Etc.

Some commentary by WSWS about how the mess on the East Coast is being handled.
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Lance Armstrong will likely lose his bronze Olympic medal:

The International Olympic Committee said on Thursday that it has opened an investigation into Armstrong’s role in the drug scandal outlined in the explosive report released on Oct. 10 by the United States Anti-Doping Agency. The IOC will also review the involvement of other cyclists and cycling officials who were implicated in what USADA called the most sophisticated doping program in the history of sports.

Some damned fools are upset because a giant Armstrong effigy is going to end up in ashes this weekend.

Lance's $125 million fortune may evaporate once all of the lawyers get their act together and go after him:

First out of the blocks will be the demand for the return of a $5 million bonus, plus $2.5 million in legal fees for an action he won against a Texas insurance firm that had accused him of taking drugs when he won three consecutive Tour de France’s. With all the evidence that he lied under oath, he will be liable to repay that all of that, plus interest, plus legal fees, plus possible damages, which could end up costing him about $15 million.

Over the years he has sued and received damages from various newspapers, magazines and publishing houses for his claim that they had impugned his “so-called” character. These are now going to come after him en masse. Then, there are many people, including fellow cyclists, whose lives he has wrecked over the years. He even went after Greg LeMond and his wife when they raised questions about his amazing performance.

In 2001, he had Trek bikes stop manufacturing LeMond cycles and insisted that John Burke, the head of Trek, should have LeMond read a formal apology to Armstrong and fellow doper, Dr. Ferrari. (Since banned for life, along with Armstrong.) The kick in the pants for Armstrong is that Greg LeMond is now the only American to have won the Tour de France. And he did it three times, which is three times more than Lance.

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Etc.

Millions of people are without power thanks to the hurricane.

Things are very slowly getting back on track.
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Lance Armstrong remains an admired figure throughout the world:

Adelaide, Australia:

The Australian city of Adelaide has stripped Lance Armstrong of its highest honor — the key to the city — following the removal of his seven Tour de France titles.

Edenbridge in the U.K.:

The disgraced American cyclist has been chosen as the latest celebrity to be burned in effigy during an English town's nationally famous Bonfire Night celebrations.

Edenbridge in southeast England has built a 30-foot model of Armstrong, who was stripped recently of his seven Tour de France titles for doping offenses.

The effigy, to be burnt Saturday, sports a sign saying "For sale, racing bike, no longer required."

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I will make a prediction for Tuesday: Senate stays Democratic, House stays GOP though it loses some seats, and Obama will carry all of the states he carried in 2008 except for NC and IN but still will win.

The election was over when Mitt messed up with the Libya question in the second debate. The October Surprise with the weather sealed the deal.

Speaking of the election, lots and lots of letter writers decided to give the Des Moines Register a piece of their collective minds after that paper decided to endorse Mitt Romney.
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The WSWS had a nice write-up on the late senator George McGovern. His campaign and defeat are seen as pivotal in the rightward lurch of the Democratic Party.

The October Surprise

Nobody could have predicted the election season would go out in a fury.

It is certainly making for strange political bedfellows:

In an interview on NBC, Christie called Obama “outstanding” for expediting relief efforts. He also told MSNBC that Obama “deserves great credit.”

“He gave me his number at the White House and told me to call him if I needed anything,” Christie said.


The New Jersey governor even took his message to Fox News, saying that Obama had helped “tremendously.”

Meanwhile, Romney is continuing to campaign despite the storm, but he is trying to dress up his campaigning as some kind of "relief" effort.

What choice does he really have? The campaign is for all intents and purposes over with.

"Hurricane Sandy is the Best Thing That Ever Happened to the East Coast"

Can you imagine that dipshit asshole Arne Duncan thinking such an awful catastrophe as the current hurricane could be the perfect way to force worthless, corrupt charter school systems throughout the East Coast? I can just about see this shit coming down if the eastern seaboard is as traumatized as New Orleans was with Katrina.

I am such a cynic, I think anything is possible resulting from a natural disaster.

People back there can have the lousy weather. I am going to die out west and would NEVER consider living anywhere east of the Rockies.

Sure, there is lots of history back there and a lot of things to do, but it is so great out west I could never even dream of living anywhere back there.

From the article:

Hurricane Sandy battered the mid-Atlantic region on Monday, its powerful gusts and storm surges causing once-in-a-generation flooding in coastal communities, knocking down trees and power lines and leaving hundreds of thousands of people — including a large swath of Manhattan — in the rain-soaked dark.


The mammoth and merciless storm made landfall near Atlantic City around 8 p.m., with maximum sustained winds of about 80 miles per hour, the National Hurricane Center said. That was shortly after the center had reclassified the storm as a post-tropical cyclone, a scientific renaming that had no bearing on the powerful winds, driving rains and life-threatening storm surge expected to accompany its push onto land.

The storm had unexpectedly picked up speed as it roared over the Atlantic Ocean on a slate-gray day and went on to paralyze life for millions of people in more than a half-dozen states, with extensive evacuations that turned shorefront neighborhoods into ghost towns. Even the superintendent of the Statue of Liberty left to ride out the storm at his mother’s house in New Jersey; he said the statue itself was “high and dry,” but his house in the shadow of the torch was not.

So much for the economic "recovery." But Obama should get lots of positive press over his handling of the situation, unlike Bush's criminal bungling of Katrina.

I am sure the Republicans are going to accuse Obama, if not of causing the hurricane himself, of exploiting the disaster for political gain.