News and Views: October 3, 2024

Is Anyone Here Competent? Responses To Hurricane, Port Strike, Add To White House Failures  Hurricane Helene has wrought deadly and destructive havoc across the South and Appalachia, killing dozens and doing billions in property damage. Fast on Helene’s heels, we now have another disaster hitting the U.S.: The longshoreman strike that now threatens to shut down much of the U.S. economy.

   And very conspicuously, Joe Biden did nothing about it. No jawboning. No ideas. No attempt to cool tempers and bridge differences to get a deal. Apparently Biden’s leaving it to others as he whiles away the remainder of his only term as president at his beloved Rehoboth Beach vacation home.

   Kind of like his administration’s reaction to the devastation from Hurricane Helene, the second-deadliest hurricane of this century. A complete failure.

America Last: After Spending $640 Million On Migrants And Billions Abroad, FEMA Suddenly 'Broke'   The Biden-Harris administration's 'America Last' policies have left the country vulnerable. Between draining the strategic petroleum reserve, sending hundreds of billions in cash and equipment to Ukraine (such as electrical transformers that are now needed for Hurricane Helene), and FEMA spending $640 million to help migrants, the agency tasked with emergency preparedness is now 'broke,' and doesn't have enough money to get through hurricane season which typically lasts through November.

The War against America and Israel 

In a formal introduction of his newly chosen Cabinet, President Biden proudly declared: “This is the first [time] in American history that the cabinet looks like America.”  Scrutinizing the actual appointments and not just the sex, skin color, and ethnic origins of the Biden team reveals a group that may look like America but doesn’t think like America.  In fact, it is a team whose outlook is transparently anti-American.

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Politicians Are Hindering Rescue Efforts in North Carolina, and One Rescuer Has Had Enough  “The most effective way I have found to go find these people is by getting in a helicopter and flying down the rivers and roads and looking for SOS messages or people waving us down, and then we drop down and get them,” he added.

    Howard pointed out that some of his colleagues are funding their rescue missions out of their own pockets. At the same time, Air Force helicopters are grounded and personnel aren’t working because they’re awaiting Title 10 orders that aren’t coming from above.

Mountain Mules Are Bringing Hope to Appalachia  

"A Post-Apocalyptic Scene": North Carolina Communities 'Wiped Off The Map' By Helene, Governor Says  The governor of North Carolina said that “hundreds of roads” were destroyed and that entire communities were “wiped off the map” because of storm Helene last week and over the weekend.

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Now Comes Israel's Vengeance — But Will It Go Full Old Testament?  While all options are on the table, Israeli officials indicated that its first targets would be Iran's oil facilities, air defense systems, and targeted assassinations. Iran's nuclear program will reportedly remain safe unless Iran attacks again.

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Trudeau Fines Amish For Not Putting COVID App on Phones They Don't Own  “Ontario’s Amish community is being fined $300,000 ($222,660 U.S.) for not downloading the Canadian government’s Covid app. This is even though Covid fear is about as far past its sell-by date as Joe Biden is. It’s even though religious freedom is supposed to be a priority in Western nations. And, for a kicker, it’s even though the Amish reportedly don’t use the smartphones necessary for downloading the app.”

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Bank of America Outage Leaves Customers with Zeroed Out Account Balances   An unknown number of Bank of America customers found their accounts with a zero balance on Wednesday, as many complained of outages and disruptions online. According to Downdetector, thousands of customers reported being unable to access their bank accounts, while those who could found they had zero or missing balances. 

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Suicide Pods and the Trivialization of Death 

And so the Sarco pod, as disturbing as it is as an innovation, is on this level really nothing new at all. It speaks of the perennial human need to act as if we are gods and masters of our own destiny. And, strange to tell, it highlights one last paradox: The more control we claim for ourselves over the great matters of existence, the more “godlike” we become, the more we reduce ourselves to nothing. In making our deaths trivial, we make our lives—our selves—trivial too. Our Promethean aspirations have made us small indeed. First Things Image

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Days of Elijah 

Robin Mark

These are the days of Elijah 

With Israel under fire, it’s time to prepare the way of the Lord