Where We Are This Week
Helene's aftermath in North Carolina, and Iran attacks Israel.
After the Flood
Southerners are protective of the South. We claim each other, Kentucky, Tennessee, the Carolinas, etc. Just not Florida, that’s a different region unto itself altogether.
There’s a common element between our handful of states, but it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what it is, the food, the culture, the history. If I had to quantify it, it’s whatever is in Ronnie Van Zant’s voice. That’s who we are, that’s the South to me. Ironically, he was a Floridian.
That’s why watching the fallout from Helene is so hard — it’s because I know those people. Both literally and figuratively.
I went on family vacations in North Carolina. My band toured through the state, camped in the woods, and swam in backyard pools. After I started working at the bike shop, Asheville, NC became at least a twice-a-year destination for my wife and me. Between the handful of us full-time employees, there was always one of us spending the weekend in the mountains visiting our bicycle comrades in the East.
At my house, we eat off of pottery made by hand by the people who live there from the mud of Appalachia. We don’t live there, but that doesn’t mean it’s not personal.
It should be personal for all Americans. The same way the Lahaina wildfires should have been, but, here we are, repeating our same mistakes again.
On Wednesday, Alejandro Mayorkas said that FEMA does not have enough money to take effective action in the regions hit the hardest by Helene. A division of FEMA, the Shelter and Service Program, has spent over a billion dollars over the last two years on illegal immigrants.
This is the problem with having idiots in charge of your country. Who could’ve thought that flooding the borders with undocumented migrants would lead to strange and surprising consequences?
To add insult to injury, congress passed a bill on September 25th to avoid a government shutdown without extra funding for FEMA in the budget. Originally, it was included in the legislation but leaders from both chambers of Congress, Democrats and Republicans, got together to remove all that unnecessary cash from the bill.
The spending bill passed with bipartisan support.
This is the problem with having idiots in charge of your country.
Approving a provisional governmental budget without the necessary funding to mitigate a disaster is like jettisoning flotation devices so your ship doesn’t sink. It’s exactly like that.
It really is Lahaina all over again. The residents of the Hawaiian community are still without homes, and it’s not as if that story is leading the line in the mainland.
If only there were some superfluous expenditures in the budget we could excise to make way for disaster relief. Here’s an idea: the collective annual salary of all 441 US Representatives is $76,734,000.
That might be enough to make a few trips to the grocery store.
Iran Throws a Tantrum
If world affairs had a fantasy league, what should it be called? League of Nations and United Nations have already been taken, unfortunately.
How about the Government Games? Or the Tournament of Tyrants and Democracies? Neither of those is very good, but we can circle back to it.
Points would be awarded for military victories, economic progress, democratic processes, speeches, and flag design. Fair? Big shout out to Bhutan for having an actual dragon on their flag, but we all know the real winner here is Brazil.
While everyone would go for the big ticket names like the United States of America, the People’s Republic of China or Great Britain — I’m sure a few friends of ours would get the wool pulled over their eyes by a country with the name Democratic People’s Republic of Korea — I’m picking up a smaller nation in the first round.
With the first pick of the first annual Double Fantasy Risk Games, I’m drafting Israel.
Reasons:
They have a sweet flag. Plenty of countries have the crescent moon or a cross, but only one has the Star of David.
It’s young, having won independence in 1948, so you don’t have to worry about its legs giving out anytime soon.
They’re an economic and technological juggernaut in the region they’re in. Additionally, they practically turned a desert into a green, thriving, oasis.
Lastly, they’re on an incredible hot streak.
Israel has managed to fight a war on at least four different fronts without turning itself into a wartime dictatorship. Not just that though, since the unspeakable tragedy of October 7th, Israel’s victories against its enemies have been many and virtually unanswered.
In less than a year’s time, the Jewish State has neutralized Hamas, a terrorist group that embedded itself in labyrinthine tunnels in the Gaza Strip for the last two decades, with minimal Israeli casualties.
