Not wrong, yet not right

By Carl

Atmospheric scientists have a really tough job: predicting weather. This year, 2013, has seen a hurricane season that lived up to predictions, and yet, did not:

In August of 2011, Tropical Storm Irene became the worst storm to hit New York since 1972. A year later, Hurricane Sandy made Irene look like a drizzle, and Governor Andrew Cuomo referred to the danger posed by the massive storms as the "new normal." So it was hardly comforting for New York, still largely unprepared for another Sandy, when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted in May that there was a 70 percent chance this year's hurricane season would be more active than normal, with three to six major (category three or higher) storms.

Then ... nothing happened. With the season winding down, there have been twelve named storms, two hurricanes, and not a single major hurricane to date. On the surface, it seems kind of embarrassing. But one of the lead scientists behind the NOAA forecast says that it is just proof that you shouldn't pay attention to hurricane projections anyway.

[…]Consequently, while the number of storms predicted was on target, "They just didn’t find an environment that was conducive to go on and become strong," Franklin says. "So we had lots of weak systems that didn't last very long."

What may have happened, scientists speculate, is a phenomenon called “sinking air”.

When air rises, it carries moisture from the surface, especially the ocean, to upper levels of the atmosphere. This creates instability and instability breeds thunderstorms and thunderstorms seed hurricanes.

When the opposite happens, when air sinks, it brings drier air down, and basically soaks up any thunderstorms. They’ll still form but they get short-circuited.

This is important because of the human propensity to a short attention span.

It’s one year since Superstorm Sandy hit New York City, and we’re still digging out. We can take preventative steps, but there’s nothing like being prepared.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

In wake of tornado tragedy, both of Oklahoma's senators prove once again to be self-serving assholes

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Inhofe and Coburn, Oklahoma's finest.

First it was Tom Coburn, the junior senator, who said that he would "only support relief aid if it's offset by cuts elsewhere." As I wrote, "disaster relief is apparently one of those things you have to negotiate with Republicans. (Okay, we'll help you out a bit, but only if we fuck some other people elsewhere.) Chris Christie understandably went ballistic when Republicans did this in response to Hurricane Sandy. But who will speak for the people of Oklahoma?"

Well, Jim Infofe, but with shameless hypocrisy. The senior senator said that Hurricane Sandy aid, which he opposed, was "totally different" from Oklahoma tornade relief, because the Sandy bill had "things in the Virgin Islands. They were fixing roads there and putting roofs on houses in Washington, D.C." "Everyone was getting in and exploiting the tragedy that took place," he added. "That won't happen in Oklahoma." No? Your buddy Coburn's already gone there.

In any event, Inhofe is full of shit. As the Post's Rachel Weiner and Matt DeLong explain:

The senator appeared to be referring to the fact that some funds from the Sandy package for the Federal Highway Administration could go to the Virgin Islands, as well as $2 million allocated to the Smithsonian for roofs damaged by the storm. We don't yet know what a congressional relief package for Oklahoma would look like, if one is even necessary. As of Tuesday morning, FEMA has $11.6 billion in its Disaster Relief Fund.

So some money could have gone to an American territory through the FHA and there was a need to repair some damage at the Smithsonian, an essential American institution.

Look, Inhofe and other Republicans were just looking for anything to block Sandy relief. This extra spending was what they used to justify their opposition.

Read more »

A tale of two cites

By Carl 

So, it was the best of times last week as I took a week's break from the news and the grind of ordinary life and went on a tropical vacation to central America. Specifically, I went to the Honduran Bay Island of Roatan. And I couldn't help but take a critical eye to my surroundings.

Now, none of this should in any way, shape or form being construed as a reflection on either the people of or the government on the island. Everyone I met was very nice, hard-working, and friendly. But it was hard not to notice one glaring problem.

A little history is in order.

Honduras was originally two nations: Spanish Honduras, and British Honduras (now Belize). As you can imagine, Hondurans spoke Spanish, and Belizeans spoke English.

However, the Bay Islands were mostly populated by the Caracol people, originally black slaves from Jamaica and the Caymans who moved to the Bay Islands when Great Britain repealed slavery in the mid-1800s.

That population has moved out in large numbers over the past twenty years, primarily due to the devastation caused by 1998’s Hurricane Mitch, which devastated the island. Mainland Hondurans then moved in, as Roatan is one of the few places in Honduras where work is plentiful and easy to come by. It is a huge tourism destination, and has a deep water port that fits a cruise ship nicely.

