Saturday, September 9, 2017

Barbara Palvin 'Cheeky' in Curaçao (VIDEO)

Nice.



Irma's Approach Shifts to Gulf Coast (VIDEO)

At WSJ, "Irma’s Approach Shifts to Gulf Coast, Keeps Florida on Edge":


MIAMI — After days of preparation, Hurricane Irma—one of the most powerful storms to cross the Atlantic—is forecast to hit the Florida Keys around daybreak Sunday before continuing on a path that threatens catastrophic flooding along Florida’s Gulf Coast.

Deadly storm surges could inundate parts of the state’s southwest coast with up to 15 feet of water, the National Hurricane Center said, and much of the state will see “life-threatening wind impacts” regardless of the hurricane’s exact path.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott hammered home the danger from rising waters Saturday. “There’s a serious threat of significant storm surge flooding along the entire west coast of Florida” he said. “Think about that: 15 feet is devastating and will cover your house.”

The state of 20.6 million people has been readying itself for Irma as the storm barreled into the Caribbean, killing at least 22 people and battering islands with winds in excess of 150 miles per hour. Now Irma is headed for the U.S. mainland as a Category 3 storm that is expected to pick up strength overnight as it moves away from Cuba into warm open water.

Irma would bring a punishing cocktail of destructive winds, major storm surge, torrential rains, possible tornadoes and widespread power outages, said Alan Albanese, senior meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Key West.

“This is a very serious threat, potentially catastrophic,” he said. “A lot of people down here in the Keys have not experienced anything with the potential this system has.”

Florida officials have warned that Irma could be worse than Hurricane Andrew, the Category 5 storm that devastated South Florida 25 years ago. Andrew killed 61 people in the U.S. and caused nearly $48 billion in economic damage in 2017 dollars, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—the costliest storm in U.S. history until Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Parts of Florida were experiencing tropical-storm force winds Saturday evening. “We have been very aggressive in our preparation for this storm and now it’s upon us,” Mr. Scott said. “Every Floridian should take this seriously and be aggressive to protect their family.”

“The storm surge will rush in and it could kill you,” he said.

More than 76,000 electricity customers had lost power by early Saturday evening, mostly in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, a tiny fraction of the state’s total, according to the Florida Division of Emergency Management. The number is expected to grow.

Hurricane Irma’s westward shift toward the Gulf Coast brought some sense of relief to cities like Miami and Fort Lauderdale but heightened fears of catastrophic flooding on Florida’s Gulf Coast. The hurricane center warns the storm surge could reach 10 to 15 feet above ground from Captiva Island, west of Fort Myers, to the southern tip of the Florida peninsula. That warning is an increase from the 8-to-12-foot range forecast Friday night.

Residents on the state’s west coast quickly shifted plans and bunkered down.

Wrede McCollum, who lives on Pine Island off Florida’s southwest coast, had planned to stay at a friend’s house—despite a mandatory evacuation order—because of reports of log-jammed highways and packed shelters. But after seeing the storm’s projected westward turn, Mr. McCollum and his friends decided to go to a shelter.

“The current track seems headed right for St. James City,” where he lives, he said by text. “Jangling a few nerves here.”

Lisa Tilson, a Boca Raton native, has been through many hurricanes but she worried about this one. She drove to her mother’s house in Sun City Center, a retirement community near Tampa on the Gulf Coast, only to find herself more squarely in Irma’s path. The family rushed to protect the home.

As the storm approached Saturday afternoon, Ms. Tilson planned to stay in one hallway with her daughters, while her mother, her mother’s partner and Ms. Tilson’s 80-year-old aunt stay in another, she said. “That’s where we are going to ride it out,” she said. “I’ve had a weird feeling in my stomach about this storm since I first heard about it.”

More than 6.3 million Florida residents, about 30% of the total, have been told to leave their homes, state officials say. Evacuations have led to long lines at gas stations, fuel shortages, traffic jams and overrun hotel rooms.

More than 70,000 Floridians have taken refuge in more than 385 shelters around the state...
More.

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Friday, September 8, 2017

Irma’s Surge Poses Big Risk to Coast

Oh boy, this one's a doozy.

At WSJ, "Hurricane Irma’s Surge Poses Major Risk to Florida":

Hurricane Irma, the most powerful storm to take aim at Florida in decades, is on a path that presents the worst-case scenario for deadly storm surges and powerful winds when it strikes the state Sunday, threatening millions of homes and businesses.

