America Inside Out 2012

This has been my thesis since the mid-1990s: America has its inside out, and its outside in.  It internalizes external problems while it acts out its inner struggles, or more briefly, it acts as if its unconscious were its conscious (rational) self, partly as a way to avoid acting on the dangers of the outside world.

This plays out in all sorts of ways, but its function at the moment is explaining the utter madness of the Rabid Right.  It's more than being convinced of an alternate reality proposed by institutions and media promulgating the fossil fuel industry line, or even by the sense of belonging to a mad as hell talk radio fan club/tea party. 

It's more than believing and (in the case of certain increasingly craven politicians like Tim Polenta) repeating the vile Romney lies, although it does explain why the Romney people feel no pressure to stop lying even when the usual news media arbiters call them on it. 

It's the complete refusal to believe what a marginally sane society regards as proven facts.  This is willed ignorance, with a substructure of reasons (as all unconscious shadows produce) but coming from those unconscious dark depths.

The most important example is the dogma that the climate crisis isn't happening, that it isn't caused by greenhouse gas pollution, etc.  This in the face of an overwhelming scientific consensus, which now includes one of the more respectable (former) skeptics.

But there is that additional and very powerful factor of fossil fuel money and power--from companies (including 7 of the top 10 largest) that have most of the money in the world.  This however is not the case when it comes to simple biographical facts about Barack Obama.

A new poll shows only half the Americans surveyed "know" that Obama is a Christian.  Some of that (some part of the 31% who 'don't know') is attributable to nonexistent attention ( only 40%  know how many Supreme Court Justices there are.)  But there is a persistent set that refuses to accept all the evidence concerning Obama's birthplace, his education and so on. 

And it is refusal.  David Maraniss recently published a biography of Obama that included original research, naming sources and quoting people all along the line.  But he keeps getting resistance from people who claim the opposite from the facts he carefully presents.

There is enormous appetite for the lies however.  Another purported biography, by Edward Klein, has been widely denounced as scurrilous and scandalous tripe.  Klein is well known for this in recent years.  Even when he seemed to be legitimate, as the editor of the New York Times Magazine for instance, he had the contempt of the people who worked for him.  I was told by someone who was in the room that when it was announced to the staff that he was leaving the Magazine, they stood up and cheered.  That, believe me, is (or at least was) very unTimesian behavior.

But Klein's diatribe is #1 on the Times best seller list.  Klein was interviewed by C-Span as if he is a legitimate author.  And as Political Wire noted on Monday, his book has sold 137,000 copies, while Maraniss' has sold 19,000.

So what's on the outside, masquerading as rationality, is hate.  And there's no fact that can change it.

This clearly has the legitimate media flummoxed.  Because without an agreed-upon standard of fact, the whole rational system collapses.

Weekend Update

Dept. of Corrections:  CNN says using the song Stupid Girls "to introduce a segment on Sarah Palin was unintentional and not meant as a commentary on the former Republican vice presidential candidate," The Wrap reports.

Baseball Update (Monday): The SF Giants got a power hitting outfielder, Hunter Pence, from Philadelphia, where he led the team in hitting.  That's a damn good move.  Meanwhile,  the Dodgers got another Phillies outfielder, Shane Victorino, to lead off.  Both teams got help from these trades, the pros are saying the Dodgers overall made the best trades.  Meanwhile, the Pirates got an all-star first baseball (Gaby Sanchez) and some pitching.  
The Olympics have started but I only have eyes for baseball.  My Pittsburgh Pirates are still going strong in a tough division (though fans in Pittsburgh are despairing over a recent rough patch.)  But my San Francisco Giants stumbled badly by losing a 3 game series to the LA Dodgers, and losing first place to them in the process, while revealing their comparative (and probably fateful) weaknesses: they don't have the depth, especially in bringing hitters off the bench.  They were without Pablo Sandaval and may be for awhile, their other best hitters have cooled, their first baseman has been in a deep slump (as has one of their formerly dependable best pitchers.)  The season starts grinding about now.  Their one trade wasn't all that impressive.  They are a close team, though, so they might still make a run.  Unfortunately for them, the Dodgers matched their latest winning streak, and now are back at full strength--with Matt Kemp hitting homers again--and they acquired a good new hitter (who beat the Giants himself) and just acquired more pitching.  I believe both the Pirates and Giants are three games out of first place, to highly touted teams.

A Level of Concern

So cable TV has a function after all.  I caught a talk on public access given this past spring here in Arcata--the kind of event I never take the trouble to attend or even know about--by a scientist for the Forest Service, Michael Furniss, talking about sea level rise and its impacts, especially locally but elsewhere, too.  I learned a lot in several different ways.

I learned more about why this amazing oasis of summer (it's cooler than usual if anything, rarely breaching 65F) will probably remain an oasis for the climate crisis of this century.  That's partly because the big earthquake that is likely to hit in this century will have greater impact than just about anything the climate crisis can throw at us, short of total polar ice loss and a sea level rise of 200 ft.  But it also goes beyond our coastal climate.  We have and will likely have enough water.  We aren't dependent on mountain snow melt, which is declining.  He believes, contrary to some recent studies, that we're not losing moisture via fog, and that there's good reason to believe that fog will actually increase. (High fog--the "marine layer"--is an almost daily feature here, like right now as a matter of fact.)   Which is good for the redwoods (which depend on moisture from fog) and he says since they've probably been here a million years, they're likely to survive.

On sea level rises, he notes that another factor that has to be considered is the land level rising or falling, which it naturally does.  Right now the land is rising in Sitca, Alaska faster than the sea level.  But the land level is lowering in Galveston, Texas.  Like sea levels, land levels are the product of complex interrelationships and forces, but even more locally determined than sea levels along a given coast.

He notes that globally, sea levels have changed a great deal over the Earth's history--responding for example to Ice Ages--but they've been relatively stable for the past 6,000 years: pretty much all of human civilization.  So the idea that it can change is not part of our history. 

In judging sea level rises, one of the factors is that warmer water takes up more space--and this thermal expansion is basically what the IPCC calculated in their initial prediction of about a 1 meter rise by 2100.  They didn't even attempt to figure in ice melt, it was too controversial at the time.  Now others have made those calculations, and that roughly doubles the rise, to over 2 meters.  That's without rapid melt, the kind scientists are worried about now because of this summer's news from Greenland and Antarctica.  That might result in a 10 to 15 meter rise in a few decades.

