☕️ AMERICA’S GOVERNOR ☙ Friday, October 4, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Once again, Florida's Governor DeSantis proves his salt in perfect trifecta of response to multiple catastrophes; the pros and cons of FEMA activation; good news for supply chain; conspiracies; more.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Friday! Your roundup today includes: Gubernatorial trifecta as Florida’s Governor DeSantis sweeps the executive efficacy field; DeSantis shames feds into activating hurricane relief; encouraging video from Florida’s emergency operations center; Biden bizarrely reports that disaster relief is working across the board; DeSantis saves the supply chain in good news about the dockworker strike; NPR scolds hurricane conspiracy theories on Twitter; and Florida’s Governor leads by focusing hurricane relief on next month’s election.

🗞💬 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 💬🗞

🔥 Even though he’s only Governor of one state, Ron DeSantis is single-handedly keeping the nation afloat. The evidence appeared in three separate stories this week. First, yesterday Politico ran a story headlined, “DeSantis again skips meeting with Biden after hurricane hits state.” The sub-headlined added, “Sen. Rick Scott, who is up for reelection in November, toured recovery efforts with Biden instead.”

Complaining like an old man asked to use the couch for a few days while his armchair gets deep cleaned, Joe Biden grumbled his way off Rehobeth Beach and visited storm-ravaged areas of the Carolinas and Florida yesterday.

DeSantis snubbed Biden, not to score political points off the aging vegetable, or because Biden is a quadriplegic lame duck, but because Governor DeSantis is busy. Florida’s Governor lacks time for coddling old codgers. Bless him, former Governor (now Senator) Rick Scott volunteered to steer slow-walking Biden around for a couple hours so that DeSantis could keep working.

Joe Biden — who is not busy — wasted a week since Helene tore through Florida’s panhandle before visiting the Sunshine State. There is only one reason Biden came at all, and that was the same reason that FEMA surged 5,000 relief workers and activated its volunteer network yesterday.

That reason was Governor DeSantis. Politico:

Follow this simple logic. Operation Blue Ridge, in which storm-damaged Florida began surging disaster relief to North Carolina and Tennessee since nobody else was doing it created irresistible political pressure on the Biden Administration to stop sandbagging and activate federal its relief programs.

The political pressure did not come from any fear of political embarrassment. In many ways, Biden’s brain has traveled far into outer space and is now beyond earthly embarrassment. No, Operation Blue Ridge was politically undigestible because it would have strengthened DeSantis. (It would also have highlighted President Trump who, like Florida’s Governor, stepped into the post-hurricane leadership vacuum.)

It’s a good news-bad news situation. Now that FEMA has occupied the territory, assistance from other states and from independent volunteers must follow FEMA’s federal rules. That’s the pro/con of getting the feds involved. Once they are in, they’re all the way in, and they brook no competition.

In any case, on balance, it was good news for disaster victims. FEMA’s resources are orders of magnitude greater than what Florida can provide. It would not have happened, or it would have happened much more slowly, had Governor DeSantis not made Joe Biden look feeble and slow.

🔥🔥 Check out Florida’s impressive State Emergency Operations Center:

CLIP: short DeSantis remarks at Florida’s Emergency Operations Headquarters (1:33).

I suspect there isn’t much comparable to that impressive facility in any other state. Nor could I easily find any images of FEMA’s Emergency Operations Center. With its stratospheric annual budget in the hundreds of billions, I would expect to see something even more magnificent and effective-looking than Florida’s EOC.

Maybe you guys can find it somewhere.

🔥🔥 Meanwhile, after making his great tour of the storm zones yesterday, the hamster in Joe Biden’s brain fell off it’s tiny wheel and the Former Vice President forgot what storm he was talking about:

CLIP: You have to hear this for yourself to believe it (0:19).

Here’s the actual conversation:

REPORTER: “What do the states in the storm zone need — after what you saw today?”

BIDEN: “Oh, in the storm zone? I didn’t know which storm you’re talking about. They uh, they’re getting everything they need. They are happy, across the board.”

Happy? Across the board? Really? Who is he talking about? Is something happening in space? Headline from NBC, this morning:

Honestly, I don’t think Biden has any clue what’s going on. He just says stuff now. He has a running list of stock vague answers, meaningless throwaways, which are the intellectually caloric equivalent of a gas-station donut.

It usually goes like this:

REPORTER: Mr. President! What is your response to President Putin’s demand for the immediate removal of NATO Troops from Ukraine??

BIDEN: Don’t. Not a joke. (walks away)

I’m not even exaggerating. Here’s one recent example of that one.

REPORTER: How will FEMA rush aid to affected citizens as fast as possible?

BIDEN: I have an opinion, but I don’t have all the facts. So I probably shouldn’t say anything.

It’s always like that.  Whenever the last three neurons in Biden’s brain fizzle out, he rattles off one of these non-answers like a talking applehead doll. And the useless captive media lets him get away with it every time.

🔥 The second story in our DeSantis series begins with the Washington Post, which ran a good-news article yesterday headlined, “Dockworkers’ union suspends strike, ports reopen on East and Gulf coasts.” Port operators agreed to give longshoremen eye-watering raises of +62% in a deal guaranteeing ports stay open through at least January 15th. The deal prevented a potentially catastrophic economic collapse. We can once again thank Florida’s Governor.

I don’t know how he does it. While occupied with catastrophic damage to several parts of the state, a slavering media hot on his heels for any slipup or mistake, DeSantis somehow found time to coordinate help for other states. But that wasn’t all. Florida’s Governor also leaped into the port strike disaster.