Irma is a massive storm, covering an area more than double the size of Florida, and generating sustained winds of more than 150 miles an hour. It has already killed more than 20 people after flattening the Caribbean islands of St. Martin and Barbuda as it arced north toward Florida. The hurricane’s impact could reach as far north as Indiana and Illinois, forecasters say, affecting about 50 million people.

Long lines of cars clogged Florida’s highways after authorities and forecasters implored the state’s 20.6 million people to leave low-lying coastal lands expected to be inundated by hurricane-driven seawater.

Storm surges, one of the most deadly threats of Hurricane Irma, are forecast to be 9 feet to 20 feet high, depending on whether the storm hits the peninsula from the Atlantic on the east or the shallower Gulf of Mexico to the west.

“If it comes in from the Gulf side, Tampa Bay could just get hammered and that really is one of the big catastrophic events we have been worried about for some time,” said Kyle Mandli, assistant professor of mathematics at Columbia University.

But Mr. Mandli warns the entire state could remain at risk if the hurricane tracks up the middle of the state and causes storm surges on both coasts, though those would probably not be as high.

With Irma now projected to make landfall in the Florida Keys about daybreak Sunday, weather experts say the flooding could begin hours earlier because surges from a hurricane start to hit land in advance of the storm’s center. The surge peaks as the hurricane eyewall crosses onto land, said Robert Bea, professor emeritus at the University of California’s Center for Catastrophic Risk Management. “We’re talking several hours of surge,” Mr. Bea said.

Storm surges, created when the high wind of a hurricane forces ocean waters onshore, account for half of the deaths and most of the destruction caused by the majority of hurricanes, weather experts say.

Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez cited a possible life-threatening storm surge when he expanded the county’s evacuation zone on Thursday, now affecting more 650,000 residents.

Much of the estimated $62 billion in U.S. damage from superstorm Sandy in 2012 was caused by the storm surge that slammed the Eastern seaboard, according to an analysis by the U.S. Geological Survey.  Storm surge was cited by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as the major cause of the $75 billion in destruction along the Gulf Coast from 2005’s Katrina, which leveled beachfront communities in Mississippi and inundated the city of New Orleans.

On Florida’s coasts, which will face the brunt of the Category 4 hurricane’s destructive force, about 3.5 million residential and commercial properties are at risk of storm-surge damage and almost 8.5 million properties are at risk of wind damage, according to data provider CoreLogic .

The last Florida storm that was the size of Hurricane Irma, which was downgraded to Category 4 from Category 5 on Friday, was Hurricane Andrew in 1992. That storm was originally classified as Category 4 but was reclassified in 2002 to a Category 5.

Catastrophe-modeling firm Karen Clark & Co. said a repeat of Hurricane Andrew on the same path as in 1992 would cause $50 billion in insured losses. The same storm directly hitting Miami today would cause more than $200 billion in losses, the firm said.


Miami, however, is protected by a rapid drop offshore thanks to the continental shelf, which is unlike Florida’s mostly shallow Gulf of Mexico coast. As a result, the surge hitting Miami from a Category 4 storm like Irma is expected to total up to 9 feet, compared with as high as 20 feet if it were to hit more along the Gulf Coast, according to NOAA.

The highest waves are typically centered on the leading right side of the storm, where counterclockwise winds in the Northern Hemisphere push the bulk of a hurricane’s destructive force. The surge waves are made even higher when they travel across shallow coastal waters, said Robert Bohlin, a meteorologist with the Central Pacific Hurricane Center in Honolulu.

Historically, the biggest storm surges in U.S. history have taken place in shallow Gulf waters. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 produced the nation’s highest recorded surge of 27.8 feet at Pass Christian, Miss. At least 1,500 people died in Katrina—many from the surge—and entire beachfront neighborhoods were washed away by the waves, NOAA officials said.

But Irma is forecast to take such an unusual track—essentially up the length of the Sunshine State—that hurricane experts aren’t exactly sure how the surge pattern will play out. If it shifts slightly to the west, much higher surge could inundate parts of Florida’s Gulf Coast, said Columbia’s Mr. Mandli.

“Even a shift of a few kilometers could be the difference between a huge disaster and something more manageable,” Mr. Mandli said.

Damage from a storm surge is considered flooding, which isn’t covered by standard homeowners insurance policies. Flood damage is largely covered by the federal government’s National Flood Insurance Program, which provides homeowners up to $250,000 to repair a home and $100,000 for personal possessions.

