It's now my privilege to sign the Homeland Security Act. The Department of Homeland Security will have nearly 170,000 employees. The threat of mass murder on our own soil will be met with a unified, effective response. So the Department of Homeland Security, DHS, is celebrating its 20th birthday, which is a perfect opportunity to rethink the whole concept of Homeland Security and how to best provide it. DHS has grown into a monster child that is massively expensive, incredibly ineffective, and reliably destructive of basic civil liberties. It's time to abolish it and replace it with fewer, smaller, and more accountable agencies. In the wake of the 9-11 attacks, President George W. Bush called for the creation of a new cabinet-level department whose primary mission is to protect the American homeland. By pulling border security, emergency services, and immigration into a single streamlined bureaucracy, Bush promised that the new department would improve efficiency without growing government. Instead, we got politically manipulated color-coded terror alerts that only made it easier for late-night comedians. The threat level is now magenta. The DHS budget now stands at $82 billion, or almost double its original cost and inflation adjusted dollars. Are there really twice as many threats to the homeland as there were when the embers at Ground Zero were still smoldering and the global war on terror was just ramping up? In the early days of the war on terror, Washington was obsessed with the idea that the 9-11 attacks happened because different agencies, notably the CIA, FBI, and NSA, didn't communicate with each other. Hence the idea of a unified Homeland Security structure. The critics of DHS noted from the start that it didn't actually reduce bureaucracy or streamline much of anything. It just added a new layer of red tape on top of existing agencies while creating new ones, such as the Customs and Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, both of which have become legendary for callousness and root-level failures. Similarly, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, has gone from catastrophic failure in New Orleans all the way to catastrophic failure in Puerto Rico, updating its long-standing stumble-bum reputation for the 21st century. In a new report, FEMA admits failures occurred in its disaster response to Hurricane Maria. The 2019 Inspector General report called out DHS for failing to rein in bad behavior, ranging from padding expense accounts to drinking on the job to illegal reprisals against sexual harassment whistleblowers. The report concluded no one was really in charge of organizing and inspecting reports of employee misbehavior. President Biden has boasted that DHS has almost 260,000 employees, yet its HR department told the Inspector General it had limited staffing to perform these functions, and staff do not believe they are responsible for managing the allegation process. Perhaps worst of all, DHS is a determined foe of civil liberties. As the ACLU documents in a new study of the department, DHS routinely undermines our ability to speak and move freely about the very country it's supposed to be protecting. For instance, since immigration enforcement became part of a national security agenda, ICE agents encourage local police to stop arrest and bring low-level charges against people who look like immigrants, with the actual aim of helping ICE deport them. Something like an immigrant isn't against the law, and it shouldn't be a pretext for a police stop. And when we talk about DHS, of course we have to talk about the Transportation Security Administration, TSA. Oh, of course the brilliant TSA! Which you might refer to as thousands standing around the testicle-squeezing agency or any number of different euphemisms. Despite very occasional positive headlines, the TSA rightly looms large in the public imagination as a make-work program gone horribly wrong. Famous for forcing mothers to drink their own breast milk, scaring children, and pantsing the elderly, the TSA reportedly spends as much as $667 billion per life saved. On its 10th anniversary, two conservative Republican members of Congress even denounced the TSA, saying the degraded security theater it imposed on travelers did not improve on the safety protocols that were in place before 9-11. DHS's mission is simply too vast to accomplish. Having been tasked to do so many different things, from processing immigration checks to responding to natural disasters to checking passengers on every flight in America to stopping terrorism, it ends up doing all of them poorly. It would be better to break those functions up into smaller agencies that are directly accountable to departments that existed prior to 9-11. As Richard A. Clarke, a 30-year veteran of security positions in the Defense Department, State Department, and White House has suggested, it makes sense to create a smaller group tightly focused on terroristic threats that would work directly with the FBI in the Office of National Intelligence. Preserving the status quo, he writes, will only perpetuate the mistakes made in the panic trauma that followed 9-11 and doomed these important missions to continued mishandling and lack of success. As it celebrates its 20th birthday, it's time to blow out the candles on DHS.


Dear students, in this topic we shall discuss the motility of the elementary canal. The ability of the elementary canal to contract and propel ingested material along its length is called the motility. Motility depends on the activity of the smooth muscle wall of the elementary canal and or ciliary lining of digestive tract in various animals. Motility is highly significant for the translocation and conduction of food along the elementary canal. It is also important for the mechanical treatment of food. It also prevents scumming. We will discuss these three significant features in detail. The translocation of food involves carrying of the food to various parts of the elementary canal. The process of translocation needs to be correctly timed along the entire length. Because of this translocation, food reaches the specialized regions for digestion and absorption in time. The timing is very important because the process of translocation of food reaches the food and time. For example, a part of the translocation is secreting the enzymes for some time and the food reaches the required timing. This timing is also important for the expulsion of fecal material. The elementary canal's motility has second function which is the mechanical treatment of food. The muscular activities of elementary canal are involved in grinding and kneading actions. These actions break the larger components of food into smaller soluble forms. When food converts into smaller soluble forms, it enables the enzymes and bile to act on the food. This action of grinding and kneading also mixes the digestive juices with the food contents present in the luminoff elementary canal. Dear students, the process of mixing and grinding occurs in the form of a small phenomenon which is called segmentation. Segmentation is a process in which the circular muscles of the elementary canal are involved and they have asynchronous contractions. Segmentation is a process in which only asynchronous contractions of circular muscles are involved. In the process of segmentation, longitudinal muscles do not participate. Because of this process, food rolls within a certain part of the digestive tract and as a result it is mixed and ground. Dear students, the motility of the digestive tract also keeps renewing the material in contact with the absorptive and secretive surfaces of epithelial lining. The material that is passing through the epithelial lining is being renewed because of the motility. Because of this, the food content that is passing through the digestive tract does not stop at any place and does not form a layer formation. This process which is called scumming can cause clogging of the surfaces. If clogging occurs and layer formation occurs, then the absorptive and secretive areas are reduced. And this motility prevents this type of layer formation.


The future bioeconomy will rely heavily on lignocellulosic biomass, which is difficult to process due to its recalcitrant nature. Enzymatic conversion of polysaccharides in this biomass, specifically cellulose, is a key technology for future bio refineries and is currently being intensely researched. Recent developments in enzyme technology have led to the discovery of new types of enzymes, such as CBM-33 and GH-61, which catalyze oxidative cleavage of polysaccharides, increasing the efficiency of classical hydrolytic enzymes, cellulases, by acting on the surfaces of insoluble substrates. This article was authored by Hornsven, Vatikolstad-Gustav, Westerengdjage, and others.


I believe that Manipur adds to India. So whatever your perspective is, whatever your feelings are, whatever you want to say, when you say them, I believe that India becomes stronger. The BJP feels that you should not be allowed to say what is in your heart. You should listen to what they have to say and Manipur should be run from Nagpur, not from infar.  They don't want you to dance around. They want you to stand like this. They don't want you to do all that. So there's a deep inferiority complex in that. States like the Northeast, which have particular requirements, require a strategic approach. So tremendous damage has been done to the Northeast because they've taken away your special status. They've taken away the special industrial policy that we had put in place. Basically it is the imposition of mediocrity on a country that is extremely sophisticated, a country that understands things, a country that has huge amount of talent. So you just waste all that talent. I view Northeast, frankly, as a potential manufacturing hub in the eastern part of India. So we would like to set up right near the farms in Manipur, food processing units for oranges, whatever you grow so that you can, the farmers can sell their produce in the factories and get adequate compensation. I think we have to accept that there is a job crisis. And then the whole country has to become one in trying to ensure that we resolve this crisis. And Manipur has a role to play in that movement of creating jobs for this country.


We developed transformer-based models to classify motor imagery electroencephalogram, e.g., data using Physionet dataset. Our models achieved higher accuracy than existing state-of-the-art models, demonstrating the effectiveness of transformers in this application. Additionally, the attention weights provided insights into the working mechanism of the transformer-based networks during motor imagery tasks. This article was authored by Jean Sia, Jiaxian, Jiao Sun, and others.


