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(1 of ) 3/31/2012: B1: PC: With Arch Rock in the background, large waves crash ashore at Goat Rock State Beach, Friday March 30, 2012, as a strong early spring storm bears down on Sonoma County. (Kent Porter / Press Democrat) 2012

MARY CALLAHAN

THE PRESS DEMOCRAT | February 18, 2017, 12:03PM

| Updated 6 hours ago.

Another big storm expected to hit the North Coast with a vengeance late today is forecast to raise the lower Russian River ever-so-slightly above flood stage by Tuesday, the National Weather Service said.

The river is projected to crest at 32.8 feet in Guerneville around midday Tuesday, the National Weather Service said. Flood stage at that location is 32 feet.

In the meantime, the region can expect to be battered by an atmospheric river bringing heavy rain, high, gusting winds, widespread urban and small-stream flooding and pounding ocean surf.

Accumulated rainfall above 3 inches is expected around the region by early Tuesday, with twice as much possible in the coastal hills, the weather service said.

Its a decent amount of rain, thats for sure, meteorologist Mark Strudley said.

The rain should start this morning but not become heavy until tonight, when gusting winds are forecast to reach 35 mph inland and 45 mph in the coastal hills and on the coast, Strudley said.

Winds and rain will be even stronger Monday, the National Weather Service said.

Surf is also expected to be very high and powerful, forecasters said.

The approaching rain could cause more problems in the far north, where damage to spillways of the Lake Oroville dam forced the evacuation of 188,000 people last weekend.

The California Department of Water Resources, however, said Saturday night that the level of Lake Oroville continues to fall despite the stormy weather. And the amount of water flowing down the spillway has been reduced to 55,000 cubic feet per second and continues to be cut, the department said.

Earlier this week, outflows were at nearly 100,000 cubic feet per second.

Northwest of Sacramento, nearly 200 people were evacuated Saturday as overflowing creeks turned the town of Maxwell into a brown pond, with some homes getting 2 feet of water. Nearly 100 homes and the elementary school filled with a couple inches of water.

Southern California was cleaning up Saturday from Fridays storm, which killed at least three people,

In Victorville, several cars were washed down a flooded street and one man was found dead in a submerged vehicle. In Sherman Oaks, a man was electrocuted when a falling tree downed power lines that hit his car. Searchers on Saturday found the body of a man who was swept down a rain-swollen gully in Thousand Oaks a day earlier.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Read more from the original source:
Sonoma County targeted by President's Day storm - Santa Rosa Press Democrat

Scranton, Pennsylvania, retained its fundamental link between population density and party politics, even in the topsy-turvy 2016 election.

Denis Tangney Jr./Thinkstock

Back in early November (such a simple time!), I wrote a piece for Slate on political scientist Jonathan Roddens analysis of precinct-level voting patterns.Rodden, a professor at Stanford, showed that the familiar pattern of high-density Democratic areas and low-density Republican areas had been re-created, fractal-like, in the small towns and cities of the Rust Belt during Barack Obamas presidential election in 2008.

Henry Grabar is a staff writer for Slates Moneybox.

These little-downtown voters, who helped Obama carry several swing states, were supposed to be irrelevant to the Democratic Party in 2016, as Chuck Schumer infamously said in July:For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin. After Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania flipped for Trump on Nov. 8, it was easy to think that small-town Democrats had abandoned the party wholesale.

But it turns out Democrats didnt lose those town cores inPennsylvania and Ohio; in fact, as Rodden showed with new data this week in the Washington Post, the correlation between living downtown and votingDemocrat was (relative to nearby rural areas) just as strong in this presidential election as in its predecessors. Red counties werent homogenous before, and theyre not homogenous now.

Rodden thinks this trend rebuts a common cultural trope about small-town America: "A popular claim is that Trumps populist anti-trade rhetoric resonated most in postindustrial towns with severe job losses, he writes in the Post. "If so, we might expect that these towns suddenly started to vote more like their neighboring Republican precincts, with the graphs flattening in 2016.

In fact, his graphs show two things: First,Clinton did worse across the board in all these countiesthanAl Gore, John Kerry, and Obama (both times). Second, her returns mirrored almost exactly the existing correlation betweenpopulation density and politics.People who lived closer to downtown were still more likely to vote Dem.

