How could a natural weather event be the October surprise?
Wouldn’t it be something more like pizza gate that Hilary Clinton had to deal with in 2016.
maybe Harris and Walz at a diddy party, or Trump.
Asteroids are natural events, do you reckon one of those would be a surprise?
The October surprise was Comey in 2016. That shifted the needle irrevocably.
Only lunatics would have been impacted by pizzagate.
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Although some States south of the Mason Dixon line have removed Confederate symbols from official sites and others have deleted the names of racist advocates from institutions, there are views that the Civil War is not over ( it’s moved from the battlefield).
Back here, our history of Federation is so different from that of USA and only contemplated 7 States ( including NZ). The USA after a successful revolution to secure independence in some territories , has grown from thirteen States to 50 today.
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You’d be amazed.
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“Natural” is doing a lot of work here.
In Aust, you can predict the result of federal elections (which are mostly held in the 2nd quarter of the calendar year) by the severity of natural disasters. If there’s a bad bushfire season over summer, people start thinking about climate change again and vote accordingly. Hell, it seems to have escaped EVERYONE’s attention that the three seats the Greens won in inner Brisbane last election were all significantly flood-affected only a month or two earlier, in a climate-change-driven natural disaster.
Now, obviously the dynamic is different in the US, but when a cataclysm happens, it clearly affects people and how they vote. You hear a lot about ‘people don’t care about climate when inflation is high!’, but the reverse is also true, if your house is on fire or floating out to sea or getting blown into the next state, there’s a tendency to rearrange one’s priorities and maybe care a bit less about trans people using bathrooms on the other side of the country.
Of course, exactly how those priorities change is not certain. The Rs are trying hard to make the storms an October surprise by pushing all sorts of demented conspiracy theories about FEMA and so on, they certainly think it might move the electoral needle.
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It could be an issue if any of this speculation about FEMA being short on money has any legs.
Wrong tense.
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300+km/h winds. 4th largest on record at this time apparently.
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Mayorkas said last week FEMA “does not have the funds to make it through” the rest of hurricane season.
20 billion was authorised by congress a day before the hurricane hit.
However, presumably those funds are needed for other natural disasters that have occurred this year.
Despite all of the this, the White House said yesterday: "FEMA “has sufficient funding to both support the response to Hurricane Milton and continue to support the response to Hurricane Helene”
Will there be a Black Swan event offshore that could impact on the Presidential elections?
Reagan had a Black Swan event in 1987 with the stock market crash, in his last term as President. His response included cuts in income taxes, reducing government budgetary expenditure, cutting programs and reducing the public service workforce. AFAIK, nothing about migrants hurting the population.
Reagan was succeeded by Bush senior , who only served one term on continuation of Reaganeconomics.
I need to stay off twitter. The amount of people believing these storms are created by the government is frightening. Conveniently the same people who dont believe in climate change.
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Why else would there be the US Dept of Storms and Hurricanes if storms are not created by the Govt? Answer me that?
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Project 2025 is supposed to eliminate the National Weather Service.
So you red state kids have fun when your tornadoes and hurricanes are no longer warned.
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Dont you know its a George Soros funded space laser that controls the weather?
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On funding, extracts from Biden press gaggle in Georgia on 3 October ( latest up on WH site)
We can’t wait for FEMA supplemental approval .
This entire project is going to cost billions of dollars.
You know that Congress has an obligation to me - it seems to me , to ensure that the States have the resources they need
What Johnson said on 6 October
The thing about these hurricanes and disasters of this magnitude is that it takes a while to calculate the exact damage.
The States are going to need some time to do that
Specific requests based on the actual damage from natural disasters takes time.
The White House, in a release on Monday afternoon, said FEMA “has sufficient funding to both support the response to Hurricane Milton and continue to support the response to Hurricane Helene -– including funding to support first responders and provide immediate assistance to disaster survivors.”