AMERICAN SPORTS TODAY

Today, sports.  In the past I've posted on Tampa, Florida, because this seems to be the city for sports champs.  Today, I'll expand the kudos to the entire state, for their excellence has been almost remarkable.

To begin, the Florida Panthers are in the Stanley Cup.  Not sure who will oppose them, for the Dallas Stars and Vegas Golden Knights will play game 5 tonight, with Vegas leading 3-1.  The Panthers, incidentally, are located in Sunrise.  Sunrise?  That's in Broward County, in the Miami metropolitan area.  Population, around 100,000.

It hasn't been easy, for the Panthers had to come back from a 3-1 deficit to eliminate the Boston Bruins, who had set NHL records in wins (65) and points (135).  Earlier last month Florida was ranked #12 in the NHL, with the Bruins at #1.  The Florida star is a 25-year old American, Matthew Tkachuk

Or maybe like Tampa, I need to focus on Miami, for their NBA Heat was at one time 3-0 against the Boston Celtics.  Now, 3-2, with game 6 also tonight, in Miami.  Maybe because of injuries, but Boston is  currently favored to win the match this evening.  What this game has come to is 3-point accuracy.  The latest NBA power rankings has the Celtics at #1 and Heat way down at #22.

In Major League Baseball, the Tampa Bay Rays comfortably leads the American West.  However, they have never won a World Series.  The latest rankings show the Rays #1 in the MLB.  The Miami Marlins have won two, in 1997 and 2003.  They are doing okay, but not great this year.

Otherwise, there are some surprises:

• In the AL Central, the Twins are #1 with Tigers #2.  Yes, Detroit Tigers.
• AL West, Rangers lead, with Astros #2.
• The National League leaders are the Braves, Brewers and Dodgers.

Florida has three National Football League teams, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Jacksonville Jaguars and Miami Dolphins.  Both the Bucs and Dolphins have won two Super Bowls, while the Jags have not been to any of those games.  Miami is the only NFL team ever to go undefeated, and that was way back in 1972.  The White House re-honored the team in 2013, with QB Bob Griese, President Obama and Coach Don Shula.

At the college level, the Florida State softball team will be in the Women World Series.  They already have the t-shirt.  OKC stands for Oklahoma City, the site of this annual event.

Oklahoma is #1 and will also be in the World Series.  However, they were really lucky, in that their 48th straight win (lost only to Baylor this year), breaking the college record, came today as follows:

The Sooners have currently won 48 games in a row, through May 27. That puts them alone on top, with a chance to extend further in the 2023 Women's College World Series. Oklahoma's only regular-season loss in 2023 came to Baylor in February. The 48th win of the season came in Game 2 of the super regionals — the Sooners trailed 7-4 in the seventh and down to their last out and last strike when Kinzie Hansen sent an 0-2 pitch over the fence for a three-run bomb. OU then came back to take the lead in the top of the ninth and hold off Clemson to advance to its seventh-straight trip to the WCWS. The record-breaking win, that beat Arizona's record set in 1997, was even more significant because of what was likely the Sooner's last game played on Marita Hynes Field.

For the record, my fantasy baseball teams are #1 in head-to-head and rotisserie leagues, and #2 in a RL.  I change my players virtually every day, letting go lagging veterans, and adding hot hitters and pitchers.  This is the main reason why I'm doing so well.  In the head-to-head league, I have 203 moves (this is unlimited for the year), and the #2 team has 77, with #3 18.  In the RL, my #1 team has had 174 moves, with #2 21, #3 14 and #4 14 moves.  My #2 team in a RL has had 175 moves, while the #1 team ahead of me, only has one.  The last place team has 22 moves.  Under these conditions, I can't believe the #1 team is far ahead of me, and catching up so early the season will  be nearly impossible.

Mawar is back to being a super typhoon at 180 MPH.  While the Phillipines watches with concern, all projections has the eye turning north, weakening, missing Taiwan and probably also moving sufficiently east of Okinawa.  But you never know.

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SHOULD YOU WORRY ABOUT THE NATIONAL DEBT CEILING CRISIS?

 I yesterday ended with this cartoon by Mike Lukovich:

Something terrible has happened to the Republican Party.  The root cause is Donald Trump.  

At one time, smart minds guided the Grand Old Party.  Today, the dregs of society control this organization.

That Trump coup attempt on 6January2021 was Act One.  Then consider all the legal problems facing him.  Add the mediocre competitors facing him.  I've long thought Ron DeSantis was an idiot governor, and nothing he has recently done has helped.  Are they doomed on 5 November 2024?

