America's Number One Terrorist

"To weaponize the debt ceiling, you must be willing to inflict harm on millions of innocent people. It is a shockingly powerful self-destruct button built into our very system of government, but only useful for the most ideologically hardened or borderline sociopathic."
Jonathan Chiat

Over the weekend US forces raided sites in Libya and Somalia to capture known terrorists.  Meanwhile the world's foremost terrorist went on national television to assert that the United States is on a direct path to default, which he and his GOP congressional cronies are causing.  Just as they have caused the federal government to stop working.  And he won't stop it, by simply putting it to a vote.

If Speaker Banal and his cronies continue and accomplish default, they are in all practical terms guilty of sedition.  At the moment they are terrorists, terrorizing the American people with unparalleled power to make good on their threats.  What they have been unable to accomplish through democratic means, they mean to accomplish through extortion.

Someone suggested a little thought experiment be put to them: if Democrats threatened to shut down the government and drive the world's most economically crucial nation into default unless Republicans in Congress got rid of the sequester, voted for a much needed infrastructure program, passed effective gun control and raised taxes on the rich--would they consider that a legitimate strategy?

I recently suggested the possibility that there's money behind this callous insanity: This is one case where a billionaire or two--no matter what their agenda might be, corporate greed or crypto-religious apocalyptic anarchism--can start the process that ends up in a national and world economy in shambles, and real anarchy in America.  That turns out to be true in a way, and it's the Koch brothers, of course.  The conspiracy reportedly began as the second term agenda for thwarting Obama, with this exact scenario  in mind: shut down the government to destroy Obamacare. The billionaire Koch brothers, Charles and David, have been deeply involved with financing the overall effort, says the New York Times.

Chiat writes further:

The standoff embroiling Washington represents far more than the specifics of the demands on the table, or even the prospect of economic calamity. It is an incipient constitutional crisis. Obama... now has to crush the practice completely, lest it become ritualized. Obama not only must refuse to trade concessions for a debt-ceiling hike; he has to make it clear that he will endure default before he submits to ransom. To pay a ransom now, even a tiny one, would ensure an endless succession of debt-ceiling ransoms until, eventually, the two sides fail to agree on the correct size of the ransom and default follows.

This is a domestic Cuban Missile Crisis. A single blunder could have unalterable consequences: If Obama buckles his no-ransom stance, the debt-ceiling-hostage genie will be out of the bottle. If Republicans believe he is bluffing, or accept his position but obstinately refuse it, or try to lift the debt ceiling and simply botch the vote count, a second Great Recession could ensue."

Update: If you're not already anxious and depressed, read Josh Marshall's perspective on what's happening and what's ahead.  The weak Speaker overwhelmed by events sounds like a Shakespearian screenplay, if there's an economy left to support one when this is over.

We Had 'Em All the Way!

In a tense back and forth game on Sunday, the Pittsburgh Pirates defeated the St. Louis Cardinals 5-3 in their division playoff series, with 2 runs in the 8th inning to break a tie.  The Pirates now need to win one of the next two games.  Monday's is at home, where they--and all of Pittsburgh--would love to see them end it.

For the fourth game the Pirates pitch veteran Charlie Morton, who battles rather than overwhelms.  The Cardinals pitch their rookie phenom Wacha, who was one out shy of a no-hitter his last outing. He's never started at PNC Park.  Morton on the other hand has been shaky lately, and hasn't pitched in 8 days.  So much of the third game was counter to stats and expectations it's impossible to speculate, except that the Pirates should the advantage in the late innings because of more experienced relievers and a better bench, and at least on Sunday that proved out.

The Pirates are on a roll--5 straight wins against the Reds, 2 against the Cardinals with just one loss in between.  It's their time.

The R Word

The longstanding controversy over the racist nicknames of certain professional and college sports teams has gone mainstream in the past year, mostly centered on the Washington team of the National Football League, and their use of the R word to identify themselves.  Better than the N word some might say, but that it's pretty much in the same league is really the point.

It's so mainstream that ESPN has openly discussed it, and several news outlets have officially refused to use it in their coverage.  But it reached a new level over the weekend, first because Oneida Indian Nation held a conference on the Washington name in Washington, in the same hotel where the National Football League team owners were also meeting.

Then Sunday it went to still another level when President Obama joined his name with many others--prominent and not--who agree that the nickname is perceived as insulting and the Washington team ought to change it.

