And Then Bashing Teachers

George Will's article today, giving thanks by cynically bashing dozens of progressive ideas and movements, stooped to another low.  This, and other "lows" is the reason the Republican Party is destined to be an afterthought in American political life.

He smashed into the teachers of Illinois.  First he snidely commented that teachers in Illinois should give thanks that the "Bill to move retirement up from 47 did not pass", then a comment about how teachers at a low performing school all got good evaluations, while the school itself was failing.

Matt Damon's mother is a teacher.  Recently a conservative blogger tried to interview him at an event  praising teachers.  The conservative bigot asked aggressive questions about teacher's huge pensions and lack of accountability.

Matt took his head off.

These were some of his comments:

1.  If teachers are so greedy then why work in a profession that minimally at best rewards their training and experience?  Most teachers in the United States top out at about $60,000 to $70,000 income before retirements, that deliver about 60% of that income after 35 years of service.  That works out to about $40,000 retirement.

2.  Find me other professionals in our work force with a bachelors degree plus year of professional credentialing of education and 35 years experience.  The closest are engineers, who make over twice as much comparably.

3.  The retirement is modest to say the least.  There is no profit sharing plan for teachers.  In fact, until only recently, most retired teachers had to substitute in California because their retirements had no inflation factor figured in.  So, 70 plus year olds hobbled into classrooms filled with hyperactive children, and tried to hold it together for seven hours, because they had retired when $12,000 year salaries yielded a $3000 per year pension, with NO Social Security or Medicare.

4.  Most bigots like Will don't realize that it was not until the mid-eighties that teachers were allowed to buy into Medicare.  Many of those teachers are now retiring and at least have Medicare.  Older teachers still don't have Medicare.

5.  Why you might ask?  Well, the same hide-bound conservative people,  like Will, legislated a block to Medicare for teachers since their "salaries were sufficient to yield a pension that could buy health insurance in their retirement".

6.  Ok, you do the math.  A teacher retires in San Jose in 1995 after forty years of helping, teaching, counseling, saving young people.  She retires with a salary of $40,000 (the average at that time).  She gets a State Teachers Retirement of lets say 70% (forty years of service).  This yields a retirement of $28,000 per year.  She does not get Social Security or Medicare since in the mid-eighties it was too late to enter the Medicare system.  So, on $28,000 she has to try to buy health insurance at 65.  She has a pre-existing condition and cannot even qualify.  So, she substitutes to pay most of her doctor's bills and prescriptions.   The medical bills take half of her salary in the early 2000s.  She dies in 2012, broke having worked until the last year substitute teacher (one of the hardest jobs on earth).


7.  And the satisfactory evaluations at the at risk school comment:  Mr. Will, you go into   a truly "at risk" school and teach for a month.  Then look me in the eye, and tell me that failing teachers make for a failing school.  The best, and I mean the best teacher alive, fails at a school that has 90% abused children.  The schools in America need to have the tools to treat deep socio-economic damage done to children, and have nothing, save that teacher who stands in front of 35 screaming, hurt, scared and sometimes hateful children every day.  Try teaching an abused youngster someday, Mr. Will, and tell me the child does not achieve because of poor teaching techniques.  Nonsense.

That, Mr. Will is the reality for most senior retired teachers.  Only the 65 and younger retirees have Medicare (I am one of the first) and have benefited from more generous pensions.

And generous by what standard?  As an example, I am a Stanford graduate with a Masters Degree.  I have three credentials, one of which is an Administration Credential.   Each of these required a year of post graduate study.  So, basically I have a Masters plus three more.  In the business world, that would mean a six figure salary.  I put in 35 years of service.  My retirement, far short of six figures, is about 70% of my best year's salary.  I do qualify for Medicare and get an "offset" Social Security monthly stipend that is so small it is insignificant.  The Social Security is for 16 years of coaching and 'extra-duty' assignments that my district decided to make subject to Social Security for which I qualified with 40 quarters (just like everyone else).  But, the offset, because of my "generous pension" cuts the paltry social security by 50%, resulting in just enough to make my Medicare Plan B payment each month.

So I am a moocher by Will's standards I guess.

America has always not respected its teachers.  The result is an educational system in constant crisis, math and science scores the lowest in the "developed world", and a constant cry to "privatize", "charter school", cut pensions; etc.

That Mr. Will is your problem.  First, you don't know what you are talking about....see 2012 election results.  And second, your bigotry toward teachers is why people now hate the Republican "brand".

