The Commentariat -- Oct. 31, 2012
;)
CLICK TO SEE LARGER IMAGE. Art by Brian McFadden of the New York Times.Jerry Markon & Bill Turque of the Washington Post: "Officials in a variety of affected state said that while early voting had been delayed in some areas, most of the time was likely to be made up in the days before the Nov. 6 election. They also vowed that Election Day itself would be relatively unaffected, even as they scrambled in the hardest-hit states to make sure all voting machines would have power."
Elizabeth Kolbert of the New Yorker: "The number of ... weather-related disasters, has quintupled over the last three decades.... It is, at this point, impossible to say what it will take for American politics to catch up to the reality of North American climate change. More super-storms, more heat waves, more multi-billion-dollar 'weather-related loss events'? The one thing that can be said is that, whether or not our elected officials choose to acknowledge the obvious, we can expect, 'with a high degree of confidence,' that all of these are coming." ...
... Michael Gormley of the AP: "New Yorkers on Tuesday cheered the extraordinary rescues that saved hundreds of lives in and around New York City in the midst of Superstorm Sandy, but New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said it's time to brace for more of the same havoc which he blames on climate change." ...
... We have a 100-year flood every two years now. -- Andrew Cuomo:
Presidential Race
Nate Silver: "Just about every method for evaluating the election based on state polls seems to hint at a very slight lead in the popular vote, as well as an Electoral College victory, for President Obama."
Donovan Slack of Politico: "President Obama is hitting the trail on Thursday after taking three days off from campaigning to oversee storm response. He will attend rallies in Green Bay, Wis.; Boulder, Colo.; and Las Vegas, Nevada...."
David Nakamura & Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post: "In a campaign notable mostly for its negativity, the historic storm provided Obama with a commander-in-chief moment a week before Election Day. The president gained a rare moment of bipartisan praise, with Democratic and Republican governors alike commending the performance of the federal government.... On Wednesday, Obama will travel to New Jersey to tour damaged areas with Republican Gov. Chris Christie, a regular critic of the president who heaped praise on him in the aftermath of the storm...."
Maureen Dowd: "Gov. Chris Christie ... was all over TV Tuesday, effusively praising the president for his luminous leadership on Hurricane Sandy, the same president he mocked last week at a Romney rally in Virginia as a naif groping to find 'the light switch of leadership.' ... Christie also extolled FEMA, even though Romney has said it is 'immoral' to spend money on federal disaster relief when the deficit is so big.... Just about the only criticism the president got on his storm stewardship was, amazingly enough, from 'Heck of a Job, Brownie' Michael Brown, the FEMA chief during Katrina, who naturally thought Obama acted too quickly and efficiently." ...
... John Cassidy of the New Yorker: "Romney has a Christie problem and a FEMA problem."
Feliciz Sonmez of the Washington Post: "Mitt Romney repeatedly ignored questions about his position on federal funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) at an event for storm victims Tuesday.... 'Governor, you've been asked 14 times. Why are you refusing to answer the question?' one [reporter] asked. Romney ignored the reporters' queries and continued loading up the truck. Earlier, during the event, he ignored similar queries." ...
... Charles Pierce: Both Romney & Ryan "are on record ... as recommending that the federal government's responsibility for things like disaster relief be either handed back to the states, or privatized entirely. They have made this argument in public. They have made this argument as part of the reason why you should vote for them. They also have similar plans for the National Weather Service, and for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and they have made those arguments as part of the reason why you should vote for them. If those ideas had prevailed..., more people would have died because of this storm, and more people would still be dying from this storm two or three weeks from now.... This election has come down to a battle between two visions of the the functions of the national government and, through that, a battle over whether the political commonwealth exists at all." ...
... Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic: "So far, Romney and his allies haven't suffered politically because of their boasts to shrink or abolish federal agencies. Government, in the abstract, doesn't get a lot of love from the voters. Maybe Sandy will remind people that it should." ...
... David Firestone of the New York Times: "On a day when millions of Americans face serious hardship as they recover from Hurricane Sandy's damage, Mitt Romney ... turned a scheduled rally in Kettering, Ohio, this morning into a 'storm relief event,' and posed before piles of donated canned goods.... He described such donations as 'the American way.' ... Mr. Romney's rash promise to put a hard ceiling on discretionary spending -- which includes emergency response -- would mean far less money for [FEMA]. The House budgets developed by ... Paul Ryan would cut this kind of spending even further, an idea that Mr. Romney considers 'excellent.' Mr. Romney ignored all questions this morning about his plans for federal emergency management. It's probably embarrassing to admit those plans consist largely of collecting soup cans."