died this week from a choice. We all have a choice, I understand that. But if someone wants to commit suicide, that's an individual choice. But when you commit suicide and you can also kill the person next to you, that's not, I just put my toe in the water being cautious all this year. I've only gone to a limited number of events. And now I'm getting ready to shelter back in place because people who want to think that it's in the Constitution for them not to wear a mask and not to get a vaccine. It's not. I'm so frustrated. My hair is curling and falling out at the same time. I am just so over. I saw it on national news yesterday that our own chans, whatever we call the name of now. UF Health, yeah. They made national news this week. They are vaccinated, 75 people out. People, I just don't understand the freedom versus death. I don't understand that model. And I'm just so frustrated. I just pray that this will cause people to turn, but I'm not sure. I just, I'm not sure. I know, Linda, let an event. I appreciate it, Linda. And I know of several other stories like that in my own life. And it's just heartbreaking that you could have gotten a free shot that would have protected you from all of this misery. And again, these vaccines are safe and highly effective. Tommy in St. Augustine. Go ahead, Tommy. Hello, thank you for taking my call. Sure. I just wanted to say this past two weeks I've been in the emergency room for blood pressure-related issues. I just want everyone to know that it is very real. There were so many people. There were COVID-like symptoms or suffering from COVID had been diagnosed. And they were really struggling. I went to Baptist South and Baptist Beaches. So it is very real. And I also wanted to know, not everyone who has not taken the shot or been vaccinated is political or cultural, believed or distrust. It may be that it's contraindicated for health issues such as myself. So some people just cannot take the vaccine. So for those of you who can, please help up those of us who can, who have compromised immune system and get the vaccine if you can. Tommy, thanks absolutely. Thank you for that. Lots of calls. Bill in Mandarin, go ahead, Bill. You're on the air. Yeah, just a couple of one-liners. I think those folks who haven't gotten vaccinated are walking tombstones, waiting for the date to be filled in. I think the leadership of our, by our governor is nicknamed should be governor graveyard. But I might suggest, I think there's a valid thought here about a third of these folks are probably just outright afraid of getting stabbed. I know when I've got my second shot, I had such fear about getting it because of the poke in the arm from what I've seen on TV. That's it, thank you. Okay, Bill. Hey, look, David Barrowline, nobody enjoys getting vaccinated.  I did. I didn't feel very good, especially after the second Moderna shot, but I'm just so relieved that I got it early on and have some immunity to this. David Barrowline, what about the governor? He doubled down Thursday on his opposition to mass mandates for public school students. He says he'll call for a special legislative session. If the federal government moves toward requiring masks in schools, President Joe Biden has indicated they may do that in a week or two. I think there's a fundamental difference in between DeSantis and Biden in terms of whether masks work. Biden would argue that there is scientific basis that the wearing of masks can slow, not stop, but slow the spread of the virus by reducing how far the virus spreads when somebody is infected with it, coughs or even breeze, and then makes the zone around them smaller in terms of where people can then become infected by that person. And I think DeSantis' view is simply that the masks really don't work and that they're not effective and that it's just sort of a meaningless symbol gesture that really just causes more problems than it solves. And so, yeah, there would definitely be a showdown between the federal government and the state government if the federal government sought to impose a mask mandate nationally. I wish quite frankly the government that the federal level has not done so far. It's all been up to local governments and state governments. You know, he may be referring to some studies that show that there wasn't widespread transmission in schools in Florida of COVID. At the same time, most urban school districts did have kids masked up. Claire Goforth, the governor said, we're not doing that in Florida. We need our kids to breathe. And he said that there is not any science to support mask wearing slows the transmission of COVID-19. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is advising that kids younger than 12 should be wearing masks in schools. You know, Claire, we've heard from a lot of parents in the last few days of young children who feel that their kids are in limbo. They have to go back to school. They're not old enough to be vaccinated. They know that if they put a mask on their child, their child is going to be in the minority. They're worried about their kids being bullied if they are wearing masks, frankly. Yeah, and that's a fair concern. And I mean, one way that we could make it safer for kids to be able to go to school without masks is to get the adult population vaccinated. You know, I know that there are statistically, it's less likely for children to transmit the disease and less likely for them to have serious illness from it, but it's not impossible. We have seen, I don't know how many children across this country, certainly in the thousands, who have died from COVID, and that is a tragedy for every single family. And that's another thing that we need to think about. You know, for all of those people who may be listening who haven't had the vaccine yet, who are reticent to get it, you know, you're putting not just yourself at risk, but you're putting children at risk. And you're also putting people like your caller who said that she had blood pressure issues because when we have our emergency rooms in our hospitals completely overflowing with COVID patients, that provides less bandwidth for people with other conditions and people who need to get different types of procedures performed. It makes it so that the rest of us have less access to quality healthcare. And I know that our healthcare professionals are doing their very best under the most dire circumstances, but while making a choice not to get a vaccine, you are taking your own life into your own hands. You're also taking the lives of others. And that is very important to remember. Lots of calls. Let's get a few more of you on as you connect with our Friday Media Roundtable. Don in Jacksonville, hi Don, thanks for holding. Go ahead. Hi, as a 80 year old vaccinated stage four kidney patient who spent more than 40 years in healthcare journalism, I think we need to put this in perspective in the sense that about 37% of people got flu shots. So we start with a base of people, a huge majority of people who don't believe in vaccines or don't go to the trouble to get shots. So to blame this on the Santas or the politicians is a little bit of a reach. And I think what's important to understand is that we're gonna have COVID for the rest of our lives. We're gonna have to learn to distance. We're gonna have to learn to wear a mask if we feel vulnerable. And we have to learn to understand that there are people who are not like us and we cannot look down on people who disagree with us and who don't have our point of view. And we also have to look at the fact that like 15 to 20% of the population are impaired by addiction or a mental illness or what have you. So they are less likely to get healthcare. And then there are people who are just busy and then there are people who just don't believe in vaccines. And so to blame this on all the politicians. Well, I don't think, you know what, Don, I don't think we're blaming this on all of the politicians so much who's just trying to get the word out that people should get vaccinated since this is a uniquely deadly pandemic. That's all. But let's listen, Don, I appreciate your call. Yeah, and I just wanna keep the conversation moving. Charles Greggs, what about that? Hey, Charles, are you there? I have been competing. I'm here. Go ahead. I'm here. There certainly have been competing narratives around the vaccine and respecting Don's point. There are various variables there that keep people from wanting to get vaccinated. However, like I mentioned earlier, the science doesn't lie. We run the risk of giving an opportunity for additional variants to take hold in our community, not just the Delta but others. And our goal should be to work towards an acceptable number of vaccinations in our community to slow the spread and to slow the risk of symptoms of the disease. So that's what we're looking for. And we understand that there are people out there who cannot get the vaccine because of their health conditions. We understand that there are people out there that reluctant to do it for their children until they get more information. But we know that the children, based upon the way this Delta variant is operating, they're next in line. The starting to Delta variant is obviously having more impact on younger people than we saw with the original stages of this virus. And so our children are gonna be next in line. And we need to get a hold of this, to do whatever we can as a community and as a country to get a hold of this before we start seeing major impacts upon our children. When we have to wear masks or ask our children to wear masks in class, I'm willing to do that for my grandson. And I don't see if that's a big burden for him to do that or any other student. I don't see what the problem is. Don't even think it shouldn't have to be mandated. That should be something that parents will wanna do to protect their child. It's almost like making sure that they got clean shirt on in the way to school or their shoelaces are tied. It should be that simple to make sure that they protect their children in the process of trying to slow the spread of this virus. On our Facebook page, Teresa says, unvaccinated by choice people are keeping those who need operations from getting them. Cancer patients from getting care. Accident victims from getting prompt emergency care. And on and on, she's right. Because there are so many COVID patients now filling up local ICUs, that means people with other medical needs, including serious ones, are not getting the best level of care. So that is an important point to think about. If you are not getting vaccinated for whatever your reason is, you're impacting a lot of other people outside of the pandemic because this is putting such a strain on hospitals. Let's go to, we have a doctor on the line. It's Virgilio in Riverside, Virgilio. Good morning. Hi, good morning, Melissa.  Thank you. Thanks for calling. So I'm a local doctor. I admit COVID patients. That's what I've been doing this whole time. It's been tough, of course. I think you've discussed that and covered that. Last week I was exposed to COVID and I became symptomatic. We use the term miles, but walking around the house with chills and muscle ache and a hoodie, that's hard, that's hard. Yeah. I just wanna acknowledge that. And you've been vaccinated? I have been vaccinated. I just wanna acknowledge that even as a doctor, a professional who takes care of patients on a daily basis, you know, finding out where to get tested, what to do with your loved ones who are at the house, how do they isolate? The life changes with your family and friends. It's really difficult. And I just wanna acknowledge that to people who are going through it, that how they're feeling is correct. Yeah.  