Also, as part of the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, the second largest in the world, the waters off the island are teeming with fish. And scuba divers.

Read more »

In charge of the six hundred

By Carl 

Not the Light Brigade, but the remaining families who are still homeless after Hurricane Sandy devastated and destroyed their homes.

They've been living in city-provided shelter, basically hotel rooms, since the disaster clean up began. On April 30, the city is pulling funding for that program. They will for all intents and purposes be homeless:

Many families who fell victim to Sandy will be left with no place to go when the city pulls the plug on its hotel program at the end of the month, advocates warn in a new report.

Some 592 families are still in hotels six months after the storm, and the city is trying to get them into other housing by the April 30 end of the program.

Advocates are urging the city to scrap the deadline.

I'm not one of those advocates. New York City can't possibly be expected to finance their living arrangements indefinitely.

But here's the thing: Where are all the free marketers who claim that private enterprise will step in when times are tough? These people live less than fifteen miles or so from the greatest concentration of wealth in this hemisphere, if not the world. You mean to tell me that those billion dollar bonus packages that bankers and brokers dole out annually couldn't have gone towards helping to fund relief in these areas?

Read more »

Freedom is free. Fascism, however...

By Carl 

So it turns out that Mayor Mike Bloomberg has yet another black eye in his third term – Occupy Wall Street:

After eleven months of talking in the courts, New York City has agreed to pay Occupy Wall Street almost a quarter of a million dollars.

The lawsuit, filed on May 24, 2012, by lawyers representing OWS, claimed that 3,600 of 5,000 books in the free People's Library were destroyed during the violent raid and eviction of the protest camp in Zuccotti Park.

In addition to books, also destroyed were computers, live streaming equipment and bicycles which were owned and operated by an environmental nonprofit, Time's Up.

It's barely a victory... after all, people were harassed and arrested and injured for the crime of protesting and assembling peacefully, and $186,000 of that is eaten up by attorneys' fees... and yet, it's a start.

The greater victory is this: the city actually acknowledged responsibility for the actions of its police officers. This is diametrically opposed to the usual, "Who? Him? Don't know him. Rogue cop."

I can sympathize with the city, but to a limited extent. The administration of a city the size of New York demands some corner-cutting somewhere, and the fact that rights were trumped is indicative of that. Safety and health have importance, too, as well as the rights of other people.

With OWS, however, we see a situation where – some sanitation issues aside – peaceful protestors were using a public space, admittedly provided by a private corporation but in exchange for zoning variances, effectively making it a public space. It was this company that demanded OWS be removed, which started the whole mess back in 2011.

Read more »

Most shameful moment on The Daily Show

By Frank Moraes 

The Daily Show annoyed me again Wednesday night with the most shameful deception I have ever seen on the show. My friend Andrea tells me I'm just angry at Jon Stewart over his treatment of the platinum coin idea. This is not true. I am often bothered by how The Daily Show deals with issues and bends over backwards to seem "balanced" when it is anything but. Last night, the show took on Hurricane Sandy relief. I figured they would do a good job of this, but they blew it completely.

They started by noting Republican obstruction in the House. Then they showed a clip that made Chris Christie look good. That's fine, when it comes to this issue, Christie has been okay (although not nearly as good as his press would indicate). Then they showed Representative Mick Mulvaney complaining about pork in the bill. In particular, there is money to help the fishery industry in Alaska and the Gulf Coast. Stewart followed up with a typical, "Can't we all just get along?"

There are two problems here. First, putting pork in a bill is part of getting along. In fact, a lot of the Congressional dysfunction these last few years comes from the fact that Congress has made it much harder to do this kind of horse trading. Second, Congressmen always have some very good reason for not voting for any particular bill. Oh yes, Mulvaney would love to vote for the bill, if only it weren't for this one thing! Stewart is showing himself to be extremely naive about the way politics works.

Read more »

Debt ceiling crashing down

By Frank Moraes 

As I posted the other night, the House voted to fund Hurricane Sandy relief with only 49 Republicans. The Fiscal Cliff deal passed the House with only 85 Republicans. Both of these votes violated the "Hastert Rule," which says that the Speaker of the House should only bring a vote to the floor if a majority of his caucus is in favor. That should mean that for a vote to come to the floor, there should be at least 122 Republican votes. But twice in one month, this has not been the case.

