Trail Mix Southern Command (Orlando) — Separated only by screen and protective trees, from my back porch I watched Hurricane Irma howl:
September 10, 2017 at 10:55am
A bit more rain, still no wind, not even a breeze here. Most noticeable consequence so far: none of the usual morning squirrel activity. They must be sheltering in place. Current predictions for us: 88mph from 10pm to 3am tonight. Enough to make a mess of downed limbs etc. (nature’s pruning), but well below Charley’s 2004 105mph that busted our roof and downed half a dozen trees.
September 10, 2017 at 12:07pm
Now moving from hard sprinkle to light rain, just lost satellite TV signal. Tropical Force winds (35mp>) expected in 2 hours. Making coffee for our thermos collection. Frying bacon and roasting a turkey breast for sandwiches if power goes out.
September 10, 2017 at 1:39pm
20 minutes to tropical force wind projection. Hard rain. No wind. Just a cool breeze, making the porch comfortable as ever.
September 10, 2017 at 3:07 pm
At least we eat well during hurricanes. Fried chicken wings, bacon for BLTs, and roasted turkey breast.
September 10, 2017 at 7:40pm
Just now started to feel like a hurricane on the way. Winds more sustained, gusts into the low tropical force category, 30-35mph. Time to eat. Having roast turkey, green beans, macaroni & cheese, biscuits and gravy.
September 10, 2017 at 8:19pm
Internet connection painfully slow. Power outages in the area, we’re still good for now. Jamie, take the bit for next thread post.
September 10, 2017 at 9:02pm
We’re finally into the soup. Sustained tropical force probably above 40mph sustained, gusts higher. Casualties in the last 20 minutes: Two 8-10 foot limbs we can live without down in the front yard, and an upstairs window screen blew out. They now say meanest stuff in our part of the county will come 10p-midnight.
September 10, 2017 at 9:09pm
Our lights are flickering, might be going dark soon.
September 10, 2017 at 9:42pm
Irma’s core now heading our way, didn’t move west as expected. Eye could pass by 20-30 miles from here. Now in lights-out preparation, hard to imagine power staying on. Old-school hurricane lights pictured here, no batteries required.
September 10, 2017 at 11:01pm
On the back porch enjoying the show, which is no off-Broadway knock-off, a full-on major hurricane, must be at least 70 mph gusts, perhaps 80. Love the sound of howling wind and trees at midnight. Latest projection is the eye’s new track puts it 20 miles west of Southern Command within couple hours, bringing up to 100 mph winds. It’s 70 miles southwest of us now. Frogs are loving all this rain water, singing like crazy. Hope they eat lots of skeeters tomorrow. They get that job done. I call it Hillbilly Pesticide.
September 10, 2017 at 11:39pm
Here’s our flamingo ornament PatD was worried about. She’s handling these hurricane winds just fine so far. [Update: She made it unharmed]
September 11, 2017 at 1:21am
Closest Weather Underground station, 1 mile away, clocking 95 miles per hour here right now. Irma’s eye just 30 miles southwest, will get another 10 miles closer as it moves North and due West of us. Tree limbs snapping like potato chips every few seconds, hopefully those that needed trimming anyway (Mother Nature cheaper than paying for tree service). So far no whole trees downed. House unharmed. No roof leaks sighted. Amazingly, power still on. Toby under my feet on the back porch watching this awesome spectacle.
September 11, 2017 at 3:23am
Power is out at Southern Command. Alas Babylon. Now on restricted communications protocol.
September 11, 2017 at 11:38am
Irma did a fine job of pruning. We are looking at a war zone of tree debris, but no major damage. sure wish Mother Nature could clean up after itself.
September 11, 2017 at 4:07pm
The more we inspect, the more work it turns out to be. All thanks to my fanatical love for planting trees last 40 years. Saddest part is we lost both banana trees to oak limbs crashing into them. I’ll take it, compared to much more lost by so many others in this hurricane season.
Before Irma …
After Irma …
Special thanks to Jamie, PatD, et al for keeping Trail fires burning during the hurricane and the 4 1/2 days of power outage.
kudos to ms flamingo for standing her ground
sounds like nancy heeded the same message according to wapo’s description of the daca deal dinner talk at wh:
At one point, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross asked, “What exactly does the president get out of this deal?” As Pelosi, the only woman at the table of 11, tried to make her point — that the president gets the cooperation of the Democrats, which he will likely need on a host of issues — the men in the room began talking over her and one another.
