D.C.-area forecast: Enjoy today, as our weather is about to deteriorate for a while - The Washington Post
View of the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery at 17th and Pennsylvania Avenue NW on June 25 (Tim Brown via Flickr )
9/10: ENJOY THE NOW. Considering: a) comfortable warmth for DC; and, b) we may not have a day like this again for the foreseeable future.
You’ll soon yearn for today’s dry conditions and bright skies. We’re staring down the prospect of growing mugginess accompanying chances of showers, thunderstorms and downpours for the foreseeable future. So please enjoy the now. Near-average warmth today but without the average mugginess for July.
Today (Friday): We could stay a couple of degrees cooler than Thursday thanks to some periodic clouds later, but mid-to-upper 80s still feel plenty warm. Southeasterly breezes around 10 mph should build during the afternoon and help keep us refreshed. Dew points should dip back below that palpable 60-degree mark for the afternoon, keeping our heat index in step with our air temperature. Not bad, and not sure when we’ll have another decent summer day like this. Cash it in! Just a small chance of a passing shower. Confidence: Medium-High
Tonight: Clouds fluctuate a bit. Perhaps clearing later in the evening, only to increase again right near dawn. An isolated shower can’t be ruled out. That humid feeling returns a bit, as dew points creep up into the mid-60s. East-southeasterly breezes between 5-10 mph help keep temperatures buoyed in the mid-60s to around 70 degrees downtown. Confidence: Medium-High
Tomorrow (Saturday): Clouds dominate for the most part, as a coastal storm system grazes our region. (Sorry to beachgoers, especially.) While periodic showers are most likely midday into the afternoon hours — giving a small window for morning errands perhaps — dampness is possible almost anytime. We’ll feel more mugginess but at least the temperatures are held down a bit? Mid-70s to near 80 seems probable, assuming 10-15 mph northeasterly breezes do keep us completely socked in with clouds and wetness. Low 80s are possible if we see more sunshine than currently expected. Confidence: Medium
Tomorrow night: While scattered showers remain possible through the night, their coverage and intensity should wane a good deal, especially into the early morning hours. Slight but steady breezes out of a generally northward direction should cool us off a bit — into the low-to-mid 60s. Confidence: Low-Medium
Sunday: As our Saturday coastal low fades from memory, the atmosphere quickly fills in more raininess with an upper-level disturbance approaching from the west. Somewhat similar timing as Saturday, periodic showers and thunderstorms are possible almost anytime during the day — but especially midday through early evening. Downpours could be notable during the mid-afternoon hours but keep an eye on timing with us. Very muggy, but not hot, high temperatures could stall in the upper 70s to low 80s with clouds and rain in store. Confidence: Medium
Sunday night: Mugginess ramps up another half-notch overnight. Periodic showers and even some thundershowers move through in at least a couple of bands, as it appears now. Nothing too, too heavy but that could change, so please stay tuned. Also drive carefully, in case roadways flood while dark — when it’s hardest to see. Low temperatures may hover in the low-to-mid 70s throughout the region. Confidence: Medium
Very cloudy, periodically damp, and oppressive mugginess may be our story through Monday and Tuesday. Luckily temperatures should top out only in the low-to-mid 80s both days, but the air likely is close and steamy. Some downpours cannot be ruled out, but we’ll have to wait until we get closer to perhaps get a fix on timing of rain bands that might move through. An inch of rain (or more) is possible these two days. It keeps coming. Confidence: Medium
Following his narrow re-election victory with 47 percent of the vote, California Gov. Gray Davis faces by far the biggest budget deficit in the state's history. He has nobody to blame for the state's increasingly precarious finances but himself. After all, following his first election as governor in 1998, Mr. Davis inherited a state budget that had generated a cumulative two-year surplus of $7 billion. Reasonably projected surpluses were even larger. Then, Mr. Davis began writing checks. This summer, Mr. Davis was confronted with a projected deficit of $23.6 billion for fiscal 2002-03.
During the election campaign, Mr. Davis addressed the deficit by using a slew of gimmicks. Tax receipts were expedited, while spending was pushed back into the next fiscal year. To pay for current expenditures, Mr. Davis used nearly $5 billion from the state's share of the long-term tobacco settlement. In keeping with his ludicrous assertion "The problem is not spending, the problem is lack of revenue" California's out-of-control general fund was cut a paltry 0.2 percent. As Stephen Levy, director of the Center for the Continuing Study of the California Economy, recently told the Los Angeles Times, Mr. Davis and the state legislature have engaged in "massive ostrich behavior."
