Sandy: Evidence That Romney Is the Wrong President

In which, finally at the end of its tether, Irony washes down forty-five Xanax with a bottle of Kentucky Gentleman, and hurls itself off a cliff:


(And I like Sirota but, Jesus, there wasn't a perfectly respectable wino sleeping on a steam-grate along Mississippi Avenue with whom he could have partnered up on the radio?)

Look, America, you've had your fun. It was great to pretend that we all are just a nation of bootstrappy pioneer entrepreneurs who Built It All Ourselves. It made us feel all warm and tingly in our Chris Matthews parts when our favorite millionnaire radio hosts and TV stars told us what strong and independent people we are, what stalwart heirs to the best traditions of the Founders we are, and how absolutely spiffy we looked in our tricorns and knee breeches out there on the mall. It made us feel powerful when we elected a Congress full of loons and vandals. It was a tremendous, rolling good time to follow this year's Republican primary, in which, while the rest of the world likely looked on in horror, one of our two political parties allowed a veritable Wrestlemania of political dementia to produce the most singularly soulless and mendacious nominee since it allowed Richard Nixon to rise from moldy earth again. It was great good jolly fun to come right up to the edge of n-bombing the president and then, giggling like schoolboys caught wanking out a window, run away.

But, honestly, it's time to get real about things. Honestly, it's time for someone to "politicize" this storm for what it is.

Based on what the various candidates actually have told the people whose votes they are soliciting, over the past 48 hours, it has been far better for the nation that Barack Obama and Joseph Biden are running the executive branch than it would have been had those jobs been held by Willard Romney and Paul Ryan. Both of the latter are on record — and on audiotape, and on video, and all over the Intertoobz, and, for all I know, bellowing from the fillings in your teeth — as recommending that the federal government's responsibility for things like disaster relief be either handed back to the states, or privatized entirely. They have made this argument in public. They have made this argument as part of the reason why you should vote for them. They also have similar plans for the National Weather Service, and for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and they have made those arguments as part of the reason why you should vote for them. If those ideas had prevailed, and those plans had been passed through the Congress, and signed by President Romney, more people would have died because of this storm, and more people would still be dying from this storm two or three weeks from now.

What they are saying now in an attempt to walk back their earlier arguments is almost assuredly nothing but a barrel full of lies. They'd be out there saying the very same things today if they hadn't gotten blindsided by this storm. Do you honestly think, absent the arrival of Miss Sandra along the east coast, Willard Romney and Paul Ryan would be out there refining their opinion on federal disaster relief? That they would have abandoned the notion of handing disaster relief back to the states, or to their various corporate cronies. That they would have distanced themselves from barely camouflaged bigots like John Sununu, who repeatedly calls the president "lazy"?

And, even given all that's happened, if a massive stimulus bill aimed at reconstruction of the infrastructure damaged by the storm somehow miraculously got through this Congress and landed on the president's desk, and he signed it, do you think Romney and Ryan would support it and, once it passed, do you think they would miss any opportunity to use the word "boondoggle," or to intimate a program of political payoffs to the president's east coast supporters, despite the fact that even my casual observations have led me to believe that New York City depends rather vitally on its subway? Please, stop. No, really, you're killing me here.



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