Nathan Bomey & Brent Snavely of the Detroit Free Press: in a radio ad, "... Mitt Romney has broadened his attack on President Barack Obama's auto industry restructuring, implying that General Motors used the aid to hire more workers in China than in the U.S.... GM quickly defended its performance. 'We've clearly entered some parallel universe during these last few days,' GM spokesman Greg Martin said. 'No amount of campaign politics at its cynical worst will diminish our record of creating jobs in the U.S. and repatriating profits back to this country.' Separately, Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne used an e-mail to employees today to refute the implication in a Romney TV ad that Chrysler may move all Jeep production from the U.S. to China." ...
... Sam Stein of the Huffington Post: "Mitt Romney's round of highly dubious television and radio ads suggesting that Chrysler and GM are shipping American jobs to China has managed to offend both car companies."
Liars-in-Training. Scott Keyes of Think Progress: "Documents from a recent Romney poll watcher training obtained by ThinkProgress contain several misleading or untrue claims about the rights of Wisconsin voters.... One blatant falsehood ... informed poll watchers that any 'person [who] has been convicted of treason, a felony, or bribery' isn't eligible to vote. This is not true. Once a Wisconsin voter who has been convicted of a felony completes his or her sentence, that person is once again eligible to vote.... The training also encouraged volunteers to deceive election workers and the public about who they were associated with."
Surrogate Liar. Evan McMorris-Santoro of TPM: on Monday, former Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), a "top Romney surrogate, told a group of Jewish voters in [Ohio] that ... [Roe v. Wade] is in no danger of being overturned should Romney become president.... For his part, Romney has said overturning Roe is a personal goal."
Katrina vanden Heuvel of the Nation, in the Washington Post: "Republicans ... settled on a true Plutarch ... as their banner carrier. Romney has waged a campaign of upper-class disdain for the electorate.... He called for tax cuts for all -- particularly the wealthy -- without revealing how he would pay for them. He called for deep cuts in domestic spending without revealing what he would cut, other than Big Bird. He called for repealing Obamacare without revealing what he would replace it with. He called for turning Medicare into a voucher system that would put more costs on seniors without revealing how he thought they would pay for it. He championed a 'territorial' corporate tax system that would make any profit earned abroad tax-free -- giving multinationals multimillion-dollar incentives to move jobs or report profits abroad. This part of his agenda was inviolate; everything else -- from his position on abortion to his catering to the anti-immigrant crowd to his muscular posturing on foreign policy -- seemed to be situational, depending on the audience he sought to sell."
Michael Tomasky on "Mitt Romney's Closing Con Game." Republicans obstruct, obstruct, obstruct; then blame Obama for not being "a uniter"; then Romney promises to be a uniter, unlike the "divisive" Obama. CW: this is the insanely stupid argument, BTW, that the editors of the Des Moines Register adopted as their main rationale for endorsing Romney.
Local News
CW: My husband and I are going to vote this afternoon. As Michael Grunwald of Time reports, we should expect long waiting lines, thanks to Republican's cutting early voting days nearly in half.
News Ledes
President Obama tours a New Jersey neighborhood devastated by Hurricane Sandy & makes remarks:
New York Times: "President Obama stood shoulder to shoulder with Chris Christie, the Republican governor of New Jersey, Wednesday afternoon, offering reassurance in the wake of devastating storm damage -- and a politically powerful picture of bipartisanship just days before the election."
Washington Post: "Sandy, the hybrid hurricane/nor'easter, began to lose steam Tuesday as it drifted across Pennsylvania and veered toward Canada. But the damage was done, and it will go down as a historic storm, not least because of what it did to New York City, where a surge of seawater inundated some of the most valuable real estate in America."
AP: "The floodwaters that poured into New York's deepest subway tunnels may pose the biggest obstacle to the city's recovery from the worst natural disaster in the transit system's 108-year history."
AP: "Criminal investigators from France will exhume Yasser Arafat's remains next month to try to find out how the Palestinian leader died, a French official said Tuesday."