Yesterday afternoon, DeSantis deployed the Florida National Guard to Florida’s ports to keep supplies flowing amid the dockworker strike. The Governor was appalled at the looming supply chain disruptions, especially in light of desperately needed recovery efforts for Hurricane Helene.

DeSantis said, nope, that’s not happening on my watch. Here’s his tweet from around two o’clock yesterday:

Remember, Biden holds the power to end the Longshoreman’s strike instantly by signing a piece of paper invoking the ineloquently named Taft-Hartley Act, which would impose an 80-day cooling-off period. Had he done so, it would have gotten the nation at least past the immediate Hurricane recovery.

Six hours after DeSantis’ announcement, around nine o’clock, the Longshoremen announced good news! They accepted the deal in the Washington Post’s headline. Suddenly everyone was happy and contented — even though the deal was silent as to the Longshoremen’s top priority of preventing port automation:

A sixty-two percent raise sounds like a lot. But the union had previously rejected offers of a fifty-percent raise:

It’s possible negotiations were ongoing behind the scenes and Biden Administration officials maintained uncharacteristic discipline about them. But I don’t believe that. The timeline is too compelling.

It seems more likely the Biden Administration decided that after Operation Blue Ridge, it couldn’t afford to let DeSantis again embarrass the feds. A phone call was made during which a two-word Act rhyming with ‘Raft Fartley’ was mentioned. Negotiations ensued. The Longshoremen accepted a generous raise and stood down about the robots. To avoid Taft-Hartley.

Now, all of a sudden, they are excited and energized. Who cares about robots?

The reason doesn’t matter. The end of the strike before the supply chain collapsed is good news either way. But I think it is not unfair to conclude that Florida Governor DeSantis is single-handedly saving the country.

🔥🔥 Dummies! Quit reading all those conspiracy theories! Schoolmarmish NPR ran a scolding story yesterday headlined, “Politically charged rumors and conspiracy theories about Helene flourish on X.”

X! Corporate media’s bane and its newest bogeyman. Without X, without free speech, dumb citizens would have to get all their news from NPR, whose job is to ensure we don’t see or hear anything that might disturb our carefully collated thoughts.

That’s all well and good, but this laughable paragraph exposed NPR’s moronic manipulation:

The old “no evidence” gag! In other words, NPR isn’t denying the federal government is withholding aid. They just saying you can’t prove it.

NPR’s claim was a classic example of the argument from ignorance fallacy, ingloriously known as an argumentum ad ignorantiam. The statement, "there's no evidence the federal government is withholding aid," implies that the lack of evidence proves it is not happening. But just because there is no evidence yet does not necessarily mean something isn't happening or couldn't happen.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

The biggest problem with NPR’s favorite logical fallacy is that it can swing both ways. NPR could have just as easily reported, “the federal government has offered no evidence it is providing aid to affected states.”

It’s nice (for Biden) the governors of South Carolina and Georgia praised the federal response. But it doesn’t prove they got any aid; they might just be sucking up, to make sure they’re first in line for a check whenever it comes.

And, what about the governors of Florida, North Carolina, and Tennessee? They didn’t praise Biden. NPR was uncurious as to why not.

Not that long ago, there was a day when NPR would have been mercilessly mocked for this kind of weak-minded reporting. Whoever is stage-managing the media these days does not do its best work under pressure.

🔥🔥 Finally, the third DeSantis story ran in CBS yesterday under the headline, “DeSantis issues executive order authorizing election changes to Helene-impacted Florida counties.”

Yesterday, Florida Governor DeSantis issued an executive order authorizing election changes in ten counties affected by Hurricane Helene.

For obvious reasons, county election supervisors are normally prohibited by state law from changing voting locations right before an election. This commonsense rule prevents voter confusion over where they expect to vote, showing up to the wrong place, and precludes putting the ballot box down in a locked basement.

But if the polling place is suddenly submerged under three feet of water, supervisors require a little flexibility. While some people might crawl over broken glass to cast their ballots, other less adventurous voters prefer not having to swim.

The order contained other sensible changes, like letting residents who’ve evacuated vote by mail even if they didn’t request a mail-in ballot by the long-expired deadline, or if they are temporarily living with in-laws in Ohio.

In his presser, DeSantis said his order wouldn’t affect election integrity. "None of those rules are being lifted. But if there's a polling place that's been destroyed, you have an ability to set up a different site, provide proper notice and follow all the rest of state law, but this will ensure that residents that were impacted by this storm and displaced, maybe, still have the ability to vote in November's election," he told reporters.

Careful readers will recall that over the weekend, I suggested affected states start considering how to help displaced citizens vote next month. As far as I know, Florida is the first to act.

It occurs to us that things would be a lot different if the federal government worked as hard and efficiently as Ron DeSantis and his Florida team. Once again, Governor DeSantis —America’s Governor— is leading the country.

Have a fantastic Friday! Displaced or not, get back here tomorrow morning for another installment of essential news and commentary in the Weekend Edition roundup.

Don’t race off! We cannot do it alone. Consider joining up with C&C to help move the nation’s needle and change minds.  I could sure use your help getting the truth out and spreading optimism and hope, if you can:  ☕ Learn How to Get Involved 🦠

How to Donate to Coffee & Covid

Twitter: jchilders98.
Truth Social: jchilders98.
MeWe: mewe.com/i/coffee_and_covid.
Telegram: t.me/coffeecovidnews
C&C Swag! www.shopcoffeeandcovid.com