Post-Election Lists

Many authors have chosen to cast their post-election analyses as lists: lists of things to do, lists of things that happened, lists of things about to happen, etc. Here are some lists I found particularly valuable; I'll amend my, uh, list as I find more:

• Juan Cole offers a "Top Ten Wish List Progressives should Press on President Obama"; Cole notes before his list that
  

  Progressives will have to push Obama to the left if we are to get what we want. This situation is nothing new– FDR’s New Deal would not have amounted to much if workers hadn’t engaged in widespread wildcat strikes and if people had not resorted to civil disobedience.

  Indeed. It's going to take the same sort of outcry and probable civil disobedience on the part of liberals to nudge Mr. Obama off his typical reluctance to, you know, disagree with Republicans, coupled with his propensity to give away the store.
  
  
  
• Glenn Greenwald at The Guardian, among many useful observations, gives a list of  six steps that Mr. Obama and Congress (including Democrats) will follow in their "Grand Bargain" to diminish or even dismantle the major New Deal social programs and their descendants which liberals hold so dear:
  

  

  In other words, the political leader in whose triumph liberals are today ecstatically basking is likely to target their most cherished government policies within a matter of weeks, even days. With their newly minted power, will they have any ability, or even will, to stop him? If history is any indication, this is how this "fight" will proceed:
  

  [list of six steps]

  Greenwald's list of steps incisively reminds us that liberals have grown too accustomed to having no hand on the levers of power, and that we had better get good at it again very quickly. (As I've said before... where is LBJ when we need him?)
  
  
  
• What a Paul Craig Roberts Administration Would Look Like: Roberts's hypothetical cabinet appointments, if he were to be taking office as president right now. Many names I don't know, but those that I do, I like. Sampling:
  

  

  Willie Nelson for Secretary of Agriculture, Cynthia McKinney at State, FBI chief Sibel Edmonds, Glenn Greenwald for deputy AG, Bradley Manning in charge of shutting down the torture prisons, Andrew Bacevich as National Security Advisor, Noam Chomsky... NOAM CHOMSKY! ... as US ambassador to the UN, Julian Assange and John Pilger to head PBS, ... and when you're done laughing at all that, consider that "Elizabeth Warren would have whatever post she wants."

  Righteous! There's more; this one is worth reading. (H/T karmanot in comments.)
  

I'll expand the list as things emerge.

Schadenfreude: Go Watch A Video Of Karl Rove...

... (figuratively) eating his hat, without mustard (YouTube), on the air on Fox as the call for Obama is made and then explicitly confirmed. Priceless! (H/T TPM.)

(Well, that sucks. The video has a Share link, but the resulting video frame won't play. Just click through on the above link labeled 'TPM'. Grrrr...)

(Fixed. There's an equivalent YouTube out there; the first link above now points to it. The TPM article associated with its video still has some interesting material in it, so I'll leave it linked. But fuck 'em for making their video so inaccessible!)

A Shout Out To My LGBTQ Friends

... and congratulations on the first two victories of gay marriage at the ballot box, in Maryland and Maine. Goodness knows you've waited long enough and fought hard enough.

Marriage is a fundamental human right, not a legally granted privilege. The gay couples I know who are now or are soon to be legally married have been de facto married for years, even decades; some have kids, a home mortgage and all the other burdens/joys of the wedded state. It's about damned time they had the status if they want it.

Best of all, the public attitude is changing. In the performing arts community, gayness has for several decades been as normal as breathing; no one thinks anything of it... you have to remember your good friends' spouses' birthdays as surely as you do in the straight community. It's just not that big a deal, and hasn't been for over 30 years.

But for the LGBTQ community, the deal could scarcely be bigger. One of many reasons I want to live another decade or so is that it will give me the opportunity to watch this transformation into a love that damned well CAN speak its name... at the altar if it wants!

Bless you all. It is a good time to be queer!

A Note To Turtle-Face

Remember, when someone asked what your number one priority for America was?

Well, you failed, mofo! BWAHAHAHAHA!

Now, what are you going to do with your useless self? Maybe not obstruct reasonable attempts to improve America's awful situation?

No, of course not. You'll play politics-as-usual, asshole. It's the most we can expect of you. Ever.

---

However you feel about NYT editorials, you may want to read this one.

OBAMA!