Is it a kind of a mild case? I would call it a bad summer cold that just continues to trickle. Yeah. And so you're living proof then, we need to make sure people understand this, that you can be fully vaccinated and still get the disease, although you're, as you say, it's more likely to feel like a cold than needing ICU care. Absolutely. No respiratory symptoms. I wouldn't go to the ER. I don't feel that sick, but I also wanna acknowledge that, you know, what do you do once you're sick? Where do your loved one goes? Now they have to go get tested. It's a total life stopper. And I think that just takes an emotional toll in addition to the physical toll. 100%. And thank you so much for calling and thanks for all the work you're doing in the hospital. Chris in St. Augustine, hi, Chris, thanks for holding. Hi, thanks for having me on the show. Sure. I just wanted to ask, you know, of you and of the guests, you know, when does this become a legal issue? I mean, I know we're never gonna be able to chase down the, you know, the anonymous people online who are spewing garbage and misinformation about what's going on here, but you can very easily track down folks in media, politicians, et cetera, who know better and are propagating that misinformation. At some point, we're gonna be able to prove that the delay in vaccination because of all this hesitancy, et cetera, cost real lives. At what point do those folks get held accountable for knowingly spreading information that they know is gonna cost lives?  Mike Mendenhall, Jack's Daily Record. There's been a lot of discussion about this in recent days and a lot of anger, particularly at the biggest spreaders of disinformation. Facebook at the top of the pile and also Fox News, frankly, and how they've tried to pivot in recent days and started to encourage vaccinations. There is a real cost to misinformation and it is in human life. And we can expect some major lawsuits, I think, if they haven't already been filed by those who are willfully putting out false information about the vaccination program. Yeah, most, I mean, they're likely will be lawsuits at some point. But I think for companies like Facebook, I mean, I really think the real, like, penalty would come from possible, an increased regulation from Congress, increased regulation from the federal government. I mean, that's really would probably be, I mean, it would probably be a quicker avenue to take care of some of this. You've already seen the federal government trying to encourage Facebook to change its algorithms to, and they did for a brief time around the time of the election as well, to stop misinformation, to put more credible news sources to show up toward the top of people's news feed, those kind of things. But I think that we've seen time and again that there are national news outlets, unfortunately, that, like you mentioned, particularly with Fox News, that are continuing to perpetuate misinformation. And I think it's mostly coming from that group's commentators from their prime time commentators. Yeah, their opinion hosts. So then their opinion hosts, more so than the journalists that are working in the newsrooms. That's right. Brian in Arlington. Hi, Brian, you wanna talk about the NFL? Is that right? Yeah, I'm Alyssa, I'm vaccinated and certainly the impact on human life is the number one issue. But I'm upset with this governor who thinks he can restrict businesses from checking whether people have vaccines. And with yesterday's announcement, I'm wondering if Governor Ron DeSantis is gonna be responsible for ending NFL football in the state of Florida this fall. Let's talk about that. David Bauerline, the NFL came out this week and said that this is a league-wide policy. If a national football league game cannot be resched and is canceled due to a COVID-19 outbreak among unvaccinated players, that team will have to forfeit and will be given a loss. That is a major incentive to players to get the vaccine and the NFL is a huge corporation. It will certainly have a ripple effect, I would think, among some other businesses. David. No doubt, actions are in actions will have consequences in that case in the win-loss column, which is what it all boils down to when you talk about NFL games. For other businesses, it's a hard one for other businesses to, does that mean that if there's a COVID-19 outbreak in the workplace and somebody was not vaccinated and traced back to them, that they then worth it pay while they're a month's pay or something? I mean, it becomes very difficult and I'm not sure it's quite so easy to translate that to the regular workforce, but certainly at the NFL level, I mean, they're getting them where it hurts. You also, I think, would not get paid for the game that's not played. So that's a financial impact as well. And it could have a symbolic, it certainly heightens the issue and shows the importance of what's going on. And that there is a price to be paid for not doing something that's really readily available. Yeah, Claire go forth. Most businesses have held back on a policy that strict. They've encouraged vaccination. They can enforce mask wearing on the property. For example, at here at WJCT Public Media, we've had a mask order in place for, gosh, it's almost a year and a half now. But forcing, saying that you can't come to work unless you're vaccinated or there will be real consequences if you're not vaccinated, it will be interesting to see if corporate America goes down that path if this continues at the level that we're at right now. Yeah, that is gonna be a difficult issue for companies to say I'm gonna force you to take a vaccine if you wanna work here. Although I think they should be well within their rights to do so, but that would be a very unpopular decision for them and they would get a lot of negative press and probably from some of those very same outlets that we've been speaking about today. I think we should also note that the ongoing war between the DeSantis administration and the cruise industry, which wants to require passengers to be vaccinated and the DeSantis and the Republican leadership in Florida doesn't want to allow them to do so. So they're fighting that out in court. That is something that people who go on cruises, whether or not they wanna get vaccinated, I think they'll change their tune if they're on a cruise ship with 5,000 people and there's a COVID outbreak and suddenly they're trapped on the ship and cannot get off like we saw last spring at the beginning of the pandemic. That's right. The cruise ship industry is also facing off against Florida's policies. We've been following that as well. Alan on the south side. Hi, Alan. I know you've been holding. Thanks for holding, go ahead. Hey Melissa, happy Friday. You too.  But there's a lesser known corollary to Murphy's Law called Hanlon's Razor. And while it comes in a lot of embodiments, my favorite goes like this, never attribute to conspiracy that which can be explained by stupidity. Never attribute to conspiracy.  Yeah, I know it, I know it. Yeah, what can you do? You can't, you can present information, you can encourage, you can do all you can. But you're right, at the end of the day, it is what it is. Okay, Travis on the south side. Hi, Travis. Hey, Melissa. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. I had a quick comment and then what I think is kind of an important question. The comment is shout out the healthcare workers who are still my heroes, my wife's a nurse. And thank you to everyone in healthcare who's been working for over a year now, during this pandemic, it's been crazy. And it's an interesting perspective to talk to a healthcare worker who sees this stuff on the front lines. I guess my question is, if COVID-19 was the dress rehearsal for what could be in the future, a worse pandemic, didn't we just kind of fail miserably? And what does that mean moving forward? How would we be impacted by an even worse pandemic if this is how our response was? I tell you what, Travis, you're absolutely right. And so many mistakes have been made. Charles Greggs, it's been a hundred years since this country went through the 1918 flu pandemic, which is sort of the closest historical analogy to this pandemic. We didn't learn the lessons of that pandemic. We repeated a lot of the same mistakes that Americans made a hundred years ago. That's really unfortunate. People don't know history. At the same time, as Travis pointed out, healthcare workers are heroes, and you really have to feel for them right now, as they're seeing all these unvaccinated people come in needing care. And right before they're intubated, they're crying and telling the nurses and doctors, I wish I'd gotten the vaccine. Can you give me the vaccine now? And they have to tell these folks it's too late. Yeah, Melissa, I would say that we did learn all lessons from previous pandemics. You know, I worked in public health for 12 years. And we rehearsed these scenarios over and over and over again, how to respond to events such as this, how to respond to pandemics, how to implement public health practices to prevent the spread and lower the risk, and what to do in cases of vaccine distribution and so on and on and on. And I would argue that the ball was fumbled from the very beginning, being stubborn, not to respond with using the science and using public health principles and practices in order to mitigate the situation from the very beginning. We were slow to the trigger on making sure that we do the things that we know we can do. And really based upon politics. And now we're paying the price. And that's just the way it is. Those things that we know would have worked, we didn't apply at the beginning. So what I hear you saying is all the people in the health world knew what to do. It was the political sphere that you think messed all this up. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, okay, let's take a few more calls, lots of calls with our Friday Media Roundtable as we talk about COVID-19 and the crisis situation in Jacksonville and surrounding counties. The Delta variant has devastated this community. ICUs are filling up with younger and unvaccinated people. As we speak with David Bauerlein, Claire Goforth, Charles Griggs and Mike Mendenhall from Local Media Outlets. We're taking lots of calls. Let's go to Nancy in Mandarin. Nancy, good morning. Good morning. Go ahead. I have to know why we don't have conversations about the real cause of this pandemic. We all know the shot is free from the federal government. But what is happening to little Mike if you go in and stay for 57 weeks in ICUs and the cause of medications? And of course, now we understand that the penalty on the human beings and nurses that they're exhausted and the doctors are exhausted and they just feel like they should give up because people just aren't touching their home. Yeah. Thank you, Nancy. I can't remember who's next in the queue. I'll go to Mike Mendenhall. What about this? As we noticed yesterday, a 33-year-old father in Jacksonville and a fitness coach in the peak of health was in the ICU for more than two weeks. He didn't get the vaccine. He's actually now set up a GoFundMe for help paying his medical bills. We don't know his insurance status or how much of his insurance covered his costs in the ICU, but it's sure to be in the tens of thousands of dollars. So the cost of all of this is staggering when you add it all up, the cost to this country, Mike. Absolutely, Melissa. I mean, you know, we've been trying to work on our insurance policy at the federal level and how we pay for healthcare in this country for decades. And I think that when you have a global pandemic of this scale, you