Will Sandy's ferocity wake us up before we drown?

The NYT lead editorial from Monday, "Big Storm Requires Big Government," cites the evidence for the irreplaceable role of federal resources and management to respond to massive disasters like Sandy.  In making the case, the editorial examines the sickness of willful blindness beclouding the minds of America's right wingers. The key symptom is unshakable faith-based belief that it is always, per Romney's response in a GOP primary debate, "better to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states... And if you... send it back to the private sector, that’s even better."

That almost half of the country throws in their lot with the "you're-on-your-own" ideology of indifference -- and I hope and pray with all fervor that the "almost" is borne out by results in six days -- makes my stomach turn with literal, physical nausea. It's like the feeling I get if I am subjected to a video clip of a sadistic, savage beating of a homeless man.  The editorial writer characterizes the GOP as preferring blaming victims to helping them; Repubicans -- at least the elected ones -- would walk on by that man with contempt for his vulnerability.  

Beyond the obvious immediate advantages of federal emergency management over uncoordinated state-by-state efforts, there is the economic idiocy of having every state be responsible for duplicating the reserves and resources to provide effective emergency disaster response.  And better we should also cut out the expensive federal weather research and monitoring functions like NOAA and the National Storm Center.

Hey, Mr. Big-Gummint Man, you want to know what the weather is going to be? Look out the f&#<in' window!  It worked for the Founding Fathers, didn'it?

The Romney campaign ultimately had to deal with the absurdity of Romney's position when a global-warming-incubated reality storm broadsided it, swamped it and left it exposed like a fishing boat illegally parked on A.C.'s Atlantic Ave. NOW, they say, despite the states' being better positioned to do disaster relief, Romney would not abolish FEMA, as if he'd never said otherwise. 

If you buy that about-face BS, Al Sharpton has a bridge to sell you -- it takes people from Brooklyn to Manhattan when the streets are not covered by ocean or river. If W downgraded and underfunded FEMA, and ideological crusader-plutocrats like Eric Cantor are in place in the House beyond this year, there is no reasonable doubt that Romney will go further than W did in slashing funds and channelling them to private corporate allies.

Americans will either wake up to the massive dual threat of global warming and the radical right, or they/we will soon wake up to a shore line that makes New Jersey the first underwater state and New York City the world's next great SCUBA-diving destination. 

And just maybe the storm has splashed virtual cold water in the faces of some of those undecideds across the swing state electorates.  Quoth Nate Silver, "Mr. Obama made gains in the FiveThirtyEight forecast on Tuesday, with his chances of winning the Electoral College increasing to 77.4 percent." 

I am circumspect at ever drawing a silver lining from a disaster like this -- at least 50 people have died, and damage may rise above $50 billion, which is a ridiculously callous distillation of the cumulative human suffering and loss represented by all that damage.  One factor freeing me up to welcome the possibility that the storm's thumb is resting on Obama's side of the electoral scale is that there is human culpability here that needs to be accounted for in understanding what happened and in deciding for whom to vote.  Denial of global warming is now a clear and present danger to all humans, and, to borrow from Mitt F. Romney the very term he used to describe the expenditure of federal funds on emergency response, it is "immoral".