The Daily Parker

Via Fallows, I'm now reading the transcript of Donald Trump's recent meeting with the Washington Post editorial board. It's...I don't even know how to describe it. He makes no sense. Example, from early on:

[Fred] HIATT [WaPo editorial page editor]: The root of many people’s unhappiness in Baltimore was the perception that blacks are treated differently by law enforcement. And the disproportionate – do you think it’s a problem that the percentage of blacks in prison is higher than whites, and what do you think is the root of that situation?

TRUMP: Well I’ve never really see anything that – you know, I feel very strongly about law enforcement. And, you know, if you look at the riot that took place over the summer, if that were stopped – it all, it mostly took place on the first evening, and if that were stopped on the first evening, you know, you’d have a much nicer city right now, because much of that damage and much of the destruction was done on Evening One. So I feel that law enforcement, it’s got to play a big role. It’s got to play a big role. But that’s a pretty good example, because tremendous amounts of damage was done that first evening – first two evenings, but the first evening in particular. And so I’m a very strong believer in law enforcement, but I’m also a very strong believer that the inner cities can come back.

HIATT: Do you see any racial disparities in law enforcement – I mean, what set it off was the Freddie Gray killing, as you know. Is that an issue that concerns you?

TRUMP: Well, look, I mean, I have to see what happens with the trial. I—

HIATT: Well, forget Freddie Gray, but in general, do you believe there are disparities in law enforcement?

TRUMP: I’ve read where there are and I’ve read where there aren’t. I mean, I’ve read both. And, you know, I have no opinion on that. Because frankly, what I’m saying is you know we have to create incentives for people to go back and to reinvigorate the areas and to put people to work.  And you know we have lost million and millions of jobs to China and other countries. And they’ve been taken out of this country, and when I say millions, you know it’s, it’s tremendous. I’ve seen 5 million jobs, I’ve seen numbers that range from 6 million to, to smaller numbers. But it’s many millions of jobs, and it’s to countries all over. Mexico is really becoming the new China. And I have great issue with that. Because you know I use in speeches sometimes Ford or sometimes I use Carrier – it’s all the same: Ford, Carrier, Nabisco, so many of the companies — they’re moving to Mexico now. And you know we shouldn’t be allowing that to happen. And tremendous unemployment, tremendous. They’re allowing tremendous people that have worked for the companies for a long time, they’re allowing, if they want to move around and they want to work on incentives within the United States, that’s one thing, but when they take these companies out of the United States. Other countries are outsmarting us by giving them advantages, you know, like in the case of Mexico. In the case of many other countries. Like Ireland is, you’re losing Pfizer to Ireland, a great pharmaceutical company that with many, many jobs and it’s going to move to Ireland.

What...the...fuck is he talking about? Incoherent doesn't seem strong enough a word. The lack of thought, the lack of knowledge, the lack of any ability to discuss a real problem in a real way should be completely disqualifying.

But after the Republican Party has spent 50 years hammering into people the idea that coherent, reasoned, informed thought doesn't get the job done (and by extension, education is worthless and fast-talking liberals are trying to win one over on you), this was kind of inevitable, wasn't it?

Skipping Mitt Romney's dig that Trump's wives have been foreign-born because "there are jobs that Americans won't do," it's becoming obvious that Trump has a problem with women mocking him. New Republic's Jeet Heer explains:

An old-fashioned sexist boor, Trump tends to divide the world into a simple binary: men are rivals to be bested and women are potential sexual conquests. When he’s confronted by a strong, assertive woman outside the mating arena, his synapses tend to short-circuit, leading him to odd and often self-destructive behavior. Before Carly Fiorina’s presidential bid fizzled out, she was the only Republican who had managed to faze Trump at all. He walked back his initial attempt to insult her looks and found himself booed by the debate audience on November 10 when he snapped, “Why does she keep interrupting everybody?”

If the presidential contest does become a battle between Clinton and Trump, Clinton is likely to enrage Trump in much the way previous women have. This suggests a strategy of using the red cape of gender to enrage the bull-headed Trump—the better to get him to make mistakes that will prepare him for the slaughter. 