This is good news, and it makes me kind of hopeful about the Debt Ceiling crisis. It suggests that the Republican leadership is not going to allow its extremist caucus to destroy the United States and thereby the Republican Party. Hopefully. But there really is cause to be hopeful. It isn't just this recent abandonment of the "let the crazies block all legislation" rule.

The whole Republican Party seems to be splitting in half over the issue. Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins have said that the Debt Ceiling must be raised. Admittedly, both of these Senators are of the "not quite so crazy" variety of Republican, but it is always the weakest joists in the ceiling that crack first. 

Read more »

Make their day: Why Democrats should stand firm on raising the debt ceiling

By Mustang Bobby 

Oddly enough, the Democrats are itching for a fight with the Republicans over the debt ceiling even to the point of letting them shut down the government.

Well, at least one is: 

Echoing President Obama's refusal to negotiate on the debt limit, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) warned Republicans on Friday that Democrats have no intention of giving in to any of their demands in exchange for lifting the nation's borrowing limit to pay its bills.

"I think that risking government shutdown, risking not raising the debt ceiling, is playing with fire," Schumer told reporters in the Capitol, in response to a question from TPM. "Anyone who wants to come and negotiate, and say 'we will raise the debt ceiling only if you do A, B, C' will not have a negotiating partner. And if then they don't want to raise the debt ceiling, it'll be on their shoulders. I would bet that they would not go forward with that."

The No. 3 Democrat declared that Obama and congressional Democrats have learned their lesson from the 2011 fiasco that nearly led to a default. He predicted that Republicans will give in and cleanly raise the country's borrowing authority — which expires around March — if Democrats stonewall and give them no other option.

"If they realize for sure that they're not going to have a negotiating partner, they'll have to find another route to bring the change that they want and they won't risk the full faith and credit of the United States. The only way they get leverage is when they think we might negotiate on those issues," he said. "There was a very sad moment in 2011 when that happened. And I think there's a strong consensus at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue among Democrats not to repeat what I would call — I think what most of us would regard — as a mistake."

Read more »

Chris Christie, America's governor, says he'll be ready next time

By Richard K. Barry

The "next time" to which Christie refers is 2016 for a potential run at the presidency. As he said in an interview in Newark on Tuesday night:

I wasn't ready to run for President this time. If it comes, I know that I will be more ready for it than I would have been this year.

He added:

We lost two national elections in a row. We're not connecting with Americans on the issues that matter most to them. We haven't had the best candidates. I believe that Mitt Romney is a good man. I was out supporting him before anyone else, but he simply didn't connect with Americans.

Read more »

The concert for people who really shouldn't need it (but do)

By Carl 

Tonight I, like hundreds of millions around the globe, will be glued to my television to watch the 12.12.12 Concert for Sandy Relief.

And like hundreds of millions of people around the globe, I have better things to do with my three hours than sit and watch TV.

It's not that I'm knocking either the concert or the intent behind it. People in this area still need help getting back on their feet and my last few weeks have been spent doing what I can and then some to assist. Even people who adequately prepared and even had enough insurance to cover their losses are waiting around for checks to begin rebuilding and feeding themselves.

It's this last I'm finding a really bitter pill to swallow.

This tragedy occured within ten miles of the greatest concentration of wealth on the planet. Hell, this tragedy affected the greatest concentration of wealth on the planet!

So where are the rich? Where are the dazzling limos and gleaming boats, the pearl-strung ladies who lunch, delivering meals and blankets? 

Read more »

Matt Taibbi on how the media are suddenly for big government

By Frank Moraes

Matt Taibbi is angry -- at a lot of different people, but mostly the media. He's been watching how they have reacted to the storm. Before, the main thing was that Big Government was baaad. Small government was the way to go. I've written about this: journalists are almost all in the upper or upper-middle classes. As a result, when it comes to economic issues, they are conservative. But more to the point: they are selfish. If it affects them, it matters; if it doesn't, not so much.

That has been brilliantly on display this week. I'm not suggesting that Sandy isn't a big deal (although few in the media were that interested in all the Haitians who died before it hit the east coast). But they are clearly a lot more interested because it has affected New York and Washington. Taibbi notes that Hurricane Sandy was all that was necessary to turn the mainstream media into Big Government lovers. And thus Obama lovers.

