As the legend goes, nineteen years ago this month, a freak bolt of lightning struck the home of Joe Biden in Wilmington, Delaware. The lightning hit a pond nearby, traveled through some wires, and caused a kitchen fire. To make matters worse, Joe Biden wasn’t at home. He was hundreds of miles away in Washington, being interviewed on “Meet the Press.”
Fortunately, or suspiciously (depending on how you look at it), a future doctor named Jill Biden was on the scene. She called 911, and firefighters quickly arrived to find that the blaze hadn’t spread past the kitchen. Within about twenty minutes, everything was fine. “We got it pretty early,” the local fire chief said. The fire department later called the fire “insignificant.” There were no casualties.
In that respect — and in every other respect — there is no comparison between Joe Biden’s kitchen fire from 2004 and what has just unfolded on the island of Maui. Over 100 people are confirmed dead after one of the…