The Daily Parker

A couple of articles piqued my interest over the last day:

• Via IFL Science, a team of graduate students from three European universities studied how long humans would survive the emergence of a vampire population. (It depends a lot on how effective your slayers are.) They even built a calculator.
• Harvard Law professor Lawrence Tribe, writing in the Financial Times, argues the STBXPOTUS should face prosecution for using the pardon power to obstruct justice.
• Emma Goldberg describes some coronavirus-era neologisms.

Finally, with only a few days left in December, we have now had 5 days this month with more Americans dead from Covid-19 than died on 9/11, and the STBXPOTUS won't sign even the miserly, half-assed recovery bill that Republicans in the Senate would agree to. January 20th can't come soon enough.

It's 11°C outside and I have a fuzzy houseguest for the day, so there will be walks! At least until the 20°C temperature drop starts around 6pm... So while I'm enjoying the last above-freezing day of the year with a very sweet and very strong office companion, I've got a few things to occupy my time.

At the top of my list today, we find that the STBXPOTUS has pardoned 15 truly awful murderers and grifters, including the four assholes who slaughtered unarmed Iraqi civilians in 2007. It's possible these are the worst pardons ever granted by a US president. (I wonder if Bill Moyers would agree.)

Next we have Bruce Schneier explaining just how bad the SolarWinds penetration really is.

And finally, US Surgeon General Dr Jerome Adams said Chicago's coronavirus vaccine rollout was the best in the nation. Go us!

I will now finish my lunch, guarded vigilantly by my neighbor's dog who hopes against all evidence that some of my ham sandwich will find its way to her snout.

FireEye, a cybersecurity firm, revealed last week that unknown parties had penetrated its network and that its clients, including the US Government, were at risk. Bruce Schneier has technical details about the attack. Former Homeland Security Adviser Thomas Bossert lays out the scope of it:

The attackers gained access to SolarWinds software before updates of that software were made available to its customers. Unsuspecting customers then downloaded a corrupted version of the software, which included a hidden back door that gave hackers access to the victim’s network.

This is what is called a supply-chain attack, meaning the pathway into the target networks relies on access to a supplier. Supply-chain attacks require significant resources and sometimes years to execute. They are almost always the product of a nation-state. Evidence in the SolarWinds attack points to the Russian intelligence agency known as the S.V.R., whose tradecraft is among the most advanced in the world.

According to SolarWinds S.E.C. filings, the malware was on the software from March to June. The number of organizations that downloaded the corrupted update could be as many as 18,000, which includes most federal government unclassified networks and more than 425 Fortune 500 companies.

The magnitude of this ongoing attack is hard to overstate.

The Russians have had access to a considerable number of important and sensitive networks for six to nine months. The Russian S.V.R. will surely have used its access to further exploit and gain administrative control over the networks it considered priority targets. For those targets, the hackers will have long ago moved past their entry point, covered their tracks and gained what experts call “persistent access,” meaning the ability to infiltrate and control networks in a way that is hard to detect or remove.

The logical conclusion is that we must act as if the Russian government has control of all the networks it has penetrated.

Now, if only we had an administration that believed its experts and a majority party in the Senate that would pass a Defense Reauthorization Bill...

The Electoral College has voted, and with no surprises, as of 16:37 Chicago time Joe Biden has received the requisite 270 votes to be elected President of the United States. And yet, we had a few surprises today:

• The loathsome STBXPOTUS fired his almost-equally-loathsome Attorney General, Bill Barr, which could not have happened to a better couple.
• The US passed 300,000 Covid-19 deaths today. Probably 250,000 could have been prevented.
• Security guru Bruce Schneier advocates for regulation of persuasion technologies.
• A man in Peoria, Ill., impersonated a property owner to have an artist paint a Cookie Monster mural. The real property owner did not find this amusing.

Finally, John le Carré died at 89 yesterday. Time to revisit Josephine Livingstone's review of "the glorious return of George Smiley," le Carré's 2017 novel A Legacy of Spies.