Im not sure Rodden is right to characterizethe downtowns of Ashtabula, Ohio, and Muncie, Indiana, (among other places) as more stung byindustrial job loss than their outskirts. They were once. ButJohnUpdikes America, whereHarry Angstrom could take the bus home from his job as a linotype operator, is a long time gone. Manufacturing work has taken place outside of downtownfor manydecades.The top four small metro areas for job sprawl, according to a 2009 Brookings analysis, were all post-industrial Northeast cities: Poughkeepsie, New York; Scranton and Wilkes-Barre in Pennsylvania; Youngstown, Ohio; and Worcester, Massachusetts. In Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, for example, more than half of all jobs are more than 10 miles from the two cities downtowns. Thats not new. So when the plant closes, it shouldnt burn downtown voters more than others.

Still, whatever voters grievances about deindustrialization, there are other correlations that would tip these old town centersScranton, Wilkes-Barre, Reading,and Johnstown, in Pennsylvania, for exampletoward Democrats. For one thing, they are almost all poorer than theirsuburbs. For another, they all have concentrated minority populations. They also have more rental housing, and their residents ought to have a closer relationship to the public assets that Democrats have traditionallychampioned, like universities, libraries, parks, and transit.

U.S. Census Explorer

Racial Dot Map

For Democrats, the problemwith these people isnt that they didnt vote Democratic; its that they didnt vote at all. In some cases, turnout in downtown precincts was about half what it was a few miles away. Clinton still carried them.

This, then, is an optimistic message about left-wing politics in non-metropolitan America: Those deep-red swaths of countryside in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana are more politically diverse than they look. It just depends on your frame of reference.

Excerpt from:
Even in 2016, Democrats Carried Rust Belt Town Centers. Why? - Slate Magazine (blog)

Over the past few months, America has lurched from partisan warfare to the cliffs of an existential crisis.

Multiple reports show that my former colleagues in the intelligence community have decided that they must leak or withhold classified information due to unsettling connections between President Trump and the Russian Government.

Said an intelligence officer: I know what's best for foreign policy and national security And I'm going to act on that.

Some of us might applaud this man, including a few of my fellow Democrats. In their minds, this is a case of Mr. Smith Goes to Langley to do battle against a corrupt President Trump.

One small problem. The intelligence officer quoted above was actually Aldrich Ames, a CIA traitor whose crime of treason in the 1980s and 1990s resulted in the compromise of more than 100 assets. Many were tortured and executed as a result.

Ames flawed logic is eerily similar to that of his present-day colleagues who are engaged in a shadow war with their commander in chief. They, too, have decided that their superior judgment is more important than following the law.

For the sake of argument, however, lets assume that these officials are somehow different than Ames. Lets suppose that they have compelling pieces of information that indeed suggest Trump or his staff have committed treason.

When youre trained as a spy, youre taught how to handle these kinds of situations. Upon learning the information, it gets tightly compartmented (restricted) and sent to the Department of Justice or Congress for investigation. If the evidence is found to be credible, the constitution makes clear what happens next: impeachment.

Thats how American democracy should work.

And thats precisely how it has been working. According to former Vice President Biden, theres been an on-going investigation into the alleged connections between Trump and Russia. All of us should take heart in knowing that the system is functioning exactly as designed.

However, some of Americas spies are deciding that thats not enough. For reasons of misguided righteousness or partisan hatred, theyve taken it upon themselves to be judge, jury, and executioner. They have prosecuted their case in the court of public opinion, with likeminded media outlets such as CNN, The New York Times, and the Washington Post serving as court stenographers.

Elected by no one, responsible only to each other, these spies have determined that Trump is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors.

Days ago, they delivered their verdict. According to one intelligence official, the president will die in jail.

I understand how this might feel appealing to deeply partisan Democrats. After all, I didnt want Trump to win either. But the solution to fighting this subpar president cannot be encouraging a network of spies to tip the scales back in our political favor. We must instead let the system continue to work, as it has, and make our case to the American people during future elections.

If youre not convinced, imagine the consequences of letting spies decide not just Trumps fate but other political winners and losers too. Imagine how they might treat our candidates next.

Flash-forward to November 4, 2020, where Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have defeated Donald Trump and Mike Pence for the White House. Democrats will celebrate in the streets. The liberal spies will smile.

Mission accomplished.

Conservative spies, however, will take a darker view. To them, their liberal colleagues will have gotten away with political murder. Theyll be looking for revenge.

Welcome to the new America. Its now their turn to burn democracy down. And theyve got the tools and motivation to do it.