Networks are projecting that Obama has won a second term, and I believe they are correct... I don't see how Rmoney could win with the scraps that are left, even if Obama's 270+ has not yet been officially counted.

To paraphrase Tiny Tim, "Dog bless us every one!"

I know very well that not everyone who opposed Rmoney supported Obama. And I know President Obama is a man with serious flaws. We all... all progressives, liberals, whatever... have a ton of work to do to prevent more bad economic shit and set the country on the right footing. But I'll leave that until tomorrow. I never expected to be celebrating before midnight tonight.

Touch-Screen Machine Poll-utes Votes In PA

Via l'Enfant de la Haute Mer in comments, in Pennsylvania, as Pam Spaulding tells us, a touch-screen voting machine reproducibly highlighted Romney when a voter selected Obama. Being a software developer, he experimented, tapping the buttons in small vertical increments, and found out that the entire area of the Romney button, plus the entire area of the Obama button, again reproducibly selected Romney. Only one small sliver between the two buttons actually caused Obama to be selected. The voter took a cell phone video documenting the phenomenon.

It gets worse. The voter asked the voters on either side of him, and found they had no problems. He then called over a volunteer assistant, who hemmed and hawed, then said something like "Don't worry. Everything will be all right..." and walked away, declining to do more.

Later in the day, that particular machine was pulled from service. How many are there like it in the field? How many states, how many polls, how many votes, are poll‑uted by this kind of tampering?

Jeebus Christ on a crutch in a crap-heap! If the voting machines really are... right now, today... tampering with our votes as we speak, what is there left to call "democracy"?

Harris County's voting machines may still be rigged, but if so, they are more subtle about it. For one thing, they do not have touch screens, but rather fingertip dials that move the selection bar, with a sort of Enter key that selects the currently highlighted candidate. For another, the selection in a race is visible for the entire time that ballot page is visible, and is again displayed for you in a list of your votes in every race at the end of the ballot; at any point, you may go back to earlier pages and change or verify your votes. As I said, this is not total security; such machines are, for example, still vulnerable to the "man-in-the-middle" approach described earlier in the post about Ohio. But at least a few hacks are precluded.

Users of e-voting systems: did you vote for Obama? did you merely THINK you voted for Obama? You'll probably never know.

There should be a "Boston voting machine party" in which these machines are all sent straight to the bottom of the ocean, after which actual voting is returned to paper ballots with a strict chain of custody both before and after they are marked. Yes, there are still ways to cheat on paper ballots, but it can be made much harder than it is with e-voting equipment.

It's 4:09 PM CST... where is YOUR vote?

Vote!

• Because it may make a difference;
• Because if you don't, you may never get another chance;
• Because someone has to stave off the madness thrust upon us primarily by our political opponents;
• Because after Tuesday, there's no tomorrow; it's now or never;
• Because the Lesser Evil may still contain some evil, but the Greater Evil will contain far more and far worse evil;
• Because you can;
• Because you owe it to your forebears, who bought this land for you with their blood and with their genius;
• Because you owe it to your descendants, who will have to inhabit it as you leave it.

Those are only some of the many reasons every American citizen should vote. You know them all in your mind and in your heart; I don't have to tell them to you. But the knowing is no good at all without the voting. Don't wait around for perfect candidates. Just do it!

AFTERTHOUGHT: even as recently as yesterday, there is still evidence that an attempt is being made to steal Ohio's election through untested, uncertified "patches" to software installed on voting systems in 39 counties. As I've said before, electronic voting systems have exactly one legitimate place: the bottom of the ocean. Ohio is forecast by most polls to go to Obama by a few percentage points. If it does not, maybe it's time for an Ohio voting machine party.

Ryan Slashes At Obama's Religious Values

There is a tradition in American politics that we do not... publicly at least... fault an opponent for his religion. Of course our one (?) Muslim member of Congress has received no such courtesy, but for the most part, over most of my lifetime, only one presidential candidate... John F. Kennedy... has been called to account for his religion, Catholicism.

Now comes GOP veep candidate Paul Ryan one day before the election, wielding a baseball bat at Mr. Obama's religion (and it's not the first public mention criticizing his religion). From TPM's David Taintor:

Paul Ryan told a group of evangelicals Sunday night that President Obama has put America on a path that compromises the "Judeo-Christian, western-civilization values that made us such a great and exceptional nation in the first place," NBC News reports:

A Ryan campaign spokesman told NBC News about Ryan’s comments: "He was talking about issues like religious liberty and ObamaCare - topics he has mentioned frequently during the campaign."

