The Ugliness that is Donald Trump (and His Base)

Last night the Saturday Night opening skit summed up Donald Trump's view of America, some people and their lives matter and many do not.  Alex Baldwin delivered perfectly on Trump's view that Puerto Ricans are not "real Americans" when he said the line “We want to help you but we have to take care of America first.”  In Trump world, "Americans" are white, heterosexual, conservative Protestants who preach division and dislike, if not open hatred towards others that are different be it due to race, national origin, language or sexual orientation. That mindset is shared, in my view, by a majority of Republican elected officials and most certainly by must of the GOP base.  The live and weelbeing of small children or the elderly of other races or ethnicity simply do not matter.  Yet surely this morning many of theis Trump supporters will be packing church pews and underscore their total hypocrisy.  The truth is that not a single one of us had the least bit of influence on what race were born into, what country were born in, or even our sexual orientation according to modern medical and mental health knowledge (knowledge which is, of course, rejected by the ignorance embracing GOP base).  Two pieces in the Washington Post look at this sad reality.  The first looks at the SNL skit while the other looks at a true leader, the Mayor of San Juan.  Here are highlights from the first:

In the sketch, Baldwin’s Trump returns from a golfing outing in Bedminster, N.J., to take a call from the mayor of San Juan. “I’m sure she wants to tell me what a great job I’m doing,” Trump tells Sarah Huckabee Sanders, played by Aidy Bryant.

She does not. “I”m begging you. Puerto Rico needs your help,” says Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz (Melissa Villaseñor).  “I know that things are, as the locals say, ‘despacito,'” Trump says, adding that help will arrive by Tuesday, “Wednesday at the latest.” 

When Cruz tells him “that’s not good enough,” Trump responds, “Well you should have paid your bills.”

“Ma’am, I don’t know if you know this but you are in an island, in the water. The ocean water, big ocean with fishies and bubbles and turtles that bite,” Trump continues. “We want to help you but we have to take care of America first.”

Cruz asks, “Wait, you do know we’re a U.S. territory don’t you?”  Baldwin’s Trump contorts his mouth and holds it open for several seconds before stammering, “I mean I do, but not many people know that.” He then hangs up on Cruz after she asked for help again, and tells Huckabee Sanders, “Wow, that woman is so nasty.”

The second piece looks at Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz and her efforts to save American citizens in Puerto Rico even as Trump's fat ass spent yet again at one of his golf resorts.   Here are excerpts:

She once went before Congress to ask that Puerto Rico — crippled by debt — be able to reorganize under bankruptcy laws, and thereafter enter into commercial agreements with other countries.

"Puerto Rico has been denied these tools far too long," Cruz said in 2015. "And as long as our options are defined by the powers of this Congress, we will always be at your mercy. The measure of our success will always be limited by the vastness of your control over our affairs."

Two years later, Hurricane Maria has made the island's many dependencies all too apparent.

Cruz worked nearly nonstop on the ground — walking the capital's streets and doing what she could for those she met. In an interview with a Washington Post reporter just three days after the storm, she described what she was seeing. 

"There is horror in the streets," she said at the time. "Sheer pain in people's eyes."  The city's hospitals had no power. Much of the country would not have electricity until 2018, she said. Looters were already taking over some streets after dark. The few residents who still had gasoline and drinking water were quickly running out.

"I know we're not going to get to everybody in time," she said. All she could do was try.  She said that on her way to talk to the reporter, a man had asked her for a favor: "To tell the world we're here."  As tears filled her eyes, Cruz obliged. "If anyone can hear us," she told the reporter, "help." 

Her people were resilient, she said. Residents had taken the streets back from criminal gangs. But if the federal government did not step up its response, she feared, "people will die."  "I don't know if Trump's comment shows an utter lack of understanding of the political situation in Puerto Rico, or if it's just a cover to rally his base," said Yarimar Bonilla, an anthropologist at Rutgers University. "It makes no sense. 

 

"Complaining about people on the island not having food, electricity, water is not partisan. That's just basic human necessity."

 

On Saturday, Cruz dismissed Trump's tweets with a smile. She was dressed in combat boots and cargo pants as she oversaw the distribution of supplies from San Juan.  "The most powerful man in the world is concerned with a 5-foot-tall, 120-pound little mayor of the city of San Juan," she said.