“Do the women get to talk around here?” Pelosi interjected, according to two people familiar with the exchange.
There was, at last, silence, and she was not interrupted again.
Trump vows to veto Sanders’s single-payer health care plan: ‘A curse on the U.S. and its people’
When Hurricane Agnes flooded out the Southern Tier of New York state our communities were sent loaves of government cheese & cans of peanut butter. Still have memories of the long lines waiting for handouts on Main Street.
What a lovely banana tree. Is it dead or will it regenerate from the roots, like a perennial in spring?
RIP Cassini.
‘…a curse on the U.S. & its people,” the president tweeted
wasn’t that the last thing he proclaimed in his inaugural speech? or was it just before his sieg heil salute?
from nasa:
As Cassini makes its final approach to Saturn, this page will be updated with the latest mission status. For an updated timeline of planned mission milestones, see the End of Mission Timeline.
and from others:
sjwny, yes, r.i.p. to the brave cassini. always sad to see a suicide of one so young, just 20 years, so smart and so accomplished. feats of wonder and promising more but laying her life down for science. perhaps not a suicide then, but an act of valor.
SJ & patd, yes, Cassini is now gone – but oh the pictures it gave us. Much of the time they didn’t even look real – more like artist’s conceptions. Cassini did its job and much more – hope there’s a crumb or two for NASA in upcoming budgets – be a shame not to continue such exploration.
Poobah, all considered I’d say you, Dad and Toby fared pretty well.
patd, how brave of SFB!! vowing to veto a bill that will never never be passed, never go to the floor of the Senate for a vote, hell, never make it out of committee to be considered by the Senate. What a leader! Sad.
As planned obsolescence goes Cassini is spectacular.
Yes, SJ. The roots are intact, the banana tree will rise again.
Making the rounds of all the twitterati enthusiasms over “Medicare For All”, I was stunned though I shouldn’t have been, about the total ignorance regarding Universal Healthcare. They were all lovingly cherishing unicorns and gazing at rainbows. You can imagine the blank stares coming through the screen when asked which Universal Care model would be possible in the US transitioning off an employer/employee system and how would it be funded.
Health Care Systems – Four Basic Models
Freed of my Trailmix duties, I returned to my love of books and film to celebrate the birth of Agatha Christie and the impending remake of Murder on the Orient Express. Who Done It
the judicial branch hits back wapo: Yes, Joe Arpaio got pardoned. But a judge isn’t convinced she should toss his conviction. ….. A presidential pardon does not mean a conviction automatically gets thrown out. A judge has to rule on that — and the one handling Arpaio’s federal court case has some hesitations. In a filing Thursday, U.S. District Judge Susan R. Bolton wrote she wasn’t convinced that she could scrub the guilty verdict from Arpaio’s record. Instead, she signaled she was considering simply dropping the criminal case but letting the conviction stand — unless the government can persuade her otherwise. Bolton found Arpaio, 85, guilty of criminal contempt of court in July after he deliberately defied another judge’s order to stop detaining people he suspected of being undocumented immigrants, a practice that violated the U.S. Constitution. Arpaio was scheduled to be sentenced in October, at which point Bolton would have entered a final judgment. Trump’s pardon upended that. Because he made the decision before Arpaio was sentenced, no final judgment was ever rendered. Following the pardon, Arpaio’s attorneys asked the judge to dismiss the case and vacate his conviction, which is protocol in such circumstances. Department of Justice attorneys joined them, writing in court papers this week that Trump’s pardon made the entire case moot because Arpaio “will face no consequences that result from the guilty verdict.” But Bolton said it wasn’t that simple. Vacating the conviction didn’t seem to be an option because no judgment had been entered, she wrote in… Read more »
ken burns and gang on morning joe this a.m. were comparing 1968 to current turmoil. interesting in particular was the discussion about the collusions of presidential candidates nixon and trump with a foreign power (south Vietnam & Russia) to affect their elections. here’s also an excerpt from time:
Being history, the documentary lays this all out with a clarity that is never available at the time, but especially not at that time, when no assumption went unquestioned, and any possible commanding view was obscured by the smoke of a thousand fires. The filmmakers took 11 years to sort it all out, consulting scores of scholars and interviewing, on camera, 100 people, every one of whom was asked what music they remember listening to at the time. It helped that Johnson and Nixon taped themselves–and each other: we hear Johnson confide that, in 1968, candidate Nixon secretly persuaded South Vietnam to hold back on peace talks until he took office. In other words, he colluded with a foreign government to help win his election.