...

NO, HE WAS NOT. That is not what Ryan was talking about. He was talking about Obama's religion, saying it "compromises [our] 'Judeo-Christian, western-civilization values.'" Only a certifiable idiot would be unable to understand that Paul Ryan was criticizing Obama's religion. And Ryan isn't... quite... stupid enough to qualify as an idiot.

Ryan set out intentionally to say something bad about Obama's spiritual life, contrary to America's tradition of not publicly faulting a candidate for his or her religion. And he did exactly what he set out to do.

Does this give me license to do the same to Rmoney and Ryan? Am I now entitled to light into Rmoney for his missions, his secrets of the temple and his funny underwear? How about Ryan... am I allowed now to talk about boy-buggery?

Shades of that pic of GeeDubya with a halo!

This Says It All: Rmoney Staffers Refuse To Let Frostbitten Children Exit Outdoor PA Rally

Attaturk of FDL, citing John Aravosis of AMERICAblog:

This is happening right now [Sunday about 7pm] at Mitt Romney’s rally in Pennsylvania.

Apparently it’s freezing, and Romney’s staff is refusing to let rally-goers leave. People are begging reporters for help.

Absolutely incredible.

From the NYT’s Michael Barbaro:

From USA Today’s Jackie Kucinich:

Jeebus Christ on a crutch!

If you had any doubts whatsoever about Rmoney and his staff before, they should be dispelled now. This man has no right to be running for president of the United States. Indeed he should spend some time in a jail cell. I expected evil things in the last week of Rmoney's campaign... but never this.

Put him in a box and send him somewhere else. Dog bless and keep the Mittens, far away from me. And Dog spare the children. Spare the children!

US National Archives Blocks Search For Gov't Docs Containing 'WikiLeaks'

FDL's Kevin Gosztola:

Searches for “WikiLeaks” in the public search engine for the US National Archives have been blocked, according to a posting at Cryptome.org. Any search containing the word “WikiLeaks (like “Congress” and “WikiLeaks”) turns up an error message.

WikiLeaks reacted on Twitter, “The US National Archives has literally turned into Orwell’s Ministry of Truth.” In another more vivid message, “The US state is literally eating its own brain by censoring its own collective memories about WikiLeaks.” And, in another message, “The US National Archives censoring searches for its records containing the word ‘WikiLeaks’ is absolutely absurd.”

It is unknown when the Archives began blocking searches, but the United States government did adopt a generally accepted and understood policy of censorship back in December 2010 when the US State Embassy cables were being released.

The Library of Congress (LOC) blocked access to WikiLeaks on its computer system, including computers used by patrons in reading rooms. ...

...

Whether or not you like WikiLeaks, and whether or not (as has never been established) they are leaking classified information, this behavior by the Archives has only one legitimate name: censorship. It is one thing to prevent the release of secrets. It is another altogether to prevent public discussion of agency activity. Not only stories from WikiLeaks are blocked: stories ABOUT WikiLeaks are blocked.

Read the rest. Your free-speech rights may come to depend on the result of this battle. And don't think either presidential candidate is better on this issue.

Blame-mentum!

It must be all but in the bag for Obama: according to two articles on TPM, GOP officials are laying the groundwork to blame Hurricane Sandy for distracting the electorate and allowing Obama to win.

Well, OK; whatever makes them feel better. If they are correct... if Obama actually wins, and miraculously the GOP theft attempt fails and Obama actually takes office... next time, the GOP could try running on actual issues advocating positions real Americans actually support. I'm just sayin'.

This isn't quite over yet. Be sure all your Dem friends have voted, then, if you live in a swing state, join a group keeping an eye on your local polls to make sure they don't steal us blind. (Of course if they use e-voting equipment, there's probably not much you can do.) Even if we win this one, we face a sort of brave new world, but I'll have more to say when this is nailed tighter than a coffin.

GOP SuperPAC Money to Burn

Slightly amusing afterthought: there is talk that much super-PAC money is being spent in these last three days in markets that are not really GOP-competitive. I mean, what are they going to do? If in fact Rmoney loses, the superPACs don't want to face their contributors that there was money unspent.

And contrary to popular images, even they don't have money to burn...

