused at least one person, not "allegedly," but "really." A jury has said so:

A verdict has been reached in the E Jean Carroll v Trump trial, according to a court spokesman. It [was] delivered at 3 p.m. today in the courtroom. The jury began deliberating today shortly before noon.

The jury has found that Carroll did not prove Trump raped her, but they did determine that he had sexually abused her. The jurors also found that Trump had defamed Carroll when he called her accusations false. They awarded her $5 million damages.

As a matter of law, a jury verdict establishes the allegations as facts. And as truth is an absolute defense against a libel accusation, that means we can all go ahead and repeat the horrible truth that the former president almost raped someone in a changing room at a department store.

This demented thug remains the head of the Republican Party.

So, if you vote for this horrible person, you're basically saying you have no objection to his conduct. You're saying it's OK that the person you voted for stuck his fingers inside someone without permission in public. You're saying that you wouldn't mind if he did it to someone else. Someone like you, or your spouse, or your parent.

We all knew what kind of person he was, but until a few minutes ago, at least Republicans had a tissue-paper-thin defense that no one had ever "proven" it. That defense has dissolved now. The Republican Party now owns this asshole completely.

If you don't like the Democratic party, and don't want to vote for us, that's fine. But please: form a new party that doesn't have people in it who endorse this man or his actions. We need a real opposition party in this country, not the right-wing looney bin that endorses sexual abuse. Because at this point, if you stay in the Republican Party, you're showing everyone where you stand on this behavior.

Reading while the CI build churns

I'm chasing down a bug that caused what we in the biz call "unexpected results" and the end-users call "wrong." I've fixed it in both our API and our UI, but in order to test it, I need the API built in our dev/test environment. That takes about 18 minutes. Plenty of time to read all of this:

Finally, the Times explains how last year's 257 traffic fatalities in New York City undermine the claims that "Vision Zero" is working. But Strong Towns already told you that.

OK, build succeeded, fix is now in Dev/Test...on with the show!

Stuff I may come back to later

First, because it's April 20th, we have a a couple of stories about marijuana:

(The Daily Parker owns shares in Chicago-based Green Thumb Industries.)

Second, because it's the 21st Century, we have a collection of articles about the end of democracy:

And in me. I've got software to write.

Toujours, quelque damn chose

But for me, it was Tuesday:

  • The Democratic National Committee has selected Chicago to host its convention next August, when (I assume) our party will nominate President Biden for a second term. We last hosted the DNC in 1996, when the party nominated President Clinton for his second term.
  • Just a few minutes ago, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg filed suit in the Southern District of New York to enjoin US Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) from interfering in the prosecution of the XPOTUS.
  • Speaking of the House Moron Caucus, Jonah Goldberg worries that the kids following people like Jordan and the XPOTUS have never learned how to behave in public, with predictable and dire consequences for public discourse in the future.
  • And speaking of, uh, discourse, New York Magazine features Stephanie Clifford (aka Stormy Daniels) on its cover this week, in which the actor describes her meeting in 2006 with a "pop-culture curiosity" years before destroying American democracy even entered into his dementia-addled brain. It...isn't pretty.
  • Jennifer Rubin thinks the Religious Right's "victory" in politicizing the Federal judiciary will cripple the Republican Party. (I believe she's right.)
  • Today I learned that Guthrie's Tavern did not die during the pandemic, and in fact will offer free hot dogs during Cubs home games to all paying customers (while supplies last).
  • Rishi Shah and Shradha Agarwal, the CEO and president of Chicago tech company Outcome Health, were convicted on 32 counts of fraud and other crimes for their roles in stealing investors' money.
  • The Hubble Space Telescope has detected a runaway black hole moving close to 1,000 km/s with a 200,000-light-year tail of baby stars following it. (Those baby stars happened because at that speed, it wasn't able to pull out in time...)
  • MAD Magazine cartoonist Al Jaffee, inventor of the Fold-In, died Monday at 102.

Finally, Tupperware has warned its creditors and shareholders that it may go out of business in what I have to call...an uncontained failure of the company.

Asyncing feeling

I spent all day updating my real job's software to .NET 7, and to predominantly asynchronous operation throughout. Now I have four stubbornly failing unit tests that lead me to suspect I got something wrong in the async timing somewhere. It's four out of 507, so most of today's work went fine.

Meanwhile, the following stories have backed up:

Finally, a very rich person is very annoyed after his or her private jet got stuck in the mud at Aspen's airport. It seems the guy sent to pull it out of the mud maybe needed another lesson on how planes work, because he managed to snap the nose gear right off the $3.5 million airplane. Oopsi. (There's video!)

XPOTUS, criminal defendant

The New York County District Attorney charged the XPOTUS with 34 felony counts stemming from his payment of hush money to Stephanie Clifford, aka adult film actor Stormy Daniels:

The indictment against the former president, People of the State of New York against Donald J. Trump, Indictment No. 71543-23, has been unsealed.

The former president was charged with 34 felonies and pleaded not guilty before State Supreme Court Justice Juan M. Merchan.

The charges include filing false business records in the first degree, a low level felony that carries a maximum of four years in prison for each count, though if he is convicted a judge could sentence him to probation.

Trump has walked out of the courtroom and back into the district attorney’s office. He did not stop to talk to the press.

Unfortunately, the District Attorney declined to get a mug shot of the XPOTUS, probably because half the country would immediately change their social media profile photos to mock it. More seriously, the DA has discretion of mug shots, and understandably declined to take one for the same reason they didn't ask for bond. I mean, the XPOTUS has Federal law enforcement agents around him every minute of the day, and it's not like he can outrun them.

I still think Finland joining NATO is a more important story. So does the White House.

And if you're curious, the Post has the indictment and statement of facts for the case.

History, courtesy of authoritarian incompetence

No, not that incompetent authoritarian; that bit of history hasn't happened yet. I mean the one whose adventure in Ukraine has succeeded in adding 1,300 km to his border with NATO:

Finland has become the 31st member of the Nato security alliance, and its flag will soon be raised at the alliance's headquarters.

The Finnish foreign minister handed the accession document to the US secretary of state who declared Finland a member.

Finland's accession is a setback for Russia's Vladimir Putin, who repeatedly complained of Nato's expansion before his full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The length of Russia's border with NATO member states has now doubled.

Putin remains master strategist!

Honestly, Finland joining NATO matters in the long term a lot more than the nonsense in New York. I'll address that mishigos when the New York County DA unseals the indictment.

In other news

Stuff read while waiting for code to compile:

Finally, Chicago Tribune food critic Louisa Chu says I should take a 45-minute drive down to Bridgeview to try some Halal fried chicken—just, maybe, after Ramadan ends.