Downtown Miami Flooded With Ocean Water; Crane Collapses

The National Weather Service reported that a crane has collapsed in Miami as strong wind from Hurricane Irma blows in. The weather service’s Miami office said in a Tweet that one of its employees witnessed the crane boom and counterweight collapse in downtown Miami. The employee captured video of the collapse.

The crane fell onto a high-rise building that"s under construction. It"s in a bayfront area filled with hotels and high-rise condo and office buildings, near AmericanAirlines Arena. According to AP, Miami-Dade County Director of Communications Mike Hernandez said emergency personnel couldn"t immediately respond to the scene because of high winds. Authorities urged people to avoid the area after the Sunday morning collapse. It wasn"t clear if there were any injuries. Miami City Manager Daniel Alfonso said the approximately two-dozen other cranes in the city are still upright and built to withstand significant wind gusts.

The cranes were thought to be able to withstand the direct hit of a Category 4 hurricane, however, Irma"s winds in Miami are just at the Category 1 level. About 25 cranes remained up before the storm approached South Florida.

It wasn’t immediately clear if the collapse caused damage or injuries.

The boom of the crane snapped off and is currently still connected to the tower, but is hanging off the side of the building. "All we care about is the safety of everyone right now," the building"s developer, PMG, said in a statement. "We will have a crew over to secure the crane as soon as the weather permits."

As reported previously, the cranes have been a concern even though construction sites across Irma’s potential path in Florida were locked down to remove or secure building materials, tools and debris that could be flung by Irma’s winds.

But the horizontal arms of the tall tower cranes remained loose despite the potential danger of collapse. According to city officials, it would have taken about two weeks to move the cranes and there wasn’t enough time.

Breaking: at least one crane has come down in Downtown Miami. This is next to the Federal prison front of courthouse. @wsvn #HurrcaneIrma pic.twitter.com/sC96QKqM0w

— Brian Entin (@BrianEntin) September 10, 2017

Meanwhile, as of noon ET, Miami’s financial center appears to now be flooding as ocean water enters city streets as part of the storm’s surge.

Brickell flooded with ocean water #Irma @nbc6 @CNN @WPLGLocal10 @wsvn pic.twitter.com/wRzGApcJGs

— SV (@SamVSoares) September 10, 2017

Water ponding in #brickell #irma #miami pic.twitter.com/gMDFgekXSj

— Rosa Flores (@RosaFlores) September 10, 2017

Curious minds in #brickell defying instruction from first responders #irma #miami pic.twitter.com/ruaqmA3kww

— Rosa Flores (@RosaFlores) September 10, 2017

Democrats, Stop With The Poll Rigging...It's Getting Embarrassing

Last fall, in the months/weeks leading up to the presidential election, we spent a fair amount time talking about how Democratic pollsters were setting themselves up for a massive embarrassment on election day with their obviously rigged polling data that consistently suggested Hillary had a commanding lead.  In fact, just weeks before the election, the Washington Post published a poll showing that Hillary was well on her way to a "blowout" 12-point victory (we wrote about it here:  This Is How WaPo"s Latest Poll Gave Hillary A 12 Point Advantage Over Trump).  Needless to say, that never happened and those pollsters suffered the humiliating consequences of their biased "math."

Unfortunately, as last night"s special election in Georgia makes all too clear, no one on the left seems to have learned any lessons from their presidential poll rigging debacle last November.

In fact, one prominent pollster even declared just 6 days before the election that if Ossoff failed to win it would mean that "MATH IS DEAD AND DATA IS BROKEN."

It means there"s a 70% chance Ossoff wins and a 30% chance that MATH IS DEAD AND DATA IS BROKEN.

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) June 14, 2017

Of course, the problem isn"t that "math is dead" or "data is broken"...the problem is that rather than using data to arrive at a solution pollsters have resorted to starting out with a solution and then solving for the data.

Which is exactly what appears to have happened in Georgia.  As the following chart points out, with just 9 days left until election day, pollsters were predicting a fairly easy win for Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff in Georgia"s 6th district runoff...shocking, we know.  But, just over a week later, the Republican candidate ended up easily walking away with the win, and served up another embarrassment for pollsters in the process as actual results swung 8.6 points from predictions peddled to the public just a week earlier.

So how does this keep happening?  Well, it"s not that surprising in light of the fact that Democrats literally wrote a playbook on how to rig polling data through "oversamples."  As we noted last October in a post entitled "New Podesta Email Exposes Playbook For Rigging Polls Through "Oversamples"", it all apparently has a lot to do with "oversampling" various minority groups.

