Floron du Jour

Florida mom has affair with daughter's husband, attempts to run him over

Kathleen Regina Davis, 58, of Jupiter, was arrested on Sept. 20 after attempting to run over Michael Sciarra, 33, with her Mercedes-Benz, Palm Beach Gardens police said.

Davis was upset with Sciarra for ruining her own relationship with her daughter by admitting the two had been involved in an affair.

Davis went to Sciarra's Palm Beach Gardens home and threw eggs at both the house and cars.

Sciarra and Davis' daughter are in the process of being divorced.

Upon arrival, police witnessed Davis driving towards Sciarra in the front of the house in an attempt to run him over.

Police said Davis admitted to wanting to run over Sciarra and that she wanted him to die.

What the hell was he thinking? 

Seafood for the Landlocked?

Bounty from the Bay

Meet the farm-to-table movement’s salty-aired cousin: dock-to-dish. Like CSAs providing produce to folks without a farm, Old Line Fish Company is the region’s first Community Supported Fishery (CSF), bringing fresh and local seafood to community members who do not have access to the water. Every other Thursday over a 10-week span, Old Line Fish Company program director Kelly Barnes coordinates pickup of safely packed cooler bags containing the Bay’s bounty like soft shell clams, blue catfish, rockfish, oysters and occasional specialty items like Jonah claws. The community, it turned out, was hungry for it.

Debbie Ellen, a CSF member and fresh seafood enthusiast, was keen on the camaraderie that comes about through this community endeavor. “We really look forward to it!” she exclaims, having just picked up her prize on September 5, the last pickup day of the CSF season. “We all get together on Friday to discuss what we got and what we made.”

Kelly Barnes, program director of Old Line Fish Co., delivered
 biweekly allotments of seafood to 35 customers during the latest season. 

The “we” includes Ellen and a few of her coworkers at the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, who all joined the Old Line Fish Company’s CSF together and make an event of the pickup. The seafood is always a fresh off-the-boat catch, and the CSF members waste no time in closing the circle from boat to cooler to taste buds. Assisting them in their culinary adventures are recipes for their week’s catch and informational handouts about unfamiliar species in each delivery. “The whole purpose is to get [CSF members] comfortable with the seafood,” explains Barnes.

Barnes became the coordinator of Old Line Fish Company through her work at the Oyster Recovery Partnership, an organization that has been recycling oyster shells and working with the watermen community for years. Seeing the growing demand for fresh seafood as well as the untraversed distance between land-dwellers and watermen, the Oyster Recovery Partnership, with the financial support of the Ratcliffe Foundation, formed Old Line Fish Company. Barnes uses Old Line Fish Company to educate consumers on seafood and to knit more closely the lives of those who live and work in the region.

What I'm not seeing in this article is whether or not the seafood is given away or sold; but given that she's a state employee, I'm just guessing it's being given away.

I do my part, Georgia gives away the majority of the fish I catch to friends and neighbors who don't have a fisherman in the family. But we don't provide recipes.

Crystal Left Out in the Cold?

Or, as cold as it gets in Southern California? Hugh Hefner's wife Crystal Harris, 31, 'will inherit nothing after signing an ironclad prenup before their wedding and was never added to his will'

Hugh Hefner's wife Crystal Harris will inherit nothing due to an ironclad prenup that means she was never added to his will, it has been reported.

The couple, who shared a 60 year age gap, tied the knot on New Year's Eve in 2012 at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles.

 We covered the marriage back in 2012.

Before the nuptials, Harris was said to have signed an 'ironclad' prenuptial agreement.

A source told US Weekly that while the blonde beauty will be taken care of, she won't receive a penny of his fortune.

We discussed the prenup in previous blog posts.  But, of course, the proof of an "iron-clad" prenup lies in a court of law.

Instead, his estimated $43million estate, will be divided between his four children, the University of Southern California and a list of charities.

That number doesn't take into account the Playboy Mansion which was sold in 2016 for $100 million.

The $43 million figure was first revealed back in 2009 when Hefner divorced his second wife Kimberly Conrad.

At his peak, the Playboy magnate was worth upwards of $200 million, but as the magazine's popularity tanked, Hefner lost millions.

Comme ci comme ça

By the time of his death the 91-year-old held 35 percent of the Playboy brand and still completely owned the magazine.

He had $36 million worth of stocks and bonds and $6 million in a joint account with an unnamed person.

His monthly earnings from the magazine only totaled $100,000, with the rest coming from his pension.

I'm sure someone kind can find a job for a hot 31 year old model.

Wombat-socho was on time and with budget with "Rule 5 Sunday: Autumn Girls".

Previous posts on the Hef/Crystal romance:

Hefner first gets engaged to Crystal

They didn't need a pre-nup
An epidemic of Legionnaires Disease at the Playboy Mansion
Crystal pawned Hef's ring for a cool $90k
Their respective rebound partners
Initial reconciliation in June
And finally, their re-engagement

Their wedding

Her Widowing

Reason #5724 That Trump Was Elected

Thanks Obama! FBI Confirms: Yes, The National Violent Crime Rate Is Rising Again

For the past several years there’s been something of a mixed message coming from the nation’s law enforcement agencies. Even as we’ve seen murder rates and incidents of other violent crimes going up in a number of major cities (not including New York and Los Angeles, by the way), the message was always tempered. These were localized problem areas and the overall crime rate remained at least stable, if not slightly decreasing across the entire country. In fact, we were still at nearly historic lows, compared to the bad old days of the early to mid-90s.

