Be Ethical and Advocate for Social Justice

I found this quote in a BBC News article on the partial shutdown of the U.S. government rather amusing and disturbing:

“Paul Broun of Georgia, who is currently running for a Senate seat, said he would not vote for legislation that ‘does not fit the Judeo-Christian biblical principles that our country was founded on’.”

Among the 84 votes that the Republican congressman has cast against the wishes of his party’s leadership was a vote last January to deny disaster aid to Hurricane Sandy victims. 

Christian charity!?! Harrumph!!!

I wonder, just which biblical principles do Broun and his fellow travelers agree with? Do they include polygamy? Or slavery? Or perhaps he’s in favor of, according to Jewish law, land redistribution to original owners every 50 years when the jubilee comes around? There are lots more inconsistencies between Broun’s and the Bible’s views on the way one’s life should be conducted, but perhaps the deepest chasm is between the latter’s exhortation to care for the needy and the former’s indifference to the plight of his fellow man, woman and child.

As the fight over Obamacare has shown, the world is living in increasingly doctrinaire times. Dogma for dogma’s sake. Fie on good will and fellowship. Principles and partisanship over peace and probity. 

Even Pope Francis is feeling the heat from those within the Catholic Church who wonder what happened to their ecclesiastical leader. Why is he emphasizing serving the people and not the papacy with its crimson-robed functionaries? 

No religion is immune to internecine bickering, though Islam seems to be more bent on warfare from within than dialogue. How disrespectful of another point of view are the repeated bombings of mosques and funerals by those not sharing the attacker’s version of Islam. Hundreds of years ago Christianity—Catholics, Protestants, Russian Orthodox—fought its share of wars of intolerance. Two thousand years ago Jewish factions killed those who didn’t agree with their visions of Mosaic law. 

With few exceptions, today’s Jews don’t kill one another, even when the debate is over their existence in Israel and the lands conquered in the Six Day War in 1967. There are, however, ongoing battles for the soul of the Jewish state in Israel and for the soul of Jews in the Diaspora. In Israel, the debate has many levels. One is over territory and security. Neither side wants to undermine the security of Israelis, but those who would relinquish total control of the West Bank see nothing secure about continued control of more than a million Palestinians. It would be state suicide to confer citizenship on the Palestinians; it would destroy the Jewish soul to retain the Palestinians in their current stateless condition. 

On another level, the secular foundations of Israel are under assault. Ultra-Orthodox Jews are pressuring for a more rigidly religious state, one that increasingly separates women from men. They haven’t blown anybody up, but they have exhibited behaviors abhorrent to Western sensibilities. 

The soul of the Jewish Diaspora, particularly in America, is in play, as well, as highlighted by this week’s release of a survey of U.S. Jews by the Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project. In a nutshell, the study found fewer American Jews identify with their religion’s rules or religious institutions, though they continue “to feel pride in being Jewish and have a strong sense of belong to the greater Jewish community.” As the Associated Press reported, their connection is based mostly on culture and ancestry. “A large majority said remembering the Holocaust, being ethical and advocating for social justice formed the core of their Jewish identity.”

Being ethical and advocating for social justice. Nothing restrictive about those values. Be ethical to all. Advocate for social justice for all. Yes, remember the Holocaust, but also remember that other religions and people have their tragedies to commemorate. That’s also a part of being ethical and advocating for social justice.  

Predictions Come True

I warned you the day before the election last week we were on the cusp of the inauguration of the 2016 presidential campaign. If you took my warning to heart you would not be too depressed by the insipid chatter from pundits already handicapping the race four years hence. They’ve conducted polls—Hillary and Mike Huckabee are frontrunners of their respective parties. 

Personally, I like Stephen Colbert’s idea. Let’s not spend time on 2016. Tuesday night Colbert zeroed in on the 2072 election, a contest he said would be between Robo-Cheney and a swarm of sentient nano hornets. He did not predict the winner.

Hornets. Seems Tuesday was a big hornets day for me. Earlier, in Bible class (Exodus 23:28), hornets were part of God’s arsenal in support of the Israelites’ conquest of the land of Canaan (“And I will send the hornet before thee, which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite, from before thee”). 

Last week’s post on the election also contained a tongue-in-cheek suggestion that the United States bifurcate itself into Blue and Red State countries. Seems I wasn’t the only one thinking along those lines. The Huffington Post reported residents of 42 states have submitted petitions to secede from the Union. Here’s the list: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

The list included Blue and Red States. Maybe we are making progress toward thinking alike.

