Dealing with an uninvited guest

The Friday Letter / No. 513 / October 7, 2022
Updated with minor typographical corrections at 8:42 a.m. ET. 

It was late afternoon April 3, 1974, shortly after tornadoes had trashed several rural towns in Hancock County, Indiana. I was editor of the Greenfield Daily Reporter. I was also an EMT, though not yet with the seasoning I would get later working on the very busy paramedic ambulance division of Wishard Memorial Hospital in Indianapolis.

My crew of five young hard chargers and I fanned out across the county and ended up working 30 straight hours. Everybody became a reporter – the sports editor (constituting the entire sports department), the society writer, our reporter-photographer, and one of my closest friends, the late Bob Dixon, who rode the copy desk and put out most of the pages each day. Like everyone else on our small staff, he also covered meetings, took pictures, and wrote whatever story needed to be cooked up in a hurry.

Every fire department in the county was volunteer. I found myself wearing two hats that afternoon, newsman and rescue worker. I partnered up with John Holt, garage mechanic by day and ambulance EMT when called, which was often.

We dug through the rubble of the homes – mostly frame shotguns built in the Thirties and Forties – calling out and listening for responses. Miraculously, nobody was killed that day in Hancock County.

We combed through Charlottesville, where our correspondent, the late Charles Elmer Fox – Reefer Charlie, author of Weeds and Other Good Things to Eat, Depression-era hobo and acquaintance of forager-author Euell Gibbons – and his wife still used an outhouse. Then on to Knightstown, whose ancient and dreary high school gym was where Gene Hackman defended his coaching style against an angry and impatient mob of townsfolk in Hoosiers.

Tornado Alley residents have a few hours at most to prepare for a storm. Yet deaths are comparatively fewer than from hurricanes. There are some exceptions, like the 13 who died in the April 27, 2011, tornado that wiped out 350 houses in Pleasant Grove, Ala. Perhaps it's because tornadoes strike every year. People take them seriously. Florida typically goes five years or more between killer hurricanes, and people become blasé.

A week after Ian struck Florida, its death toll exceeded 100 and was climbing. Of course the swath of destruction is wider in a hurricane, but residents had more than a week of warnings to evacuate. Photos of overturned boats and airplanes has to make one wonder what these people were thinking when Gov. DeSantis and emergency management leaders all over South Florida issued urgent warnings to get out. We read reports of Sanibel Island residents having hurricane parties. Some of them died; how many, we don't know yet.

Florida's governor is a lieutenant commander (0-4) in the Naval Reserve. He knows something about command. He got in front of Ian early with his team of directors in emergency management, law enforcement, and the National Guard to co-ordinate with utility companies, charities, volunteers, and others in a massive effort to battle this overwhelming catastrophe.

That didn't stop the media boo-birds from carping that he lacked the leadership to deal with a crisis. Never mind that the chattering classes are composed almost entirely of people who have never held a job outside of government or journalism and couldn't organize a one-car funeral.

Media reaction to the governor's hurricane response was predictable: Criticize everything, make him look weak and hurt his chances for 2024 if he runs for president. They may fantasize about derailing his re-election for governor, but his lead is huge and getting larger. He could win by 15 points or more.

This Newsweek headline is the kind of media dishonesty DeSantis and other conservatives constantly face: “Ron DeSantis Under Pressure Over 'Botched' Hurricane Ian Evacuation.” That's nice, except the story wasn't about DeSantis. It was about Lee County's evacuation order, which didn't come fast enough for Newsweek.

In fact, DeSantis, the National Weather Service, local television, Lee County and even counties as far away as Alachua (Gainesville) first issued warnings on Sept. 23, five days before the hurricane hit Florida. It might be assumed that adults are smart enough to recognize danger when told about it.

There are times – legitimately infrequent – when government needs to step in to confront a crisis. Why voters continue to elect people who have no experience or training in crisis management or any other kind of management is a mystery we will continue to pursue, albeit without a lot of optimism.

Short takes on the news

Anti-Trump Republican Ben Sasse of Nebraska is expected to resign from the Senate to become the next University of Florida president, Politico reported Thursday. Sasse publicly supported Hillary Clinton in 2016 and voted for Trump's impeachment. In 2021 the Nebraska Republican Party issued an “Expression of Disappointment” over Sasse's positions, including his silence on Democrat efforts to eliminate ballot security measures. . .

We don't expect medical schools to teach civics courses, that being the role of high schools. But we would have more confidence in our doctors if the medical establishment stuck to health care and left policymaking to policymakers. That said, we should expect even doctors to know something about the constitutional rights that made this country great, including the right of anyone to say anything about anything without the government stepping in to arrest and imprison dissenters. . .

ICE gave cell phones and attached tracking devices to 316,700 illegal immigrants before sending them on their way and asking them to please report back later, The Daily Caller reports. Taxpayers picked up the $361,218.08 daily tab. . .

Bush 43 campaigns for anti-trump GOP Senate candidate Joe O'Dea, running in Colorado but trailing incumbent Democrat Michael Bennett in the left-friendly Five Thirty-Eight poll. The Bush family is still burning over Trump's treatment of Jeb in the 2016 debates. O'Dea is said to be the only GOP Senate candidate without Trump's endorsement. . .

Guns drawn, FBI goons arrest 11 pro-life protesters who blocked a Tennessee abortion clinic in 2021, The Daily Signal reports. . .

