This crane dangling over Midtown Manhattan may be the iconic image of Hurricane Sandy hitting New York City. It has supposedly been secured to the building and another crane will be installed to remove the damaged one. But how long will that take?
How long will it take? is the question that hangs over Manhattan, with many residents especially in lower Manhattan without water and electricity for 48 hours. There were fights today as residents lined up for crowded city buses to get them off the island. Others walked out over the bridges.
New Yorkers are famously tough, and they can last a few days without water service. Most buildings have large water tanks on the roof. Standard practice is to fill the bathtubs to have water to flush the toilets. But at some point that runs out.
The subway system is supposed to reopen tomorrow, but what percentage of the system will be operating and in what neighborhoods? While large parts of the city may be up and running without problems, that doesn't necessarily help the neighborhoods that are still down.
With Long Island and New Jersey also in tatters we may have a very large problem looming if services across the city and region don't get put back to normal in the next day or two. In the meantime, it is Occupy Wall Street on a large scale.
Update 11/1: ConEd is saying they will have the power back on in lower Manhattan by Saturday but it could be out another week in other places. Mayor Bloomberg wants to go ahead with the New York City Marathon on Sunday. Organizers are probably counting on a majority of the usual 50,000 runners not showing up.
Update 11/2: Mayor Bloomberg has succumbed to climate change and cancelled the NYC Sandy Zombie Apocalypse Marathon that he was still planning to run on Sunday: "While holding the race would not require diverting resources from the recovery effort, it is clear that it has become the source of controversy and division." Politicians thrive on controversy and division, corporate sponsors not so much.
Update 11/2: Mayor Bloomberg also spoke today on the world's largest dangling metaphor:
"Concerning the crane on West 57th Street: Tomorrow, work on securing the crane will begin. It’s an approximately 36-hour operation, and the goal is to remove the vacate order and allow people in the vicinity to return to their homes and offices by Monday night.
We’ve just got to make sure that we do this where it doesn’t cost any more lives – or any lives – and we think we have a plan that’s been well studied by everybody, and we’ve been on the crane and with workers and we’ve photographed everything, and we’ve studied the blueprints, and we think we have a plan that will in 36 hours let us secure the boom to the building, and then over the next three or four weeks they’ll have to build another crane next to it to take down the pieces that are damaged."
You've got to admire the use of the word "we" by the world's newest expert on dangling metaphors.
The whole east coast is being left stranded at the drive in. No need to worry what they will say Monday at work here in Massachusetts, the governor has told all non-essential workers to stay home.
I brought in the porch furniture and roped the garbage cans to the chain link fence. I got out my flashlights, candles, and transistor radio. It looks like the center of the storm will make landfall in New Jersey and then hook back around through upstate New York. so Boston may not take a direct hit.
The crowd at the grocery store Sunday afternoon was fairly impressive, although Shaw's had full staff and the express line moved faster than it often does. Judging from which shelves were emptied, Cambridge will be living for the next few days on chips, crackers, and tuna fish.
Thursday last week, some neighbors down the street took down a big tree. Probably judged it better to take it down first than have the wind bring it down.
At 2am I got an email from the Obama campaign inviting me to a phone bank to make calls into New Hampshire Wednesday evening. I can see that as long as I keep getting the regular-as-clockwork ping from the Obamaspam machine I'll know the internet is still up and running.
It will be creepy-ironic if the power fails and people can't watch the Monday night episode of Revolution. Or, as I like to call it, the best advertisement for stockpiling guns and ammunition since the Alamo. OK, since Hurricane Katrina.
Update:
A friend's Camry took a direct hit from a tree limb.
Cambridge firefighters secure a stray line in the street below my window, probably phone or cable as no one in the neighborhood lost power.
With the polls close, there is a lot of talk about stealing the election, Democrats running in dead people, felons, and illegal aliens, Republicans kicking legitimate voters off the rolls and turning away voters without ID. But the real danger may come from the Libertarian Party exploiting a few quirks in the 12th, 20th, and 23rd Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Here's how it would work:
(1) Tie up the electoral college.
(2) Elect or lure one elector.
(3) Put the pitchforks to Congress.
First, a small cadre of libertarian activists would orchestrate a 269 to 269 tie in the electoral college, the little understood institution that actually elects the President under the U.S. Constitution.
The number of electors in the electoral college was originally set to the number of representatives in the U.S. House, always an odd number, plus the number of U.S. Senators, always an even number. That would be a total of 535 electors, making a tie impossible with two candidates in a two-party system.
However, the 23rd Amendment gives the capitol city of Washington, DC the number of electors it would be entitled to as a state by population limited to the number allotted to the least populous state. That works out to 3 electors and brings the total to 538, which makes possible a 269 to 269 tie.
The 12th Amendment requires to elect the President a "majority of the whole number of Electors appointed" which is 270. In the event that no candidate gets 270 electoral votes, the selection of the new President goes to the U.S. House of Representatives. More on that later.