Netanyahu and his war cabinet certainly weren’t flawless in their Gaza mission; the duration and scale of the incursion were such that outside political pressure did a great deal to hamper the IDF’s aims.
However, it seems as if they learned their lesson with Hezbollah. In a matter of a few days, over half of the Iranian-backed militia’s weaponry was destroyed, and many of its top brass, including Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, have been sent to the abyss where they will, hopefully, be frustrated in their attempts to collect their 72 virgins.
The military victory against Hezbollah can’t be overstated. For years, Iran has leveraged its power through smaller proxies in the region — and some worldwide — but it was Hezbollah that posed the most serious threat to Israel. Until this past week, the Lebanon-based terror group — and its ballistic missile arsenal — was considered an existential threat to Israel. It was essentially Iran’s satellite battalion on the border in Southern Lebanon.
So, the fact that the IDF has been able to defang its pet viper so swiftly is quite the kick in the pants for those ol’ mullahs.
In retaliation to Nasrallah’s unceremonious assassination, Iran launched hundreds of their own ballistic missiles into Israel — the second time they have attacked Israel directly in recent months — sending virtually the entire country into residential and military bomb shelters.
I’ve often thought about what constitutes a miracle. We’re not exactly turning rivers into blood these days, but that’s not to say the Spirit of Creation isn’t acting in less overt ways. If you ask Rick Rubin, the Beatles are a miracle. Yeah, probably. Yeonmi Park’s escape from North Korea to China then the Gobi Desert in freezing conditions falls into that category. The birth of a child feels like one.
But we explain these away too quickly by unique circumstances, coincidences, or our superior understanding of the machinations of the material world.
Yet by any historical standard, the defense mechanisms of David’s Sling and the Iron Dome and their unbelievable efficacy are nothing short of a miracle. Every ordinance that was heading for Israeli soil was intercepted by one of these two defense systems — continuing the success rate they’ve both established since October 7th.
Without these systems, military and civilian loss in Israel over the last 12 months would be unspeakable, yet, they continue to provide safety and security to the Israeli people to the tune of 0 casualties from this latest Iranian assault.
I’ve said this before, but I’m picking Israel because they remember what it means to be a country. Until the land of John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ is instituted from on high, sovereign nations are still worth pursuing; you know, retrieving hostages, killing your enemies, that sort of thing.
Somewhere in our bones, the United States might remember that, but imploring Israel not to go after Nasrallah, days after the bombings began after October 7th, does nothing to help rekindle those flames. The United States never retaliated for the 241 US Marines that were killed via suicide bombs in Beirut in the early 1980s. The French never diminished their significant trade relations with Lebanon after the same Hezbollah attacks killed 58 paratroopers — even after the terrorist group had established itself as a political and governing body within the Lebanese government.
Israel will surely set their sites on the Islamic Republic of Iran next, and it would come as no surprise if the Biden Administration (from his office on the beach) asked Netanyahu to turn the other cheek on this one.
Remember, the current administration freed billions of dollars from sanctions so that Iran could use the money for food and medicine for its people. Wait, you don’t think Iran was just air-mailing care packages to Tel Aviv, do you? Such nice guys.
Yes, we could be on the precipice of World War III, but I’m getting used to the thrill of it ever since Russia invaded Ukraine.
Alternatively, we might be knocking on the door of something much more positive. For decades, the Islamic Republic of Iran has influenced politics in the region and has long stood in the way of any Islamic country normalizing relations with Israel - and, thus, the Western world.
Hamas is debilitated. Hezbollah has proved to be much weaker than previously thought. Who’s to say Iran’s nuclear program isn’t just some paper maché and balsa wood?
After the Abraham Accords and the warming of Saudi Arabia to relations with Israel, a new regional hegemony might only be a few targeted strikes away. We know from the anti-regime protests from 2022 that the Ayatollah doesn’t have the most fervent support from the public, and a threatening engagement with Israel won’t be a boon for its economy or, hopefully, popular sentiment.
It would take a miracle. Long may they continue.
To a better next week,
Cheers,
~FDA