Sunday Baseball: Big Games

The first game of the Pirates home series with the Cincinnati Reds was like a horrific flashback for me and I'm sure many old time fans.  The last good Pirates team was one out--and even one strike--from going to the World Series in 1992, with a comfortable lead in the 9th.  Then a Pirates infielder muffed an apparently routine ground ball, and the Atlanta baseball team scored several runs to win the game and the National League pennant in an agonizing third of an inning.  The images of that inning are etched in many Pittsburgh souls. By the start of the next season, the exodus of the team's stars was well underway, and they didn't have another winning season for twenty years, until this season.

The game on Friday was way too reminiscent.  The Pirates were playing for at least a top wild card berth, with some hopes for the division title.  St. Louis was in first by a game.  The Reds were breathing down the Pirates neck in third.  After that, the closest team was more than 20 games back.  But the Pirates had the game in hand, with timely hitting, homers and brilliant starting pitching.  They had a 3 run lead with their closer on the mound for the top of the 9th, and yes, there were two outs, and at times, the Reds were down to their last strike.  But an infielder's error led to a run, and after several foul balls on a 3-2 count, an infield hit scored two more to tie it.  The Pirates did nothing in the bottom of the 9th or the 10th, and in between a solo home run gave the Reds the game.

It was the second time in three days that the Pirates second-half closer had blown a save with 2 outs in the 9th.  They'd been bested 3 out of 4 by San Diego, and so had little margin for error.  That Reds victory meant the two teams were tied.

Nobody can yet be sure how devastating that 9th inning will be, although the Pirates did come back Saturday to win over the Reds 4-2--and even better, with the Reds having a man on and the tying run at the plate in the 9th, they held firm.  A. J. Burnett had another brilliant start, and this one wasn't wasted--the good news being that first-half closer Jason Grilli was back to close it out, after being out from injury.

Sunday's game with Cincy is pretty important.  It's the last home game of the Pirates' season--the next 3 are in Chicago and the final 3 in Cincinnati.  I'm not good enough at math to figure out the permutations, but the most likely outcome remains that the Pirates will play a one-game playoff--with the Reds. The Atlanta team (who they could wind up playing this year for the NL crown) was the nemesis for the 90s Pirates.  Let's hope the Reds aren't the Atlanta of this era.

Beat 'em, Bucs!

(Meanwhile the Steelers looked sorry against another Cincy team.  They have yet to win a game this year, including preseason, and now 2 reg season losses against lesser teams.  They may not win one for awhile--teams know how to beat them, and so far the Steelers don't have an answer.)    

Closer to Ross St., the Bay may get a new champion--the Oakland A's are on the verge of clinching their division.  While some individual SF Giants players have had an exciting September, the team is still wobbly, and is currently giving the Yankees hope for making the playoffs.  Giving up the all-time record breaker for grand slams to a guy who is probably not in Lou Gehrig's league as a human being is not a highlight of the season.

Stories for the Future

There's a nice little piece at the Atlantic by Jennifer Vanderbes that argues for storytelling and imagination as important to human survival, in the evolutionary past and for the future.  Her citing of the function of storytelling in Paleolithic times, when humans evolved to be essentially the humans there are today, is rudimentary (when compared for example to Paul Shepard's work in the later decades of the 20th century) but entertaining and relevant.

Her argument is that imagination (or in her words "counter-factual" stories--what if? imagining about yesterday's hunt) enhanced survival because the imaginer (and those he told) were more prepared for new opportunities and nasty surprises they'd thought of, and perhaps even figured out how to respond.

 Good stories that urge listeners to imagine what it felt like to be another person or animal enhanced empathy. "An imaginative foray into another person’s mind can foster both empathy and self-awareness. This heightened emotional intelligence might, in turn, prove useful when forming friendships, sniffing out duplicity, or partaking in the elaborate psychological dance of courtship ... which brings us back to the second Darwinian evolutionary imperative: Getting laid."

 A good storyteller also enhanced his or her genetic survival because a good story is sexy.  So storytelling becomes culturally as well as maybe genetically important.

Imagining the consequences of present actions, anticipating the effects of future actions, dreaming up the future and plans to make it happen, are all part of the dreaming up we do and need to do daily in order to apply our best human capabilities to saving the world and making a better future.  Of course, this all must be tested by reality--by probabilities, facts and experiments. Imagination is not the same as delusion governed by projection and prejudice.

The author suggests that our fascination with stories might be what we need to survive the oncoming tests of our survival-- as long as we choose the right stories.

“According to the Bureau of Labor Statistic’s American Time Use Survey, the average American spends almost 20% of his or her waking life watching television. Add to that movies, gaming, books and magazines (reading alone consumed less than 3% of the waking hours of those surveyed), and you can postulate that almost a quarter of our waking lives are spent in imagined worlds.

Evolutionarily, that number is off the charts. Thanks to Gutenberg and the inventions of film and television, we immerse ourselves in more narratives than our ancestors could have imagined, which means we’re cutting back, along the way, on real-life experience. This means our choice of which stories to consume is more crucial than ever. They need to be as useful as lived experience, or more so, or we’re putting ourselves at a disadvantage.

Today we can pick up the books of the most dazzling, intelligent storytellers in the world. From all time. We can tune into the primetime masterpieces of the Golden Age of television. And if we can soak up their wisdom, and make ourselves a little bit smarter, we might just all make it to the next Ice Age.”

Sunday Baseball

Baseball fans around here seem to be noticing my Pirates cap more often.  An Oakland A's fan I passed on the street called out "Maybe I'll see you in October!"  An A's/Pirates World Series is actually possible!  (Odd perhaps I've had no interest in the As, while I've followed the SF Giants.  Maybe it's that I never followed the American League much.  When we were kids we had to be in awe of the Yankees--Mantle, Maris, Ford etc.-- and though my cousins were Orioles fans and I knew enough about the league to covet certain baseball cards, I guess I never made any emotional connection.)

At this moment, the Pittsburgh Pirates are tied for first place in their division with the St. Louis Cardinals.  A couple of days ago the Pirates lost and the Cards won, so the Pirates were a game back.  On Saturday the Pirates won and the Cards lost, so they're tied again.

