HURRICANE TRUMP ☙ Wednesday, October 9, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS
Hurricane Milton set to break all records; FEMA hoarding disaster cash; healthcare inflation baffles experts; WaPo on hurricane politics; polls show Republicans surge into national lead; more. JEFF CHILDERS
Good morning, C&C, it’s Wednesday! And here we go again! Hurricane Milton’s windy buzz saw will tear into Florida late this evening, so it’s anybody’s guess whether you’ll hear from us tomorrow morning. But we’ll be back right after the first hot shower. Meantime, this morning’s roundup includes: Hurricane Milton news, updates, and conspiracy theories; FEMA’s couch cushions cough up billions in covert coin despite the agency pleading poverty; Wall Street Journal shocked to find inflation falling but healthcare costs rising anyway, and what are we getting for that money again?; WaPo digs into hurricane politics and finds the same thing we’ve already noticed about what parts of the country these turbo storms have targeted; and multiple national polls show Republican self-identification surges into the lead.
WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 
️️ Fox ran an eye-watering story yesterday headlined, “Milton remains catastrophic Category 5 storm ahead of Florida landfall as major hurricane late Wednesday.” After first slowing to a Cat 4 storm yesterday, turbo Hurricane Milton abruptly re-energized and is once again a Category 5 monster. The good news, if you can call it that, is Milton not currently pushing the limits of physics and reality, having sustained winds of ‘only’ 160 mph.
NOAA’s current forecast optimistically predicts further weakening to a Category 3 storm when it lands on Florida. Hopefully that bears out, but folks around here in North Central Florida are edgy since these storms have been acting so weird. Things are much crazier on the state’s west coast, where NOAA is currently forecasting a 10-15 foot storm surge in Tampa Bay — which would cover the roofs of most houses.
Even the alligators are evacuating. Georgia’s 11-Alive News noted another minor 2024 record yesterday, in its article headlined “Traffic on Georgia interstates up four times higher than historical average as Floridians evacuate.” On a normal day, driving I-75 through Atlanta is roughly comparable to spending an afternoon giving your teenager driving lessons in a Walmart parking lot on Black Friday, combined with the exhilaration of unsuccessfully trying to bare-handedly wrestle an overcaffeinated raccoon back into its cage without catching rabies.
Now multiply that times four. Ironically, Florida evacuees are headed straight toward the part of the country recently submerged by Hurricane Helene. Now, soggy Helene survivors are suffering a second flood — of Floridians.
If you’re interested in alternative takes, Suspicious Observer published a short “minority report” video yesterday arguing that these mega-storms are really being fueled by record solar activity combined with Earth’s weakening magnetic field, not HAARP. Here’s the link (6:49). On the other hand, for your conspiracy theory infotainment, enjoy In2ThinAir’s latest radar-manipulated-Milton video, linked here.
Good news, everybody! Yesterday, the New York Post ran a story that must have been a great relief to someone, headlined “Watchdog found $7B in untapped FEMA funds — even though DHS Secretary Mayorkas said none available for future disasters.”
They are calling him a liar nicely, without actually calling him a liar.
An Inspector General’s report from as recently as August showed a whopping $7 billion left over in FEMA’s disaster relief budget, even though Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas has been going around telling everyone that FEMA is basically broke. The IG report uncovered a spare $8.3 billion in unused relief money earmarked for declared disasters from 2012 and earlier.
But Alejandro Mayorkas said FEMA’s checkbook is running on fumes. What gives?
Well, one of a few things must be true. First, it could just be that FEMA has been hoarding, like that guy who asks you to pay for lunch since he’s broke and then brags about his upcoming Alaska cruise. Or it could be that FEMA is broke, but spent all that money on something off-book, which will be properly accounted for right after the Pentagon figures out where its missing $3 trillion went.
Don’t judge. Who among us hasn’t quietly bought a beer brewing kit that our spouse sneered at as another useless gadget that would just take up valuable kitchen counter space before inevitably being re-homed to Goodwill? Not me, of course. I’m just saying, things can fall through the budgetary cracks for perfectly good reasons.
Anyway! Whew, the FEMA budget crisis is over! They can just use all that money they saved up from pre-2012 disasters that never happened. And don’t tell me they probably spent it on pet supplies for illegal Haitians or something. I don’t want to hear all those racist conspiracy theories.
Look, it’s impossible. What does FEMA have to do with illegal immigrants anyway? FEMA spending money on non-citizens who are not in natural disasters would be crazy.
Unexpectedly! The Wall Street Journal ran a shocked —shocked!— story yesterday headlined, “Healthcare Premiums Are Soaring Even as Inflation Eases.” How could this happen after Obamacare, the inaptly named “Healthcare Affordability Act?” If I didn’t know better, I’d think whenever government arrives to help, it just makes things worse, like a bumbling relative with a creative idea to save money by re-plumbing the septic tank ourselves.
The Journal’s figures showed that, despite its alleged “easing” of inflation, the average family is now paying roughly $25,500 in annual healthcare premiums. In other words, the average family is buying the healthcare industry a Honda Civic every single year.
Thanks, Obamacare!
