Romney Likens Hurricane Relief to Cleaning up "Rubbish and Paper Products" from a Football Field

Providing further proof that he is not only out of touch but also devoid of any empathy for others, Mitt Romney has likened hurricane relief in the wale of Hurricane Sandy to cleaning up "rubbish and paper products" from a football field.  Apparently, Romney has been too busy counting his money or concocting new campaign lies to take the time to watch the media coverage of the horrific devastation in New York and New Jersey and other areas damaged by the storm.  Or perhaps in Romney's mind, given his multiple homes, recovery from the storm is as simple as moving to one of your other residences while the one that has been devastated is rebuilt.  The more I see of this man, the more terrified I am of the prospect of someone like him in the White House.  Salon looks at Romney's incredible out of touch comment on hurricane relief.  Here are excerpts:

It’s become a platitude to say that no one should be playing politics with Hurricane Sandy, but that’s silly. When the performance of government suddenly becomes a literal matter of life and death to many Americans, we ought to be thinking about what kind of government we want to have, and that involves politics.

It’s impossible not to see that this storm has devastated Mitt Romney’s presidential candidacy. The response to the hurricane has seemed like one long dramatic Obama campaign commercial, a lesson in “We’re all in this together,” while Romney, the man who said he’d dismantle FEMA, flails on the sidelines.

Romney’s “relief” event outside of Dayton, Ohio, was surreal enough to be a campaign parody, with the candidate comparing the federal government’s hurricane relief efforts to the time he and some friends had to clean up a football field strewn with “rubbish and paper products.”

[O]utside of Romney’s embarrassing European tour this summer, when he insulted Britain over Olympics planning and divulged a secret briefing by MI6, this is Romney’s worst moment yet. As the storm approached, political reporters dredged up his pledge to “absolutely” restructure FEMA to give power to the states. At a Republican debate in June 2011, he suggested the private sector should do more, because federal spending even on FEMA was “jeopardizing the future of our kids.” Tell that to the kids of New Jersey, Gov. Romney. And of course the Ryan budget would slash funding for FEMA.

After Romney’s laughable relief event Tuesday, reporters swarmed him to ask if he still favors sending FEMA funding and responsibility back to the states. .  .  .  .  .  Romney won’t answer because he can’t.

The heroes of Sandy, so far, are the first responders, the cops and firefighters and emergency technicians, the folks evacuating patients from hospitals and trapped citizens from flooding. These are the people who’ve been demonized by Republicans for the last two years: the public workers who have become the new “welfare queens.” 

No one can be reassured by Romney’s empty posturing. Unless there is some government-abetted or neglected further disaster, I think Obama will be reelected next Tuesday. Hurricane Sandy has reminded us what’s at stake.

Look at the photos in this post and then try to tell me Romney doesn't have his head up his ass and that he would not be a menace in the White House.

Why Democrats Need to Politicize Hurricane Sandy

Republicans - especially those within the Kool-Aid drinking Tea Part element of the party - love to talk about about the need for "smaller government," motivated primarily by what I view as greed.  They want to slash government agencies and services so that they can hoard more money for themselves. Their attitude is to Hell with the best interests of the nation not to mention the unfortunate who may find themselves needing assistance through no fault of their own.  

In this current presidential election the "starve government" charge is being led by Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan - two spoiled, amoral brats who were born to wealth and as a result protected from the everyday trials and financial worries that haunt us regular Americans. They promise to slash government so that the wealthy can enjoy more tax cuts.  But when confronted about specifics, their "plans" resemble a pile of Jell-o that lacks substance and any coherent framework.  Enter Hurricane Sandy and the massive damage that has been inflicted up and down the East Coast from North Carolina to New England.  Now, Mitt Romney is being challenged about his past pledges to gut FEMA and federal emergency relief agencies/programs.  And low and behold, he's shape shifting and trying to disavow his past statements and positions since he knows voters will be appalled by his callousness and willingness to allow citizens to suffer even more when hit by natural disasters such as Sandy.  

The man is a heartless liar who can empathize more with a rich friend who just saw his/her horse lose a dressage event than he can with families who have lost their homes.  He and Ryan need to be challenged.  A piece in New York Magazine makes the case for politicizing Hurricane Sandy's aftermath and exposing the agenda for what it is.  Here are excerpts:

Disasters are inherently political, because government is political, and preventing and responding to disasters is a primary role of the state. But there is an innate tension in overtly politicizing a disaster. 