How would libertarian voters tie up the electoral college? As polling stands today, Romney victories in Iowa, Colorado, and Nevada would do the trick.
Now you are probably thinking that there is no way libertarians can organize enough people to influence the vote in those 3 states. But Ron Paul did just that with libertarian voters in the Republican primaries. He got 26,036 people out for the Iowa caucuses, 7,759 out for the Colorado caucuses, and 6,175 out for the Nevada caucuses. Only 537 votes made the difference in Florida in 2000.
The next step exploits another aspect of the 12th Amendment. In the event of failing to get a majority of the electors, the U.S. House chooses "from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President." Barack Obama and Mitt Romney will be #1 and #2. Who will be #3?
Most states award their electors based on who wins the state. Nebraska and Maine, however, award their electors by Congressional districts. These are not swing states getting a lot of attention, so it would be possible for the plainsmen or woodsmen to sneak in one libertarian elector. A Republican elector might also be lured into defecting. That last happened in 1972, when Virginia Elector Roger MacBride switched his vote from Republican Richard Nixon to Libertarian candidate John Hospers. The Paulistas may well already have planted libertarian infiltrators on Romney's elector lists in any number of states.
This year the Libertarian Party candidate is Gary Johnson, the former two-term governor of New Mexico. As such, Gary is uniquely qualified to be #3. No one has ever become U.S. President without first being Vice President, a victorious general, a cabinet secretary, a senator, or a state governor. Unlike recent past third party candidates Ralph Nader, Ross Perot, and John Anderson, Gary Johnson qualifies - all he has to do is get on the list as #3.
That brings us to the final step. For the presidential election tiebreaker, the U.S. House votes by state delegation. That's generally thought to favor the Republicans, because Democrats control most of the bigger states but Republicans control more states. House Speaker John Boehner would be expected, in the event of an electoral college tie, to save the day for Mitt Romney.
But factor in Joe Biden and Michele Bachmann. Under the 20th Amendment, "If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified."
The Vice President elect in an electoral vote tie will almost certainly be Joe Biden. Unlike the President, the choice of Vice President falls to the U.S. Senate and must be "from the two highest numbers on the list." That will be Joe Biden and Paul Ryan as #1 and #2. Democrats are expected to retain control of the U.S. Senate, and they won't pick Paul Ryan. Joe Biden will be waiting in the wings to become President if the U.S. House is unable to choose before noon January 20.
That gives Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann enormous leverage in her role as Chairwoman of the Tea Party Caucus, and she is just crazy enough to use it. The Tea Party Caucus currently has 61 members in the U.S. House, all ostensibly Republicans. Without the Tea Party Caucus votes, Republicans would only have 180 seats as compared to 191 for the Democrats. That's clout.
The state of Texas, for example, has 11 Tea Party Caucus members. That's enough to tip that state's delegation in the tiebreaker vote. The tea party vote can deprive Mitt Romney the win and that means Bachmann can go to Boehner and say, "It's my guy or Joe Biden."
Why would the tea party prefer Gary Johnson to Mitt Romney or Barack Obama? Both Romney and Obama plan to cut the federal deficit by raising taxes, albeit in different ways. Taxed Enough Already is the tea party motto, and they already scuttled the grand bargain on the deficit between Boehner and Obama because it would have raised taxes.
All this Constitutional coup d'etat needs is a slogan. Gary Johnson has five:
Be libertarian one time
Cast a protest vote that counts
Be the 5 percent that changes America
End the two-party system for good
Live free
There it is, the Libertarian Menace, and Hollywood may be behind it. Over the last couple of years, Hollywood opened the door to libertarian values with TV shows like The Walking Dead and Revenge. The hot new TV shows Revolution and Last Resort feature strong libertarians fighting against tyranny.
The Thursday night comedy 30 Rock will feature an episode on November 1 titled "There's No I in America" in which fans of Jenna Maroney (played by Jane Krakowski) under the catchphrase "Unwindulax" will determine the winner of the election. The Revolution episode "The Children's Crusade" will air on the Monday election eve before the Tuesday, November 6 election.
Would that the Republican Party not have picked these two morons to run for U.S. Senate:
Todd Akin of Missouri: "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."
Richard Mourdock of Indiana: "I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen."
"
By this latter logic, God intends everything to happen, including saying stupid things that cost you an election.
Mourdock's statement is less stupid than Akin's, but it was made after Akin's caused enough stir that a smart man wouldn't have gone near the subject of rape and pregnancy, so that makes it more stupid.
Mourdock is still being given a good chance to win his race, but I suspect he will lose too. In both cases, they will lose because a number of voters in these two Republican-leaning states will blacken the Mitt Romney oval, then either vote for the Democrat for U.S. Senate or leave their ballot blank.
