The Patriot Post® · Monday: Below the Fold
- Hurricane Watches posted in Florida as Milton continues to rapidly intensify in Gulf (Fox Weather)
Government & Politics
FEMA head: It’s “dangerous” to criticize us: Folks all across the Southeast are continuing to suffer terribly in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, and the death toll is now more than 230. Not only was Joe Biden’s Federal Emergency Management Agency late to show up to the disaster, but it appears that the agency has also spent so much money caring for illegal immigrants that it has no funds left. Criticism of the agency has been fierce, and rightly so. But yesterday, in an interview on ABC’s “This Week,” FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said public outcry over the agency’s response is both unfounded and — get this — dangerous. “It has a tremendous impact on the comfort level of our own employees to be able to go out there,” Criswell said, “but it’s also demoralizing to all of the first responders … FEMA staff, volunteers.” She added, “I need to make sure I can get the resources to where they are needed, and when you have this dangerous rhetoric like you’re hearing, it creates fear in our own employees.” Unfortunately, victims of the disaster could not be reached for comment about their own “comfort level” and “fear.”
Insurance crisis: Hurricane Helene caused a trail of devastation across swaths of Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, and especially North Carolina, leaving many residents with damaged or destroyed homes. The losses won’t be easily restored. Massive flooding was the main means of this destruction and, unfortunately, few people have flood insurance — in fact, it may be less than 1% of those in the region. It’s hard to blame folks living in a mountainous area. As Boone, North Carolina, fire chief Jimmy Isaacs observed, “People never thought they would have a problem with flooding.” Flood insurance is not typically part of homeowners insurance. Only 4.6 million homes and businesses are covered by FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program. For many victims of Helene, not only have they lost their homes, but along with it, their financial equity.
Is Scranton Joe sticking it to Kamala? We’ve been getting some contradictory signals from Kamala Harris lately. Was she the “last person in the room” with Joe Biden when he moved forward with his disastrous retreat and surrender in Afghanistan? Or is she trying to distance herself from her boss, promising to chart “a new way forward”? At an impromptu appearance at the White House press briefing on Friday, the wildly unpopular Biden strongly suggested it’s the former: “I’m in constant contact with her,” said the Frenemy-in-Chief. “She’s aware we’re all singing from the same song sheet. She, she helped pass all the laws that are being employed now. She was a major player in everything we’ve done.” Rarely are Biden and the Trump campaign as tightly aligned as they are here. “This is 100% accurate,” said Donald Trump Jr. when he saw the clip. “When Kamala finally put up her policy page most of it was cut and pasted from Joe Biden’s page.” Clearly, Team Trump approves of Joe Biden’s message.
Walz tries to downplay laws he signed granting benefits to illegals in Minnesota (Fox News) | Walz: “I don’t think people care whether” I’ve lied repeatedly (Daily Wire)
PA’s Hispanics are moving toward Trump: It’s no secret that Donald Trump has remade the Republican Party and expanded its appeal to traditionally Democrat voting blocs. He did so in 2020, but the extent to which he’s doing so this cycle caught the attention of NBC’s political guru, Steve Kornacki. Yesterday, Kornacki revealed some voter registration data and demographic trending in Pennsylvania that should give the Harris campaign cause for concern. “Some people call this the Latino belt of Pennsylvania,” he said, pointing to his map. “These are counties that have some small to mid-sized cities with rapidly growing Latino populations. And we’ve been talking about Trump improving, relative to 2020 and 2016, among Hispanic voters. … Reading, Pennsylvania, is 70% Latino. It was overwhelmingly Democratic in 2020; Joe Biden won by 45 points. But look, that’s down almost 20 points from 2012. Hazelton, Pennsylvania, is more than 60% Hispanic. In 2012, Democrats won it narrowly, it’s now a double-digit Trump place. Allentown has come down 10 points in its margin for Democrats.” Caveats apply, of course. Polling, after all, isn’t voting. But still, these are big shifts. If Trump wins Pennsylvania, it’ll be in large part because of the Hispanic vote.