Homeowners in high-risk flood zones are required by their mortgage providers to buy flood insurance, but consumers outside those areas often forgo the coverage.

Businesses can buy federal flood insurance, which covers up to $500,000 for damage to a building and $500,000 for its contents. Commercial-property insurance for large businesses often includes flood coverage...
Still more.

Genie Bouchard in Turks and Caicos (VIDEO)

Well, this was well before Turks and Caicos got hit by Hurricane Irma, that's for sure.

Nice, in any case.

At Sports Illustrated Swimsuit:



Poll: America's Political Divisions Reach Deep Into Nation's Culture, Economy, and Social Fabric

We're completely divided as a society, something I've studied quite a bit. But it's always interesting to see a new poll that provides more evidence of our polarization.

At WSJ, "Political Divisions in U.S. Are Widening, Long-Lasting, Poll Shows":
Divisions in America reach far beyond Washington into the nation's culture, economy and social fabric, and the polarization began long before the rise of President Donald Trump, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey of social trends has found.

The findings help explain why political divisions are now especially hard to bridge. People who identify with either party increasingly disagree not just on policy; they inhabit separate worlds of differing social and cultural values and even see their economic outlook through a partisan lens.

The wide gulf is visible in an array of issues and attitudes: Democrats are twice as likely to say they never go to church as are Republicans, and they are eight times as likely to favor action on climate change. One-third of Republicans say they support the National Rifle Association, while just 4% of Democrats do. More than three-quarters of Democrats, but less than one-third of Republicans, said they felt comfortable with societal changes that have made the U.S. more diverse.

What is more, Americans' view of the economy, the direction of the nation and the future has even come to be closely aligned with their feelings about the current president, the survey found.

"Our political compass is totally dominating our economic and world views about the country," said GOP pollster Bill McInturff, who conducted the survey with Democratic pollster Fred Yang. "Political polarization is not a new thing. The level under Trump is the logical outcome of a generation-long trend."

The poll found deep splits along geographic and educational lines. Rural Americans and people without a four-year college degree are notably more pessimistic about the economy and more conservative on social issues. Those groups make up an increasingly large share of the GOP.

One measure of how much more polarized the electorate is than a generation ago can be found in views of the president. Eight months into the 1950s presidency of Republican Dwight Eisenhower, 60% of Democrats approved of the job he was doing. That level of cross-party support for a new president remained above 40% until Bill Clinton, when only 20% of Republicans approved of his performance after eight months in 1993. For Barack Obama, Republican support dropped to 16% at this point in his presidency in 2009.

Under Mr. Trump, that trend has continued and intensified. His job-approval rating among Americans overall has remained in recent months at about 40%, but just 8% of Democrats approve of the job he is doing, the survey found. By contrast, 80% of Republicans approve.

Mr. Trump's election has brought a sharp mood swing among Republicans. In August 2014, 88% of Republicans said they weren't confident that life for their children's generation would be better than their own, a gloomy view of a central element of the American dream. Eight months into the Trump presidency, just 46% of Republicans say they lack confidence in their children's future -- a 42-point swing that is more dramatic than improvements in the economy would seem to justify.

The survey found changes over the years in attitudes on cultural and economic issues, such as gun control, immigration and globalization, that were key issues of Mr. Trump's campaign.

Views of gun rights used to be less partisan: Asked if they were concerned that the government would go too far in restricting gun-ownership rights or, alternatively, that the government wouldn't do enough, Republicans in 1995 were about evenly split. Democrats were divided 26% to 67%.

Now, 77% of Republicans say they are concerned the government would go too far, and just 18% worry the government wouldn't do enough. Democratic opinion is the mirror image, 24% to 71%.

Views of immigration have also become more partisan. In an April 2005 poll that asked whether immigration strengthened or weakened the U.S., a plurality of 48% said it weakened the nation, with 41% saying immigration strengthened the country.

Now, a substantial majority of 64% view immigration as strengthening the country, while 28% say it weakens the U.S. The change is due almost entirely to a sharp shift in Democrats' views. In 2005, just 45% of Democrats said the country was strengthened by immigration; now the share is 81%.

Democrats also are now more inclined to see globalization as beneficial, compared with 20 years ago, when both parties had largely similar views of the matter.

Two groups in particular have a relatively pessimistic view of the economy -- rural Americans and those with less education.

