HURRICANE HIATUS - SURGING - Saturday, September 28, 2024
Many hurricanes in the news this week.
JEFF CHILDERS
Good morning, C&C, it’s Saturday! Power at the house came back late yesterday afternoon (office remains dark), but internet is still down. I’m blogging in slow motion using my cell tether which, based on its glacial performance, is what everybody else must be doing too. Your essential news today begins with — what else? — a Hurricane Helene roundup.
WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 
️️ Category 4 Hurricane Helene raced right into the Sunshine State’s armpit around 11pm Thursday night, about 10 miles west of sleepy Perry, Florida and just 100 miles from where I live in Gainesville. Then the storm shot, as though fired from a cannon, tearing across several southern states and wreaking havoc as far north as Tennesee, collapsing interstates, opening sinkholes, overwhelming dams, spawning tornadoes, tumbling rockslides, washing cars and homes away, and wiping some small towns completely off the map. The New York Times ran one of the many stories headlined, “Destruction Spreads Across Southeast as Helene Spawns Floods and Landslides.”Florida was hit hard, but was at least well prepared, and is run by one of the most successful hurricane-managing governors in history. The states north of Florida, which aren’t used to hurricane force weather, struggled mightily. In Atlanta, flood waters rose so fast one Fox weatherman had to stop in the middle of a live broadcast to save a woman trapped in a car:
Even further north in Asheville, beloved landmarks like the Biltmore Village were underwater. Northern Georgia and Tennessee saw vast areas of flooding from rain, rising rivers, rockslides. The flooding didn’t just waterlog everything, it became a powerful destructive force, showing us how easily nature brushes aside our great works.
I-40, a main East-West corridor in the Blue Ridge area crossing eight states, washed out in multiple spots, and is now closed indefinitely:
North Carolina DOT said I-40 was closed in multiple locations between Asheville and eastern Tennessee due to washouts and debris. I-40 Eastbound dramatically collapsed into the Pigeon River Gorge. Smaller roads and connecting highways also collapsed. Like Highway 105 in Watuga County:
Many of these highways run through mountainous terrain and there aren’t easy alternative routes to get from one place to another. I can only imagine how fouled the traffic must be in the Carolinas and Eastern Tennessee right now. Ask yourself: when was the last time you saw anything similar to this remarkable NC DOT advisory:
All roads. All. Now what? Here’s what the NC Road Closures map looked like yesterday:
From Florida to Tennessee, there were too many scenes of individual drama to report. In one thrilling rescue operation, authorities airlifted about 40 stranded medical workers off the roof of a flooding hospital in Erwin, Tennessee. The waters were too rough for a boat rescue:
The video from the helicopter is rather impressive. To give you an idea of the scale of relief operations, the Tampa Bay Times ran a story last night headlined, “Tampa Bay saw more than 1,000 rescues during Hurricane Helene.” That's just from one city.
Sadly, various media report the death toll is up to 44. One man was killed while driving down I-4 in Northwest Florida during the hurricane, which is a very Florida Man thing to do. Alas, he was crushed by a traffic sign. The reports did not disclose what the sign said. Maybe “Heaven, next exit.”
Record flooding is happening worldwide, and seems related to the massive amount of extra water in the atmosphere that I reported on back in July of 2023 (“Overheated”), and to all the extra solar energy we’ve been getting lately. If you prefer to chew on some insightful conspiracy theories about the hurricane, I recommend In2ThinAir.
NBC ran a truly remarkable story this week headlined, “EPA must review risks of risks of fluoride in drinking water to children, judge rules.” Not that long ago, questioning flouride was on par with the Lizard People Hypothesis and was more likely to get you a lithium prescription than a court hearing.But diligent anti-flouride activists haven’t given up, and were rewarded this week when a federal judge in San Francisco (of all places) sided with sanity following a non-jury trial. The judge ruled in the activists’ favor and ordered the EPA to beef up regulations for fluoride in drinking water, holding that the ubiquitous chemical poses an unreasonable potential risk to children at current levels.
“The scientific literature in the record provides a high level of certainty that a hazard is present; fluoride is associated with reduced IQ,” wrote Judge Edward Chen, an Obama appointee. It was a cautious decision that stopped far short of concluding the flouride is actually a public health menace. But it’s opened the door.
One thing is sure; flouride is big business and has long enjoyed the protection of the mindless follow the science trickery that deceived so many of us for so long. It’s not clear how the flouride scam was upheld for so long, since fluoridated drinking water is almost non-existent in Europe, yet Europeans’ teeth aren’t crumbling to dust.
Just say Nein! Or, Non! And so forth.
A brave decision like this would have been impossible until very recently. Even if some judge somewhere had ruled against flouride, the media would have relentlessly mocked it into oblivion and the judge had retired under pressure. But things are different now; now the media reported the story straight. We can thank the lost trust in our so-called expert class from the pandemic. Nobody believes their pallid assurances now, not even Obama judges. We want proof.
Thursday, Fox News ran a story confirming a key fact we’ve heard before, headlined “Local officer's bullet stopped Trump shooter's gunfire before Secret Service shot, witness testifies.”According to officers’ testimony in the Senate, a Butler County Emergency Services officer fired at Thomas Crooks less than six seconds after Crooks began shooting. The officer’s bullet made Crooks recoil and stop shooting—ending the threat. Only then did the Secret Service sniper fire at Crooks —about 15 seconds later.
Count out fifteen seconds to yourself to see how long it is.