Except, of course, that of the two candidates, Obama has a far better claim to being the Small Government guy. He's the guy who has slashed the deficit, year after year. And Romney is Joe Isuzu giving away $5 trillion in new tax cuts and $2 trillion in new military spending. But just look at the record: Democrats are the fiscal conservatives.

Taibbi sees it a little differently. He thinks the federal budget will go way up regardless of who is elected President. Under normal circumstances, I would agree with him. (But don't misunderstand me: in general, federal spending going up is a good thing.) But with the Republican House, I think we will see more of the obstructionism that has defined the last four years.

But Taibbi knows who the true villains are in all of this: the rich Randians who depend upon government largess that the poor could only dream of:

But everyone lives off the government teat to some degree -- even (one might even say especially) the very rich who have been the core supporters of both the Bush presidency and Romney's campaign. Many are industrial leaders who would revolt tomorrow if their giant free R&D program known as the federal military budget were to be scaled back even a few percentage points. Mitt's buddies on Wall Street would cry without their bailouts and dozens of lucrative little-known subsidies (like the preposterous ability of certain banks to act as middlemen in transactions when the government lends money to itself).

And if it's not outright bailouts or guarantees keeping the rich rich, it's selective regulation and carefully-carved-out protections from competition -- like the bans on drug re-importation or pharmaceutical price negotiation for Medicare that are keeping the drug companies far richer than they would be, in the pure free-market paradise their CEOs probably espouse at dinner parties.

The evolution of this whole antigovernment movement has been fascinating to watch. People who grew up in public schools, run straight to the embassy the instant they get a runny nose overseas, stuff burgers down their throats without worrying about E. Coli and sleep happily in planes they know have been inspected by the FAA (I regularly risked my life in Aeroflot liners for a decade and know the difference), can with straight faces make the argument that having to pay any taxes at all is tyranny. It's almost as if people feel the need to announce that they don't need any help with anything, ever -- not even keeping bridges safe or drinking water clean.

That's right. But a big part of the problem is that the government goes out of its way to make welfare for the rich invisible just as it goes out of its way to make welfare for the poor as humiliating as possible. I once thought about getting food stamps. There were over 50 pages of documents to get as much as $200 per month in food assistance. The TARP loans of billions of dollars? Two pages.

We've got to get the government off the backs of the banks! Matt Taibbi isn't wrong to be angry.

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg endorses Obama

By Richard K. Barry

Well done, Mr. Mayor.

In a surprise move, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said on Thursday Hurricane Sandy helped him make up his mind that Barack Obama was a better choice for the country.

In an editorial at Bloomberg, he wrote:

The devastation that Hurricane Sandy brought to New York City and much of the Northeast — in lost lives, lost homes and lost business — brought the stakes of next Tuesday's presidential election into sharp relief.

Our climate is changing. And while the increase in extreme weather we have experienced in New York City and around the world may or may not be the result of it, the risk that it may be — given the devastation it is wreaking — should be enough to compel all elected leaders to take immediate action.

Ultimately, Mr. Bloomberg seems to have reasoned that with the stakes so high it might be a good idea to endorse the guy who believes in science.

In the endorsement, Bloomberg cited several things Obama has done to combat climate change, but he also cited other reasons like the president's support for abortion rights and same-sex couples -- important issues for the mayor.

Both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama had been seeking the mayor's endorsement, but the mayor noted that however sensible Romney had been in the past on issues like immigration, illegal guns, abortion rights and health care, he "reversed course on all of them."

Climate change may well have been what swayed Bloomberg ultimately, but not knowing or trusting what Mitt Romney stands for at any given moment seems also to have been a major factor. 

I hope others take heed.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

It's only natural

By Mustang Bobby

Talk about your perfect storm: When you have an epic natural disaster occur a week before a very close election, of course it's going to be politicized: 

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. At the moment of greatest urgency, emotions run so hot that it's hard to fairly assess the costs and benefits of disaster response. On the other hand, moments of normality are too cool, and it is far too easy to minimize the costs of preparing for an eventuality that is far from the horizon.

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.

[...]

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.

And as long as it doesn't interfere with the relief efforts, I say go for it.

I sure hope that no one is so naive as to think that President Obama's very visible 24/7 stewardship of the response by FEMA and various government agencies was not due in large part to the lessons learned from Katrina and the BP spill in 2010. Sure, you can hope that he would have done it anyway, and I have no doubt that he would have, but perhaps he wouldn't have been so subconsciously aware of the photo-ops, too. Even Mitt Romney's clunky attempt to turn his political rally into a GOP version of Live-Aid, complete with singers and a can drive (which is exactly what the Red Cross said they don’t need) showed that the Republicans, when pushed to the wall, can awkwardly look like they give a damn about people who lost their homes and had no second home to go to. (Mr. Romney compared this to cleaning up a football field. Seriously.)

