I enjoyed one of my loveliest drives ever in late March 2012. My sainted parents had invited me to join one of their many post-retirement trips. So, I flew into Asheville, North Carolina, rented a car, and departed for their time-share condominium on Lake Lure, about an hour away.
When Kamala finally made it to North Carolina, she offered Helene’s survivors an insulting $750 each.
I expected that area to be rich in bluegrass music. So, I clicked on the radio, only to find a particularly hideous rap tune oozing from the speakers. Repulsed, I swiftly turned one station to the left.
Eureka!
The plink-plink-plink sounds were exactly what I wanted. Exquisite banjo riffs brightened the crisp, sunny, early-spring afternoon. The DJ soon announced that this local National Public Radio station was honoring the memory of bluegrass legend Earl Scruggs, who had passed away that March 28 — just days earlier. The station planned to remember Scruggs by playing his recordings, wall to wall, all day long.
Jackpot!
“And now, back to the music,” the DJ said with a warm, rich voice. “Here’s Earl Scruggs with Lester Flatt at Carnegie Hall, December 2, 1963.” Gorgeous, pristine banjo, guitar, fiddle, and other real instruments erupted from a record of the first bluegrass concert at the legendary venue that Andrew Carnegie opened in 1891. Better still, that show originally was performed the week before I was born.
Highway 74. Image by Google Earth for The American Spectator
As these fantastic bluegrass tunes poured forth, played by North Carolina native Scruggs and his ensemble, I rode along a stunning, winding, highway. Countless trees and shrubs were in bloom. Up hills and down, the curvaceous road twisted left, right, and all around. It repeatedly turned, perhaps 270 degrees in one direction and then 190 the other way.
The Long and Winding Road
No complaints! The vista through my rented SUV’s windshield could not have been prettier. Highway 74’s topography, sunshine, blossoms, blue skies, and bluegrass all delivered one of my most delightful experiences as a motorist. I traversed small towns called Fairview, Gerton, and Bat Cave. The entire area struck me less like the South and more like Vermont.
Before long, Lake Lure emerged. Its tranquil waters glistened beside vacation mansions as the Blue Ridge Mountains climbed into the heavens. My father and I canoed on that very lake a few days later. My parents and I savored the local restaurants and shops. And the highlight of our trip was a tour of The Biltmore, America’s Largest Home®. George Washington Vanderbilt erected it in 1895, as his extended family virtually drowned beneath waves of its own cash.
The Biltmore: America’s Largest Home® (Photo: Purplemango2020 via Wikimedia Commons)
Asheville, Lake Lure, The Biltmore, and their surroundings. What spectacular places!
Too bad so much of that has washed away. Residents of western North Carolina saw their region vanish, thanks to Hurricane Helene’s astonishingly relentless rains. Rushing waters stole miles of the stunning roads I navigated. The bridges I crossed: swept aside. Lake Lure: Clogged with tree stumps, demolished cars, ripped-up pieces of living rooms, and chunks of former kitchens. The trees and bushes full of spring flowers — uprooted and turned to projectiles that shredded houses and, even worse, human bodies.
The survivors are fine people trapped in a living hell. They waited an obscene amount of time for federal aid that is trickling, not flooding, in. These Americans deserve none of this.
I have three pieces of advice for the citizens of this battered region.
First, fly to Tijuana, run across the border, and surrender to the Border Patrol. Rather than suffer from the Kamala Harris Administration’s almost sadistic neglect, these people’s every need will be catered to: Free food, healthcare, cell phones, plane tickets. Their wish will be Kamala’s command. Especially if the western North Carolinians can fake foreign accents, they will be in like Flynn.
As this calamity unfolded, staying put in these communities meant that locals waited and waited and waited in vain for federal disaster assistance and personnel. For the first week after the storm, thousands of Helene’s victims wondered if they ever would be seen again.
The federal response was somewhere between sluggish and comatose. Emergency equipment, generators, medicine, food, and water all were in painfully short supply. While these Americans suffered, President Joe Biden relaxed at his Rehoboth, Delaware, beach house. Meanwhile, Kamala, who blew off her hurricane-preparation briefings, raised funds in Hollywood.
As the saying goes: Not a good look.
Homeland Security Secretary Antonio Mayorkas complained about a lack of resources.
“We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have. We are expecting another hurricane hitting,” Mayorkas said on October 2. “FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season.”
But even as Mayorkas excused Washington’s sloth by pleading poverty, FEMA was flush with cash for babysitting illegal aliens.
“I wanted to ask if the White House plans any legal responses for the state sending migrants on buses and, secondly, if there’s [sic] plans to reimburse those cities or provide funding for how they’re handling that,” a journalist asked presidential Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on September 16, 2022.
“FEMA Regional Administrators have been meeting with city officials on site to coordinate available federal support from FEMA and other federal agencies,” Jean-Pierre replied. “Funding is also available through FEMA’s Emergency Food and Shelter program to eligible local governments and not-for-profit organizations upon request to support humanitarian relief for migrants.”