You Think Last Week Was Crazy?

If the shutdown wasn't absurd enough, on Saturday it hit a whole new level in Washington.  The House voted unanimously to guarantee retroactive pay for federal employees now furloughed, which means GOPers will vote to pay federal workers to do nothing with no strings attached, but they won't vote to let them do their jobs without killing or wounding the Affordable Care Act ( or whatever they're demanding today instead.)

And until Saturday about half the federal employees furloughed worked for the Defense Department, but Secretary Hagel decided that the bill the GOPers pushed through that exempted the military and employees necessary to support them meant, well, almost everybody in the Pentagon.  So he called 350,000 people back to work, and there's little likelihood the GOPers will squawk.

However, beneath the waves of absurdity and insanity is the cold reality of the shutdown: the families who aren't federal employees but are not getting federal and federally-supported state health, education and survival services they need.  It's the cold reality of stuff that isn't being built with federal funds or for federal agencies (like the Pentagon) that means private businesses must lay off people, and the economy takes numerous hits.

It's also clear that Republican governments in the states, having already denied needed help to the most vulnerable through the sequester, already manipulating the Affordable Care Act to make healthcare less accessible to the most vulnerable, are happy to use the shutdown to inflict further cruelty on the poor, the sick and the old--as in Arizona, which has stopped welfare payments.  Stopped them.

Maybe it's time that the GOP own the slogan once applied to Exxon:

We don't care.  We don't have to care.  We're Republicans.

The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the home team St. Louis Cardinals in the second game of their division series, wresting hometown advantage from the division winners.  The next two games are in Pittsburgh.  The first team to 3 wins wins it all.  Having taken a 9-1 defeat in the first game, the Pirates also won in convincing fashion, 7-1.

There were some Pirates fans in St. Louis (photo above) but also at PNC Park to watch the game together on the Jumbotron.  Here's a neat Post-Gazette story about how rooting for the Pirates in the post-season has finally become multi-generational.

The third game of the series is on Sunday at PNC Park.  The Pirates are sending their ace starting pitcher to the mound in a very big game.  Luriano is very good at home, but the Cards are countering with a pitcher who is very good on the road, and has specifically dominated the Pirates this year.  It will be pretty difficult for the Pirates to win this short series if they don't win this third game.  So both teams know the importance of this particular game.

The Pittsburgh fans will certainly be a factor, though hopefully not a negative one, as when two fans may have interfered with balls hit in the 9th inning of the Reds game, perhaps leading to a home run and a double that could have been consequential.  This is the Pirates' best shot at taking real control of this series.  

Everything You Need to Know About the Shutdown and the 'Debt Ceiling'

In clear language, President Obama explains to workers at a Kentucky plant what's going on with the government shutdown and the impending crisis over the 'debt ceiling,' or paying the country's bills: who is responsible, how it can be fixed, what's happening now, what could happen, what's at stake.  Among the points he makes that aren't generally discussed is that the budget that the Senate passed but the House refuses to pass was already a compromise budget that kept cuts the Republicans insisted on, at least until there are further negotiations.  But the refusal of Republicans to pass what is essentially their budget until they get what they have been unable to get through democratic means, is responsible for the shutdown.  And how and why they are threatening an even worse economic catastrophe in the next two weeks.

Our Elected Terrorists

So far the House GOP is resisting any reasonable effort for at least a cooling off period in this insane government shutdown and debt ceiling crisis.  Democrats have offered to go into budget negotiations if Congress will pass a continuing resolution funding the government at current levels until mid-November, and John Banal on behalf of the GOP House has rejected it.

This is the government shutdown nobody thought would happen, and it is now running into the absolute necessity for Congress to authorize the payment of U.S. government debts in the next two weeks, or a completely unprecedented crisis will occur in the tightly knit and very tightly wound world economy.

Everybody is against these people.  Many traditional GOP corporate allies are against it.  The latest polls show that Americans know that the GOP's apparent first priority is opposing President Obama regardless of consequences; that they disapprove of defunding or delaying the Affordable Care Act (which as a conservative pundit points out, is fading as an issue as the House tries to cherrypick which aspects of the federal government it wants to fund.)

The media and members of Congress themselves say this is the work of a small minority of GOP House members, and that they are driving this suicidal venture through the one man who has the power to stop it, speaker of the house John Banal.