Standing by Shaking Their Heads

And the Native Americans stand  by shaking their heads.

Recently Ken Burns did yet another excellent and prophetic documentary on the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.

The documentary was excellent in its detail and accuracy.  The piece, in great detail, documented the dust bowl storms that killed thousands, and the reasons for the tragedy.

The dust bowl was almost entirely man's fault.  Fools, and I can't call them anything else, of today who deny global climate change, are  shown by the "Dust Bowl" to be the same fools making the same mistakes.

Man's greed triumphs over science is a very bad idea.

Settlers were enticed by unscrupulous land agents to settle on land that was called "no man's land" by the Native Americans.  They then tore up the land, plowed under centuries of prairie grasslands, in a mad rush to make money.

In fact, "no mans' land" was so bad, Comanches had been relocated there since is was "useless" prairie.  It was good enough however for illiterate immigrants  suckered by land speculators.

And the Comanches, who were even  pushed  off "no mans' land", looked on and shook their heads.

World War I did not help.  A vast market was created for American wheat, since the Russian Ukraine was unavailable due to war.

Poor American immigrants,  were enriched  by the wheat they grew on land that was never suited for farming.  And the Native Americans stood by, shaking their heads.

And the more the grew, the more they plowed; in unscientific ways.

Scientific farming was a thing  for losers.  Many of the farmers were poor, often illiterate, who did not know terrace plowing.  Others, who knew better, denied the science.

The rain, that did fall in the early 1900s, was said  not to be  an anomaly (in a drought area), but was a "new normal".   The land speculators said that.

And the Native Americans stood by shaking their heads.  After all, it was called the "Great American Desert" for a reason.

Government scientists, who warned that a catastrophe was in the offing, were said to be anti-capitalism and anti-jobs.  Reality was what the greedy farmers said it was, not what scientists said it was.

Boy does this sound familiar.  Then as now, self deception ruled the Dust Bowl.  In fact, today, Oklahoma, Texas Kansas and Nebraska are hotbeds of climate change deniers.

And the Native Americans stood by shaking their heads.

And so plow on they did.  And the war ended.  And the market busted.  And they plowed and planted more, since the price of wheat dropped (more is better-drill baby drill).

Today we are running out of oil, but rather than conserve, we drill more, we use more, and we accelerate global warming.  We are doing the same thing the "sodbusters" did!

True insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result.

Hard working farmers, who toil in spite of the odds, who outwork nature is one thing, stupid is another.

And then the 30s came, the rain stopped, the wind continued to blow and the "black lizards" blew entire states away.

The immigrant farmers, who were by now fiercely independent and hateful of government,  still disregarded reality and even plowed the sand dunes!

And people died, the depression wrecked havoc.

Finally, toward the mid-30s, they finally  asked, actually pleaded, for help from the government.  And the scientific plowing techniques, that had been there all along began slowly  to turn the tide.

And it finally rained in the 1940s.  And the "dusters" stopped.

The cost was incredible, thousands dead, millions displaced, a region destroyed.

Yesterday, in "Climate Progress" there was a chilling photograph.   The picture was from space, and it showed a "duster" running from Colorado to Texas, right through the Dust Bowl

The picture was taken this summer!

You see, the droughts are back, along with killer heat that is a product of yet another man made ecological disaster.  Only this time, the scope of the disaster is world wide.  Climate change is making for another dustbowl on a scale that we can barely imagine.

This time, it will be much longer and much worse.

And, the farmers in the Dust Bowl, are at it again, plowing up the soil and over planting to make higher profits.

And the droughts continue, and the wind blows.

And no man's land is about to strike us all down again.

And the Native Americans stand by shaking their heads.

We Promise to Change

So now it comes; the inevitable conservative "mia culpa" (not really), and promises to change their approach after losing the national campaign (badly).

And the chorus is loud, and often, and as usual, wrong.

First, the Libya controversy is still being stirred by Fox News and Senator McCain.  The tragedy in Libya, with four people murdered by "bad guys" (we don't still know who they specifically were), is an "issue".  Supposedly, the Administration covered up who really did the violence.

The question is why?  Why cover it up?  If the perpetrators were terrorists, which they were if you apply any kind of definition, then why call them demonstrators gone mad?    The President, in his first public statement, famously said the nation would not be cowered by "terrorists"; why say that if you were scheming to depict the act as a "demonstration"  Romney walked into a buzz saw when he thought he had the President in the debate remember.