Some 43% of rural residents gave a high rating to their local economy's health, compared with 57% of urban dwellers. Among people without a four-year college degree, only 47% viewed the economy in their area as good or excellent, compared with two-thirds of people with a degree.

Both groups have been moving from the Democratic Party to the GOP.

Among people without a four-year college degree, a plurality of 44% identified as Democrats in 2010. Now, only 36% do. Among those who are college graduates, just 36% now identify as Republican, versus 41% in 2010.

While there is broad agreement that the country is riven by division, there is no consensus on why...
Still more.

Harry Turtledove, In the Balance

I haven't started this one yet. I have a couple of other books I'm finishing, but Turtledove's on the top of my "next novels" list.

At Amazon, Harry Turtledove, In the Balance: An Alternate History of the Second World War (Worldwar, Volume 1).


Officials Urge Residents in Florida Keys to Evacuate (VIDEO)

These folks are pretty emphatic: If you don't get out now, we can't help you later. Please leave.

Oh boy, what a nightmare.

Below, at CBS News 4 Miami.

And see the Miami Herald, "‘Unprecedented’ evacuations set as Irma takes direct aim at South Florida."



Natalie Portman in Racy Bedroom Scenes for Dior Campaign

At London's Daily Mail, "Natalie Portman strips off in racy bedroom scenes as she portrays dramatic love story for steamy Dior perfume campaign."

Knocked Him Out with One Punch

Heh.

This is good!


Alexis Ren Workout

She's great!


The Rotting Soulless Moral Abomination That is Ben Rhodes

Ben Rhodes was Obama's Deputy National Security Adviser.

Seth Mandel excoriates him:


Roots of the Current Campus Madness

At great piece, from an unexpected source, Scientific American, "The Unfortunate Fallout of Campus Postmodernism":
Students are being taught by these postmodern professors that there is no truth, that science and empirical facts are tools of oppression by the white patriarchy, and that nearly everyone in America is racist and bigoted, including their own professors, most of whom are liberals or progressives devoted to fighting these social ills. Of the 58 Evergreen faculty members who signed a statement “in solidarity with students” calling for disciplinary action against Weinstein for “endangering” the community by granting interviews in the national media, I tallied only seven from the sciences. Most specialize in English, literature, the arts, humanities, cultural studies, women's studies, media studies, and “quotidian imperialisms, intermetropolitan geography [and] detournement.” A course called “Fantastic Resistances” was described as a “training dojo for aspiring ‘social justice warriors’” that focuses on “power asymmetries.”

If you teach students to be warriors against all power asymmetries, don't be surprised when they turn on their professors and administrators. This is what happens when you separate facts from values, empiricism from morality, science from the humanities.
RTWT.

Francesca Eastwood

At Maxim:


Punish Americans for Their Heritage, but Reward 'Dreamers': How #DACA Outrage Exposes the Left

At Breitbart, "By now it is crystal clear: the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (DACA) was simply a way for President Obama to force his successor to make an unpopular decision."

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President Trump's Bipartisan Path, at Least for Now

At the New York Times (FWIW), "Energized Trump Sees Bipartisan Path, at Least for Now" (at Memeorandum):

WASHINGTON — By the time President Trump woke up on Thursday morning, he was feeling upbeat. And as he watched television news reports about his fiscal agreement with Democrats, he felt like telling someone.

He picked up the phone and called the two Democratic congressional leaders, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York and Representative Nancy Pelosi of California. “The press has been incredible,” he gushed to Ms. Pelosi, according to someone briefed on their call. He was equally effusive with Mr. Schumer, boasting that even Fox News was positive.

A few hours later, Mr. Trump went on TV himself, vowing to turn a one-time spending-and-debt deal brokered out of expediency into a more enduring bipartisan alliance that could transform his presidency. He signaled openness to a Democratic proposal to eliminate the perennial showdowns over the debt ceiling, and he repeated his desire to cut a deal to protect younger illegal immigrants from deportation.

But even as Republicans fumed at being sidelined, many in Washington were skeptical that the moment of comity would last. Although Mr. Trump has at times preached bipartisanship, he has never made it a central part of his governing strategy. While he may have been feeling energized on Thursday by the collaboration, he is a politician driven by the latest expression of approval, given to abrupt shifts in approach and tone. He is a man of the moment, and the moment often does not last.

