East Coast residents are used to these winter Nor'easters -- under normal circumstances. Some trees down, some temporary power outages are par for the course. But now? The timing couldn't be worse. For one thing, the ground is already saturated, which means more flooding and more falling trees. And I feel really, really bad for the people who are already traumatized by Sandy, because this will trigger such bad memories of the original storm.

From Dr. Jeff Masters at his blog:

Storm-weary U.S. residents pounded by Superstorm Sandy may have a new storm to contend with next Wednesday: an early-season Nor'easter is expected to impact the mid-Atlantic and New England with strong winds and heavy rain. Our two top models, the European (ECMWF) and GFS (run by the National Weather Service), both predict that an area of low pressure will move off the coast of South Carolina on Tuesday evening.

Once over the warm waters off the coast, the low will intensify, spreading heavy rains over coastal North Carolina on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. The storm will accelerate to the north-northeast on Wednesday and pull in cold air from Canada. The storm is predicted to intensify into a medium-strength Nor'easter with a central pressure of 992 mb by Wednesday afternoon, when it will be centered a few hundred miles south of Long Island, NY.

The European model, which did an exemplary job forecasting Hurricane Sandy, predicts a stronger storm that will stay just offshore and bring a 12-hour period of strong winds of 40 - 45 mph to the coasts of Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and New York on Wednesday morning and afternoon. The GFS model and 06Z NOGAPS model runs from 06Z (2 am EDT) this morning have a weaker storm that is farther offshore, with the main impact of the Nor'easter occurring Wednesday evening in coastal Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Maine. The Nor'easter will likely bring a swath of 2 - 4" of rain to the coast, and the potential for more than a foot of snow to mountain areas of the New England.

The storm is still five days away, and five-day forecasts of the path and intensity of Nor'easters usually have large errors. Nevertheless, residents and relief workers in the region hit by Sandy should anticipate the possibility of the arrival on Wednesday of a moderate-strength Nor'easter with heavy rain, accompanied by high winds capable of driving a 1 - 2 foot storm surge with battering waves.

(Jamie McCarthy/WireImage.com)

It's not just the hair that makes him look foolish, but the words he utters from his mouth. Here's his latest buffoonery.

Donald Trump is not a big believer in global warming. "With the coldest winter ever recorded, with snow setting record levels up and down the coast, the Nobel committee should take the Nobel Prize back from Al Gore," the tycoon told members of his Trump National Golf Club in Westchester in a recent speech. "Gore wants us to clean up our factories and plants in order to protect us from global warming, when China and other countries couldn't care less. It would make us totally noncompetitive in the manufacturing world, and China, Japan and India are laughing at America's stupidity." The crowd of 500 stood up and cheered.

Is this supposed to be taken seriously? Isn't it winter on the East Coast and doesn't it usually snow there? Is this his proof?

Please Lord, help us all.

The HuffPo reports:

"The Donald" did not include Vancouver's unseasonably warm temperatures and lack of snow in his weather observations. After last week's record-breaking storms, many scientists went to great lengths to explain that the storms do not disprove climate change. Some even believe that climate change contributed to the storms.

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We know that folks on the East Coast -- especially in New York and D.C. -- tend to think the world revolves around them, but this is ridiculous.

The Fox News anchors were having a field day yesterday, promoting their coverage of the East Coast snowstorms, mostly as a way of springboarding into their claim that the storms somehow prove that global warming is not happening -- a fixture in the Fox narrative.

Because, of course, the only part of the world that actually counts is the East Coast. Nevermind that for the planet as a whole, temperatures in 2009 were the second-warmest on record, nor that scientists are anticipating more records in the immediate years ahead.

The theme on Fox: Because it's colder in New York and D.C., it must be colder all around the rest of the world!

Eric Bolling taunted Al Gore, as did Glenn Beck, who then went on to laugh at the reports noting that in fact this is evidence of global-warming theory, claiming that we were now using an upside-down thermometer, then darkly proclaimed that this was all about the "progressive agenda", which has no use for "the truth." And on Hannity's show, he trotted out the "blizzards debunk global warming" line, and Greg Gutfeld proclaimed that this meant the demise of the "global warming industry."

Of course, we could just as easily proclaim that the record warm temperatures we're getting in Seattle are proof that global warming is real.

But here in Seattle, we understand that what happens to us locally doesn't mean the same thing is happening globally. We're not only more honest about it, we're more reality-based.

And the reality, as the New York Times explained this morning, is that the heavy snowstorms on the East Coast in fact perfectly fit into the model of climate change being predicated by scientists:

Jeff Masters, a meteorologist who writes on the Weather Underground blog, said that the recent snows do not, by themselves, demonstrate anything about the long-term trajectory of the planet. Climate is, by definition, a measure of decades and centuries, not months or years.

But Dr. Masters also said that government and academic studies had consistently predicted an increasing frequency of just these kinds of record-setting storms, because warmer air carries more moisture.

“Of course,” he wrote on his blog Wednesday as new snows produced white-out conditions in much of the Eastern half of the country, “both climate-change contrarians and climate-change scientists agree that no single weather event can be blamed on climate change.

“However,” he continued, “one can ‘load the dice’ in favor of events that used to be rare — or unheard of — if the climate is changing to a new state.”

A federal government report issued last year, intended to be the authoritative statement of known climate trends in the United States, pointed to the likelihood of more frequent snowstorms in the Northeast and less frequent snow in the South and Southeast as a result of long-term temperature and precipitation patterns. The Climate Impacts report, from the multiagency United States Global Change Research Program, also projected more intense drought in the Southwest and more powerful Gulf Coast hurricanes because of warming.

In other words, if the government scientists are correct, look for more snow.