The rest of the schedule favors the Cards.  Eleven of their last 14 games are against teams with losing records, and their last six are at home.  The Pirates play the Reds--just 2.5 games behind in their division--six more times, and their last six games of the season are on the road.  Those are big hills to climb.  The Cards seem over their losing streak, and the Pirates emerged from their longest of the year--four games--with 5 victories out of the last 6.  But three of those 4 losses were to the Cards, and so they lost the margin that might have made the next few weeks a lot easier.

So the smart money is on the Cards holding on to win the division by a game or two, in which case the Pirates and Reds would win wild card spots--and play each other in a single game win or go home situation.  The Pirates have played well against the Cards, less well against the Reds--so far.

But the Pirates are as healthy as they've been in months, and if they can come out of their current home stand with only a few losses (and 2 of 3 from the Cubs so far is a great start) they can keep the pressure on, and vie for their first division win in a generation.

Meanwhile their center fielder Andrew McCutcheon is considered the frontrunner for the National League Most Valuable Player.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"In Pynchon’s view, modernity’s systems of liberation and enlightenment — railway and post, the Internet, etc. — perpetually collapse into capitalism’s Black Iron Prison of enclosure, monopoly and surveillance. The rolling frontier (or bleeding edge) of this collapse is where we persistently and helplessly live. His characters take sustenance on what scraps of freedom fall from the conveyor belt of this ruthless conversion machine, like the house cat at home in the butcher’s shop. In Joyce’s formulation, history is a nightmare from which we are trying to awake. For Pynchon, history is a nightmare within which we must become lucid dreamers."

Jonathan Lethem
NYTimes Book Review of Thomas Pynchon's new novel, Bleeding Edge

Pudge and Pema

So far this year we've got at least the usual minimum contingent of resident hummingbirds, being two.  We did get a couple of visitors to the feeder early in the summer, but they seemed to be passing through.  Our residents are small, with short, straight bills, probably a similar species to Anna's Hummingbird.  (But I'm not very good at that kind of identification.)  The visitors were larger, with longer, curved bills.

The novel feature this year is the hummingbird I called Pudge.  He (I'll call him he, but who knows) spent the better part of a month doing very little besides perching for hours on the clothesline near this feeder.  The way he was perched made him seem rather pudgy for a hummingbird, though he's either lost that now or it was an optical illusion.  Optical illusions are frequent with hummingbirds, particularly their iridescent greens and reds that seem to flash in and out of existence. 

We've had hummers perch on the clothesline before but never with the frequency or the apparent lethargy of Pudge.  Still, even though he stayed there for hours, I could never get close enough to him to take a decent photo.  He may well have been guarding his access to the feeder, and he was certainly chowing down.  So I put a second, larger feeder up, farther down the porch.  This did not seem to dismay him.  He just changed his usual position on the line to midway between the two feeders, presumably so he could keep his eye on both.

Lately he's less of a fixture there, though he does hang around for days at a time, and then disappears for days, seemingly.  Another hummer of his species also comes to the feeder--she (I imagined) seemed slimmer and smaller.  But now I can't tell them apart (though I have seen them at the same time, so I know there are still two.)  It has occurred to me that Pudge is female, was pregnant and has since given birth, but any evidence of an offspring is yet to be seen.

Earlier this week when I sat outside to read, I noticed that one of the hummers came to perch in some nearby bamboo, and then moved to perch even closer to me.  It seemed quite deliberate.  I'd guessed from an experience a few years ago (after being away for awhile, I was buzzed by a hummer who hovered directly in front of me and seemed to look me sternly in the eyes) that hummers recognize the person who feeds them, and I've since read that this is so.  They also remember all their usual flower locations, and even at which intervals it pays to visit them.  

As if to confirm this, the hummer in the bamboo made sure I'd noticed its presence, and then zipped directly to a feeder, fed for awhile, and zipped back. I've noticed similar behavior with Pema the cat--she patiently leads me to her dish when she wants it filled.  Apparently they worry that scatterbrained humans will forget the correct sequence.

As for Pema, she was of no interest to the hummers when she went outside, nor was she interested in them.  But since a scary and surprising bout with fleas early in the spring which resulted in serious illness, she doesn't go outside anymore (and doesn't seem to care.)  She'd stopped eating and drinking water, so we had to take her to the vet.  Getting her into the carrier may have injured her pride, but left both of us bloodied.  The vet said there had been a recent rash of flea problems, resistant to most remedies.  But finally one worked, and she seems fine.

Otherwise, Pema has forgotten how to sit on laps, which she had finally learned after several years.  On the other hand, she loves being brushed, and now has a complete routine she expects, or demands. I think life for her is a constant tension between what she clearly understands as the rules and benefits of domesticity, and the instincts and fears honed by her early feral life.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

Haven't posted one of these in awhile, but I was inspired by being out in the first really clear night in a long time, and seeing what stars there are to see here.

Also a good occasion for another quote from Jung--one that follows pretty closely the previous quote, Memories, Dreams, Reflections:  "Uniqueness and limitation are synonymous."  In the previous paragraph: "In knowing ourselves to be unique in our personal combination--that is, ultimately limited--we possess also the capacity for becoming conscious of the infinite.  But only then!"

New Normal: Dispatches and an Explanation

We're breaking daily temperature records around here with some frequency, so I have little doubt that this summer is going to turn out to be one of the hottest on record, following one of the driest winters--not a pretty combination.

But it's nothing compared to the severity and the consequences of the current and surprisingly late heatwave in the Midwest.  

Meanwhile, wildfires continue in California--at least one to our northeast is not expected to be out until October. The biggest one down in Yosemite continues, apparently made worse by congressional failure to approve brush-clearing.  And the Forest Service has already spent its fire-fighting budget for the year, thanks to congressional cuts under sequestration.
 
So much for the New Normal as it evolves.  Last week also brought a scientific explanation, at least generally, for two apparently dissonant facts: the planetary temperature has not been rising much, while record high temperatures have been rife in many places, including entire continents (like North America.)

A new study confirms what others have speculated: that increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have not led to the corresponding global temperature rise because that CO2 is being absorbed by oceans--specifically the Pacific, which goes through a cycle of absorption until a tolerance level is reached, at which point the gases are expelled into the atmosphere.  This cycle is of varying length, but can be as much as 20 or 30 years.

