This shapes up to be a classic display of hitting vs. pitching.  The Dodgers unquestionably have superior pitching with their 2 aces, Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke.

Kershaw (16 – 9, 1.83 ERA L) is considered the top Cy Young contender in the Senior League and has tonight’s start.  He’ll be opposed by Kris Medlen (15 – 12, 3.11 ERA R).

But the Braves are the marginal favorites because of their hitting and they have a great bullpen.  There will be a game 3 at Dodger Stadium and neither Kershaw nor Greinke will pitch it.

Now as bad as the history of the Dodgers is (and it’s very dodgy) and regardless of the fact that the Braves have been a clearly superior organization, reliably getting into the post-season for over 30 years now, I just can’t bring myself to root for Atlanta.

But you can’t rule them out, they’re a great team.

Baseball will always break your heart.  This Series pits the Pirates (Argh) against the Cards (Squirrels!, Squirrels!) and I sure hope the eventual League Champion emerges from this bracket instead of the Dodgers (traitors), Braves (evil opponents of my Mets) one.

The Cardinals clinched their Division with 2 to go in the season and rode a 6 game winning streak to the end.  As you can tell by the seeding they’re considered the best on the Senior circuit.

Adam Wainwright (19-9, 2.94 ERA R), tonight’s starter, is generally considered the best pitcher left playing, though both team have outstanding staffs.  He was 1 – 0 with a 3.00 ERA in three starts against Pittsburgh this season.  He’ll be available on full rest for a deciding Game 5 if necessary.

The Pirates won the season series 10 – 9, but were swept at home by the Cards in early September.

They’ll start A.J. Burnett (10-11, 3.30 ERA R), late of the Yankees.  He’s 3-1 with a 3.67 ERA in his career against the Cardinals, but the last time they faced each other he was chased after 5 runs in 3 innings.

Pirates fans should not be discouraged, these teams are very evenly matched and pitching ought keep the games very close.

70% of intelligence staff out in government shutdown

Al Jazeera

October 2, 2013 12:04PM ET

Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that roughly 70 percent of the intelligence workforce – including staff from the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency – have been furloughed.

“I’ve been in the intelligence business for about 50 years. I’ve never seen anything like this,” Clapper said at the hearing on the controversial spy programs.

“I think this, on top of sequestration, seriously damages our ability to protect the security and safety of this nation and its citizens,” Clapper said.

He added that the agencies risk losing valuable staff, especially after layoffs forced by the so-called “sequestration” budget cuts that went into effect earlier this year.

Clapper: U.S. shutdown ‘a dreamland’ for foreign spy services

By JOSH GERSTEIN, Politico

10/2/13 10:39 AM EDT

Clapper said the law only allows civilian workers to be kept at work if their work addresses “an imminent threat to life or property.”

“Our applying that standard is what results across the board in furloughing roughly 70%,” he said. “I think that will change if this drags on.”

…

The ranking Republican on the panel, Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, said he was puzzled by reports that 72% of intelligence agency civilian workers have been furloughed as non-essential.

“The intelligence community either needs better lawyers who can make big changes to the workforce or are you over-employing in those areas?” he asked.  “It can’t be that 70% of the intelligence community is being furloughed and we’re still able to meet our national security responsibilities.”

Talking Jamie Dimon With Sam Seder of ‘The Majority Report’

By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

POSTED: October 1, 11:20 AM ET

Pareene hilariously told the CNBC panel that anybody could do Jamie Dimon’s job as badly as he’s done it, offered himself in half-seriousness as an option and made the absolutely accurate point that any other boss in any other industry who had overseen the regulatory problems that took place at Chase under Dimon would be looking for work.

“If you managed a restaurant, and it got the biggest health department fine in the history of restaurants,” Pareene said sensibly, “no one would say ‘Yeah, but the restaurant’s making a lot of money. There’s only a little bit of poison in the food.'”

I hadn’t seen the exchange until yesterday when Sam played it on his show. It’s an amazing piece of tape that tells you everything about why the financial press constantly misses major scandals – their only sources of information are bank spokestools and they have no clue about even the most obvious things, like the fact that the whole country north of TriBeCa and south of Battery Park cringes at the sound of Dimon’s name.