Sea levels have been slowly rising for the past quarter century, and this is accelerating because of the climate crisis.  At first the impact will be felt only in extreme events--"perfect storms" that involve periodical tidal events--when the extremes are more extreme, leading to greater flooding that seen previously.

But by the end of the century, the impact will be enormous, even with the most conservative estimates (he notes, by the by, that projections for Humboldt Bay don't change very much from a 1 meter to a 2 meter rise.)  The San Francisco Bay area is very vulnerable.  The airport will be under water, for one thing.  Much of Florida will be inundated, and the U.S. East Coast hit pretty hard.

Elsewhere in the world it's even worse, especially in Vietnam, Bangladesh, other southeast Asian countries.  He notes that in Asia there is no debate over the climate crisis.  The discussions are on what to do about it.

As for our neck of the woods, the information is incomplete but is coming.  Some areas that I would have thought were vulnerable turn out not to be, but others really are: like a lot of highway 101, our link to the outside world, and especially Arcata's link to Eureka and points south.

Some solutions involve engineering, but he warns against taking a total concrete and steel approach--you can't build seawalls everywhere (rivers that need access to the sea are a big problem) and a lot of ecological analysis, land analysis, etc. has to be done to protect against unintended consequences.  Even if there is enough money to do it.

Furniss ended on a note of optimism.  The changes will take place over decades, presumably with enough time to respond intelligently.  His last slide said simply, " We are adaptable.  We'll be okay."  But he also noted (without making a big point of it) that financial support for research into what to do is lacking.  Significantly, local scientists are doing almost all the local research on possible impacts as a volunteer effort, and not part of their regular jobs.

So I don't take away the idea that it won't be so bad, in due course things will be okay all on their own.  The disruptions will be enormous, even in much less than worst case scenarios.  They will require concerted and dedicated attention.  But they will occur over time, and so they will be the work of people over the next decades, even apart from responding to particular crises and events caused or made worse by the climate crisis.  But it's really really time to get started in a bigger way.

Democracy in Pennsylvania

No matter who is in power, no matter how much power the rich and the corporate empire have, no matter how feckless and idiotic and remote to reality that the media gets, no matter how your views and your voice go uncomprehended and unheard, in America you have one power, one act, one node of participation that--when joined with others who might be similarly outcast--can be decisive.  You have the vote.

That's why ongoing GOPer voter suppression efforts are such a basic threat.  They are clearly, manifestly and pretty openly attempts to deep six democracy, by preventing people they fear and don't like from voting.  Voter suppression laws passed in states where GOPers are in total power--most of that having happened in 2010--now cover a majority of the American electorate.

Every study shows that those who are most likely to be newly ineligible to vote are the poor, non-whites, urbanites, the young and the old.  Except for the category of the old, those groups tend to vote for Democrats.

I have watched from afar, and with weary dismay, as my home state, the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, rapidly deteriorates under the 2010 extreme version of GOPer rule.  By gutting or ignoring environmental protections, and even preventing municipalities from governing their own zoning, PA is trying very hard to turn itself into West Virginia: an Appalachia of a few rich and a lot of poor run by fossil fuels corporations, in a rapid race to the bottom, while destroying its own natural habitat.  They have bought into all the other extremes as well, including unconstitutional and unconscionable intrusions on women's health and reproductive rights.

But if any of these are worst, it is the Pennsylvania voter suppression law.  Studies indicate that a million citizens may not be permitted to vote, including--incredibly-- 43% of the population of Philadelphia.

The intent is very clear, even if a PA GOPer legislator hadn't admitted it.  As TMP wrote: "The number of Pennsylvania voters who most likely lack a valid form of photo identification now doubles President Barack Obama’s margin of victory in the Keystone state in 2008. A group contracted to educate voters about the new law is stacked with Republicans and is headed by a bundler for Mitt Romney."    

The best hope of overturning this law is the suit by the ACLU and others that went to court last week and is likely to be decided next week.  Though incredibly the official defenders of the law admitted there was no evidence at all of voter fraud--supposedly the reason for the law--they propose the rationale that the legislature was within its rights to regulate voting, an argument that apparently convinced the U.S. Supremes to uphold a voter ID law in Indiana.

However, those attacking the law have strong arguments based on the Pennsylvania constitution, which makes voting a fundamental right.  A procession of witnesses stating their right to vote is being denied began the proceedings.  There are other arguments as well, though I'm not sure they are making them: the arbitrary and capricious nature of the ID being required (a college student in PA--interning at Lawrence O'Donnell's  show--discovered that her student ID is not valid because it doesn't show an expiration date), and in particular the burden of obtaining an ID before the November elections.  This example demonstrates what some observers fear: that a lot of people believe they have the required ID but don't (the ACLU estimates a million), and may not find out until they're denied a ballot on election day.  A lot of people also don't even know they must bring a required ID to the polls or they lose their right to vote.

At issue on a federal level is the nature of the law as equivalent to a poll tax, as Attorney General Eric Holder noted.  That's because getting an ID solely for the purpose of voting (which may well require paying for a birth certificate) is a financial burden for people who have the gall to be poor and/or old and infirm, and still consider themselves citizens with the right to vote.  So the U.S. Justice Department is also looking into the PA law.

As a Pennsylvanian born and bred, I believe the state court will overturn this law, and that the PA Supreme Court will uphold that decision, and declare it invalid for this election.  But even before that decision, there is already resistance: one local election official has announced he will not enforce the law.  The Florida voter suppression efforts by means of culling registration rolls have fallen into disarray, partly and decisively because local election officials refused to cooperate.

Changes in voter eligibility has only gone one way in American history: it has expanded.  To begin taking away rights--and especially this fundamental right--is not just a step backward.  It is a goosestep towards the abyss.

Above photo: AP/ Sacramento Bee.

Consequences

Heat, drought and fire.  Apart from the suffering, illnesses and death, the consequences mount up.  Forecasts of higher food prices--even significantly higher prices--by fall have led to speculation (unfortunately in both senses) on the human as well as economic consequences.

The consequences on infrastructure are already been felt, including some that were simply not foreseen.  The New York Times article on this subject begins: "From highways in Texas to nuclear power plants in Illinois, the concrete, steel and sophisticated engineering that undergird the nation’s infrastructure are being taxed to worrisome degrees by heat, drought and vicious storms."