Share Article
Reader Comments (26)
Bill McKibben says it much better than I:
NAME STORMS AFTER OIL COMPANIES (The Ones Most Responsible for Climate Change)
..."The fossil fuel companies have played the biggest role in making sure we don’t slow global warming down. They have funded climate denial propagandists and helped pack Congress with anti-environmental extremists, making sure that common sense steps to move toward renewable energy never happen. So maybe it’s only right that we should honor their efforts by naming storms for them from now on. At the very least it’s fun to imagine the newscasters: “EXXON is coming ashore across New Jersey, leaving havoc in her wake.” “CHEVRON forces evacuation of 375,000.”
At 350.org, the climate change campaign that I helped found, we’re sending out an appeal to our worldwide mailing list today. It asks two things: that people send money to the Red Cross to help with relief efforts along the Atlantic seaboard, and that they send a message to the oil companies asking them to stop funding election campaigns and use the money for recovery efforts instead."
*************************************
I know I am preaching to the choir here on this site of highly intelligent readers. So I will close with the wish and hope that all of you are safe, well and able to vote! I am also assuming that you have not been part of MittWitt's "relief effort"-- sending unasked for canned goods to New Jersey and New York. Yikes! The Red Cross is freaked out, since they will have to spend valuable time (which they do not have) sorting and sending back "stuff" that cannot be used). As Bill McKibben says: "SEND MONEY (to the Red Cross)."
According to my wife, God was so pissed off with the election being this close, that she sent Hurricane Sandy to give Obama a chance to demonstrate how Presidential he is. So if Obama wins because of Hurricane Sandy, it will be because God intended that to happen. I certainly prefer my wife's theology to Murdoch's.
The lies Romney is telling about Chrysler and GM are mind boggling.
@Calyban I have actually heard that God said it was the Gays who caused hurricane Sandy! Do you think God was pissed in 2008 and decided to have the financial collapse so that Obama would be more Presidential than McCain? Maybe Dick Moredick can enlighten us.
One of the NYC blogs I follow, Backyard and Beyond, features photos by the blogger Matt Wills. Today he posted a photo taken early this morning from the Brooklyn Promenade showing a rainbow and the Statue of Liberty. One of my friends said she saw the photo--or a similar one--on CNN.
I take this a a sure sign from Heaven that Obama will win (and Sherrod Brown et. al.).I know this because, shortly before the election in 1992, my husband and I were driving home from Chicago on a stormy day. As we were high on the Interstate along the lake, we saw a rainbow. I said, "Ah, Clinton will win for sure."And he did!
God gave Noah a rainbow sign.....
Oh, and another sign. My brother-in-law, a retired political science professor from UMass, told me tonight that he asked a colleague in North Carolina if a presidential candidate who endured as much ridicule as Romney has ever won. NO.
And their house in the Berkshires did not lose power, just some trees.
Romnoccio has inspired my last minute Halloween costume. Dress up in my corporate suit and strap a penis to my nose. It works in so many ways.
Can't think of anything more frightening than that image appearing on teevee for the next four years.
I hope the Democrats and the media (fat chance) make the most of R&R's plans for FEMA, NOAA, and the National Weather Service and hammer on it till R&R bleed. Oh and let's throw in LSB's collection of cans of soup for the survivors. Such a magnanimous gesture!
Re: your god in hand; Just got off the phone with Mother Nature. She said all of her sons including Jesus and Mohammad were good boys and none of them had anything to do with the silly little ruckus on one side of the silly little marble that the boys sometimes play a little rough with; but they are good boys and know when enough is enough. She then said that she thought the marble was dirty and needed cleaning and she was going to give it a good scrubbing when she had time. I said, What about us? She said, Please, it's not always about you. There's the worms to consider.
Way to go President O!
"Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell, chair of the Republican Governors Association and a leading Romney surrogate, said the federal response was “incredibly fast and we’re very grateful.”
McDonnell described Obama as “direct and personal” in his approach to the disaster, adding that during natural disasters, “partisanship goes out the window.”
“The election’s going to come, but it says a lot about the president, and it makes me feel good to be an American that people have had the right focus,” McDonnell added."
@Calyban. Great. Can you give us a link? I did a quick Google search & didn't find the story. Thanks.
Marie
@Marie:
It's at the bottom of the WaPo article you linked above:
David Nakamura & Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post: "In a campaign notable mostly for its negativity, the historic storm provided Obama with a commander-in-chief moment."