really see which country's healthcare systems can financially grapple with it and which cannot. It really does kind of reveal a lot of those things. And as far as the emotional toll on healthcare workers, I mean, I have a couple of healthcare workers in my family, and I think there is some disillusionment for sure, you know, having to, you know, seeing these patients come in and out. And also trying to protect patients that are in there from, you know, for other needs, other issues from getting infected from those that are coming in. You know, so I definitely think there is some disillusionment, but there's also this frustration, I think, on the part of a lot of healthcare workers as well when, you know, they know very, very well that, you know, the shot, you know, could have protected these people. And I think it's, you know, I think they try, I know just from the healthcare workers that are in my life, I know they try very hard not to let that, let that allow them to think negatively of the patients that are coming in. They try really hard to remember that everyone has a unique, has a different perspective and different opinions and they're trying really hard to do their jobs. David Bauerlein, Florida Times Union, you know, we're going to see a big corporate push next week. Business leaders speaking out about this crisis, they see the cost to companies, to public health, to the city's reputation. This isn't a good look for Jacksonville to be getting all of this negative national attention because our vaccination rate isn't where it needs to be. David. Absolutely. No, it's the bad kind of publicity for the city. And, you know, just about every metric, the city is behind the rest of the state and then Florida is behind the rest of the country. So there is, Jacksonville is kind of becoming a poster child for this latest summertime resurgence, new wave of COVID-19 vaccinations. And, you know, Charles had a good point earlier, which is this attention on it is welcome. It's good to see that out there from people in the community where the local leaders are the most trusted people, probably in this case, but, you know, it would have probably been good just seeing this two or three months ago when there were all the daily news reports about all these vaccinations that were going unused at these big mega sites that were set up. And now we're seeing that that had some impact for every one of those vaccines that didn't get used or hundreds or thousands of vaccines that didn't get used. Now we do have this pandemic had been unvaccinated in Jacksonville and the Jacksonville area, unfortunately, it's the hotspot in the state and really in the country as well. Let's take one more call and then we'll do a quick lightning round with our panel, some other news and notes from the week. Paige in Arlington, hi Paige, good morning. Well, listen, thank you for taking my call. Hey listen, I'm listening to all of this and I'm a bit concerned. My reason being is one, I have elected officials, I have council people, I have senators, congressmen. What are they doing to dissent this? Who's saying, hey, I'm gonna outlaw these people who are trying to make people wear masks. I wear a mask because one, I don't trust other people. I wear a mask because I know that some people are not vaccinated and they're falling along the Trump campaign and they think this whole thing is closed until they get it.  And I wanna know what are my elected public officials going to do? I mean, somebody can sue him. Somebody has standing to sue him because what he's doing is going to, you know, it's going against public health. And one other thing too is that I think that if Jacksonville remains a hot spot, I don't think they should play any games here. I think NFL should go just one step further. Any place where there's a hot spot. Yep, Paige, and we're out of time. Paige, I really appreciate your call. I know there's a lot of frustration out there. Unfortunately, we're out of time. We can't do a full lightning round, but shout out to Eddie Alvarez of the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp. He's gonna carry the US flag at the Summer Olympics in Tokyo during the opening ceremony, the first baseball player ever selected for that honor. Go Eddie Alvarez. And thank you so much to David Bauerlein, Claire Goforth, Charles Griggs and Mike Mendenhall. Always lending great insights to this program. Thank you so much, everybody, for being with us on audio and video stream. Good to see you all and have a great weekend. Thanks, Melissa. Thank you, Melissa. Thanks, everyone. In a moment, just like me, it's a special program for local teens in foster care and how the arts is helping them age out. That's next. 999. It's the biggest stories affecting the Sunshine State. Hi, I'm Melissa Ross. And I'm Tom Hudson. Join us Friday for the Florida Roundup. Each week at noon, we interview newsmakers and people from across the state discussing the stories and issues that affect your life. What's driving the conversation in Florida? Join the conversation on the Florida Roundup. Every Friday at noon on WJCT News 89.9. Crosswords in a Senate hearing. You do not know what you are talking about. Liz Cheney accuses the head of the House GOP of trying to sabotage an investigation into the January 6th riots. The idea that anybody would be playing politics with an attack on the United States Capitol is despicable and is disgraceful. The Friday News Roundup next time on 1A. Today starting at 10 on WJCT News 89.9. Welcome back. Just Like Me was developed for local teens in foster care preparing to age out of the system. And they use the arts as a means for self-expression, empathy, and social self-assurance. Next week is the 10th anniversary of the Just Like Me cultural arts exhibition coming up at the Florida Theater July 29th. This performance is free and open to the public. Katherine McAvoy is on the line. She's found our executive director of the Performers Academy, working with local kids, helping them gain skills and excitement through the arts. And it's always good to hear your voice, Katherine. Good morning. Good morning, Melissa. So tell us about the Just Like Me program coming up next week at the Florida Theater. We are so excited to celebrate our 10th anniversary. And the first camp we did, we didn't anticipate having an actual performance. But the kids that spent three weeks with us in this art camp for behavioral intervention and artistic expression, we realized that they really wanted to get on stage and share what they had done, which was to tell their own story and their own words through music, poetry, dance, rap, music production, and visual arts. And they wanted to get up and do that. We had put together at the last minute a performance for them that was, you know, attended by the case managers in the local foster community. And now, 10 years later, we're gonna be at the fabulous Florida Theater and be on stage. We've done it every year for 10 years, including last year. And we have got some really talented teens who come together and express themselves in ways they never knew was possible. It's a very exciting event. And I hope we can fill up the floor to theater. Sure. Now, let's talk about this program and how unique it is. It's one of the only programs offered for kids age 15 to 17. And it's the longest running program with family support services. And they work with local foster kids, right? Right, right. And for us to have a program that's been in existence and continually running for 10 years is, first of all, it's fabulous. The family support services, they don't have many opportunities to serve the teens. There are a lot of programs for little kids and the kids don't stay in foster care very long, typically, but the teens are, they're harder. I mean, my teens are hard, right? Aren't yours? My teens are harder, you know? And so it's difficult to find things that can engage them and keep them interested and then as well motivate them. So our camp is one of the few programs that offers that and offers it to, has that therapeutic component to it because arts is, after all, very therapeutic. I think we're the only program that has that therapeutic component. And the kids just blossom. It's amazing the changes in them from the day they come in to three weeks later, what they have established, what the bonds that they've established and the ways they've learned to express themselves and they never were able to before. So it's really a fabulous process that we go through. Yeah. Now you just had a mural festival at the Performers Academy. You are offering free after-school programs to kids in September funded by the Kids Hope Alliance. You're helping kids all over this community with the arts. We are, and I do have to tell you that I'm no longer the executive director that Ebony Payne English. Oh, that's right, Ebony Payne English. That's right. That's right. You're the founder, yeah. And she's, I'm the founder and I'm the board president. But she is the executive director doing a great job and we get support from the Kids Hope Alliance and the Cultural Council to give us year-round programming, all free to the community. And our goal is to be the source for behavioral intervention, academic motivation for teens to teach them coping mechanisms that are a healthy way to express themselves through the arts. And we've really seen a difference in the past 10 years. We've helped hundreds and hundreds of teens. And you ought to come see our building now that we had the mural festival, which was a fabulous success. And we had 14 muralists there, seven who were female, seven males, seven who were from out of town, seven who were local. And it was a great event and our building is beautiful, our campus is beautiful. So yes, encourage the teens to come after school to the free programming. And I really hope that people will come out and support these teens that are in foster care at the Florida Theater next Thursday. This is next Thursday, Florida Theater, 6.30 p.m., free and open to the public. Come on out for the 10th anniversary of the Just Like Me Cultural Arts Exhibition next Thursday night. And you can also learn more about the Performers Academy because Catherine, as you've talked about on this show before, a lot of kids don't have access to art and music programs the way they used to in schools. When I was in school, every school had a band, every school had an orchestra, every school had some kind of art programming, art or music programming.  It is. And so your organization is filling that need. Yes, and we do use it in conjunction with the school programs as an academic motivator. So, I mean, if the kids can find something they're passionate about, they'll stay engaged. And they'll graduate high school if they can get that encouragement through a way to express themselves and understand that if they'll do the art and do the education, they can work together to get through high school. That is a big issue for us with them dropping arts out of the school program. Particularly the schools that are being used for kids that are at risk. Those are the ones that don't get any programming, any special programming. So we're fighting to try to get in Matty V and Grand Park and other places to get the arts program. Let us be the arts program for them because we can handle these kids. We do the trauma training and we know what to do with these kids when they need to de-escalate or have a moment. Sure. And the arts helps with all of that. It helps with all of that. In the meantime, check out Just Like Me next Thursday, 6.30 p.m. at the Florida Theater. It's free, open to the public, and learn more about the Performers Academy in Jacksonville. Founder Catherine McAvoy, thanks for all you do and have fun with it. Thank you so much, Melissa. Thank you, and that's our show. Thanks for listening. I'm Melissa Ross. Make sure to join us at noon for the Florida Roundup as we go across the state taking calls about the biggest news of the week. That's at noon. See you then. Support for First Coast Connect is