What you are going to see over the next week is an overt effort by Democrats to politicize the issue of disaster response. They’re right to do it. Conservatives are already complaining about this, but the attempt to wall disaster response off from politics in the aftermath of a disaster is an attempt to insulate Republicans from the consequences of their policies.

Funding for FEMA is something the parties wrangle over, with Republicans pushing to limit the agency’s budget, and Democrats pushing back. FEMA has to fight for its share of a constricted pot of money for domestic non-entitlement spending, a pot of money that the Republicans propose to radically constrict. How radically? Romney’s budget promises require shrinking domestic non-entitlement spending as a share of the economy by about two-thirds.

The Republican proposal to eviscerate this wide array of public functions is one of the underdiscussed questions of the election. Republicans have defended it using a very clever trick. They don’t explain how they would allocate the massive cuts to all these programs. When President Obama explains what would happen if those cuts were allocated in an across-the-board fashion, Republicans scream bloody murder. And when any single one of those programs enters the political debate, they can deny plans to make any specific cuts: They won’t cut education, they won’t cut support for veterans, and so on.

[T]he most concrete statement of Romney’s view of disaster spending came in a Republican debate last summer. John King, the moderator, asked Romney whether FEMA needed to be devolved to the states. Romney agreed and went farther:

The GOP is the party arguing for splurging on a long vacation at the beach rather than repairing the roof. Naturally, they want to have this argument only when it’s sunny and never when it’s raining. There’s no reason to accommodate them.

Sandy Slams New York - New York Times Slams Romney

New York City took a pummeling from former hurricane Sandy with tremendous damage, including seven flooded tunnels crossing the East River, as the New York Times describes in part here:

Bridges remained closed and seven subway tunnels under the East River remained flooded.

The storm was the most destructive in the 108-year history of New York City’s subway system, said Joseph J. Lhota, the chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, in an early morning statement. “We are assessing the extent of the damage and beginning the process of recovery,” he said, but did not provide a timetable for restoring transit service to a paralyzed city. 

As the storm lashed the city, waves topped the sea wall in the financial district in Manhattan, sending cars floating down streets. West Street, along the western edge of Lower Manhattan, looked like a river. The Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, known officially as the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel in memory of a former governor, flooded “from end to end,” the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said, hours after Governor Cuomo of New York ordered it closed to traffic. Officials said water also seeped into seven subway tunnels under the East River.  

By early Monday evening, the storm knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of homes, stores and office buildings. Consolidated Edison said that as of 1:30 a.m. Tuesday, 634,000 customers in New York City and Westchester County were without power. Con Edison, fearing damage to its electrical equipment, shut down power pre-emptively in sections of Lower Manhattan on Monday evening, and then, at 8:30 p.m., an unplanned failure, probably caused by flooding in substations, knocked out power to most of Manhattan below Midtown, about 250,000 customers. Later, an explosion at a Con Ed substation on East 14th Street knocked out power to another 250,000 customers. 

Reports from New Jersey suggest huge damage across that state.  In short, devastation extends from North Carolina through New England.  The situation is a strong statement as to why the federal government needs to remain in the disaster response business.  Even though Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan would eliminate FEMA and federal response programs.   No doubt Romney "I'm a Liar" Romney will deny that he ever made the proposal - even though it was caught on video.  In its lead editorial, the New York Times eviscerates the out of touch and uncaring Romney on this issue. Here are editorial highlights:

Disaster coordination is one of the most vital functions of “big government,” which is why Mitt Romney wants to eliminate it. At a Republican primary debate last year, Mr. Romney was asked whether emergency management was a function that should be returned to the states. He not only agreed, he went further. 

“Absolutely,” he said. “Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go even further and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better.” Mr. Romney not only believes that states acting independently can handle the response to a vast East Coast storm better than Washington, but that profit-making companies can do an even better job. He said it was “immoral” for the federal government to do all these things. . . . .

It’s an absurd notion, but it’s fully in line with decades of Republican resistance to federal emergency planning. FEMA,  . . . . .

The agency was put back in working order by President Obama, but ideology still blinds Republicans to its value. Many don’t like the idea of free aid for poor people, or they think people should pay for their bad decisions, which this week includes living on the East Coast. 