So if the recovery is made easier and people get the help they need quicker, there's nothing at all wrong with making the point along the way that when it comes to that sort of thing, there is a political message that goes along with it.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Not from The Onion: Michael Brown on the response to Sandy

By Michael J.W. Stickings and Mustang Bobby

MJWS:

I've always thought that Brown was Bush's convenient scapegoat after Katrina, even if it was clear that he wasn't at all qualified for the job and didn't do anywhere near a good job, let alone a heckuva one. He and I even had some e-mail exchanges several years ago after I published a post at The Moderate Voice (somewhat) defending him. He's a nice guy, or at least he was to me, and he seemed like a thoughtful man.

But this... this is just stupid, not to mention unnecessarily partisan (and self-defensive) at a time when what is needed, as Chris Christie knows, isn't division but unity. And if he's really having a hard time figuring out the difference between Benghazi and Sandy, perhaps he should think a little harder. One involves trying to gether meaningful intelligence after a sudden uprising/attack in a dangerous foreign location, while the other involves responding, with measures already in place, to the devastation caused by a storm that everyone knew was coming, along the rather less foreign eastern seabord of the United States.

If you have trouble getting your head around that, you shouldn't be commenting publicly about anything, especially if you didn't have much credibility to begin with.

**********

MB:

Michael ("Heckuvajob Brownie") Brown, failed ex-head of FEMA under George W. Bush who completely screwed up Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts, on President Obama's response to Hurricane Sandy:

"One thing he's gonna be asked is, why did he jump on [the hurricane] so quickly and go back to D.C. so quickly when in... Benghazi, he went to Las Vegas?" Brown says. "Why was this so quick?... At some point, somebody's going to ask that question... This is like the inverse of Benghazi."

Yeah: he's saying President Obama responded too quickly.

There's never a large polo mallet around when you need one.

Chris Christie's moment

By Mustang Bobby

Charles S. Pierce bear-hugs Chris Christie:

In case you missed it, no matter who wins next Tuesday, Chris Christie almost guaranteed his inauguration on January 20, 2017. From his tough-guy outburst at that dough-brained mayor of Atlantic City, to his outburst of genuine grace regarding the president and the federal response to the deluge that swamped his state, to his fundamental acceptance of the reality that we need a national government to solve national problems, to the way he slapped around the denizens of the Fox News Couch of Stupid, you have to give it to the man. He's been a genuine star over the last 48 hours.

I have a great deal of respect for Charlie Pierce, but I don't think this moment is going to cement anything for Gov. Christie. First, people tend to forget how their politicians reacted to a natural disaster unless they completely screw it up, and trying to capitalize on one event, even one this size, doesn't have a long shelf life. As Steve M notes, "President Guiliani." Or, for that matter, Romney running mate Bobby Jindal.

No matter how much the gruff lug from Joisey makes Maureen Dowd's heart go pitty-pat, Mr. Christie would be a hard sell to the true believers in the GOP base. He obviously did not get the memo that no Republican can ever say anything nice about Barack Obama. Ever.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Desperation hath no shame: Romney's phony "relief" effort in Ohio

By Michael J.W. Stickings

"You know, I'm totally into this whole giving thing. Voters like that."

Or, to put it another way, Romney is desperate and has no shame, and is consequently ramping up his relentless deluge of dishonesty.

BuzzFeed's McKay Coppins has the sordid details. Read the whole piece -- it's really worth it. Here's a taste:

But even as Romney, clad in blue jeans and rolled-up sleeves, hustled around his area of the gym, shaking hands, thanking supporters, and stacking cases of bottled water on top of each other, signs of stagecraft remained.

As supporters lined up to greet the candidate, a young volunteer in a Romney/Ryan T-shirt stood near the tables, his hands cupped around his mouth, shouting, "You need a donation to get in line!"

Empty-handed supporters pled for entrance, with one woman asking, "What if we dropped off our donations up front?"

The volunteer gestured toward a pile of groceries conveniently stacked near the candidate. "Just grab something," he said.