In the 2010 election, Republicans saw their U.S. Senate candidates Christine O'Donnell of Delaware and Sharon Angle of Nevada go off in their hands like grenades. A swing of 4 seats in the U.S. Senate would have given them control after this election, instead they've given it away.
Let's see. Strap on a pressurized space suit and a parachute, ascend in a hot air balloon to 128,000 feet (24.2 miles) above the earth's surface, take a step off the side, and freefall for 4 minutes and 20 seconds to reach a maximum speed of 833.9 mph (Mach 1.24). Says Felix Baumgartner just before he took that step on October 14:
"I know the whole world is watching right now and I wish the world could see what I can see. Sometimes you have to go up really high to understand how small you really are. ... I'm coming home now."
It's not the fall that kills you. The truly impressive fete is that he was able to slow that freefall down and land on his feet in the New Mexico desert. Otherwise, it's a Wile E. Coyote ending, and a man is not a cartoon character who can pick himself up from that.
One downside to going so fast, faster than the speed of sound, is that Felix missed setting the 1960 record for longest freefall by 17 seconds. That was set by Joseph Kittinger who jumped at a mere 102,800 feet. Colonel Kittinger was later shot down over North Vietnam and spent 11 months as a prisoner of war.
Felix will have to settle for the record highest manned balloon flight, highest sky-dive jump, farthest freefall, and fastest freefall speed. These records are subject to verification by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. If they are unable to verify, he'll just have to do it again.
You may have thought the last debate was on Monday but C-Span had a third party candidate debate moderated by Larry King on Tuesday.
Larry got a little confused and forgot to ask for the opening statements before asking the first question, so the opening statements start at the 24:00 mark.
David Letterman tells Rachel Maddow he is a little discouraged in his support for President Obama:
"President Obama was not telling the truth about what was excerpted from that op-ed piece."
The subject is the auto bailout and the claim is that President Obama saved GM while Mitt Romney would have put GM out of business.
The now famous "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt" editorial by Mitt Romney appeared on November 18, 2008. Of course, there are two types of bankruptcy, the "going out of business" bankruptcy and the "can't pay all the bills so the creditors have to accept less to keep the doors open" bankruptcy. Chrysler filed for bankruptcy on May 1, 2009 followed by General Motors on June 1, 2009.
So what happened in the six and a half months between November 18 and June 1? A lot of secret meetings were held in Detroit, NYC, and DC to determine which auto plants and dealerships around the country would be closed, which would stay open, and how much federal cash that would take.
I visited Detroit for a great uncle's funeral in April 2009. There was a feeling that times were tough but no feeling of impending doom. There was considerable scoffing at the notion that the U.S. government would be guaranteeing the warranties on GM cars, which had been announced at the end of March. GM will warranty its cars was the Detroit wisdom.
As for Chrysler, it had been owned by Germany's Daimler Motors and would end up owned by Italy's Fiat. If it had been liquidated, Form and GM might have been given the opportunity to buy its best brands, and they would have returned to American ownership.
The Ford family wanted to keep control of their company and Ford didn't take the bailout. They were able to avoid bankruptcy in no small part because they had proactively closed unprofitable auto plants and dealerships starting in 2006. Their reward was to watch their competitors have large portions of their debts forgiven and fill up on cheap government money.
One of Mitt's ideas in that op-ed has a distinctly populist ring:
"Get rid of the planes, the executive dining rooms — all the symbols that breed resentment among the hundreds of thousands who will also be sacrificing to keep the companies afloat."
Another of Mitt's ideas is exactly what eventually happened 4 to 6 months later:
"The federal government should provide guarantees for post-bankruptcy financing and assure car buyers that their warranties are not at risk."
Another one of Mitt Romney's prescriptions that took much longer to become true:
Management as is must go. New faces should be recruited from unrelated industries.
GM CEO Richard Wagoner was allowed to stay on until March 29, 2009, when he was replaced by longtime GM hand Fritz Henderson, who served as CEO until December 1, 2009. Eventually GM got around to hiring outsider Dan Akerson, a former telecom executive and private equity investor, as its CEO on September 1, 2010.
What then President-elect Obama should have done was immediately appoint Mitt Romney as his Car Czar. That would have sent a signal he was serious about the new era of bipartisanship he had promised. And the U.S. auto industry would have gotten where it needed to go a year or two earlier.
At the end of the day, I don't think U.S. taxpayers can complain too much about the auto bailout. It all went on the federal credit card, so it hasn't cost taxpayers anything out of pocket, yet. The U.S. might have to write off about $14 billion of the GM loan. That works out to about $45 person, or $122 per taxpayer. You can buy a share of GM today for $23.69. Some are agitating for the government to send them a share. Frankly, I don't want one.
In any case, the auto bailout was a bipartisan effort that started under President Bush and was completed under President Obama. But you'll never hear Barack Obama say, "President Bush and I saved the auto industry."