Now that’s changed. Up until this point the most recent data we had to draw on was from 2015, but this week the FBI released their full statistics for 2016. The news is bad across the board in terms of the worst offenders. Murder, assault and rape were all ticking upward once again. As the Free Beacon reported yesterday, if these are the signs of the time, the signs are poor indeed.

Murder and violent crime rates increased significantly in 2016, according to Federal Bureau of Investigation records released on Tuesday.
The agency’s Crime in the United States report shows an increase of 3.4 percent in the violent crime rate from last year and a 8.2 percent increase in the murder and nonnegligent manslaughter rate. It shows the violent crime rate, at 386.3 incidents per 100,000 inhabitants, is the highest since 2012. The murder rate, at 5.3 per 100,000, is the highest it has been since 2008. The same is true for rape with 29.6 per 100,000. The aggravated assault rate, at 248.5 per 100,000, is the worst it has been since 2010.

The good news, if there’s any to be had, is that some categories of property crime are way down. Burglary and larceny are at all time lows. Automobile thefts are up slightly but are still barely half of what they were in 1997.

The "Ferguson Effect" is at least partially to blame.

Linked at Pirate's Cove in the weekly "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup" and links.

Rule 5 Saturday - Lindsay Ellingson

 This week's lucky Rule 5 winner is:

Lindsay Marie Ellingson (born November 19, 1984) is an American fashion model. She has modeled for Chanel, Dolce & Gabbana, Proenza Schouler, Valentino, and Christian Dior, as well as Victoria's Secret as one of the brand's contracted "Angels".

Ellingson grew up in Moreno Valley, California, where she graduated from Canyon Springs High School and won three trophies at the USA National Championships for her high school dance team. Prior to being discovered on the street, she went to college at the University of California, San Diego to study biology. After a test shoot, she was sent to Paris by her model agency, where she met John Galliano who put her on the map.

Fashion saved the world from another biologist!



GOODSTUFF's prolonged absence continues. Linked at Pirate's Cove in the weekly "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup" and links. EBL wonders why Claire Abbot is so popular. Wombat-socho scores a day late with "Late Night With Rule 5 Monday:
Coffee, Please" and "FMJRA 2.0: This Space Deliberately Left Blank".

Pics of the Day

 I went fishing (again) over in the the shallow waters of the Eastern Shore with Pete, Andy and Derek. A gorgeous day between blows.  We fished from Barren Island down to South Marsh.

We caught fish most, if not all, of the places we tried despite a fickle current.

Late in the day, we ended up in the Middle Grounds, where we jigged up a few stripers, a blowfish, and a bunch of little Black Sea Bass.

Reason #5719 - #5723 That Trump Was Elected

Desperately seeking Trump's Katrina, WaPo admits Trump administration earns cautious praise for early response to hurricanes

Hurricane Harvey was just beginning to unleash its full fury on Houston when President Trump took to Twitter to praise his new emergency management chief, Brock Long: “You are doing a great job — the world is watching!”

To Mark Merritt, a Federal Emergency Management Agency official in the Clinton administration, the tweet seemed premature. “I was having a ‘Brownie’ flashback,” said Merritt, referring to Michael Brown, the FEMA administrator lauded by President George W. Bush for doing a “heck of a job” during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

In Trump’s case, however, the social media “attaboy” proved more prescient. Facing off against a pair of historic storms — first Harvey in Texas and Louisiana, then Hurricane Irma through the U.S. Virgin Islands and Florida — Trump’s administration has earned bipartisan praise for coordinating the federal response with state and local officials, avoiding the type of catastrophe that marked the Bush administration’s response to Katrina, a storm that killed more than 1,800 people. . .

Instapundit: YOU CAN TELL HE’S DONE A GOOD JOB BY HOW LITTLE THE PRESS IS TALKING ABOUT IT: Faced with Harvey and Irma devastation, Trump finds his footing.

Then there was yet another hurricane, and liberals rushed to find fault again.

Trump Waves Jones Act, Critics Say Too Late

President Donald Trump’s top disaster adviser defended the administration’s eight-day wait to waive restrictions under the Jones Act that limited which ships could be used to deliver relief supplies to hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico, despite complaints from lawmakers.

Tom Bossert, Trump’s homeland security adviser, said the criticism is “unfounded.” Shortages of water, food, fuel and other relief supplies have been caused by distribution bottlenecks on the island rather than constraints in shipping capacity, he told reporters at a White House briefing.

Trump on Thursday ordered a waiver of the Jones Act, a 1920 maritime law requiring shipments of goods between two U.S. ports to be made with American-flagged vessels and manned by American crews. The waiver will last 10 days for shipments to Puerto Rico, though some Democrats criticized the time period as too short for the scale of the disaster.

“In this particular case we had enough capacity of U.S. flag vessels,” Bossert said. But the president took the action as a “proactive” measure after he received a request from Puerto Rican Governor Ricardo Rossello.

Amid NFL Obsession, Media Blinds Itself to Trump’s Puerto Rico Relief Efforts

In the past week, Puerto Rico was devastated by Hurricane Maria and a bunch of millionaire NFL players took a knee during the national anthem.

Guess which one President Donald Trump tweeted about the most? If you don’t know, the mainstream media has been more than happy to let everyone know. Trump tweeted nearly 20 times about the NFL protest but devoted only one tweet to Puerto Rico.