 Somehow, this tragedy, we are told by the Cons, disproves Obama's successful foreign policy in the Middle East, which was an election issue: and the election is OVER.  So why keep beating on it?

That is "we promise to change"?  NO, that is we will continue the gotcha  game no matter what!

What difference does it make?  The Middle East is a dangerous place, revolutions leave chaos in their wakes, and people get hurt.

But the cons are working ceaselessly to keep this "issue" alive.  This includes the incredible statement by McCain, that "Watergate type hearings be held".

What?  Where on earth is there any administration culpability in this?  Are we to assume the administration planned the attack for political reasons?  

Or, made up a story, that intelligence officials contradicted within weeks of the incident, openly to everyone.  President Nixon would be shocked by the shoddy cover up behavior.  He was "successful" for over a year before Watergate ruined him.  Obama stonewalled for about a day and a half!

No, the "promise the change" that got the Republicans beat, is no promise at all.  The Libyan "issue" is proof that they are not going to change.

They are still playing payback for Watergate, when a President really did engage in a detailed and planned cover-up of a "third rate" burglary, failed to tell the truth for over a year, and finally was driven from office not for the incident, but for the cover up.

The murder in Libya occurred on September 11, it is November 16, and every depiction imaginable of the incident has been released by the administration.  The problem is finding the perpetrators and punishing them.  If we are lucky, and they talk, THEN we will know the motives...only then!

What the cons forget, is that it was months before Nixon gave an inch regarding the wall of lies that were used.  This administration has allowed all sides (?) of the intelligence agencies to postulate the reasons for the attack and the possible perpetrators, within a few weeks of the event.

Watergate?  Come on McCain, that makes about as much sense as your calling our ambassador to the U.N. "not too bright" when she is a Stanford grad, AND a Rhodes Scholar.  Not too  bright, or not white enough Senator?

And there it is.  There is the proof that no change is coming for the conservatives, now or later.

Scratch the Republican Party and you get white, old southern whites  desperate to retain a system of repression and white supremacy that simply is clueless when confronted with modern America.

If does not help that the President is a person of color.  That fact, and cons don't handle facts very well, destroys any chance to change.  In calling Ambassador Rice basically "stupid", McCain falls into the racist trap of assuming that all people of color are not equal to him.

This from a man who selected Sarah Palin as his Vice President.   Remember her, the governor who saw Russia from her front porch, who listed newspapers she reads as "all those you know", who was so clueless about foreign policy it was scary?  Not very smart huh?  A Rhodes Scholar, really?

So, we promise to change statements, are just that; promises.  The Republican Party is being run by racists who "want their country back".  The majority of statements made in the last few days, come back to  colored people cheated to win, white people can win again if we repress the vote, as their numbers dwindle, and white power succumbs to simple demographics.

We promise to change....right!

The Bubble

It is nearly impossible to believe, but the Fox Bubble Machine just continues on and on.

The latest is the Patraeus "scandal".  Fox is trying to link the infidelity of the much decorated General and CIA Director (former) with the Libya killing "scandal".

Both are completely bogus.

Patraeus, it appears, succumbed to a very attractive 40 something woman, who was his biographer.  The "affair" it seems, in no way threatened national security.  In short, the General succumbed to a beautiful woman.  Gee,  how unique!

Moreover, it appears that the Libyan "scandal" is more the product of Fox imagination than anything.

Let's see, how many Fox Scandals have actually born out?   Tell  me a couple that did?  Go on, I'm waiting.

The truth (a word Fox News has no clue about), is that Fox scandalizes practically everything, from prayers in schools, to religious artifacts.

And 99% of the time, there is NOTHING there.

What is amazing, is that Fox has admitted that it was clueless when it came to the Presidential election, attacking polls that were right, while touting polls that were very wrong.

This "living in a bubble of created reality" probably contributed to Romney's substantial loss, and may have cost some conservative congressmen their jobs.

Fox basically gave cons the impression, based on no facts, that Romney was going to win in a landslide and bring Republicans with him.

Of course, this was nonsense.  But Romney perceptibly "coasted" through the last few days of the campaign.  He even visited Pennsylvania, which he had no chance in.

Of course now, Fox has had the gall to actually launch a couple "stories" (as in once upon a time), claiming ominously that some areas  in Pennsylvania actually went 100% for Obama.  Right, people were so pissed off with voter suppression, they all voted for Obama...No surprise!

