Rush To Wishful Thinking

Rush Limbaugh called Hurricane Irma a hoax and also called it a story that was deliberately overhyped to promote Al Gore's climate change agenda.  Another Al who believes in climate change - that would be Al Roker, the NBC weatherman - called Limbaugh's statement dangerous and counterproductive.  Then Rush had to evacuate his own home in Florida.  So liberals have decided, given this humiliation, that Limbaugh's long and peculiar career as a right-wing political commentator is over.

Yeah, about that . . .

I remember folks saying that Limbaugh was finished when, in 2012, he attacked Sandra Fluke, the law school student who achieved fifteen minutes of fame by defending contraception in a congressional hearing and then in 2014 ran for a seat in the California State Senate, and how numerous advertisers were pulling ad accounts from his show.  Talk-radio consultant Holland Cooke noted on Ed Schultz's MSNBC show that Limbaugh's show was migrating from AM radio stations with strong signals to AM stations with weaker signals.  The sun was finally setting on conservative political talk radio and talk radio in general.  Ed Schultz himself was getting out of the talk-radio business and going only to podcasts.  A new media era was dawning . . .

It was a mirage.  After the Fluke fluke, Rush's ratings did change. They continued to go up.  Here are some unfortunate numbers courtesy of Wikipedia: Premiere Radio Networks, which syndicates Rush's show, and iHeartMedia - formerly Clear Channel Communications, the company with which he signed his contract - noted in 2016 that Rush's audience grew 18 percent among adults 25-54 and experienced even more growth with women in the same age group - 27 percent.  How do you think Donald Trump got elected President?  Meanwhile, Limbaugh hardly needs to worry about any of the advertisers who bailed out on him in 2012 over Sandra Fluke.  With a reported ad revenue growth of 20 percent year over year, he'll continue to make a lot of money for the advertisers who stood by him - and, coincidentally, for himself.  Maybe that's why his 2008 contract with iHeart - set to expire this year - was renewed in advance last year through 2020, keeping him on the national airwaves for 32 years, longer than Johnny Carson hosted "The Tonight Show."

Oh yeah, a Zogby 2008 poll found that Rush Limbaugh was the most trusted "news personality" in America, with one of eight respondents giving him a thumbs-up over numerous news personalities who are actual reporters and editors.  Walter Cronkite, in pace requiescat.

Limbaugh has since tried to spin the media's negative reaction to his Irma statements by saying that he never told anyone not to evacuate and that his remarks were taken out of context.  Incredible, but people will believe him.  Meanwhile, Sandra Fluke, who lost her bid for office, lived up to her surname, and Ed Schultz, long gone from MSNBC, is a discredited hack working at RT America as an apologist for Vladimir Putin.  (I neither know nor care what Holland Cooke is up to.)  Unless the Communications Act of 1996, which put terrestrial radio in the hands of fewer people and dictates who and what we get to listen to even if don't like what we get, is repealed, get used to the future of American talk radio looking more like the hideous and godawful present, only more so.  

Irma . . . Jose?

On this anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, we're taking stock of the aftermath of a disaster of a different sort. 

Hurricane Irma slammed into Florida yesterday, blowing street signs and trees out of the ground, turning pieces of buildings into deadly projectiles, flooding Miami (above), leaving nearly six million people (at last check) in the dark, and rendering the entire state as a wasteland.  And a friend of mine,  a sister of another friend, my maternal cousin, and my paternal uncle and his wife are all in the middle of it. 

And Irma isn't done yet.  It's moving into the Atlanta area and the South Central states, and it will likely bring more misery.  And even with all that, there is still . . . 

. . . Hurricane Jose.

Jose formed on September 5 and is currently looping around in the warm waters of the North Atlantic Ocean just east of the Bahamas.  It won't be a threat to anyone for at least a week, but by next weekend things may change.  Jose will start to move northward, and while it may go out to sea, computer projections from the Global Forecast System and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts - the so-called GFS and Euro models, respectively - show it moving north close to the U.S. East Coast and possibly, sometime during the middle of next week,  hitting the Canadian Maritimes, hitting New England, or . . . making a direct hit on New York City or on Washington, D.C. via the Chesapeake Bay.

Here we go again!

One GFS model run even showed Jose making a hard-left turn, in the manner of Sandy, into southern New Jersey and moving westward toward Baltimore.  And all of these models show Jose's central pressure anywhere between 935 and 955 millibars - which would indicate a more powerful storm than Sandy was.

How much more powerful?  I don't let myself think about it.

To be honest, no one knows what's going to happen with Jose.  New Jersey weather blogger Jonathan Carr notes that the storm could fall apart while it goes around in a circle near the Bahamas and get taken out by trade winds to the northeast or remain intact and still stay out at sea.  But a hit on the Northeast or on southeastern Canada is also possible.  We'll just have to wait.