They still have two pathways for victory.  If Joe Biden gets seriously ill, that could become a problem for Democrats.  If the national economy crashes by the Fall of 2024, Republicans can cheer.  The one sure way this can occur, beginning now, Act Two, is to default on our national debt.  Sure the country will suffer, and if Republicans succeed, this will just be another way to discombobulate not only our economy, but the foundation of democracy and freedom.  

What might happen?

• The national and global financial markets will be rocked.  
• The stock market will crash.
• A serious recession will carry into 2025.

• 
  Social Security recipients might not get their checks on time.
• Federal workers, including the military, might not get paid.
• Medicare and Medicaid will be disrupted.
• Interest rates will shoot up, maybe to 20%.
• Housing will crash, for few could afford the mortgage, but has never defaulted.  Even then, this crisis made Standard & Poors downgrade the U.S. debt for the first time, the stock market sunk, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average losing 17% before and after the compromise.

Earlier this week Fortune said there's ZERO CHANCE the debt crisis isn't resolved.  Well, they were quoting Jeremy Siegel, professor of finance at Wharton.  Biden supposedly has a 14th Amendment solution he can use.  Something about the debt ceiling being unconstitutional.  One problem is that if Republicans contest the decision, this matter could get locked up in court up to the Supreme Court.

Anyway, Janet Yellen just said Congress has until June 5, not June 1, to agree.  Others say at least June 8.  From all reports, Congressional staff members are ironing out differences.  Better yet, with this agreement, the next debt ceiling crisis will not come until after the 2024 presidential election, probably the spring of 2025.  

From all reports, war (most call this defense) expenditures will be increased, while social spending will be reduced.  Why?  We already have a war budget as high as the next ten countries combined.  Sure, we got to help Ukraine, but we can do this without spending as much as the next ten nations with defense budget #2 to #11, combined.

What exactly is the U.S. debt ceiling?

• Simply, the debt ceiling is the maximum sum of money the U.S. Department of Treasury is authorized to pay our bills.
• The first ceiling was $49 billion in 1940.
• By 1945 this was up to $300 billion.

• 
  In 1946, the ceiling dropped to $275 billion.
• Was $1 trillion in 1981 and close to $10 trillion in 2007.

• 
  Congress raised the debt ceiling 90 times before the year 2000.
• The three most serious debt limit crises were in 2011, 2013 and 2021.
• Raised seven times during George W. Bush's 8-year term, and 11 times during Barack Obama's reign.

• 
  We now can't exceed a debt of $31.4 trillion, or 768 times the original amount in 1940
• The country actually reached that point on January 19, and "extraordinary measures" are keeping us afloat.
• We actually defaulted once, in 1979, but this was a technical bookkeeping glitch that was quickly rectified.

Mawar is back to being a Super Typhoon at 185 MPH. However, most projections show a beeline towards Taiwan, a weakening into a Category 2, with a right turn to the north, then a further directional move to the northeast away from Okinawa.  Japan?

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WHAT WAS THE ECONOMIC COST OF THE COVID PANDEMIC?

 Some weekly Worldometer info on COVID-19:

• Deaths over the past 7 days.
• World  1913
• #1    Brazil  243
• #2    Germany 223
• #3    USA  209
• #4    Russia  183
• #5    France  155
• Deaths in the past 7 days per million population.
• World  0.24
• #1    New Zealand  11
• #2    Hong Kong  11
• #3    Martinique  5
• #4    Greece  4
• #5    Denmark  4
• #11  S. Korea  2
• #17  Brazil  1
• #23  USA  0.9

Worried about long covid?  At one time as high as one-third of people who got infected were suspected of suffering this symptomatic fallout.  However, a recent study seems to show that only 10% now suffer from this ailment.  Part of the reason is that the subvariants from Omicron to the present are not as troublesome.

Now that the pandemic has been declared over, what was the cost of covid?  Seems like an uncalculable task, but Jakub Hlávaka (top photo) and Adam Rose of CREATE (University of Southern California's Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Threats and Emergency) made an attempt.

• First, they only analyzed the effect on the USA.
• They said the cost will reach $14 trillion by the end of the year.  

• 
  From 2020 to what it will be at the end of this year, the net economic output of our country will be $103 trillion.  
• However, without the pandemic, it would have been around $117 trillion.
• Thus, simple subtraction gives you $14 trillion.

• 

  The greatest loss stemmed from workplace absences and lost sales.
• Take direct health care expenses.
• During the pandemic, hospitalization amounted to $214 billion.
• Normally, 65,000 Americans would have died from January 2020 to June 2022.  This cost should have been only $20 billion.
• 
  At the height of the pandemic in the second quarter of 2020:
• Air travel had fallen by nearly 60%.
• Indoor dining by 65%.
• In-store shopping by 29%.
• Of course, these losses were offset by online purchases, government stimulus and working from home.