Asked whether there was anything political in her barbed remarks, Cruz denied it.  "I don't have time for politics," she said. "There is a mission, and that is to save lives."  Then in the middle of an interview, the mayor got a call about a generator catching fire at San Juan hospital. She quickly mobilized her staff, barking out orders like a general.  And, within minutes, she was rushing once more out into her city.

Contrast Trump with Cruz and decide who is the true leader who cares about their citizens.  I posit that it is not the foul bigoted, lard ass in the White House. 

Trump Administration Shamed Into Send USNS Comfort to Aid Puerto Rico?

The Comfort

Recently, I noted in a Facebook post that Der Trumpenführer could find the time to generate a tweet storm for more than 5 days over NFL players allegedly disrespecting the American flag, but he seemingly could not find time to direct his administration to focus the same level of aid to Puerto Rico as was focused on Texas.  I suggested the reason why: The majority of residents of Puerto Rico are brown skinned and worse yet in the mind of Trump and his supporters, a majority do not speak English.  In Trump world and the world of today's GOP that means these people in Puerto Rico are simply not fully human and, therefore, disposable trash.  Yes, I am livid, but it's similar to the mindset that I confronted when I was fired for being gay and had no legal resource under either Virginia or federal law.   I simply did not matter because I was "other." Worse yet, neither did my children.   Ironically, it may have taken tweets by Hillary Clinton to get the Trump administration to get off its ass and order the USNS Comfort - currently docked directly across Hampton Roads harbor from my home - to head to Puerto Rico with its 1000 hospital beds and 80 bed ICU and 12 operating rooms to aid in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria which left many hospitals without power and literally causing people to die:  

President Trump, Sec. Mattis, and DOD should send the Navy, including the USNS Comfort, to Puerto Rico now. These are American citizens.

A piece at Daily Kos looks at the travesty.  Here are highlights:

Eight hundred and ninety-four feet long, 106 feet wide, and weighing 69,360 tons, USNS Comfort is a complete ocean-going medical facility with 1,000 patient beds including 80 for intensive care patients. Along with 12 operating rooms she boasts a complete dental clinic, optometry lab and pharmacy, X-ray machines, CT scanners, oxygen and fresh water production plants, capacity to store 5,000 units of blood, laundry operations, and a morgue.

She’s the size of a 20th century supertanker. Indeed, she was a supertanker — the SS Rose City — until purchased by the Navy in 1987 and converted to serve her current lifesaving mission. She and her sister ship in the Pacific, USNS Mercy, are among the rare few assets of the obscenely wealthy US military devoted exclusively to saving, rather than to taking, lives.

But today, as Puerto Rico and its 3.4 million American citizens slowly die with the island’s hospitals without power and in ruins, Comfort remains snugly berthed in her home port of Norfolk, Virginia.

Thomas LaCrosse, the Pentagon’s director of defense support to civil authorities, said U.S. officials discussed deploying the USNS Comfort to Puerto Rico over the weekend but decided that it should stay in Norfolk because it could not get close enough to any port to avoid using helicopter support to get patients to and from the ship.

True enough, the behemoth ship’s deep draft of 30+ feet bars it from San Juan harbor’s 32 to 35 foot channels even at the best of times (and these are far from San Juan’s best times). But, unmentioned in the WaPo article quoted above, that’s nothing new for the Comfort, which routinely anchors a mile or two offshore to serve disaster sites, as it did following Haiti’s devastating earthquake or, again, as it fearlessly did in 2007 in the teeth of a “storm of a decade” off Corinto, Nicaragua, where it anchored 1.5 miles offshore to receive patients. It is such a common fact in the life of this ship of mercy that militaryfactory.com notes as a mere aside that

Comfort has a deep draft and, in many ports, she has to stand offshore at least a mile. To receive wounded, Comfort has a large day-and-night helo pad.

Puerto Ricans, like all other American citizens, should be deeply chilled by the Trump administration’s stubborn refusal to deploy the Comfort, buttressed by such a transparently flimsy excuse. Because if they’re lying about the reason for their decision, then we must ask what the real reason is...and the answer is terrifying.

It can only be this: Trump intends to abandon Puerto Rico at the first opportunity, leaving its 3.4 million American citizens in their current Stone Age hell forever.

