Pensacola Makes Top 10
Conde Nast Traveler named Pensacola to its “Top 10 Best Small Cities” for 2023 in the 36th Annual Readers’ Choice Awards.
Why this matters: In its announcement, Vist Pensacola wrote, “This accolade celebrates what Pensacolians and visitors to the destination have long known, that Pensacola is ‘The Way to Beach™.'”
- Pensacola is #8 on the list that includes Sedona, Annapolis, St. Augustine (dammit, one spot above us), Aspen, Savannah, Greenville (SC),
Alexandria, Santa Fe and Charleston.
Dig Deeper: The Conde Nast Traveler’s Readers’ Choice Awards are the most important awards in the travel industry, celebrating the ultimate destinations across the world. The annual survey encourages readers to vote on their favorite destinations, hotels, cruises, resorts, and more, celebrating what makes each destination a must-visit, special place. To read more about the winners, visit here.
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Maritime Park Update
On my radio show yesterday, Mayor D.C. Reeves said progress is being made on the development of several parcels at the Community Maritime Park.
Inspire Communities has options on Parcels Four and Five, which include the parking lots used by Blue Wahoos fans. The developer also has options for Parcels Three, Six and Eight that are up for renewal in November.
- “What I’m looking to do is to possibly extend those to match Four and Five,” said the mayor. “Those have never really matched and there’s really no good reasoning behind that.”
About Inspired, Reeves said, “I am encouraged by the progress and that Inspire continues to push this Parcel Five project forward as well as looking at those other lots. We just actually had a conversation with them yesterday that was very encouraging that they continue to be very serious about it and invest lots of money and time into trying to be able to get something done there. So that’s good.”
The proposed luxury hotel for Parcel Seven, which is next to Nick’s Boathouse, is still under consideration. The mayor said, “Valencia remains interested in pushing forward with some kind of negotiation of a term sheet.”
- He added, “So what I’d say is there’s really nothing tangible yet, but there’s a lot of great progress in the headwinds of a pretty hard lending market right now. I think in the next three to six months, we’re going to know really where we stand in terms of whether these projects are going to move forward.”
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Don’t Panic
About 1:20 p.m. this afternoon, FEMA and the Federal Communications Commission will send an alarm to your phone, TV and radio. It’s just a test of the nation’s emergency alert system, and not the deep state taking over the country. Or, at least, that’s what they tell us.
On the subject of the bad actors looking for any way to eek out more hysteria from the Trumplican base, here’s our old friend and propagandist Jim Holt, otherwise known as the Gateway Pundit. Still churning out the cult koolaid after all these years:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/10/reminder-fema-alert-system-will-sound-alarm-send/
“While the purpose of the [FEMA] test is ostensibly to ensure the systems’ effectiveness, the timing and nature of this announcement have left many Americans feeling uneasy. With the world in a state of flux—geopolitical tensions, climate crises, and public health emergencies—it’s hard not to feel a sense of impending doom.”
Read “many” in the above as the roughly 20% of Americans whose brains are seemingly forever blown on Russian/Trump/Radical GOP brainwashing in the service of pulling down our democracy and instituting a sociopathic, megalomaniac carnival barker as an American dictator.
Hopefully after yesterday’s lunatic and tragic Gaetz fiasco in the House, more people are waking up to the destructive aims of the hard-core MAGA base, and what they are really about. I keep seeing the word “nihilism” and it is such a misnomer for what’s happening. Their chaos is anything but without a goal; along with the likes of Tuberville, they are working to weaken our national security to the point that they have a better chance of couping our democracy and installing an autocracy, whether it have Trump or some other Three Toes cartoon at the helm.
On a local level, I first caught wind of this newest idiocy–the conspiracy that these FEMA tests are being conducted to train the American public to comply with the dastardly ends of the Biden “regime”–from a Keith Bowe post on Next Door, where the West Side’s favorite bearded conspiracy uncle and PR man (self-appointed?) for the Building Meaningful Communities church was bleeting out a red-level alert about this test. The comments below are verbatim. Every registered republican who does not start speaking out against the lunatic fringe is increasingly culpable for contributing, through their silence, to weaken our national security and our democracy.
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“Number one, unlike other emergency broadcast systems, this overrides turning off the signal. It’s also national. Secondly people may be caught unaware. I have concerns that it’s going to acclimate people into a false sense of heighten [sic] awareness, or worse complacency. It may cause confusion or mass reaction before reason overrides emotion. This reminds me of the old nuclear drills that ended after the assassination of President Kennedy. Duck and Cover was merely intended to provide hope for survival. This however is a different and more willing persuasion for adopting control with participation that may instruct mass compliance. We just need to understand that compliance can’t be forced, but it can be made more probable through the right conditions where people feel there’s not a choice. I no longer trust but want to verify any changes that restrict freedom. Each person must choose for themselves. I’m sure close to the date all the media will create a positive message, including “Fact Checkers.” At this point we must just be aware. Don’t let imagination become more than a precaution. I’m being a rational theorist here.” –Keith Bowe
“Make America Great is a patriotic goal. Again is [sic] represents we never should have lost freedom and the rule of law with Blind Justice….MAGAs aren’t violent.” –Keith Bowe