Then why are we getting record heat waves?  It's the difference between winter and summer, the researchers say:

The solution to this contradiction is that temperature has behaved differently between winter and summer seasons," said Prof Xie.
"The influence of the equatorial Pacific ocean is strongest in winter but weakest during the summer, so CO2 can keep working on the temperature and sea ice in the Arctic over the summer." 

The last period of the cold Pacific capturing greenhouse gases was from the 1940s to 1970.  After that we got very noticeable spikes in global temperature.  The same will happen some time in the future.  But given how climate is still being affected--increased droughts in some areas, floods and precip in others, plus temperature extremes and storms--there's no telling what quickly rising global temps will do when they interact with these cumulative effects.

Happy Labor Day

chart from Think Progress

The Enduring Dream

I was sitting on the ground in the very hot sun when I watched and listened to the speeches and the songs at the March on Washington in 1963.  I listened to at least parts of the speeches and songs at the 50th anniversary commemoration in front of the Lincoln Memorial literally in my rocking chair, as I accessed the C-Span replay on my laptop.  Nothing after the comma in the preceding sentence would have made any sense at all in 1963.

Some of the words were stirring, some provocative.  But the only real speech that came close to measuring up to that day was President Obama's.  I was proud to hear him single out "those white students who put themselves in harm’s way, even though they didn't have to."  But mostly he praised those who deserved it the most--the African Americans who daily faced personal and institutionalized bigotry, who had lately faced mobs, police dogs, beatings, fire-bombs, white faces contorted with violent hate.   "They were seamstresses and steelworkers, students and teachers, maids and Pullman porters."

It was an important day and a unique experience for me, and I worked hard to write well about it in retrospect.  For the record, my remembrance was published in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette and the Arcata Eye--though of course my favorite version is right here, a couple of posts ago. The PG played it at the top of the editorial page I'm told, and led to a radio interview with a public radio station.  The interview didn't really add anything, because I'd said what I had to say the best way I could in what I wrote.  And I was beginning to feel strange about drawing attention to myself, when my participation was so insignificant.  But it is one of the most important historical events I was part off--probably the most important. In an interview later in the day, President Obama would say of the original March "I think that day is as important a day as any in our history."

He made the case then and earlier in his speech for why that is so.  It's because ordinary people came together and changed things.  Not just in providing impetus for civil rights legislation that ended segregation enforced by law, or even only on behalf of African Americans.  Martin Luther King's speech made the point that until all were free in America, no one was free.  President Obama noted in his speech:

"   And because they kept marching, America changed. Because they marched, a Civil Rights law was passed. Because they marched, a Voting Rights law was signed. Because they marched, doors of opportunity and education swung open so their daughters and sons could finally imagine a life for themselves beyond washing somebody else’s laundry or shining somebody else’s shoes. (Applause.) Because they marched, city councils changed and state legislatures changed, and Congress changed, and, yes, eventually, the White House changed. (Applause.)

Because they marched, America became more free and more fair -- not just for African Americans, but for women and Latinos, Asians and Native Americans; for Catholics, Jews, and Muslims; for gays, for Americans with a disability. America changed for you and for me. and the entire world drew strength from that example, whether the young people who watched from the other side of an Iron Curtain and would eventually tear down that wall, or the young people inside South Africa who would eventually end the scourge of apartheid."

Much of President Obama's speech related his ongoing theme of changing the downward plunge of incomes for the non-wealthy few to the goals of the March--which after all was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

He captured the feeling of that day when he talked about the spirit there of determination, compassion, empathy and courage, and how the March was all about imagining a better future.

"But it also teaches us that the promise of this nation will only be kept when we work together. We’ll have to reignite the embers of empathy and fellow feeling, the coalition of conscience that found expression in this place 50 years ago." 

"That’s where courage comes from -- when we turn not from each other, or on each other, but towards one another, and we find that we do not walk alone. That’s where courage comes from. 

And with that courage, we can stand together for good jobs and just wages. With that courage, we can stand together for the right to health care in the richest nation on Earth for every person.  With that courage, we can stand together for the right of every child, from the corners of Anacostia to the hills of Appalachia, to get an education that stirs the mind and captures the spirit, and prepares them for the world that awaits them. 

With that courage, we can feed the hungry, and house the homeless, and transform bleak wastelands of poverty into fields of commerce and promise.

America, I know the road will be long, but I know we can get there. Yes, we will stumble, but I know we’ll get back up. That’s how a movement happens. That’s how history bends. That's how when somebody is faint of heart, somebody else brings them along and says, come on, we’re marching. 

There’s a reason why so many who marched that day, and in the days to come, were young -- for the young are unconstrained by habits of fear, unconstrained by the conventions of what is. They dared to dream differently, to imagine something better."

Update: A few links I forgot: former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau on the March,             expostfactoid's grudging approval of President Obama's speech, and what's still the best piece on the March in the context of the Civil Rights movement I've seen on the web, by the great Louis Menand at the New Yorker.

Before leaving thoughts of the March behind for now, I must mention the great American novel The Time of Our Singing by Richard Powers which revolves around the March, and certainly the questions of race in American life.  The March scenes are haunting and magical, and though certain events are fabulous in the original sense, some are based on little known aspects of the day. If I were teaching a course on the Great American Novel I would add to the justly selected standards Moby Dick and The Great Gatsby two contemporary novels: Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day and Powers' The Time Of Our Singing.

They're Rockin in Pittsburgh

They're for real.  The Pittsburgh Pirates are rocking PNC Park, winning two in a row over St. Louis to regain sole possession of first place.  They're at worst mathematically certain to have their first winning season since they opened that park.  At best--well, the Bucs could be going all the way, all the way, all the way this year.

This past week they added three veteran players including two power hitters who were already having good years.  And these guys couldn't wait to get to Pittsburgh--the most recent acquisition, Justin Morneau, rushed to join the club for tonight's game, just hours after he was acquired.  In his first game for the Pirates, former Met Joe Buck hit a home run in a victory.  Catcher Marlon Byrd contributed to Saturday's victory with a key hit.

So it's not just that veteran talent was added--it's guys who are excited to suddenly be on a real contender so close to the playoffs.  And even though they were acquired partly for the stretch run, it's the depth needed for playoffs teams that made this a buoyant move.