While we’re on the subject of the election, I wonder if you noticed an article in the business section of The NY Times the other day. It dealt with patent law and the problems American companies have protecting their unique products. Here’s how The Times described the article: “Sears, which sold many Bionic Wrenches last holiday season, is selling a similar product (the Max Axess) this year — only now it is made in China instead of America.”  

You can read the full article by linking here (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/09/business/popular-wrench-fights-a-chinese-rival.html), but the real meat of the story came near the end. Here are two telling paragraphs:

“The company that makes the Max Axess wrench and other tools for Craftsman, the Apex Tool Group, is being acquired by Bain Capital, the company founded by Mitt Romney, in a $1.6 billion deal.

“Throughout the presidential campaign, Bain was criticized on the grounds that it encouraged outsourcing by companies it buys at the expense of American workers. Apex makes many of its tools overseas. A company spokesman referred all questions to Sears.”

Romney hasn’t run Bain Capital since 1999, but his management philosophy of outsourcing American jobs is enshrined in that company. 

And remember my cautionary advice last week about buying cars from the flooded areas. Well, there's been a slew of warnings from attorneys general and consumer protection officials about cars with engines flooded not just by Hurricane Sandy but also by storms and floods in other parts of the country (dealerships across state lines have been known to swap swamped autos). So be wary out there. 

Kickoff Time for the 2016 Elections

It’s all over but the shouts of joy or despair, the air of resignation or elation, the couldabeen, shouldabeen cries of missed opportunities, the atta-boy, way to go hurrahs of “yes, our country has been saved from (you pick it) socialism or 19th century-style robber baronhood.” 

Hard to believe that, barring a hanging chad-like controversy, we will settle into the 2016 presidential election cycle in less than 36 hours. I know, you just can’t wait. Who’d have thought there was an actual silver lining to gender neutral Hurricane Sandy (like the Saturday Night Live character Pat, who’s to say Sandy was a female or male hurricane), when it knocked the campaigns off front pages and TV screens for days, giving the nation respite from the shallow, often offensive tones of the candidates and their surrogates. 

As anyone who has read my blogs knows, I’m hoping for an Obama victory. No need to review why. But there’s still time to point out some interesting and perhaps fun thoughts about the election.

For instance, I wonder why so many Republicans deny the reality of evolution when they’ve witnessed it in warp speed before their very eyes. During his years-long run for the White House, Mitt Romney has evolved from a moderate to a conservative to an extreme conservative to a moderate (at least in his eyes). It’s not so much survival-of-the-fittest as survival-of-the-whatever-it-takes-to-win. We’ll see Tuesday if the public swallows his brand of political posturing.

From the Republican party and presidential debates, Romney came across as a silver-tongued salesman. Rapid fire delivery of purported facts. No countenance of disagreement. Aggressive to the point of disrespect. A manner more suited to the manor than to the general public. It was a type of behavior I’ve seen before, in captains of industry. Even in public companies, they broached no dissent. Shareholders at annual meetings who questioned their authority were barely tolerated. Shareholders could submit resolutions and get to vote on the election of corporate directors, but the tally was usually stacked in favor of management. For Romney to win he would have successfully convinced enough voters that he knows best. 

I found an insight into his character in a story that didn’t get as much play as I would have suspected, given its human interest nature. The Associated Press reported that after the second debate, the town hall debate where Obama woke up from his first debate coma and attacked Romney’s misrepresentations, Romney's son Tagg was tempted to "take a swing" at the president for criticizing his father. Tagg made that admission in a radio interview. He apologized for his thoughts. Forty-two-year-olds don’t make those kind of statements if they haven’t been brought up in an environment where the powerful are not meant to be challenged. 

During one of his campaign stops last month, Romney predicted stock markets would likely rise if he wins. "There will be a great deal of optimism about the future of this country," he said. "We'll see capital come back and we'll see—without actually doing anything—we'll actually get a boost in the economy," he said. "If the president gets re-elected, I don't know what will happen. I can­, I can never predict what the markets will do."

