Friday Free-for-All: Katrina Redux Is Playing Out On The Eastern Seaboard

Via Graphic Design Blog: Hurricane Sandy: 50 Devastating Pictures

Katrina Redux Is Playing Out On The Eastern Seaboard says Scott McKay of the Louisiana blog, The Hayride:

When I heard the pundits declare earlier this week that Hurricane Sandy would somehow redound to the benefit of Barack Obama’s campaign, I couldn’t stop scratching my head.

“The folks who say this obviously haven’t been through a hurricane,” I thought. “Nobody makes out well in a hurricane. Didn’t they realize that during Katrina?”

For a day or two, everybody bears up well and thanks God they’re still alive and that things weren’t worse, and thinks happy thoughts about a quick recovery of their homes and infrastructure.

That lasts a day or two.

By Day Three or Day Four, folks start noticing that the power hasn’t come back on yet. That food and gasoline are pretty scarce. That getting anywhere is a nightmare. That it’s impossible to accomplish anything at work. That they can’t take a hot shower. That the schools aren’t open and what are they going to do with the kids?

And so on.

By Day Seven, EVERYBODY has absolutely had it. They’re miserable. They want their lives back the way they were, they’ve already read all the books they’ve stashed away for a rainy day, they’re tired of listening to the politicians babble endlessly about the situation and they want somebody’s head.

Read the rest of McKay’s excellent analysis at the link.

Ace of Spades HQ: After Taking a Victory Lap Photo Op, Obama Leaves an Apocalpyse-Struck New York and New Jersey To Fend For Themselves:

In New Jersey, entire sections of the shore were essentially wiped off the map by the storm. Flotsam and broken timbers are left behind. Beach towns are are now just beaches.

Staten Island — part of New York City that rarely gets much media coverage, as reporters don’t live there — is devastated. At least 19 people are dead; they’ll probably find more bodies.

Watch the video there. FEMA’s not in Staten Island, by the way. I remember the media being very angry at George Bush for not directing FEMA to New Orleans in a manner they judged timely.

But the outrage is growing. Despite my snipe that reporters don’t typically cover Staten Island, NBC covered it (!!!), and they did note the anger growing at the slowness of relief efforts.

And old people are still on high floors of buildings without working elevators, or food, or sufficient emergency response.

And where’s Obama? Well, he put in his appearance, said a few Magic Words, and returned to the campaign trail, with laurels around his neck for doing… nothing.

And Michael Bloomberg? He’s endorsing candidates, attending basketball games (can’t miss the Brooklyn Nets’ first game), hosting the marathon, and generally being a twat, as usual.

Breitbart TV: NBC: Staten Island Abandoned By FEMA, Red Cross:

NBC’s Brian Williams conducted a devastating exposé on the latest developments of the ravaged areas in Sandy’s path. “There’s no Red Cross,” on resident exclaimed. Multiple residents vented their frustrations at the camera “Where is FEMA?” “Who do we go to for help?” “We need help!” NBC reported on the growing outrage by those hit hardest by the superstorm, cut off from access to necessities they are dependent on government aid to provide for their basic needs until the city has removed enough of the damage for residents to be able to leave. “They are still pulling out bodies,” one resident said. Many residents who claimed they had lost everything have said that they haven’t received any help from FEMA or the Red Cross.

Instapundit: STATEN ISLAND BOROUGH PRESIDENT: Don’t Give Money To The Red Cross. Mitt should show up with a boatload of supplies.

Gateway Pundit: Non-Union Alabama Utility Workers Denied Entry into New Jersey – Told to Stand Down (Video):

Non-union utility workers from Alabama were called up to help out in New Jersey but when they reached the state they were denied entry.

Michelle Malkin: Poser of the United States: The photo-op presidency:

The official Obama 2012 campaign slogan is “Forward.” The operational motto of the Obama administration is “Cheese.” As in “say cheese.” From hollow Greek columns to strategically released Situation Room candids, the Paparazzi President has put self-serving optics above all else.

What did we get after four long years of expertly staged Kabuki-theater-meets-Potemkin-village productions? Sixteen trillion dollars in debt, a pile of dead bodies, troops at increased risk and a gallery of tax-subsidized Kodachrome pictures creating the grand illusion of leadership.