Well, happy endings like that only happen in Madam Chao’s Massage Parlor and Hollywood, though Cleveland manager Terry Francona is looking forward to a rematch against the Red Sox, at team he only helped break an 86 year World Championship drought.  Can he have a sequel with the Indians?  After all it’s been a mere 65 years for them.

The fact that they’re forced to scramble for a Wild Card Sudden Death win after finishing up with a 10 game win streak (errorless fielding too) and going 15 – 2 down the stretch tells you everything you need to know about how badly they played in the beginning of the season.  They’ll be starting rookie Danny Salazar (2-3, 3.12 ERA R).

Tampa won four of the six games against Cleveland this season, but the teams haven’t met since early June so that tells you not much.

Alex Cobb (11 – 3, 2.76 ERA R) missed 50 games with a concussion, but he’s been a different pitcher since the injury, going 5 – 1 with a 2.41 ERA in nine starts.

The Rays have gone from inoffensive against Team W (for steroids) to obstacles in the way of the sentimental favorites.  Not that I’m ungrateful, just that in playoff Baseball your loyalties change depending on the opponent.

Game start @ 8 pm ET on TBS.

Bill Black: Why do Conservatives Oppose Prosecuting Elite Corporate Frauds?

William K Black, Naked Capitalism

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

There are at least four principles that virtually all conservatives purport to support – except when the potential defendant is socially elite. I have written previously about two of these principles on several occasions – the need for accountability and “broken windows” theory that calls for the prosecutors to make the prosecution of even minor street crimes a high priority if they have, even indirectly, a material effect on the community.

The third principle is that it is vital to punish in order to deter crime. Gary Becker, the very conservative Nobel laureate in economics, emphasized this point (again, in the context of street crime). Under Becker’s theory of crime our current practices of allowing elite banksters to become wealthy through leading the “sure thing” of accounting control fraud with immunity from the criminal laws will predictably lead to new, larger epidemics of fraud that will continue to cause our recurrent, intensifying financial crises. It is rare, however, to find a prominent conservative who is demanding a priority effort to prosecute the elite bank officers who ran those frauds. I know of no conservative member of Congress publicly making that demand today. Senator Chuck Grassley has previously criticized the Obama administration’s failure to prosecute elite bankers.

The fourth principle, the one this column addresses, is the conservative love of “creative destruction” – a concept made famous by the economist Joseph Schumpeter. I have a simple proposition – there is no more creative destruction than putting a control fraud out of business through a prosecution, receivership, or enforcement action. I have never met personally a conservative, however, who agrees with that proposition in the context of a large, elite corporation. When blue collar workers complain that their clothing manufacturing firm was put out of business by a rival firm that locates its plants in Bangladesh and is able to charge less for their goods because they pay their workers a pittance and “save” money by building factories that are death traps the conservative answer is to tell the U.S. workers to stop whining and light a candle on the altar devoted to the worship of capitalism celebrating the “creative destruction” of their jobs.

Conservatives should view control frauds as the supreme evil that they will devote their lives to eradicating. Control frauds are the ultimate betrayal of capitalism. First, they are the elite face of capitalism that gives capitalism a terrible name. They become wealthy not because they are skilled, innovative, or willing to take risk but because they cheat.

…

Second, control fraud harms not only the primary intended victim, e.g., the bank’s creditors and shareholders, but also honest firms by creating a “Gresham’s” dynamic in which bad ethics can drive good ethics out of the markets. George Akerlof was the first modern economist to explain this point in his famous 1970 article on anti-purchaser control frauds (“lemons”) that led to him becoming a Nobel laureate.

…

Third, control frauds are the agents of crony capitalism. Their CEOs may spout Randian sayings, but they are ultimate moochers who delight in translating their immense economic power into dominant political power that they use to defraud with impunity. Control frauds betray and destroy capitalism. If they are not stopped by the regulators and prosecutors (the “cops on the beat”) they destroy capitalism and democracy.