Examples include a passenger airliner getting stuck on a heat-softened runway, heat-stretched subway rails, heat contracting the ground beneath highways causing splits while the highways themselves expand and buckle.  Too-hot water in both intake valves and cooling pools threatens power generated from nuclear plants--and it is the power grid in general that is most in danger from the consequences of heat and storms.

Infrastructure is designed with locally "normal" extremes in mind.  But not for extreme extremes, and certainly not for long.  But now such extremes are becoming normal.  The Times:

 "The frequency of extreme weather is up over the past few years, and people who deal with infrastructure expect that to continue. Leading climate models suggest that weather-sensitive parts of the infrastructure will be seeing many more extreme episodes, along with shifts in weather patterns and rising maximum (and minimum) temperatures. " 

Dealing with all this costs money, and while some of that spending may come from companies that are at least partly "private" (like some power companies), much of it must come from government.  But without leadership acknowledging this new reality, especially on the federal level,  these problems are not likely to be adequately addressed.  This too is already becoming evident where the problems and their consequences occur.  

It's an unsustainable situation. The longer it goes on, the worse the problems become, and the greater the suffering--and the fear.

This Fast

Strange, sudden and massive, according to the AP story.  It's the announcement by NASA that: " For several days this month, Greenland's surface ice cover melted over a larger area than at any time in more than 30 years of satellite observations. Nearly the entire ice cover of Greenland, from its thin, low-lying coastal edges to its two-mile-thick center, experienced some degree of melting at its surface, according to measurements from three independent satellites analyzed by NASA and university scientists.

On average in the summer, about half of the surface of Greenland's ice sheet naturally melts. At high elevations, most of that melt water quickly refreezes in place. Near the coast, some of the melt water is retained by the ice sheet and the rest is lost to the ocean. But this year the extent of ice melting at or near the surface jumped dramatically. According to satellite data, an estimated 97 percent of the ice sheet surface thawed at some point in mid-July."

That's almost all of the surface ice.  In four days.

Update: New evidence that melting is happening faster in the Antarctic as well.  News reports on the Greenland melt note that NASA suggests that whether the melt there will lead to an immediate rise in sea levels is unknown at this time, but possible.

Mittpocracy

The Rabid Right and its GOP are so regularly hypocritical that they are daily setting new standards for hypocrisy, as well as merely outrageous lying.  In response to the Colorado shooting they warn gun control advocates not to politicize a tragedy, when they are the ones that have turned societal problems into partisan political issues, with the question of what to do about gun violence high on the list. 

And so the argument goes on with lots of heat and little light.  Besides which, it's not the only societal question that has become politically partisan--there's the one I emphasized here, the support of public agencies that deal with these crises.  To stop all such tragedies in this society is just about impossible, though they can be reduced.  But responding to them is a need for every single one, and despite their hollow words of support, GOPers want to cut funding for police, fire, first responders as well as counseling and other support services.  That's the clear implication of their budgets.

It's implied as well in their latest lies: distorting President Obama's words to make their severely hypocritical battle cry of individuals building businesses on their own without help or support.  It supports their ideology, which justifies lower taxes for the wealthiest as somehow generating jobs for the middle class.  But the reality is very different.  Not only in the simple but profound notion that taxpayers support the infrastructure that supports businesses--a point it is necessary to make because GOPers want to cut funds for that infrastructure, as they are doing now.  But behind the valiant individualist businessman that Romney is supposed to symbolize is truly shameless hypocrisy about how Romney and his ilk actually succeed and make tons of money.  They do it largely and sometimes principally by taking government money.

More news emerged about the guy featured in Romney's latest anti-Obama ad who wants everybody to know that he and his family built their business, nobody else helped.  He'd already admitted that indeed government supported a teacher who was important to him, and built the infrastructure that allowed his business to thrive.  On Monday it was further revealed that his business had received direct government assistance and tax breaks--several times, with some pretty big bucks involved. 

But even this is small potatoes for the Romney class.  Romney's Bain made much of its money exploiting tax breaks, tax havens and taking government money.  Other corporations, eager to get on the Romney bandwagon, conveniently forget about the special deals with state and local governments that pave special roads for them, give them a free ride on taxes, turn over millions in taxpayer money to them.  They thrive because of government money they get that small businesses let alone middle class families never get, and probably don't even know about.  They are the richest hypocrites on the planet. 

Procrasti-nation Continued

I like this photo as a symbol of where we are on the Climate Crisis because it is at once a reality--those encroaching fires were real--and a metaphor for the national attitude towards the oncoming storm: the traffic of the usual while the fires burn the horizon. 

In those cars, people may well be listening to news of other crises.  They may be horrified by the killing of 12 in a movie theatre in Colorado, as are we all.  There are always other crises and shocking events, other problems looming, competing for our attention.  There are also the stories we mostly don't hear, like 37 people killed in a huge rainstorm in the capital city of China, or the scores that die in U.S. heat waves.  Update 7/23: Death toll across China is currently 100 from these rains.

To be fair, a lot of people in those cars are frightened by the climate crisis and worried about the future, and they want it to be addressed, and may well be frustrated by the paralysis and inaction, especially in our political system, and most especially in Washington.  They may even be the majority.  But the power of the fossil fuel industry, so deeply dependent not only on the flow of oil but the future of oil for the money that floats them now, grips our system tight.  And it's looking to grip it even more firmly in this year's elections.

But the climate crisis isn't waiting.   Much of the U.S. is in serious and protracted drought (as much as 80%), and by fall the Midwestern drought in particular will result in rising food prices.  This summer's record-breaking heat is likely to continue into fall. And so the drought is expected to worsen.  The effects continue to spread, already with economic costs.  This alone will become impossible to ignore very soon.

But drought is not the only cost now spreading nationally.  Fires, damage from rain, hail and floods in the U.S. There's simple misery and the effects of heat on the human brain and body.  Strains consequently on the electric power grid for air conditioned protection--a grid, by the way that is decaying rapidly.

In other parts of the world, hotter temperatures have brought mosquito-borne diseases to places where they haven't been before, and where public health is not equipped and people have no immunity.   Before this, the ignorable Native communities in the north have been the principal victims in North America.  But they are no longer alone.  Once again, scientists are looking at possible tipping points for abrupt climate change.