There appears to be some dispute about whether Butler’s officer shot Crooks or not. The FBI says they missed. Butler thinks they wounded and disabled Crooks. We’ll never know, since the FBI quietly and inexplicably released Crooks’ body for cremation in the days following the incident. Maybe when they tested Crooks’ body, it came up positive for covid and they panicked.
On Thursday, the coroner testified saying the Secret Service bullet was the kill shot.
The fact Butler cops shot first is important, because it raises an ugly question. Why did the Secret Service wait to shoot Crook until after he’d already been shot at by the locals? Regardless whether or not the Butler people wounded Crooks, assassination time was over.
When Crooks was no longer a danger to anyone, was it then his time to exit the world’s stage? I wouldn’t even entertain a conspiratorial question like that if it weren’t for the equally unbelievable alternative explanation that the Secret Service catastrophically failed in about a dozen different ways.
After all, local cops were presumably less well-trained than the Secret Service snipers, and the cops occupied a less favorable position to take the shot since they were shooting at Crooks from the ground and not a sniper’s perch.
Why were local police more effective than trained Secret Service snipers?
The feds have unsealed his indictment, and the controlled demolition of Eric Adams continued over the last two days without a hint of rescue anywhere. NBC ran a snarky story this morning headlined, “Inside Eric Adams’ ‘clumsy’ attempt to hinder foreign bribery probe.”I’m no Eric Adams fan, not least of all because of his devastating pandemic policies. Nor do I find his pushback against the Biden Migrant Invasion particularly compelling, since New York City was overrun anyway.
But the corporate media pile-on is highly suggestive.
NBC described the indictment’s allegations as best it could, but the narrative is still failing to come up with a hook. What did Adams do? Here’s how NBC framed it:
Discounts on plane tickets and hotel rooms? Like Travelocity or something? Campaign donation violations? About $10K per year over ten years? What? The NBC article mocked Adams’ spelling and compared him to Boss Tweed.
Have a look at some of the other corporate media headlines. The Atlantic, also this morning:
Or this morning’s Washington Post’s non-paywalled op-ed roundup, in which all the writers agreed:
This morning’s Business Insider compared Adams’ indictment to the stomach-turning allegations against Sean “Diddy” Combs:
And from Thursday’s New York Times editorial, on behalf of the entire editorial board:
Adams pleaded ‘not guilty’ in court yesterday. He Diddyn’t do it. In an emphatic response video released last week by his office, Adams forcefully fretted that, despite receiving lots of advice to step down from far-lefties like AOC and Jerry Nadler, he wouldn’t quit.
This all reminded us of New York’s Luv Guv Andrew Cuomo, who also swore he wouldn’t quit right up until the glorious day he did quit.
CLIP: Mayor Adams blames feds, hints at illegal migrants as cause of his persecution prosecution (1:02).
What is painfully obvious at this point is Eric Adams is out, like Andrew Cuomo was out. Adams can try to hang on, but the deep state’s political machine has ten thousand ways of applying pressure. Like by organizing a media character assassination, which is exactly what we’re watching happen right now.
The betting markets are forecasting a 66% chance Adams is out before the year’s end. I’d give it 99%.
In the best story of the week, the New York Times ran an article headlined, “Trump’s Huge Civil Fraud Penalty Draws Skepticism From Appeals Court.”The headline referred to Trump’s Inflated Real Estate case, where New York Judge Arthur Engoran soaked Trump for a $500 million dollar fine, for “overestimating” the value of his priceless real estate holdings. You’ll recall that wispy-haired Judge Engoran, who probably couldn’t estimate the value of a double-wide mobile home, substituted his own judgment of what Trump’s totally unique properties like Mar-A-Lago were worth.
Was it Trump Derangement Syndrome that caused Judge Engoran to value Trump’s irreplaceable real estate holdings at pennies on the dollar? Who knows. Whichever, Judge Engoran found Trump liable for civil fraud despite there being no fraud victims, despite that all Trump’s loans were paid back in full, and despite that the involved banks all testified they didn’t rely on Trump’s financials anyway.
According to the story, during the oral arguments the five-member panel of appellate judges asked lawyers questions seeming highly skeptical about Judge Engoran’s judicial misadventures. Justice Moulton, who seemed generally unsympathetic to Trump’s lawyers, still observed at one point that “the immense penalty in this case is troubling.”
Justice Friedman asked the attorney general’s lawyer to name any other case where the attorney general had ever sued “to upset a private business transaction that was between equally sophisticated partners.” Even before the lawyer could answer, Justice Renwick queried, “And with little to no impact on the public marketplace?”
At a different point, Justice Higgitt interjected,
“Sorry, but what’s being described sounds an awful lot like a potential commercial dispute by private actors.”
Toward the end of the hearing, Justice Moulton asked how the attorney general’s office could “tether the amount that was assessed” by Judge Engoron “to the harm that was caused here, where parties left these transactions happy about how things went down?”
It wouldn’t take all five justices to vacate the judgment. Engoran’s excessive award could be reversed with a decision by only three of the five justices. Questions appellate judges ask at oral argument aren’t always reliable signals but in many cases, they are decent barometers of the way things might be trending.
I predict they will send the case back for a drastically reduced award. While there is a chance they could reverse the judgment altogether —which is what should happen— given the politics involved, a full reversal seems unlikely.
Have a wonderful weekend! I’ll see you back here Monday, hopefully re-powered and back to scratch, to start the new week off the right, Coffee & Covid way.[/size]