This from a network that actually cheered on the voter suppression efforts of Republicans, that had the unintended consequences of actually INCREASING minority turnout, and dooming Romney (and  apparently other radical conservatives) to defeat.

Absolutely unbelievable!

We Didn't

I had a dream last night.

I dreamed I saw hundreds of people standing in line, waiting hours to vote.  They were standing, often, in the ruins of a recent Hurricane.  They stood patiently, offered coffee by volunteers from the Democratic Party while the Republicans stayed away.

I dreamed of the Republicans in the background hoping and scheming to get people off the line, forcing  voters to stay home.

They didn't.

I dreamed of women, being elected to the U.S. Senate in record numbers.  I dreamed of Republicans, shouting that they know what decisions women should make during the most difficult times of their lives.  I dreamed that women agreed to let religious zealots take control of their bodies.

They didn't.

I dreamed that voters would buy the con that people were dependent on government, that it was killing their spirit.  I dreamed that people would agree about this evil, and would vote to end programs that were keeping millions of elderly citizens living in comfort.

They didn't.

I dreamed that voters would turn their back on the millions of immigrants, that we all were once, and vote for policies that would punish and not welcome.  I dreamed that the walls would be approved by the voters.

They didn't.

Finally, I dreamed that the "I Have a Dream Today" of Martin Luther King would die as he did, in a  wave of racist reaction; that people of color cannot lead, that only whites should be President.  I dreamed that American citizens would renounce the we, and embrace the me and kill the social contract  we all share with this generation and the next.

We didn't.

The Work Needs to Start

Truth:  The government needs revenue.  It just does.  There are no smoke and mirrors to fake it.  

The trick will be to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire, but in a measured manner.

I personally think allowing them to expire on people who make over $250,000 is a great idea.  We also need to look at the other tax cuts, even for the middle class, and phase them out gradually, to begin getting the deficit under control.  We also need to NOT dramatically cut spending, do not make the same mistake we made in 1936.

President Obama's balanced approach is sensible.  I hope he doesn't get bullied into anything less.

President Bush caused a huge deficit by cutting taxes irresponsibly while getting us into two wars, a huge addition to entitlements, and don't forget Homeland Security (a new federal agency with practically limitless funds).

All this was done on the Republican watch.

Then, incredibly, when President Obama was elected, they immediately turned from cut tax and spend, to deficit hawks.  They literally pivoted on a dime.

This was all a ruse, a con, too pin the deficit on the new President, make him the fall guy for the damage it did to the economy, and make him a one term President.

It almost worked.  Really, it almost did.

And, with a limitless amount of money to literally buy the election, the odds were great for a Republican sweep of the Senate, House and White House.

But, from the beginning, it appears, more Americans were on to the con than the cons themselves.

Any betting person would have figured it would work.  Billions were spent to make it work.  Fox News pounded away, year after year, that it was all Obama's fault.

And it did not work.  The con backfired.   The American People got it, saw the truth, and punished the Republican party for not honestly working with the President.

Billions were pissed away, gone, wasted.  I wonder how much gas prices will have to go up to pay for all the money Big Oil spent to elect Republicans, pass anti-union propositions; etc.

The real work needs to start to straighten out the problems facing our country.  Ruses, cons, and deceit were detected and punished severely last night.

Conservatives need to shake this infatuation they have with conning people, take Karl Rove out of their dialogue completely, insist Rush Limbaugh be fired, stop listening to nutso radio, stop the conspiracy theories and start working for the good of the nation.

The con did not work.  Immense amounts of money to support the con did not work.  Deceit does not make good public policy.  Karl Rove represents this principle, that deceit and lying work to win elections, regardless of the consequences.  He needs to disappear from the body politic.

The work needs to start to approach the real problems of the country, honestly, without sneaky agenda, and deceit.

Join us.

The Promise of the Center from the Right

I recently read an article by Thomas Friedman that hoped a defeat by the Republicans in the upcoming Presidential race would force the party to go back to the middle.

He also remarkably intimated that the Democrats would do the same thing, .

The past four years will not be remembered by historians fondly.  You have to go back to the 1850s to find so much acrimony, hate and vitriol.

What amazes me is how observers like Friedman always try to strike a balance considering the radical agendas being shouted.  The Tea Party Republican Party is supposed balanced off by the  "?" Democratic Party.

