The Daily Parker

The first polls close in the US next Tuesday in Indiana at 6 pm EST (5 pm Chicago time, 22:00 UTC) and the last ones in Hawaii and Alaska at 7pm HST and 8pm AKST respectively (11 pm in Chicago, 05:00 UTC). You can count on all your pocket change that I'll be live-blogging for most of that time. I do plan actually to sleep next Tuesday, so I can't guarantee we'll know anything for certain before I pass out, but I'll give it the college try.

Meanwhile:

• The US Senate confirmed Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court last night by a vote of 52-48, with only Susan Collins (R-ME) joining the Democrats. It's the first time since Reconstruction that the Senate confirmed an Associate Justice with no votes from the opposition party. And in the history of our country, only two people have been confirmed by a smaller margin: Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas. I'm sure the three of them will continue to fight for bipartisanship and good jurisprudence as strongly as they ever have.
• Emma Green points out "the inevitability of Amy Coney Barrett," because the Republicans don't care. And Olivia Nuzzi brings us the story of "the tortured self-justification of one very powerful Trump-loathing anonymous Republican."
• Bill McKibben reminds us "there's nothing sacred about nine justices; a livable planet, on the other hand..."
• Speaking of the planet, Tropical Storm Zeta became Hurricane Zeta last night. The 2020 season has now tied the all-time record for the number of named Atlantic storms set in January 2006, and it's only October.
• Bars and restaurants in suburban Cook County have to close again tomorrow as statewide Covid-19 cases exceed 4,500 on a rolling 14-day average. Some parts of the state have seen positivity rates over 7.5% in the last couple of weeks. My favorite take-out Chinese place down by my office is also closing for the winter, which I understand but which still saddens me.
• The Washington Post asked TV screenwriters how 2020 should end.
• In one small bit of good news, the Food and Drug Administration has finally agreed that whisky is gluten-free, as gluten does not evaporate in the distilling process and so stays in the mash.

Finally, from a reader in Quebec comes a tip about violent clashes between a Canadian First Nation, the Mi'kmaw tribe of Nova Scotia, and local commercial fishermen over First Nations lobster rights. If you think Canada is a land without racism, well...they're just more polite about it.

Unlike the first presidential debate on September 29th (i.e., two years ago), nothing that happened at last night's debate made me want to become a hermit in the mountains of New Zealand. But two big things stood out.

Most importantly, Joe Biden pledged to expand Obamacare with a true public option. This would expand health coverage to the entire country. It would constitute the broadest expansion of a public program in my lifetime. And it would take the biggest step towards a true guarantee of health care in the US since Medicare became law in 1965. I imagine UHG, Blue Cross, and all the other health insurers in the country just started taking a hard look at their stock option plans.

On the other side of the ledger--the side making New Zealand more attractive to me--the president essentially said that only stupid undocumented immigrants show up to immigration court. This goes along with his general belief that following the law is for suckers. And coming in the same debate in which he reiterated his "rapists and murderers" view of immigrants, it really showcased his unfitness to lead a country where fewer than 1% of its families can claim to have lived here for 500 or more years.

Other reactions, from home and abroad:

• The Guardian: the president "has given up trying to articulate a plan."
• Le Monde: the president "needed a striking victory to change the dynamic of the election. This wasn't the case."
• El Universal: "nada cambia." (Nothing changed.)
• The Toronto Star: "final debate is calmer amid the campaign storm."
• The Washington Post: The changes to the debate format "all worked. There were far fewer interruptions — perhaps because Trump recognized it didn’t really work for him last time, but also because of the changes — and there was a far more substantive exchange on the issues." Still, the president said nothing new.
• The New York Times: "Biden’s win is also a function of a solid performance focused on real issues, in contrast with the president’s decision to spend most of the debate on the deep lore of the Fox Cinematic Universe."

Of course, last night's debate won't change a thing. About a third of the electorate, including I, have already voted. The number of truly undecided voters this cycle wouldn't make a dent in the Tampa Bay Rays fan base. And as the man himself pointed out last night, we're only one Scaramucci (11 days) from the polls closing.

Here we go, the third second presidential debate of the 2020 election. Unlike the first debate, in this one, the moderator can muzzle the guy who's not speaking. Will it make a difference? We will see.

Once again, I'll be watching PBS. All times below are Central Daylight Time (UTC -5).