Monday evening, Trump began tweeting about Puerto Rico, talking about its poor infrastructure and financial problems from before the hurricane hit. Naturally, Leftists weren’t happy, and the media was again able to attack Trump for his tweets being “not well received.”

Because, apparently, the only thing Trump does is tweet.
. . .
As it turns out, it was the media ignoring Puerto Rico—not Trump.

PBS’s John Yang spoke to Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello about the help he has received from the states. Rosselo immediately said he was “very grateful for the administration” and that “they have responded quickly.”

“The president has been very attentive to the situation, personally calling me several times,” Rossello said. “FEMA and the FEMA director have been here in Puerto Rico twice. As a matter of fact, they were here with us today, making sure that all the resources in FEMA were working in conjunction with the central government.”

He asked Congress to quickly provide an aid package to the island.

Politico reported, “Rossello and other officials praised the federal government for planning its response in detail before the storm hit, a contrast with what Puerto Rico has long seen as the neglect of 3.4 million Americans living in a territory without a vote in Congress or the electoral college.”

It's gotten so bad that if it's not tweeted, it didn't happen.

FEMA: Hurricane Maria  Federal Response Updates

There are thousands of federal staff, including more than 600 FEMA personnel, on the ground in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands engaged in response and recovery operations from Hurricanes Maria and Irma.

U.S. Air Force Airmen load a C17 with food and water to support relief efforts in Puerto Rico and St. Croix

Commodities and Communications

• Officials in the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico opened points of distribution (POD) in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands for survivors to get meals, water, and other commodities. The Governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands announced that locations in St. Thomas, St. Croix, and St. John will be open Friday.
• FEMA, working in coordination with federal partners, provided millions of meals and millions of liters of water to Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands. Additional meals and water continue to arrive to the islands daily.
• FEMA’s National Business Emergency Operations Center (NBEOC) is facilitating private sector requests for humanitarian relief. The NBEOC continues coordination between government and private sector organizations as the community responds to Hurricanes Maria.
• Mobile Emergency Response Support (MERS) communications assets and personnel continue to support the FEMA Incident Management Assistance Teams (IMAT), Urban Search and Rescue (US&R), National Disaster Medical System (NDMS), and other federal teams in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. As of September 27, 2017, there are more than 30 MERS personnel in Puerto Rico and more than 20 MERS personnel in the USVI.
• A U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) mobile communications team is in Puerto Rico to help improve communications across the storm-impacted area.

Life Safety and Life Sustaining

• FEMA search and rescue teams have accessed 90 percent of Puerto Rico, conducting search and rescue operations and helping to assess hospitals. FEMA US&R task forces saved or assisted 843 individuals and five pets, while searching over 2,600 structures as of September 27.
• The U.S. Virgin Islands Water and Power Authority drinking water system is back online, and other drinking water systems on the islands are top priority for receiving generators. Additionally, the Concordia potable water pump station is online in St. Croix.
• The U.S. Virgin Islands Water and Power Authority Waste Management, and USACE are addressing potential public health risks of garbage build up; coordinating route clearance of wires and poles to enable garbage haulers to access the St. Thomas landfill.
• The National Guard Bureau (NGB) has thousands of Guard members on the ground in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands taking part in security and support operations. The Air National Guard is focused on transporting food, water, and communications capabilities as well as rapidly increasing airlift into affected areas.
• More than 180 Federal Law Enforcement Officers (FLEO) are in San Juan and the U.S. Virgin Islands supporting search and rescue, medical teams, and other federal responders, additional FLEOs are en route expected to arrive this week. Additional law enforcement support from New York State Police is on the ground in St. John.

Fuel, Transportation, and Debris

• The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has supported the restoration of services to seven of eight commercial airports in Puerto Rico. The FAA has restored full Air Traffic Control (ATC) services to Luis Munoz Marin International Airport in San Juan and limited ATC services to Rafael Hernandez Airport in Aguadilla. Recovery efforts are now supporting more than a dozen commercial passenger flights per day at Luis Munoz Marin International Airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
• 17 chainsaw teams (34 individuals) and one Incident Management Team (IMT) (23 individuals) from the Department of Agriculture United States Forest Service arrived in Puerto Rico Wednesday to conduct emergency road clearance and manage logistics. Nine additional teams are en route.
• The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) deployed debris experts to assist FEMA with debris management strategies in Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands. One of the first priorities is emergency route clearance in multiple locations to enable access to remote locations.
• USACE also completed a Blue Roof install on Cyril E. King Airport on St. Thomas, and completed its first residential Blue Roof install on September 23. Assessments for St. Croix are ongoing. A customer service center for Blue Roof installations opened over the weekend for Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
• To bolster the delivery of fuel throughout Puerto Rico, 100 delivery trucks were dispatched by the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) carrying an estimated 275,000 gallons of diesel fuel.
• Power is restored to Centro Médico Hospital in San Juan and San Pablo Hospital in Bayamón, Puerto Rico. The Governor Juan F. Luis Hospital in St. Croix and the Schneider Regional Medical Center in St. Thomas are established as mobile hospitals. More than half of dialysis centers in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands are open and accessible for patients. More critical care facilities will re-open in the coming days as power and access are restored.
• The U.S. Coast Guard reports the following port statuses with additional ports opening as assessments continue:

• Puerto Rico

• Open: Port of San Juan, Guayanilla, Salinas, and Talboa

• Open with restrictions: Arecibo, Fajardo, Culebra, Guayama, Mayaguez, and Vieques

• U.S. Virgin Islands

• Open:

• St. Thomas: Charlotte Amalie, East Gregerie Channel, Crown Bay, West Gregerie Channel

• St. Croix: Krause Lagoon, Frederiksted, Limetree Bay

• Open with Restrictions:

• St. Thomas: Redhook Bay

• St. John: Cruz Bay

• USACE coordinated transportation of more than 300 FEMA or Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) generators from across the U.S. to meet anticipated requirements in the islands. Additional generators are arriving in the coming days.