Note the "?".  What takes its place relative to the supposed Democratic Party extremism?  Where is the "?" Party in the Democratic Party.  There is none.  Friedman, and many others, postulate that both Parties have their extreme wings.  There is no such thing in the Demoratic Party.  But there sure is in the Republican Party, BOTH  Tea Party and Libertarians...and a few moderates left.

I would postulate that an overwhelming number of non-partisan political scientists, rate President Obama as a moderate Democrat.  I also would postulate that the Democratic Party right now, is not Center/Left (as Friedman suggests) but Center.

The Republican Party is not.

Look at their Platform if you doubt the radical swing to the right.  Abortion is outlawed in ALL cases.  Their economic policy is for radical tax cuts, huge reductions in "entitlement programs"; etc.

Look at the Democratic Platform.  You see the "radical" notion of redoing the tax rates for people making $250,000 a year from 34%  to 39%.  Those are the same rates that existed during President Clinton's term, and are still much below the marginal tax rates in the post WWII era.  How on earth is this a "radical agenda"?

And then there is the Affordable Care Act, that the Republican Tea Party basically grew to power hating.  People forget the summer of 2010, when hapless Congressmen went into their districts to simply discuss the Act.  They walked into a staged, contrived agenda of anger and fury,  not seen since the segregationist south resisted Civil Rights in the 1960s.

Much of the anger was carefully rehearsed for effect, with millions of dollars provided by the health insurance companies, but much was genuine.  The sponsors of the angry demonstrations, quickly lost control of what essentiall was a white backlash to the first President of color this country ever elected.

This anger, that caught the nation by surprise, was actually the right racist wing of the Republican Party, screaming that they could not stand a Black Man being President!  Moreover, all the  old radical right agendas were trotted out:  The Federal Government is regulating us to death; there are conspiracies to take away white people's rights, the Feds are after our guns, the Income Tax is a plot to enslave us; etc. etc.

And that anger is still fueling the candidacy  of Mitt Romney.  Romney decided, early on, that either you fought them or you joined them, so he cloaked himself in his "radical conservative" clothing, took  the Koch brothers' money, and became a lackey for the far right.

Friedman explains that the major reason Romney is competitive now, and may win the election, is his swing to the middle in the first debate.  Americans had not heard this "softer, more central Mitt", who proudly proclaimed that he had "reached across the aisle" in Massachusetts while governor.  And, after all, he had championed the Affordable Care Act there...but still will repeal it?  That promise to repeal is an absolute cave-in to the radical racist right of the Republican Party.

And therein lies the invalidation of Friedman's  argument.

The nation is split almost 50/50 right now between radical conservative and the rest of us.  In real terms, it is about 60/40 moderate to radical conservative, but Citizens United makes up the difference.

The right wing can make up for their minority status by basically buying votes.  And they are doing  that with abandon.

If Romney wins, with his right wing Vice President, he will have no chance of governing from the middle.  If he tries, he will be blocked at every turn by the Tea Party.

And losing will not "reform" the Republican Party, because they have been taken over by scared white voters, who see the technicolor coalition of multi-racial Democrats growing steadily every year, and must adopt what minority white racists have always done; a repressive right wing government that rolls back civil rights, attacks fairness and equity, and eventually resorts to violence to keep its position.

South Africa comes to mind.  Still, after all the feel good movies about the defeat of Aparteid, still South Africa struggles.  Racism dies hard.

That is what the segregationists did in the south.  Pure racists were never the majority, but used fear and violence (and extra-legal discrimination), to control the south for over 100 years after the Civil War.  For over a hundred years, the social illness of racism destroyed the south, held back economic development, stifled humanity.  It is not dead yet...it lives in the Tea Party.

And that, contrary to what Mr. Friedman suggests, is what is in store for the United States no matter who wins Tuesday.

The Republican Party has become radically right wing, even fascist by the classical definition, and are being run by scared whites who are making a "last stand" for white supremacy.

So there is a reason we have seen the anger and angst of the 1960s segregationists in the Tea Party of today; because in a more sophisticated sense, they are doing the same thing that plagued this nation of 200 years.

It all comes down to race.  The one thing that historians, political scientists, and others have always warned could almost end this nation, is still there trying.

A few days after the election, a new motion picture will come out, about President Lincoln.  Its main theme is the struggle to get the emancipation proclamation passed before the war ended.  Lincoln believed that, even if the north won the Civil War, the south would never relent and abandon slavery voluntarily.  The racist bedrock of the radical right was simply too strong.