The email even includes a handy, 37-page guide with the following poll-rigging recommendations.  In Arizona, over sampling of Hispanics and Native Americans is highly recommended:

Research, microtargeting & polling projects
-  Over-sample Hispanics
-  Use Spanish language interviewing. (Monolingual Spanish-speaking voters are among the lowest turnout Democratic targets)
-  Over-sample the Native American population

For Florida, the report recommends "consistently monitoring" samples to makes sure they"re "not too old" and "has enough African American and Hispanic voters."  Meanwhile, "independent" voters in Tampa and Orlando are apparently more dem friendly so the report suggests filling up independent quotas in those cities first.

-  Consistently monitor the sample to ensure it is not too old, and that it has enough African American and Hispanic voters to reflect the state.
-  On Independents: Tampa and Orlando are better persuasion targets than north or south Florida (check your polls before concluding this). If there are budget questions or oversamples, make sure that Tampa and Orlando are included first.

Of course, the intent of publishing these ridiculous polls is presumably to "chill" the Republican vote...afterall, why go through the hassle of long lines at a polling station if your candidate has no shot at winning? 

That said, the strategy only worked BEFORE the media and pollsters lost all credibility...so, why bother keeping up the charade?  As we mentioned above, it"s just getting embarrassing at this point.

Why Trump's First War Is Probably Going To Be A Conflict With North Korea

Authored by Daniel Lang via SHTFplan.com,

By now most people are completely desensitized to stories involving North Korea (just look at the lack of mainstream media coverage of tonight"s missile test-launch). One can only hear about so many blustering threats, missile launches, and state sanctioned executions, before those incidents are no longer surprising. Over the years we’ve seen it all, and most folks don’t really pay much attention to what’s going on in the Hermit Kingdom. That’s unfortunate, because they’re not paying attention as the Trump administration inches towards war with North Korea.

The first definite sign that the current administration was going to take a different approach to North Korea, was when Secretary of State Rex Tillerson stated emphatically last month that “all options are on the table.”

“Let me be very clear. The policy of strategic patience has ended. We are exploring a new range of diplomatic, security and economic measures. All options are on the table,”

Tillerson told reporters during a joint news conference with South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se on Friday.

“Certainly we do not want to, for things to get to military conflict,” Tillerson said.

However, he went on to say that “if they (North Korea) elevate the threat of their weapons program to a level that we believe requires action, then, that option’s on the table.”

He added that a “comprehensive set of capabilities” is being developed to deal with the country.

And at least one of those options is already in place. Before that interview even took place, US special forces were already training to decapitate the North Korean regime.

Despite that threat, North Korea has refused to back down on their nuclear program, and for good reason. Kim Jong-un’s regime believes that they won’t be safe from foreign invasion unless they have a nuclear tipped ICBM that can be launched at targets that are thousands of miles away.

The US government on the other hand, has taken a different position. Our government believes that North Korea can’t be trusted with that kind of military capability. In a sense both sides are correct, but clearly those opinions are diametrically opposed. Unless one side backs down, there will be war before North Korea demonstrates that it can launch a nuclear tipped ICBM.

And President Trump has tacitly admitted that he’s willing to go to war with North Korea. During a recent interview with Financial Times, he stated if China can’t or won’t reign in North Korea, then our government is willing to “act alone.”

POTOMAC FALLS, Va. (AP) — President Donald Trump says that the United States is prepared to act alone if China does not take a tougher stand against North Korea’s nuclear program.

 

Trump’s comments in an interview with the Financial Times come just days before he is set to host Chinese President Xi Jinping at his Mar-a-Lago estate in South Florida. The two are expected to discuss a number of issues, including North Korea, trade and territorial disputes in the South China Sea during their meeting on Thursday and Friday.

 

“Yes, we will talk about North Korea,” Trump told the newspaper for a story that appeared Sunday on its website. “And China has great influence over North Korea. And China will either decide to help us with North Korea, or they won’t. And if they do that will be very good for China, and if they don’t it won’t be good for anyone.”

Without China’s help, there can’t be any peaceful resolution with North Korea, because China is the closest thing to a friend that country has on the global stage. Unfortunately, there isn’t much of a chance that China is going to defang this regime anytime soon. If they could they would have done so a long time ago. They may enjoy having a communist buffer state between their capital and an American ally in the south, but they don’t want to live right next door to a certifiably insane regime with nuclear weapons.

I don’t think that China could ever convince North Korea to give up its nuclear program. Kim Jong-un saw what happened to countries like Libya and Iraq after they abandoned their WMD programs. And North Korea is probably just as afraid of regime change at the hands of China as they are of America, because China would prefer a buffer state that is much more obedient and prosperous (and you know, not armed with nukes that at the command of a lunatic). Even North Korea’s closest friend is kind of an enemy, and they need capable nukes to defend themselves from China as well.

So if China can’t convince them to give up their nukes, and the United States won’t tolerate a nuclear armed North Korea, then there’s only two possible outcomes. Either our government is going to blink in this standoff, or there’s going to be war.