What does he think has been happening to the stock market over the last four years? Here are the facts: On Election Day 2008, the Dow Jones Industrial Average stood at 9,625. On the next three Election Days under Obama, the DJIA went up to 9,771, then 11,189, then 12,170. As Americans troop to the polls Tuesday, the DJIA is at 13,113, a 36.2% increase under Obama. Compare that to what happened under George W. Bush’s presidency. The day he got elected, the DJIA was 10,952. Eight years later it was 9,625, a 12.1% decrease. For all their bellyaching about Obama wanting to increase taxes on their oversized earnings, Wall Streeters have done quite nicely under our “socialist” president.

It’s apparent that once more the country will be divided in politics and philosophy. So why not adapt an idea from Britain and separate the country in two, much the same way Ireland was divided as was the Indian subcontinent into India and Pakistan? Actually, the idea of two entities precedes British action. The Confederacy thought it up first. You’d have the Republic of Red States stretching across the South, Midwest, and Plains states separating the two sections of the Republic of Blue States in the Northeast and West Coast—having two parts is like the original Pakistan, the eastern section is now independent and known as Bangladesh. (For the moment, let’s not concern ourselves where Florida, Illinois and perhaps Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota fall.) Let’s remember that Texas governor Rick Perry thought his state might want to secede from the Union. This idea just elaborates on that birdbrain notion.

The Red States would have lots of natural resources, lots of agriculture, lots of nuclear rocket silos, lots of tornadoes and drought, lots of Bible belters. Lots of people working with their hands and big machines. Blue States would have lots of earthquakes and shore erosion. Lots of lawyers, bankers, geeks, surfers, media stars, fashionistas. Lots of people dedicated to making money from  intellectual capital, with no guarantee their ideas are anything more than schemes to make money out of thin air. 

I don’t have all the details worked out, but it’s worth keeping in mind as we start the next presidential selection process on Wednesday. Assuming Romney loses, the GOP will undergo an internal contest of values. It will either veer further right or return to a more moderate, just right of center, position. If it does the latter, NJ governor Chris Christie has a shot at the nomination. He’d have to fight off Jeb Bush. If it swings further right, Christie would either have to alter his stances or Congressman Paul Ryan would have an inside track, along with Senators Marco Rubio and Jim Dement. 

On the Democratic side, the battle for the nomination will be between Hillary Clinton, Joseph Biden and Andrew Cuomo. Those are easy predictions. My real crystal ball forecast is the vice presidential pick—Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark, NJ, or Deval Patrick, governor of Massachusetts. 

That’s it for now. Go vote. Pray. Cross your fingers. Light candles. Vote again (just kidding). Pray some more (not kidding).

Fair, of Should I Say, Storm Warning: Anyone, anywhere in the market for a new or used vehicle in the next half year or so better check where and when that car was manufactured and serviced. With so many cars swamped by Hurricane Sandy, lots of autos and trucks will be bought as replacements. But if you’ve ever wondered what happens to the cars and trucks salvaged from the deluge, even those that were on dealers’ lots, listen up—they are often “repaired” and many times shipped to other parts of the country to be sold to unsuspecting customers. 

That’s where CarFax or other services that can trace a car’s provenance come in handy. Trust me, you don’t want to buy a car or truck with an engine that was under water. For a new car, it’s probably a good idea to buy one built after November 1. It also would be a good idea for any new or used vehicle purchase to get the dealer to give you a sworn statement that it has not gone through Hurricane Sandy.

Tragic Bookends: New York mayor Michael Bloomberg moved into city hall months after the devastation of September 11. He will be leaving office at the end of 2013 while the Big Apple is still in the midst of recovering from the big bite Hurricane Sandy took from it. 

I Never Really Liked Halloween

Just five kids braved our cul de sac to trick or treat last night. Can’t really blame them or their parents who tagged along. I wouldn’t have gone out last night, either. Then again, I never really liked Halloween. I don't remember dressing up in a costume to go trick or treating as a youngster. My antipathy toward Halloween carried over to my parenting. I reasoned that since Halloween really was All Saints Day it was a Christian holiday, one good Jewish children shouldn't celebrate. Besides Gilda and I didn't want Dan and Ellie eating candy. I'm also not into scary movies, especially ones wherein a haunted house plays a central role. 

Perhaps my aversion to haunted houses goes back to my early childhood. Across the street from our brick row house on Avenue W in Brooklyn in the early 1950s stood a dirty grey, two or three story clapboard structure recessed back from the road. I say dirty grey, but in truth the house started off white. Years of neglect turned it dirty grey. The small plot of lawn in front of the house was overgrown with weeds.