So, I have to repeat the same spiel I offered here this time last week, albeit with changes of dates.  I may end up blogging less frequently in the days leading up to wherever this hurricane is going. And if it turns out that the storm is zeroing in on New Jersey, I will be putting this blog on hiatus and shutting down my Music Video Of the Week page temporarily, because while I may be able to post a new video on September 15, I may not get to post one on September 22 if the power goes out just before then and stays out for some time to come.  My beautiful-women picture blog - front-loaded with posts scheduled to publish automatically all the way to the end of October - will continue, with or without me. 

It wouldn't surprise me if Jose hit my area of the country.  First Harvey hits Texas, then Irma hits Florida . . . the Northeast would logically be next.  It's as if America, so long a country dedicated to plundering the environment and denying climate science, is suddenly being punished by God, with God's bratty kid sister, Mother Nature, dishing out the punishment.  Twenty seventeen has been a tough year for  this country, with hurricanes on the coast and wildfires in the West.  And even if Jose spares the U.S., worse will almost certainly follow. :-(  

The Most Powerful Atlantic Hurricane Ever

That would be Irma.

This storm is expected to make Katrina look like a drizzle.  Its path of destruction will likely surpass that of Harvey.  No more powerful hurricane has ever been recorded in the Atlantic basin. 

It's a Category 5 hurricane, meaning its winds are over 157 miles an hour.  Well over 157 miles an hour - 185, to be exact.  That's as fast as Joe Walsh's Maserati!

If you live in Florida, life won't be good to you much longer.  Irma is widely expected to ravage the state and possibly make landfall there.  Even if it doesn't make landfall there and does so over South Carolina or Georgia, it will do more than enough damage.  

And to think Rick Scott, Florida's governor, still doesn't want to guess one way or the other about climate change.  And in this flat state, surrounded by water on three sides, he's barred anyone in the state government from even discussing it.

There is a special place in hell for Richard Lynn Scott. >:-(     

IRMA???

Eleven months after Hurricane Matthew, I'm watching another Atlantic hurricane go full tilt boogie down near the Leeward Islands.  Irma could be a Category 4 hurricane at its peak, and if it hits the U.S., it may not be all that much below its peak.  Some models - computer models, not the models who wear designer clothes for display purposes and make teenage boys swoon - have shown a Category 3 storm hitting the Northeast.  I have decided, unlike during Matthew, not to show any such graphics here.  Following this storm online is scary enough.  

Irma is currently following the same course as Matthew, and while some projections have had it going out to sea by the time it reaches forty degrees latitude north, where Philadelphia is located, others have shown it hitting the Delmarva Peninsula, Philadelphia itself, New Bedford in Massachusetts - even New York City!  On September 11! 

If it affects the New York area, direct hit or not, this won't be Sandy Mark Two.  It will be exponentially worse.  We in the New York area were warned before Sandy that we were overdue for a cataclysmic tropical system.  Sandy was not it.    

I've looked at other storms that have followed the coastline and made landfall near New Jersey, along with the two that actually made landfall in New Jersey, Sandy and Irene - and the effects Irma could have if it follows the same course could be potentially devastating.  You know all about Sandy, and Irene was so bad for my area (even though I got through it without a scratch) that the name was retired in favor of . . . Irma. :-O

At this rate, the letter "I" will have to be retired because they're running out of reusable names that begin with it.    

I'm even seeing weird coincidences paralleling Sandy.  When Sandy approached New Jersey, my neighbors across the street were expecting a child.  As Irma threatens the East Coast, those very same neighbors are . . . expecting a child.  When Sandy approached, there was a remodeling job going on at a house two blocks away from me near a street called Harrison Street.  As Irma approaches, two new houses are being built two blocks away from me near . . . Harrison Street.  Hurricane Sandy hit on a Monday.  If Hurricane Irma hits here, it would likely be a week from today . . . Monday. :-O

September 11.

This coming week will be busy for me, and despite the fact that I have been blogging here daily for awhile, I may be blogging less frequently in the next few days.  And if it turns out that the storm is zeroing in on New Jersey, I will be putting this blog on hiatus and shutting down my Music Video Of the Week page temporarily, because while I may be able to post a new video on September 8, I may not get to post one on September 15 if the power goes out and stays out for awhile!  (This would be Outage #42 since November 2009; Outage #41 struck overnight this past Saturday going into Sunday, lasting for forty minutes, as a result of Harvey's remnants.  The next street over was spared.)  Even if Irma were to hit slightly to the south and west, like at Cape Charles in Virginia or the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and go inland, I can't be assured that we'll be spared any hardship.  Right now, computer models are shifting Irma farther south and west, with a potential landfall somewhere between South Carolina and Florida.  Chances of it going out to sea are now slim to none, so if those of us in the Northeast hope it won't hit us, we're essentially putting ourselves in the ethically dubious situation of hoping it hits . . . someone else.  But even this late in the game, all of the East Coast is still in play.

So here we go.  Hopefully things will work out all right.  But be prepared to see this blog black out for awhile, just as my house might.  Fingers crossed . . .