Two teenage boys retrieved a jar of peanut butter each, and got in line. When it was their turn, they handed their "donations" to Romney. He took them, smiled, and offered an earnest "Thank you."

Great, eh? Okay, here's more:

The plan was for supporters to bring hurricane relief supplies to the event and then deliver the bags of canned goods, packages of diapers, and cases of water bottles to the candidate, who would be perched behind a table along with a slew of volunteers and his Ohio right-hand man, Senator Rob Portman. To complete the project and photo op, Romney would lead his crew in carrying the goods out of the gymnasium and into the Penske rental truck parked outside.

But the last-minute nature of the call for donations left some in the campaign concerned that they would end up with an empty truck. So the night before the event, campaign aides went to a local Wal-Mart and spent $5,000 on granola bars, canned food, and diapers to put on display while they waited for donations to come in, according to one staffer. (The campaign confirmed that it "did donate supplies to the relief effort," but would not specify how much it spent.)

At more senior levels of the campaign, careful consideration was being given to the tone of the program, officials said.

In other words, it was theater, a photo-op to try make it seem like Romney cares, really, really cares, and is doing something, really, really doing something, to help with the relief effort. Which is to say, it was a campaign event masquerading as an expression of generosity and leadership:

The cryptic advisory went out to press several hours later, announcing the time and location of a "storm relief event" on Tuesday. As Sandy made landfall in New Jersey, Romney's campaign jet carried the candidate, along with his staff and traveling press corps, back to Ohio after an afternoon rally in Davenport, Iowa.

Meanwhile, on the ground in Dayton, aides were working feverishly to depoliticize the planned event. Campaign signs were removed from the premises, long rows of folding tables were set up, and logistics were painstakingly arranged to accomodate physical donations.

And all the more pathetic given that it was in Ohio, which Romney is desperate to win (and where he's solidly behind in the polls), and given that President Obama is providing "outstanding" (Chris Christie's word) leadership by doing a great job in a time of crisis.

Am I being too hard? Okay, the president is doing presidential things, but shouldn't Romney be praised for helping in whatever way he can?

Sure, but he's not helping. As Jon Chait notes, "Coppins doesn't mention that donating goods rather than money is not only inefficient or even useless, but counterproductive, forcing relief organizations to divert resources to stow them." And, again, the Romney campaign was managing this as carefully as they do everything Romney does. It was meant to score political points. Period.

And it was typical phony Mitt.

Final thoughts on Sandy

By Carl 

It occured to me last night that the city and the surrounding region was about two hours from a Katrina-level event.

The projected storm surge plus tide was around eleven feet, closing in on a record for our region. The storm surge was almost 14 feet, and was short of high tide by about two hours.

Sandy showed mercy and sped up, in other words. Easily, we could have had a surge + tide of closer to twenty feet.

A twenty foot surge would normally have triggered an evacuation of Zone B, as it would equal or exceed a Cat 2 hurricane surge.

Not only would that have swamped areas that weren't even ordered to evacuate, it would have come without warning, much as it did in parts of Manhattan that weren't already evacuated, specifically, the 14th Street/Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village sections. This, above anything else, is what is delaying so much of the reboot of the city.

See, lower Manhattan, south of Canal Street, is serviced by two power plants that were taken offline ahead of Sandy, which is one big reason the evacuation order was given. The water would recede, but it would take days to bring the power back online.

However, the 14th Street plant was deemed safe (they might have sandbagged it) but the surge was higher than projected and it became swamped, as well. That was actually online when the storm hit. The machinery in there was running. That's a monster of a hit.

Similarly, if you click the link I referenced earlier, you'll see that about half of Brooklyn would be affected. How do you move 500,000 people, or more, at the height of a storm?

You can't. We would have had death tolls in the hundreds, and even with the storm as "mild" as Sandy was -- comparatively speaking -- we're approaching 100 dead in the region. 

Millions of New Yorkers are without heat or power or water. In Hoboken, NJ, people are actually out of food, and stores can't be stocked up because, well, they're closed still. That's 50,000 people with water still flowing into their basements, freezing, getting ill, and starving. 

Entire swaths of homes were destroyed, surprisingly, by fire. The gas lines into homes were severed when the homes were lifted off their foundations, even if they dropped right back down. Pull down a power line, get a spark, and ballgame over. And with the flooding and broken water mains, firefighters could only stand and watch.

Some even watched their own homes burn to the ground.