Just reviewing what I actually got up to yesterday, I'm surprised that I didn't post anything. I'm not surprised, however, that all of these articles piled up for me to read today:

• Dunn County, Wis., Democratic Party chair Bill Hogseth, writing in Politico, explains "why Democrats keep losing rural counties" like his.
• Ross Douthat asks, "why do so many Americans think the election was stolen?"
• Author Ben Judah explains why The Crown's portrayal of Prince Charles is wrong.
• The STBX administration's salted-earth activities include making the US citizenship test more political.
• The Federal Court for the District of Hawaii sentenced the corrupt former Honolulu police chief and his equally-corrupt ex-wife to prison for conspiracy, bank fraud, and other charges.
• The National Academy of Sciences has determined that a directed-microwave weapon sickened US diplomats in Havana, Cuba, but did not examine who fired it.
• Covid-19 has given us a whole new dictionary of workplace slang, according to 1843.
• The New Yorker's Alex Ross finds the moral closure of the 2004 film Downfall a little too facile.
• Divers in the Baltic Sea have found an Enigma coding device from May 1945.
• Though difficult to see from Chicago, a conjunction between Jupiter and Saturn will cause a rare double-planet effect this month, peaking when the planets are 6 arc-minutes apart on December 21st.

While I'm reading all of that, I've got a stew going in my Instant Pot (on slow-cooker mode). Unfortunately, it seems I underestimated the bulkiness of stew ingredients. I think I'll have a lot of leftovers:

So many things to read at lunchtime today:

• Philip Bump calls a video the soon-to-be-ex-president posted yesterday "the most petulant 46 minutes in American history."
• But whatever, because as David Graham points out, the STBXPOTUS is becoming irrelevant.
• As for voter fraud, and for accusing opponents of what you're actually the one doing, Georgia authorities have begun an investigation of a (Republican) Florida attorney who recommended to people that they illegally register to vote in Georgia ahead of the US Senate runoffs on January 5th, and even provided instructions.
• And speaking of lying about your opponents for political gain, the BBC calls bullshit on UK government claims that the EU would not have allowed the UK to approve the Pfizer vaccine as quickly as it did.
• If you live near Chicago, check out the Tribune's interactive map showing how every precinct in the six counties voted for president, US Senate, and the Fair Tax Amendment. As one of my friends pointed out, the line demarcating the Fair Tax vote between Evanston and Wilmette and the absence of such a demarcation on the Biden vote suggests that rich liberals say they're for fair taxes but don't actually vote for fair taxes.
• The National Science Foundation has released video from the Aricebo Observatory control tower showing its final collapse yesterday.
• Speaking of collapses, when you really think about it, Mount Rainier is actually the most dangerous volcano in the US. (Think: billions of liters of water locked up in its glaciers.)
• A shop in Kyoto has been selling mochi (grilled rice flour cakes) for over 1,000 years. And it's not even the oldest business in Kyoto.
• Google has made it easier for anyone, anywhere, to contribute to their Street View feature.

Finally, a year ago today I made some predictions about what could happen in the 2020 election. Turns out, "Option C" is true, and we're still waiting to see on a few others.

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.)

A cold front pushed its way through Chicago this afternoon, making it feel much more like autumn than we've experienced so far. And it got pretty chilly in Washington, where Senate Republicans began the first day of hearings into the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court:

• Matt Ford says Barrett's nomination is "the culmination of [the right-wing Federalist Society] movement’s work—and perhaps its high-water mark as well."
• Aaron Blake calls the Republican Party's  gamesmanship over the past 30 years "court stacking," and argues it deserves a proportional response from the left.
• Microsoft and the United States Cyber Command discovered that they had both targeted a group of cybercriminals, with happy results for all (except the Russians who they targeted).
• Closer to home, a developer will start construction on an extension to Chicago's 606 Trail across the Chicago river, due to open in 2023.
• The Chicago Tribune has yet another explainer about the Illinois graduated income tax proposal.

And much farther from home, Mars will be in opposition tomorrow night, coincidentally during the new moon, meaning we'll get a really good look at it.