PatD,
I would have been proud to have had you in any of my intel organizations. I have no doubt that you would be the chief of research and analysis.
ny times yesterday also mentioned it in their “Review: Ken Burns’s ‘Vietnam War’ Will Break Your Heart and Win Your Mind”
Sometimes the film echoes today’s headlines, as in the subplot of foreign collusion in an American election. Richard M. Nixon had made a secret deal for South Vietnamese leader Nguyen Van Thieu to stay out of peace talks, thus enhancing Mr. Nixon’s chances in the 1968 race. President Lyndon B. Johnson was aware of the deal through intelligence surveillance and believed it to be treason, but chose not to publicize it.
He did, however, call Mr. Nixon, who — we hear on the audiotape of their call — coolly lied to him. And Mr. Nixon’s paranoia about being found out drove him to the strategy of break-ins and cover-ups that eventually led to his resignation.
flatus, I would be humbled by the honor. no talent here, just a throwback to the enjoyment of childhood days enthralled in roaming stacks in the local library.
Pat, to my jaundiced recollection the peace talks went nowhere until 73 after the b-52s were unleashed on Hanoi and Haiphong in a deliberate effort to get the North back to the table and to convince them that it was in their interest to release our POWs. It worked. I was sent to Guam in support of the operation.
I always refer to 1968 as the Year America Died. It is impossible to explain to a young person today just how different the nation was before and after (both in good and very bad ways). If you have never read Kurlansky’s book 1968: The Year That Rocked The World, it is well worth the time.
Even though I’m wearing sack cloth and ashes in mourning for what could have been. The Rachel Maddow interview of Hillary Clinton last night was wonderful. Hillary could have been Madam President. Instead we got Madman President. If you missed it …
https://youtu.be/n0MEVZ0jat8
Jamie, I caught a good portion of that interview last night. Really does make you sad, doesn’t it?
Craig: Nice play by play 😉 glad all the family members came through unscathed! My son posted some pix on his facebook of some of the family’s favorite local places “our happy little fishing spot and place to watch the launches from got obliterated and the parks we always play at are submerged” His dog Emma was traumatized but the family is fine.
I missed the HRC interview w/RM. However, I watched and re-watched the bannonov interview w/CR.
I concur w/the beast on several points, but why he chose to associate himself w/the third reich and klan is way beyond my ability to comprehend. Perhaps he saw a hand up through their passion; perhaps he saw a subculture that he could easily bilk. Or perhaps, he’s just a foxking nazi himself.
In re the case of joseph arpaio, convict :
At last, a Bolton that I can love ! At last a true conservative judge, who cites stare decisis.
American tradition trumps trump.
Pogo
Liked Maddow’s reaction after the interview. “It was the first time I have interviewed a non-president who made me feel I was talking to a President.”
It would have been nice if media had covered that Hillary instead of the Emails and Russian bot talking points from fainting spells to pizza for perverts.
Jamie, thanks for the Rachel Hillary vid. I really liked the panda sneeze segment. re the earlier portion on the state dept, bet a lot of the foreign service officers were in tears when they watched it.
Speaking of 1968 and things that have truly changed, this is what a stewardess wore to the friendly skies.
Another horrific date to remember: On this date in 1963, four little girls were killed when white supremacists bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.
Jamie I didn’t hear the end of the interview, but I concur with Rachel’s assessment.
XR, another cherry on the sundae is that the losing attorney for the US in the Nixon v. US case was none other than Kenneth Starr. And the Nixon opinion was delivered by Chief Justice William Rehnquist for a unanimous court that included Scalia and Thomas. Having a court cite law to you when you have cited none to it is a bit of a “humbling” experience. The kind of thing that many inexperienced lawyers learn and if they are smart, don’t repeat often. Be interesting to see what if anything Sessions’s minions can come up with that contradicts that dicta from Nixon.
Jamie,
That was the Houston – Dallas shuttle?? Sure didn’t see it Kunsan – Kwang-Ju
Garrison Keillor writing about the Hillary Clinton (The Good Methodist Girl) who got my vote. Click on the date not his name to read
https://www.facebook.com/garrison.keillor.14/posts/10154046259773892