For Pittsburgh fans it's a great time and a needed distraction, for the Steelers show signs of being not very good this year, and even posting their first losing season in awhile.  Winning the NL Central is going to be tough for the Pirates, though.  It may well come down to the end of season series in St. Louis.  Though they've pretty much owned the Cards this year (10-5), they aren't the greatest road team.  Still, they're likely to make the playoffs anyway--and that's magic time.

An Altered State: My March on Washington 1963

I was 17 when I participated in what was officially called the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963. I was a student at a Catholic high school, and heard my own beliefs expressed by President Kennedy in his television address that June: “We are confronted primarily by a moral issue. It is as old as the scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution.”

In the weekly newspaper for the Greensburg, Pennsylvania diocese, the Catholic Accent, I read about an organization called the Catholic Interracial Council that was inviting people to go to the March. I contacted the priest who was named and he talked to my parents. He must have been convincing because I got permission to go.

But I got my first indication of just how small this group was going to be when I attended a meeting, and it was two priests and me. A photographer from the Accent snapped our picture as I pretended to paint the already completed banner we would carry.

As it turned out we were the only three people from the diocese to march under that banner. We would meet many other people from the Pittsburgh area, organized by religious groups of various denominations as well as by labor unions and civil rights groups.

Many traveled to the March from all over the country by bus, and a few by plane, including celebrities from Hollywood and legendary entertainer and activist Josephine Baker from Paris. I boarded a special train from Pittsburgh, one of the twenty or so originating from various places that were added to take people to the March. Recently reviewing video from that day posted on YouTube, I was amazed to see a few frames of my 17 year-old self arriving at Washington’s Union Station (at about the 11:32, 11:33 marks), walking towards the camera and trying to look appropriately serious, in my dark suit, white shirt and tie.

I also looked alert. Vigilance to the possibility of violence was universal that day. From police commissioner Bull Connor unleashing police dogs on demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama, to the murder of Medgar Evers outside his home in Mississippi, it had been a brutal summer in the South. It’s been estimated that over 14,000 demonstrators across the South (including high school students) were arrested during those months, with at least one death.

When I got home I wrote (in the Catholic Accent) of the “dedicated and dignified fervor” around me at the march. But high spirits were also part of that day’s rhythm. From Union Station to the Lincoln Memorial there was always singing. For me it started even earlier, when I restlessly explored the train, wandering through one quiet car after another until I suddenly pushed open a heavy door to a car literally packed to the rafters with young people. Some were perched in the luggage racks. Several at the far end of the car were playing guitars, and everyone was singing.

The march itself was like one long song. It is more powerful in my memory than the hours of speeches at the reflecting pool. Looking into the faces of the people nearest me, and all of us looking around, my feelings became a reflection of what we felt in common.

We were astonished by our numbers, by the fact of us all there, of the reality that was completely new. The overwhelming mood was wonder. It was a sustained altered state, a living dream.

We had a sense of unanticipated numbers on the march, but the dimensions of the day weren’t clear until we got to the reflecting pool. So many people (since settled at 250,000, the largest demonstration in U.S. history to that date) and yet the transfixing feeling of peace—I don’t think anyone had foreseen this.

I saw the joy and wonder and the tears as black people of different ages and from different parts of the country saw each other there. I was also aware that in this context they could see a young white face undistorted by hate or contempt.

We’d marched and sung together, but even as an audience for the program at the Lincoln Memorial, the interactions didn’t stop-- interactions that in the mid-1960s were still rare.

Now we stood in line together at portable water fountains and toilets. We bunched and sprawled on the grass together, sweating under the same steamy sun, both drowsy and responsive to the inspiring words and music coming through the not always comprehensible fuzz of the sound system. We felt careful courtesy becoming a release into a common regard. We looked at each other.


We listened to Dr. Martin Luther King together, quoting an American hymn—“From every mountainside, let freedom ring!” We heard his American litany reach its crescendo: “Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!...Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!”

“And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring... from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!’"

He spoke of a dream that he saw reflected in the water in front of him.

The official intent of the March was to support passage of the Civil Rights bill that President Kennedy sent to Congress a few days after his June speech. Immediately afterwards I recall commentary in the press calling it a failure because that bill was stalled in Congress (it would pass in early 1964.) Today the march is better remembered than the political reason for it.

Race has still not been erased as deep separation, nor has full racial justice been achieved. But fifty years after that day, my memories aren’t of politics or even history. They are physical. They are of a future glimpsed by being lived.

copyright 2013 William Kowinski

Racism Unchained

On Saturday there was a march in Washington (see photo above) to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.  I've written a reminiscence of that day in 1963 from the point of view of a 17 year old participant, which has been published in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette (I lived in western Pennsylvania at the time.) It will also appear in this week's Arcata Eye (which is where I live now.)  I will post that piece here on the actual anniversary day, which is Wednesday.

Today I note the flood of racist activity that seemed aimed at a kind of crescendo as the anniversary approaches.  I have no idea if it's related, even psychologically, and I don't intend it as an evaluation of the March's legacy, which I still believe remains positive.

But it seems pretty clearly related to the fact that the first African American to serve as President of the United States is in the White House.  I think it was about a decade ago that Thomas Franks wrote about the secret racism that remained in the supposedly post-racial society--never overt, expressed in neutral-sounding code words, or even by adopting the rhetoric of the Civil Rights movement against the people that movement was chiefly about.  But these days even that discretion has been discarded. Racism is not so secret anymore.

There was the anti-Obama demonstration in Arizona as he was speaking there in support of an economically viable middle class.  Singing "ba ba black sheep" and carrying racist signs, calling the President "47% Negro," it seemed in part a direct response to Obama speaking about race in connection with the Trayvon Martin case.  Demonstrators insisted that by speaking about race, Obama was creating racial divide.  Apparently he couldn't keep the secret.  The Governor of Maine was quoted as saying the thought behind this out loud: that Obama hates white people. He later denied saying it.

At about the same time, racial slurs were painted on a statue of Jackie Robinson, who was the first African American major league baseball player, thus paving the way for...President Obama, I guess.  A rodeo clown  in an Obama mask as the victim to be gored by a bull was just part of a display at the Missouri State Fair that led one (white) observer to react. "They mentioned the president's name, I don't know, 100 times. It was sickening," Beam said. "It was feeling like some kind of Klan rally you'd see on TV."

