Post Tropical Cyclone Sandy: FEMA Stages Sandy PR Show For Gov Christie

by Scott Creighton

UPDATE 2: from status quo mouthpiece Huffington Post: Ed Gillespie, Romney Adviser, Admits Obama’s FEMA Doing A Good Job Responding To Sandy could they make it any more obvious that they are taking a dive?

UPDATE:I found this video from Higgins. He takes a camcorder around the outside of his home (doesn’t show damage inside the home for some reason) viewing all the damaged possessions he’s laid outside like his neighbors but I couldn’t see much if any damage to his home itself. Turns out, he owns a home on some kind of waterway and it looks like all the damage to his possessions are from the rising water. And though that is bad and a terrible loss for him, it seems like he still has a home which is good I suppose.

UPDATE 2: This Higgins guy sits in his car filming while “Hurricane” Sandy is a blowin. He claims the “roof is blown off a NAPA store” but what actually happened is the roll on roof section of rubberized roofing blew off the top of the store, not the ROOF itself. Here he has a video of a piece of siding blowing off a house and a downed tree. I guess this guy has never seen a real hurricane before.

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Take a look at this. Here is a guy, Alexander Higgins I think, who has lost his home due to Sandy. He needs help, that’s for sure. But what does FEMA do? They stand around, with the press, using him and others from his neighborhood as props lined up behind where Gov. Christie is going to make a PR speech about how FEMA is overworked trying to help the victims of Sandy. Notice how small the crowd actually is. If they wanted to actually help these people, they would have already done so. But they don’t. They WANT them to remain in a limbo status because they can USE that to garner more sympathy and a bigger check from the Federal government to be given to various crony companies linked to Christie and others. They are exploiting these legitimate victims for political and economic gains. Surprised? Ever heard of Katrina?

Post Tropical Cyclone Sandy: Online Social Marketers Comparing Sandy to Katrina

by Scott Creighton

UPDATE: See comparison videos of Sandy and Katrina at the end of this article

UPDATE 2: You think I’m making this up? Huffington Post: Hurricane Sandy vs. Katrina Infographic Examines Destruction From Both Storms notice how they inaccurately report that Sandy made landfall as a Cat 1 hurricane. That is untrue.

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Dear Social marketers and influence peddlers:

Just stop it. We aren’t that stupid. It’s a “Wag the Dog” natural disaster and it’s obvious and we are sick of it. We aren’t that stupid and you aren’t that smart so just stop it.

We understand that neo0liberal Christie and Bloomberg (Bloomberg Business Week “It’s Global Warming Stupid“) want to get as much money as they possibly can to hand over to various cronies of theirs to grow their personal fortunes once they leave office. We get that. But stop pretending this exaggerated crap tropical depression is worse than Katrina, it isn’t. Not even close.

And what you are doing is insulting: it’s insulting our collective intelligence and it’s insulting to the people who suffered through Katrina to have you belittle their losses and their grief for nothing more than a larger slice of the Disaster Capitalism pie. So go get your precious money, cash the damned checks an…

… just stop it.

Post Tropical Cyclone Sandy: Chris Mathews Drools Over Clinton; Calls Deniers “Luddites” and “Pigs”

by Scott Creighton

Chris Mathews proves his sycophancy and his ignorance once again.

It’s all about man-made global warming … I mean climate change … I mean global warming. Can’t question those scientists because we have to get Barack Obama ready to force the failed UK carbon credits market on the U.S. just as soon as the fraud election is over (read as “Romney takes a dive like McCain, Kerry, and Gore before him”)

Chris Mathews went on Hardball yesterday and breathlessly drooled over Bill Clinton saying that Sandy proves man-made global warming is real. He also called deniers of this new religion “pigs” and “Luddites” (for the “Luddites” quote see this)

Waves of anger: Japan tsunami victim aid spent on whalers, officials and fighter pilots

(This is what disaster capitalism does. This is the Japanese story I made reference to earlier. Imagine giving Chris Christie a hundred billion dollars in relief money for Jersey. Christie. This guy is a fat thug mobbed up sycophant neoliberal. What do you think he’s going to do with it? I heard someone on NPR saying this storm was the worst to hit the east coast in “many many decades”. As I have proven, that is completely false. But they have to keep pushing that line of disinfo because people like Christie want to get their hands on that money. During the NPR interview some reporter was in Atlantic City where he said there wasn’t much damage at all. BUT he said, the “poorer section of town to the north” was devastated. Christie will get money for all that damage. People will see those photos and opine over the horror of it all and the Fed will hand over billions to Christie who will then hand the money to some friend of his to build a sweat shop in Jersey City.)

from RT

A quarter of Japan’s tsunami relief fund has been spent on unrelated projects, including renovating a government office and subsiding whaling. The revelations have ignited outcry as more than 320,000 tsunami victims remain displaced.