In Fiscal Year 2023, FEMA dedicated $364 million to nurture illegal aliens. For FY 2024, FEMA allocated $650 million — a one-year 78.6 percent increase. If Kamala, Biden, and Mayorkas had not squandered $1,014,000,000 to pamper people who broke into America, FEMA would have more funds on hand to offer hope and dignity to those stuck in the mud of Lake Lure and its environs.
“Over the last 4 years the Biden-Harris admin has steadily transformed FEMA — the agency responsible for responding to natural disasters like Hurricane Helene — into an illegal alien resettlement agency that emphasizes DEI over public safety,” America First Legal declared.
Despite Mayorkas’ pleas of poverty and these hard data on FEMA’s cornucopia for illegal aliens, the catastrophe agency now claims that the controversy over these facts is fueled by — wait for it — “conspiracy theories.” (Never mind that conspiracies often undergird such “theories.” Just ask Julius Caesar, Jesus Christ, Abraham Lincoln, Archduke Ferdinand, the September 11 dead, and many more.)
“Officials will push to uncover the source of conspiracy theories hampering Hurricane Helene relief efforts, the head of the US Federal Emergency Management Agency said,” according to Bloomberg. “Disinformation in previous disasters came from U.S. foreign adversaries, said FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell, and though she doesn’t know if that has been the case for Helene yet, the cause is ‘certainly something that will be looked into.’”
The Heritage Foundation assisted Criswell’s hunt for cred in October. Investigators at the conservative think tank exposed the disinformers who claimed that illegal aliens scored more than $1 billion in catastrophe relief: FEMA. Here is Heritage’s recap of FEMA’s own announcements of aid to illegals:
Image used by permission of the Heritage Foundation.
Case closed.
Meanwhile, a failure to communicate plagued the Helene Zone early on. Telephone lines were torn down, and cellphone towers dissolved like sandcastles at high tide. Too many of those in distress could not shout for help.
“One of the frustrations is that Kamala Harris had $42 billion and years to get rural satellites and rural communications established and didn’t get one household connected,” U.S. Senator Ted Budd (R – North Carolina) told Fox News anchor Eric Shawn on Sunday. “In a matter of a button click, with a phone call from Donald Trump, Elon Musk had hundreds of Starlinks delivered on the ground,” thus allowing satellite-based communication. “We need really strong, entrepreneurially minded, non-bureaucratic thinking to get this solved in the future.”
Atop catalyzing Musk’s resources, Trump visited Helene’s victims in Georgia. He arrived with the Rev. Franklin Graham and trucks brimming with relief supplies, courtesy of Samaritan’s Purse.
Trump also launched a GoFundMe page and urged his supporters to donate up to $1 million to aid those aching in Helene’s wake. As of Friday morning, that appeal had generated 48,200 contributions totaling $7,713,057. And all at the behest of an alleged narcissist who supposedly thinks only of himself.
My second piece of advice to those in the Helene Zone is to fly to Lebanon and seek Kamala’s help there.
Kamala Calamity
While Kamala shuffles in house slippers to aid her fellow Americans, she dons running shoes to dispatch assistance to foreigners. When Kamala finally made it to North Carolina, she offered Helene’s survivors an insulting $750 each. This echoed the $700 that the Kamala Administration gave those who escaped the August 2023 conflagration in Maui.
Kamala focused her full compassion overseas.
“The people of Lebanon are facing an increasingly dire humanitarian situation. I am concerned about the security and well-being of civilians suffering in Lebanon and will continue working to help meet the needs of all civilians there,” Kamala announced Saturday via X. “To that end, the United States will provide nearly $157 million in additional assistance to the people of Lebanon for essential needs such as food, shelter, water, protection, and sanitation to help those who have been displaced by the recent conflict. This additional support brings total U.S. assistance to Lebanon over the last year to over $385 million.”
North Carolinians and their neighbors needed food, shelter, water, protection, and sanitation.
My third piece of advice for those struggling after Helene: Stop voting Democrat.
The Democrat Party’s mistreatment of these embattled Americans blends big-government incompetence and cruel disrespect. One could almost hear Team Kamala say, “Take that, you crackers!” as these southerners’ appeals for mercy went unheeded for days.
Democrat campaign consultant David Axelrod’s breathtakingly condescending words encapsulated this attitude. On his podcast, The Axe Files, Axelrod said that Democrats in Left-dominated Asheville are “upscale liberal voters, and they’re probably going to figure out a way to vote.” But, in contrast, Axelrod continued: “I’m not sure a bunch of these folks who had their homes and lives destroyed elsewhere, in western North Carolina, in the mountains there, are going to be as easy to wrangle for the Trump campaign.”
The Democrat outlook seems to be Helene? Whatever. These Trump-loving hicks had it coming.
When illegal-alien loving Leftists prefer to send humanitarian aid to south Lebanon rather than to North Carolina, and then laugh about it, it’s time to deny Democrats what they crave most: Votes.
READ MORE from Deroy Murdock:
Kamala for President … of Lebanon
ICE Numbers Offer Chilling Proof of Kamala’s Illegal Alien Crime Crisis
Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News contributor.
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