Not only that, but the government is also spending more on America’s healthcare than any government ever has in human history. Not only that, but even with all this investment in “health care,” all-cause mortality continues increasing and American life expectancies continue decreasing. CNN, two days ago:
That headline evidences a stunning short-term reversal. As recently as 2021, for example, a Princeton University study optimistically predicted that “if the current pace of progress in life expectancy continues, most children born this millennium will celebrate their 100th birthday.” Win some, lose some.
Nothing to see here! Move along. Headline from the New Atlas, in March:
Setting aside other obvious causes, in 2024, half of Americans are prediabetic or diagnosed with Type II diabetes, compared to only 1% before the rise of the medical-industrial complex. Two-thirds of us are obese, and an astonishing 77% of our young people suffer from intractable health conditions precluding military service.
The good news though is that our public school system is focused on correcting the deplorable legacy of hatred toward cross-dressers. So there’s that.
To me, one of the most puzzling and mysterious features of life in 2024 is that fact that you can show your Democrat relatives these kinds of figures, and they will insist that even more government is the only answer.
And, surprise! The far-left Washington Post ran a story yesterday headlined, “Analysis - The hurricane X-factor in the 2024 election.” By “x-factor,” WaPo meant “it helps Democrats.” The sub-headline blithely explained, “Previous hurricanes have reduced voter turnout in hard-hit areas and both helped and hurt incumbents. This fall’s storms affect particularly crucial electoral regions.”
In other words, we aren’t the only ones who noticed these pre-election turbo hurricanes are crashing into critical tossup states like Georgia and North Carolina.
And what about Florida? WaPo hopes Hurricane Milton could possibly be a game-changer:
It’s not even a poorly kept secret anymore. They’re talking about it out in the open:
How did they learn about hurricane politics? WaPo mentioned the storm that taught the nation how hurricanes can radically change political outcomes. After 2005’s Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans, WaPo parenthetically observed that “The city in the years that followed the storm saw non-Black politicians assume levels of power not seen in decades.”
It’s so weird how these historic hurricanes are hitting red counties right before early voting starts.
On Monday, the Hill ran a heartwarming story headlined “Georgia Supreme Court halts lower court ruling, reinstates 6-week abortion ban.”
In 2019, Georgia banned abortions after six weeks in a new law called the Living Infants Fairness and Equality (LIFE) Act. The dormant LIFE Act woke up and became effective following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade.
Nine days ago, Fulton County (Atlanta) Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ruled that, since Georgia’s state constitution includes a due process right to “life, liberty, and property,” that necessarily includes a right of healthcare autonomy, which he held includes an unlimited right to abortion.
One wonders where this amazing right to healthcare autonomy was lurking during the pandemic, when we really could have used it. While I applaud Judge McBurney’s latest epiphany about healthcare autonomy, his interpretation of the state constitution is, legally speaking, a distant stretch.
On Monday, Georgia’s Supreme Court accepted the state’s appeal of Judge McBurney’s decision, and temporarily reinstated the six-week rule while considering the case. Given the court’s conservative majority and Judge McBurney’s creative interpretation, I suspect the ban will stand.
The Wall Street Journal ran another encouraging election story yesterday headlined, “More Americans Identify as Republican Than Democrat. Here’s What That Means for the Election.” Of course, it also strongly suggested a reason for why Democrats have blasted opened the country’s borders.
It has been over thirty years since the GOP led in national party identification. But in recent NBC surveys, Republicans led by +2% (42% to 40%) when voters were asked which party they identify with. Similarly, Gallup also found voters identifying as Republican beat Democrats by +3% in its latest surveys. And Pew gave the GOP a +1% lead in nationwide polling this spring.
How could this happen? How could this happen despite a ceaseless corporate media assault on “far-right” conservatism that has relentlessly painted garden-variety conservatives as literal nazis? Are people picking nazism?
They will probably blame Twitter.
But this news was, perhaps, not any shock to seasoned political analysts. It is the culmination of a noticeable ten-year trend toward the GOP: Democrats led by +9% in 2012, +7% in 2016, and +6% in 2020. In other words, they’ve seen this coming.
A GOP pollster involved in the surveys quoted for the story called the results “the underrecognized game-changer for 2024.’’ Another X-factor! The change raises the horrifying possibility that Republicans could win the popular vote, which Democrats have long wailed should be the gold standard. But don’t worry. Soon, virtue-signaling lefties will turn on a dime and start whining about the tyranny of the majority.
That they could see this flip coming explains a lot of the post-Trump insanity, like the wide-open borders, the midnight migrant relocation flights into the heartland, and the kitty gobblers. Don’t get complacent. More than a small lead in the popular vote will be needed to clinch the election.
But in broader terms of the surging conservative counter-revolution, this is wildly encouraging news. I suspect that, if anything, absent some catastrophic blunder, the trend toward the GOP will continue to pick up speed, like Hurricane Miltion.
Here comes Hurricane Trump.
Have a wonderful pre-hurricane Wednesday! Pray for we Florida folk and don’t lose hope if you don’t hear from me tomorrow morning. C&C will return as soon as the electrons resume zipping through the wires. See you then.