Humor: Thousands of migrant farmworkers head north in preparation for the Democrat ballot harvest (Babylon Bee)
Hillary demands gov’t control over speech: In a CNN interview Friday, Hillary Clinton exposed her complete lack of concern for adhering to and upholding the First Amendment’s protection of free speech. Clinton called for repealing Section 230, which she interpreted as giving “platforms on the internet immunity because they were thought to be just pass-throughs, that they shouldn’t be judged for the content that is posted.” She elaborated, “If [social media platforms] don’t moderate and monitor the content, we lose total control, and it’s not just the social and psychological effect, it’s real harm.” It’s rather rich for Clinton, whose 2016 campaign intentionally seeded and peddled the Trump/Russia conspiracy hoax, to be expressing concern over the spread of “misinformation” via social media. As Tulsi Gabbard observed, “People like Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris do not believe in the First Amendment because they see it as an obstacle to achieving their real goal: ‘total control.’”
Stephanopoulos insists only Republican rhetoric is dangerous: During his interview with House Speaker Mike Johnson over the weekend, ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos complained that Donald Trump and his family have been claiming “Democrats are behind the effort to assassinate him,” and he took umbrage when Johnson rejected that framing. The speaker also observed how the Democrats’ rhetoric, including that of Kamala Harris, about Trump being a “threat to democracy” has incited “dangerous people to do dangerous things.” A clearly incensed Stephanopoulos suggested that Johnson was claiming that the Democrat Party was directly responsible for the assassination attempts against Trump. Johnson responded that Democrats have been engaged in character assassination against Trump “since the day he came down that golden escalator in 2015.” Moreover, “The lawfare is unprecedented. They have attacked him in every single way. They try to malign his character every single day. And the people have had enough of it. That’s why you have these massive turnouts at the rallies.”
Federal judge issues new pause on Biden administration’s latest student loan forgiveness plan (Just the News)
Security
War rages on multiple fronts as Israel marks a year since Hamas’s October 7 attack (AP)
Kamala Harris sidesteps question on whether Israel’s Netanyahu is a good U.S. ally (NY Post)
Macron calls for end to funding for Israeli arms (Hot Air)
China is upping information attacks against U.S. via AI tools: One great difference between the two presidential candidates is their posture toward Communist China. Whether the topic is trade or national security, Donald Trump seems to understand the ChiCom threat, while the Biden-Harris administration would rather ignore it and hope it somehow goes away. Good luck with that. As The Washington Times reports, “China’s military and the ruling Communist Party have turned to artificial intelligence to boost the impact of propaganda and influence operations through American social media platforms, according to a new study of Beijing’s covert operations.” According to the Rand Corporation, these operations include the use of AI tools and social media that the Chinese had once feared but are now warming up to. “China’s leaders are now embracing the use of Facebook and X as key tools for influencing foreign public opinion,” the think tank reported in its 183-page study. With its newfound command over these tools, we can expect the ChiComs to seek to influence our elections, protect their own regime, and improve their military prowess. Especially under a Harris-Walz regime.
U.S. wiretap systems targeted in China-linked hack (WSJ)
License plate readers collect data: A system that ostensibly was set up to help police enforce traffic laws by capturing images of license plates combined with a date stamp of their location is capturing much more than license plate numbers. Certain AI-powered cameras that have been mounted on vehicles with the intention of capturing license plates are also capturing images of bumper stickers, campaign signs in people’s yards, and even the T-shirts that individuals are wearing. The photograph system produced by DRN Data is used by everything from private investigators to repossession agents to insurance companies. It is building a trove of billions of date- and location-stamped photos. This database effectively allows for people’s political views and their homes to be queried. In other words, it’s a vast surveillance system. What could go wrong?
Misc.
Biden-Harris have lost over 320,000 migrant children. A journalist tracked some down and what he found was horrific. (Not the Bee)
Supreme Court lets stand a decision barring emergency abortions that violate Texas ban (AP)
The biggest cases on the Supreme Court’s new docket (Daily Signal)
The U.S. may have hit peak obesity (Morning Brew)
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