…

I urge conservatives to lead the charge for the creative destruction of the elite control frauds. This is one of the many critical areas in which people of different political views should be able to find common cause.

Argh Mateys.  This be Cap’n Hank Bloodbeard and for the first time in a long, long time the Pirates be ready to pillage and plunder the Senior Circuit.  If’n it helps ye hate on the scurvy Reds remember they be the team o’ Pete Rose, a cut throat player who turned out to be so corrupt a Cap’n he’d bet agin’ his own side.

No Hall for you.  Ever.

The Reds be takin’ the field first behind Johnny Cueto (5 – 2, 2.82 ERA R).  He be better than he look, 8 – 2 at PNC Park, 7 – 2 with a 1.43 ERA in his last 12 starts agin’ the Pirates.

They be puttin’ up Francisco Liriano (16 – 8, 3.02 ERA L) who be vulnerable.  Liriano went 0-3 in four starts against the Reds this season though lack of run support be a significant factor.  But this be his home field, 8 – 1 with a 1.47 ERA in 11 starts at PNC Park. And the Pirates keelhauled Cincinnati on the final weekend of the season.

The Pirates be in the playoffs for the first time in 21 years.  They have 20 straight losing seasons, longest among the four major professional sports.  The Pirates went 50-31 at PNC Park this season 5 – 4 against the Reds.

The Reds be in the playoffs it for the third time in four years and are 13 – 7 against the Pirates in the postseason.  They also took two of three at PNC Park in their last series there Sept. 20 – 22.

And ye think this not be a grudge match between ’em they plunked 28 batsmen this season.

The format o’ the game be rightly called… Sudden Death.

The year is spinning out of control.  It’s not even the end of September yet and we have playoff Baseball.

Or play-in, but who’s counting?

Tonight’s matchup is the Tampa Bay Rays at the Texas Rangers who finished with identical 91 – 71 records.  The Rays closed the season with 7 wins including 7 – 6 over the Jays Sunday.  They’ll be starting David Price (9 – 8, 3.39 ERA L) who is 1 – 2 with a 10.26 ERA at Arlington.

Team W (for steroids) will start rookie Martin Perez (10 – 5, 3.55 ERA L) who has been doing better than average down the stretch.  The question for them is whether their big bat, Nelson Cruz who is finishing up a 50 game steroid suspension.  He hasn’t played since August 4th at which time he had 27 HR and 76 RBI.  Cruz is .429 v. Price, 9 for 12 with 3 HR.

As I’ve said many times, unless you’re extremely lucky, playoff Baseball is not about who you like.  No, it’s about who you hate and in most cases who you hate less.  Perhaps it will help you decide if I tell you the inoffensive Rays are an expansion team from 1999 and have hardly had any time to develop serious rivalries.  They have 3 post season appearances, losing twice to Team W (for steroids).

Team W (for steroids) on the other hand, in addition to rampant drug abuse (Clemens, Pettite), have the misfortune of scorching your eyes with picures of W himself throwing out ceremonial first pitches and him and killer Laura sitting in the stands.

Not that magical thinking works, but I think you know what to do now.

The winner advances to face the hapless Cleveland Indians at Jacobs Field in your “normal” one game Sudden Death Wild Card on Wednestday.  Game time is 8:05 pm ET.

History of the Cup

The Auld Mug (or more formally the “Royal Yacht Squadron £100 Cup”) was originally contested in 1851 between the America and 15 yachts of the Royal Yacht Squadron in a race around the Isle of Wight.

It is the oldest continually contested championship and the Cup was held by the New York Yacht Club from 1851 to 1983 (also a record).

After the defeat of Liberty by Australia 2 it’s bounced around a considerable bit between Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland (interesting because they have no sea coast, see Canadian challengers between 1870 and 1881), and of course the US.

Fast Boats

…for Ellison, the 2013 America’s Cup wasn’t about the race, per se. It was about disruptive innovation. It was about turning yachting into a sport for the masses. As Ellison put it, he was going to reinvent the America’s Cup for “the Facebook generation, not the Flintstones generation.”

The boats are fast.  Really fast. and can hit speeds of 50+ mph regularly.  They are literally faster than the wind and run just as fast upwind as down.