But what we know already is bad enough.  Bill McKibben, who wrote one of the first books on the climate crisis in 1989, said in an email to those on his 350.org mailing list that he regards his new article in Rolling Stone as the most important thing he's written since then.  In that article, he reviews this year's stark numbers and some of the more remote, less reported weather events, such as "Saudi authorities reported that it had rained in Mecca despite a temperature of 109 degrees, the hottest downpour in the planet's history."  (I am reminded all too often of the 'sensationalistic' early scenes in the 2004 climate crisis disaster film The Day After Tomorrow, many of which have since happened.)

In the fight to slow down global heating, McKibben writes, "I can say with some confidence that we're losing the fight, badly and quickly – losing it because, most of all, we remain in denial about the peril that human civilization is in."
McKibben reviews the attempts by environmentalists to slow down the death march on both the individual and political levels, and judges them obviously ineffective.  Change through the political system hasn't work so far and is unlikely to in time. He thinks action requires a global movement, centered on the real enemy: the fossil fuel industry.

"But what all these climate numbers make painfully, usefully clear is that the planet does indeed have an enemy – one far more committed to action than governments or individuals. Given this hard math, we need to view the fossil-fuel industry in a new light. It has become a rogue industry, reckless like no other force on Earth. It is Public Enemy Number One to the survival of our planetary civilization. "Lots of companies do rotten things in the course of their business – pay terrible wages, make people work in sweatshops – and we pressure them to change those practices," says veteran anti-corporate leader Naomi Klein, who is at work on a book about the climate crisis. "But these numbers make clear that with the fossil-fuel industry, wrecking the planet is their business model. It's what they do."

For a long time McKibben has been advocating that the climate crisis be approached as a moral issue, akin to the Civil Rights movement.  Now he believes that like Bull Connor and southern segregationists, this movement needs an immoral enemy--but this time it is an enemy that itself must be controlled in order for change to happen. 

What would success look like?  Maybe like a hefty carbon tax, with the proceeds devoted not only to addressing the causes of future global heating (financing green energy and a host of carbon-reducing strategies) but also to dealing with the effects of the climate crisis, now and likely in the future, everything from mobilizing for emergencies to a real public health system, and eventually much more.  There will be likely be huge engineering projects necessary.  In not so many decades, that really will be the choice: deal with the effects as a society while dealing with the causes, or fall into violent anarchy and international war over resources, or simply as the only way we know how to mobilize anymore.

Update 7/23: Add to the warning voices today economist Paul Krugman: "For large-scale damage from climate change is no longer a disaster waiting to happen. It’s happening now."

The Bets

The Obama campaign is betting heavily that they can define Romney now in a way that essentially disqualifies him in the minds of enough voters in the swing states to make the difference.  They've outspent the Romney campaign 2 to 1 so far trying to do this, and there is evidence that they are getting voter attention.  They are counting on voters who want to make up their minds now, and ignore the rest of an increasingly exhausting media campaign.   So far however the polls don't show Obama gaining advantage, although in truth the polls are all over the place--except the ones that are very close either way.

The Romney campaign is betting that as unemployment continues to be high, month after month, voters will be receptive to his negative ads, which distort the President's words shamelessly, but which could sew enough doubt or disgust to engender an "anybody but Obama" vote.  They are piling up money to do huge media after the Democratic convention.  They are betting on low information voters who make up their mind when they absolutely have to, close to election day.

I have to believe there is a second component to the Obama campaign, a positive one, with real action from the White House and an exciting vision for the second term.  It may not be enough to define Romney as the wrong solution (which of course he is, to a devastating extent) or to continue a general theme campaign.  Confronting the realities of this summer would also be helpful.  Let's hear Romney deny global heating.  But the Obama campaign, and President Obama himself, need to add something new.

The question for the Obama campaign will be whether there will be any air time left to buy, let alone money to buy it.  They need a strong convention and strong debates.   It's not clear that Romney has a second act to his campaign.  He's betting that he doesn't have to release his tax returns or state actual positions or make actual proposals on issues--he's betting on the power of millionaires to lie him into the White House.

Tragedy

The tragic shooting in Colorado late last night at once reveals two public policy needs.  The first is obvious: gun control and the control of ammunition.  The shooter got literally hundreds of rounds off the Internet, including for his assault rifle.  The NRA has dominated political decisionmaking on this and other issues for far too long. 

But the second public policy need is revealed by the positive outcome of this tragic event: the effective response by police, EMTs and other public agencies.  Police were so swift in responding that they caught the alleged shooter as he was returning to his car--judging from the extent of his armory and his garb, it seems likely he was about to drive to his next target location.

But there are many places in America right now where the police and other agencies are so understaffed that response like this is unlikely.  All kinds of situations that require the quick and effective intervention of public agencies--including public health agencies--are happening with increasing frequency now, and will happen on even greater scales in the future as the climate crisis causes more emergencies.

 Right now the Republican party and the Republican candidate for President are willing and eager to sacrifice the public good and the training, equiping and simply the livelihoods of public servants on the front line of trouble, all to further line the pockets of people who have more money already, and a greater percentage of shared resources, than makes any sense.  The Republicans in Congress have blocked any attempt to help the states keep their public employees, and those public employees--teachers, police, fire, emergency medical, etc.--are being fired by droves.  It's there in every monthly unemployment report.  It's hurting our national economy, and it's hurting communities.  It's scandalous.  And it will only get worse if Romney and Republicans are elected to federal and state office.  

Witness to the Procrastination

"Here’s what American exceptionalism means now: on a per-capita basis, we either lead or come close to leading the world in consumption of resources, production of pollutants and a profound unwillingness to do anything about it. We may look back upon this year as the one in which climate change began to wreak serious havoc, yet we hear almost no conversation about changing policy or behavior."

So begins an online opinion column by Mark Bittman of the New York Times.  Yes, and that exceptionalism has been quantified: again this year, Americans ranked last in the world in sustainable behavior, and they don't appear to be upset about it.

Meanwhile, new heat waves are embroiling the Midwest, teasing the East Coast and contributing to drought in many areas.  The impacts are starting to mount up.  Heat and drought is threatening the Midwest corn crop, with ripple effects through the food chain.  Even grass-fed cattle in Oregon are being deprived of their feed by fire.  And the heat has helped lower water levels in the Mississippi river, which is making barge shipping more difficult--thus a major threat to commerce-- and may be allowing pollution of the drinking water in New Orleans with seawater.

