The Daily Populous Tuesday October 1st, 2024 evening edition
Authored by esquire.com and submitted by 1900grs

The video evidence from western North Carolina looks like something Matthew Brady would have sent back from Antietam. Asheville is currently doing business as a lagoon with coffee shops. And the smaller, outlying towns like Mill Spring and Lake Lure are simply gone, literally blown off what maps they were on in the first place. The storm’s overall butcher’s bill is now more than one hundred all over the southeast. From the Charlotte News & Observer:

Many badly pummeled communities in the western part of the state have been isolated since heavy rains struck, due to power outages, missing cell phone signals and absent internet connections. Images from newsrooms and social media show houses floating down a muddied French Broad River, submerged cars and the town of Chimney Rock seemingly erased by a mudslide. More than 200 people were rescued from flood waters, according to Cooper’s office, with North Carolina’s search and rescue teams helped by 19 federal and out-of-state teams. Many mountain locations were pelted with rain totaling more than 10 inches, some as much as 29 inches. That brought catastrophic flooding, Cooper’s office said, with winds that gusted up to hurricane strength.

Last week, as Helene was winding up in the Gulf of Mexico, strengthening almost by the minute, the House of Representatives voted on a spending package that would have prevented a government shutdown. Eighty-two Republicans voted to shut down the government as a catastrophic storm prepared to devastate a quarter of the country. Let’s look at the box score.

The no votes included eleven members of the House from Florida, including thoroughgoing blowhard Rep. Byron Donald; three from Tennessee; and all five of the Republican members from South Carolina. North Carolina’s delegation remarkably showed good sense; only Rep. Dan Bishop voted against the spending package.

Project 2025, the conservative wish list that all good Republicans have never heard of, proposes radical changes in how the Federal Emergency Management Agency does its business, most of which seem to be oriented toward having state and local governments foot most of the bill for natural disasters and raising the criteria for FEMA involvement. This, of course, is at the same time that Project 2025 is crippling NOAA, the National Weather Service, and the National Hurricane Center.

And then there’s the inevitable Leonard Leo. The redoubtable Digby hipped us to a report in The Guardian about Leo’s new project—building the same kind of network he’s used to deform the federal judiciary for the purpose of institutionalizing climate denialism in the courts. From The Guardian:

The Washington DC-based non-profit Environmental Law Institute (ELI)’s Climate Judiciary Project holds seminars for lawyers and judges about the climate crisis. It aims to “provide neutral, objective information to the judiciary about the science of climate change as it is understood by the expert scientific community and relevant to current and future litigation,” according to ELI’s website....The American Energy Institute (AEI), a rightwing, pro-fossil fuel thinktank, has been attacking ELI and their climate trainings in recent months. In August, the organization published a report saying ELI was “corruptly influencing the courts and destroying the rule of law to promote questionable climate science.”

What has happened down there is the winds have changed...

TheDeepStateDirector on October 1st, 2024 at 12:30 UTC »

Almost every Republican voted AGAINST FEMA emergency funding last week.

1900grs on October 1st, 2024 at 12:05 UTC »

> Last week, as Helene was winding up in the Gulf of Mexico, strengthening almost by the minute, the House of Representatives voted on a spending package that would have prevented a government shutdown. Eighty-two Republicans voted to shut down the government as a catastrophic storm prepared to devastate a quarter of the country. Let’s look at the box score.

> The no votes included eleven members of the House from Florida, including thoroughgoing blowhard Rep. Byron Donald; three from Tennessee; and all five of the Republican members from South Carolina. North Carolina’s delegation remarkably showed good sense; only Rep. Dan Bishop voted against the spending package.

Drolb on October 1st, 2024 at 12:05 UTC »

They should be treated as traitors for that