The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

Odd lake cold front interface

A high-pressure dome of hot, humid air is parked over the middle of the U.S. right now, driving temperatures up and heat indices up higher. But here in downtown Chicago, something weird happened this afternoon.

Around 1pm, a line of thunderstorms came down Lake Michigan from the north. Just before then, it was 33°C at O'Hare with a heat index close to 38°C. Then, within fifteen minutes, this happened:

Note the green lin snaking from Gary, Ind., in the southeast around to Crystal Lake, Ill., in the northwest. That's an interface between cool air coming off the lake and the hot, muggy air surrounding it. And it's still raining there; here's the radar image from 3:50:

So right now, it's 25°C in Gary, 24°C in Lansing, Ill. (near Gary), and 33°C in Joliet (near the + sign on the radar images).

Weird. And welcome, at least in the Loop. But the temperature is climbing again as the thunderstorms make their way deeper into Indiana. And tomorrow's forecast predicts more humid heat. Bleah.

Fryin' Ted

Last night at the Republican National Convention, Ted Cruz took a huge risk when he essentially told people not to vote for the nominee:

The Republican convention erupted into tumult on Wednesday night as the bitter primary battle between Donald J. Trump and Senator Ted Cruz reignited unexpectedly, crushing hopes that the party could project unity.

In the most electric moment of the convention, boos and jeers broke out as it became clear that Mr. Cruz — in a prime-time address from center stage — was not going to endorse Mr. Trump. It was a pointed snub on the eve of Mr. Trump’s formal acceptance speech.

As hundreds of delegates chanted “Vote for Trump!” and “Say it!” Mr. Cruz tried to dismiss the outburst as “enthusiasm of the New York delegation” — only to have Mr. Trump himself suddenly appear in the back of the convention hall. Virtually every head in the room seemed to turn from Mr. Cruz to Mr. Trump, who was stone-faced and clearly angry as he egged on delegates by pumping his fist.

Mr. Cruz was all but drowned out as he asked for God’s blessing on the country and left the stage, while security personnel escorted his wife, Heidi, out of the hall. One delegate yelled “Goldman Sachs!” at her — a reference to the company that has employed her, a job that Mr. Trump attacked during the primaries.

Pundits are split about how this happened and what it means. Josh Marshall pulls out "Trump's Razor:"

"Ascertain the stupidest possible scenario that can be reconciled with the available facts."

I tried, as events unfolded tonight, to piece together in the two posts below just what happened tonight and how. At first I was certain that Ted Cruz had executed an excruciating double cross of Donald Trump, a thoroughly disreputable and dangerous man, who had also humiliated Cruz, defamed his father and denigrated his wife. We now have two contending theories. The first: by whatever means, the Trump camp allowed Cruz, under their very noses, to blow up their convention through a feat of staggering, almost incomprehensible incompetence. Somehow, with so much at stake, they didn't even read the speech. The second: the Trump campaign knowingly allowed Cruz to light his bomb and then egged the conventioneers on to an outraged chorus of boos imagining that Cruz would be humiliated and that laying bare the GOP's protracted civil war before millions would in fact 'unify the party.'

Either scenario, both defying any conventional credibility, could plausibly emerge from that toxic soup.

Indeed, while this conflagration was erupting in Cleveland another bomb, which Trump himself had lit earlier in the day, was going off on the pages of The New York Times. One can debate whether it is wise or sensible for the United States to guarantee the independence of small states on the periphery of Russia which had for centuries been either within the Russian domain or inside its sphere of influence. But we have. In his comments to the Times, Trump treated the matter like a real estate goon shaking down a distressed landlord to make an easy buck.

Brian Beutler (and others) think Cruz brilliantly stomped on Trump:

Cruz seemed determined to use his moment in the spotlight to maximize the size of Trump’s defeat. If it pays off, Cruz will cement his status as the one Republican 2016 candidate who practices politics with an eye toward the horizon, and the Republican in politics most willing to elevate personal ambition above party interest–a useful if not heroic trait at a time when Republican interests and Trump’s are converging. He will spend the ensuing years as the presumptive frontrunner in the 2020 primary. But it will only work if Democrats humiliate Trump this fall.

He told 20 million voters, disproportionately Republican, they don’t need to vote for Trump if they don’t want to; he stabbed Donald Trump in the front. And in the final analysis, he probably made the safe bet, too.

Jeet Heer thinks Cruz made a huge mistake:

In terms of preserving his honor, Cruz did the right thing. Trump, after all, was the man who created the slur “Lyin’ Ted,” who insulted the physical appearance of Cruz’s wife, and who slyly suggested that Cruz’s father was involved in John F. Kennedy’s assassination. How could anyone keep their honor and endorse someone who had done all that?

But in terms of his long-term political ambitions, Cruz made a grievous mistake. Political parties are built on loyalty. You’re supposed to stick with your party-mates whether you disagree with them or not. ...

Cruz’s cool rejection of Trump calls to mind the crisis that engulfed the Republican Party in 1964, when Barry Goldwater’s nomination polarized the party. Some of Goldwater’s rivals kept a distance, notably Nelson Rockefeller who was roundly booed during the 1964 convention not just for his reluctance to fall in line, but for his criticism of groups like the John Birch Society.

