Hurricane Katrina battered New Orleans and coastal Mississippi as a Category 3 hurricane 19 years ago. As a hurricane, a Category 3 storm is average, not the killer Category 4 or 5 storms that we less frequently see.
Most of the damage and loss of life at that time was due to New Orleans being built below sea level, with levees designed to keep seawater out. However, the levees didn’t hold due to faulty engineering, leading to massive flooding.
The damage was immense, with over 1,800 fatalities and $100 billion in property damage. There was plenty of blame to go around. The Cato Institute identified these failures – confusion, failure to learn, communication breakdown, supply failures, indecision, and fraud and abuse.
The presiding president, George W, Bush, was pilloried over his response. U.S. News & World Report called it “The undoing of George W. Bush,” claiming that he “didn’t pay attention to the biggest news story of the moment because he was on vacation and allowed himself to get isolated from the country.”
Vanity Fair described it as “The flood that sank George W. Bush.”
As Dan Bongino likes to say, elections are made up of snapshots and soundbites.
For Bush, the soundbite was his compliment to then-FEMA Director Michael Brown, “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.” The famous snapshot of Bush looking out the window of Air Force One at the hurricane’s aftermath was emblematic, too, and can be viewed at the MSNBC site.
Screen shot from AP video, via YouTube
Fast forward to last week.
Another hurricane and another president, Helene, and Joe Biden respectively.
What a difference a president makes, at least to the media and their coverage of another epic disaster, especially on the eve of a presidential election.
Hurricane Helene hit Florida on Sept. 26 as a Category 4 storm, moving north and dumping torrential rain onto Georgia and North Carolina, devastating Asheville, and western North Carolina.
The Guardian described the situation, at the time of this writing, “At least 166 people have died from Hurricane Helene, many are still missing and more than 1 million people remained without power as rescue and recovery efforts continued from the devastating storm.”
On Sept. 30, four days after the hurricane landed, former President Donald Trump visited Georgia. No flyover, but boots on the ground. Where were President Biden and Vice President Harris?
Biden was on the sand at Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, saying only, “I was commanding it.” What was he commanding? The hurricane? Or was he finally beating Medicare?
Remember above how U.S. News & World Report criticized Bush for being “on vacation.”
Any similar criticism of Biden? Fat chance.
YouTube
Snapshots and soundbites. Biden at the beach, “I’m commanding.”
To pile on, what did the Biden administration do or not do to aid North Carolina hurricane victims? They cut off communications.
The Biden-Harris regime blocked almost 20,000 North Carolina residents from having Starlink to punish Elon Musk for failing to support their regime. Meanwhile the regime had the FCC ignore the law and its own rules to expedite George Soros’s takeover of 220 radio stations ahead of the election to reward the fact that he’s the single largest Democrat donor in the world.
Before boarding an airplane, perhaps heading to the beach, Biden was asked,
“Do you have any words to the victims of the hurricane?”
BIDEN: “We’ve given everything that we have.”
“Are there any more resources the federal government could be giving them?”
BIDEN: “No.”
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Another snapshot and soundbite.
Of course, there is no money for hurricane victims, particularly those in the red portion of western North Carolina. Would government resources be more readily available if the flooding was in the Research Triangle of far bluer Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill?
Where’s the money? The cupboard is bare for Americans but for other countries, the cupboard is overflowing. Here’s where the money went over the past week.
$8 billion to Ukraine.
$8.7 billion to Israel.
$567 million to Taiwan.
As with most things Biden and Harris, America last, everyone else first.
DHS Secretary Mayorkas, “warns FEMA doesn’t have enough funding to last through hurricane season.” Of course not. DHS is tapped out providing food, hotel rooms, debit cards, and sex change surgery for illegal aliens.
Where was candidate Kamala Harris during the hurricane? “She was campaigning in Las Vegas over the weekend,” reports Newsweek.
But rest assured, she did tweet about the hurricane as our intrepid media reminded everyone, “Fact Check: Kamala Harris DID tweet about Hurricane Helene.”
I’m sure the two 70-year-old grandparents and their 6-year-old grandson in Asheville, NC, felt relieved and supported by Harris’s tweet as they were swept away from their roof, drowning in the raging flood.
Snapshots and soundbites. Even Democrats noticed.
In the wake of Hurricane Helene’s devastating impact on the southeastern United States, a prominent Democratic strategist issued a warning to Vice President Kamala Harris, emphasizing the political significance of disaster response in the lead-up to the upcoming election.
Speaking on CNN’s News Central, Megan Hays stressed the importance of visual imagery and on-the-ground presence during natural disasters.
“People remember the visual here. People are going to remember he is on the ground,” Hays said, referring to former President Donald Trump’s visit to storm-ravaged Valdosta, Georgia on Monday. “And in an election, that’s going to be won on the margins….People are going to remember.”
Trump, never letting a political opportunity go to waste, “Trump accuses Kamala Harris of staging Hurricane Helene briefing photo: ‘You have to plug the cord into the phone for it to work!’”
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Snapshots and soundbites.
Bush was already in his second term when Katrina hit, but between that and his failed misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, he left office with a 22% approval rating, paving the way for the “fundamental transformation of America” presidency of Barack Obama.
The same fate should await Harris and Biden next month, at least if the media held both presidents to the same standards and scrutiny. But they won’t.
One of VP candidate J.D. Vance’s debate opponents, CBS’s Norah O’Donnell, when asking about the hurricane, started not with disaster relief, but the usual Democrat canard of climate change, “Scientists say climate change makes these hurricanes larger, stronger and more deadly because of the historic rainfall.”
Was Helene historic in terms of strength? Helene was a Category 4 storm. Wikipedia lists 41 Category 5 (meaning stronger than Category 4) Atlantic hurricanes. Many of these were in the first half of the last century before climate change was the cause de jour.
For another perspective, there was the Flood of 1916 in Asheville, North Carolina. “One spot in Altapass, near Grandfather Mountain, measured more than 22 inches of rain in 24 hours.”
Compared to Hurricane Helene with these three-day (not 24-hour) totals
More than 18 inches fell across southern Yancey County, western McDowell County, southeastern Buncombe County, and northwestern Rutherford County. That included 24.41 inches at our ECONet station on Mount Mitchell and 19.99 inches at our station on Bearwallow Mountain.
In 1916, 3.6 million cars were registered in the U.S. Today that number is 283 million. If man-made global warming caused the massive flooding today, what caused it over 100 years ago when cars were scarce and commercial airline flights were just beginning?
This information is readily available, but the media only presents one perspective. Two presidents, two hurricanes, and two vastly different media responses.
But the snapshots and soundbites live on, especially in this election season.
Brian C. Joondeph, M.D., is a physician and writer. Follow me on Twitter @retinaldoctor, Substack Dr. Brian’s Substack, Truth Social @BrianJoondeph, LinkedIn @Brian Joondeph, or message me at brianjoondeph@gmail.com.
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