welcome everyone to another live video just doing a long drive over four hours and I thought it'd be a good time to do a video as well as you can see I've got my microphone so hopefully the sound should be clear I know I did one video over a month ago I think and the sound wasn't so good but now this time it should be a lot better with the mic so let's see how it goes but yeah narcissists they are crazy and they might not be completely insane they know what they're doing they understand the effects that their behaviour is having on you they know that what they're doing is wrong it's abusive it's harmful they know all of that but they are on a spectrum towards psychosis at times it may seem like they're not existing in reality a lot of the things they say a lot of the things they do really are crazy it's the kind of things you might expect from a person who should be in a mental hospital a person who should be restrained in a straight jacket and locked away in a padded room really a lot of the things they do are not socially acceptable they do not meet the standard of a socially acceptable person they do things that go outside of social norms things that would not be approved of by the general public but in their minds they think it's normal they think it's okay and of course crazy reckless things are going to seem normal to someone who is practically insane someone who is out of touch with reality because what you have to understand with these people is that they don't want anything to do with reality they want no parts of it they'd rather create this false narrative this alternative worlds this delusional reality and then they expect everyone else to go along with it but of course if they're confronted by an authority figure whether it's the police a doctor whoever it may be then they quickly snap back to reality then then they know how to act normal then they know exactly what they're doing wrong they know what they need to stop doing but when they're around you they're acting in a fool because they assume there's no consequences for their actions when they're in an environment where they don't have to have any accountability and they think there's no consequences they're allowed to run wild they're allowed to do whatever they want to do they can entertain their delusions they can live in their fantasy world because that's really where they like to be they don't like reality they don't like the real world it's boring for them and they want to be seen as something special too they want to be seen as something that's different from what is usual they want to be shocking impressive and opposing so they create this world and they pull unsuspected people into it they try to pull you into it so that you can validate the illusions of their false self so you can support it because it's like a movie it needs an audience otherwise what's the point there's no good if a movie is playing and no one's even watching it they're not going to play their parts that's the starring role in their movie if you're not going to sit around and watch it so they have to find a way to get your attention they have to find a way to pull you into it and initially they may try to love bomb you they may give you some fantasy and when you start to realize that you run out that's when they start making threats they start making false accusations they'll say horrible things about you to other people they'll start a sphere campaign they will try to sabotage your success they'll try to isolate you they'll do all of these things because you've realized that something's wrong or you've lost interest in them because you know they're full of shit you know they're fake and they don't like how that feels they want to be the almighty the all-powerful they want to be the most intelligent the most beautiful and if you're not going to make them feel like that someone else will is how they're thinking because what our role comes down to is can you make me feel special can you make me feel attractive and if you can't do that you're no use to me that's really what it is so yeah you have to be crazy just like them and they will track you crazy if you want to be around a narcissist you cannot exist in reality it's just not possible because anytime that you do that they're going to try and pull you out of it with denial projection blame shifting and gaslighting and they're just going to break you down they're going to do all of these things to make you less than who you actually are to where you can't think clearly you don't know what's up and what's down you've just lost touch with reality yourself and many of us when we come out of these relationships the world can be a scary and confusing place because everyone else has been living in the real world all of this time well we have learned all of these distorted meanings and interpretations from the narcissist which have no basis in reality they have no basis in the real world well that's a problem but then you go out into the real world and you start to realize it was a lot of bullshit all of these things they said about you aren't true and how they try to portray themselves some themselves was a false display they gave you a false impression and it's important to realize that because otherwise it's difficult for you to interact with normal people people who have not been brainwashed by the narcissist to believe in all of these lies and delusions but the first step in all of this is really to identify what you're actually dealing with because many of us taking them so seriously whatever they say whatever they do we take it as though it's true and real but it isn't real they will impose their will on you they will impose their false narrative but you have to recognize that you have to not let it define you you have to not let it become a part of you you have to stop validating the illusion and supporting this false character that they've created to manipulate you it doesn't matter what they say or do just don't take it seriously you have to look at them like they are some sick mentally ill patient and when you do that it will all make sense many of you have been gaslighted by the narcissist on many occasions and you sit back and think to yourself I can't make sense of any of this why are they doing this to me why are they saying this why would they do that you're thinking in your heads you're trying to put the pieces together you're trying to make sense of it and you're looking at them like a rational normal human being because that's what they look like they look like just like anyone else but they're not and that's the thing if you look at them like they are crazy they are insane then a lot of the things they say and do are going to start to make a lot more sense the problem is when we look at them like they're normal people that's when it really affects us and nothing makes any sense you need to just stop right now and picture the narcissist in your head picture this image of the narcissist okay they are restrained in a straight jacket in a headed room whatever they've done I don't care if they whatever it is imagine that situation taking place in a mental hospital in headed room and then it's going to start to make a lot more sense then things will start to add up you will be able to put the pieces together because for an insane person it makes a lot of sense you might not be that surprised if you went to a mental hospital you might expect to see that because it's normal to not live in the real world they've created an alternate reality which is separate from the world that we live in and as long as you believe in their world and you exist in it things can be okay because you're validating the illusion the false self they're not going to get so angry at you but as soon as you start to entertain reality then they don't like that then they start arguing they act out even more because they're trying to pull you back into their world and they do that by playing this role they are the star of their movie and you're meant to be the audience so yeah they are crazy not completely insane as I said but they are definitely on the spectrum to psychosis that's why you get the word salad a lot of things they say and do don't make any sense to normal people and even the gas lighting sometimes is you know we think they always know what they're doing some of them sometimes actually don't know what they're doing sometimes they do but sometimes they don't sometimes the behavior doesn't even make any sense to them there's no rhyme or reason they have no reason for it they're impulsive they're acted on impulse and that's why they can often seem so rational if you can be the most sensible logical person in the world I mean let's take me for example I'm not saying I am the most logical person in the world but you know I talk on YouTube every day I've had millions of people watching my videos millions of people understand where I'm coming from what I'm saying it makes sense to everyone almost everyone who watches them so it would be like me having a conversation with a narcissist and then speaking to me and I I don't understand it I can't make sense of it for that to be the case it's like we're living in different worlds but that's just how it is with narcissists I mean many of you you are very intelligent and logical people I read the comments every day there's a lot of good information in there I would say even I've learned some new things from my own comments from other people so yeah I mean that's how you should know that something is wrong but what we tend to do is we blame ourselves we think there's something wrong with us that's how you know what you're dealing with narcissists never do that they never look themselves or think maybe they got it wrong we are always the ones that do that we are always the ones questioning ourselves and they're always the ones making us question ourselves it's always the same situation but we have to stop doing that and we can stop doing that by realizing what we are actually dealing with you're not dealing with a normal person you're dealing with someone who is pretty much crazy insane I'll actually tell you everything you need to know whatever they're saying whatever they're doing just imagine I'm staying or doing that in a mental hospital in a padded room and it's going to make a lot more sense to you that I'm just enjoying my new ride here it's a great car very fast it's the same car as the last one but this is the forward door the other one was the coupe and this one has a sunroof as well which I really like the color is pretty cool it's matte gray and yellow I've actually got Nala at the back as well I don't know where she is because she's right behind me I don't know if she's going to come out now to say hello she's just relaxing at the back it was raining all day but now it's nice to see a bit of sunshine but I can't open the sunroof now because driving pretty fast on the road doing it to get too noisy but yeah it's pretty tough with narcissists but I'm back now yeah you can't have a normal conversation with a narcissist they always take things out of context they apply different meanings to what you've said and the things that they say always have double meanings different ways of interpreting them which is intended and they can't even go five seconds without saying something to hurt you or