This is the slippery slope of political tribalism that, up until a few months ago, I would have thought impossible in America. Certainly it happens in third world nations but not here. I was trained to believe that we were exceptional.

In the culture of Americas spies, you live and die by a set of rules. One of them is a sacred pledge of allegiance to the constitution and commander in chief. Spies may not like a president or their policies but they must salute their leader nonetheless. If they cannot, they are told to resign.

Spies also take a vow of secrecy, specifically to keep classified information hidden from anyone who doesnt have an authorized need to know. Its a commitment one keeps for a lifetime. And should that vow be violated, the consequences are dire. Prison time. Colleagues and informants killed. Enemies emboldened. The country less safe.

Spies also accept and embrace a final rule: there must be an unbreakable wall between government workers and the democratic process.

Why?

Because many spies have access to powerful tools that, if used improperly, could cause incredible damage to the nations stability. Accordingly, clandestine officers have a special covenant with the American people codified by the Hatch Act that limits their participation in politics.

During my time as a CIA officer, I quickly learned why all these rules were in place. I read peoples emails. I listened to phone calls. I recruited assets that told the dirtiest and most embarrassing of secrets. I came to realize that my power was both an awesome responsibility and, at times, wickedly seductive.

Some of us faltered in our commitments. I remember colleagues who believed themselves above the rules, conducting quiet investigations into cheating wives or ex-boyfriends. They were eventually discovered and rightfully thrown out. They had demonstrated an inability to handle the burden of power.

And that is precisely what we are experiencing today. The spies who are plotting against President Trump are breaking U.S. laws. Theyre violating their oaths. And theyre committing treason to remedy (perceived) treason.

They likely dont see it that way, of course. But, then again, neither did Aldrich Ames.

With luck and aggressive investigations, these renegade spies will join their fallen colleague at the Allenwood Correctional Facility for the remainder of their lives.

I look forward to watching the gates forever close behind them.

Bryan Dean Wright is a former CIA ops officer and member of the Democratic Party. He contributes on issues of politics, national security, and the economy. Follow him on Twitter @BryanDeanWright.

See the original post:
I'm a Democrat (and ex-CIA) but the spies plotting against Trump are out of control - Fox News

As part of an effort to understand the state of the Democratic Party both inside and outside Washington in the wake of Donald Trump's victory, I am embarking on an occasional series of email conversations with people who will be part of what comes next for the party. I began this project by talking to Guy Cecil, a leading Democratic strategist. The second installment was a chat withJason Kander, a former Missouri secretary of state, who nearly unseated Sen. Roy Blunt (R) in November. The latest is my conversation with Seth Moulton, a Democratic member of Congress from Massachusetts first elected in 2014. Our conversation was conducted via email and is reproduced below. Have a suggestion for a Democrat I should talk to for this series? Email me at chris.cillizza@washpost.com.

FIX: Congressman, thanks for doing this.

I want to start with the fact that you have been very high profile in your opposition to Donald Trump and his travel ban on refugees and visitors from seven predominantly Muslim countries. The Boston Globe wrote a piece headlined Seth Moulton is seizing the moment.

So, walk me through your thinking on why to push so hard and so publicly on this one issue. And whats the feedback been both inside and outside of Congress.

I am also interested in your take in whether Democrats need a message beyond Trump is bad at the moment. Lots of people in the party say no, pointing out that Republicans made big gains in the 2010 and 2014 midterm elections with a message that effectively boiled down to: Were not Obama.

Moulton: Sorry for the delay. My travel has been held up by the winter storm. Ill do my best toanswer your subsequent questions more quickly!

My reason for standing up on this issue is simple: it's the morally right thing to do. Thisorder is absolutely harmful to our national security to the safety of Americans here athome, and to the lives of our young troops abroad. Our enemies will use it against us,and our we will lose the trust of our critical Muslim allies.

Each of us myself, my Republican colleagues, and President Trump swore an oath touphold and defend the Constitution. It's the exact same oath I took when I became aMarine officer. I'll never compromise that oath for the sake of politics, though it seemsthat the President and many of my Republican colleagues have chosen to do so.

In the Marine Corps, you are taught to never leave a man behind. Many of the peopleaffected by this ban are translators who risked their lives by working with us people whohave sacrificed more for our country than many of my colleagues ever will. I won't leavethose men and women behind, and our country shouldn't either. And dont think that ourfuture allies arent watching. Especially in this Internet age, everyone will know howwe treat our friends, and that will affect the ability of our troops to do their job as safelyand effectively as possible.