The rabid right and its most powerful media instruments used their own twisted logic to accuse President Obama of a double standard for not defending the white victim of assault by alleged perpetrators who are black, as he had spoken about Trayvon Martin--despite the obvious differences in the case, such as the fact that the alleged perpetrators were arrested and jailed.  It got so bad that the rabid right muttered darkly about the addition of yet another black dog to the White House--but no white dog at all.

The frenzied hatred leads to predictable craziness, as when more Republican citizens of Louisiana blame Obama for the poor response to hurricane Katrina than blame Bush, despite the evident fact that Bush was in office but Obama was not. Or the reflexive hatred of Obamacare changes to approval of its provisions if the name isn't attached to it.

Given that extreme charges of a similarly crazed tone were often aimed at FDR, as well as JFK and RFK (though some of the hate against them was related to support for racial justice), race is probably not the whole Obama psychosis story.  But it is clearly a big part of it.  Big enough for no less than the Majority Leader of the Senate Harry Reid to bring it out in the open.  Of GOPers even in Congress he said  "It's been obvious that they're doing everything they can to make him fail," Reid said. "And I hope, I hope -- and I say this seriously -- I hope that's based on substance and not the fact that he's African-American."  

Much of this was on the minds of speakers at the anniversary march on Saturday, as was the political beneficiary of overt racism, the naked attempt to restrict voting rights in the states--the most substantive and most open challenge to those rights since the Voting Rights act almost 50 years ago.  This is why this resurgent racism is more than a scary psychological response, or melancholy evidence of the depth of racism in America.  Racism is being used to weaken and discredit the presidency of Barack Obama (which is of course not to say that anyone who opposes his policies or even believes he's not a good president is racist.)  Racism is also being used to deny Americans their votes.

  All of this shows what a powerful and incendiary tool racism remains, with those who harbor it and those who cynically employ it, or both.  The Republican party in particular is further discrediting itself and demeaning America by employing it.  But it is perhaps a measure of that party's desperation as well as its resurgent hatred that it is so obvious.

The Fire This Time

Update Monday: The Yosemite fire slowed a bit but is again threatening the SF water supply.  President Obama promises federal emergency support.

The wildfire crossing the borders of Yosemite in California has tripled in size, with potential to grow more today.  Because it threatens both power and water supply for San Francisco, Governor Brown has declared a state of emergency.

Several hydroelectric plants near the fire have stopped operating, and there have been blackouts reported in San Francisco.  The fire is closing in on areas that supply 85% of San Francisco's water.  This same area supplies power to the San Francisco airport and municipal buildings.

The fire is at best 5% contained, and it is so powerful that it is creating its own weather.

This is one of 50 major fires burning in the West.  There's another north and east of here that is sending smoke down to us.  It may burn a long time yet.

Update 10 p.:  The Yosemite fire is still mostly out of control, but the area near the San Francisco power and water supply has apparently been secured, and damage is being assessed.

Ex-Post-Partisan

In previous match-ups between the Pittsburgh Pirates and San Francisco Giants I was equally happy/sad whoever won.  Not this time.  In what even a Giants' radio announcer called "a lost season," and with the Pirates in a tight pennant race for the first time in 20 years, I'm afraid I'm no longer post-partisan.

The Pirates are in a tough fight in a very tough division with St. Louis and Cinncy, both of which won on Thursday.  So I was rooting for the Bucs, even at ATT Park, though sad to see that the Giants' bad luck just continues, with Matt Cain the latest player and pitcher to be injured.  First reports are that it isn't serious, though.

The Pirates won Thursday 10-5 to stay in first place by just one game.  There are three more games in the series.

Update Friday: First reports were optimistic--Cain is on the 15 day disabled list.  One more wound for the wounded Giants. No team deserves a season like this.  The Pirates won a high scorer on Thursday, and then a pitcher's duel on Friday, 3-1.  But St. Louis also won, so the Pirates just held their ground.  The Reds lost, though.

Snowden, Greenwald, the NSA: a Perspective

In the department of who cares what I think but I'm going to tell you anyway, here's my take on the squabble so far.

Glenn Greenwald is a an asshole.  I don't trust him as a journalist.  But the actions of British police in subjecting his partner to nine hours of interrogation at the London airport that was a transfer point was sheer thuggery, and exactly what people are justifiably afraid of when "security" gets too much power.

That the Brits overstepped their bounds is also the opinion of the U.S. White House and in fact of the Brit who helped write the terrorism law they supposedly were employing:   Lord Falconer of Thoroton, the former Labour lord chancellor who was involved in introducing the anti-terror legislation used to detain Miranda, said the police had no right to detain him under the Terrorism Act 2000... Falconer, who helped introduce the act in the Lords before he became lord chancellor in 2003, told the Guardian: "I am very clear that this does not apply, either on its terms or in its spirit, to Mr Miranda."   (Yeah, ironic for USers that the guy's name is Miranda and his rights were violated.)

As for the NSA etc. there's been more heat than light.  The heat ranges from the media simply suggesting untoward intrusions to the rhetoric of Greenwald and Snowden likening it to Nazi atrocities.  While even President Obama acknowledges that Snowden's revelations got America to pay attention to the problems of ensuring privacy at the same time as the law and the country apparently wants every possible effort to track and stop terrorists, there's so far only fragmented and inconclusive information about what's really going on.

While some folks like Andrew Sullivan and John Cassidy at the New Yorker are alarmed, Jeffrey Toobin at the New Yorker is less concerned about the revelations than what the costs of Snowden's security breach are and will be.  Only on the basis of the arguments each has made so far, I'm more persuaded by Toobin.

It goes without saying that thuggery and similar excesses are always a danger with any kind of police, and the more power and secrecy they have, the more potential for big bad abuses.  But we're not so far talking about anything being done with any information gathered, or for that matter, any information other than the fact of someone calling someone, which like it or not (as Toobin notes) is not protected by law.  Maybe it should be but it ain't.  Also, it could be that the only people in America who are surprised by this are those who haven't seen a cop show in the past five years.

We're also not talking about censorship, about tracking what people take out from the library, or about torture, or sending people to secret prisons never to be heard from again--we're not even talking about the abuse of that stupid concoction called the no-fly list.  All of which the American public was apparently willing to allow by reelecting President Bush in 2004, who instituted them all.