Republican Projection: Registered GOP Voter In Nevada Arrested For Attempting To Vote Twice

This is almost too sweet for words. From PoliticusUSA:

...

A registered Republican was arrested by the FBI on Friday for trying to vote twice in Henderson, Nevada. Roxanne Rubin tried to vote twice at two different polling locations. At the second location, they checked her name in the database and her name came up as having already voted. Ms. Rubin tried to claim their database was wrong, and that she hadn’t voted. But they weren’t buying it.

An investigation ensued and she was arrested at the casino where she works on Friday.

...

As ye sow... or, as a lobbyist might say, too many ironies in the foyer...

How could anyone at this point in the Information Age be so foolish as even to attempt this? Did she think she could outrun the voting system network in her dash from one polling place to another? And why? As I've repeatedly observed, there's really no profit in voter fraud, not in money and not in enhancing your vote. Obviously I neglected to consider the simple fact that SOME REPUBLICANS ARE JUST PLAIN STOOPID...

Ohio SoS Jon Husted Sued For Issuing Instruction Defying Judges' Orders Re: Provisional Ballots

I know, I know; in real life, "SoS" stands for "shit on a stick," and that's what it should mean regarding Jon Husted. But Husted is the Republican Secretary of State of the great State of Ohio, and in direct defiance of multiple court orders, Husted issued last-minute instructions to election officials not to fill out one required section of provisional ballots verifying what form of ID was provided by the voter, thereby leaving the information to be filled in by the voter... or not. If the field remains blank, the provisional ballot is automatically disqualified. If voters forced to use provisional ballots are not properly instructed in filling out this field, there is no telling how many will have their otherwise legitimate ballots discarded.

Husted has until Monday to respond to the order in court, which has said it will decide by Nov. 17, which is when provisional ballots are to be counted.

As if that were not enough, poll workers dealing with provisional ballots will be trained by the "Voter Integrity Project" of "True the Vote," a Tea Party org which trains them "beyond" what the SoS instructs. Right. (How can that possibly be legal?)

You know, this is the third presidential election since 2000, the one in which Florida SoS Katherine Harris arranged the theft of the state's vote for GeeDubya Bush, largely as a means of self-promotion. It worked. Bush took office (I'm sure as hell not going to say he was elected, because he wasn't in any meaningful sense) and ended up as de facto president for eight years. Republicans noted the ease with which this was accomplished, and never looked back: election theft has become the primary means of Republican office-taking ever since. Ohio in 2012, like Florida in 2000, is liable to be a critical state for either candidate. Late yesterday, one of the poll-averaging sites reported an average Obama state poll lead in Ohio of about 3 points. If Rmoney, with an assist from Husted, takes the state, we could well end up with another illegitimate president.

Ideally, the judge should order Husted held for contempt of court, in custody without bond and without outside contact until the election is over, and moreover, no Voter Integrity Project member should be permitted to serve as a pollworker. In short, no special Republican instructions should be in force regarding any procedural aspect of voting.

Failing that, if the GOPers steal another presidential election, I'll renounce my commitment to nonviolence. This has got to stop. NOW. We want our democracy back!

Of Darkness And Karl Rove

Roughly 70% of the known universe is dark energy, and roughly 25% of the universe is dark matter. (Source: NASA.) Only 5% of the universe is stars and their planets, galaxies, nebulae, etc., the familiar things we think of when we think of matter in space. And we don't really know what the dark stuff is, perceptible as it is only through its gravitational effects, though it's fascinating to speculate.

Roughly 81% of dark money in politics in America goes to Republicans. (Source: Sunlight Foundation via TPM.) Only 19% of dark political money goes to Democrats. And we don't really know where the dark money comes from, though it's gut-wrenching to speculate.

I'd hate to think we will be forced to buy our democracy back. But that sure as fuck is what it looks like to me. That, or something even more costly...

Of Unicorns And Karl Rove

Josh Marshall quotes Karl Rove:

With the election three days off, a growing chorus of Republican operatives and pundits are saying Sandy may be the game changer. Karl Rove says it’s turning out to be the “October surprise.”

“If you hadn’t had the storm, there would have been more of a chance for the [Mitt] Romney campaign to talk about the deficit, the debt, the economy. There was a stutter in the campaign. When you have attention drawn away to somewhere else, to something else, it is not to his [Romney’s] advantage,” told the Post in an interview published late last night.