The response so far has been overwhelmingly positive. That shouldn't be surprising,since most Americans don't support this immoral and unconstitutional ban. But morethan any particular policy, Americans are hungry for real leadership. Trump's no leader:He's a coward who's sacrificed almost nothing for this country. And if you look on theDemocratic side, our leadership team has remained largely unchanged since the peoplewho just voted in their first election were five years old. It's time for a new generation ofleadership, both in politics and in America as a whole.

For Democrats, that means stepping up and articulating a clear vision for our future. AndI dont just mean more policies I mean vision. Who are we as a nation? What do wewant to become in the next century? What roles can we all have in this new world andthe new economy?

Trump presented a dark, backward-looking view of America. Democrats have theopportunity to present a vision for the future, an optimistic vision thats true to our valuesand asks all Americans to be a part of our success. I believe Americans are hungry now and will be even more hungry after a few years of Trump for an optimistic vision for thefuture and a real plan to get there.

FIX: Ah, yes, the vision thing.

What I am left with after this last campaign, however, is that the vision Donald Trump offered of America where we are and where we are going was fundamentally at odds with the vision that politicians of the left and right have offered before. Trumps America was a dangerous and chaotic place that was on the verge of permanently spinning out of control. Only by electing Trump could we avoid that fate.

No one thought the public at large would vote for someone with such a dystopian vision for America. And yet, Trump won.

My question for you: Does Trumps win fundamentally alter the calculus of the vision that Democrats need to offer the country? Does your party need to do a better job of acknowledging the struggles many people have? The idea that the American Dream is dead or dying? And, if they dont do that, do they run the risk of looking out of touch ala Clinton in 2016?

Moulton:The fact that Trump's vision resonated with anyone at all is a reflection of how littlevision was presented by either side during the campaign. Democrats campaigned on thenotion that everything was more or less fine, and all we had to do was stay the course.But that totally ignores the fact that this economic recovery, while significant, has beenuneven, and a lot of Americans feel left out. I don't think that most people genuinely buyTrump's pessimistic view of America. Most people love this country and still believe inour ability to be a positive force in the world. But if you have one candidate saying we'vegot big problems and one candidate just saying, That guy's nuts! you can understandwhy people would gravitate toward someone who is at least willing to acknowledge theproblems real people are facing, even if he can't even begin to offer any realisticsolutions.

It makes total sense that the generation who's led us here over the last twenty yearswould say that everything is fine or that they alone can fix it. But this election hasshown us that people are hungry for change. It's going to take a new generation ofleaders to offer the kind of real, sweeping change that people are looking for. I do not believe we should try to trump Trump with a similarly dark message or similarly pessimistic messengers. One pieceof encouraging news is that I've spoken with dozens of service veterans who feel calledto run for office in the wake of this disaster and that's just in the last few weeks. Theseare Americans who, unlike Trump, have actually made sacrifices for our country. Theyknow that the America they fought for, or the community they served through civilianservice programs, is better than the weak country Trump wants us to be. Democrats havea chance to be the party that offers that new generation of leadership to America. I'mworking to make sure we seize that chance.

FIX: To your point about Democrats offering a new generation of leadership to America: The two leading names to take on Trump in 2020 are Bernie Sanders (age 75) and Elizabeth Warren (age 67). Both will be septuagenarians by the time voters vote in 2020.

But wait, theres more! The top three leaders for House Democrats are Nancy Pelosi (76), Steny Hoyer (77) and Jim Clyburn (76). And none of them were seriously challenged for their jobs after watching 80 seats disappear between 2010 and 2016.

Doesnt that make it hard to say Democrats to say they are the party where young leaders are most welcome? Why wasnt there a more serious challenge to the Congressional leadership following 2016? And why arent more young people looking at that 2020 presidential open nomination and stepping forward?

Moulton: I've been very clear and very public that it's time for a new generation of Democratic leaders to step up, both in Congress and in states across the country. And I think there's far more support for change than the result of [Ohio Rep.] Tim Ryan's leadership challenge, for example, might suggest. The support Ive received for pushing for change within our caucus has been far greater than I ever imagined. The reality is that many people understand that we need a change, but too many are afraid to make it happen. Courage, more than anything else, is what's missing from Washington today. And this next generation, the generation that fought in Iraq and Afghanistan and has served in disproportionate numbers here at home, is far better prepared to provide that courageous leadership than the generation that sent us there.