As I reflect that prudent people should now be preparing for possible economic apocalypse, and cannot count on a lot of the immediate future--from getting tax refunds and government services to retiring on their mutual fund-fueled retirement accounts (for as this goes forward the stock market is more and more likely to tank like nothing since 2008.)  And that prompts me to wonder if in the minds of those insane few this isn't the point: the thrill of the apocalypse, the end times to this sinful civilization, the Rapture of the rapacious.

I would not forget, by the way, that this is also the week of the new IPIC report which confirms the climate crisis in its most definitive language, with a call for stringent action.  The enormity of this future that for one reason or another people cannot admit, or can only think of in crypto-religious terms, could well be having an unacknowledged psychological impact.

Speculation aside, all I know is that a small faction of GOP congressmen is threatening the nation and the world economy in a way that no terrorist group could realistically accomplish. A weakness in our constitutional government is being exploited, and in the next two weeks we're in real danger of blowing it out of the water, in an inexorable and uncontrollable cascade that could take months to play out but will leave us with a very different reality.

The influence of political party organizations in general aside, in this instance I do very much wonder whether there is a specific source of financing that's fueling this (beyond the small donations such conflicts gin up for both sides.) This is one case where a billionaire or two--no matter what their agenda might be, corporate greed or crypto-religious apocalyptic anarchism--can start the process that ends up in a national and world economy in shambles, and real anarchy in America. It may seem fantastic but somebody better start taking that possibility with the utmost seriousness. And that somebody is the speaker of the house.

Update:  The latest offer the GOPers have rejected came from President Obama: fund the government, pay the bills and we'll open a negotiation on the budget.

As the risk of repeating, I've monitored sites that publish pundits and political reporters and political scientists, and nobody has a clue on how this ends well.  Something else that's different this time, since the paying the country's debts authorization is being "debated" while the government is shut down: no new information is going in or coming out of the government.  That the monthly employment figures, due out Friday, will be delayed is just the beginning.  Citizens who want to express their opinion or outrage to members of Congress may not be able to do it if that particular member has furloughed staff during the shutdown.  There may be nobody to answer the phones or collect and collate the mail.

Meanwhile, small businesses can't start up or expand without the Small Business Administration, lots of people can't buy homes with the FHA, the National Weather Service is on skeleton crew etc.  So the economy is stifled and more vulnerable to sudden emergencies.  That's just now, that's just for starters.

That's another quality of terrorists: they don't care who they hurt as long as they make their point, even when it isn't clear to anyone what that point really is.

Bucs Beat Em

Luriano pitches a gem, Russell Martin hits two homers and Marlon Byrd (above) started it with a homer, and the Pittsburgh Pirates defeat the Reds 6-2, to advance to the division series.

From the NYTimes: They did it Tuesday by thumping the Cincinnati Reds in the wild-card game, 6-2, before 40,487, the largest paid crowd to see a game at this sparkling riverfront ballpark. Some fans watched from the Clemente Bridge beyond center field. A Jolly Roger flag hung proudly over the Allegheny River.

  This park was not here in 1992, when the Pirates lost a trip to the World Series on the final play of the seventh game of the championship series. They lost their star, Barry Bonds, and lost their way.

Yet on Tuesday, they invited Doug Drabek, the pitcher who lost that infamous Game 7 in Atlanta, to throw the ceremonial first pitch. Drabek waved a black towel, then fired a strike from the top of the mound. Pertrina McCutchen, the mother of Andrew McCutchen, the Pirates’ star center fielder, sang a stirring national anthem.

And off the Pirates went, to play ball and play it well. Francisco Liriano stifled the Reds for seven innings, Russell Martin homered twice, and the crowd — waving flags, honking horns and wearing black at the players’ suggestion — made a difference. Johnny Cueto, the Reds’ right-hander, never seemed to have a chance.

Game Day

PNC Park hosts its first post-season baseball game as the Cincinnati Reds visit the Pittsburgh Pirates in a one game playoff to see who goes to St. Louis for the division series.  It's going to be rocking at PNC Park when the lights go on.  Great day to be in Pittsburgh, wish I was.  Beat 'em Bucs!

Tonight's Headlines

Neither of these are satire--but the juxtaposition is certainly surreal.

Government shuts down as Congress fails to pass funding bill
  [This is because the House GOPers insist on defunding/delaying/otherwise destroying Obamacare (aka ACA) as the ransom for passing a budget to keep the federal government operating past Oct. 1.]