19:41: Watching last weekend's John Oliver waiting for the debate to start. He's explaining how we really screwed the WHO. Fun times...

20:02: 47 million people have already voted. That's 34% of all the votes cast in 2016.

20:03: And here we go. PBS is almost 2 seconds behind NPR, which I have playing in the kitchen, for obvious reasons.

20:05: "More than 40,000 Americans are in the hospital with Covid... How would you lead the country?" The president: "As you know, 2.2 million people were going to die." Oh FFS. Almost nothing he said in his answer was true. This is going to be a looooong hour and a half.

20:08: Biden: "There are 1,000 deaths a day. No one responsible for those deaths should be president. ... The president has no plan. ... Wear masks all the time, invest in rapid testing, national standards...." See? That's called a plan.

20:09: The president: "We're counting on the military [to distribute vaccine]." What? Biden: "Make sure everything is transparent. By the way, this is the same fellow who said this would end by Easter. ... He has no clear plan, and no prospect of a vaccine soon."

20:13: Why is the president blaming Biden for H1N1? Biden: "He is xenophobic, but not because he banned China. He did virtually nothing."

20:14: The president: "He's obviously made a lot of money somehow. ... I'd like to lock myself up in the basement, or in a beautiful room in the White House for a year and a half." Yeah, one can dream. And Biden's reactions are perfect.

20:15: Biden: "He says we're learning to live with it? Come on, we're dying with it." Nice.

20:16: The president: "It's China's fault!" Biden: "What did the president say in January? ... Maybe we should inject bleach? ... We're about to lose 200,000 more people!"

20:17: "Do you want to respond to that, Mr Vice President?" "No." He got the president's goat and then said "nyah."

20:19: Biden: "You need money to open, and he hasn't done anything to make that happen."

20:21: Biden: "We ought to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time." Arguing for money to help businesses. Arguing that it's a continuum, not black and white. "Continuum," unfortunately, is not a word the president can comprehend. Or spell.

20:22: A Daily Parker reader texts: "Wow, what restraint. No one's landing a single blow." I disagree; the president is coming close to hitting himself.

20:23: The president keeps saying businesses are "getting killed" but, to Biden's point, refuses to deal with the Democrats in Congress to get aid passed.

20:27: (Had to get a G&T, sorry about the delay.) Biden: "Giuliani is being used as a Russian pawn. ... Russia wants to make sure I don't get elected. ... I don't understand why this president isn't taking on Putin when he's paying bounties to kill American soldiers."

20:28: The president: "You got $3.5 million from Putin. I never got any money from Russia. ... There's been nobody tougher than me on Russia." Wut? "They took over a big part of Ukraine, you handed it to them."

20:30: Oh, FFS, "the emails"? I mean, really?

20:31: Biden: Hitting the president's conflicts of interest in China, including the bank accounts. "I have released ... 22 years of my tax returns. What are you hiding? Foreign countries are paying you a lot."

20:32: Again with the "under audit" crap? What the hell, "pre-paid" taxes? THAT ISN'T HOW ANY OF THIS WORKS.

20:34: "Phony witch hunt." FFS. Another TDP reader: "This is the most ridiculous 'debate' we've ever seen. I can't decide who is most inarticulate. Bullshit bullshit bullshit. This will accomplish nothing for either of them. The needle will not move in either direction." Well, sure; but nothing happens in Kabuki, either.

20:37: The president has to respond. He has to get the last word in. He can't help it.

20:40: "He pokes his finger in the eyes of all our allies. ... We need to have all our friends supporting us against China."

20:41: "All this malarkey." If I were doing a drinking game, that would be a big one.

20:43: Again, the president is all-or-nothing, which hobbles him: "If there's a war [with North Korea], it would be a nuclear war." And now he's just saved 25 million Koreans by not trying to rein in Kim.

20:45: Biden: "The Korean Peninsula must be a nuclear-free zone." The president: "[Kim] didn't like Obama." Biden: "He wouldn't meet with President Obama ... because we were putting on sanctions." And the president just can't give in. Biden is getting under his skin now.

20:47: The president is taking credit for ending the individual mandate. Unbelievable. That's like Major Dyer taking credit for Amritsar.

20:49: And the president got muted. Nice. Biden: "I'm going to pass Obamacare with a public option." WHAT? WHAT WHAT WHAT? Woooooooot!

20:50: Biden: "We're going to get the pre-existing condition plan when we get the infrastructure plan." The president is turning purple, making faces...Biden is getting to him.

20:51: Biden: "Everyone should have the right to affordable healthcare." Hear hear! "This is something that's going to save people's lives, and give people an opportunity...to have health care for their children."

20:52: The president: "[Harris] is more liberal than Bernie Sanders." Tell that to the people she prosecuted.

20:53: TDP reader, by text: "Joe has hit his stride now." Yep. And now the president is lying about Social Security.

20:54: Biden: "He's a very confused guy. He thinks he's running against someone else. I beat them." "The idea that Donald Trump is lecturing me on Social Security and Medicare? Come on." And it got to the president.

20:55: Biden: "Where I come from...people don't live off the stock market." Beautiful pivot. And the president walked right into it.

20:57: "Mr President, why haven't you gotten the relief bill?" The president: "Nancy Pelosi does not want to approve it." Moderator: "But you're the president." Biden: "I have [pushed a deal]. ... This HEROES Act has been sitting there! ... He will not support that, and Mitch McConnell won't either."

20:59: Biden repeats the Obama "I don't see red states and blue states" line. "The founders were smart; they allowed the government to deficit-spend for the United States of America." OK, that was a bit much.

21:00: The president demonstrate a complete lack of understanding about how wages work. Which means he's talking about how wages work.

21:02: We're an hour in, and the president has yet to articulate a single coherent government policy. And here comes the question about children separated from their parents at the border, and he blames the kids.

21:03: "But how will you reunite children with their families?" The president goes on about cartels, coyotes, and Obama. "Yes, we're working on a policy." Biden slams him: "Their parents brought them over. ... We're a laughingstock." Using the president's favorite words against him.

21:04: The president is now 100% on the defensive, and he's slipping.

21:05: Biden: "Within 100 days, I'm going to send to Congress a pathway to citizenship for 11 million people. ... Over 20,000 [Dreamers] are first responders ... We owe them." The president: "He had 8 years..." Yes, but he was vice-president. You're president.

21:07: The president: "A murder would come in, a rapist would come in ... and we would release them. ... Only those, I reeeeeeeally hate to say this, only those with low IQs would come back." Wow. Just, wow.

21:09: I'm still in awe of the president's last answer. One could extrapolate that he believes that people who obey the law are stupid. I sincerely hope he learns a clear lesson from Cyrus Vance next year.

21:10: Did the president just say "good" in response to Biden talking about how people of color are afraid of police? What?

21:13: What is he talking about? I do not know what the president is talking about.

21:14: The president: "I ran because of you, I ran because of Barack Obama." Yes: and let's remember why.

21:16: The president, on contributing to an environment of hate, first conflated BLM with anti-police extremists, and then "I am the least racist person in this room." OK. Right. And then he repeated this.

21:18: Biden: "Abraham Lincoln here is the most racist person here. ... This guy is a dog-whistle the size of a foghorn." And the president goes off on "Abraham Lincoln" instead of what Biden actually said, and then turns it around to the Crime Bill of 1994. Biden, with eyeroll: "Oh, god."

21:20: The moderator follows up on the Crime Bill. "Why should those families vote for you?" Biden: "In the 1980s, all 100 Senators voted for a drug bill... It was a mistake. ... People should not go to jail for a drug or alcohol problem, they should go to treatment." The president: "Why didn't he get it done? That's what these politicians do." Well, yes, that's the downside of not living in a dictatorship.

21:23: The president: "Look at China. It's filthy. Look at India. Filthy." He just insulted a fifth of the world. Good job. And all of this in an answer about climate change. Biden: "Climate change...is an existential threat to humanity." One notices subtle differences between the candidates...

21:27: Biden: "I don't know where he comes from. I don't know where he comes up with these numbers. '$100 trillion?' Come on."

21:30: Biden: "We need other industries to get to zero emissions by 2025." Uh, Joe...did you mean 2035?

21:34: The moderator, Kristen Welker, is not taking shit from anyone. She may have won this one.

21:35: Biden's closing: "We're going to choose science over fiction. We're going to choose hope over fear."

Ite missa est.

I'm switching to NPR for commentary, then walking the dog and going to bed. This debate didn't accomplish much, but that's OK. It reminded everyone what normal might look like. In that way, Biden might have the upper hand.

I believe we will know who won on Election Night, so I'll live-blog a week from Tuesday. A lot could happen, but I don't think a lot will. I am so looking forward to a calmer, more predictable White House starting next January.

I cracked the code on an application rewrite I last attempted in 2010, so I've spent a lot of my copious free time the past week working on it. I hope to have more to say soon, but software takes time. And when I'm in the zone, I like to stay there. All of which is why it's 9:30 and I have just gotten around to reading all this:

• The president stomped out of a 60 Minutes interview with Lesley Stahl, and for reasons passing understanding, has threatened to release it himself.
• Pope Francis has officially endorsed civil partnerships for gays, to mixed reviews.
• NASA successfully landed a probe onto a small asteroid that scooped up some dust and gently lifted off again.
• The Lyric Opera of Chicago has officially cancelled the remainder of the 2020-21 season due to Covid-19.
• On this day in 1926, the heads of Chicago's Prohibition-era gangs signed a peace deal. (It lasted almost a year.)
• And what is "cuffing season" and why did no one inform me about it?

I'm now going to turn off all my screens, walk Parker, and go to bed. (Though I just got the good news that my 8:30 am demo got moved to a later time.)

After finishing a sprint review, it's nice to reset for a few minutes. So after working through lunch I have some time to catch up on these news stories:

• Faced with rising Covid-19 infections and deaths, Governor JB Pritzker has ordered suburban Chicago bars and restaurants to temporarily cease indoor dining.
• The Verge has an analysis of how Foxconn conned the people of Wisconsin (with the active complicity of former governor Scott Walker).
• Steven Pearlstein points out that, should we win the Senate and White House, we will have a far easier time legislating than fighting the Supreme Court.
• Former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steel has endorsed Joe Biden.
• Crain's political columnist Greg Hinz recommends voting for the Fair Tax amendment to Illinois' constitution, even though its biggest champion hasn't made the best case.
• Julia Ioffe investigates the mysterious attacks on American diplomats and attempts to figure out what actually happened.

Finally, mathematician and humorist Tom Lehrer has waived most of the copyright protections around his music and lyrics, effectively putting the corpus of his work into the public domain. He says: "Most of the music written by Tom Lehrer will be added gradually later with further disclaimers." People have until the end of 2024 to download the materials he has released.

I did a lot today, so I've just gotten around to these stories:

• The Commission on Presidential Debates announced a rule change (that, of course, the president hated) for Thursday's debate: only the person who should be speaking will have a hot mic.
• Franklin Foer believes Biden "is preparing for a transformative presidency."
• Rachel Monroe explains how to spot a military impostor.
• The Economist points out that peaceful transfers of power happen less often than the not-so-peaceful.
• Meredith Shiner blames US Senator Susan Colins (R-ME) for some of the problems the Senate faces today.
• The BBC Reality Check takes on the bullshit claims about voter fraud coming from the Republican Party.
• Aaron Blake shows how dumb was the president's recent attack on Anthony Fauci.
• John Scalzi has some thoughts about the upcoming election.
• Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot warns that we're now in a second Covid-19 surge.

Finally, I may be published in a national magazine next month. Details as I learn them.

Science-fiction author John Scalzi (Red Shirts, Old Man's War) lives in Darke County, Ohio, population 52,000, 97% of them white. He does not exactly fit in with his neighbors politically, as he describes:

Four years ago in Bradford, the town where I live, there were Trump street signs, like the one in the picture above. Here in 2020, there are multiple signs per yard, and banners, and flags, not just with Trump’s name on them, but of him standing on a moving tank whilst screaming eagles fly alongside him, and no, those flags are not being flown ironically, they really mean it. There are occasional Biden signs, mostly of modest size, but anecdotally they are outnumbered by Trump signs by at least twenty to one. The 2020 Darke County Trump tank is deep and perhaps a bit frantic. If Trump is hoping for “shy voters” to suddenly spring up to take him to victory, he’s not going to get them here. Darke County Trump supporters may be many things, but shy does not appear one of them.

A whole bunch of the voters are being fed shit from social media and questionable news sources and either they don’t know it or they don’t care. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the epistemic capture in the US of (not only, but in particular) poor and working class whites by conservatives, billionaires and propagandists is one of the great social engineering success stories of the last half century. This includes an informational ecosystem that’s easy to get into and hard to get out of because it simultaneously stimulates fear and anger responses, degrades one’s own ability to reason, and breeds mistrust in outside sources and political points of view. In other words: cult conditioning.

