By Deplorable Andrew Allen
Surprise!
As of this writing, the October surprise has devastated Haiti, parts of Cuba, and may make landfall in Florida really soon. Matthew is its name, and if forecasts are accurate it’s going to devastate south Florida. And maybe parts of Georgia. And the Carolinas (refer to Hurricane Hugo back in 1989).
Virginia, DC, Maryland, and Delaware? We’ll see.
Hello Clinton Foundation Where Are You?
According to the Clintons and their foundation, they worked miracles in Haiti. Does Hillary plan to render assistance to all those Haitians she, Bill, and Chelsea allegedly adore so much. (Chelsea cares so much about Haitians her complaints about the way the Clinton Foundation mismanaged aid to the island nation were made public not too long ago – and then Chelsea’s complaints were summarily shushed of course).
Or will Hillary forget, kinda like how she “forgot” whether or not she suggested using a drone strike to take out Julian Assange?
Because we want a President who can’t remember from day to day which drone strikes she did and didn’t propose? (Admit it, it’s funny to imagine President Hillary in rare form ordering up a drone strike only to have some aid inform her “Madam President, we killed Abu three weeks ago.”).
By the way, what was she doing proposing drone strikes, whether as Secretary of State or in any other capacity?
Doesn’t Hillary’s “I forgot” excuse tell us there is probably an email in Julian Assange’s hands containing a highly classified proposed drone strike that would have taken him out had it been executed?
So how about those Haitians Hillary?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know – unless Hillary can figure out a way to generate favorable campaign optics by wandering around whatever’s left of Port Au Prince and pretending all those distressed Black Lives Matter to her, she’ll take the “what difference does it make” approach. The basement-dwellers don’t mind.
Did Nero Play Golf When Katrina Hit Rome?
The 2016 election isn’t going to be won or lost based on what Hurricane Matthew did to Hispaniola. Nor will it be won or lost based on what happens when the hurricane hits American shores. It’s the aftermath that will be defining.
As with most things, Barack Obama doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to helping communities in need when major storms wreck them. Ask New York City and New Jersey how Superstorm Sandy’s aftermath worked out for them. Or Nashville flood victims that didn’t get so much as an “I feel your pain” from Obama on the sixth hole of whatever golf course he was vacationing at that month. Same goes for Louisiana when floods hit, or any number of other communities hit hard by tragedy.
A lackluster federal response to Katrina redux might influence voters.
Or It Might Not
Back in 2004 I was working in Pensacola, Florida. That year, Hurricane Ivan plowed through Pensacola. The devastation was shocking. I remember seeing an old man walking on a highway the day after the storm. Walking. In the aftermath. As though he had nowhere to go.
And there was nowhere to go. Pensacola was like a war zone. There may have been one store open and if there was, it was because it was the only store without a collapsed roof. Every gas station was closed. Since there was no power there was no way to run the pumps. I spent ten days without power and with no hot water, making do. As Pensacola recovered, something quickly became evident: Pensacola’s demographics had changed quite a bit.
A lot of area residents evacuated and never came back. Some couldn’t. Their homes were gone in the literal sense. So they started life over in Houston and other places they had evacuated to, with whatever they had crammed into their cars and trucks when they left Pensacola.
A lot of new people came into the area. Some were legitimately interested in helping turn blue roofs (I flew out of Pensacola to attend my father’s funeral in November 2004 and from the air, even then, Pensacola looked like a sea of blue tarps covering the damaged roofs of homes) into shingled ones again. Other newcomers had rap sheets longer than a Black Lives Matter martyr and figured Pensacola was a good place to run a scam, sell some dope, commit rape, assault, robbery, or generally do all those things that lengthen a rap sheet.
With active voter fraud investigations open in two states (Colorado and Indiana), in the aftermath of a hurricane how sure can we be that voter fraud won’t happen. Only one of the two major political parties depends on voter fraud to win elections and their mascot isn’t an elephant.
The Stakes Are High
Florida is worth 29 votes in the electoral college.
Georgia 16.
North Carolina 15.
South Carolina 9.
That’s 69 votes total in the electoral college that could be swayed by the October surprise.
Image: By United States Naval Research Laboratory – http://www.nrlmry.navy.mil/archdat/test/kml/TC/2016/
ATL/14L/visir/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=51849822