There are two principle reasons for this.  First, and most important is the semi-rigid airfoil they call a wing-sail.  Because this uses aero-dynamic lift to generate power instead of just being pushed along, it’s almost equally good whatever the wind direction and can generate more lift (power) than the air speed.

The second is hydrofoils.  These lift the hull out of the water to reduce drag, the boats are literally flying.  They also use hydro-dynamic effects to control other aspects of boat behavior which allows previously impossible maneuvers like turning on a dime.  If improperly trimmed they can also cause a boat to pitchpole, capsizing end over end instead of sideways like you’re used to.  It was a pitchpole that caused the death of Andrew Simpson.

The Races were also modified to be noticably shorter, sailing 2 a day with a firm 40 minute time limit per race.  The course was shortened too, 5 legs- a Reach from inshore to the first mark, a Downwind leg to the second mark, an Upwind leg to the third mark, another Downwind leg to the fourth mark, and a reach to the Finish Line.

The Regatta

Team Oracle started the Regatta with a 2 Race penalty for cheating during the preliminaries on the 45 foot scale boats, meaning they had to win 11 Races before Emirates New Zealand won 9.  This is quite a penalty, the harshest ever given in America’s Cup.  Just what did they do to deserve this?

They used bags of lead pellets to change the trim and that’s about as cheating as it gets.

There was also a monetary fine (cost of doing business).  Of more import were the crew sanctions.  Team Oracle lost wing trimmer Dirk de Ridder (considered Spithill’s right-hand man) who was deemed the instigator of the plot.  Also boat builder Andrew Walker and Bryce Ruthenberg, rigger, who carried it out.  Matt Mitchell, a grinder, was suspended for four races.

Oracle did not start competition well, dropping 2 the first day only one of which was close and in the subsequent 3 races spliting 1 – 2 with the All Backs.

With perfect 20/20 hindsight most commentators point at the postponement called after Race 5 and the replacement of John Kostecki with Ben Ainslie at Team Oracle Tactician as the critical moment, and say that also was the day the modifications were made to make Oracle a faster boat.  Let’s remember that at the time the Regatta stood only 4 – -1 in favor of Emirates New Zealand and they went on to score 4 more victories in the next 6 races to put the margin at 8 – 1 going into Race 12.  It’s easy to forget that All Blacks were leading the Race 12 that wasn’t by a considerable margin before high winds forced its cancellation, and the abandoned Race 13 where they were a mile ahead.

I, on the other hand, think the pivotal turning point was the 5 day set of delays and postponements before Race 14 at the end of which the match stood at 8 – 3.

This is also when most people lost interest in the contest, thinking it a sure loss.

Another more important day was Sept. 16, when the All Blacks were still leading 7 – 1 and Team Oracle was struggling with finding the proper settings for the boat.  That was a “reserve day”, scheduled to allow catching up on previous postponements.  The All Blacks had the option of forcing a race day but declined use it.  This gave Oracle more time to find the right adjustments to tune the boat.

Future Developments

Larry Ellison’s oft stated goal is to turn America’s Cup yacht Racing into Formula One for boats.  He wants to create a “World Series” of yacht racing similar to what he attempted this defense with a series of regattas at various important and well known racing ports using smaller, cheaper, and more rigidly formula boats to train crews and build interest.

If you saw any of the support racing you know it can be interesting, especially the “free for all” races where you have many boats racing at once instead of just two match racing.  Kind of like Turn Left in the water (Holy chunks of flaming twisted metal Batman!).

And of course there will be TV.

Larry Ellison’s Amazing Victory and Huge Failure

By Jonathan Mahler, Bloomberg News

Sep 25, 2013 6:13 PM ET

New Zealand would probably have won the cup several days ago, were it not for the 40-minute time limit that Ellison imposed on the races. (Imagine, say, the results of the New York City Marathon being decalred invalid because it was an unexpectedly windy day and the race times weren’t fast enough.)