• 
  This pandemic period was unprecedented.
• The toll was twice that of the Great Recession of 2008 (December 2007 to June 2009).
• 20 times that of the 9/11/2001 terrorist attacks.
• 40 times that of any other disaster since this century began.
• The analysis was limited to the pandemic's standard economic effects.  If they had included the vast array of indirect costs, such as lost years of work because of premature deaths and long COVID, mental health effects and student learning loss, the cost would have been much higher.

Look's like this debt crisis is entering a dangerous stage because the House of Representatives has gone home for the Memorial Day weekend, and June 1 is the supposedly the doom day.  Something from Mike Lukovich that well explains what might be happening.

If you've been keeping up with Super Typhoon Mawar, it yesterday only brushed Guam as a Category 4, creating considerable havoc.  In the open ocean, it is back to being a Super Typhoon, strengthening at this writing to 175 MPH!  This makes Mawar the strongest typhoon in this region since Typhoon Damrey in 2000.  Guam is home to 168,000 people, including more than 20,000 U.S. military personnel and dependents.

Looks like there will be some weakening as Mawar heads for Taiwan, and further good news, the latest projection has a turn to the north, then slightly northeast, away from Okinawa.  Then what?  We'll see.

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BOAT: The Brightest of All Time

You by now must know that GOAT is the Greatest Of All Time.  But BOAT:  The Brightest of All Time?

• Last October telescopes spotted a gamma ray burst, which is caused by the collapse of a black hole.  These also occur when two black holes or neutron stars collide.  This phenomenon is focused along a narrow beam.  If you happen to be in the path, you could be in trouble.

• 
  One of Humanity's most serious possible extinction evenf could well be a gamma ray burst.
• However, Planet Earth is so far away from such things that astronomers don't much worry about that, especially as the odds of this beam heading exactly our way are very low.

• 
  Yet, astronomers detect about a burst a day, and these are only the ones heading in our general direction, which is a small percentage of all GRBs in the Universe.
• The calculation is that an extinction GRB happens once every five million years, but not on here.
• Possibly, a GRB with this potential could have occurred about 450 million years ago.

Well, those phenomena serve as fine background, for if you are in the direct path, the light intensity is way up there.  But that is not the BOAT of my discussion today.  The latest issue of Scientific American reports on the largest-ever cosmic explosion that has raged for years.

• 
  First detected three years ago, this blast has continued to shine on.  According to a new study, there is a cosmic explosion known as AT2021lwx 8 billion light years from us that has been erupting all those years now, emitting two trillion times the light of our Sun, and 10 times the energy of the brightest supernova ever observed.

• 
  This explosion was initially spotted by Caltech telescopes in 2020.
• The initial thought was that this was a quasar.  But these fluctuate in energy and brightness.

• 
  AT2021lwx burns at a steady luminosity.
• The next best guess was a supernova.  But these typically last for months, not years.
• The current thought is that this could be because a star was being pulled into a black hole, and this is the shredding process.  Yet, AT2021lwx this three times brighter for any of these.
• The latest conclusion is that the cause is a massive cloud of gas 100 times the size of our solar solar system orbiting a black hole and somehow got disrupted, now emitting 100 times more energy our Sun will over 10 billion years.

If you got lost a few bullets ago, the same can be said for most astrophysicists.  The problem with their field is they are seemingly baffled by almost everything.  They are confused by anything Black and Dark, like holes, energy and matter.  At 15 Craigside we annually get question about the day and time.  They need to come here to be checked out.

About astrophysicists, the general thought is that they are not different from astronomers.  There are around 10,000 to 15,000 of them in the world, and their salary falls between $90,000 and $117,000/year.  Not much actually, considering that most have doctorates.  The median PhD salary in the USA is around $100,000.  Of course, someone like Neil Degrasse Tyson makes half a million/year and has a net worth of $7 million.

From all current reports, the eye of another super typhoon, this one called Mawar, again just missed Guam to the north as a Category 4, and seems headed straight to Taiwan.  However, the expectation is a northern movement, placing Okinawa in jeopardy.  

This is the largest typhoon to affect Guam in a couple of decades, although since 2000 23 typhoons have tracked within 200 miles.  The last super typhoon to make landfall was half a century ago.

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THE FABULOUS DORSEY BROTHERS

I've had numerous articles featuring the Big Band Era.  To the right Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, with Janet Blair.   In 2020 I posted:

My favorite song #56 enters the Big Bang era, and today, I feature Jimmy Dorsey:

• I'll Be Seeing You
• All the Things You are
• I'm Getting Sentimental Over You

In the beginning there were the Dorsey brothers, Jimmy (left), elder, and Tommy.  In their early group was Rudy Vallee.  They joined Paul Whiteman in 1927 and in 1929 had their first hit.  In 1934 they signed with Decca, and a member of their band was Glenn Miller, who received a loan from Tommy to form his own band.  The brothers had a falling out, so in 1935 Tommy, who played the trombone, formed his own orchestra.  Frank Sinatra became a singer with him, then quit.