No children lived there. The only person we ever saw going into and out of the house was a wizened geezer. He walked stooped over, his grey suit jacket draping a skeletal body. His cheeks appeared sallow and shallow, as if he had no teeth to keep them from caving in on his gums. A stub of a cigarette dangled from his lips. His grey hair ran wild. He was, to a young boy and his friends with furtive imaginations, a most scary fellow, the type of shadowy figure Scout and Jem envisioned of Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird. Even his name made us squirm—Pupkis. 

My friends, Lenny and Richie, and I weren’t old enough to cross Avenue W by ourselves, so we never threw rocks or fuzz balls at Mr. Pupkis or his home. One day, maybe when I was eight or nine, Pupkis and his home were gone. In short order they were replaced by side-by-side adjoining brick homes. Into one of them moved a family with a daughter, Sherry, who became one of my sister’s best friends. The most memorable aspect of Sherry’s home was her living room furniture. Her mother encased the sofa and chairs in protective plastic. People did that back in the 1950s and early 1960s. 

One other noteworthy event occurred on Avenue W between East 18th and East 19th Street. A few years later on a Friday evening in the spring, just as our family was sitting down to Sabbath dinner, we heard sharp popping sounds—gunfire— from across the street, followed by a man’s anguished cry. We looked out the dinette window to see police detectives stuff a portly man handcuffed from behind into an unmarked car. Turned out he was a drug dealer. The detectives had pursued him down his driveway into his back yard, firing their pistols in the air to get him to stop fleeing. We didn’t know the family. I don’t think they would have been the type of folks my parents would have had as friends. 

More Sandy Fallout: Wednesday’s NY Times carried a letter from Joseph McCaffrey of Bala Cynwyd, Pa., arguing for early voting legislation in all 50 states so that future disasters, wherever they may occur, don’t limit suffrage opportunities. “Mother Nature is nonpartisan and could take out red or blue states in the future and severely affect national elections,” he wrote.

McCaffrey must be a Democrat as he tagged Mother Nature (another euphemism for God) as being nonpartisan. No self-respecting Republican, at least in this time of Akins, Santorum, Bachmann and Mourdock, would declare God to be anything but a card carrying member of the Grand Old Party. 

My Mistake: Another example of why it’s very hard to copy edit yourself. In Wednesday’s post I wrote Hurricane “Sally,” not Sandy (since corrected). My apologies. To those who wrote in, thank you. To everyone else, this is another example of seeing what you want to see, not what the reality is. 

More Sandy, Sandy, Sandy

Three days after Hurricane Sandy, the mailman finally resumed his appointed rounds, one day after the UPS man was able to deliver a package. So much for the “neither snow nor rain ...” motto of the U.S. Postal Service, which by the way, is not an official creed of the agency. Could Romney be right? Could private enterprise function better than a quasi-governmental entity? 

Perhaps, since “brown,” FedEx and any other company probably would not have to operate under the same constrictions imposed on the Postal Service, such as requiring congressional approval for rate hikes and service-related decisions, including the ability to cut off some delivery days and routes. Free enterprise is great but we should realize there are some functions that serve our national best interest if they are either government run or at the least government regulated. For example, could you imagine what would happen if the government did not oversee nuclear power facilities? How safe would you feel living near such a power plant. Even with government oversight I’m not too comfortable living within 28 miles of the Indian Point nuclear power plant in Buchanan, NY. 

Maybe government supervision of nuclear energy is easy to accept. How’s about something simpler, such as cell phone service. To be honest, our cell phone capabilities are lousy, far behind those in most other countries, including Third World nations. It’s because the government did not set national standards when the industry began. Only recently did consumers obtain the right to keep their telephone numbers when they switched carriers. 

Reagan and his blind followers were wrong to blame government as the problem. Waste is the problem. Even with occasional delays in getting my mail—mostly bills, promos for more credit cards and mail order prescriptions—our postal service is among the best in the world. If you have friends or relatives living in other countries, ask them about their postal horror stories.

By the way, if you didn’t know any better, you’d have sworn Barack Obama and Chris Christie were the best of buddies the way they hung together and talked effusively about each other during the president’s tour of wreckage in the governor’s state of New Jersey. Some reports say Republicans are upset with Christie for praising Obama when the election hangs in the balance. Obama, meanwhile, didn’t seem to hold a grudge for recent attacks Christie has launched on his leadership. The photo-op of Obama looking presidential visiting and comforting the Sandy’s victims was worth swallowing some pride. See, Democrats and Republicans can work together, or at least give the appearance of such. 