And again I'll only mention that the most active intrusions and use of collected information that I know of are by corporations for their own profit and that of their clients.  Beyond that, I'd like to see more light on the subject and less self-serving heat.   Yeah, idealist.

As Jung Once Said...

"In the final analysis, we count for something only because of the essential we embody, and if we do not embody that, life is wasted.”

C.G.Jung

Memories, Dreams, Reflections

p 325

for a fuller context for this quote: Blue Voice.

painting: Le Printemps by Gino Severini 

"As Someone Once Said:" Jung, Martin Luther King and Quotations

"That which we do not bring to consciousness appears in our lives as fate."
C.G. Jung

It's a great quote, right?  It's certainly a penetrating thought, succinctly expressed.  But is it really a quote?
Did Jung really say or write it--those exact words?

A lot of sites on the Internet think so, or at least they unquestionably accept it as a true quote.  Try it yourself--do a search on the quote.  I just did again--5 out of the first 6 sites at the top use these exact words, attributed to Jung, but without a source named.  One of the top six however varies it a bit: "Whatever is not conscious will be experienced as fate."

To be fair, this last site was quoting a book, or rather a review of a book: a Washington Post Book Review "where it was noted to be the epigraph to Craig Nova's new novel, Cruisers..."

And I first happened on it in a actual physical book as well, in the exact form quoted up top.  It's one of three quotations at the top of an essay ("Flying Rabbits: Denizens of Distant Space") by Margaret Atwood, in her recent collection In Other Words: SF and the Human Imagination.  Atwood is a careful writer and scholar, who noted in a footnote that the quotation came from another book, Meeting the Shadow by Abrams and Zweig.

It happens that I have that book, too. It's a collection of essays by various authors, including Jung.  Eager for an exact citation, I checked it. It's not in the Jung essay, nor in the many footnoted passages from Jung's work in other essays.  The quote is again one of several on the very first page, without source.

By source or citation or attribution I mean, exactly where in Jung's work does it appear?  Nobody seems to know.  And nobody seems to care.  Because it just keeps getting repeated--and thanks to the Internet, over and over. It's even been perpetuated by multiple tweets.  If it's on the Internet it must be true, right?  It's like the quote has been friended about a million times.

Instead we get "as Carl Jung once said..."

 That it appears in slightly different form--always without attribution--is perhaps telling.  The Psyche Wizard quotes it:“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” And he calls it "one of the most important quotes ever!"
 
Another site: "When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Though this site does attribute some quotes, it doesn't link for this one (though as we'll see, we may be getting warmer...)

For finally, someone does have an attribution to a statement that carries the sense of this one: "The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner opposite, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposing halves." The citation is to Jung's Collected Works Vol. 9.  The book's title is Aion, and this quote is taken from "126" which is a paragraph number I guess.  In the paperback edition it's on p. 72.  (This site comes up earlier if you search Jung and the quotation.)

So what's the point? We know by now that some famous quotes weren't said by the person credited with them, or said at all.  We know that many are not exact.  So people have different attitudes about what constitutes a quotation.  Close still gets a cigar.

On the other hand, we're seeing at the moment a consequence of the inaccurate or paraphrased quotation--namely the one that is being sandblasted off the Martin Luther King, Jr. statue in Washington.  Right now it's touch and go whether the work will be done in time for the 50th anniversary of his speech at the March on Washington.

The controversy there was not so much accuracy as the inaccuracy gave a false impression of King's point.  A lot of the problem was context.  And in some sense that's true of lots of quotations.  For instance, Jung's.  In Aion he's making a very specific point about western civilization, and the split in Christian consciousness.  (The chapter is called "Christ, A Symbol of the Self.")

But of course Jung may well have said something very similar in another context.  He may actually have written or said the exact words of this "famous" quotation.  (I noted it because it is brilliantly expressed, and seemed familiar.  My hunch is that someone paraphrased Jung in just this way--Hillman maybe, or William Irwin Thompson, or Bly.)  But if so, nobody I've seen who quotes it has given any location in his writing where he wrote it--or even an interview where he said it.

What truly bothers me is that nobody seems to care where he said it, in what context, or whether he said it at all.    

Telling Truth to Anti-American GOP

Quoted: “Their number priority, the one unifying principle in the Republican Party at the moment is making sure that 30 million people don’t have health care,” Obama told reporters at a televised news conference Friday. “There’s not even a pretense now that they’re going to replace it with something better. The notion is simply that those 30 million people or the 150 million who are benefiting from the other aspects of affordable care, will be better off without it. That’s their assertion. Not backed by fact, not backed by any evidence. It’s just become an ideological fixation.”

New Normal in California

While fires rage in southern CA and north and east of us in national forest areas, California's Environmental Protection Agency issued a 270 page report on other climate crisis effects in the state.  The SF Chronicle story noted: "The combined impact described by the indicators is dramatic," said Matthew Rodriquez, California's secretary for environmental protection, whose agency specialists prepared the report.
"The science is clear that we're already seeing significant changes in every part of the state," he said Wednesday. "If you look at these indicators, you can't really debate that climate change, and its impact, is here." 

The quantified impacts include sea level rise, temperature variation, movement of tree, plant and animal species to higher elevations, fires, decline in salmon, increased sea lion pup mortality and other species disruptions. Many of the changes can be traced back a half century, and many are accelerating in recent years.  For instance (acc. to the Chronicle) The annual average acres burned by California wildfires in the dozen years since 2000 (598,000 acres) is more than double the acreage burned in the 50 years between 1950 and 2000 (264,000 acres).

California newspapers gave the story positive play.  A subsequent editorial in the San Jose Mercury News said: "Climate change is not just some abstract scientific debate," California EPA Secretary Matt Rodriquez told the Mercury News' Paul Rogers. "It's real, and it's already here." Californians understand the seriousness of the threat. In a poll last week from the Public Policy Institute of California, 79 percent of respondents said they support even bolder action from the state, which is already at the forefront. As in so many other matters, Californians can lead the rest of the nation with this. The cost will be high, but the cost of inaction will be higher."

The LA Times story included: "These environmental indicators are leaning very dominantly in a single direction that is consistent with the early phases of climate change," said Dan Cayan, a climate scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the U.S. Geological Survey who contributed to the report. "It’s not something that's 100 years away; it's already starting to play out."