Obamacare: How do I sign up?
[The full implementation of Affordable Care Act has long been scheduled for Oct. 1, when the exchanges in various states begin offering insurance plans.   So stories like this are naturally popping up now.  The main problem the ACA has had is a dearth of accurate information on what it does and how.  The noise of lies backed by big money has drowned out the government's own information efforts.  Thanks to House GOPers however, the media is paying more attention to "Obamacare," and so the word is finally getting out.  Plus--while much of the federal government shuts down because GOPer crybabies want to defund ACA, implementation of ACA proceeds, because it has already been fully funded, by Congress.]

Everything You Need To Know About the Impending Federal Govt Shutdown

Today's Headlines

Boehner Advises Americans to Delay Getting Cancer for a Year
(satire)

House GOP Votes for Shutdown, Says That’s Not What They Did
(not satire)

Welcome to Pittsburgh

For the first time ever, one of the great "new" baseball parks on the continent will host playoff baseball.  By defeating the Cincinnati Reds in the first two games of their series in Cincinnati, the Pittsburgh Pirates have clinched home field advantage for their one-game playoff with those same Reds on October 1.

It will be the first playoff game played in PNC Park, which opened in 2001.  A few years ago it was named the best ballpark in baseball, and is generally regarded as in the top 2 or 3.

Congratulations, Pirates.  It's been a long time coming.  Playoff baseball, welcome to PNC Park--and welcome back to Pittsburgh.

Later Word: Eyes Wide Shut, Careening Towards the Tipping Point

Several news outlets zeroed in on another statement from the IPIC report.  The LA Times story is an excellent example.  Their headline: Experts set threshold for climate-change calamity: Researchers say an emissions tipping point for the planet may be 25 years away:

The world's leading climate scientists have for the first time established a limit on the amount of greenhouse gases that can be released before the Earth reaches a tipping point and predicted that it will be surpassed within decades unless swift action is taken to curb the current pace of emissions.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimated that once a total of 1 trillion tons of carbon dioxide are emitted into atmosphere, the planet will exceed 3.6 degrees of warming, the internationally agreed-upon threshold to the worst effects of climate change.

"We've burned through half that amount" since preindustrial times, Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University who reviewed the report and is a co-author of the panel's upcoming report on the effect of climate change, said in an interview. "Because the rates of emissions are growing, it looks like we could burn through the other half in the next 25 years" under one of the more dire scenarios outlined in the report.

Under the least dire scenario, that limit could be reached by the end of this century.

Calling climate change "the greatest challenge of our time," panel co-chair Thomas Stocker said humankind's fate in the next 100 years "depends crucially on how much carbon dioxide will be emitted in the future."

But this is the tipping point for utter catastrophe, for thousands of years.  As other statements in the report affirm (noted in the Early Word below), effects from greenhouse gases already emitted will continue, and continue to get worse in the coming decades.  Attacking the causes now may save the far future, while humanity is simultaneously dealing with the ongoing effects of past pollution.

Early Word

First words on the release of the IPCC report, giving 95% certainty and as official as conclusions get to what we've been saying around here for awhile:

'Leading climate scientists said on Friday they were more certain than ever before that mankind was the main culprit for global warming and warned the impact of greenhouse gas emissions would linger for centuries.

A report, by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), played down the fact temperatures have risen more slowly in the past 15 years, saying there were substantial natural variations that masked a long-term warming trend.  It said the Earth was set for further warming and more heatwaves, floods, droughts and rising sea levels as greenhouse gases built up in the atmosphere. The oceans would become more acidic in a threat to some marine life.

"As a result of our past, present and expected future emissions of carbon dioxide, we are committed to climate change and effects will persist for many centuries even if emissions of carbon dioxide stop," co-chair Thomas Stocker said.

The U.N.'s top climate official, Christiana Figueres, said the report underscored a need for urgent action to combat global warming. Governments have promised to agree a U.N. deal by the end of 2015 to restrict emissions. "To steer humanity out of the high danger zone, governments must step up immediate climate action and craft an agreement in 2015 that helps to scale up and speed up the global response," she said.

Hot Water

Tomorrow we'll see what the UN panel has to say about it, but in advance of that there's more consensus that the "pause" in global temp rise has a lot to do with carbon--and heat--being captured in the oceans.
For example, here's a detailed analysis from Real Climate.