There are also reasons to doubt whether Democrats would sustain a partnership with Mr. Trump beyond the deal they have cut to keep the government open for three months and paying its debts. The centrifugal forces of partisanship tug from the left as well as the right, and the liberal base has put pressure on Democratic lawmakers not to meet in the middle a president it loathes.

For one day, though, the two sides sought to put months of acrimony behind them. “I think we will have a different relationship than we’ve been watching over the last number of years. I hope so,” Mr. Trump told reporters at the White House. “I think that’s a great thing for our country. And I think that’s what the people of the United States want to see. They want to see some dialogue. They want to see coming together to an extent.”

Democrats expressed a blend of optimism and caution. “We’ll see,” Mr. Schumer said in an interview. “I think it would be much better for the country and much better for Donald Trump if he was much more in the middle and bipartisan rather than siding with the hard right. I think he got a taste of it yesterday. We’ll see if it continues. I hope it does.”

One area of possible agreement could be a proposal advanced by Mr. Schumer to eliminate the requirement that Congress vote from time to time to raise the debt ceiling, a perennial point of division in Washington, and raise it automatically. “It could be discussed,” Mr. Trump said. “There are a lot of good reasons to do that.”

In a separate interview, Ms. Pelosi said that during their phone call, the president seemed eager to support legislation called the Dream Act preserving President Barack Obama’s program allowing 800,000 immigrants who were brought to the county illegally as minors to stay and work. Mr. Trump canceled the program this week on the grounds that Mr. Obama overstepped his authority, but he called on Congress to authorize it before it phases out in six months.

“He said, ‘I want to sign it. Let’s do it fast. Let’s do it soon,’” Ms. Pelosi said. “And I said, ‘All the better. We don’t want to take six months, and we don’t even want to take three months.’”

She used the opportunity to ask Mr. Trump to post a message on Twitter reassuring those in the program, called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, not to worry about deportation during the six-month wind-down period. “My members had said to me last night, ‘We need more assurance that people are going to leave these dreamers alone,’” she said.

She said she also asked Mr. Trump to make certain that the Department of Homeland Security did not target the young immigrants. “He said, ‘Are they doing that?” she said. “I said, ‘That is what is being reported to me, and I want to make sure that they don’t.’”

Whether this latest round of interaction marks a turning point in Washington, Ms. Pelosi sounded dubious. “Every day is a new day around here,” she said.

Still, Mr. Trump followed through on the Twitter promise. “For all of those (DACA) that are concerned about your status during the 6 month period, you have nothing to worry about — No action!” the president wrote shortly after the phone call.

The message appeared just as Ms. Pelosi was briefing her whips about the call. Representative Debbie Dingell of Michigan spotted the tweet on her iPad and read it out loud to surprised Democrats.


Thursday, September 7, 2017

'Tiny Dancer'

From yesterday morning's drive time, at the Sound L.A.

Here's Elton John, "Tiny Dancer":

Due to the song lacking a hook, "Tiny Dancer" was initially a non-starter as a single in the US, reaching only #41 on the U.S. pop chart, and was not even released as a single in the UK. The song fared better in Canada, where John had much of his early commercial breakthrough success, peaking at #19. It was also a hit in Australia, peaking at #13. Eventually, the song slowly became one of John's most popular songs even in the territories that initially failed to embrace it, and the full-length version is now a fixture on North American, UK and Australian adult contemporary and rock radio stations.
Time
Pink Floyd
8:29 AM

No One Like You
Scorpions
8:25 AM

Margaritaville
Jimmy Buffett
8:21 AM

Ten Years Gone
Led Zeppelin
8:14 AM

Crazy Little Thing Called Love
Queen
8:12 AM

Jamming
Bob Marley & The Wailers
8:08 AM

Shoot to Thrill
AC/DC
8:03 AM

Time of the Season
The Zombies
8 AM

Walk This Way
Aerosmith
7:55 AM

Fame (2016 Remastered Version)
David Bowie
7:51 AM

Tiny Dancer
Elton John
7:34 AM

(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction
The Rolling Stones
7:31 AM

Rock the Casbah
The Clash
7:27 AM


Wednesday, September 6, 2017

Danielle Gersh's Sunny and Mild Forecast

It's been a lot more pleasant heat-wise this week.

Warm but mild.

Here's the lovely Ms. Danielle, for CBS News 2 Los Angeles:



The Cold Civil War

It's Angelo Codevilla, at the Claremont Review: