The Daily Parker

I could have worked from home today, and probably should have, but I felt well enough to come in (wearing an N95 mask, of course). It turned that I had a very helpful meeting, which would not have worked as well remotely, but given tomorrow's forecast and the likelihood I'll still have this cold, Cassie will just have to miss a day of school.

I have to jam on a presentation for the next three hours, so I'll come back to these later:

• Alex Shephard says this is the week Twitter finally went totally evil.
• Bret Stephens says the American anti-Israel left really needs to sit down for a minutes.
• Julia Ioffe decided to take the risk of getting yelled at as she mourns the chance for any peaceful resolution to the millennia-long conflict in the Levant.
• Yair Rosenberg interviews his friend Amir Tibon, who describes how he and his family survived the Hamas attack on Nahal Oz on Saturday.
• Yoval Noah Harari draws a line from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (Likud) and right-wing populism to Saturday's attack.
• Netanyahu and opposition leader Benny Gantz (Blue and White) have agreed to form a wartime coalition, excluding the crazy parties on both sides, and to suspend routine legislative activity.
• Speaking of crazy parties, House Republicans have nominated Steve Scalise (R-LA), "David Duke without the baggage," to take over as Speaker. He needs 217 votes to get elected, which means any 4 people in his party can send this game to overtime.
• As soon as that's done, the New York delegation to the Republican House Caucus plans to introduce a measure to kick out Rep. George Santos (R-NY). This will probably succeed as the seat will certainly go to a Democrat next November if he stays, but only probably go to one if the GOP can run someone else.
• In a filing with the court overseeing the XPOTUS's classified-documents trial this week, the US said it can show why he took the documents. ("Vell, Donald's just zis guy, you know?")
• Speaking of fraud, Molly White takes us through the first half of Caroline Ellison's testimony in the Sam Bankman-Fried trial.
• Speaking of corruption, US Associate Justice Clarence Thomas (R$), the subject of thousands of press reports that he took bribes in every form but bags of cash from billionaires before ruling on their cases before the Supreme Court, once again called on the Court to do away with the Sullivan rule that ensures the press can find out when Justices are on the take.
• Caltrans fired its deputy director for planning and modal programs for advocating against widening I-80 through Sacramento, even though widening I-80 through Sacramento is one of the worst ideas currently proposed by Caltrans.

Finally, no sooner did it open than the new Guinness brewery in Chicago is for sale. It will stay a Guinness brewery, just under different ownership. The Brews and Choos Project will get there soon.

Just a few:

• US Representative George Santos (R-NY) faces another 21 felony charges in New York, with prosecutors alleging he stole donors' identities and misappropriated their donations.
• Isabel Fattal attempts to explain Hamas, the terrorist organization that attacked Israel on Saturday.
• Alex Shephard is glad the news media have gotten better at reporting on the XPOTUS, but they've still missed the biggest part: he's a "singular threat to American democracy."
• Jason Pargin pays homage to celebrity worship, and goggles at how weird it's gotten.
• Molly White explains the evidence presented at Sam Bankman-Fried's trial yesterday that (allegedly) shows how they perpetrated the fraud in code.
• McSweeney's has a helpful template for right-wingers who are upset with Taylor Swift.

Finally, National Geographic gets cozy with the history of bedbugs and their relationship to humans. Fun evening read, y'all!

I woke up this morning feeling like I'm fighting a cold, which usually means I'm fighting a cold. One negative Covid test later, I'm still debating whether to go to rehearsal tonight. Perhaps after a nap. And wearing an N-95.

Meanwhile, in the rest of the world:

• Kenyan runner Kelvin Kiptum ran the world's fastest marathon yesterday in Chicago, finishing the race in 2:00:35, 36 seconds faster than Eliud Kipchoge's 2:01:09 set last year in Berlin.
• David Ignatius reflects on the massive intelligence failure that allowed Hamas to attack Israel over the weekend.
• Matt Ford completely debunks the XPOTUS's argument that being president granted him total immunity from prosecution. Along those lines, David Graham says that anyone who represents the XPOTUS in court has a fool for a client.
• David French finds "moral outrage" in the insult "OK Boomer."
• Chicago spent $3.5 million hosting NASCAR over the summer, offset only a bit by the $620,000 in fees the organization paid to the city for the privilege. And we're stuck doing it next year, too.

Finally, pilot and journalist Jim Fallows annotates a 17-minute video of the Air Traffic Control conversations with FedEx 1376, which made a gear-up landing at Chattanooga, Tenn., last week. (No one was injured, but the Boeing 757 will probably be written off.)

A rainy cold front passed over Inner Drive Technology WHQ just after noon, taking us from 15°C down to just above 10°C in two hours. The sun has come back out but we won't get a lot warmer until next week.

I've had a lot of coding today, and I have a rehearsal in about two hours, so this list of things to read will have to do:

• Mother Jones's Russ Choma thinks the XPOTUS doesn't really want to win his fraud trial.
• Robert Wright interviewed Brown University professor Lyle Goldstein, late of the US Naval War College, about what lessons Ukraine holds for Taiwan.
• Michael Tomasky salivates over the prospect of Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) becoming Speaker of the House, which Josh Marshall understands.
• The Post details a gruesome Tesla crash the NTSB partially blamed on "over-reliance on automation."
• The Chicago City Council approved a plan to end the sub-minimum wage for tipped workers in Chicago.
• At least 960 migrating birds smacked into the side of Chicago's lakefront convention center yesterday, a new record.
• Poet Jesse Nathan sighs over the loss of poetry in Baseball.

Finally, for the first time in 346 days, the Chicago Bears won a football game. Amazing.

US Representative and certified-fresh moistly-steaming dingleberry Matt Gaetz (R-FL) succeeded in catching his speeding car:

On Tuesday, allies of Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) tried to table the motion, which would have stopped the resolution in its tracks. The motion to table failed by a simple-majority vote. Lawmakers then moved on to a vote to vacate the speakership. With 216 members voting for his removal, McCarthy was ousted Tuesday afternoon.

Of course all of my guys voted to remove him. And now, per the post-9/11 continuity of government rules, Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) has taken over as Speaker Pro Tempore—an office that appears nowhere in the Constitution nor in the Presidential Succession Act of 1947. Senate President Pro Tempore Patty Murray (D-WA) is now 3rd in line to the Presidency.

Former House Speaker Newt Fucking Gingrich (R-GA) has already published an op-ed in the Washington Post (the Post!) arguing that the Republican Party should expel Gaetz for being (checks notes) so dumb you can hear the ocean when you stand next to him:

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) is an anti-Republican who has become actively destructive to the conservative movement.

Gaetz obviously hates House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) — and that’s fine. If Gaetz were simply a loudmouthed junior member who attacked McCarthy every day, that would be fine, too. He would just be isolated with a small group of lawmakers who can’t figure out how to get things done. They’d huddle together seeking warmth and reassurance from their fellow incompetents.

Gaetz’s motion to remove McCarthy should have been swiftly defeated, but it wasn’t; he should still be expelled from the House Republican Conference. House Republicans have far more important things to do than entertain one member’s ego.

My god, that's rich coming from Gingrich. Someone tell that poor schmuck that he's the reason Gaetz ever got on the ballot. Gingrich spent all four years as Speaker trying to convince ordinary Americans that the US Government wasn't capable of helping them, mainly by smashing bits of it with a hammer and wasting Congress's time with impeaching President Clinton. But hey, as the old joke goes, there are some things not even a Gingrich will do.

And! I almost forgot this:

The New York judge presiding over Donald J. Trump’s civil fraud trial ordered the former president Tuesday not to attack or even comment on court staff after Mr. Trump posted a message to social media targeting the judge’s law clerk.

Mr. Trump has spent much of the first two days of the trial attacking Justice Engoron, Ms. Greenfield and Letitia James, the New York attorney general. Ms. James filed the lawsuit that led to the trial that began Monday. She accused Mr. Trump of “staggering fraud” in the way he inflated the values of his assets, as a way to gain favorable treatment from banks and insurance companies. Ms. James and Justice Engoron are both Democrats.

As Napoleon said, “when the enemy is making a false movement we must take good care not to interrupt him.” Godspeed, House Republicans! You have 43 days to solve this before the government budget lapses again.