Ellison did this for the purposes of making the cup more TV-friendly. In fact, for Ellison, the 2013 America’s Cup wasn’t about the race, per se. It was about disruptive innovation. It was about turning yachting into a sport for the masses. As Ellison put it, he was going to reinvent the America’s Cup for “the Facebook generation, not the Flintstones generation.”

Toward that end, Ellison added helicopter-mounted cameras and microphones on the boats. He even hired the guy who brought the virtual first-down line to the NFL’s broadcasts and the glowing hockey puck to the NHL’s.

At the end of the day, though, in trying to make the America’s Cup a TV spectacle, Ellison made it anything but. Sure, the boats look cool and go fast, but they are way too expensive to build and maintain for the costs to be offset by advertising. What’s more, the event was supposed to be over days ago but was delayed several times by weather conditions. One day it was too much wind, another day too little for these finicky, high-performance craft. How, exactly, do you create a TV spectacle around an event whose timing you can’t predict? (Even Wimbledon was forced to add a retractable roof!)

NBC Gets More Than It Expected

By RICHARD SANDOMIR, The New York Times

Published: September 25, 2013

NBC got a great deal: it paid nothing for the Cup races – the America’s Cup Event Authority bought time on NBC and NBCSN and sold advertising to its sponsors – and used the race production that was hosted by the Cup. But NBC also got lucky, televising a remarkable comeback.

…

NBC and its cable network, NBCSN, showed 13 days of racing starting on Sept. 7. NBC averaged 1.05 million viewers on the first two days; through the next 10, including Tuesday, NBCSN averaged about 165,000 viewers – about twice what it usually attracts from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Eastern.

Put into context, the America’s Cup races attracted more viewers for NBC Sports Group than for Major League Soccer games (111,000) but fewer than it received for its live Tour de France coverage (287,000) or its Formula One races (203,000 to date).

…

The America’s Cup was once a much stronger draw. The event became a late-night sensation in 1987 from Fremantle, Australia. In the final race, when Stars and Stripes defeated Kookaburra III, nearly 1.9 million television households watched on ESPN.

So I don’t think there’s any need for Mr. Ellison to get unduly pessimistic about his prospects.

There are rumors that the race will move from San Francisco to Lanai, the Hawaiian island Ellison recently purchased.  That’s a Billionaire (#8 worldwide) joke folks.  Lanai is too remote for the crowds Ellison craves, and why would h want to stink it up with crowds and media, not to mention the time zone problem (races would start around 10 pm ET).

Another frequent complaint is that there aren’t enough Americans in the America’s Cup.  You hear this most strongly from the Kiwis who have indicated that they might not mount a challenge next cycle and have complained for years that all their best talent is hired away.  There is a possibility that there may be some kind of “nationality quota” in the near future.

The next challenger of record for the Cup is set to be the Hamilton Island Yacht Club from Queensland, Australia.  As challenger of record they will negotiate with the defending Golden Gate Yacht Club (actually Larry Ellison) about the rules for the next round.  Don’t pretend they have a lot of influence though, the New York Yacht sat on the Auld Mug from 1920 to 1930 and again from 1937 to 1958 because they didn’t like the cut of the challenger’s jib.

After the racing there was a lot of talk about changing the formula.  I don’t think the AC72s are uniquely dangerous or expensive.  A big rap against them is that when you’re foiling and dip your bow you can easily get an end over end crash.  This is unusual for a boat, but falling off your foils is almost always pilot error.  Likewise, the formula is so different and so new this time around that everything is incredibly expensive.

I think that if you keep the formula the same you reduce the learning curve and standardize the parts making them cheaper.  The costliest things at the moment are research and development, and training.  Now that potential rivals have had a change to see and learn from the mistakes of these prototypes I think that you can expect the next roud to be faster, safer, and cheaper so that more teams can participate.

Wikipedia-

• America’s Cup
• 2013 America’s Cup

2013 America’s Cup Official Site

Below the fold you will find a sampling of stories from Bloomberg News, Bloomberg News Video, The New York Times, The Guardian, and The San Jose Mercury; as well as complete OFFICIAL Video coverage of all Races, Postponements, and Press Conferences with a short summary of each Race’s action and the reason for delays and postponements.