He succeeded.  We are failing.


So, Mr. Friedman alas, is wrong. What we are seeing I am afraid are the seeds of another Civil War, this time along "ideological lines" which are still painted with race.

Racism kills, and it is killing us now.

The Cost

Spain nearly burned down a couple years ago.  Remember?

Greece nearly burned down a couple years ago.  Remember?

Russia had a huge drought, weeks of 100 plus temperatures, and nearly burned down a couple years ago.  Remember.

Our Mid-West and South had a rash of huge tornadoes, that killed dozens and destroyed several towns.  Remember.

A monster Hurricane, just last year, came into New England and caused flooding that had never been encountered.  Remember.

Nashville almost washed away with record floods.  Remember.

Katrina struck New Orleans and nearly finished the city.  Remember.

Drought afflicted Texas and Oklahoma for months, with wildfires and a touch of hell.  Remember.

New Mexico, Colorado and Northern California just had huge wildfires that burned hundreds of homes.  Remember.

Hurricane Sandy just destroyed the Jersey Shore, the Atlantic Boardwalk is GONE, the New York subways are flooded, with billions of dollars in damage.   Remember.

The cost of global warming or climate change is huge and climbing every day.

Candidate Romney says we are warring on coal, that all fossil fuels need to be used as fast a possible, to create jobs.

But the cost of man made global warming is accelerating.  It will not stop.  The cost has already overwhelmed the "new jobs" that using more coal, or the Canadian pipeline with dirty oil.

The cost.....Remember?

And Then Along Came Sandy

Not a comment about global warming in the debates; not a word.  Governor Romney, as usual, has switched his position from one of advocating efforts to curb global warming, to a drill baby drill conservative collaborator.    President Obama, has not mentioned it, but his support of a balanced approach to energy includes at least attention to global warming or climate change.  These is a huge difference between the to mens' positions.

President Obama is saying the more we rely on clean energy sources, wind, solar, and yes, even natural gas, the more we approach a coordinated attack on climate change that is costing us billions every day.  Governor Romney's position is to use fossil fuels with no regard for the consequences, because not doing so will cost jobs.

But, then  Katrina was a long time ago.  The polar ice caps melting, the rise in ocean levels and temperature, did create larger Hurricanes and Typhoons but those did not hit populated areas.

Why worry?

And then along came Sandy.

"An Inconvenient Truth" which has been constantly attacked by conservative deniers, spent much screen time explaining the danger to cities like New York City, from rising ocean levels and warming  oceans.  Much of New York City lies at or near sea level, and the island nature of the city lends itself to storm surges and tidal flooding.

In short, New York and its Burroughs lies a few short feet from disastrous floods.  But, super storms never happen.  There is simply no evidence that a Hurricane of significant force could hit New York directly, because Atlantic waters are so cold, that Hurricanes typically lose force and swing out to sea.

Those few that have come inland, are of minimal power and force.

And then along came Sandy.

Sandy was a tropical Hurricane, that became a killer in the Caribbean and then headed north, to die in the Atlantic like all other Hurricanes had done.

But it didn't,  it suddenly dove west, taking dead aim at New Jersey and New York.

It did that because the Atlantic Ocean is degrees warmer than ever before.  Warm oceans feed Hurricanes.  Warm oceans create a beacon if you will, drawing the Hurricanes in.

Scientists, at first, were reluctant to attribute Sandy to climate change.  They still subscribe to the moderate position that no one weather "event" is a product of climate change.

So this time, local politicians, namely the mayor and governor of  New York, admitted that yes, Hurricane Sandy was a product of global warming, and the world had better wake up.  Mayor Bloomberg even went so far as endorsing President Obama, who he has criticized from a Wall Streeter's point of view in the past.  The reason?  The President's policies are addressing the climate change that nearly destroyed his city.

The Republican Governor of New Jersey, no friend of a Democrat,  was effusive in his praise for President Obama, because he needs federal help bad; since his state was dramatically damaged at huge cost.

Governor Christie had roundly criticized President Obama, has predicted his defeat, but suddenly could find nothing but superlatives to say about his disaster help.  What an amazing turn around!

I would not doubt that the governor has "seen the elephant" and now acknowledges climate change as the disruptor of  life on earth.  Many citizens from the east coast now are having the same realization.

Many deniers have lived in a false world of unscientific nonsense.

And along came Sandy.