Turf Wars: Or should I say, tree wars. I wonder, what with all the downed trees, is there a nesting war going on among squirrels and birds forced to find new homes above us in trees already staked out by their rodent and aviary cousins? (Actually, squirrels live in nests called “dreys,” usually built in the forks of trees limbs.) 

In anticipation of winter, squirrels have been packing food away all around their neighborhoods. How’s the new landscape going to impact their winter feeding? Just wondering ...

More to wonder about ... The Pied Piper legend had him ridding Hamelin of its rats by luring them with his flute to jump into Germany’s Weser River where all but one drowned. I wonder, has Hurricane Sally basement and tunnel flooding killed off many of the rats that reside in subterranean Manhattan? Just wondering ...

Today being Wednesday I usually deliver food to seniors living in Yonkers. But the social service agency couldn’t get its food shipment so the ladies will have to hunker down for another day as a delivery is planned for Thursday. They’re a pretty resilient group, these octogenarians and nonagenarians (those are 80 and 90 year olds, for those not familiar with those terms), so I’m not too concerned they’ll waste away. But I do feel responsible for checking in on them, some of whom still live in free-standing houses.

A few limbs fell off some of our evergreen trees, but for the most part we emerged unscathed from the storm. Some 30 years ago, however, in our first house, we experienced a startling tree casualty. One Sunday as I was working in our breakfast nook around 9 pm, I heard what sounded like a mortar blast in our back yard. Half of an enormous weeping willow tree in one of our neighbor’s yards had snapped and fallen across three yards, ours included. Luckily, no house was hit. No damage except to the neighbor’s pocketbook. It cost more than $2,000 to have the tree chopped down, cut up and hauled away. Willow is not good firewood, so none of it was worth salvaging. Too bad, because at the time 80% of our heat came from wood I gathered for our wood burning stove.

Following Sandy

Gilda and I dodged another bullet. Our home was not affected by Hurricane Sandy. We did not lose power, Internet, cable or phone service. I still think I should have bought that small generator just in case we needed it to run our sump pumps. Perhaps next time I’ll be more aggressive. 

I haven’t become a storm-zombie, watching or listening to Hurricane Sandy 24-hour coverage. But from the little time I did spend pre- and post-landfall, here are some observations:

Prior to Sandy hitting the New York area, CBS-2 weatherman John Elliott, when describing the dangers expected from the storm, said, “We’re not trying to scare you.” Whoa! Of course he was trying to scare his viewers. He was trying to scare everyone into doing the right thing, such as evacuating from low-lying areas. Anyone who didn’t heed his warnings and had the capacity to vacate before Sandy hit but didn’t should be required to pay for any emergency help provided to rescue them.

I found it rather incongruous watching in-studio newscasters nattily dressed and coiffed while telling us about the storm and flooding. I’d have preferred a little more grunge, in the spirit of what their reporters in the field were experiencing. 

Bridges, roadways, tunnels, mass transit were closed. Ferry service was suspended, as well. Ferries? I couldn’t understand that at first. Aren’t ferries supposed to float, even over troubled waters? Gilda and her brother Carl reasoned the ferry terminals probably were damaged. Makes sense.

With Noah and the Flood a recent blog topic, Carl also reminded me Russell Crowe is filming part of a movie titled Noah on Long Island which, according to a noon report, has 90% of its residents without power. The biblical-based film is being directed by Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan and The Wrestler), a boyhood and long-time friend of our nephew, Andrew, Gilda’s sister’s oldest offspring.

President Obama swiftly declared parts of New York and New Jersey disaster areas and eligible for emergency federal relief funds through FEMA. Ever wonder what Mitt Romney’s position is on FEMA assistance? Here’s an article from The Huffington Post:

During a CNN debate at the height of the GOP primary, Mitt Romney was asked, in the context of the Joplin disaster and FEMA's cash crunch, whether the agency should be shuttered so that states can individually take over responsibility for disaster response.

"Absolutely," he said. "Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that's the right direction. And if you can go even further, and send it back to the private sector, that's even better. Instead of thinking, in the federal budget, what we should cut, we should ask the opposite question, what should we keep?"

"Including disaster relief, though?" debate moderator John King asked Romney.