Days ago Dick Morris predicted a 400+ EV Romney landslide. Now he thinks Sandy may undo Romney.

Let’s translate this from CYA-ese: I was right. Romney was winning. But that was before Sandy, the Mitt-slaying anti-Unicorn which changed everything. So, just to be clear, I was right, Romney wins. Except then there was Sandy, which no one could have predicted, so he doesn’t win. Bummer.

Poor Karl Rove. Poor, poor Karl Rove! Other people faced Sandy and lost their lives. Many faced Sandy and lost their homes and other valuable possessions. Karl faced Sandy from a distance and may... may... lose an election. And he still has a chance of stealing it. Bastard motherfucker should just shut his fucking mouth!

---

(Google "Sandy unicorn" for the odd incident that led to the whole "unicorn" meme. Or just view this YouTube. It's nothing to get excited about, but we've reached the point of giddiness...)

Did Republicans Quash CRS Report Saying Cutting Taxes For Wealthy Has No Effect On Expanding Economy?

If you aren't familiar with the Congressional Research Service (CRS), do yourself a favor and look it up. It is the research arm at the disposal of Congress, the source of facts for legislators who are interested in facts (which admittedly not all legislators are). I actually knew one of CRS's team members once. Not only was she committed to responding to requests with reports containing "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth," she grew absolutely livid at any suggestion that the Service was partisan in any way. CRS researchers are career civil service employees; partisan behavior in the context of their jobs could result in dismissal, if not worse.

So here's Andrew Rosenthal at the NYT with the word about this incident:

In a brazen example of putting ideology ahead of reality, Senate Republicans seem to have pressured the Congressional Research Service to withdraw a report debunking conservative economic orthodoxy. Cutting tax rates at the top appears “to have little or no relation to the size of the economic pie,” the report said. “However, the top tax rate reductions appear to be associated with the increasing concentration of income at the top of the income distribution.” So charging the rich lower tax rates doesn’t promote economic growth; it merely increases economic inequality.

The CRS is a highly respected, independent agency that prepares reports for members of Congress and routinely issues findings that disappoint or even irritate their clients, who usually just grin and bear it, or at least bear it. But Congressional Republicans seem to think that the CRS should function like Pravda.

And we all know "there is no Truth in Pravda" ...

Continuing...

Don Stewart, a spokesman for the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, said Mr. McConnell and other senators “raised concerns about the methodology and other flaws” in the CRS report. Antonia Ferrier, a spokeswoman for the Senate Finance Committee, said the panel had relayed its objections to the CRS. “We had a good discussion,” she said, “Then it was pulled.”

A good "discussion," indeed... did you threaten them with a sap? Dammit, GOPers, leave the CRS alone. They do you a great service. They do America a great service. If you want politically specific results, publish them yourself. Don't force the feral gummint to do your dirty work for you!

Blitzer: 'Obama Up By 4' Equals 'Tie'

Sam Wang of the Princeton Election Consortium:

... A few days ago, Wolf Blitzer at CNN cited a single Ohio poll, done by his own organization, showing Obama up by 4%. He then proceeded to call this a "tie," revealing an amazing inability to interpret a simple number. Compounding this is the fact that dozens of polls have been conducted in Ohio. The odds of an Obama lead are extremely high. So why does he persist?

Wang has an hypothesis:

The news media have an incentive to fuzz up the picture: ratings and profit. A message that the cake is fully baked does not automatically bring back the viewers. Without the artificial suspense, Cillizza and Blitzer are put in a position of having to say something substantive or interesting that gets beyond a horserace number. Think how much work that would be.

The same problem extends to the aggregation of polling data, which many sites do (FiveThirtyEight, Oct. 31). But think of all the headlines you have seen about "Romney ahead nationally," "Obama pulls ahead in Wisconsin," "it's a dead heat," and other permutations. Each of these headlines was based on a single poll. But aggregation would lead to fewer news stories - and less of the breathless horserace coverage we are used to.

Reason #857142 why I don't get my news from the MSM...

I might add another reason. I don't have figures, but no doubt Blitzer and Cillizza and all those guys 'n' gals in front of the camera are themselves rich. They're rock stars. Everybody knows their name, and this ain't Cheers. If they're not in a very high tax bracket, I'll eat my hat. (I don't wear a hat.) So if the Democratic presidential candidate, based on the full spread of available polling evidence, is leading, they have to put their thumb on the scales by calling it a "tie." After all, the network owners are surely wealthy as well, so it's just good business...

Last Official Jobs Report Before Election: Good News

"Persistent Economic Growth," says the NYT headline. This is good news for working Americans, indeed, for everyone except Republican office-seekers. Here's Catherine Rampell of the Times:

The nation’s employers added 171,000 positions on net in October, the Labor Department reported on Friday, and more jobs than initially estimated in August and September. Hiring was broad-based, with just nearly every industry except state government adding jobs. The unemployment rate ticked up slightly to 7.9 percent in October, from 7.8 percent in September, but for a good reason: more workers joined the labor force and so officially counted as unemployed.

No doubt the ranting Right is howling its conspiracy theories about the BLS, but they can't do much about it now.

This is still not enough, and as Rampell points out, there's that fictional "fiscal cliff" to overcome in Congress to avert a Tea Party government shutdown. One is tempted to resort to Alice's solution (see recent post), but hey, at least one side has to act as if it's really a democracy, and if they are elected, we have to live with that.

A job! I think I remember what those are like...

Rmoney's Closing Argument: Elect Me, Or My Brothers Will Beat You Up

Well, OK, that's not literally what he said. But it might as well have been:

In what his campaign billed as his “closing argument,” Mitt Romney warned Americans that a second term for President Obama would have apocalyptic consequences for the economy in part because his own party would force a debt ceiling disaster.

“Unless we change course, we may well be looking at another recession,” Romney told a crowd in West Allis, Wisconsin.

...

House Tea Party
Out Of Rmoney's Control

Fuck him. Just fuck him. If he has that much power over his own party, he has it whether in or out of the Oval Office, and he is obligated as an American to spare us the economic disaster. If he has the power to control the House Tea Party (which will very possibly be re-elected, or would have been before Rmoney said this), he is obliged to keep them under control. And if he doesn't have that influence, he has no business running for the presidency.

Can you imagine the late great Lyndon Johnson, who regrettably never ran for a second term, saying to America, "vote for my re-election, or the House Democrats will run rampant over everything"?

We have a lesser breed among those who govern us these days...

UPDATE: Krugman weighs in on "The Blackmail Caucus."

Republican Ideology Endangers Real-World Disaster Relief

According to Joan McCarter at Kos and just about anyone else who has been alive and awake for the past decade, the Republican Party, and specifically Romney, Ryan, Cantor and others in the GOP leadership, have made an ideological point for years of insisting that FEMA shut its doors and leave disaster relief to the states. During GeeDubya Bush's administration, they did a pretty good job of almost killing FEMA. (Remember "Heckuva Job Brownie"?")

Unfortunately, no one informed Frankenstorm Sandy about state boundaries.

And as with Hurricane Katrina, no private-sector entity has any motivation to restore all that was damaged in a vast community tragedy. As an NYT editorial reminds us,

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, as would the Republican-instigated sequester, which would cut disaster relief by 8.2 percent on top of earlier reductions.

The GOP... it's the "we're all in this together Americans, you're on your own" party. Here's McCarter again:

It's all true. And even worse than the Times had room to detail. For instance, remember that Majority Leader Eric Cantor insisted last year that any increase in disaster aid funding had to come from cutting funds for equipping and training first responders by 40 percent. House Republicans nearly forced a government shutdown over disaster aid funding. They succeeded in forcing massive cuts to the program, passing a $2.65 billion bill for the disaster relief fund for the year, when the need is closer to $12 billion, annually. That's based on the average year, the average need. Hurricane Sandy is likely to blow that figure to smithereens.

Smithereens. Recent pictures of Staten Island bring that word to mind, too.

Our founders were not stupid people. Perhaps their vision 200 years into the future was sometimes clouded; they had no crystal ball, any more than we have. But enough of them understood the need for a federal government to prevail in framing the Constitution to assure an adequate amount of federal power to meet the emergencies we face as a nation. That power exists today.

Unless Republicans use the built-in safeguards not for their intended purpose but rather to obtain their own narrow, selfish aims, at the cost of abandoning our storm-stricken fellow Americans.

As rumors fly that GOPers are planning to do just that, maybe this would be a good time to contact Mr. Cantor and remind him of his duty to the entire American public... and that there's an election in a few days, and if he plays politics with the lives of Sandy's victims, all of us... not just those in the stricken states... will remember when we go to the polls.