Raw sewage is flowing in the streets and into the basements of homes on the barrier islands. Those homes will probably be condemned until a full cleaning can begin, including the land, which is effectively one big septic tank right now. That's millions of dollars, perhaps tens of millions of dollars, lost.

And we're not even considering the health issues of the mold and the bacteria floating in the waters and evaporating into the air. That may end up being the lasting legacy of Sandy.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Leadership over partisanship: Obama and Christie on the ground in New Jersey

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Allies, perhaps even friends for a brief time, certainly two leaders facing a crisis and doing what they need to do to bring genuine relief to those affected by Superstorm Sandy.

Why is major Romney surrogate Christie doing this? He may think that President Obama's leadership has been "outstanding," but why did he come out and say it, and why has he been so public about it?

It depends how you look at it. There may in fact be no rift between Christie and Romney, but events dictate a different course of action than remaining in the partisan fray. Christie has a job to do -- and he's doing it.

Jeffrey Goldberg suggests that Christie is actually "subverting" Romney and that he's motivated by a) sentimentality in response to the devastation in his state, and/or b) a desire to run for president in 2016 and so implicitly by a desire to see Obama win. (He offers the third possibility, that Christie is driven by his crazy love for Bruce Springsteen, but that's rather less likely.) I have no doubt that Christie is looking ahead to a future presidential run, but Christie has been a loyal partisan and Romney booster, and so it seems unlikely that he's actively trying to help the president in partisan terms. As for the first possibility, I think Goldberg sells Christie short.

Again, Christie has a job to do. He loves New Jersey and is proud to be its governor. He sees all the devastation and it affects him deeply. He knows he needs federal help, and federal money, just as he knows that when you face a crisis like this you have to do what needs to be done and that, yes, some things are more important than partisanship.

And so, as Doug Mataconis suggests, Christie is just "speaking his mind" in praising the president -- that is, he's putting his state first, putting the partisan spin to the side, and saying nice things about President Obama because President Obama is, in fact, doing an outstanding job.

I'm generally extremely critical of Christie, while generally respecting his political skills, but in this case he deserves our praise for putting his state before his party, even if that means speaking the truth about President Obama at the expense of Mitt Romney.

(photo)

Photos of the day: Lambertville, New Jersey

By Richard K. Barry

My brother-in-law took this shot, and my sister the one below. They're in Lambertville, New Jersey, which is in central New Jersey on the border with Pennsylvania. As of last night, they were still without power. Something about the dangling signs kind of says it all. And while that picture is cute, the one below, also taken in town, speaks more to the danger and power of the storm.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

A sense of perspective

By Carl 

It's been interesting reading the national press coverage of Sandy. I haven't had much opportunity to review what you all have been saying about us behind our backs until this morning.

I like that Romney's bullshit about FEMA has come back to haunt him and that the bold and brave words he spoke in the quietude of calculation have become hot button panic topics for his campaign.

I understand the need to pander to your base and to attract leaning voters, but my thinking is, if you say something, have the guts to stick by it when gut check time comes. President Ford told us to drop dead when it mattered most. Yes, he regretted it and yes, ultimately he had to eat them, but you'll notice he still battled Jimmy Carter to a virtual tie, despite pardoning Nixon.

Maybe he had more latitude. Still, it's been an exercise in evolution to watch Romney wriggle like a catepillar on a hot grill.

Similarly, the "turn" in polling towards Romney seems to underestimate the damage that Sandy created in the telephone networks in the east, as well as being premature to Obama's handling of the crisis. When Governor Sammich Chris Christie, an erstwhile vice president name and likely candidate for the nomination in 2016, praises Obama not once but frequently, that's going to have a lot more import than any six Jeep ads either campaign can run, given Christie's "independent, tell-it-like-it-is" perception.

Finally, a few people have asked me for an assessment as to whether the national news has the coverage underreported, overestimated or just about right. I think it's safe to say that the true damage, the true horror of this event, is only just now being reported. Even this morning, another dozen homes went up in flames, 36 hours after the worst of Sandy had passed, because first responders couldn't get to the site.

Canals that contain enough toxins to qualify for Superfund sites overflowed into residential neighborhoods. The very real threat of typhoid, TB, and other afflictions of neglect (cholera leaps to mind) is now looming over large swaths of the city. The residents of lower Manhattan, poor and rich, have raw sewage drying in their streets and basements. The health effects of this crisis will not unfold in a manner consistent with a 24 hours news cycle. 

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)