I haven't had the most productive morning ever, but I should get back into coding after I take Cassie on her lunchtime walk. Meanwhile:

• California governor Gavin Newsom (D) has announced he would appoint Emily's List president Laphonza Butler to serve out the remainder of the late US Senator Dianne Feinstein's term.
• The XPOTUS has shown up to his fraud trial in New York today, in what Michael Tomasky hopes will utterly ruin the man.
• In the Post, Michael Lewis examines the last year of Sam Bankman-Fried's life in the Crypto game.
• US Representative and clownish dingleberry Matt Gaetz (R-FL) threatened to call a vote on House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's (R-CA) tenure, but since just about everyone in his party can't stand him, the threat is going nowhere. But as Aaron Blake points out, my party won't save McCarthy either.

Finally, just look at this wonderful creature who got a bath yesterday. She actually climbed into the tub on her own, and seems to have figured out that getting a vigorous whole-body massage with warm water, followed by an equally-vigorous toweling off, actually feels pretty good.

Somehow, it's already the end of September. I realize this happens with some predictability right around this time of year, but it still seems odd to me.

Of course, most of the world seems odd these days:

• As we careen into the 4th Republican-caused government shutdown in the last 30 years, we might want to reflect on the fact that only 68,000 people elected the 8 clowns most responsible for this year's bullshit.
• New York Times editorial board member Alex Kingsbury wants people to keep top of mind the XPOTUS's promises to expand his lawlessness if re-elected.
• India's assassination of a Canadian citizen over the summer looks even weirder when you consider that Sikh separatism isn't really a thing in India—at least no more than UP separatism is a thing in Michigan.
• Sal Gentile, a writer for Seth Myers, believes the recently-ended writers' strike showed all workers, not just writers, that labor can take back its power. The Atlantic's Lora Kelley agrees.
• Edith Olmsted loves that Taylor Swift makes right-wingers' brains explode.
• Travel site Travelbag crunched the data to find Chicago has the best beer-drinking experience in the world, followed by Hanoi, Jakarta, and Nanjing. San Diego and Houston come in second and third among US cities.

Finally, just look at this happy dog and all his new human friends playing a fun game of keep-away...during a professional football game in Mexico. I've watched it about five times now. The goodest boi was having such a great time. I hope one of the players or refs adopted him.

It's only Wednesday? Sheesh...

• The Writers Guild of America got nearly everything they wanted from the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (i.e., the Astroturf organization set up by the big studios and streamers to negotiate with the Guilds), especially for young writers and for hit shows, but consumers should expect more bundling and higher monthly fees for shows in the future.
• Josh Marshall suspects that the two competing storylines about the XPOTUS (that he's about to return to power, but he's also losing every legal battle he fights) are actually just one: his "current posture of bravado and menace – while real enough as a threat – is simply his latest con, concealing a weaker and more terrified reality."
• Jamie Bouie marvels that Justice Clarence Thomas (R$) wins the trifecta: "We have had partisan justices; we have had ideological justices; we have had justices who favored, for venal reasons, one interest over another. But it is difficult to think of another justice, in the history of the Supreme Court, who has been as partisan and as ideological and as venal as Thomas...."
• Melissa Gira Grant profiles US District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk (R-NDTX), a Christian nationalist who rose through the Federalist Society pipeline to a lifetime appointment where he will push his Victorian-era views on the people of Texas for the next 30 years or so.
• North Korea vomited up US Army Private 2nd Class Travis King, having used him for the little he was worth after the soon-to-be-dishonorably-discharged soldier illegally entered the kingdom in July.
• Kelli María Korducki worries that "in the age of AI, computer science is no longer the safe major," not realizing, perhaps, that the most effective programmers are and have always been liberal arts majors.

Finally, yet another fact that will make everyone I know feel old: today is Google's 25th birthday. And yes, the Daily Parker has been around longer trillion-dollar search company. We just haven't had our IPO yet.

New York Supreme Court (i.e., trial court) judge Arthur Engoron ruled yesterday that the XPOTUS's eponymous family business committed fraud on such a scale that the company is no longer allowed to do business in New York State:

The surprising decision...is a major victory for Attorney General Letitia James in her lawsuit against Mr. Trump, effectively deciding that no trial was needed to determine that he had fraudulently secured favorable terms on loans and insurance deals.

Ms. James has argued that Mr. Trump inflated the value of his properties by as much as $2.2 billion and is seeking a penalty of about $250 million in a trial scheduled to begin as early as Monday.

Justice Engoron wrote that the annual financial statements that Mr. Trump submitted to banks and insurance companies “clearly contain fraudulent valuations that defendants used in business.”