"We cannot -- we cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids," Romney replied. "It is simply immoral, in my view, for us to continue to rack up larger and larger debts and pass them on to our kids, knowing full well that we'll all be dead and gone before it's paid off. It makes no sense at all."

On Sunday, according to HuffPost, “a Romney official reaffirmed the former governor's position Sunday evening in an email.

"'Gov. Romney wants to ensure states, who are the first responders and are in the best position to aid impacted individuals and communities, have the resources and assistance they need to cope with natural disasters,'” the Romney official said."

One has to wonder how any state would be able to afford the billions and billions of dollars it will require to rebuild after Hurricane Sandy. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo already has said states do not have such funds, given their constitutional requirement to balance their budgets. Washington, on the other hand, can supply financing, even if it means adding to the national debt. 

As for Romney’s suggestion to privatize disaster relief, it would open a Pandora’s Box of  troubles including the possibility help would be doled out quicker to more affluent areas than poor neighborhoods. If government did that, voters could react at the next election. But there’s no recourse if private enterprise fails or shows favorites.  

There is a silver lining to all the destruction—replacement purchases by municipalities and individuals for capital goods, home furnishings and apparel will stimulate the economy. Lots of jobs may be created filling the new demand for goods and services. Contractors and related construction industry workers have reason to smile, assuming they didn’t suffer from Sandy. Romney, of course, would see these jobs as a plus, given that in his nominating acceptance speech he mocked Obama for promising “to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet.” Obama’s idea doesn’t sound too crazy now, does it?

I guess we’re lucky Sandy hit this week and not a week later when the election might have been affected by more than just the campaigns suspending events. Had Sandy come next week, we might have had to extend voting beyond Tuesday in the states affected, most of which lean Blue. Then again, in places like Pennsylvania where Republicans now control the state government, there might have been some thought not to as a way of keeping Obama’s vote total low. (Yeah, I'm being cynical, but not too unrealistic.)

Gilda had the best comment—just let Ohio vote. Whomever wins the Buckeye State wins the presidency.

I wasn’t the only one to focus on the World Series ending on a called third strike. Here’s a link to an article from The NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/30/sports/baseball/called-third-strike-is-rare-way-to-end-world-series.html

  

Waiting for Sandy

Waiting for Hurricane Sandy to make landfall in Westchester County, I am troubled by thoughts I have not done enough to prepare. Gilda and I have gone round and round about the wisdom and efficacy of buying a portable gasoline powered generator (our subdivision is not serviced by natural gas so we can’t get a backup whole house generator). Walking through the Christmas Tree Shop on Friday I was tempted to make an impulse purchase of a 3,500 watt generator for $299, but Gilda talked me out of it when I called her. Over 28 years we’ve never had a power outage, though we have come close. Several years ago a tree fell across our cul-de-sac street, land-locking us for a day. How it didn’t sever any power lines is beyond me. I’m worried our good fortune will run out.

Anyway, the real danger should we lose electricity is the loss of sump pump power. Our basement would flood quickly as we are the lowest house in our development situated over a high water table. Our sump pump has an emergency backup battery. If we do lose power I hope it’s not longer than the life span of the battery.

I’m not a Chris Christie fan but watching the New Jersey governor’s press conference on Hurricane Sandy preparations I was impressed by his beefy determination to be ahead of events. His non-nonsense stance epitomized New Jersey’s tough-minded attitude. Also worth noting that Christie said President Obama called him to assess the state’s readiness and its working relationship with FEMA. Nice to see Obama acting proactively and Christie giving props to a Democrat.

Lots of people and organizations giving tips on how to prepare for the coming deluge. I ignored most of the suggestions but for some reason decided storing water in buckets and even a bathtub was a good idea. 

Dan, Allison, Finley and Dagny are stranded in Sarasota, Fla. Dan’s ultimate frisbee team, Boston Ironside, was playing in the national championship tournament. They’ve finished second three out of the last four years. They came into the tourney rated number one in the country, but lost in the semi-finals Saturday to a team from Texas, Doublewide, which wound up winning the title Sunday afternoon. Small compensation was the NY Giants’ thrilling, nail-biting, clinging victory over the Dallas Cowboys early Sunday evening. Dan’s family can’t get out of Florida until Tuesday at the earliest. My brother, as well, is stuck on the east coast of Florida. 