This set of phenomena may be lessening some effects of global heating on land but hot oceans have bad effects,too, notably on fish.  We're noticing a decline in what's available and higher prices for what is, and this is a coastal area with professional as well as lots of amateur ocean and river fishing.  The major impact is detailed here.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"How many of us would be willing to settle when we're young for what we eventually get?  All those plans we made...what happens to them?  It's only a handful of the lucky ones that can look back and say that they even came close...So before they clean out that closet Mr. Kirby, I think I'd get in a few good hours on that saxophone."

Kaufman and Hart
You Can't Take It With You

Circus of Disgrace

I've been trying to ignore the latest round of disgrace in Congress over the federal budget and the debt ceiling.  (As apparently have others, as evidenced by the only slightly satirical Borowitz headline: In Poll About Debt-Ceiling Crisis, Americans Totally Excited About New iPhone.)  I do note that 2 years after the first attempted shakedown, the White House is repeatedly characterizing it for what it is: blackmail, extortion, holding the American people hostage.  (One WH aide quoted today saying we're not negotiating with people with a bomb strapped to their chest.)

The House GOP maniacs forcing these crises issued what Jonathan Chiat charactrized as their ransom demands for passing the bill that says yes Congress will pay its debts after all. As Jonathan Chiat writes: "It’s Mitt Romney’s 2012 economic plan. Almost word for word, in fact... The fact that a major party could even propose anything like this is a display of astonishing contempt for democratic norms. Republicans ran on this plan and lost by 5 million votes. They also lost the Senate and received a million fewer votes in the House but held control owing to favorable district lines. Is there an example in American history of a losing party issuing threats to force the majority party to implement its rejected agenda?"

WH Press Secretary Jay Carney quipped that he was surprised it didn't include a birther bill.  But like a lot of absurdity we've become all too used to, at the core this has a price in people's pain, suffering, illness and forced death: specifically the horrifying and cynical efforts to prevent Americans from getting better and more affordable health care.

The Affordable Care Act exchanges open on Oct. 1, with generally lower premiums offered that before and that anyone predicted, including the CBO.  But there have been glitches and delays in parts of it.  Jonathan Bernstein in his blog suggested possible real world reasons for these and asked the political scientists and other professionals who read his blog for the information they had, since reporters don't seem to do that kind of reporting anymore.  In several of the responses, it seems that the delays and glitches are often caused deliberately by GOPer governments in the states actually trying to make it harder for people to get health care, and congressional GOPers trying to subvert the program partly by denying it enough funding.

We all know that politics more often brings out the worst than the best in people who hold office.  But the price of their illusory power and cheap perks is the health and happiness of many people, most of them in the lower depths of the 99%.  It's sick and sickening.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"Now with the invention of computers and the Internet, it's as if there is a new substitute for reading, writing and thinking.  There's not.  A mass movement is being created that is even more susceptible to different forms of Nazism."

Jim Harrison
1997

Buctober

The Pittsburgh Pirates have made it to the postseason for the first time in 21 years.  And (especially given the sorry state of the Steelers) Pittsburgh is paying attention.  They've coined a new word for the Bucs future: Buctober.

  At worst (and most likely) they'll be playing the Wild Card game on October 1.  As of right now, it would be in Pittsburgh, but there are four crucial games left, 3 with their opponent in that game, the Cincinnati Reds.  If the Reds finish ahead of them, I suppose they may just stay in Cincinnati, where their last game of the regular season will be played.  There's still a mathematical chance they can win the division, but St. Louis is two games ahead and keeps on winning.

As for this latest long drought, it's not unfamiliar for the Pirates, one of the oldest professional teams in baseball.  (Humboldt State U. is boastfully celebrating their centennial this year.  When this school opened the Pirates had been playing baseball for 30 years.)  Their greatest game World Series victory in 1960 was their first world championship since 1927.  So we're kind of used to this.  And we know to savor the moment.

Colorado Rain: It Doesn't Have to Be a Butterfly

How does Arctic ice contribute to torrential rains and killing floods in Colorado?

Prospects for a climate crisis made climate science prominent.  As it turns out, it is the most comprehensive set of scientific methodologies and disciplines attempted so far.  It involves fairly elementary physics and chemistry, but also very sophisticated ideas and techniques.  The behavior of clouds, of air currents, the oceans (temperature, depths, interaction with carbon, etc.) are very complicated scientific (and mathematical) problems.  Chaos theory is only a generation or so old, and it is crucial to all this.  There are even newer constructs trying to find the keys to complexities.