saying something to make you overthink and overanalyze something so yeah you can't even sit down and have a normal conversation with them and then we wonder why the relationship went went to shit we wonder why when you couldn't even talk to them because if you did talk to them then they twist everything you say they're just when you're having a conversation they're just thinking about what can I say to get under his skin what can I say that's gonna mim up so that I can get supply I can feel better about myself that's really what they're doing you ever talk to a narcissist and it just seems like their mind is somewhere else like you're talking to them and they're talking to you but it's like they're not really there because they're thinking of things that they can say to hurt you to wind you up that's what they do every day it dominates their life all they do is just think of ways to upset people to make them angry to make them upset just so they can feel better about themselves they're like the punishers they're like the judge jury and the executioner all they want to do is torture people make people miserable so how can you have a normal conversation with someone like that you can't all you can do is avoid them but if it provides you with any relief of course they're not gonna have a normal conversation with anyone nothing for longer than five minutes they're lucky because they always have to say something stupid to hurt you I don't think they can go five minutes without saying something dumb or having to impress people by being grandiose and that just irritates people as well I mean there's nothing wrong if you want to share your accomplishments and success that's fine and normal healthy people will congratulate you they will praise you for that they will encourage you but when it goes on and on and on and every damn conversation is just about you and how great you are at some point people will just want you to shut up because that's exactly how these narcissists are but if you have a conversation with them they always turn it back on them it's all about them and how great they are and how you're not as good as they are and if you don't like it then they'll say you're jealous or you don't want them to be happy but anyone it doesn't matter how calm cool and collected you are at some point you're just going to get fed up of hearing it and that doesn't mean you're jealous or you're envious you're just irritated by hearing the same thing again and again it's like if someone played the same song a hundred times in a row you would get sick of it even if you liked it the first time they played it so yeah you could be comforted by this fact that the narcissist if they've discarded you they're not going to move on and have a normal healthy experience with anyone it doesn't matter who they are i'm sure you remember they couldn't just sit down and have a normal conversation with you they couldn't have a normal relationship with you remember what happened anytime you tried to sit down and talk to them anytime you tried to make them happy anytime you gave them a hug you tried to kiss them what do they do they always have to pull away or push you away they always have to say something hurtful do something hurtful they will always sabotage anything normal if something is normal and functional they have to do something about it they have to take it down until it becomes dysfunctional until it becomes abnormal i mean if you just look back at your entire relationship with them all it was was you just fighting for normality that's all it was the entire time you were fighting to make things normal and what were they doing they were fighting to just make things crazy they were causing drama and chaos all the time and they'll always be that way they're always going to do that it's not going to change they don't feel comfortable when things are normal because then they don't feel normal because they're not normal for them to feel comfortable they have to cause drama and chaos they have to hurt you they will move on and try to make things appear normal with someone else in another situation because they know that as a good person as a loving kind and caring person you just wanted a normal relationship so yeah they all follow the same script they all go off of the off of the same playbook so they will discard you triangulate you and try to get you to believe that they have something normal without you the problem is how is that normal if they've triangulated you in that but then what they try and do is act like it's you the other one that's not normal and then they just expect you to ignore everything they said and did while you were together and people say it's always find a way to justify their actions but yeah there's really no way of getting through to them you can't get them to see sense because for them to see sense that would require accountability they would have to hold themselves accountable for their actions and then they may have to face the consequences of those actions they would have to get better they may have to grow and that's why they never do grow no matter how old they get they still act like two-year-old children they never seem to grow past that because that would require accountability but how can you grow when you're not even existing in reality when you're always in some kind of fantasy some delusion to make yourself feel better to distract you from your actual life and how can someone like that be happy crazy fantasy where you're someone else this other character that's what they do in it their false character that they created to manipulate you then they get rid of you and they may get rid of that character too and then create a new character with someone else so you'll start to see that they just become a completely different person they might dye their hair pink or blue they might get a lot of tattoos or unusual piercings they might start hanging around with different people that you've never seen before they might take a completely different interest things that you've never seen them do before because they've become a completely different person they can change characters at any moment because you never saw the real them anyway you never knew who they actually were even they don't know who they are that's why they just go from character to character but actually they are running from themselves that's the reason why they discard you because after you've been with them for a certain amount of time you start to get to know the real them you start to get to know who they actually are their faults and flaws their imperfections and they don't like how that feels it brings up shame because you're reflecting it back to them from what you're seeing from them and that's why after a certain amount of time it's usually after a few months but sometimes it can be a couple of years it depends how much they reveal to you in that short amount of time but after some time they will just get rid of you it may seem like they're running from you but they're actually running from themselves and then they'll run off with a new person who doesn't know anything about them so that they can feel better about themselves so that they can feel like they're not wrong because this new person they're not going to know anything about them when they see them they're going to think they're magnificent they're charming and charismatic they're attractive they're going to be overwhelmed they're going to give the narcissist compliments and praise they're going to tell them they're amazing they're intelligent they're handsome they're beautiful because they don't really know who they're dealing with but the narcissist loves that the narcissist doesn't want to know anyone who already knows them if you know who the narcissist is they want nothing to do with you they want to get rid of you you're no good to them after that you're a lost cause there's nothing a narcissist loves more than people who know nothing about them people who don't know what they're like but it's just a fantasy it's not real happiness because the real thing comes from people knowing who you actually are and you knowing who they are and you trying to work things out despite your flaws despite your mistakes but that's something they'll never experience because they're always running from themselves but yeah to go back onto the topic really I think I went off a bit there but yeah narcissists are crazy well that's how you have to see them when you start to see them that way the things they do will start to make more sense and everything you've experienced with them just remember how you couldn't have a normal conversation with them you couldn't experience true intimacy whenever you try to show an interest in them and who they actually are or you try to be affectionate they want nothing to do with that it's only sex because they use that to get supply they use it to lock you down and secure you but other than that there was nothing you didn't get anything else and yeah I mean you think it's because there's something wrong with you because you know you know what to expect in a normal relationship and they're not accepting any fault so you take it upon yourself but you have to recognize that really it's them they're crazy they're insane and it's not your job to change that I mean I'm sure you've already tried and you've noticed that the more you try and make them normal and sane the worse they get the more they push you away the more you try to make things normal the worse they go and then they eventually discarded you and found someone else because you were trying to make things normal and then they act like they have something normal going on with someone else but you should already know that's not normal what's normal about someone one day just suddenly packing up and leaving like you never existed and then finding someone else and acting like they're living their best life what's normal about that that doesn't happen in the real world but try try explaining that to a narcissist they're never gonna understand just like you don't understand them to understand crazy you have to be crazy but yeah I don't want to get too deep into it I think that's enough for this topic and I have done other videos on this as well so type it in in the search box and I'm sure they'll come up but yeah thank you all for joining me I've enjoyed this just driving and talking to you giving you this information helping you please give the video a thumbs up if you enjoyed it and I'll talk to you in another one very soon have a great day


Olga box clips We are what was it two fifty-three shark back play over there on the right that for a shark back At the front of the shark yet Almost there There we go use more targets Come back to my point of entry Haven't gotten quite to the front of that shark yet targets filled Press the like button share subscribe and comment below with your thoughts and what you learn


Hey, hey, Joe from Jasper. He's here with a recap video from Monday, the 11th Fanatics Live Break, Random Team 16, quick little three box break of Cosmic Chrome Baseball. Big thanks everybody here who joined in on the auction process. Thanks to the winning bidders. Thank you everybody for getting in on the action. Appreciate you. There's Nick Prado to $1.99. Ivan Herrera to $1.99. Yoshida Starry Night. Glaiberdale to $0.50. Got a Riley Green Starry Night. Bryce Turing to $0.99. Courtney Carroll. Kristen Yelggold to $0.50. Jordan Walker Green to $0.75. Nice Juan Soto the son. And a Gunner Henderson.  That's pretty strong. That's going to go to $0.70. There you go ladies and gentlemen. Quick little three box break. Thanks for going. I'll see you next time on the Fanatics Live.