D.C.'s deputy mayor for public safety and justice is arrested for assault and battery on a much smaller man in a long-running feud at a gym, The Blaze reports. . .

Democrat version of equity. Republicans sue Maricopa County, Arizona’s largest county and the scene of widely acknowledged fraud in 2020, for hiring more Democrat than Republican poll workers for the upcoming election. Just the News reports the county has hired 857 Democrats but only 712 Republicans. The suit also alleges other disparities. . .

Calling mail balloting “the fake vote store,” Trump says it's time to return to paper ballots and one-day voting with limited absentee voting, as in France and other countries, where elections outcomes are known a few hours after polls close. Trump spoke with John Solomon at Just the News. . .

On his podcast, Christopher Rufo offers the following: “Breaking: The American Medical Association is asking Big Tech and the Department of Justice to censor, deplatform, investigate, and prosecute journalists who question the orthodox of gender surgeries for minors, arguing that public criticism is 'disinformation.'”

In the news

. . . an occasional look at some of the weird events that make up our world.

Now they tell us. A former New York City assistant district attorney and his lawyer boyfriend are going through the back door, so to speak, and suing the city because they just discovered that, try as they may, they can't get pregnant. “They think that because both of them are male and are biologically incapable of naturally procreating, they meet the medical definition of infertile and are thus entitled to insurance that will cover the costs of using a woman to have a baby,” Jordan Boyd writes at The Federalist. Apparently, they don't teach that sperm and egg thing in law school. Is your humble correspondent entitled to an airplane? He doesn't have wings and can't fly. Just asking.

She should try dairy farming. New Orleans Mayor Latoya Cantrell says she flies first class because flying coach is dangerous for a black woman. Why the mayor of a corrupt, mismanaged and crime-riddled city needs to visit Switzerland and France isn't explained in this story at The Daily Mail, but Latoya says she'll repay the nearly $30,000 shakedown. Her motive might be to divert attention from the other news tidbit revealed last week, that she's living rent-free in a $3,000-a-month city-owned luxury apartment in the French Quarter. Democrats aren't so good at governing, but they surely know how to milk the taxpayers.

Don't put racist dressing on this word salad. A professor at Seattle Pacific University and a community organizer published a study finding that classroom whiteboards are – you guessed it – racist. The “study” was actually published in an academic journal called Physical Review Physics Education Research, Campus Reform reports.

Explains one of the co-authors: “Whiteboards display written information for public consumption; they draw attention to themselves and in this case support the centering of an abstract representation and the person standing next to it, presenting. They collaborate with white organizational culture, where ideas and experiences gain value (become more central) when written down.”

If anyone has subscription information, please pass it along. We can't wait to read more.

Our favorite headlines at the Babylon Bee:

“After Divorce Settlement, Gisele Expected To Own At least 3 Times As Many Super Bowl Rings As Aaron Rodgers”
“God Moved to FBI Watch List After Pro-Life Comments Surface”
“Hurricane-Ravaged Town Raises Ukraine Flag So Congress Will Send Aid”

Intended consequences

When SCOTUS ruled in the 2015 Obergfell decision that homosexuals can “marry,” court-watchers warned that nothing could now stop three people from saying they are married, or a loony lesbian from claiming she is married to her cat. Welcome home.

In New York, a judge ruled that a recently-departed homosexual's roommate has survivorship rights under the state's ominous rent control law which prevents landlords from actually earning a return on their investment. This is a complicated story outlined at The Unz Review, but the short version is this: Unlike normal and more rational survivorship laws – say with Social Security – in New York now it is legal for a homosexual's surviving boyfriend to inherit his rent control rights, and then pass them along to his new boyfriend when he dies, and so on in perpetuity.

The case involves three homosexual men, two of whom hated each other. The third member of this sordid triangle died, setting off the kerfuffle. You will need to read the entire story for a better understanding of this drama.

Which leads us to a question: Which is worse, rent control laws or those which fantasize homosexual “marriage”?

Recommended reading

“When Billy Met Teddy”
How the FBI failed to protect America against a real domestic terrorist
Lloyd Billingsley at American Greatness

Nominally, Billingsley's piece is a comparison of the FBI's 1980s and 1990s response to Ted Kaczynski, the Unibomber, with its treatment of its political enemies today, the FBI being an agent of the Democrat Party. The only logical conclusion is the need to demolish the FBI and start over.

Trying to reform the FBI would be like removing most of the mold from a diseased building but not all of it. Our next president, whether Trump or DeSantis, must leave no trace of this corrupt, dangerous Gestapo organization.

Quotes for today

“The Orwellian relabeling that allows us to pretend that the lithium and cobalt used in electric car batteries is not produced by slave labor is blatant and pitiful. . . Does the racism of our parents even begin to compare to our own willingness to enslave billions of Chinese people using the shortsighted ambitions of their communist dictators, while financing the gross pollution of their rivers and the chemical fouling of their air, just so that we can keep our own air and water clean, drive cheaper cars, and bring momentary joy to our children on Christmas morning? Would Christ really approve?” – Vincent McCaffrey at American Greatness.

“If the chief justice had any interest in ensuring the future of the Supreme Court’s legitimacy, he would quit acting like Mitch McConnell in a robe and start behaving like the judge he was appointed to be.” – Shawn Fleetwood, on Chief Justice John Roberts' political activism, at The Federalist.