At both the theoretical and practical levels, the physical sciences that bear on climate and the effects of the climate crisis are robust.  They are impressively prepared, though crucial gaps remain.  They are making real progress on clean energy, including low cost and relatively low tech forms.  There are some good ideas for dealing with carbon, and some very big, very bad ones.  In tragic contrast, our political behavior is barbaric.

The complexities of climate are better understood now, though explaining those very complexities invites skepticism that's easy for know-nothings to exploit.  But for those who really want to understand what might be going on, there are at least tentative explanations.

So what about the droughts, fires and especially the rains that came to Colorado?  In an NPR interview, Rutgers researcher Jennifer Francis first described what was different about the Colorado rains:

For one thing, the floods that they usually have this time of year are typically more of the flash flood variety, whereas the one that occurred last week was a very long lived event for Colorado. It spanned a few days. Normally, they just come and go. And the amounts of rain are just really staggering. I mean, usually, in the month of September, say, Boulder, Colorado, would typically get about two inches. They got nine inches in just one day. And over the whole week, it added up to about 17 inches. And this can be understood in the perspective of their typical amount of rain they get for the whole year, which is only 20 inches.

Then what was different about the weather patterns that led to the floods:

There was a large swing in the jet stream northward up over the whole western half of North America. So there was this big swing northward in the jet stream and then, south of that, was what we call an upper level low. So the jet stream was bringing in moisture from the Pacific while the lower level winds were actually from the southeast bringing moisture in from the Gulf of Mexico.

And so we had moisture at two levels in the atmosphere, which made for a very, very large amount of water vapor available. So as that wind came in from the southeast at low levels, it hit the Rocky Mountains, was lifted by the mountains so it then cools and condenses and it wrings that moisture right out.

And because there was this large swing in the jet stream and this upper level low, this configuration we call a blocking pattern. And it's called the blocking pattern for the very good reason that it means that the weather patterns are stuck. The block means that it's blocking things from changing. And so we were in this pattern for several days and we've been seeing these sorts of blocking patterns quite a lot in the last couple years."

Blocking patterns occur naturally but Francis said the reasons we're see more of them and are likely to keep seeing them in the future has to do with Arctic ice.  The first is related to the years of drought in the West:

But in the summertime and in this period of years that we're in right now in particular, we've had a prolonged drought in the western half of North America. And we think this is at least partly related to the fact that, of course, sea ice is disappearing, the Arctic is warming very rapidly, we're losing the snow cover much earlier on high latitude land areas, so in the far northern part of North America, and this causes the soil underneath to be able to dry out and warm up much faster in the spring, which kind of gives a jumpstart to the warming season of summer.

So we think this might be contributing to the jet stream taking these very large northward swings because that soil, once it dries out, is able to heat up much more and it kind of creates a bulge or a dome of hot air. And this sort of contributes to the jet stream taking these sorts of patterns."

The effect of less Arctic sea ice is a change in the behavior of the jet stream.

"...because the Arctic is warming much faster than the areas farther south and it's that temperature difference between the Arctic and areas farther south that really is what drives the west to east winds in the jet stream. So we are, in fact, seeing those west to east winds of the jet stream slowing down and we believe it's related to this differential warming of the Arctic.

And once the jet stream does slow down, it tends to take a wavier path as it goes around the Northern Hemisphere so bigger swings to the north and south, which, you know, we're starting to see that happening more."

Francis added that scientists are intently studying this new behavior for clues to future weather, because the jet stream often determines it for a given area.  It was a factor, she says, in the path of the destructive hurricane Sandy on the U.S. East Coast.

And it's those waves in the jet stream that create the weather that we feel down here on the surface. So where you're located relative to different parts of these waves determines what kind of weather you're in. But what we are seeing is an increasing frequency of these northward bulges, which we call ridges, occurring in the North Atlantic, in particular.

You can think about Sandy, for example, when Sandy came along, there was one of these very strong ridges or blocking patterns in the North Atlantic and that's what helped steer her into the East Coast. And we also see them becoming more frequent in the western U.S. and other areas as well. So it does seem that we're starting to see some patterns emerge that will help us make longer term predictions in the future."

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