Boogie Woogie came in 1939.  Frank Sinatra returned from the Harry James band in 1940 and they made 80 records.  In 1940 I'll be Seeing You, written by Sammy Fain and Irving Kahal made it to #4, but the Bing Crosby solo in 1944 reached #1.  Along the way, Nelson Riddle also played trombone with Tommy, and in his group were Jo Stafford and Paul Weston, where they got married.  Others included Doc Severinsen, Buddy Rich, the Pied Pipers, Dick Haymes, Connee Boswell, Gene Krupa (even after he was arrested for marijuana possession) and Connie Haines

Even though he disbanded his band in 1946, he did record How are Things in Glocca Morra in 1947, so formed another band.  He and Jimmy reconciled.  The biographical film that year, The Fabulous Dorseys, was released.  That was the whole movie, but Rotten Tomatoes audiences only gave it a 28 rating. In 1953 Jimmy joined Tommy, and they did well on TV.  In 1956 they introduced Elvis Presley to the world.

Tommy choked on food and died at the age of 51 in 1956.  All his works were destroyed by that 2008 Universal Studios fire.  Jimmy passed soon thereafter at the age of 53 of stomach cancer.

Tommy Dorsey had 286 Billboard chart hits, with 17 reaching #1.  The biggest was I'll Never Smile Again with Frank Sinatra, which stayed at #1 in 1940 for twelve weeks. I'm Getting Sentimental Over You (1935) was his theme song and is my #56.  Haunting and sad, I get emotional.

I could end nostalgia Tuesday with above, but I add a few more items of interest:

• 
  From an Irish mining community in Pennsylvania, older brother Jimmy was born in 1904, with Tommy the following year.
• Their first band was with father, Thomas senior, who wanted his boys out of the mines.  He succeed beyond expectations, but at least one grandchild did work there, until he became a teacher.
• The two joined various bands from 1922, with Jimmy playing the saxophone and clarinet, with Tommy taking up the trombone.  One way to distinguish between the two is that I'm Getting Sentimental Over You is clearly led by a trombone.
• 
  They got a break in 1927 when Paul Whiteman hired their latest group.
• Seven years later in 1934, they formed the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra, with Glenn Miller on second trombone.  Their Boogie Woogie.
• They broke up only a year later over a dispute, where Jimmy gained controlled of their band and Tommy took over a band from Joe Haymes.
• Over the next 18 years, both bands were immensely successful.
• 
  They temporarily reunited in 1947 for the film,  The Fabulous Dorseys.  Full movie, but Rotten Tomatoes audiences only gave it a 28% rating.
• In 1953, Jimmy's band fell apart and the brothers reconciled as The Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, featuring Jimmy Dorsey.
• They performed together for three years, and had a national TV program called Stage Show on CBS, the program where Elvis made his debut in 1956.  Watch Elvis singing Heartbreak Hotel.

• 
  They died six months apart in 1956 and 1957, where Jimmy only two days before his death received a gold record for his greatest instrumental, So Rare.
• Tommy Dorsey had 286 Billboard chart hits, and The Dorsey Band had 17 #1 hits.  However, the Beatles had 20, #2 Mariah Carey 19, #3 Elvis 18 and #4 Rihanna 14.  What about the Dorsey Band?

• 
  How's this for a list of who played for them:
• Rudy Valée
• Frank Sinatra
• Bunny Berigen
• Bing and Bob Crosby
• Johnny Mercer
• Ray McKinley
• Glenn Miller
• Jack Teagarden
• Buddy Rich
• Gene Krupa

• 
  Mildred Baily
• Bob Eberly
• Helen O'Connell
• Mae West
• Paul Weston
• Jo Stafford
• Frank Sinatra
• In 1956, Dorsey Brothers on NBC Bandstand.

They appeared in various films:

• Jimmy Dorsey and His Orchestra (1938 short)
• The Fleet's In (1942)
• Du Barry Was a Lady (1942)
• Ship Ahoy (1942)
• I Dood It (1943)

• Four Jills in a Jeep (1944)
• Lost in a Harem (1944)

• Hollywood Canteen (1944)
• The Fabulous Dorseys (1947)
• Disk Jockey (1951)

In 1996 they were honored with a commemorative stamp.

Typhon Mawar jumped from Category 1 to 4 in one day, and stormed over Guam today as a Super Typhoon at 155 MPH.  Fox reports now at 160 MPH, and headed for the Luzon Strait between the Philippines and Taiwan.

AccuWeather projects that Mawar will turn north and miss Taiwan, heading for China.

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