Nixon took a different tack than Rockefeller. Privately, he thought that Goldwater was a disaster for the party. But in public, Nixon was a good soldier. He endorsed Goldwater, and diligently campaigned all over the country, trying to shore of down-ballot candidates threatened by the electoral tidal wave that crushed the Republican Party that year.

Nixon’s loyalty wasn’t forgotten; party members remembered his service.

James Fallows points out that, if Trump can't manage the speaking order at a convention where he's the star, he's unlikely to manage the country:

Again the theme of recent posts has been: conventions and national campaigns don’t “matter” in any profound sense (although they can make a difference in whether you get elected). But if you can’t manage a four-day convention, let alone a four-month national campaign, you’re facing steep odds in managing a very complex national government for four or eight years.

And — except for the effective Mike Pence speech, which began near the end of the 10pm-11pm EDT prime time bloc — this was another chaotically managed convention night. The Skyped-in-looking 90-second video by Marco Rubio was the minor indication. The cold, outright subversion by Ted Cruz — the man whose wife’s looks Trump had mocked, the man whose father Trump had accused of involvement in the JFK killing — was unlike anything on a national campaign stage in modern times.

We'll see what more hits the fan tonight when Trump formally accepts the Republican nomination. What times we live in.

Here comes the heat

Much of the central U.S. is bracing for the worst heat wave since 2013:

Temperatures [in Chicago] Thursday are expected to reach 34°C and 37°C on Friday, with humidity levels creating a heat index that feels more like 38-42°C, according to Kevin Donofrio, meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

The heat wave will continue through the weekend, with temperatures only a few digits lower during the day Saturday and Sunday and remaining around 25°C and even 28-29°C overnight, Donofrio said. Temperatures are expected to drop early next week.

It's already starting. I'm heading to Wrigley Field in a couple of hours, and the temperature has already hit 30°C at O'Hare with a heat index of 31.6°C.

WGN has an informative graphic explaining why this is happening.

Number 1, mister Speaker

This morning, Theresa May had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others, and in addition to her duties in the House, will have further such meetings this afternoon:

I'm not necessarily a Theresa May supporter, but this was her first PMQs. I also love that the House of Commons now publishes PMQs within a couple of hours, so I never have to miss them.

Can anyone imagine what question time would be like with Donald Trump at the dispatch box? I can. It would not be like this.

History

Forty-seven years, almost to the day, after we put a man on the moon, a major political party nominated Donald Trump for the office of President.

Two small illustrations of the choice we face November 8th: the Clinton campaign yesterday posted a comparison of Trump's resume and Clinton's. ("1997: Trump ponders Miss Universe swimsuit sizes. Hillary gets health insurance for 8 million kids.") And Clinton staffers posted a video in which they listed all 5,500 lawsuits in which Trump is a party—which took almost four hours.

In related news, New Zealand is still offering Skilled Migrant Visas...

So much to read after work today

From AVWeb: one of the world's two remaining B-29 Superfortresses flew for the first time this weekend after being grounded for more than 60 years.

From CityLab: Nice's surveillance network is extensive—possibly too extensive to do any good.

From New Republic:

Over in the Atlantic, James Fallows just adds it to the list of things historians will probably wonder about (at #44) and why it matters (#45).

Cranky Flier reports on a different batch of corruption after United Airlines released documents showing how its bid in Newark, N.J., for a new hangar went south. Literally.

At New York Magazine, Andrew Sullivan live-blogged day 1 of the Republican National Convention.

At The New Yorker, Jane Mayer talked with Tony Schwartz, the man who wrote Trump's Art of the Deal.

And here at home, from Crain's Chicago Business, how former governor Jim Edgar has gone from coaching current governor Bruce Rauner gently to calling him out in public.

 

 

The Sociopath

Tony Schwartz, who ghost-wrote Donald Trump's The Art of the Deal, has broken his silence about the experience:

Starting in late 1985, Schwartz spent eighteen months with Trump—camping out in his office, joining him on his helicopter, tagging along at meetings, and spending weekends with him at his Manhattan apartment and his Florida estate. During that period, Schwartz felt, he had got to know him better than almost anyone else outside the Trump family. ... It had never been his ambition to be a ghostwriter, and he had been glad to move on. But, as he watched a replay of the new candidate holding forth for forty-five minutes, he noticed something strange: over the decades, Trump appeared to have convinced himself that he had written the book. Schwartz recalls thinking, “If he could lie about that on Day One—when it was so easily refuted—he is likely to lie about anything.”

If he were writing “The Art of the Deal” today, Schwartz said, it would be a very different book with a very different title. Asked what he would call it, he answered, “The Sociopath.”

It's worth reading this article, since it discusses in detail the man who one of our two main political parties is about to nominate for President of the United States.

 

Fun weekend

Pitchfork was a good way to spend most of Saturday (and the weather was perfect). Hanging out with friends and running errands was a good way to spend yesterday. And now I'm back at work.

With the Republican National Convention going on this week, I expect I'll have regular posts*. But it's starting to look like July might be my slowest month for posting since I finished my MBA.

* For instance, what does it say about the Republican Party that Cleveland felt it necessary to quadruple its police force for the week?

Too many browser windows open at work

Because I need to read all of these and have to do my actual job first:

I'll get to these this evening. I hope.