Catching a plane to DC this morning. Have fun everyone!
@Calyban: thanks. The dog ate the second page of my WashPo.
Marie
I suppose I'm disposed to check under bushes more than most-i.e blatantly cynical. But I have this little tickle in the outer reaches of my brain that says Christie, from Christie's perspective, would be better off not having to potentially wait until 2020 to mount a bid for the Presidency. Eight years is a long time to keep yourself relevant in a society that mainlines every possible grunt, fart and burp via Facebook and has an insatiable need for cheap drama. Yup, no downside here for Christie. He can point out Lord SB has no soul while never saying a word. He can look obscenely large-and-in-charge as well as bipartisan. It's late enough in the election cycle that he won't suffer much blowback from the GOP, who dislike Lord SB anyway.
Cuomo, same strategy for 2016, but he's already a Democrat so his praise of Obama is not newsworthy.
Although I maintain, this performance is calculated for purely personal benefit, Christie may have decided the election is going to Obama. He may just give our man a little bump toward the White House. I'll give him a pass on the Jenny Craig spokesperson jokes for a couple days.
Ala Kate - Haven't heard the media, except Maddow, make the observation that all the photo-op shit from the Lord SB rally is useless to the Red Cross. It also give you a good read on the smarts of his supporters. DUH.....
@ Kate: Thanks for posting Bill's piece––he has been a dogged fighter for years–-love the idea of naming these storms after them that's responsible in part.
@JJG: Perfect! "IT's not always about you"–––just marvelous!
@Diane: you're not cynical. Christie made the GOP convention keynote speech all about himself for exactly the cynical reason you suggest. And he's praising Obama for the same cynical reason (tho he would not do so if he thought FEMA & Obama were doing a lousy job).
Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia, BTW, has White House dreams, too. They would both like to run in 2016. But they won't get to if Romney wins next week. Knocking out Romney also undermines Right Wing World's prom king Paul Ryan, who surely has Oval Office dreams.
Marie
Despite what Rasmussen and Gallup are reporting it appears the Abandon Ship order has gone out on the sinking SS Romney. The list to starboard appears to have been too steep for many of the passengers to endure. Having Captain Quige pointing the craft in different directions each day without any indication of moral compass or any compass for that matter has not helped to keep the craft afloat in the turbulent seas of Hurricane Sandy.
@Roger Henry. I think you've confused the Bounty & the Caine, but that's okay. Cap'n Romney & the First Mate have already thrown some 30% - 47% of the crew overboard while the others bail. Meanwhile, the junior officers, unable to work in unison, are each staking out a lifeboat. Cap'n Romney & the first mate may go down with the ship, Cap'n Romney ensconced in his quarters to the last, counting his golden dubloons. The fate of the first mate is unknown.
If we're going to look for analogous figures to Captain Mittens from life at sea (whether from fiction, Captain Queeg, or real life, Captain Bligh) there are many to consider.
Queeg, even though he was a martinet and a little loopy ("he steamed over his own tow-line!"), had been a conscientious and able seaman during the war.
Bligh, another martinet, at least had some idea concept of morals and the law of the high seas. He might have been an asshole but he wasn't a completely amoral asshole (like the Rat).
Couldn't think of any good Conrad figures although Lord Jim comes close (having abandoned passengers during a storm in order to save himself), he eventually overcomes his amoral lapse and becomes somewhat of a hero. Romney already sees himself as a hero for having done nothing, so no go there.
Neither Captain Jack Aubrey nor his friend Doctor Maturin (Patrick O'Brian's heroes) fit the bill being both highly moral and competent men. No good here either.
Captain Ahab (another martinet...seems to be a trend) doesn't do it either. At least he believed in something, even if it was a whale.
Hmmm...Captain's Courageous? No. Too many good people.
Two Years Before the Mast? No. The experiences of common sailors wouldn't have anything to compare to the royal Rombot.
Hey, what about Jack London's the Sea Wolf? Yeah....the evil, sociopathic, manipulative captain, Wolf Larsen seems like a good avatar for the equally conniving, amoral Rat. Not perfect, but not bad. Larsen, like Romney, sees others he considers his inferiors as nothing but tools for his own ambitions. Pretty close.