Trump’s problem with women is not just personal, of course, but political. According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll, half of American women have a “very unfavorable” view of him, which has led The Washington Post’s Paul Waldman to argue that Trump could face “the largest gender gap in history” in his race against Clinton.

That's a problem with running a campaign on instinct, and with a narcissism bordering on delusion (but on the other side of the border than most people). It shouldn't be too hard to goad him into a "self-destructive rage that will destroy his presidential aspirations," as Heer says. He's already come close enough.

Stuff to read later:

• New Republic asks, if so many people hate Hillary Clinton, why is she getting more votes than any other candidate running in either party?
• Paul Krugman expands on the thought that the Republican Party made Trump possible.
• New York Magazine wonders why we're not talking about the GOP disasters in Louisiana and Kansas, when their national candidates are still running on those failed platforms.
• The Chicago River is getting cleaner. You still never want to fall in, though...
• Cranky Flier explains why TSA Pre-Check isn't the solution people had hoped it would be. (Hint: The Republican-led Congress.)
• Turns out, people in Roman times weren't usually nailed to crosses; they were tied up.
• Millennials are now finding out what it's like to try managing millennials. Pass the popcorn.
• Josh Malina is starting a weekly West Wing podcast. I'll have to listen.

OK, conference call is ending. Time to perambulate the pooch.

I think we can all agree that Donald Trump believes everything he says. Either he's a genius bullshitter or he has narcissistic personality disorder. It doesn't really matter in the end, but James Fallows still tries to sort it out:

A reader makes what may by now be an obvious point but is still worth reckoning with. He was responding to the post in which I noted Trump’s combination of masterful TV performance and near-total ignorance of the actual job and challenges of being president.

Imagine going through life with the conceptual framework that you simply cannot be wrong. Facts would cease to matter, and education would largely be irrelevant, because you're the one who determines what is and isn't true. In fact, people who claim to have expertise would become the enemy because they would provide information that would exist outside of yourself. If everything you say is the ultimate, universal truth, than anything that exists outside of yourself must be deception.

I think that Trump earnestly believes every single thing that comes out of his mouth, and that the reason his beliefs seem to change is because his reality is fluid.

Sounds about right. But then again, Scott Adams could also be correct. Either way, having this man so close to becoming president scares me more than any of the usual knaves and rogues the GOP has nominated would have.

And there's this:

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump won their respective Illinois primary elections yesterday. And in other news:

• Turns out, a strong social safety net leads to lower mortality, and because poor, mostly-white areas in the U.S. voted theirs down to minuscule levels, poor, white people are not doing well.
• When you vote against your own party in a hot battle with the opposition governor, and the governor wins that battle, that's a career-limiting move. Illinois representative Ken Dunkin (D-Chicago) got spanked hard for doing that last night. Good.
• A guy got charged with a misdemeanor for allegedly jamming cell phones on the CTA Red Line.
• President Obama nominated an old white guy to the Supreme Court this morning, flummoxing Senate Republicans who want to stonewall the process.
• For no reason anyone can determine, the city seems to be waging a war against valet parking companies. Businesses are annoyed.
• The Daily WTF thought President Obama sounded like an idiot boss on the subject of cell-phone encryption. Even John Oliver thought so.
• London is using pigeons with tiny backpacks to measure air pollution. No, really.
• Marco Rubio's friends say he's a lazy, devious little twerp—on the record. He's also dropped out of the 2016 race, and will probably be out of politics for a couple elections.
• Donald Trump's butler probably thought he was helping his boss by giving an interview to the Times, but...well...
• The Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo (C2E2) is this weekend. Here's what to see.

Time to write some documentation. Whee.

I'm leaving Harold Washington in a few minutes, now that I've caught up on some reading:

• Clancy Martin attempted to explain the martyr-like appeal of Ted Cruz.
• Deeply Trivial, who writes survey questions as part of her job, explained why she doesn't take surveys.
• Via Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, the University of Arizona outlined some new data linking sunspots, shipwrecks, tree trunks, and hurricanes.
• Suzy Khimm described the return of the pillory—via Internet, of course—as a tactic of some public prosecutors, most notably in the 2013 "Flush the Johns" operation in Nassau County, New York.
• Cranky Flier got interested in a robot that cleans airplanes. It's pretty cool.
• NPR media critic Adam Frank said I should watch SyFy's new series, "The Expanse."
• Engineer John Hayes wondered if we'll ever see a space elevator of the sort depicted in Neal Stephenson's Seveneves or Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars.
• Spanish writer Cristina Pop thought living in London was the worst three years of her life. (It sounds like her experiences don't exactly line up with mine, starting with her not speaking a word of English when she got there.)