Fish Pic Friday - Weird Stuff

Darcizzle with a Cutlassfish

Luiza with a Ladyfish

For this week's fish, I've chosen the odd stuff that a person might be lucky enough to catch once or twice by accident.

Brooke Thomas with an Asian Silver Carp

Wombat-socho scores a day late with "Late Night With Rule 5 Monday:
Coffee, Please".

"Everything Was Awful for a Very Long Time, . . .

. . . and then the industrial revolution happened."

In How big a deal was the Industrial Revolution?, I looked for measures (or proxy measures) of human well-being / empowerment for which we have “decent” scholarly estimates of the global average going back thousands of years. For reasons elaborated at some length in the full report, I ended up going with:

1. Physical health, as measured by life expectancy at birth.
2. Economic well-being, as measured by GDP per capita (PPP) and percent of people living in extreme poverty.
3. Energy capture, in kilocalories per person per day.
4. Technological empowerment, as measured by war-making capacity.
5. Political freedom to live the kind of life one wants to live, as measured by percent of people living in a democracy.

(I also especially wanted measures of subjective well-being and social well-being, and also of political freedom as measured by global rates of slavery, but these data aren’t available; see the report.)

Anyway, the punchline of the report is that when you chart these six measures over the past few millennia (data; zoomable), you get a chart like this (axes removed for space reasons):

Click to enlarge

(And yes, there’s still a sharp jump around 1800-1870 if you chart this on a log scale.1 )

Interestingly, this is not the impression of history I got from the world history books I read in school. Those books tended to go on at length about the transformative impact of the wheel or writing or money or cavalry, or the conquering of this society by that other society, or the rise of this or that religion, or the disintegration of the Western Roman Empire, or the Black Death, or the Protestant Reformation, or the Scientific Revolution.

But they could have ended each of those chapters by saying “Despite these developments, global human well-being remained roughly the same as it had been for millennia, by every measure we have access to.”3 And then when you got to the chapter on the industrial revolution, these books could’ve said: “Finally, for the first time in recorded history, the trajectory of human well-being changed completely, and this change dwarfed the magnitude of all previous fluctuations in human well-being.”

Historians missing the forest among the trees.

Keep this one around for the next time a liberal tries to drag you back to the pre-industrial era.

RIP: Hef

Hugh Hefner, Playboy founder, dead at 91

Hugh Hefner, founder of Playboy magazine, died Wednesday at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles, surrounded by loved ones, the magazine said in a statement. He was 91.

He died from natural causes, the statement read.

Hugh Hefner and Mildred Williams

Being 91.

After working first as a copywriter for "Esquire" – where he reportedly left because he didn't get a $5 raise – Hefner decided to start his own publication and he raised $8,000 from 45 investors to launch "Playboy" in December 1953. (He had originally planned to call it "Stag Night," but was forced to change the name to avoid trademark infringement.)

It was produced in his kitchen and carried no date because he wasn't sure there would be a second issue.

Marilyn Monroe

But with the trademark intuition and shrewdness that seemed to always ensure his success, Hefner had acquired a nude photo of Marilyn Monroe for the centerfold, taken before the start of her film career.

Actually, a whole photoshoot.

The magazine sold 50,000 copies, making it an immediate success. (Hefner later bought the crypt next to Monroe's in a Los Angeles cemetery.)

An empire was launched, with Hefner – who divorced first wife Mildred Williams in 1959 – as its charismatic, cosmopolitan head.

Often pictured in pajamas – or a silk smoking jacket - and smoking a pipe, Hefner personally promoted the Playboy philosophy as the magazine became an amalgam of nude photographs of gorgeous women and intellectual writing. ("I just read Playboy for the articles," was a standard, if joking, line at the time.)

"If you had to sum up the idea of Playboy, it is anti-Puritanism," he was quoted as saying as the country's mood became more hedonistic.

Kimberly Conrad

In 1989, he married longtime girlfriend Kimberly Conrad and for a while became a family man with two young sons before the couple separated in 1998.

Crystal Harris

Conrad and Hefner's divorce was finalized in 2010 and he proposed in 2011 to 24-year-old Crystal Harris, a former Playmate. Harris called off the wedding days before the ceremony, but changed her mind and they married at the end of 2012.

In August 2016, Hefner sold the iconic Playboy Mansion for $100 million. The deal was contingent on the understanding that the Playboy founder would live in the Mansion until the time of his death.

Hefner is survived by his wife Crystal as well as his daughter, Christie; and his sons, David, Marston and Cooper.

Hef and Crystal's off and on again relationship was chronicled in early posts of this blog.

I was first acquainted with Playboy when, as a child, some teacher friend of my father brought an issue or two to a teacher's weekend trip to our mountain house, I didn't understand what the big deal was. For a while, my dad had a subscription. Later, as an adolescent, I had my own clandestine stash of Playboys, as did most teenage boys. So did my sons.

