Another Disaster "Saves" Obama

Just how lucky can one smug asshole be? Four years ago, President Hopey-Changey was propelled into office in large measure by the financial market crash, which finally discredited eight grueling years of Bushonomics. Then, after a whole presidential term of repeatedly pissing on the heads of his liberal and progressive base and telling them it was raining, to say nothing of not doing a damn thing to punish the big banks and Wall Street who crashed the economy in the first place, yet another miraculous disaster has appeared and stopped Mittmentum dead in its tracks and, if the way the polls are now swinging is any indication, is likely going to win President Sellout a second term that he most decidedly does NOT deserve.

More amazingly, just last week Obama's people were setting Hurricane Sandy up as a convenient excuse as to why they might lose the election that would deflect blame from their hero's own culpability and complacency. The storm was going to disrupt balloting in key Obama states, so they said, and essentially blow the Republican challenger across the finish line to an undeserved victory. In such a manner, just like after the 2000 debacle with Ralph Nader, do the Democrats try to deflect attention from the fact that it is their me-too, corporatist sellout politics which causes many of the potential voters to stay home on election day, resulting in defeat often being snatched from the jaws of victory.

But something funny happened on the way to the disaster at the polls. Governor 47%-er shot himself in the foot in the worst way by blasting FEMA and threatening to privatize it just in time to see Obama use the agency the way it is supposed to be used to mitigate the disastrous effects of Hurricane Sandy. Because you see, that is the one remaining area where Democrats and Republicans do actually differ. When they get elected president, Democrats tend to appoint technocrats to important positions like the head of FEMA whereas Republicans appoint unqualified cronies like the infamous "Brownie." Just this past weekend, I saw a really stupid online "news" article claiming that Sandy would be "Obama's Katrina." I had to laugh, for as much as I loathe the man the one thing I knew he wouldn't do is hang out at his ranch clearing brush for meaningless photo-ops, leaving the disaster response to the fired head of the Arabian Horse Association while America's most important city drowned in its own hubris.

But what it really comes down to is a simple fact about the American body politic that the Republicans are constantly forgetting to their peril: most everyone says they are against "big government" until they really need it. Heck, even crazy old Ayn Rand went on Social Security during her declining years, the mere fact of which ought to have totally discredited every word she ever wrote for any person who has more than two brain cells to rub together. So buck up, Democrats, Sandy has likely saved your sorry asses so that you can spend four more years slowly legitimizing every horrible policy of the Chimpy Bush years. You win and the country loses, just not as quickly as it would have lost under President Romney.


Bonus: How many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn't see?