Now, it would unfair nonsense to suggest the people of a county that hasn’t gone for a Democrat since LBJ would not be reliably voting for whomever the GOP candidate was every four years. But it’s not unfair nonsense to say that convincing a historically large percentage of these folks to vote for someone who four years ago was clearly not competent to be president, and in 2020 has a nearly four-year record of venal graft and malice, is the fruit of a decades-long effort to get into their heads and make them resistant to actual facts that are right in front of them. It’s not coincidence that QAnon is metastasizing through conservative and GOP circles at breathtaking speed; having a millions-strong corps of voters willing to lap up even that level of rank bullshit is in fact the goal.

Meanwhile, Jamelle Bouie picks apart the nonsense of "constitutional originalism," which to me seems no better than any other fundamentalist religion.

It could be worse. It might yet be:

• Covid-19 cases have started to climb once again in the US, passing 8 million just three weeks after passing 7 million. In Illinois, we hit a second consecutive record, with 4,554 new cases today. (There were a record 4,015 yesterday.)
• TNR's Alex Shepherd says NBC did the Biden campaign a huge favor by booking the president, forcing a direct comparison between the two candidates in real time.
• The Atlantic's Adrienne LaFrance compares the absurd conspiracy theory QAnon to a nascent religion.
• New York Times columnist Jennifer Senior awards Rod Rosenstein the prize for "most complicit."
• In a post earlier last month, pilot Patrick Smith compared airplane food between airlines. (It's a fun post. Really.)

And hey, we're only 95½ days away from Joe Biden's inauguration.

Variety reported this morning that Joe Biden had higher ratings than the president last night:

Biden drew 12.7 million total viewers on the Disney-owned network, while Trump drew 10.4 million in the same 9-10 p.m. time slot on NBC. Across the entire runtime, the Biden town hall averaged 12.3 million viewers. In terms of the fast national 18-49 demographic, Biden is comfortably on top with a 2.6 rating to Trump’s 1.7.

(I wonder if anyone has told him yet? Oh, to be a fly on Pence's head during that conversation...)

Apparently things didn't go as planned for the president, either. NBC decided they needed to commit actual journalism:

[D]espite fears that the event would amount to a free promotion for Trump’s campaign, it ended up being one of the toughest grillings he has faced as president, with questions about white supremacy, covid-19 deaths and his taxes.

At one point, after pushing Trump on his retweet of a QAnon-linked conspiracy theory, Guthrie said, “I don’t get that. You’re the president. You’re not like someone’s crazy uncle who can just retweet whatever.”

When Trump said he wasn’t familiar with QAnon, Guthrie said “you do know,” to which he replied: “No, I don’t know. You tell me all about it. Let’s waste the whole show. Let’s go. Keep asking me these questions.”

After questioning him about his frequent claims of election fraud, Guthrie told him, “There is no evidence of widespread fraud, and you are sowing doubt in our democracy."

The "crazy uncle" comment prompted memes within seconds, of course, most of them with Mary Trump's face on them.

I am not sorry I missed the thing. Biden's, apparently, went pretty smoothly. I really can't wait until we have a calmer White House in January.

I dropped off my completed ballot this afternoon, so if Joe Biden turns out to be the devil made flesh, I can't change my vote.

Tonight, the president and Joe Biden will have competing, concurrent town halls instead of debating each other, mainly because the president is an infant. The Daily Parker will not live-blog either one. Instead, I'll whip up a stir-fry and read something.

In other news:

• Chris Christie continues the tradition of Republican politicians not understanding something until it happens to them directly by imploring people to wear masks now that he's out of a week-long stint in the ICU.
• Former White House Counsel Bob Bauer and Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith suggest six ways to protect the rule of law once the president leaves office. Separately, University of Chicago law professor Ryan Doerfler explains how to "make the Supreme Court safe for democracy."
• TNR's David Daley takes us through the "Republican plot for permanent minority rule."
• Illinois hit a record number (4,015) of confirmed Covid-19 cases today.
• We don't actually have to have a surge of Covid-19 cases; we can stop it.
• Google explains how their popular times and live busyness information feature works.
• Metra has sued Union Pacific for lost ticket revenue as their contract lurches toward an end.

Finally, a pie-wedge-shaped house in Deerfield, Ill., is now on Airbnb for $113 a night. Enjoy.