Okay, Energy 808, The Cutting Edge, and we're going to talk today about the recovering situation in Kauai with our guest, Meena Morita. Meena, wonderful to have you on the show. You're the perfect guest for this discussion. Aloha. Hi. Aloha, Jay. Thanks for having me, and it's been a while. Yeah, I missed you. I said, you know, Kauai is always called the Suffrakingdom, right? And because we're so far removed from Oahu and not going to pick you that bread. You know, one time I wanted to do a movie, actually, called Insula Drift with the proposition that not only Kauai, but all the islands were actually drifting away from each other. People didn't really understand that. They thought, no, the islands don't drift, the islands are pretty much in the same place they used to be, but it was a conceptual idea. The idea is that, you know, socially, culturally, the islands each had their own style and personality and they saw their relationship with the other islands, maybe it's not as close as it used to be in the day of the steamers. You remember the steamers? Or in the day when you could take an airline, you know, for 20 bucks, it's not that long ago. Or when you had the prospect of super ferry, for example, until that dreadful day, you know, willy-willy. But anyway, point is that the islands are not as close as they used to be, and that's why we have to check up on them. That's why we have to talk to you and find out what is going on in Kauai as well as the other islands. Well, I think, you know, part of the concern is not only the islands themselves are becoming more insular, but also areas on the island becoming more regional. And, you know, definitely you see it politically on the big island with East Hawaii and West Hawaii. I think you have some real physical constraints on Maui between West Maui and especially Central Maui. And, you know, always that isolation of East Maui, the Hana to Kaupo area. And the same thing is happening on Kauai. You have a kind of a North Shore divide from the west side of the island. And I think it's been exacerbated by the echo rains and again by the August tropical storm rain flooding, where now the northern side of the island part of it is isolated and only accessible by the convoy going in and out daily. Yeah, I agree with you absolutely. And what is remarkable about all that is that, presumably, we can communicate with each other person to person easier now than ever before in the world. And yet, you're right. The islands have become regional. There are parts of the islands that don't connect with other parts of the islands. If you go back to Maui in the days of Noka'oi and Lucky Live Hawaii and all those books and, you know, the literature that developed around the way these islands, the way life on these islands took place, that was a lot closer. People were a lot closer to each other on the islands and among the islands. But something has changed. I think you put your finger on a really important sea change. Well, I think part of it is, you know, just the personal relationships, you know, that kind of interpersonal contact face to face, whether it was through competition, you know, the different sports clubs on the island, getting that. You know, it certainly was more personalized than what you have now. And it says she, you know, given the cost of living and many families having multiple jobs. Yeah, it's true. True.  Well, maybe more like one month ago. And we felt the same feeling that, you know, Calico Cua was a long way from Waimea. And Waimea was a long way from Hilo and so forth. And South Point was a long way from anywhere. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, I think a friend told me a long, long time ago when we were talking about Lanai and all of the social, cultural, economic changes that were happening on Lanai. And he said, you know, basically there was a larger sense of community during the plantation time. Because, you know, unless it was the peak season, everybody was pretty much on the same schedule.  People usually had the weekends off to spend with their family and within the community. And now we have a different economy with the visitor industry where it's basically 24 seven. And so that common time to take off and participate either in their family or within their community has definitely changed how we interact with each other. Yeah, sure. And when you look back to plantations, you know, certainly there were quality of life issues on the plantations. But the plantations were a binding social platform for so many people. They had so much in common because they all, you know, lived on that platform. That platform doesn't exist anymore. And we're being taken in different directions now. Right, right. Yep. So let's talk about Kawhi for a minute.  We've had other weather since. But you know, one thing that really interests me about looking at Kawhi today with you is that, you know, we forget, we forget what happened. We forget about Iniki and Eva. We forget what happened before we, we, we move on into the future without really having a recollection of the past. And I think to fully understand this and connect the dots and see the sea change, I always use that term. We have to remember what happened before. So let's, let's refresh on, on the floods in Kawhi, but only what, 90 days ago, 120 days ago. What happened there? And, and how did you observe that? I myself was affected and I chose to be evacuated. And it was only when I was up in the air and I could see what was happening to the Hanalei River that I knew that my property wasn't going to be further affected. But what happened was, you know, it was just a deluge in April. And my understanding was there was this persistent, huge rain cell thunderstorm that was directly over the North Shore area of Kawhi where, you know, you had record rainfall within the North Shore area, especially, and in these areas, especially as you go further towards the Haina area, these river valleys are really narrow. And so the minor rain that has come down in that area bringing a lot of debris with it, you know, just fogged up streams, created barriers. You know, in one instance in the Hanalei area, I think the high tide exacerbated the ability for the water to flow to the ocean and, again, backed up in Hanalei town.  It just seemed so long ago. Well, you know, the thing about it is you say three, four feet of water and certainly we had plenty of water on a big island with lane. That is way more than these hurricanes deposited on the mainland, it seems like to me. When we get, you know, 40 inches plus in 24 hours, that's serious rain. You never hear that much rain happening in the storms on the mainland. Right. So I think, you know, a lot of it is trying to understand these weather patterns because now we know, you know, what we want. If we're going to be hit by these storms, we want them to move through quickly and, you know, and how these shears and pressure systems affect the weather now, causing them to stall over the islands now and how devastating that can be. Yeah, well, you know, it's interesting that, you know, one would think that the, what do you call it, the governmental agencies, federal and state that look over the weather for us would know that we would have known these principles like forever. But we, I think we're all learning together and your point a minute ago about the wind shear, that's an important lesson. And, you know, the fact that we had trades that were blowing at some, you know, regular rate during lane was an important factor for pushing lane to the south and getting it off our back. I didn't know that before. I guess maybe other people did. I think in general, the public now knows the point you're making, the public now knows that wind shear is your friend. But I think, you know, the other side that people have to understand, too, is the impact of climate change and the fact that we know that the occurrence of trade winds is diminishing. Yes. You know, so where we could count on the trade winds before, you know, the systems are changing where we can't now. Yes. Well, I think some people might, you know, hear about all these, I was watching Tube last night and actually it was not, it was the New York Times weather report, which is actually a video weather report that you can catch on the New York Times, something like what you would see on the weather segment of a local news channel. And they were talking about the, they were talking about the storms that were coming into the east coast, into what is it, South Carolina, from, well, off Africa. And talking about how that, you know, that could be as much as a category four storm that's really dangerous. And it struck me that a few years ago, we didn't have this many storms and that now we seem to have them all the time. Now, one school of thought might be, well, we didn't know enough. We didn't have meteorologists with all these sophisticated computer tools and sensors out there and, you know, all the ways they have of gaining data so that they can track these storms. But I'm not sure that's it. I think these storms did not exist in the same number a few years ago. I think it's easy to come to the logical, rational, data driven conclusion that we have more storms now than we've had before and in greater frequency and greater strength for that matter. You know, category four, every time you look at the category four, this didn't happen five years ago. And, you know, I almost think that some people, even in the meteorological department, are reluctant to lay it at the doorstep of climate change. But it is to me, I don't know how you feel, but to me it is clearly and absolutely climate change, no? Yeah, yeah.  But basically, we're getting 100-year storms every year now, sometimes a couple times a year. And then, you know, this was supposed, the April flooding was supposed to be a 100-year flood.   