And oh yeah, another huge iceberg the size of Manhattan has broken off from a Greenland glacier and is sailing out to sea.

But it's what's happening in the U.S., and our national non-reaction to it so far, that is most remarkable.  Writes Elizabeth Kolbert in the New Yorker:

"One of the most salient—but also, unfortunately, most counterintuitive—aspects of global warming is that it operates on what amounts to a time delay. Behind this summer’s heat are greenhouse gases emitted decades ago. Before many effects of today’s emissions are felt, it will be time for the Summer Olympics of 2048. (Scientists refer to this as the “commitment to warming.”) What’s at stake is where things go from there. It is quite possible that by the end of the century we could, without even really trying, engineer the return of the sort of climate that hasn’t been seen on earth since the Eocene, some fifty million years ago.

Along with the heat and the drought and the super derecho, the country this summer is also enduring a Presidential campaign. So far, the words “climate change” have barely been uttered. This is not an oversight. Both President Obama and Mitt Romney have chosen to remain silent on the issue, presumably because they see it as just too big a bummer.

And so, while farmers wait for rain and this season’s corn crop withers on the stalk, the familiar disconnect continues. There’s no discussion of what could be done to avert the worst effects of climate change, even as the insanity of doing nothing becomes increasingly obvious."

The Big Shoe

Of all the millions of dollars given to SuperPacs so far for this year's presidential candidates--the overwhelming majority going to support Romney--80% of it was provided by a total of 196 people.  Since much of this is given in secret, it is only an educated guess, but it is likely that the single person who has provided more millions than any other for Romney and other GOPer candidates--with an on the record boast that his giving could be "limitless"-- is multibillionaire Sheldon Adelson.

Known during the primary circus season as Newt's Vegas sugardaddy, Adelson's global casino business enables him to provide millions to the Romney campaign and to its SuperPacs.  He hasn't been shy about his intent to in effect buy the presidency.  But his motives seemed to be ideology and vanity.  Now another motive may have emerged.  A big shoe has dropped.  He may be buying the presidency to keep himself out of jail.

A PBS Frontline and ProPublica investigation suggests that Adelson and his gambling empire may have criminally violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by in effect bribing an official to pave the way for an extremely lucrative mega-casino in Macau, the only place in the whole wide country of China where gambling is legal.  Adelson's company is being investigated for just such possible crimes by federal officials. This may also have involved money going to the Chinese mob.

Violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act is a federal crime, so it really really helps if you own the U.S. Justice Department.  Which might well be among Adelson's acquisitions should Romney be elected.

Romney may need to own the Justice Department for his own defense as well--against perjury, for instance.  But his needs would likely be secondary to Adelson's. 

Rachel has her usual sterling storytelling and analysis of the Adelson affair (though she takes awhile getting there in this clip) and here's more on the story from ProPublica.

This attempt at a get out of jail free card is precisely the kind of corruption that laws limiting campaign contributions and providing full disclosure and oversight were meant to limit if not stop.  It's why these laws were created and passed, even with opposition from those who benefit from these opportunities for corruption.  At least until the current Supreme Court decided that money is speech and corporations are people, and that there is no evidence that unlimited and unaccountable campaign money leads to corruption.  

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own.  The great instrument of moral good is the imagination."

Shelley
(a quote I copied in a notebook in 1966.)

Storms Fast and Slow

A solar storm, resulting from this huge solar flare, reached the Earth on Saturday.  So far no major effects reported, though some big time auroras seem likely this weekend in northern areas.  As for our comparatively slow motion climate crisis,  NOAA issued its comprehensive report on global weather patterns in 2011, and even with some cooling effects produced by double dip La Ninas, the categories highlighted in this excellent summary all are in line with what climatologists expect from  ongoing global heating.  Except for one statistic: with all this evidence over all this time, a rational being might expect that the rational beings in control of artificial CO2 emissions that in large part are creating this global threat would be busy reducing them.  That didn't happen. The level of  CO2 emissions increased in 2011.

Mittstorm

Mitt Romney's rationale for the presidency comes down to two propositions: he's not Obama, and as a successful business executive he knows how to create jobs and right the economy.  On that first proposition he's unassailable.  He is no Barack Obama.  But he's been relentlessly if gradually damaged on the second, as stories about his tenure at Bain feed Obama campaign ads in swing states to show that as a "vulture capitalist" (in the words of Cowboy Rick Perry) he made massive profits from the misfortune visited upon working class Americans.   His job was to make profit, which he did from companies that did well and companies that went bankrupt, fired workers and sent jobs overseas.  That's a fundamentally different job than being President (as illustrated in this handy Doonesbury narrative.)

Then the stories became more directly focused: on Bain as a pioneer in sending American jobs to workers in other countries, and on Romney's finances, the glimpses of Swiss bank accounts and Cayman Island funds, raising questions that Romney will not answer, in particular by releasing past tax returns.  The Obama campaign dutifully followed up each revelation with new ads.  Polls began showing that all of this was possibly having an effect.

But on Thursday the Mitt really hit the fan.  The Boston Globe added some original reporting to previous revelations by David Corn at Mother Jones and Josh Marshall at TPM, to show that Romney was officially listed on SEC filings as CEO, President, Chairman of the Board and sole stockholder of Bain in 2002--several years after he has been saying he left the company.  That's important because he's been denying responsibility for some of the bankruptcies and layoffs and outsourcing etc. that happened after 1999.  These filings also show that he was paid a minimum of $100,000 a year (and it could have been much, much more) in salary, in addition to profits of the company.  These were listed as his principal occupation.  Moreover, he didn't always claim that he'd "retired" in 1999.  He told Massachusetts officials in 2002 that he had taken a leave of absence (to run the Olympics) with the intention of returning.

There are serious legal implications as well as credibility questions in all of this, and so this story will continue for awhile.  But there was another story that also broke on Thursday--David Corn in Mother Jones found that in 1998, when Romney doesn't dispute he was in charge, Bain invested in a Chinese company that made money by taking American jobs to China.

The Romney campaign and allies quickly pushed back on the Globe story, offering other paper trails that don't name Romney as executive in charge.  The relevance of these claims was quickly disputed.   The Romney campaign employed two other tactics.  As they've done before, they demanded apologies and retractions.  None were forthcoming, so they seem to be counting on the news headline of demanding them to signal to some that there might be some merit in their demand.
 