While the trial will determine the size of the penalty, Justice Engoron’s ruling granted one of the biggest punishments Ms. James sought: the cancellation of business certificates that allow some of Mr. Trump’s New York properties to operate, a move that could have major repercussions for the Trump family business.

In his order, Justice Engoron wrote scathingly about Mr. Trump’s defenses, saying that the former president and the other defendants, including his two adult sons and his company, ignored reality when it suited their business needs. “In defendants’ world,” he wrote, “rent-regulated apartments are worth the same as unregulated apartments; restricted land is worth the same as unrestricted land; restrictions can evaporate into thin air.”

The judge also levied sanctions on Mr. Trump’s lawyers for making arguments that he had previously rejected. He ordered each to pay $7,500, noting that he had previously warned them that the arguments in question bordered on being frivolous.

Wow. Who would have imagined that possibly the biggest grifter the United States has ever known, a man psychologically incapable of telling the truth, would have lied about his businesses? I mean, other than the sentient beings who have been laughing out loud at the man's self-description as a "billionaire" ever since he first uttered the word.

We've known for years that his "business empire" was a Potemkin village of naming rights and loans, with so many bankruptcies and defaults literally no respectable bank (and few disrespectable ones) would lend him any more money. Anyone who lived in New York as far back as the 1980s knew then that any nickels he could rub together came from someone else. But knowing he was full of shit and relying on fraudulent financial disclosures are two different things under the law.

I guess he'll have a few more bankruptcies under his immense belt soon. They'll go nicely with the 91 criminal charges against him.

And still, a third of the country think this man can do no wrong. Homines liber volunt credunt.

Other than getting a little rained on this morning, I've had a pretty good day. But that didn't leave a lot of time to catch up on any of these before I started a deployment just now:

• Heather Cox Richardson examines US history through the lens of a never-ending conflict between "two Americas, one based in religious zeal, mythology, and inequality; and one grounded in rule of the people and the pursuit of equality."
• Josh Marshall ponders the difficulty of covering the XPOTUS's increasingly ghastly behavior in the "both-sides" journalism world we inhabit.
• James Fallows zooms out to look at the framing decisions that journalists and their publishers make that inhibit our understanding of the world. Like, for example, looking at the soon-to-be 4th time Republicans in Congress have shut down the Federal government and blaming all of Washington.
• Fallows also called attention to Amna Nawaz's recent interview with authoritarian Turkish president Recep Erdogan in which she kept her cool and her focus and he...didn't.
• Speaking of the impending Republican torching of the US Government (again), Krugman looks at the two clown shows in the party, but wonders why "everyone says that with the rise of MAGA, the G.O.P. has been taken over by populists. So why is the Republican Party’s economic ideology so elitist and antipopulist?"
• The Supreme Court has once again told the Alabama legislature that it can't draw legislative maps that disenfranchise most of its black citizens. Which, given the state's history, just seems so unlike them.
• The Federal Trade Commission and 17 US States have sued Amazon for a host of antitrust violations. “A single company, Amazon, has seized control over much of the online retail economy,” said the lawsuit.
• Monica Hesse dredges all the sympathy and understanding she can muster for XPOTUS attorney Cassidy Hutchinson's memoir. NB: Hutchinson is 27, which means I am way overdue for starting my own memoir.
• Chicago Sun-Times columnist David Roeder complains that the CTA's planned Red Line extension to 130th Street doesn't take advantage of the existing commuter rail lines that already serve the far south side, but forgets (even as he acknowledges) that Metra and the CTA have entirely different missions and serve different communities. Of course we need new regional transport policies; but that doesn't mean the 130th St extension is bad.
• Software producer Signal, who make the Signal private messaging app, have said they will leave the UK if the Government passes a "safety" bill that gives GCHQ a back door into the app.
• Molly White shakes her head as the mainstream press comes to terms with something she's been saying for years now: NFTs have always been worthless. Oh, and crypto scored two $200-million thefts this week alone, which could be a new record, though this year has already seen $7.1 trillion of crypto thefts, hacks, scams, and other disasters.
• After almost 20 years and a the removal of much of an abandoned hospital in my neighboorhood, the city will finally build the park it promised in 2017.

Finally, I rarely read classical music reviews as scathing as Lawrence Johnson's evisceration of the Lyric Opera's Flying Dutchman opening night last Friday. Yikes.