You're right that this next generation isn't reflected in our current leadership yet. But remember also that it's February 2017. Barack Obama wasn't on anyone's presidential radar in February 2005. And he was considered a long shot at best when he announced his candidacy two years later. But he emerged as a national leader because he was willing to speak past the bitter partisanship of the day and articulate a bold, optimistic vision for the future of our country. And he put his reputation on the line to defend that vision when the establishment told him it was too bold or it wasnt his turn. People respected that, were inspired by it, and in the end they elected a 47-year-old as president of the United States.

The next generation of Obamas is out there. I hope many of them are Democrats. But more than that, I hope they have the courage to stand up and lead.

FIX: Ok. Last question. I want to go back to the Congressional leadership issue.

It felt like after the very tough results of the 2010 and 2014 midterms and the disappointing result of 2016 it was time for a change. And yet, as you note, Tim Ryan got slaughtered in his race against Pelosi. And the other top two Democratic leaders werent even challenged.

Sure, some of that is about courage. The courage to put yourself out there. But doesnt part of the blame lie with the current leadership team who continues to insist that all is well and no changes are needed? And what does that say about a party who isnt willing or doesnt understand that they need to make space for their next generation of leaders?

Moulton: Theres no question that our party leadership needs to take responsibility for November's election results. My job description as a Marine infantry officer was a single sentence: You are responsible for everything your platoon does or fails to do. That's as simple and powerful a definition of leadership as I've ever seen. That's the ethic of leadership we need in public service today. And if our current generation of leaders isn't willing or able to provide it, then it's time for a change.

All of this does, I think, come back to courage. It takes courage to admit you've made mistakes and have room to improve. It takes courage to encourage competition and know that you have to earn, and re-earn, your position on merit. And it takes courage to invest in the future knowing that someday that future might mean you're out of a job. But that ethos constantly improving through healthy competition and constantly investing in our future is the very definition of progress. That's the heart of what we stand for as Americans, and certainly as Democrats.

You can get away with bad leadership for a little while in a top-down party apparatus, or if you're a President who attempts to rule by fear and intimidation because you lack the courage and conviction to act otherwise. But Americans know what real leadership looks like. People want to be proud of their representatives.

A new generation of leadership is coming, whether our current leaders like it or not. We'd be wise to embrace that new generation. That's how Democrats, indeed how all of America, will win the 21st century.

Thanks for this opportunity, Chris. Its been fun!

Here is the original post:
This Democrat wants to know why his party leaders aren't leading - Washington Post

"Let's, everyone, work cooperatively here. Let's not take things personally, let's stick to the policy and vigorously debate that policy."

Dabakis described HB11 as "exclusionary," saying it removes a long-standing protection on political diversity within the state and further diminishes the voice of Utahns with minority opinions.

He compared the issue to recent debates over public lands, and said that whether Utah's governor is a Republican or a Democrat, he or she should not be allowed to stack commissions with ideologically homogeneous appointees.

"I think the fact that the Outdoor Retailers are leaving is because there isn't dialogue," he said. "There is one perspective and one block and one view in too many places in state government."

The bill's sponsor Sen. Margaret Dayton, R-Orem, argued that partisan requirements create unnecessary limitations on candidates. HB11 states that party affiliation can not be a consideration for potential board members, which she said would promote the selection of the most qualified candidates.

Dabakis countered that the bill is clearly an attempt to ensure Republican control of state boards, and he added that anyone who says otherwise either misunderstands or misrepresents the proposal's intent.

"This is bad government and it hurts a lot of people," he said.

That comment drew a rebuke from Sen. Lyle Hillyard, R-Logan, who said Dabakis had impugned the integrity of the bill sponsor.

"I am offended by it," he said.

Following the vote on the bill, Niederhauser paused to remind members to keep discussion focused on the specific merits of legislation.

"Voices are to be heard here," he said. "That's what we do and we want to make sure everyone has that opportunity."

The House approved a different version of HB11 earlier this month in a 51-21 vote. Changes in the Senate require an additional House vote before the bill reaches the governor's desk.

bwood@sltrib.com

Twitter: @bjaminwood

Link:
Democrat draws warning over claim GOP-backed bill meant to shore up Republican control - Salt Lake Tribune