The second technique was identified and named on this site some time ago: the schoolyard "That's what you are, what am I?" which has been taken up by others now, notably TPM and Lawrence O'Donnell.  To combat the outsourcing charge, they put out an ad that called Obama an outsourcer.  To combat both the Bain charges and the general charge that Romney lies with almost every breath, they made a big ad buy accusing President Obama of lying as a campaign tactic.

 But the Mittstorm on Thursday suggested to me the real possibility--though just the possibility---that Romney could be so defined that he's essentially disqualified as a presidential candidate even before the GOP convention.

He has two main hopes.  First that the economy suffers to the extent that the rising optimism expressed in polls severely sours, and the "I'm not Obama" proposition becomes persuasive.  Second, that if the economy simply doesn't improve, his Mittblitz of ads that his accumulating millions can buy will substitute his lies for any reality, and he will move perception away from President Obama to the figure that Romney will destructively create as President Obama, Vampire.

And then there's voter suppression, particularly now in Pennsylvania, which could become the new Florida if GOPers there have indeed successfully disenfranchised nearly 10% of the voters in the state, nearly all of them non-suburban non-Romney voters.  On this front, Attorney General Eric Holder told the NAACP that these voter ID laws constitute poll taxes, which are unconstitutional.  That may mean federal action.

Update: Another intent of the Romney strategy of demanding that President Obama apologize occurs to me--it deflects attention from the stories reported by news organizations and attempts to suggest that these are simply politically motivated charges by the Obama campaign.  (Of course, President Obama is no more responsible for these campaign ads--managed by other people--than Romney is for all the lives deformed when he was merely the CEO, President, Chairman of the Board and sole owner of Bain Capital.)

A further attempt at deflecting attention by the Romney campaign was the trial balloon stating that Condi Rice is being considered for v.p. nomination. But there is nothing to see here. That will never happen.  Even if the Dick himself showers praise on Romney as he did at his fundraiser.

                                           I still believe in global warming.  Do you?

                                            (John Tyndall, 19th century physicist)

Heat Front

In his Sunday report, Chris Hayes opined that the key figures needed to legitimize the climate crisis for the TV viewing public are the weather reporters.  It's true that especially at local stations the weather guy (it's usually a guy) is the best known TV celeb, and even the biggest celeb period.  Plus the network and Weather Channel reporters (many of whom are women) evoke the most positive recognition.  But partly because of the virulence of Rabid Right responses to any mention of global heating or the climate crisis,  local stations and even the networks aren't wild about the idea of their weather folk venturing the same opinion as 98% of climate scientists.  Plus weather celebs know where their bread is buttered--at the corporate speaking engagements and other corporate gigs where the real money is made.

But this June may have dented if not demolished that cold front.  Even Climate Progress is impressed with network coverage linking the summer heat and fires to global heating.   In addition to their examples, there's this NPR story about the lasting impact of the recent heat, and this CNN story  quoting scientists that the climate crisis means more of this kind of weather in the future.

Meanwhile, the hurricane season is starting to heat up.  Stay tuned.

Guess Who?

Guess who these two women are listening to.  Would you be surprised it's Mitt Romney addressing the NAACP convention?

Nobody would, least of all Romney.  While some in the media were giving him "credit" for showing up, it was clearly not some honest and courageous effort to win African American votes but a ploy to show the Grand Old White Peoples' Party that he's on their side.  He told them he would repeal "Obamacare," and let the boos go on, since reportedly he knew the term itself was going to be booed. Later referring to this audience he said that if they want more stuff from government they should vote for Obama.  This wasn't dog whistle race politics.  This was loud and clear.

Meanwhile, if you think things are bad now, catch Rachel's opening segment Wednesday on the Bush-Cheney years, as Romney tries to distance himself from them while preparing to attend a multi-milliondollar fundraiser at the home of, and hosted by, the Dick himself, v.p. Cheney.  It also concerns a scary bad Washington Post story.

Chill Out

And remember: the planet you save might be your own.

Teachable Moments

 Teachable moments are moments when the attention of a class or a nation is already on the subject--when the need for answers or at least discussion is already there.  The trick is to recognize them and use them.

President Obama had a teachable moment on Friday when a positive but disappointing jobs report was issued.  It was a moment he could have pointed out that had Congress passed his jobs bill, thousands if not millions of people would right now be repairing and restoring the infrastructure that the entire American public depends on, and not the least of all, its businesses.  And otherwise building--literally building--what the country needs for its future, to generate other new jobs as well as help its citizens be safer and more secure.  And more employed.

A lot of this was part of what he did say at several campaign events, and he said some of it in his remarks after signing the transportation bill, which at least keeps workers on infrastructure projects that have already started.  But he didn't relate this to the moment in a way that would get it excerpted in ways that reach people.

He spoke on Friday at one of my old haunts, the Carnegie Mellon campus in Pittsburgh (photo.)  It was very hot, and a number of people fainted.  He could have used this moment to talk about the climate crisis and the need for green energy.  This was a teachable moment, and he missed it.

Now President Obama is hardly alone in either having the opportunity for a teachable moment or in missing one.  But Bill McKibben did call him out for this one, and he was right to.  Still, this summer is a long teachable moment, and there will be other opportunities.

Someone who didn't miss this moment was MSNBC's Chris Hayes on his Sunday morning program, which he largely devoted to the climate crisis, and with more than the usual insight--much of it coming from Bill McKibben (it was on that show that he made the above observation.)

McKibben's entire interview is really worth watching.  Rather than embed part of it, I'll provide links because it's in several parts.  If you go to the Up with Chris Hayes site right now, chances are that all of these links will be in plain view.  But if not, here's the link to his introduction, to the first panel discussion, to the first part of the McKibben interview,  the second part of McK, the third part of McK.  

As Chris Hayes said, the summer's weather phenomena--this year's, or even the past few years'--demonstrate that "the climate change wolf is at the door."  McKibben is particularly cogent in interviews, and here are a few of his points.  Thanks in part to the very visible manifestations of climate change, about 2/3 of the American public now believes in the climate crisis and is willing to do something about it.  And even though the fossil fuel industry is the major funder of political denial (he said that the fossil fueled Chamber of Commerce poured more money into the 2010 election that the R and D parties combined), even within it, denial is crumbling. 