Trump is leaving the Comfort safe in Norfolk’s harbor because he does not intend to devote the years of effort, and the hundreds of billions of dollars, it will require to lift Puerto Rico back out of the Stone Age. And he doesn’t want to make that too obvious when the quiet pull-out soon begins. . . This is #TrumpsKatrina
 UPDATED: As of 3:30 PM Eastern, NBC is now quoting FEMA administrator Brock Long announcing, in a reversal of last night’s DOD comments, that USNS Comfort has just been ordered to sail for Puerto Rico. For those who are wondering, Comfort is normally required to be able to sail within 5 days after receiving the order, although it has occasionally done so within 3 days (there are about one thousand mostly civilian medical personnel + merchant seamen to mobilize, plus enormous stores of perishable medical supplies to load, plus all the usual ship’s stores to support a full complement of 2,000 souls). Comfort’s top speed is about 20 MPH, and it is (very roughly) about 1,200 miles from Norfolk to San Juan. So we’re looking at another 6-8 days before it arrives in Puerto Rican waters.

GOP's Peter King to Marco Rubio: "Stay home"

It is always entertaining to watch Republicans trash each other.  While I usually view GOP. Congressman Peter King a as a pompous and often bigoted blowhard, it is fun to see him lay into Marco Rubio and tell Rubio to "stay home" and away from New York State.  King is still big time pissed off at members of the Congressional GOP who voted against aid to New York and New Jersey in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy's devastation last year.  King points to the hypocrisy of Rubio who comes from a state that has received large amounts of federal aid after hurricanes.  Meanwhile, New York and New Jersey were snubbed even though they are net exporters of tax dollars.  Here are highlights from Politico:

Three months after some of his fellow Republicans voted against aid for Hurricane Sandy victims, New York Rep. Peter King is still furious, saying “nobody gave a damn” that there were “people close to dying in my district” and again calling out Florida Sen. Marco Rubio by name.

“My relationship with Congress will never be the same again,” the Long Island lawmaker said Friday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “They made us wait 90 to 100 days to give the most basic human aid. It was absolutely disgraceful. When I see these Republicans slapping each other on the back, all the camaraderie, ‘Hey, we’re great friends.’ All I know is that there were people close to dying in my district and nobody gave a damn. That’s not something I’m not going to forget.”

“Guys like Marco Rubio in Florida and all the money your people have gotten in Florida over the years from every hurricane that comes along and this guy has the nerve to vote against money from New York, and they come up here and try to raise money,” King said. “He can forget it.”

King previously attacked Rubio for having “the balls” to raise money on Wall Street after voting against the Sandy bill.

“I made it clear any of those people — people who voted and postured against money coming to New York and New Jersey and then wants to come up here and take money out of our pockets, forget it,” the congressman added. “They can stay home.”

On Jan. 1, after a majority of Republicans voted against a deal to avert the fiscal cliff, House Speaker John Boehner cancelled a vote on a Sandy aid package. An apoplectic King made the television rounds, instructing New Yorkers and New Jerseyeans to stop all donations to House Republicans. Many Republicans, including Rubio, instead supported a slimmed-down $24 billion package. A $50 billion package eventually passed the House later that month.

Asked directly by host Joe Scarborough whether he could “forgive and forget,” King said: “No, I won’t. And I never will.”

Let's hope big GOP donors from New York and New Jersey follow King's advice.

Chris Christie Unleashes Fury at Boehner and House GOP

Proving once again that he is more concerned with representing the people of New Jersey than kissing the asses of GOP potentates, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie went on a rant over the GOP controlled House of Representatives decision to not hold a vote on additional Hurricane Sandy relief for the States of New Jersey and New York, both of which send much more tax revenues to Washington, D.C., than they typically receive back.  The move by the House is despicable, but all too typical of today's rabid dogs in the Republican Party delegation.  Politico has coverage.  Here are highlights and video clip (above) of Christie exploding:

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie unleashed his full anger and scorn on John Boehner Wednesday, saying the House speaker’s decision to cancel an expected vote on an aid bill for Hurricane Sandy victims was “disappointing and disgusting to watch” and an example of the “toxic internal politics” of the Republican majority.

“They are so consumed with their internal politics, they’ve forgotten they have a job to do,” Christie said. “Everything is the subject of one-upmanship. It is why the American people hate Congress.”

The governor made his comments at a nearly 40-minute news conference in New Jersey. It was extraordinary spectacle: A popular national figure for the Republican Party publicly castigating the House Republican leader for showing “callous indifference” to the Northeast and being consumed with “palace intrigue.”

“Every day that we don’t get this aid are days that we can’t help people get back in their homes, get businesses reopened, get our economy really moving in our state again,” Christie continued. “It’s absolutely disgraceful. This used to be something that was not political. Disaster relief was something that you didn’t play games with.”
Christie wasn’t done.

“I’m not going to get into the specifics of what I discussed with John Boehner today but what I will tell you is there is no reason at the moment for me to believe anything they tell me. Because they have been telling me stuff for weeks, and they didn’t deliver.”

I haven't forgiven Christie for vetoing the gay marriage bill that passed the New Jersey legislature, but at least he gets it that ideology must give way to pragmatism - especially when the lives and well being of citizens are at stake.

Mitt Romney’s Campaign Insults and Deceive Voters

Living in Virginia which is being blanketed with campaign ads, I want to scream at times.  Especially when I hear Romney ads.  As I've noted before, I've been active in politics for a long, long time (I was on the GOP City Committee in Virginia Beach for 8 years quite a few years ago) and never in my recollection have I seen a campaign as blatantly dishonest and untruthful as that of Mitt Romney.  Worse yet are the Crossroads GPS ads orchestrated by nasty, sleazy Karl Rove.  They are simply devoid of truth.  There was a time when the Republican Party stood for integrity and some level of honesty.  Those days are clearly gone.  Today's Romney/Rove campaign tactics make the tawdriest whore look like a paragon of honesty and virtue.  Indeed, they make me ashamed to every have been a Republican.  It its main editorial yesterday, the Washington Post vented on Romney's lies and deceptions.  It is worth a full read.  Here are excerpts:

THROUGH ALL THE flip-flops, there has been one consistency in the campaign of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney: a contempt for the electorate.  How else to explain his refusal to disclose essential information? Defying recent bipartisan tradition, he failed to release the names of his bundlers — the high rollers who collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations. He never provided sufficient tax returns to show voters how he became rich.

How, other than an assumption that voters are too dim to remember what Mr. Romney has said across the years and months, to account for his breathtaking ideological shifts? He was a friend of immigrants, then a scourge of immigrants, then again a friend. He was a Kissingerian foreign policy realist, then a McCain-like hawk, then a purveyor of peace. He pioneered Obamacare, he detested Obamacare, then he found elements in it to cherish. Assault weapons were bad, then good. Abortion was okay, then bad. Climate change was an urgent problem; then, not so much. Hurricane cleanup was a job for the states, until it was once again a job for the feds.

The same presumption of gullibility has infused his misleading commercials (see: Jeep jobs to China) and his refusal to lay out an agenda.

And then there has been his chronic, baldly dishonest defense of mathematically impossible budget proposals. He promised to cut income tax rates without exploding the deficit or tilting the tax code toward the rich — but he refused to say how he could bring that off. When challenged, he cited “studies” that he maintained proved him right. But the studies were a mix of rhetoric, unrealistic growth projections and more serious economics that actually proved him wrong.

This last is important — maybe the crux of the next four years. History has shown that it’s a lot easier to cut taxes than to reduce spending.

Now Mr. Romney promises to reduce income tax rates by one-fifth — for the rich, that means from 35 percent to 28 percent — and to raise defense spending while balancing the budget. To do so, he would reduce other spending — unspecified — and take away deductions — unspecified. One of the studies he cited, by Harvard economist Martin Feldstein, said Mr. Romney could make the tax math work by depriving every household earning $100,000 or more of all of its charitable deductions, mortgage-interest deductions and deductions for state and local income taxes.  Does Mr. Romney favor ending those popular tax breaks? He won’t say.

Mr. Obama has a record; voters know his priorities. His budget plan is inadequate, but it wouldn’t make things worse.   Mr. Romney, by contrast, seems to be betting that voters have no memories, poor arithmetic skills and a general inability to look behind the curtain. We hope the results Tuesday prove him wrong.

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.

Chris Christie praises Obama, Doesn’t "Give a Damn" About Romney Photo Op

It long ago became obvious to me that most Republicans place their political party above the welfare of the nation and its citizens. One need look no farther than the GOP House's blocking of numerous legislative efforts that would have helped millions of Americans. Sadly, that same mindset is prevailing in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy with one possible exception: Mew Jersey Governor Chris Christie who had little patience with efforts by Fox News to bring Mitt Romney into the news coverage about the New Jersey clean up effort. What's even more fun is that Christie lavished praise on Barack Obama. No doubt the Mittster is none too happy with Christie.  Kudos to Christie.

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?