I also watched a time-lapse video of the Chicago River turning green last year. If you want to see this odd Chicago tradition, go downtown tomorrow at 9.

In between four rehearsals and two performances this week (Monday through Sunday), I'm taking tonight off. So while I have a minute or two between helping new developers understand some old code, I'm jotting down this list of things that looked particularly appealing when they came up on RSS feeds:

• Citylab explores cities that use numbers for both streets and avenues. They also wonder why America hates roundabouts.
• New Republic reassures Republicans that it's OK to burn down their own party, and reassures David Brooks that he's not crazy.
• Writing for The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg examines the Obama Doctrine.
• Josh Marshall calls bullshit on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

OK, the new devs are testing something...and more on that later.

Think Progress grinds through the history of Trump Steaks™:

Reporters from Home magazine, Gourmet magazine, People, New York Daily News, and Every Day with Rachael Ray showed up to the launch, which featured speeches by both Levin and Trump. Trump took the opportunity to boast of the steaks’ quality, telling reporters that the product was going to be a boon for the company, equivalent to Trump Vodka, which had launched just a year earlier.

The steaks were only available for mail order, and ranged from the Classic Collection, which cost customers $199 for two filet mignons, two cowboy bone-in rib-eyes and 12 burgers, to $999 for 24 burgers and 16 steaks.

But despite the rash of media attention, [Sharper Image CEO Jerry] Levin said, the steaks just didn’t sell.

Not all reviews of Trump Steaks were bad. Sharon Dowell, former food editor for the Oklahoman, called the steaks “tender, juicy and absolutely among the best-tasting steaks I’ve cooked on my home grill.” The New York Post gave them a 7.5 out of 10, noting that it was “an undeniably good steak” — but still three times the price of another steak that they gave a 7 to in the same taste test. Gourmet, in their taste test, were less effusive, calling the steaks “edible, but not particularly good.”

Martha Stewart, however, had perhaps the most unique response to Trump Steaks. In an interview with Joan Rivers, the lifestyle mogul and former Apprentice contestant replied “Too bad!” when Rivers said that the steaks weren’t actually from a slaughtered Donald Trump.

This person is the front-runner for leadership of the Republican party.

Not surprisingly, he behaves like a dick:

Though Trump is pitching himself to voters as a dealmaker who wins, the 12-year drama of the Trump International Hotel & Tower offers a more complicated narrative. While it reinforces his preferred image as a bold risk-taker and consummate salesman, it underscores his darker reputation as a bullying businessman willing to back out of deals and trash the competition when it's convenient. And that big TRUMP sign on the front of the building fits perfectly with the caricature of the developer as a narcissist and braggart.

Altogether, buyers of 43 condos—32 residential units and 11 hotel units—took advantage of [a 10% discount "friends and family"] deal, a group that included attorneys at DLA Piper, Trump's law firm, and architects at Skidmore Owings & Merrill, which designed the skyscraper. Some buyers demanded that Trump honor his original deal, and Trump backed down. Others were unwilling to jeopardize a valuable business relationship and simply accepted Trump's new terms without a fight.

Trump took on another group—his financial backers. Unable to pay off a maturing construction loan from a bank group led by Deutsche Bank, he sued them in 2008 for more time, citing a “force majeure” clause in his loan agreement. Such clauses are designed to give borrowers relief in the case of unforeseen, cataclysmic events, like floods or wars, but Trump argued that the financial crisis qualified. He also sought $3 billion in damages.

That a good 25% of American voters support this guy turns my stomach. But evidence about how he behaves, and how he repeatedly tries to screw his counterparties on deals, actually boosts his standing among those voters. Regardless of the outcome of this election—I'm hoping for something like the Whig implosion of 1852—it speaks poorly of our country that he's got this much support.

The GOP made their own bed: