OBAMA, CHRISTIE AND SANDY

There's no doubt that the news coverage of Obama handling Hurricane Sandy has helped his campaign. I know it's awful for a tragedy to help a candidate, but if Obama's reworking of FEMA resulted in a more efficient response than Bush's response to Katrina then he deserves credit. Remember W commenting "You're doing a heck of a job, Brownie." Brownie was the loathsome lawyer for the International Arabian Horse Association who Bush had cluelessly appointed to handle natural disasters. Brownie actually had the nerve to come out of the woodwork recently to claim that Obama had jumped on Sandy relief too quickly!

The president also looked bipartisan when profusely praised by NJ Governor Chris Christie--maybe some undecided voters saw this footage on TV and decided that a the republican big-wig probably would probably not praise a muslim, communist terrorist from Kenya regardless of what Fox News had hinted. The GOP begged Christie to run for president but he refused. The NJ governor was prized as a charismatic if vicious attack dog unafraid to take on Obama, and he just delivered the prestigious keynote speech at the RNC. Perhaps Christie is congratulating Obama to help Romney lose. Then Christie could run in 2016. One wonders if some devilish deal was brokered between the two former enemies--or if Christie just turned into a yes man because he desperately needed the federal funds that could clean up Sandy's devastation. Even though that would force him to confirm the very real need for republicans' greatest irritant: BIG GOVERNMENT in the form of federal relief funds.

New York's governor Andrew Cuomo made some fascinating points on Rachel Maddow's MSNBC broadcast. One of the reasons, he claimed, that NYC was so completely shut down by Sandy is that the subway system had to have the water pumped out of the stations. When the subways were designed, this high level of flooding was never imagined since it hadn't happened before and wasn't ever expected. Global warming has increased the severity of these storms. Cuomo made the excellent point that it didn't matter whether you believed that global climate change was caused by man's actions or by nature's cycles, you can't deny that the change in weather is right here and right now. Speaking on NY1 about the quality of drinking water, Cuomo didn't mention that just in September he'd temporarily halted massive fracking plans in New York--thanks in part to personal pleas from Lady Gaga and Yoko Ono--which infuses drinking water with carcinogens. But hey, it creates fracking jobs! What a sick trade-off. I wonder if you even feel like going to work if you have cancer...

Sadly, neither presidential candidate addressed climate change in their campaigns. Obama looked especially handsome in his Air Force One flight jacket as he rushed into action, but the fact is, neither candidate dares to even threaten to slap the fossil fuel industry on the wrist for fear of losing campaign contributions. What a desperate situation. Politicians love to squawk about "mortgaging our kids' futures" if we fund certain expensive government programs/wars. So short-sighted and greedy! I'll never have any children, but I don't want others' kids and grandkids to suffer more and more storms like Sandy which increase in intensity as the years go by. Sacrificing the long-term health of the earth and it's inhabitants to lick some corporate butt for bribes? What short-sighted, greedy non-leaders. I'm with the Green Party's Jill Stein on this one. She isn't even on the ballot in NY, and it's sad that even while Obama may be efficient at disaster relief, he isn't treating Sandy as the symptom of the chronic and deadly disease that it is global warming. But hey, at least democrats acknowledge that climate change is occurring.