On Monday night, as Hurricane Sandy bore down on the East Coast, Team Obama’s image consultants released a photo showing POTUS purportedly in charge. The White House sent the picture out to 3.2 million Twitter followers with the message: “Photo: President Obama receives an update on the ongoing response to Hurricane #Sandy in the Situation Room.”

Human Events: Is voter fraud being committed in Ohio?

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Two volunteer poll workers at an Ohio voting station told Human Events that they observed van loads of Ohio residents born in Somalia — the state is home to the second-largest Somali population in the United States — being driven to the voting station and guided by Democratic interpreters on the voting process. No Republican interpreters were present, according to these volunteers.

While it’s not unusual for get-out-the-vote groups to help voters get to the polls, the volunteers who talked to Human Events observed a number of troubling and questionable activities.

A source, who wishes to remain anonymous, is a volunteer outside the Morse Road polling center.  She has witnessed Somalis who cannot speak English come to the polling center. They are brought in groups, by van or bus. The Democrats hand them a slate card and say, “vote Brown all the way down.” Given that Sherrod Brown is the incumbent Democrat Senator in Ohio, one can assume that this is the reference.

Non-English speaking voters may use an interpreter. The interpreters are permitted by law to interpret for the individual voting; however, they are forbidden from influencing their vote in any way. Another source who also wishes to remain anonymous has seen Democrat interpreters show the non-English speaking Somalis how to vote the Democrat slate that they were handed outside. According to this second source, there are not any Republican Somali interpreters available.

Western Center For Journalism: CAUGHT ON TAPE: Ohio Voter Fraud Update:

Three Ohio residents have come forward to confirm on the record their accounts of questionable practices by Democrats to influence voters…

Las Vegas Review Journal:Benghazi blunder: Obama unworthy commander-in-chief:

U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three other Americans died in a well-planned military assault on their diplomatic mission in Benghazi seven weeks ago, the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. So why are details surfacing, piecemeal, only now?

The Obama administration sat by doing nothing for seven hours that night, ignoring calls to dispatch help from our bases in Italy, less than two hours away. It has spent the past seven weeks stretching the story out, engaging in misdirection and deception involving supposed indigenous outrage over an obscure anti-Muslim video, confident that with the aid of a docile press corps this infamous climax to four years of misguided foreign policy can be swept under the rug, at least until after Tuesday’s election.

The Investigative Project on Terrorism: A Red Carpet for Radicals at the White House:

A year-long investigation by the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) has found that scores of known radical Islamists made hundreds of visits to the Obama White House, meeting with top administration officials.

Court documents and other records have identified many of these visitors as belonging to groups serving as fronts for the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and other Islamic militant organizations.

The IPT made the discovery combing through millions of White House visitor log entries. IPT compared the visitors’ names with lists of known radical Islamists. Among the visitors were officials representing groups which have:

• Been designated by the Department of Justice as unindicted co-conspirators in terrorist trials; Extolled Islamic terrorist groups including Hamas and Hizballah;
• Obstructed terrorist investigations by instructing their followers not to cooperate with law enforcement;
• Promoted the incendiary conspiratorial allegation that the United States is engaged in a “war against Islam”— a leading tool in recruiting Muslims to carry out acts of terror;
• Repeatedly claimed that many of the Islamic terrorists convicted since 9-11 were framed by the U.S government as part of an anti-Muslim profiling campaign.

Battleground Watch: It’s an “All Skate” for Romney-Ryan in West Chester, Ohio Tonight! (Nov 2) at 7pm:

Everyone’s invited, including you, to the massive Romney-Ryan rally tonight in West Chester, Ohio. Here’s who will be joining you:

Nearly 100 governors, senators, congressmen, mayors, Olympic gold medalists and other Republican luminaries are scheduled to join Romney and his vice presidential running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.), in a Cincinnati suburb Friday night for a huge rally designed both to inject new energy into their Ohio campaign and to launch the Republican ticket on its final, frenetic three days of barnstorming before Election Day. Kicking off what the Romney campaign is dubbing the “Romney-Ryan Real Recovery Road Rally,” the event will be held in West Chester, just outside of Cincinnati, a populous and potentially decisive swath of southwestern Ohio where Romney needs to drive up turnout within his conservative base and win over moderate suburban voters. The campaign announced that almost every Romney surrogate – from the candidate’s wife, Ann, and their five sons to a number of Olympic athletes to a lengthy roster of elected officials, including Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the GOP’s 2008 presidential nominee – will attend, underscoring the importance of Ohio’s 18 electoral votes to Romney’s calculations. From West Chester, the surrogates will fan out across the nation to campaign over the weekend in 11 key states: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.

Sounds like it’s going to be huge.

The Daily: A Play for Pa.

Exclusive: Romney’s heading to Pennsylvania as GOP drops millions on ads

Mitt Romney is set to make a last-minute campaign stop on Sunday in Pennsylvania, The Daily has learned.

Details are still being determined, but two top Pennsylvania Republican officials and a Romney adviser said a large rally in the vote-rich Philadelphia suburbs is in the works for Sunday. Romney aides confirmed the coming visit after initial publication of this article.

“It’s going to be a huge rally and it’s going to be very successful,” one senior level Republican official said.

“They said all along, ‘if you get within a certain margin we’ll consider it,’” another top Republican said. “They said they’d come the final week, and we got there.”

Seton Motley, Big Government: This Presidential Election, Don’t Forget Obama’s Imperial Fiats:

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor just released a detailed report entitled “The Imperial Presidency.”  Here are – culled from just its “Creating Laws” subsection – some of Emperor Obama’s Greatest Hits:

• Network Neutrality: Like health care, the Tech sector is 1/6th of economy.  Unlike ObamaCare, Net Neutrality never passed Congress – the President just imposed it, in December 2010.  (Ditto the Administration’s power grab of wireless cellular phone networks, and a whole host of other unilateral Tech regulations.)  The results?

Tech Layoffs Hit 3-Year High in First Half of 2012

• Energy Sector regulations: The Greatest Fraud on Earth is alleged “global warming.”  Or “climate change.”  Cap & Trade never passed Congress – so Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency and Departments of Energy and Interior are imposing it as if it did.  The results?

January 19, 2009 av. gas price:      $1.85 per gallon

October 22, 2012 av. gas price:     $3.69 per gallon

Coal plants closed under Obama:  111 – more than 1/5 of the nation’s nearly 500.

Public land oil-gas production under Obama:

Leases: Down 11%

Land in use: Down 19%

Drill permits approved: Down 36%

Which brought us those doubled-under-Obama gas prices.

But wait, there’s more.

Watchdog.org: Critics say AG Holder’s ties to abortion industry create conflict of interest:

Eric Holder Jr.’s family is moving fast and furiously to bury the U.S. attorney general’s ties to one of Georgia’s most notorious abortion doctors.

Just cleared in the “Fast and Furious” gunrunning debacle, the nation’s top lawman now faces allegations that his connection to Dr. Tyrone Cecil Malloy is a conflict of interest that helps explain Holder’s failure to prosecute abortion providers who run afoul of federal law.

Critics say it also may explain why Holder has been eager to prosecute pro-life advocates who counsel women outside abortion clinics.

Documents obtained by Watchdog.org show that Holder’s wife and sister-in-law co-own, through a family trust, the building where Malloy operated. A Georgia grand jury indicted Malloy on Medicaid fraud charges in 2011. A state medical board twice reprimanded the doctor.

Holder and his wife, Sharon Malone Holder, an obstetric and gynecological doctor at Foxhall OB/GYN in Washington, D.C., failed to respond to several requests for comment.

Seton Motley, Big Government: President Obama: Is this the ‘Private Sector…Doing Fine?’:

President Barack Obama incessantly touts the alleged “success” of the $50 billion General Motors (GM) bailout, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.

General Motors – The Government’s Warped Definition of ‘Success’

Much like the Obama Economy, General Motors’ numbers are tanking.  Earlier this week we had:

GM’s 2012 Sales Growth Only 2.5%

Outstanding.  And the failures continue to abound.

General Motors 3Q Profit Falls 14 Pct (from 3Q 2011)

Sound familiar?

2011 US GDP growth: 2.0%.

2012 US GDP growth (thus far): 1.77%.

Two percent is pathetic,  and the Obama Economy can’t manage to match it this year.

Are things now looking up for the economy?

Economic Outlook for 2012 Even Worse Than We Thought

Things are looking worse for the U.S. economy than even three months ago. 

Apparently not.  How about for General Motors?

General Motors Is Headed For Bankruptcy — Again

Outstanding.