An Associated Press story published in the Washington Post, Boston Globe and elsewhere said this: Officials hope it will spur the state and local governments to plan ahead and adapt to a hotter future. Monitoring should continue ‘‘to reduce the impacts of climate change and to prepare for those effects that we cannot avoid,’’ George Alexeeff, head of the state Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, said in an e-mail.

I've written about the climate crisis for a long time, on this blog and elsewhere.  At first my intent was to spread the word, especially about the urgency of addressing it before we started feeling serious effects that were for all intents and purposes permanent.  That ship has sailed, as this report and other indicators over the past several years prove.

My second purpose in recent years was to promote the notion that we now must deal with two crises, or two aspects of the climate crisis.  We must address the causes of global heating--primarily greenhouse gases--in order to save the farther future from catastrophic change that will end life on earth as we know it.  At the same time, we must address the effects of the global heating and greenhouse gas pollution that has already occurred--effects which can't be stopped, and which will build and will be with us for a long time.

Now, when I hear an official like George Alexeeff quoted above make that second point as a matter of policy guidance, then it is becoming conventional wisdom.  That's good.

But I'm not sure what purpose it serves for me to continue to write about the climate crisis anymore.  The effects are going to be cataloged, and some of them will be somewhat surprising (like the yo-yo effect of carbon in the atmosphere reported Thurs.)   More warnings on continued carbon pollution will be made.  More storms, heat waves etc. will be attributed to the climate crisis, along with the denialists denying it (led by--no surprise, but now quantified,-- Fox News.)   More international conferences will grapple with what to do.  More progress will be made on clean energy, and more money from fossils who own fossil fuel companies will fuel denial.

It's now largely in the hands of policy makers, a great many of them on the state, regional and local levels.  Also corporations seeing opportunities, or realizing that their asses are in the fire, regardless of how lovely things are for monstrous oil companies.  If I think I can contribute anything new, then sure.  But in my limited time I wonder if this is the best use of it.

Climate Crisis is The New Normal

NOAA's climate report for 2012, issued Tuesday, adds more substance if no real surprises to the climate crisis as--in its words--the new normal.

This report involves 384 climate scientists from 52 countries, and tons of data.  Climate crisis deniers like to point to the slowing of the rate of global heating, which scientists believe is a temporary effect of the latest La Nina.  But there's the ongoing long term trend, and the specific data that supports the dour idea that heating is going to continue and probably accelerate.

The ongoing trend is for more climate records to be broken.  For instance: • Record ice loss from melting glaciers. 2012 will be the 22nd year in a row of ice loss.
• Near-record ocean heat content, a measure of heat stored in the oceans. When the ocean holds more heat than it releases, its heat content increases.
• Record sea level rise of 1.4 inches above average.
• Record-low June snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere. The June snow cover has declined 17 percent per decade since 1979, outpacing the shrinking summer Arctic sea ice extent by 4 percent.
• Record-low summer Arctic sea ice extent. Sea ice shrank to its smallest summer minimum since record-keeping began 34 years ago.
• Record-high winter Antarctic sea ice extent of 7.51 million square miles (19.44 million square kilometers) in September.
• Record-high man-made greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere. In 2012, for the first time, global average carbon dioxide concentrations hit 392 parts per million and exceeded 400 ppm at some observation sites. The number means there were 400 carbon dioxide molecules per 1 million air molecules.

It's the Arctic melting that forecasts trouble ahead, including sea level rise, but also triggering more heating.  And the consistency of data led one of the report's co-authors to conclude "The near records being reported from year to year are no longer anomalies or exceptions," Richter-Menge said. "They have become the norm for us and what we expect to see in the near future."

NOAA compiles this report for the use of policymakers who are responsible for making policy for the future.  That's where the New Normal comes in.

The report's data indicate "new normal" conditions that can inform planning decisions, instead of relying on models that "count on the future being statistically a lot like the past," Sullivan said at a news briefing.

It  cuts no ice, Arctic or otherwise, with certain irresponsible policymakers.  The U.S. House for example just passed a bill that declared carbon pollution isn't a problem.  (They say you can't legislate morality--but apparently you can legislate reality.)  A GOPer controlled House committee voted to prevent the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases, and then cut its budget by a third to make sure.

None of that is likely to pass the Senate, and at the other end of PA Ave., the Secretary of Interior declared to her employees that she wants no climate crisis deniers among them.  But in terms of the effect on actual policy, this conflict creates what I called in a different context, a "furious stasis."  

This is the U.S.--even though in 2012 the global temp only got into the top ten, while it was the hottest year on record for the U.S.  Meanwhile an unequivocal statement from 60,000 scientists of the American Geophysical Union, just the latest scientific organization to say something similar:

This week the group issued a two-page statement with the headline: "Humanity is the major influence on the global climate change observed over the past 50 years." It added, "Human-induced climate change requires urgent action."

Glory Day

It was the best and most important couple of days in Pittsburgh Pirates baseball since Bonds, Bonilla and Van Slyke were the outfielders of dreams at Three Rivers Stadium in the 1990s.  This season the Pirates have been at or near the top in one of the most competitive divisions in baseball, and with three straight victories over their closest rival, the St. Louis Cardinals, they not only climbed back into first place--and it's been a long long time since that's happened after the All-Star break--but at least for the moment they have the best record not only in the division, not only in the National League, but in all of major league baseball.

They did it Tuesday by winning both games of a double-header.  After a tense 11 inning 2-1 victory, they poured it on for a 6-0 win in the second game, behind a great pitching performance by a guy who had just been called back from the minors.

There are two more games in this five game set with St. Louis, and they are all in PNC Park in Pittsburgh, filled to the rafters with hungry fans in a sports city, and for one of the oldest baseball organizations in the major leagues.

I'm catching the wave of excitement way out here, which admittedly is easier to do when contemplating the dive that the Giants are taking--and knowing (as the players must) that this particular World Champion team is not going to be together much longer.  Best then to keep my eyes on the Pirates.  Beat 'em Bucs!

A Note: It's Not Just Me

I've been extensively reporting on President Obama's important speeches and statements here, because I don't see such coverage elsewhere, and particularly because I've read and heard too many people with big media voices claiming that President Obama said something he didn't, or didn't say something he did, or suddenly just started saying something he's said a number of times before, often in the very same way.