The expenditure was identified after the publication of an independent government-backed audit into the allocation of the $150 billion relief fund, created after the earthquake and tsunami of March last year.

Post Tropical Cyclone Sandy – Alternative Media Spins with Establishment

by Scott Creighton

Several “alternative” news sites are out there cheer-leading for the disaster capitalists in one way or the other whereas I have shown that though the storm was a bad one, it hardly lived up to the “Frankenstorm of the Century” billing it received and is now being over-hyped by people who look to use this storm to pocket billions in cash for themselves and their crony capitalist friends, to push their “global warming’ agendas and to possibly even effect the upcoming election (jobs numbers probably won’t be out before the election next week)

No, it is not a popular position to take, but it’s the truth. Several readers here have left comments about how relatively normal things in New York city are right now and of course the NYC marathon is still on track for this weekend. For those with damaged homes or stuck in areas hard hit by the storm, our sympathies are with you. But your suffering is not justification to let disaster capitalist ambulance chasers turn this post tropical cyclone into a 100 billion dollar corporate handout.

Hurricane “Climate Change!” – The Riptides of Disinformation are Tearing at the Fabric of Logic

by Scott Creighton

Dandelion Salad reposted a rather breathless screed from one Chris Williams titled “How the 1 Percent Conjured up a Moster Storm“. it’s all about how climate change is creating these Frankenstorms” like nothing we have seen in the past 10,000 years or so.

“The riptides of climate change are beginning to tear at the fabric of our biosphere as the earth’s climate system lurches, in ungainly and lumbering jerks, from the relatively dormant and benign stability of the last 10,000 years, toward a more volatile, violent and less hospitable new climatic state, previously unknown to human civilization.”  Williams via Dandelion Salad

Mr. Williams’ histrionics aside, he doesn’t seem to understand much of the history he’s writing about past or “way past”

Here’s a little info for those around who care about facts:

You never want to let a good hurricane go to waste

by Scott Creighton

UPDATE: They are still playing Sandy up as the worst in recent history to hit the U.S. The death toll has been risen to 38, 17 from New York alone (but they only have info on 11 of those). I just thought I would put Sandy into perspective for you:

Hurricane Ike Sept. 17 2008 – 600 miles in diameter – hits Galveston as Cat. 2 – hurricane force winds extended for 120 miles from the eye of the storm. 112 people died when the surge topped the 17 foot flood wall and the Gulf poured into the low-lying areas of Galveston. They never stood a chance. 23 are still missing.

• Hurricane Gustav Sept. 1 2008 – Came ashore in Louisiana and 53 people in the United States and 153 total.
• Hurricane Rita Sept. 20 2005 – Made landfall as a cat 1 at 120 mph in Texas – killed 120
• Hurricane Ivan 2004 – Killed 121 people total, 54 in the U.S.
• Hurricane Frances 2004 – Killed 49 people
• Katrina Aug 29 2005 – hit St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana as Cat 3 sustained winds at 128 mph – 1,833 people died as a result.

Those listed should be easily remembered by most adults today and as you can see, Sandy doesn’t even compare. Yet, it’s the Storm of the Century?

Just for the fun of it, still in this century…

The Okeechobee hurricane of 1928 – Killed 2,500+ in the U.S. and 4078 total

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Never let a good crisis go to waste. It’s disaster capitalism folks, lot’s of money to be had. All we got to do is make this storm the worst thing to happen to America since Katrina and presto! cash all around.

As bad as it is, this is not the “storm of the century” or the “perfect storm”…

This was the Storm of the Century, it occurred in ’93. This was The Perfect Storm, from 1991. This is the 1944 Great Atlantic Hurricane, it killed 390 people with winds of up to 140 mph. This is the Great New England Hurricane of 1938, it killed 800 people with sustained winds of over 160 mph and did damage to the tune of 300 million dollars in ’38 (4.7 billion today) Four storms, same area, much much worse than Sandy.