Over the last two years, Congressional Republicans have forced a 43 percent reduction in the primary FEMA grants that pay for disaster preparedness. Representatives Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor and other House Republicans have repeatedly tried to refuse FEMA’s budget requests when disasters are more expensive than predicted, or have demanded that other valuable programs be cut to pay for them. The Ryan budget, which Mr. Romney praised as “an excellent piece of work,” would result in severe cutbacks to the agency

After Mr. Romney’s 2011 remarks recirculated on Monday, his nervous campaign announced that he does not want to abolish FEMA, though he still believes states should be in charge of emergency management. Those in Hurricane Sandy’s path are fortunate that, for now, that ideology has not replaced sound policy.  

Let's be clear.  Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are not only a danger to the country, they are a threat to decency and morality.  Romney/Ryan need to be defeated next week.

Romney: Shut Down Federal Disaster Agency, Send Responsibility To The States

With literally millions of Americans huddling in their homes as Hurricane Sandy bears down on them, there is one point that ALL of us need to remember: Mitt Romney would eliminate FEMA and leave disaster relief to the states.  States that have nowhere near the money or ability to handle serious disasters.  In Romneyworld, it's all about spending as little as possible on regular Americans so that he and his fellow plutocrats can pay as little as possible in taxes.  And as for  the rest of us?  We are on our own.  When talking about the 47% of Americans that he holds in contempt, Romney for once was honest when he stated: it's not my job to worry about these people.  So much for the Gospel message to care for others.  I find the man to be morally repulsive.  If it's not his family and rich cat friends, his attitude is "f*ck them" - be they men, women or children.  Here are highlights from Huffington Post:

During a CNN debate at the height of the GOP primary, Mitt Romney was asked, in the context of the Joplin disaster and FEMA's cash crunch, whether the agency should be shuttered so that states can individually take over responsibility for disaster response.

"Absolutely," he said. "Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that's the right direction. And if you can go even further, and send it back to the private sector, that's even better. Instead of thinking, in the federal budget, what we should cut, we should ask the opposite question, what should we keep?"

"Including disaster relief, though?" debate moderator John King asked Romney.

"We cannot -- we cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids," Romney replied. "It is simply immoral, in my view, for us to continue to rack up larger and larger debts and pass them on to our kids, knowing full well that we'll all be dead and gone before it's paid off. It makes no sense at all."

To Romney - like so many among the Christofascist and Tea Party circles, most of us are disposable garbage.  A point that is underscored by Romney's desire to repeal the Affordable Health Care Act and leave millions with emergency rooms as their sole source of medical help.  It's morally sick, but it is the face of today's GOP. It is the true face of Mitt Romney.  Are all Mormons this morally bankrupt?

The GOP Fears the Ghost of Katrina

As the delusional and out of touch Republicans begin their coven in Tampa, one ghost is hanging over the convention: the prospect of Hurricane Issac hitting New Orleans just as the show comes to its crescendo.  Equally terrifying is the prospect that the Obama administration's response to wherever the storm hits will further under score the GOP incompetence that followed Hurricane Katrina almost exactly 7 years ago.  Politico has this on the ghost's specter:

Republicans have begun to whisper a grim word that sums up all their fears about the 2012 party gathering: Katrina.

No longer is GOP fretting focused on the prospect of Tropical Storm Isaac striking Tampa and blowing up party’s plans to crown Mitt Romney as its nominee. There’s still the possibility of logistical disruptions, but an epic meteorological mess doesn’t appear to be in the offing here.

Instead, party officials and convention planners are increasingly anxious about a different and possibly more damaging scenario: a split-screen broadcast of Republicans partying in Tampa alongside images of serious storm damage in states such as Louisiana and Mississippi.

Some Republicans here worry the juxtaposition of events could revive memories of the disastrous 2005 storms — Hurricanes Katrina and Rita — and the government’s terrible handling of them.

Public outrage over the George W. Bush administration’s response to those catastrophes — Katrina especially — shadowed the president and the GOP for years. For Republicans, Katrina is their version of the Carter administration’s failed Iranian hostage rescue in 1980 — an enduring symbol of collective incompetence, a political wound that will not heal.

What one hopes will come out of the storm coverage over the next few days is the fact that among the many cuts sought under the Romney-Ryan budget is emergency response agencies that are needed in precisely this type of situation.  The rich would benefit while others might be left literally to drown.  Such are the GOP's "values" nowadays.