Wombat-socho scores a day late with "Late Night With Rule 5 Monday: Coffee, Please".

Weed Patch Discovered on Solomons Island

Historical 

Well, not on, but just offshore. Bay Grasses Return to the Shores of Solomons, But Will They Persist?

Each year, Orth and Wilcox review aerial photos of Chesapeake Bay to map the coverage of bay grasses, also called submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV), in our nation’s largest estuary. When they inspected photographs of the Patuxent River, they noticed something interesting: small patches of dark color near the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory’s research pier, which enters the Patuxent River off of Solomons Island. As they examined images from other parts of the Patuxent, they saw similar, often larger patches of what looked like bay grasses. Because bay grasses have not been seen off of the pier since the late 1960s, the VIMS researchers contacted their CBL colleagues Jeremy Testa, Lora Harris, and Walter Boynton, encouraging them to take a closer look.

From 2017

The very next day, CBL technician Casey Hodgkins took a camera and jumped off the pier, swimming in and around the small patches that were, indeed, healthy beds of the SAV Ruppia maritima, commonly known as widgeon grass.

Interest in these small patches stems from the fact that SAV has not been seen off of the pier in decades. In fact, VIMS photographs going back to 1984, when their mapping project funded by the Chesapeake Bay Program began, have never indicated bay grass beds at CBL.

Is this a real improvement, or a one off? We've seen grasses move into new areas and then disappear again many times. Even the article acknowledges as much:

While recent water quality conditions have been improving, consistent with bay grass recovery across large swaths of the low-salinity, or less salty, regions of Chesapeake Bay, the trends in the mildly salty parts of the Bay—which includes the Patuxent River—have not been clearly up or down. The species of bay grass that appears to have colonized the Patuxent, widgeon grass, is known to be a patchy and ephemeral species, which appears for a few years and then disappears just as fast as it arrived if water quality degrades.

So, yep, it may just be a good year. There sure is a lot of grass on the Eastern Shore this year.

Reason #5718 That Trump Was Elected

So many to chose from, but for today, Record $135 billion a year for illegal immigration, average $8,075 each, $25,000 in NY

The swelling population of illegal immigrants and their kids is costing American taxpayers $135 billion a year, the highest ever, driven by free medical care, education and a huge law enforcement bill, according to the the most authoritative report on the issue yet.

And despite claims from pro-illegal immigration advocates that the aliens pay significant off-setting taxes back to federal, state and local treasuries, the Federation for American Immigration Reform report tallied just $19 billion, making the final hit to taxpayers about $116 billion.

A billion here a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money. Given that there are about 138 million US taxpayers, that works out to slightly under $1000 per tax payer per year.

The report, titled "The Fiscal Burden Of Illegal Immigration on U.S. Taxpayers," is the most comprehensive cost tally from FAIR. It said that the costs have jumped about $3 billion in four years and will continue to surge unless illegal immigration is stopped. It was provided in advance exclusively to Secrets.

"Clearly, the cost of doing nothing to stop illegal immigration is far too high," said FAIR Executive Director Dan Stein. "President Trump has laid out a comprehensive strategy to regain control of illegal immigration and bring down these costs," said Stein. "Building the wall, enhancing interior enforcement and mandating national E-Verify will go a long way in bringing these ridiculously high costs under control," he added.

Over 68 often shocking pages, FAIR documents the average $8,075 in state, local and federal spending for each of the of 12.5 million illegal immigrants and their 4.2 million citizen children.

Broadly, the costs include $29 billion in medical care, $23 billion for law enforcement, $9 billion in welfare, $46 billion for education.

True to his word, arrests of unauthorized immigrants are rising sharply under Trump

Arrests have increased about 43 percent nationwide since President Donald Trump took office after promising a tough crackdown on illegal immigration.

ICE’s acting director, Thomas Homan, has said that “there was no population off the table,” and the width and breadth of ICE detentions have proved he’s keeping his word.

Save the Jeep!

To heck with the jeep; save the girls! The good stuff is all done in the first 2:30. Linked at Pirate's Cove in the weekly "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup" and links. Wombat-socho scores a day late with "Late Night With Rule 5 Monday: Coffee, Please".

Beach Report 9/27/17

We're feeling the furthest influence of Hurricane Maria currently, with gusty winds up to 25 knots, circling around and coming down from the north, humid 80 F tropical air, and plenty of clouds, but no rain.

It was too rough to fish from the beach, so the GBH was watching from the posing post.

Speaking of flying things, this helicopter was on a pattern that brought him overhead every few minutes. It's not clear who it belongs to, but Patuxent River Naval Air Station is always likely choice.

It appears the Ospreys have left for their winter homes in Florida, the Caribbean and South America, and the Bald Eagles are out fishing for themselves again (eating carrion more likely).

 A different eagle. Note the two short feathers in the primaries on the first one. Big birds shed their feather in balanced pairs to keep their soaring abilities intact.

Georgia and Skye got ahead of me while I was shooting eagles.

A late day, late season sun bather.

This from yesterday, also blustery and warm, but cloudier. The AIDAluna on her way to an unscheduled stop in Baltimore. She was scheduled to be in Hamilton, Bermuda today, but there was a hurricane (maybe now a tropical storm) in the way. What a bummer! You buy a trip the Bermuda and end up in Baltimore!