A while back I thought of The Lord of the Flies as a great comparison for what the Modern GOP has become. They mirror the boys who follow the manipulative and power hungry Jack. Jack and his sociopaths decide that laws and rules don't apply to them and they attack Ralph and Piggy, who represent civilization, killing piggy. Jack also uses, as Republicans constantly do, the straw man of the "Beast" as a bogeyman to frighten followers and keep them in line. Very GOP-like.
Anyway, there are a lot of analogies I'm missing, but I still think the story of Lord Franklin leading his men, gone mad, towards death and destruction seems a fitting one.
@Diane
You and I must share a brain--the paranoid section, I mean. I have had the same thoughts about Chris Christie. Remember the "damning with faint praise" speech he gave at the RNC? Hardly mentioned Lord SB. Now he and Obama are BFFs.
I think Christie's plan for some time has been to hope Lord SB loses, so he can cast his net for 2016. And now, he has found the perfect stage to do it--and do it with authenticity. Loved the way he blew off those Faux News imbeciles who asked him if he planned a photo op with Lord SB in N.J. He shouted: "No, that's not who I am!"
I agree that we are receiving all sorts of messages from the Universe that Obama will win. What better message than actually to be doing your job--and doing it so well that your competitors come out and say so. Plus, I think this is Obama's strong suit. He really means what he is doing. He would ditch his campaign for the rest of the time, I do believe, if he thought his leadership were needed in Washington. In this situation, he is the Real Deal! No "Heckuva job, Brownie" moments for this Commander-in-Chief.
Remember the Supremes, she said more hopefully!
Safari, Thanks for the laugh!!
It's interesting, reading about the reaction of "Heckuva Job" Brownie to the Obama administration's lightning reaction to natural disaster.
"Whoaaaaa....wait a minute. Take it easy, relax. Things will sort themselves out."
Why is it interesting? Because it's a perfect reflection of the Republican Way.
People are in trouble? No hurry. No need to waste money helping other Americans in trouble. After all, it's their own fault, right? Let the churches and the states and private individuals do all that. They'll be fine. And if not, well, it's probably what the good lord wanted to happen anyway. We can't challenge his wisdom. People die, they die. Fuck 'em.
So when DO Republicans move fast? Two times. When there's a chance to cut taxes on the ultra rich, and when there's a chance to declare war on some hapless nation they believe can't fight back, a chance to drop bombs on non-Christians, non-whites, people who might not listen to Rush Limbaugh and nod their heads stupidly.
A chance to look tough and decisive and cowboy-Dead-or-Alive-like. THEN they move like Hermes, messenger of the fucking gods.
Another thought about Romney's wet dream of privatizing emergency management. Let's see now....when was the last time right-wing extremists privatized vital services? Oh yeah.....how 'bout when Dick Cheney handed a no-bid, open ended contract to his former company, Halliburton, to run things in Iraq. In short order, they started gouging the military--the fucking US MILITARY--on gas prices. Here they were in the goddam epicenter of petroleum production in the world, where gas should have been pennies a gallon, and they were charging the army thousands of dollars to fill up a single tank.
Nice. They placed profits over lives, hiring thugs from FOB (friends of Bush) companies like Blackwater, who allowed soldier of fortune jerkwads to spray gunfire willy-nilly around neighborhoods, murdering innocent civilians and then claiming executive privilege to make sure their drunken operatives escaped the country unhindered by inconvenient things like laws and ethics and morals.
That's just the way the GOP does business.
And if the Rat is elected, we'll have Halliburtons everywhere. But they'll be sure, if your house is destroyed by a natural disaster, to send you a can of tomato soup. And they'll only charge you $50 dollars per can. Because, you know, that's how Romney style capitalism works. Gouge those in need. Gouge 'em good.
AND, because there's no conversation about global warming, there'll be plenty of chances for Romney's privatized buddies to pick our pockets. Because, as Gov. Cuomo said, "We have hundred year floods every couple of years now."
Re Akhilleus above -- is it possible for a gombeen man to also be a plutocrat? It just may be an American class fusion, which the GOP is working on.
Patrick,
I think most plutocrats are simply gombeen men writ large. Romney is a gombeen man in an expensive suit with a nice office.
Interesting article on the Atlantic site on how $5000 spent at Walmart turned a political rally into a Sandy's victims relief rally.
Imagine how nice it would be to live in a country where bi-partisanship wasn't reserved for national disasters.