It's crazy. It's going faster and faster, yeah. Well, Meena, when we come back, because Meena Merida, former chair of the PUC, former legislator in energy, which means environment, too, when we come back, I would like to talk about what this teaches us for the future, what we can expect for the future in terms of frequency and extreme weather. And I'd like to look at, at least for a moment, the Pacific Islands and Tahiti and all these other places in the Pacific as, you know, tidings of the future, canaries in the coal mine, if you will, right after this break. We'll be right back with Meena Merida. And Aloha. My name is Calvin Griffin, the host of Hawaiian Uniform. And every Friday at 11 o'clock here on Think Tech Hawaii, we bring you the latest on what's happening within the military community. And we also invite all your response to things that's happening here. For those of you who haven't seen the program before, again, we invite your participation. We're here to give information, not disinformation. And we always enjoy response from the public. But join us here, Hawaiian Uniform, Fridays, 11 a.m. here on Think Tech Hawaii. Aloha. Hi, I'm Pete McGinnis-Mark. And every Monday at one o'clock, I'm the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Research in Munna. And at that program, we bring to you a whole range of new scientific results from the university, ranging from everything from exploring the solar system to looking at the earth from space, going underwater, talking about earthquakes and volcanoes, and other things which have a direct relevance, not only to Hawaii, but also to our economy. So please try and join me one o'clock on a Monday afternoon to Think Tech Hawaii's Research in Munna. And see you then. Okay, we're back, we're live on Energy 808, The Cutting Edge, with Meena Merida. We're talking about the flood recovery situation in Kauai. One more point of background we should cover, at least tangentially, with respect to climate change, is that Hawaii so far has been really lucky. We've had floods in Kauai, as we'll talk about. We've had floods in the big islands, certainly. We'll have more of that. And we are, at the same time, having the sea change of sea level rise. And I want to add that we've had a number of shows involving weather and resilience organizations of various kinds, federal, state, research. Talk about the Pacific Islands. And a lot of the Pacific Islands are having serious trouble, because they're having sea level rise, their water tables are upset, their temperatures are higher, their food sources are less reliable. And I heard today that this is happening also in Tahiti, in French Polynesia, where sea level rise is actually having an effect on French Polynesia. So how much time will it be before these things, you know, home in on Hawaii? And we have not only these floods, but not only the, you know, the gradual sea level rise, but other examples of the effects of climate change, right here to the point where it becomes a much more serious business for us. Nothing is going to stop it. And the world right now is not doing a whole lot to stop it. The United States is doing very little to stop it. So it will be coming. And you can feel it. You can see it. You can touch it and taste it. So tell us about the experience in Kauai, I mean, you know, I think it's really difficult right now on the North Shore of Kauai because, you know, people are really thinking about long-range planning efforts and how you build resiliency in the recovery process. And, you know, a major point in fact is the highway, especially from the Honolulu area into Hyena. You know, there are some major landslides along the area which cause, you know, the road to be restricted. And you can only enter and exit that area to a convoy system while the contractors work on the road. And every time there is heavy rainfall, you know, you see more erosion onto the road. And you also see parts of the road, so the slipping. So one of the repairs that's going on right now is shoring up the road itself. And, you know, we have to remember Kauai is one of the older major islands and we are eroding. And so there's a lot of community talk about how do we approach this recovery and understanding that these kinds of weathering events is probably the norm now. And how do we respond to that and build the resiliency of the community in that recovery effort. You know, and part of that is having these homes built to new flood standards. And so building these homes higher, which have higher costs. And if the repair or the rebuild of these damaged homes are over $10,000, these homes are on cesspools. They have to convert to septic systems. You know, how do these septic systems function with more flood occurrence? And, you know, basically what does all that add to the cost of building and repairing your homes? I get two things out of that. Maybe you could comment on that. The first thing is you can't go home again. And what I mean by that is you cannot assume that you're going to fix your house to make it like it was. Because if you do that, you're taking a serious risk the next time. So what you have to do as a lesson we can learn by what happened in Kauai, and for that matter, the big island and the storms to come, is you have to fix your home in a way that it's stronger and more resilient going forward. You have to keep up with the increasing intensity of these storms and floods. That's one point. And the other point is that that costs money, just as the roads cost money to fix them. And so we have to sort of be ready to raise that money and to dedicate that money to dealing with, you know, making our homes more resilient and rebuilding the roads as and when necessary. This is the new normal, just as you said. Right. And, you know, the other thing that we have to understand, especially in these valleys which have been carved by rainfall, you know, from these two major flooding events, water patterns have changed. So the need for hydrological studies, so we understand the drainage system so we don't put anybody back in harm's way. And so that's from the government, you know, having more robust planning efforts as we move forward. And then on the individual end, you know, people understanding their responsibility to be able to rebuild in a way that makes them less vulnerable. And to be more vigilant, you know, in the April flood, I think we inventory something like 297 vehicles that were lost. And you mean swept away? A damage by flooding. Yeah. Whether they were, you know, in grudges that were susceptible to flooding or on the roads that were susceptible to flooding or even like you said, swept away. You know, tons of farm equipment, especially for the taro farmers. But, you know, there's a need to be vigilant and be ready to move things to higher ground and identifying where you can move equipment and vehicle to higher ground so they won't be affected by flood waters. Yeah. And part of this is part of recovering is to have insurance. And everybody says, I mean, we've had a number of people on the shows, so you want to prepare for the storms of the future? You better get flood insurance. On the other hand, it costs money for an insurance company to compensate you for flood damage. And that means your premiums are going to go up for flood damage. And maybe your insurance company may not be able to handle it. Sometimes these major events break an insurance company's ability to do business. And they go out of business and you don't get compensated. So I mean, I think that's all going to change as the storms increase in intensity and frequency. And so there's not one solution, but a combination of solutions that we've all got to attend to personally and as a community. Yeah. And I think, you know, for, especially for rural areas, it really takes community involvement in how you respond to these situations. And we saw it here on Kauai. It was not only the first responders out there, but you had a whole, a number of community volunteers aiding in the emergency response and augmenting the emergency response. And so there are a lot of questions on how do you see up this community action plan to afford disaster resiliency as we move forward. There's a lot of interest in that. And, you know, the interesting thing that happened during Tropical Storm Lane was how localized the rainfall was. And where we had community members in the Waianaea area calling the Department of Transportation, because of the convoy system in and out, calling the Department of Transportation and saying, hey, we have to open up the convoy right now because people want to get home or people want to leave. And their response was slow because it wasn't raining in Lihui. The gauges, because they hadn't, the rain gauges and the stream gauges weren't, I guess, weren't calibrated yet after the April storm. And so, you know, where the local, he had eyes on the ground experiencing a deluge, you know, it wasn't being recognized where decisions were being made. And so the response was delayed by like over an hour, you know, to get the decision makers to react to the localized situation. So, just again, how do you improve communication? How do you engage the community meaningfully in these events and open up and maintain communication? Yeah. Well, you know, one thing that strikes me is that although in recent storms, the neighbor islands seem to get more bad weather, more floods than Oahu, that whole process would be much more destructive. The storms and the floods and the winds could be, if they hit Oahu directly, could be much more destructive here. Then the other thing to get out of what you're saying, and this goes back to the whole thing about the insula drift and the drift of region from region and throughout the state. The fact is that I watched you, Mina, and you were working roll up your sleeves as a human person trying to help and trying to get people to help with you to deal with the cleanup after the Kauai flood. And I imagine there are a lot of people like that on a big island, too. It's an example of old-time Hawaii, maybe the Hawaii we left behind in some ways. But now when you have a common problem and people are in trouble, you do roll up your sleeves and everybody chips in to help. And I think Oahu can learn a lot from what has happened on the neighbor islands, what has happened with you in the community or communities in Kauai. So I think we have to revisit the whole notion of working together. It's not only taking instructions from the governmental first responders, it's being first responders or at least second responders ourselves and working together to help our neighbors. I think we may have lost some of that, but now is the time to think about it again. Don't you agree? Yeah, I'll tell you one of the most valuable that the community took was several days after the storm, there were a group of individuals that developed a needs assessment form and they had volunteers go out and get information on people. And there was another volunteer group that called through the information daily to red flag emergency situations, medical care, infants, children, those kinds of needs and respond to them quickly. And so the nonprofit that I was involved with in order to ensure that the information was being updated consistently, input into a database and consistently, we took over that and developed a database about almost over 500 households were surveyed. And so we had information that we could act on and then share with the government agencies. Oh, that's great. That's great. That's fabulous. Well, as an example of the Hawaii that I truly love, and I think what happened in Kauai is worth a lot of discussion and there's some great lessons there. And I'm sure we'll find out things that happened in the Big Island the same way. Mina, it's been wonderful to talk to you about this. And I hope we can get together again in two weeks and explore other things around environment and energy just as today. Right. Thanks, Jay. I really appreciate you having me. Aloha. Talk soon. Okay. Thanks, Jay. Bye-bye. Thank you, Mina. Bye.