In terms of political action, he said that the next direct action campaign may be to deny government subsidies to fossil fuel industries.  Beyond that, divestment is another weapon, similar to global divestment that helped end apartheid in South Africa.  (By coincidence we just saw a film about that incredible moment, and it makes the point that the economic self-interest of at least one major company in South Africa materially helped bring the parties together to make agreements that seemed impossible before they actually happened.) 

McKibben also came up with a very neat formula for the cause/effect problem that I've gone on about many times--that we have to deal with the effects of the climate crisis at the same time as we deal with the causes, whereas denial is preventing us from dealing with either, at least at the necessary scale.

McKibben uses the "adaptation" buzzword, which I still think is a loser, but at least he places it in a more comprehensible context.  His two mottos are:

1. Adapt to that which you can't prevent.
2.  Prevent that to which you can't adapt.

It's still not clean enough verbally but there's a solid core there.  Until we admit that we're going to have real climate-caused problems for the forseeable future, we aren't going to invest the resources in addressing those effects.  But unless we also deal with the causes of the climate crisis, its effects in the farther future--yet within the lifetimes of people living now--will become so severe that our societies and our science may not be up to the tasks.  Life as we know it could be over--permanently.   
The Chris Hayes segments don't teach all they could.  Nobody got around to noting that there is no paradox about "global warming" causing it to snow more in some places.  It is one of the predictable effects of warming the atmosphere--warmer air is wetter, and warmer air in the winter makes for snow--simple weatherman facts that anybody can understand.  It's a little more complicated to explain extreme cold caused by global warming but we accept many things that are more counter-intuitive and bewildering. 

What teachable moments do more than anything is they allow issues to transcend political positions.  Prominent among the many real sins of the right is making the climate crisis political.  And the way that the Rabid Right operates on this issue as on most others is with violence against anyone not adhering to their dogma.  They don't do opposition politics--they deal in heresy and heretics,  the saved and the damned.

 What's necessary for many people to suddenly see that this is some false artificial arena of noise is to focus on the reality, the problems and the consequences.   After last winter and spring, this particular summer is such an opportunity.  This is real.  This can wreck us.  It causes pain and suffering and death.  This must be addressed as problems that need solutions. 

What Global Heating Looks--and Feels-- Like

Still don’t believe in climate change? Then you’re either deep in denial or delirious from the heat," wrote Pulitzer Prize columnist Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post on Tuesday. "As I write this, the nation’s capital and its suburbs are in post-apocalypse mode. About one-fourth of all households have no electricity, the legacy of an unprecedented assault by violent thunderstorms Friday night. Things are improving: At the height of the power outage, nearly half the region was dark. The line of storms, which killed at least 18 people as it raced from the Midwest to the sea, culminated a punishing day when the official temperature here reached 104 degrees, a record for June."  And so on, adding stats from climatologists, and noting that if GOPers weren't such foes of solar power, they might well have had air conditioning today from rooftop solar collectors.

I happened to learn of this column from a flash through the new MSNBC show, "The Cycle," which features four cohosts, including a resident winger, a young woman in scholarly glasses, who said she was not terribly impressed with what a political columnist had to say about climate--she'd preferred a real climatologist.

Like nearly all of them haven't been heard on the subject.  Well, okay--how about this, also from Tuesday?

"But since at least 1988, climate scientists have warned that climate change would bring, in general, increased heat waves, more droughts, more sudden downpours, more widespread wildfires and worsening storms. In the United States, those extremes are happening here and now.

So far this year, more than 2.1 million acres have burned in wildfires, more than 113 million people in the U.S. were in areas under extreme heat advisories last Friday, two-thirds of the country is experiencing drought, and earlier in June, deluges flooded Minnesota and Florida.

"This is what global warming looks like at the regional or personal level," said Jonathan Overpeck, professor of geosciences and atmospheric sciences at the University of Arizona. "The extra heat increases the odds of worse heat waves, droughts, storms and wildfire. This is certainly what I and many other climate scientists have been warning about."

Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in fire-charred Colorado, said these are the very record-breaking conditions he has said would happen, but many people wouldn't listen. So it's I told-you-so time, he said.

As recently as March, a special report an extreme events and disasters by the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned of "unprecedented extreme weather and climate events." Its lead author, Chris Field of the Carnegie Institution and Stanford University, said Monday, "It's really dramatic how many of the patterns that we've talked about as the expression of the extremes are hitting the U.S. right now."

"What we're seeing really is a window into what global warming really looks like," said Princeton University geosciences and international affairs professor Michael Oppenheimer. "It looks like heat. It looks like fires. It looks like this kind of environmental disasters."

(Photo: one in a series of the Washington storms by Joel Holland.)

I learned from someone in the DC area a bit more about what "post-apocalyptic mode" looks like as well.  It's children and old people trapped in houses with no air conditioning or even refrigeration, or by now, even much food, since the contents of refrigerators in areas still without power have long since spoiled.  It's seniors and the disabled totally dependent on the Meals on Wheels deliverers huffing up 14 floors of stairs because of no power for the elevator.

 All of this in triple digit heat that gets down to 90 at night.  23 known deaths so far are attributed to the heat and storms in the DC area.  Thanks in part to denialists, preparation and response was in many cases valiant, but inadequate--and that's likely true across the country.

And this heat is widespread across the East Coast, Mid-Atlantic, South, Midwest and far West.  And the patterns look like they will continue through the month and well into next.

I remember that summer of 1988 when I got an inkling of what global heating would feel like.  But nearly a quarter century later we are still hearing well-paid, mediagenic and otherwise respectable deniers acting as if the scientific evidence isn't overwhelming, and the human costs of denial aren't obvious outside the studio door.  We're firmly in the political clutches of the paid and paid-off deniers with political and economic power, who are trying to increase and solidify that power for the foreseeable future, which, if they continue in this and even increase their stranglehold, may not actually be very long.

In a recent interview Kim Stanley Robinson, author of the vivid Science in the Capital trilogy, allows that people are tired of reading about the Climate Crisis, including him.  Because so far nothing changes.  At best, it's the moment before smoking "suddenly" slipped into being really unacceptable, and one municipality after another banned it from public places, which was actually after decades of battle and well-paid denial.  

What is supposed to overwhelm the denial and cauterize the denialists is feeling the reality of the Climate Crisis.  In the U.S. this summer may well test that theory, but a lot of innocent people will pay the price for those well-paid and paid off in our political and media capitals.