Be Prepared

If I were president of the United States running for re-election and faced with a shifty opponent, I’d marshal all my resources in the coming days to react swiftly and humanely should a crushing blow land. I’m talking, of course, not about Mitt Romney but rather a transmuted Hurricane Sandy, or the “Frankenstorm” being predicted to strike the Eastern Seaboard and parts of Ohio and West Virginia as early as Sunday after Sandy’s winds mix with an early winter storm coming from the west. Politicians can’t do anything to prevent storms, but they sure can suffer the consequences if they fail to react appropriately (see George W. Bush and Hurricane Katrina, or New York City Mayor John Lindsay and the snowstorm that buried Queens). 

So, President Obama, forget about any planned campaign stops early next week. Your priority is to appear presidential. Get yourself to the stricken areas lickety-split. Make sure FEMA responds in a timely manner. Declare disaster areas and the availability of emergency relief funds. Don’t let Romney say you’re ignoring the pain and suffering of people in the affected areas as you care only about keeping your job. 

Speaking of keeping a job, word came yesterday that Mariano Rivera, the NY Yankee relief pitcher beyond compare, is considering retiring rather than return post-injury to the 2013 roster. Why would the all-time saves leader not want to try another run for glory? Doesn’t he want to re-unite with Derek Jeter, once he recuperates from his injury, and possibly Andy Pettitte should he decide to come back? 

Perhaps Rivera’s been pondering the team’s playoff futility record over the past 12 seasons. Eleven playoff qualifications, World Series appearances in 2001, 2003, and 2009, but just one title (2009). Better than most teams, but surely not up to the standard the Yankees set for themselves. Their hitting prowess seems to vanish all too often in the playoffs, as it did this year. Too often the team’s closer has not even entered a game, so why put oneself through more than six months of practice and games? Rivera has nothing to prove. He is the best. He already has five World Series rings.

Time to spend more time with his family. My guess is Rivera will opt to conditionally retire from baseball. He won’t come back unless his successor, Raphael Soriano, decides to leave the team or gets injured. So, Yankee fans, be prepared to never hear “Enter Sandman” ever again, except for the day Rivera’s uniform number 42 is officially retired. 

Perhaps you’ve noticed fewer posts of late. Not that there’s less to write about, it’s just I am very discouraged by the quality of the rhetoric in this campaign and the inability of too many Americans, especially women, to grasp the social changes that would transpire if Romney wins. Romney may claim to tolerate a woman’s right to an abortion in cases of rape, incest or danger to her life, but he lacks the spine to stand up to the ultra-right wingers, which include his vice presidential running mate, who want to outlaw all abortions and even believe contraception is heinous and should not be permitted. Nor does Romney champion equal pay for women. Nor does he support funding for Planned Parenthood which provides health care, not just abortion services, to millions of women who cannot afford regular doctor’s visits. Romney says hundreds of thousands of women lost their jobs during the Obama years. The actual figure is less than 100,000, bad, yes, but understandable given the economy Obama inherited. Romney blasts Obama for investing stimulus money in failed companies. He says half of the companies that received stimulus funds have filed for bankruptcy. CNN, however, points out just 8% of the stimulus companies have failed, compared to 22% of the companies Romney invested in during his years at Bain Capital. 

I don’t normally watch Fox News. I admit most of what I view of it comes from clips on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart or The Colbert Report. Snippets can be made to sound whichever way you want them to sound, but when they play an extended clip you really have to wonder how these people get away with what they say. Take, for example, recent comments by Peter Johnson, Jr. Saying that he had no evidence to back up his claim, Johnson opined the deaths of our Libyan ambassador and three other Americans were acceptable to the Obama administration if it meant militants would be appeased. What upsets me is that Johnson, or apparently anyone on Fox News, can make a claim without evidence. What upsets me more is that people take these rants as fact. That they believe the birthers. That they care about what Donald Trump says. 

In the ongoing rage over Republican comments about rape, one has to be struck by the fervor these GOP candidates possess that God intended these despicable acts to occur. Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt, that they truly believe all events are God’s will. With that reasoning in mind, why is it they deny the legitimacy of Obama’s election in 2008? Are they willing to work with him if he wins re-election, for surely God would have shown his pleasure in Obama if he triumphs a second time? Are they prepared to accept God’s mysterious ways if Obama emerges victorious from the fires of election politics and Electoral College mathematics? They may be true believers, but doubtful they have it within their souls to go that far in service of their deity.