When Mr. Davis took over the governorship in January 1999, the nation was in the midst of an historic stock market boom. Tech-heavy California, buttressed by Silicon Valley, was especially flush with revenues. Profits from capital gains and stock options were pouring billions and billions of dollars into California's budget coffers. Between fiscal 1998-99 and 2000-01, California's income-tax receipts from capital gains and stock options alone more than doubled, rising from less than $8 billion to nearly $18 billion.
Mr. Davis spent this windfall. Annual spending increases, which averaged a once-exorbitant 8 percent during the last four years of his Republican predecessor, exploded during his first two years. In 1999-2000, spending soared by more than 15 percent. During his second year, spending jumped by another 17 percent. Thus, during Mr. Davis's first two years, the general budget increased from $57.8 billion to $78 billion. The increases occurred during a period when inflation rose by less than 6 percent.
Not surprisingly, Mr. Davis received an "F" from the Cato Institute's "Fiscal Policy Report Card on America's Governors: 2002." The analysis revealed that California's state payroll increased by 33,000 during Mr. Davis's first three years. The increase in public employees was larger than that of the next three biggest states combined. Meanwhile, Moody's has downgraded the Golden State's bond rating twice. Mr. Davis did not help matters much by borrowing $6 billion in the midst of the state's energy crisis to pay for future energy deliveries at prices that are two to three times the current market price.
Now that voters have seen fit to re-elect Mr. Davis and the Democratic-controlled legislature, they, too, have become complicit in the state's burgeoning fiscal crisis.
FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — Gov. Ernie Fletcher pleaded not guilty yesterday to charges stemming from a state hiring scandal — a plea that was entered by his attorney while the governor remained on vacation in Florida.
Mr. Fletcher was indicted last month on charges of conspiracy, official misconduct and political discrimination over the purported hiring of political allies for protected state jobs.
A grand jury has been investigating accusations that members of Mr. Fletcher’s administration based hiring decisions on politics rather than merit, as required by law. It has issued 29 indictments, but last summer Mr. Fletcher pardoned everyone in his administration but himself who might be charged.
Mr. Fletcher’s personal attorney, R. Kent Westberry, appeared in court to enter the governor’s pleas to the misdemeanor charges . Mr. Fletcher, who court records indicated was in Palm Beach County, was not required to appear.
Governor’s spokeswoman, Jodi Whitaker, declined to say what Mr. Fletcher was doing at the time of his arraignment.
“It’s a personal vacation, and therefore his daily itinerary is personal as well,” Miss Whitaker said.
Assistant prosecutor Scott Crawford-Sutherland said outside court that lawyers had agreed to limit their public comments about the case.
“Governor Fletcher is like any other criminal defendant. He enjoys the presumption of innocence. It is critical that he receive a fair trial,” Mr. Crawford-Sutherland said.
Mr. Fletcher, a physician, is Kentucky’s first Republican governor since 1971. The indictment purports his administration crafted an elaborate system of screening job candidates and ran background checks on prospects’ political affiliations and donations.
The grand jury began investigating after a Transportation Cabinet whistleblower turned over hundreds of internal administration e-mails and memos on hiring decisions.
“Voters are increasingly worried about unemployment, but Democratic leaders in Congress remain obsessed with passing health care reform,” John Fund writes at www.opinionjournal.com.
“Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin was asked recently if a health care bill would pass the Senate by the end of this month. ‘It must,’ he said. ‘We have to finish it.’
“Still, many in the trenches are uneasy about the sprawling, complex bill they privately acknowledge has no bipartisan support, doesn’t seriously tackle soaring costs and will increase insurance premiums. … Public support for the bill averages only 39.2 percent backing in all polls compiled by Pollster.com,” Mr. Fund said.
“But buried in the surveys is an explanation for the Democratic obsession to pass the bill: An overwhelming 76 percent of Democrats back it. ‘They believe the liberal base expects them to deliver and will punish them if they don’t,’ says Democratic pollster Doug Schoen, who worked for Bill Clinton in the 1990s.