'Fatberg' Blocked Baltimore's Bowels

'Fatberg' found in Baltimore sewer system after overflow

A massive "fatberg" made up of congealed fat, wet wipes and other waste has been named as the culprit in a sewer overflow in Baltimore.

The overflow discharged about 1.2 million gallons of sewage into the Jones Fall stream last week.

The Baltimore Sun reported Monday that the fatberg was discovered in a sewer main near Baltimore Penn Station.

Public works officials said the walls of a century-old 24-inch wide pipe were caked with oils, grease and congealed fats. Up to 85 percent of the pipe was clogged, blocking the flow of sewage.

The fatberg has been mostly scraped off and sent to a landfill.

A fatberg estimated to weigh more than 140 tons was recently discovered in London's sewer system. Officials say it could take weeks to destroy.

How would you like to be the poor schlub who had to deal with that?

Reason #5717 That Trump Was Elected

NBA Coach: ‘White People Especially’ Need To Be Made ‘Uncomfortable’

San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich claimed on ESPN2’s “The Paul Finebaum Show” Monday that “people have to be made to feel uncomfortable,” specifically singling out white people.

“Well, because it’s uncomfortable, and there has to be an uncomfortable element in the discourse for anything to change. Whether it’s the LGBT movement, women’s suffrage, race, it doesn’t matter. People have to be made to feel uncomfortable, and especially white people because we’re comfortable. We still have no clue of what being born white means,” he stated.

“If you read some of the recent literature, you’ll realize there really is no such thing as whiteness, but we kind of made that up. That’s not my original thought, but it’s true,” Popovich said.

Video at the link. You can find support for anything in "recent literature," especially on the internet. This is what you get for letting NBA coaches read "recent liberature" or more likely, watching ESPN.

How about a program to make NBA coaches uncomfortable, is that OK?

Midnite Music - "Pass That Bottle"

The Devil's Daughters, Misti Moon and Lisa Mortensen:

Wombat-socho scores a day late with "Late Night With Rule 5 Monday: Coffee, Please".

It's Dead Jim Obamacare Schadenfreude

Well, that was quick.

The Health care cul-de-sac

. . . sometimes, when a party has spent most of a year producing health care bills that excite almost nobody and that even the senators voting for them can’t effectively defend, it’s worth stepping back and thinking about our national priorities.

This goes for both parties: not only the stepping-on-rakes Republicans, but the suddenly single-payer-dreaming Democrats. If Obamacare repeal is really dead for the year 2017, both left and right have a chance to shake their minds free of the health care debate and ask themselves: What are the biggest threats to the American dream right now, to our unity and prosperity, our happiness and civic health?

John McCain lied — he doesn't really want to repeal Obamacare

Conservatives, long considered obstacles to cooperation by centrists such as McCain, have made the necessary concessions on every major legislative attempt in the House and the Senate to create a coalition capable of repealing and replacing Obamacare. Even the Tea Party Patriots endorsed Graham-Cassidy, a bill that leaves in place much of the regulatory structure established by Obamacare.
. . .
If he truly believes that "any serious attempt to improve our health care system must begin with a full repeal and replacement of Obamacare," McCain knows there is no bipartisan solution to reform that meets his own standards. After voting for repeal, and arguing legislative attempts to achieve full repeal and replacement were essential, McCain is now moralizing about the importance of bipartisanship, after conservatives compromised to deliver on their promises and save a failing system.

McCaincare: The dishonorable Senator from Arizona.

"I won’t stop fighting to repeal and replace," McCain declared during the last election. It would have been more accurate if he had admitted that he won’t stop fighting efforts to repeal ObamaCare.

Trump pins blame on McCain as latest GOP health-care bill sinks Fair enough, but he had help. Susan Collins: “It’s Difficult To Envision” Voting For Graham-Cassidy and Shocker: Maine Socialist Susan Collins Will Vote Against Graham-Cassidy. Et tu Ted? Ted Cruz: 'Graham and Cassidy Don't Have My Vote, and They Don't Have Mike Lee's Either' and Ted Cruz Just Stuck A Fork In The Graham-Cassidy ObamaCare Repeal/Replace Bill. He might just want to spite Lindsay, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt that it's on principle.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, fake "principled" conservatives. You're either in favor of the free market and opposed to socialized medicine, or you're an opportunist who just supports whatever it is your supposed "side' is pushing at the moment. You can't have it both ways.

Republicans press ahead with Graham-Cassidy health care bill despite mounting defections in Senate, but then Senate won’t vote on last-ditch Obamacare repeal bill; Republicans made the decision after it was clear their latest plan would fail.

Obamacare Repeal: Is There Life After September 30? The American Spectator says "Yep." Clearly Rand Paul and Ted Cruz think so. I'm not so sure.

Levin takes ‘deceitful SOB’ Kimmel & pal Schumer to the WOODSHED

In vintage Mark Levin form, Levin came out firing Friday night, refusing to let late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel off the hook for peddling dangerous health care lies and myths all week.

“Now we learn that Jimmy Kimmel and Chuck Schumer have been working behind the scenes,” Levin said, referring to a breaking-news report from the Daily Beast Friday. The Daily Beast report alleges Kimmel and his team worked with the Senate minority leader for months to combat Obamacare opposition.

“Jimmy Kimmel, you’re a deceitful SOB. You should’ve told the American people when you were espousing what you were espousing that you were getting talking points from Chuck Schumer,” Levin blasted.