Generally, reactions to last night's debate follow three patterns: Vice President Mike Pence mansplained to Senator Kamala Harris; Harris told the truth significantly more than Pence did; and the fly won. (My favorite reaction, from an unknown Twitter user: "If that fly laid eggs in Pence's hair, he'd better carry them to term.") Other reactions:

• The Washington Post, NBC, and the BBC fact-checked the most egregious distortions, most of which came from Pence.
• James Fallows believes "both candidates needed to convince voters they possess the right temperament for the job. Only one pulled it off."

In other news:

• Following the president's positive Covid-19 test, and Pence's and the president's repeated interruptions and talking over the moderators, the Commission on Presidential Debates has decided the October 15th presidential debate will be virtual. The crybaby-in-chief got angry: "It’s ridiculous, and then they cut you off whenever they want." ("Speaking to reporters in Delaware, Biden said it was still possible [the president] would show up because 'he changes his mind every second.'")
• Alex Shephard bemoans "the final message of a dying campaign:" "With his poll numbers collapsing, [the president] keeps adopting dumber and more destructive political messages."
• The New Yorker dives into "the secret history of Kimberly Guilfoyle's departure from Fox."
• For total Daily Parker bait, National Geographic explores the Russian military map collection at Indiana University, with 4,000 secret Russian maps drawn between 1883 and 1947, many captured from wartime intelligence services.
• As today is the 149th anniversary of the Chicago Fire, the Chicago History Today blog looked at the history of the house at 2121 N. Hudson Ave., the only wood-frame building to survive in the burn zone.
• Speaking of wood fires in Chicago, the Chicago Tribune has yet another ranking of pizzas. Happy lunchtime.

Finally, the FBI arrested six men who plotted to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat. They didn't get close, but still.

Daniel Shaviro, a veteran tax attorney, lays out 10 takeaways from the New York Times story Sunday about the president's tax returns:

1) Tax is the least of it. The article offers direct evidence of Trump’s impending financial liability to unknown lenders, and of pervasive conflicts of interest as president, that are of grave national security concern.

6) The consulting fees that Trump’s various foreign businesses paid to Ivanka Trump and others look potentially fraudulent. 

Based on what the article says, several different types of fraud may have been involved here. Fees paid to family members who did not provide services in return would be improper deductions. Fees paid to “consultants” who were employees might be properly deductible by the business – as salary – but would potentially trigger 3.8 percent payroll tax liability by the recipient under the so-called Medicare payroll tax. Fees that were actually gifts to family members were not properly deductible, and also may have generated gift tax liability on Trump’s part that the mislabeling helped to conceal.

10) There is an old saying that one can never detect tax fraud purely on the face of a tax return – but this comes closer than usual. – Even wholly fraudulent tax returns generally do not proclaim their fraudulence on their face. The Trump returns presumably are no exception, and much of the evidence suggesting possible fraudulence was developed in the Times article through the use of other sources. Nonetheless, with that aid, the Times article makes a powerful initial case, clearly meriting investigation, that substantial tax fraud may have occurred.

Over at the Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin sees this as yet more evidence that "Everything [the president] touches dies:"

Trump will surely need to account for the latest bombshell at the debate on Tuesday, but Democratic nominee Joe Biden should be clear that Trump’s financial losses are far from his most egregious failure. Instead, Biden should point to the loss of more than 200,000 American lives, of millions of jobs, of America’s international prestige, of the Supreme Court’s integrity, of the presidency’s dignity, of the country’s unity and of the justice system’s credibility. Everything Trump touches is made worse. His rallies bring super-spreaders to America; his policies bring one catastrophe after another.

The latest revelations — and those the Times promises are to come — make it much harder, if not impossible, for Trump to find safer terrain in the waning days of the race. He has failed to come up with a coherent (let alone winning) argument against Biden, and worse, has handed Biden one devastating argument after another to deploy against him. He generates devastating stories faster than Biden’s opposition research team can compile them. We have every reason to believe things will get even worse for Trump in the days ahead.

As for tonight's debate, tune in to The Daily Parker. I'll be live-blogging.