POTD: Kamala Hard At Work

 

This photograph supposedly shows Vice President Kamala Harris being briefed by the FEMA director about Hurricane Helene, which has devastated large swaths of Appalachia. But as many have pointed out, the earbud is not plugged into the cell phone, and the paper on which Harris supposedly is taking notes appears to be blank. Not surprising since the regions hardest hit are inhabited by what senior Democrats call "deplorables" or worse. 

    But the criticism of Biden or Harris by the MSM is missing. A far cry from the criticism leveled against George W. Bush for his response (or lack thereof) to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. U.S. News relates Bush's blunder:

    The National Weather Service had warned on August 28, the day before the storm made landfall on the Gulf Coast, that "most of the [Gulf Coast] area will be uninhabitable for weeks ... perhaps longer." ...

    Americans across the country were shocked by the television images they saw in Katrina's immediate aftermath. People stood on rooftops waving their arms and pleading for help as the flood waters inundated their communities. Desperate folks in the Superdome appeared in heartbreaking TV interviews begging for aid in their time of need. Making matters worse was that 67 percent of New Orleans was African American and 30 percent of the residents were poor, creating the impression that the government was insensitive and neglectful of minorities and the less fortunate. 

    While all this was going on, the president of the United States remained aloof from the disaster. Day after day, George W. Bush continued a long-planned vacation at his 1,600-acre Prairie Chapel Ranch in Crawford, Texas, and his staff didn't want to burden him with detailed information about the situation on the Gulf Coast. When Katrina made landfall, Bush had been on holiday at his ranch for 27 days, according to a tabulation kept by CBS News.

    As the hurricane grew into a catastrophe, and as the nation watched the TV coverage in horror, Bush's aides decided they had to inform the president about it in stark terms. ... At this point, Bush decided he should cut his vacation short and return home two days early to preside over the federal response from Washington. He flew back to Washington on August 31, after 29 days at his ranch.

    On the way back, he had Air Force One fly over part of the devastated area and he glimpsed the wreckage from the plane. White House officials allowed news photographers to take photos of a grim-faced Bush looking out an Air Force One window but the PR gambit backfired. Many Americans saw the photo, which was widely disseminated, as evidence that Bush was too distant from the misery below. In a 2010 interview with NBC, Bush conceded that allowing the photo to be taken was a "huge mistake" because it made him seem "detached and uncaring."

    Bush declined to visit the devastated area right away. White House aides said at the time that Bush didn't want to cause disruptions in rescue and recovery efforts by diverting security and communications to himself. But Bush allies privately conceded that he could have quickly visited somewhere along the Gulf Coast with minimal disruption, perhaps a staging site, to show solidarity with victims of the hurricane and the first responders. His supporters said later that his slow reaction and the weak federal, state and local response to the hurricane undermined Bush's reputation for being an effective crisis manager and a decisive leader. And his reputation never improved even though he later made repeated visits to the hurricane zone and steered billions of federal dollars into recovery programs. 

    Flash forward and we see a sitting Democrat President and the Democrat Presidential Candidate both ignoring the devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene and the MSM outlets similarly disinterested. Salino Zeto, writing at The Washington Examiner, observes:

In the days since Hurricane Helene hit the heart of Appalachian Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia, it has been remarkable to see, once again, the news media barely mentioning the devastating impact that has destroyed a large chunk of the region. As of Monday, there were 116 confirmed deaths as a result of the storm. The hardest hit county was Buncombe, North Carolina, which includes Asheville, where at least 35 people died.

Zeto adds:

    The images of cars, homes, and bridges being swept away, along with people desperate for water, food, and shelter, have been hard to consume. We are looking at our fellow citizens, our neighbors, and our families, and not understanding where the help is. We also don’t understand where the national news has been, as the story of Helene has earned scant coverage from NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, and MSNBC. Only Fox, which has a lot of local affiliates spread out across the region, was on top of the story.

    So why is that? Well, in part, this region has no center of power among U.S. cultural curators; no Hollywood studios, only a few corporate headquarters compared to those located in places such as New York and Washington; and no big centers of wealth.

    In fact, many people who work in Appalachia are in industries that are in the crosshairs of elites such as Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Kamala Harris. According to the Appalachian Regional Commission, the regional planning arm of the federal government, the region’s top industries are natural gas extraction, mining, manufacturing, and textiles, all of which have been disfavored by various liberal policies.

    So what where Biden and Harris doing? Biden supposedly spent the weekend "working" from his Delaware beach house, defending his choice because he had access to a telephone. Well, Bush could have worked from his Texas ranch, but that wasn't good enough then, and Biden taking calls between naps isn't good enough now. And when Biden could finally be roused enough to say something about the disaster, he stated that the federal government had given all it had before then blaming the local governments for not requesting federal assistance. Bush had similarly blamed Louisiana government officials for not having requested federal assistance and was eviscerated by the press. But for Biden, the press is running interference, blaming Trump for politicizing the disaster rather than pointing out Biden's lackadaisical response.

    Harris, for her part, partied with Hollywood celebrities before returning to Washington D.C. for her fake photo opportunity pictured above. She has shown that she is even worse than Nero.

    Conversely, Trump has already visited the region and helped distribute supplies.

    But if you were to point out to the Democrats or their media shills their hypocrisy, it would go over their head. They literally would not be able to understand it on a visceral level because all they care about is winning. Values, moral codes, even the law, are all malleable and subservient to accruing power. If it wasn't for their lust for power, they would be completely indifferent about this disaster.