As Obamacare repeal implodes (again), Democrats prepping for single-payer self-destruction

It's probably true that voters are skeptical of Republicans' ability to fix the mess that is health care, especially when the party is led by an unpopular president whose knowledge of medical procedures seems to be limited to the plastic surgery performed on television personalities. But the public saying, "I'm not so sure it's a good idea to write and pass a bill in a week after Republicans had seven years to fix Obamacare" is far different than "I want the federal government fully in charge on my health care."

Russian Facebook Attacks For Clinton

You know that $150 k of Facebook ads allegedly purchased by Russians to affect our election? Somebody actually looked at the content, and guess what: Leaked Descriptions Of Infamous "Russia Ads" Derail Collusion Narrative "They Showed Support For Clinton"

Less than a week after Facebook agreed to turn over to Congressional investigators copies of the 3,000-odd political advertisements that the company said it had inadvertently sold to a Russia-linked group intent on meddling in the 2016 presidential election, the contents of the ads have – unsurprisingly – leaked, just as we had expected them to.

Congressional investigators shared the information with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team, which has repeatedly allowed information about its investigation into whether members of the Trump campaign actively colluded with Russian operatives to leak to the press. Once this happened, we knew it was only a matter of time before the ads became part of the public record.

And, shockingly, descriptions of the ads provided to the Washington Post hardly fit the narrative that Democratic lawmakers have spun in recent weeks, claiming the ads – which didn’t advocate on behalf of a specific candidate, but rather hewed to political issues like abortion rights – were instrumental in securing Trump’s victory.

WaPo reports that the ads represented issues on both sides of the ideological spectrum, which would suggest that the buyers didn’t intend to support a specific candidate, but rather their own unique agenda.

The batch of more than 3,000 Russian-bought ads that Facebook is preparing to turn over to Congress shows a deep understanding of social divides in American society, with some ads promoting African-American rights groups including Black Lives Matter and others suggesting that these same groups pose a rising political threat, say people familiar with the covert influence campaign.
The Russian campaign — taking advantage of Facebook’s ability to simultaneously send contrary messages to different groups of users based on their political and demographic characteristics - also sought to sow discord among religious groups. Other ads highlighted support for Democrat Hillary Clinton among Muslim women.

Of course, support for Hillary Clinton among minority groups was less enthusiastic than it was for Barack Obama, suggesting that the ads perhaps weren’t as effective as some Democratic lawmakers would have voters believe. Despite the innocuous description, WaPo insisted on reporting that the ads were meant to “sow dischord” among different voting blocs that supported Clinton. The paper of record also reported that the targeted messages “highlight the sophistication of an influence campaign slickly crafted to mimic and infiltrate US political discourse”…again without explaining exactly how they accomplished this.

Impeach her! Oh, wait, no need.

Reason #5716 That Trump Was Elected

SJWs. 'Nuff said.

End result of identity politics & celebration of victimhood. Gross.pic.twitter.com/KoJyRqFjhE

— Rita Panahi (@RitaPanahi) September 23, 2017

Wombat-socho scores a day late with "Late Night With Rule 5 Monday: Coffee, Please".

Always Check Their References

Renters, that is. Bishop's blast at 'satanic' London Fashion Week show that turned a church into a catwalk

The show, part of London Fashion Week, was highlighting the work of controversial Turkish designer Dilara Findikoglu, whose creations have been worn by celebrities including singer Rihanna.

Against a backdrop of demonic images, heavily made-up models wearing horns or displaying upside-down crosses paraded down the aisle-turned-catwalk of St Andrew Holborn church in Central London last week.

Ms Findikoglu, who has been described as an ‘up-and-coming rebel of the fashion world’, told Vogue magazine earlier this month of her fascination with the occult and magic.

They'd fit right in with the Juggaos and Juggalettes. And they do their own costumes.

But the former Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali, said the satanic aspect of the show was ‘not acceptable’ and could lead people ‘to areas where we don’t want them to go.’

He said: ‘Christians will be outraged. This was not necessary to do. In the sense that Christ’s name is being dishonoured, it is blasphemous.’

The bishop said the general rule was that churches should not do anything that ‘dishonours Christ or contradicts the Christian faith’.

My personal favorite

At least they're wearing clothes, mostly.

‘That’s the rule of thumb that they should follow. They have to be very discerning about that,’ he added.

He questioned whether the church, which has apologised, had exercised proper caution when it took the booking, and called for an investigation.

Try this in Syria. Or even Turkey.

Wombat-socho scores a day late with "Late Night With Rule 5 Monday: Coffee, Please".

A Civil War Over Menhaden?

Omega Menhaden fishing

Menhaden battle once again pits Virginia against Northern states

Five years ago, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission cut the menhaden harvest by 20 percent, forcing the largest employer in the rural tip of the Northern Neck, Omega Protein, to lay off workers and decommission a ship.

The tiny fish is sold by fishermen as bait to catch blue crabs and commercially rendered for its oil and byproducts at Omega’s Reedville plant. Environmentalists and anglers say it’s critical to the diet of other Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic species such as osprey, striped bass and dolphin. At the time, commissioners said menhaden was at the point of being depleted.

Since then, ASMFC, which manages fisheries from Maine to Florida, changed its method of assessment and says stocks are now healthy. It began easing catch limits to where the quota is now only about 6 percent short of the 212,000 metric tons it once was.
Omega, which catches a half-billion fish each year, replaced two of its seven ships this year with larger, more efficient ships and rehired some of its employees.