I'm not alone in noticing this.  Last week, prominent political scientist Jonathan Bernstein, who writes for the Washington Post and Salon among other outlets, wrote on his own blog about something Josh Kraushaar wrote for the conservative National Journal, claiming that President Obama's economic speech in Galesburg was his first attempt to address the issues of jobs and the economy.  Bernstein called it perhaps "the single stupidest thing I've heard anyone try to peddle yet."

I added this comment: "...while Kraushaar is an extreme example and I'm happy to see him called on it, he is hardly alone. I can't count the number of times I've heard some learned pundit pick out something in an Obama speech or statement as something new, something he should have said long ago, when in fact he'd said it several times before. You like have to listen, or at least read." 

To which Bernstein responded:  Yeah, I really agree with that last point. Not just pundits, either; partisans and activists, too (most definitely including liberal activists who want to know why Obama never says X, when in fact he says it all the time).

The Good, the Bad and the Climate

There is good news, or at least hopeful news, in the struggle to address the climate crisis.

After months of obstruction, Senate Republicans finally relented and consented to President Obama's appointment of the new Environmental Protection Agency director, Gina McCarthy, who has climate crisis cred and considers addressing it as her main mission--as does President Obama.  According to the New York Times, "The president told Ms. McCarthy that his environmental and presidential legacy would be incomplete without a serious effort to address climate change. 'I’m so glad he said that, because if he hadn’t, I wouldn’t have wanted this job,” she said. “It’s an issue I’ve worked on for so many years, and it just can’t wait.”

In the NYTimes interview cited in the last post, President Obama not only affirmed that his decision on the Keystone Pipeline will be "based on whether or not this is going to significantly contribute to carbon in our atmosphere. And there is no doubt that Canada at the source in those tar sands could potentially be doing more to mitigate carbon release."  He also countered arguments that the Pipeline will lower gas prices (it may even increase them in the Midwest, he said) or that it is a job creator (a maximum of 2,000 temporary construction jobs, and maybe 50 permanent jobs.)  He awaits a recommendation from Sec. of State John Kerry, who is also a strong advocate for action on the climate crisis.

Good news continues on progress in clean energy, especially in the key area of energy storage and reliable flow.  Progress has been made in solar, and now in a new generation of wind turbines.  This makes wind power more available to electrical grids.  Though it is also important to note that one of the great advantages of wind but especially solar is its future as decentralized technology, not requiring all energy needs to be met by an immense grid.


But of course, the bad news also continues--as more evidence supports what many have been warning for years.  And sometimes the news is even worse.

In the department of duh (studies supporting common sense),  a study confirms that crime and violence increase with the heat, and throws in a provocative prediction: global heating will add 30,000 murders and 200,000 rapes to the expected US total by 2099.  A survey shows that in the western US, intense heat means increased damage to infrastructure: everything from sidewalks and bridges to railroads and airport tarmacs.  And the hotter temps for more of the year in more places is bringing disease-bearing insects to people and places without recent experience of them, or even any experience at all--such as a blood-sucking insect from Asia that may transmit dengue virus, or West Nile.

The worse news involves--no big surprise--the Arctic.  There's of course ongoing concern about the general heating and melting of the ice.  But there's also a lot of methane buried under the permafrost, and the damage it could cause if released is beginning to be quantified. A new study published in Nature concludes: "The release of methane from thawing permafrost beneath the East Siberian Sea, off northern Russia, alone comes with an average global price tag of $60 trillion in the absence of mitigating action — a figure comparable to the size of the world economy in 2012 (about $70 trillion). The total cost of Arctic change will be much higher."

Let me clarify what "mitigating action" means in current envirospeak.  It means addressing the cause, not just the effects. At least one assumes that's what it means in this context.  And that doubt is one reason I find this mitigation/adaptation vocabulary so pitiful.

The study notes that while some businesses and business writers have been touting the economic benefits of a warmer Arctic, this effect is a far, far greater economic negative.

According to Prof Peter Wadhams from the University of Cambridge, there's increasing evidence that methane is now being released into the atmosphere. "When you look at satellite imagery, for instance the Metop satellite, that's gone up significantly in the last three years and the place where the increase is happening most is over the Arctic," he said.  

Four-Fifths of a Nation

In a strong and even shocking study, AP pollsters supported President Obama's ongoing contention that income disparity and economic insecurity must be addressed--and then some.  Their study found that "Four out of 5 U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream."

It's time that America comes to understand that many of the nation's biggest disparities, from education and life expectancy to poverty, are increasingly due to economic class position," said William Julius Wilson, a Harvard professor who specializes in race and poverty.

The New York Times published an interview with President Obama in Galesburg that focused on economic matters and the ensuing politics.  In it, Obama related this economic insecurity to race relations.  After correctly reminding reporters that the March on Washington was officially for "jobs" as well as "freedom," he said directly: "And racial tensions won’t get better; they may get worse, because people will feel as if they’ve got to compete with some other group to get scraps from a shrinking pot. If the economy is growing, everybody feels invested. Everybody feels as if we're rolling in the same direction. And so a lot of the other issues that we’re talking about -- whether it’s climate change or immigration, or how we manage our trade relations -- all those are eased if we’ve got our economic act together."

The AP study also noted that while President Obama's elections have bolstered the confidence of non-whites that their economic future will be better, whites are less hopeful.

But race is not exclusively or even mainly a problem for the 80% or 99% of whites who aren't rich and powerful.  When asked about those in Congress who claim he exceeded his authority in delaying implementation of part of ACA, President Obama was blunt: "And if Congress thinks that what I’ve done is inappropriate or wrong in some fashion, they’re free to make that case. But there’s not an action that I take that you don't have some folks in Congress who say that I'm usurping my authority. Some of those folks think I usurp my authority by having the gall to win the presidency. And I don't think that's a secret."

In the interview, President Obama argues strongly for the ACA as essential to economic progress and justice.  On the Republicans efforts to subvert the implementation of Obamacare, Norm Ornstein added his voice to Jonathan Chiat's in a piece entitled The Unprecedented—and Contemptible—Attempts to Sabotage Obamacare, subtitled Doing everything possible to block the law's implementation is not treasonous—just sharply beneath any reasonable standards of elected officials.