Fox's Jane Skinner featured a report this morning discussing this Brenda Ekwurzel of the Union of Concerned Scientists, who laid out in more detail how the heavier snows are likely a product of the heavier amounts of moisture in the atmosphere from global warming.

Want to bet that this bit of reportage goes completely ignored by the "opinion" anchors?

I spend about an hour or two every night working on those little clips for the Music Club. John finally made it worth my while. He brought me along to a private screening of the best film I've seen all year, War, Inc," an incredibly original way of looking at an issue raised both my George Washington and Dwight Eisenhower: the dangers of great wealth and militarism ganging up on democracy. Monday afternoon John and I want to introduce you to John Cusack, who co-wrote, co-produced and co-starred in this thought-provoking (and hilarious) film. Just show up right here at 3pm (PT, 6 back on the East Coast) and help John Amato and I ask John Cusack some questions about his latest project.

Did anyone see the debate episode Sunday night? They did two live broadcasts, one for the east coast and one out west between two very fine actors. I'm in the middle right now. Any thoughts on who won or lost? Did the arguments and responses ring true?

Today Show Boat Photo-Op

This is funny stuff. I've been working on it for a couple of hours and just got the east coast feed. To boat or not to boat. On the east coast feed, Michelle is paddling in what looks like a river-until a couple of people go walking by. The west coast feed is a bit different.

Download | play -WMP West Coast Feed-no boat

Download | play -QT West Coast Feed

Download | play -WMP-East Coast Feed-with boat (hattip The Political Teen for the East Coast feed)

On the west coast feed they got rid of it entirely and had her standing in the water.

"In one of television's inadvertently funny moments, the NBC News correspondent was paddling in a canoe during a live report about flooding in Wayne, N.J. While she talked, two men walked between her and the camera _ making it apparent that the water where she was floating was barely ankle-deep....read on

Arianna has her questions for Tim already lined up, and this week's show could be good.

All you East Coaster's please send me any tips that you think are clip worthy.

Rich Hahan worked at the General Motors plant here until it closed about two years ago. He moved to Detroit to take another G.M. job while his wife and children stayed here, but then the automaker cut more jobs. So Mr. Hahan, 50, found himself back in Janesville, collecting unemployment for a time, and watching as the city’s industrial base seemed to crumble away.

Among the top five employers here are the county, the schools and the city. And that was enough to make Mr. Hahan, a union man from a union town, a supporter of Gov. Scott Walker’s sweeping proposal to cut the benefits and collective-bargaining rights of public workers in Wisconsin, a plan that has set off a firestorm of debate and protests at the state Capitol. He says he still believes in unions, but thinks those in the public sector lead to wasteful spending because of what he sees as lavish benefits and endless negotiations.

“Something needs to be done,” he said, “and quickly.”

Across Wisconsin, residents like Mr. Hahan have fumed in recent years as tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs have vanished, and as some of the state’s best-known corporations have pressured workers to accept benefit cuts.

OK, so here's the thing: While I don't agree with Mr. Hahan's stance on public-sector unions I can certainly understand where he's coming from.

Why? Because on the whole our government has done jack-squat to protect the jobs of blue-collar manufacturing workers in the Midwest. This includes Bill Clinton's embrace of NAFTA and other big trade deals that have become a staple of Democratic policy making right up through the Obama administration. So there are a lot of blue-collar people out there who think to themselves, "Hey, the government hasn't done a damn thing to protect my job -- why should I care about protecting government workers' jobs?"

And this brings me to a topic I and lots of other folks have been wrestling with for a long time: That is, why do a majority of white blue-collar people in this country regularly vote for the GOP in national elections? The answer, I've concluded, isn't that they love Republicans but rather that they see no reason to vote for Democrats.

I'll put it to you like this: There is a good chunk of Midwestern "Reagan Democrats" who may not see eye-to-eye with us commie heathen East Coasters on some social issues, but who also know that the GOP's economic policies are screwing them. In other words, they have no real loyalty for either party and their votes are often up for grabs in elections.

But here's the thing: You've gotta give these folks a reason to vote for you. The mistake that Democrats have made is to think the secret to capturing these votes is to become more conservative on social issues. But that's silly: If social issues such as abortion and gay marriage are first and foremost on these voters' minds they're going to vote for Republicans. Midwestern blue-collar voters will support Democratic candidates when they pledge to oppose free trade deals and to kick Wall Street's ass on their behalf. But when the Dems don't deliver on those things, a lot of these voters throw up their hands and say, "Why the hell bother?" Virginia Senator Jim Webb captured this dynamic nicely late last year:

Webb has pushed for a onetime windfall profits tax on Wall Street's record bonuses. He talks about the "unusual circumstances of the bailout," that the bonuses wouldn't be there without the bailout.

"I couldn't even get a vote," Webb says. "And it wasn't because of the Republicans. I mean they obviously weren't going to vote for it. But I got so much froth from Democrats saying that any vote like that was going to screw up fundraising.

"People look up say, what's the difference between these two parties? Neither of them is really going to take on Wall Street. If they don't have the guts to take them on, and they've got all these other programs that exclude me, well to hell with them. I'm going to vote for the other people who can at least satisfy me on other issues, like abortion. Screw you guys. I understand that mindset."

For far too long the Democratic Party leadership has supported policies that have screwed blue-collar Midwesterners as much as any Republican policies have -- after all, remember that the repeal of Glass-Stegal got more than 90 votes in the U.S. Senate and was signed into law by a Democratic president. Instead of constantly asking ourselves, "What's the matter with these silly Midwesterners?" we should probably be asking, "Why the hell isn't our supposed center-left party looking out for all workers' interests?"