Independence Day?  Not yet.  And make no mistake: the science news of the day has nothing to do with God particles.  It's what the real world is doing to us thanks to what we have done, and it's about what we're not doing about it.       

Baseball Very Very Good

They gave a taste of this last year: the Pittsburgh Pirates went on an exciting winning streak just before the All-Star break, when they were above .500 for the first time in years, but collapsed after the teams returned.  This year they are again in first place at July 4th, with another impressive winning streak, but somehow this feels like it may be different.

It seems less freakish, for one thing.  There is solid pitching and pretty dependable hitters, especially Andrew McCutchen (pictured) who leads the National League in batting with a .360 average.  In any case, the Pirates have been rocking the excellent Pittsburgh ballpark.

The San Francisco Giants are also suddenly in first place, after a series in which they shut out the LA Dodgers completely, and won a home series with the Pirates' main division rival, the Cinncy Reds.  But they're now on a torturous road trip, in which Tim Lincecum wilted in the DC heat.  Earlier in the week, first place Washington's best pitcher had to leave the game with dehydration.  Baseball is not the only sport affected, though with temperatures this dangerously high, more events should have been cancelled.  It's another adjustment to global heating that will be eventually made, though probably after the danger becomes all too obvious.

Apart from that, baseball is a ritualized refuge from current madness, and with my teams doing this well, it's fun again.

Of Roberts' Ruling and the New Order

Two things happened last week that bode well for the U.S. economy and the chances for the less than wealthy to make a little economic progress.  First was the Supreme Court upholding the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act.  Had it been wounded or destroyed, the economic turmoil would have been immediate, injecting uncertainty (especially in the healthcare sector) into a fragile recovery.  Keeping it on track will benefit the economy--not to mention most Americans-- in the long run in a variety of ways.  The second event (in time) was the European Union deal that makes major economic turmoil in Europe less likely, at least in the short term.  Such turmoil would have immediately stifled U.S. growth and could have nudged the economy back into official recession.

There's been a lot of noise in Washington about the ACA ruling.  Predictably much of it is scandalously inaccurate, both in terms of the ruling and the facts of the law.  Predictably much of it is nervous and inflated political guessing.  A number of polls taken since the ruling on Thursday have concluded various things, but perhaps the most salient number is that almost half of respondents in one poll hadn't even heard of the ruling at all.

And all too predictably, some of the noise was scary.  The ruling upheld the law by a final 5-4 vote, with Chief Justice Roberts casting the deciding vote for the majority.  This fact sent the Rabid Right into fits, and Roberts--an erstwhile reliable ally--was castigated in the usual extreme terms as a traitor to the cause.

Then a CBS report, summarized here, made news first of all because it broke the Supreme's usual leakproof silence, indicating that high level clerks or actual Justices did the leaking (my money is on a "conservative" Justice or two, or at least a clerk acting on direct instructions from a Justice.)  It also made news for its assertion that Roberts initially sided with the conservatives in nullifying the law, but made a late switch.

The initial reaction to the article was divided between those expressing skepticism on this point, and general agreement with the implications: that the "conservatives" on this Court are indeed political before they are constitutional judges.  So this decision, as beneficial as it is, may well be the exception that proves the rule.

Though one of the CBS report's points has been questioned in terms of the sequence of the various opinions being written, it suggests that Anthony Kennedy (previously believed to be a swing vote) is strongly ideological, and that he and the other "conservatives" were so upset with Roberts' decision that they ignored his legal points in their opinions--that they essentially dissed him.  In other words, they acted exactly as the ideological Rabid Right are acting now. 

Congressional Republicans are busily misinterpreting the basis for Roberts' decision, and then lying about it.  All of this is further evidence that as the GOP becomes the apparatus of the Rabid Right, it is ceasing to be a political party in the American sense, and more like the Communist Party in the Soviet bloc--striving for one party rule in the Soviet sense: insisting on ideological purity internally, and seeking to dominate and deny rights and legitimacy to any external group.  The pattern of the GOP moving in that direction is pretty clear.  

So it isn't just that the Court is engaged in partisan politics over interpretation of the law, which is already a failing.  And it isn't even that they are ideological, which further distorts their judgments and renders the R5 injudicious and dangerous.  It is that their ideology is as dogmatic as if revealed by their God, in aid of a political party bent on as totalitarian a New Order as the U.S. has ever seen.   If indeed the ACA ruling was the exception that proves the rule (which recent history as well as a lot of evidence from within the opinions convinces me is likely) maybe even because there are a few shreds of integrity left, or if Roberts' example injects some sobriety about the Court's real responsibilities, will be known only by future decisions.  Meanwhile, this election becomes in part a referendum on the future of American democracy. 
 

Campaign Rhythms

Presidential politics continues: Romney, whose reputation as a liar grows internationally (Michael Cohen writes in the Guardian: "But Romney is doing something very different and far more pernicious. Quite simply, the United States has never been witness to a presidential candidate, in modern American history, who lies as frequently, as flagrantly and as brazenly as Mitt Romney,")
is caught in a pretty serious lie about his past--with implications that have something damning for everybody, left, center and far right.  Meanwhile the Obama campaign braces itself for the upcoming unemployment report and also the figures on political contributions for June, which may show the Romney campaign raking in a bunch more.

But except for the swing states where political messaging is already unavoidable, many if not most people aren't paying a lot of attention to the day to day (not to mention the hour to hour, minute to minute, tweet to tweet.)  A lot of people already know who they are voting for in November, and so they can save a lot of time by ignoring the campaign (which is why polls that measure interest in the campaign tell very little.)

President Obama is enjoying an unpredicted bump in the polls, especially in some swing states.  But the really big anti-Obama advertising effort in those states has not yet begun.  We'll see how effective the endlessly repeated Big Lies can be.

Meanwhile many won't be paying much attention until the real show starts at the conventions later in the summer and then in the debates in the fall.  It's probably true that campaigns can be won and lost in the spring, if a candidate is defined.  But that's learnable only after the votes are in.  As is everything else.  Bill Clinton went from unloved third place to a contender at his convention, and then to favorite in the debates.  On the other hand, John Kerry had a good convention and won all three debates against G.W. Bush, but didn't win the large majority required if a Democrat is permitted to win.  So nobody really knows.  But one thing is certain: it's barely July.