“That fear is backed up by a new poll taken for the Daily Kos, the left-wing Web site: 81 percent of self-described Republicans say they are certain or likely to vote in 2010, compared to 65 percent of independent voters and only 56 percent of Democrats. ‘Democrats have simply not been given enough of a reason to come out and vote yet,’ writes liberal blogger David Dayen. ‘The left is waiting for that long-promised “change” they can believe in.’ …
“One Senate Democrat thinks the bill is bad policy. But last month that same senator joined with all of his fellow Democrats to bring the bill to the floor. The party leadership has made it clear that anyone who votes against health care will have a difficult time passing their own bills in the future.
“So the Senate death march continues. Many Democrats have grave misgivings about making the bill a top priority, given the economy. But in the age of bloodthirsty partisan bloggers, they dare not be fully candid. They can only hope their march doesn’t lead them right over the edge of a political cliff next November.”
“A lot of Republicans were surprised [recently] to discover that Maurice Clemmons, the thug who killed four Washington state police officers, had been granted clemency from a long Arkansas prison sentence by leading GOP presidential prospect (and former Arkansas governor) Mike Huckabee,” David J. Sanders writes at www.nationalreview.com.
“As has been widely reported, Huckabee commuted Maurice Clemmons prison sentence in 2000, 10 years after he was given a 108-year term for robbery and other crimes. He also was charged with possessing a handgun on school property.
“The case was quickly dubbed ‘Huckabees Willie Horton,’ after the murderer whose pardon by Michael Dukakis may have cost the former Massachusetts governor the presidency in 1988. Huckabee released a prepared statement via his Web site [on Nov. 29], spreading blame for Maurice Clemmons by claiming that the criminal justice systems in Washington and Arkansas had both failed. Two days later, he tried to limit the damage saying that he ‘accepted full responsibility’ for the clemency, but adding that ‘if the same file were presented to me today, I would have likely made the same decision.’ …
“Arkansas Republican Party officials would not comment on how the weeks news might impact Huckabees future, but one Arkansas GOP political operative who has supported Huckabee in the past said Thursday that ‘anyone with half a brain knows what this means for Huckabees political career - his goose is either cooked or packed in dry ice.’ ”
“Slowly and mostly unnoticed by the major news media, the air has been going out of the global warming balloon,” Steven F. Hayward writes in the Weekly Standard.
“Global temperatures stopped rising a few years ago, much to the dismay of the climate campaigners. The U.N.’s upcoming Copenhagen conference - which was supposed to yield a binding greenhouse-gas emissions-reduction treaty as a successor to the failed Kyoto Protocol - collapsed weeks in advance and remains on life-support pending Obama’s magical intervention. Cap-and-trade legislation is stalled on Capitol Hill. Recent opinion polls from Gallup, Pew, Rasmussen, ABC/Washington Post, and other pollsters all find a dramatic decline in public belief in human-caused global warming,” Mr. Hayward said.
“The climate campaigners continue to insist this is because they have a ‘communications’ problem, but after Al Gore’s Nobel Prize/Academy Award double play, millions of dollars in paid advertising, and the relentless doom-mongering from the media echo chamber and the political class, this excuse is preposterous. And now the climate campaign is having its Emperor’s New Clothes moment.
“In mid-November, a large cache of e-mails and technical documents from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in Britain were made available on a number of Internet file-servers for download by the public - either the work of a hacker or a leak from a whistleblower on the inside. The e-mails - more than 1,000 of them - reveal a small cabal of scientists who, in the words of MIT’s Michael Schrage, engaged in ‘malice, mischief and Machiavellian maneuverings.’ ”
“Two weeks after the scandal broke, ‘NBC Nightly News’ on Friday night became the first broadcast network morning or evening news program to inform viewers about ‘Climategate,’ but only in the most cursory manner,” the Media Research Center’s Brent Baker writes at www.mrc.org.
NBC News correspondent Anne Thompson, “a long-time ally of the environmental left, despaired the e-mails may end up ‘giving politicians from coal and oil-producing states another reason to delay taking action to reduce emissions. The government’s leading scientist told Congress there is no time to lose.’
“Anchor Brian Williams had teased: ‘Climategate, they’re calling it. A new scandal over global warming, and it’s burning up the Internet. Have the books been cooked on climate change?’
“But neither Williams nor Thompson ever again used the ‘Climategate’ term as Thompson’s story assured viewers the threat remains while she saw - not a major scientific scandal - but merely how ‘those who doubt that man-made greenhouse gases are changing the climate say’ the e-mails ‘show climate scientists massaging data and suppressing studies by those who disagree.’ ”