But the company sees a new problem.

Monty Deihl, vice president of Omega’s operations, calls it “a fish grab” by other ASMFC member states, specifically northern states where more menhaden have been showing up.

“The stock is very healthy, the quota could be raised, but no one wants to raise the quota because Virginia will get 85 percent of whatever is raised,” he told a crowd of mostly employees and their families at an ASMFC public hearing last week. “You should be offended at the way all the other stuff was done to try to get a piece of what you all put your time and careers in to build.”

During ASMFC’s summer meeting, commissioners from New York and Maine, which in recent times have not had much of a menhaden fishery, said they are having episodes where large masses of menhaden enter their waters. Now their fishermen, who sell menhaden as bait to catch lobster and other fish, want to ensure their share. Commissioners are struggling with how to do that.

“Things have changed,” said Dennis Abbott, representing New Hampshire at the ASMFC meeting last February. “It doesn’t make sense that the state of New York can only catch a handful of fish or that the state of Maine, who needs baitfish and has fish off their coast … has no allocations and has to go begging to the state of Virginia to get a million pounds to keep their lobster industry going.”

In November, commissioners will decide on whether to raise the quota and consider amendments on how to reallocate to states such as Maine, New York and even Rhode Island, which used to have a large menhaden fishery and wants a larger quota.

From my observations, Menhaden number are either not fully recovered, or Maryland's population of large menhaden is being caught up in Virginia on their way north. But it seems to me that the "northern scum" seem to have a reasonable claim to a portion of the improved catch.

Hard Time for Weiner

Anthony Weiner gets hard time

It’s hard time for Anthony Weiner.

The disgraced ex-congressman broke down crying as he was sentenced to 21 months in prison Monday for convincing a high school student to undress and touch herself via Skype in 2016.

“This was a serious crime. It’s a serious crime that deserves serious punishment,” Manhattan federal Judge Denise Cote said as the convicted sext fiend dropped his head into his hand and wept.

After the courtroom cleared, Weiner sat crying in his chair with his lawyers patting him on the back. His mom also sat crying on the bench behind him, sitting next to Weiner’s brother Jason and Weiner’s dad.

The serial sexter’s soon-to-be ex-wife, Huma Abedin, was nowhere to be seen.

In addition to his prison stint, Weiner was sentenced to pay a $10,000 fine for his crime, participate in sex offender outpatient treatment and spend three years on supervised release once his sentence is up.

He will have to surrender to his designated facility by Nov. 6 — his lawyer put in a request for Schuylkill Federal Correctional Facility in Pennsylvania, or another low-security prison near New York.
. . .
The feds said the latest and most insidious chapter of Weiner’s sexting problem began on the evening of Jan. 23, 2016, when a high school student messaged him on Twitter, prompting a flurry of “provocative” responses from the former public servant, who knew the teen was in high school, court papers show.

“As January turned to February, their intermittent exchanges grew more lascivious,” Manhattan federal prosecutors told the judge in court filings.

By the end of February, Weiner — who by this time knew the girl was only 15 — was video-chatting with her via Skype and using “graphics and obscene language” to ask her to “display her naked body and touch herself,” the feds said.

It's amazing how the article manages to recite the fact that he was a former Congressman without mentioning his party affiliation until the 13th paragraph. We know that would have been prominent in the first paragraph had he been Republican. They also skirt right around how his sexting led to the FBI investigation that found a shitload of Hillary Clinton's emails, including some classified ones, on the laptop he shared with Huma (Hillary's consigliere).

The man clearly has issues.

Reason #5715 That Trump Was Elected

How powerful a persuader is Donald Trump? So powerful, he can make liberal love football with a single tweet: President instantly sidelines criticism of NFL

The NFL’s run of terrible press is over — when President Trump attacked the league Friday night in Alabama, 99.99 percent of the alt-left media reflexively fell into line in defense of a sport they were denouncing as barbaric as late as Friday afternoon.

You know that torrent of negative news the fellow travelers has been spewing out about pro football — the epidemics of CTE and spousal abuse, the league’s plummeting TV ratings, the half-empty stadiums in California, the $6 tickets going begging, etc., etc.?

Now that Trump has slammed the NFL, it is once again ... America’s Pastime!

All it took was 90 or so seconds of the president fantasizing aloud about an NFL owner — like his buddy Bob Kraft, maybe, or his ambassador to the Court of St. James, Woody Johnson — reacting to the latest pampered prima donna to take a knee during the national anthem.

“Get that son of a bitch off the field right now!” the president imagined one of his fellow billionaires bellowing. “Out! He’s fired! He’s fired!”

Which would be the owner’s right, obviously. And surely a huge percentage of what used to be the NFL fan base is fed up with the endless PC posturing, both on the field and in the ESPN studios and on the sports pages.

The NFL’s appeal has faded, but not just among the deplor­ables. There’s a reason they are called “soccer moms,” after all. They wouldn’t dream of letting Junior put on shoulder pads. A football field is the furthest thing from a snowflake’s safe space.

But now the lemmings of the left feel compelled to defend something they loathed a mere 48 hours ago, because if Trump likes something, it must be bad. And vice versa.

Suddenly, CTE will become a badge of honor. But, unlike the conservatives, who they drove away in droves, the liberals won't stay long. If my Facebook feed is any indication, a lot of long-time football fans have become disillusioned.

Slate:  The NFL Protests Are Patriotic.