Happy Thursday!

Big stories mean a big Brew. Let’s get pouring.

Heroes and Villains in Helene Recovery Efforts

Good news! On Wednesday, Joe Biden finally showed up in a state impacted by Hurricane Helene. He visited North Carolina and South Carolina. Unbelievably, not a single member of his cabinet, nor his vice president, had been to an impacted area since the storm hit, according to The Federalist. None even expressed an interest in going. Does Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg think the North Carolina roads that got washed away were racist? Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who oversees FEMA, hasn’t visited the disaster zone, either. But he reportedly said FEMA does not have enough funds to make it through hurricane season. Perhaps blowing more than a billion dollars over the past two years on making things comfortable here for illegal immigrants wasn’t such a smart idea after all.

Kamala Harris hasn’t been on the ball with the devastation wreaked by Helene at all. According to the New York Post, Harris skipped annual hurricane preparedness meetings at FEMA the first three years of the Biden-Harris administration — meetings that former Vice President Mike Pence made sure to attend.

FEMA itself has been taking its own sweet time in responding. Rep. Chuck Edwards, who represents some of the hardest-hit areas of North Carolina, told Newsnation his constituents “feel let down,” and “deservedly so.”

“The response has been disappointing. We’ve begun to see some resources brought in today, but the storm was over about 80 hours ago. The storm was over about 10 a.m. Friday. We knew that the storm was coming and only today are we beginning to see the first FEMA employees and trailers and helicopters come in.”

No one wants to think politics is playing a part in the administration’s lackadaisical attitude. But then Elon Musk points out that the Biden-Harris administration prevented him from bringing Starlink to North Carolina, and the consequences have been dire.

Had the FCC not illegally revoked the SpaceX Starlink award, it would probably have saved lives in North Carolina.

Lawfare costs lives. https://t.co/FF0ugexP2g

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 2, 2024

Musk is now sweating to get Starlink devices into the impacted regions to help restore communications and help locate the missing.

Then there are heroes. Watch this dramatic rescue:

A man jumps into rapid flood waters to save an old woman whose house started floating away.

This is the America we fight to save. pic.twitter.com/tUd557PyTr

— Lucky (@TheMagaHulk) October 1, 2024

I’m not crying. You’re crying.

Longshoreman Strike Already Causing (Premature) Runs on Stores

While wandering around Costco Tuesday, I noticed something was missing. “Where is the mountain of toilet paper as high as the Matterhorn?” I also noticed the bottled water supply was down to only a few pallets. Uh-oh. The run on TP and the rest is already beginning, only hours after longshoremen went on strike, shutting down the East Coast and Gulf Coast ports.

People, relax. There’s no need to stock up on toilet paper! According to Global Trade Magazine, only 7.5% of the toilet paper Americans use is imported. And CNN says most of that comes from Mexico or Canada, so it won’t be coming here on boats, anyway.

The bad news? You’ll stop seeing bananas in your grocery stores in a matter of weeks. According to CNN, it takes bananas two weeks to get from the tree to your store shelves, and they go bad two weeks after that. Almost 100% of the bananas consumed in the U.S. are imported.

While the absence of banana splits may be heartbreaking, it’s not nearly as dire as the potential disruption of critical medical supplies, such as chemotherapy drugs. That impact could be “devastating,” Dr. Tiffany Moon of Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas told Fox Business.

The situation is “dangerous,” Dr. Pat Basu of Varsity Health Care Partners told the outlet, because most pharmaceuticals are imported.

This includes Ozempic and other weight-loss drugs that are currently en vogue, according to CNBC.

The dock strike is expected to cost the American economy about $5 billion a day. But how many lives will be lost in that process?

Joe Biden has said he is not going to intervene in the strike. However, after it began Biden called for port operators to give workers a “meaningful increase” in pay. In a statement, the White House said:

Now is not the time for ocean carriers to refuse to negotiate a fair wage for these essential workers while raking in record profits. My administration will be monitoring for any price-gouging activity that benefits foreign ocean carriers, including those on the USMX board.

“Price-gouging?” So keeping with the Kamala Harris campaign theme and Marxist price controls on groceries, the plan is to blame greedy ocean carriers for any price increases for other goods.

There’s another problem with what Biden said: The day before the strike began, USMX announced it had offered workers a 50% pay raise.

Who out there considers a 50% pay raise “meaningful”?

Despite Denials, Video Shows Emhoff at Cannes Event Where He Allegedly Slapped Girlfriend

On yesterday’s serving of Al’s Afternoon Tea, we told you of the shocking allegation that Kamala Harris’s husband slapped a former girlfriend in public while attending a Cannes Film Festival charity event in 2012.

Doug Emhoff won’t be able to deny attending the event with the woman. He’s on tape. See the clip below, about 40 seconds in.

By the way, MSNBC, which just days ago described Emhoff as “reshaping the perception of masculinity,” had no mention of the story on its website as of 3 p.m. Eastern.

Also by the way, October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

Anti-Trump Judge Releases 165-Page Summary of Jack Smith’s J6 Case

No doubt it is a total coincidence, but the anti-Trump judge in prosecutor Jack Smith’s January 6 case unsealed his 165-page “immunity motion” Tuesday. This should have been his explanation to the court why the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity would not apply to Trump, but is instead a complete layout of his case against Trump. (Ironically — or not — the release came less than a day after CBS made sure to ask Tim Walz and JD Vance about J6 and the 2020 election results before the vice presidential debate ended Tuesday night.)

Smith argues that Trump did not have the presidential immunity for official actions on January 6, which has been protected by the Supreme Court, claiming he was acting as a private individual “when he pursued multiple criminal means to disrupt, through fraud and deceit, the government function by which votes are collected and counted – a function in which the defendant, as President, had no official role.”

According to Gateway Pundit, a brief filed by the Trump team lays out the unusual nature of the filing. For example, it is four times longer than District of Columbia court rules allow for such filings.

There is but one logical purpose for Smith’s case and the judge releasing a document filled with damning allegations about Trump that there is not enough time for him to refute now: to smear him just weeks before the election. Will it work? Will people struggling to pay their bills and racing to stores to buy toilet paper care what Smith has to say about an event that happened four years ago?

And didn’t the entire J6 charade fall apart amid video proof of Nancy Pelosi taking responsibility for failing to secure the Capitol and sworn testimony that Trump did his best to get more security for it that day?

Along the Stream

Jules Gomes reports on a proposed bill in Britain that would redefine Islamophobia in “Church Silent as Sikhs Block UK’s Blasphemy Bill Criminalizing Free Speech About Islam.”

Coming up at 9 a.m. Eastern, Jim Tonkowich talks about digital “accountability” systems in “Building the AI Panopticon.”

Al Perrotta is The Stream’s Washington bureau chief, coauthor with John Zmirak of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration, and coauthor of the counterterrorism memoir Hostile Intent: Protecting Yourself Against Terrorism.