Original 1/13/2019 post, "Donald Trump embraces the virulently anti-immigration and white supremacist views and rhetoric of Iowa's Steve King", starts here.
Embracing King's views on immigration is not the route to re-election.
Excerpt from 1/10/2019 NYT article. Immigration is Mr. Trump’s go-to issue, his surest connection to his most faithful supporters, and his prime-time address on Tuesday night underscored his willingness to use fear and misleading statements to appeal to voters — just as he did with warnings about a migrant caravan before the midterm elections.
The Republican Party hadn’t always intended to go this route: Officials tried for years to come up with broad-based immigration reform that would appeal to growing numbers of Latino voters. But Mr. Trump’s preoccupation with the wall and anti-immigrant politics reflects how he has embraced the once-fringe views of Mr. King, who has used racist language in the past, promotes neo-Nazis on Twitter and was recently denounced by one Republican leader as a white supremacist.
Having lost the popular vote in 2016, Trump has no room for error, particularly since Democrats made strong gains in 2018 in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
With sea ice at a record low, the usual buffer that helps keep Alaska cool is gone, said Karin Gleason, a climate scientist with NOAA. "That exacerbates temperatures, because when you don't have sea ice near the coastlines, then the temperature of the continent can warm sooner and earlier than it typically would."
Arctic sea ice hit a record low in July after an early start to the melt season, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). The sea ice volume Arctic-wide was about 47 percent lower than the average from 1979-2018.
7/8/2019 update, "Record-breaking heat in Alaska", starts here.
I think it is. We're definitely seeing warmer-than-normal conditions. Like, the 90-degree temperature is 25 degrees above our average. Our average for this time of year is 65 degrees. And just in the last 10 days, we had six record-high temperatures. So not just this year, but overall, the trend for Anchorage and all of Alaska is a steady increase and a steady warming. (From an interview with Tracy Sinclair, meteorologist at Channel 2 News in Anchorage.)
This June record in Utqiagvik (formerly known as Barrow) is the latest notable in what is shaping up as one of Alaska's warmest years on record. NOAA's May climate report released earlier this month found the state had its record warmest spring (March through May) and its second warmest year-to-date through May, behind only 2016.
Original 4/4/2019 "In the red zone" post starts here.
Many Alaskans have reveled in the warm wave, but others are wary, saying the unprecedented heat has put lives at risk on melting rivers and created challenges for hunters trying to get food.
Statewide temperatures for March are expected to average 27 degrees, 4 degrees higher than the 1965 high mark, said Brian Brettschneider, a climatologist with the International Arctic Research Center at University of Alaska Fairbanks. [emphasis added]
“We’re not just eking past records. This is obliterating records,” he said.
Original 3/27/2019 post, "Record heat in Alaska", starts here.
Well above-average temperatures are expected to continue this week. Daily temperature records have broken around the state, and toppled all-time March records in the greater Arctic region.
Last week, Alaska saw its earliest ever 70-degree Fahrenheit temperature.
This exceptional warmth has been stoked by a mix of weather events and a rapidly warming climate.
"The magnitude and persistence of the warmth is particularly striking to me this winter in parts of Alaska," Zack Labe, a climate scientist and Ph.D. candidate at the University of California at Irvine, said over email.
Next week, as the Waunakee area celebrates the opening of the new public library, it will mark the end of a nearly 15-year process that hit several road bumps along the way.
This chapter in Waunakee’s history involved nearly 500 Waunakee area residents and those hired to work on the project, all who helped see the project to fruition.
But according to one library board and village board member, the long timeline may have benefited the project overall.
“The time it took was a benefit to the library,” said Village Trustee Gary Herzberg. “It gave village board members a better understanding of the library and the needs.”
Main entrance
Two views just inside the vestibule
History Hallway leading to Community Room
A peek into the Community Room. (Note the outdoor seating.)
For four days each summer, Chouteau County in Montana, a community of 5,500 people spread out over a bumpy quilt of wheat field and pasture roughly half the size of New Jersey, converges onto a few flat acres of grass and dirt along the Missouri River at the south end of Fort Benton, the county seat.
The Chouteau County Fair boasts an array of diversions. There is a midway where the Ferris wheel turns and the Octopus whips and a grandstand where the rodeo is held. There are stands that sell corn dogs and Indian tacos and deep-fried pickles. There are booths displaying the latest fashions in fences and seamless vinyl siding, and a table where you can buy a scale model of the world's largest farm tractor, kept at a ranch in the northeast corner of the county.
The revisions don’t change the overall picture of a healthy job market. But they do mean that 2018, which had ranked among the strongest years of job growth in the decade-long recovery, was weaker than previously believed. After the revision, hiring probably averaged under 200,000 jobs per month last year, down from the 223,000 initially reported and only modestly better than the 179,000 monthly jobs added in 2017.
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Apparently, Trump has yet to hit the 200K mark in average monthly job gains. If it hasn't blown through already, a tweet storm is likely on the horizon.