Status OF Transition Sheltering Assistance Extension Is Uncertain. Refugees Left To Fend For Themselves With No Notice
By Art Gallagher
Evicitions from FEMA sponsored hotel accommodations are continuing this weekend for New Jersey residents whose homes were destroyed by Superstorm Sandy. MoreMonmouthMusings reported on Wednesday that some residents have been left to sleep in their cars on weekends.
NJ.com is reporting that the Ocean Place Resort in Long Branch is evicting refugees to accomodate a pre-booked scrapbooking retreat.
Highlands residents Angus Mcdougland and Leia Sims have been living at Ocean Place since Sandy destoyed their home. This morning they received a notice from the hotel that they needed to check out today or pay $260 per night to stay. Mcdougland told MMM that there is a college basketball team filling the hotel, in addition to the scrapbookers.
Lois Pongo, also of Highlands, was locked out the room where she’s been staying this week at the Holiday Inn in Hazlet this morning. Hotel employees told her that she was no longer eligible for transitional housing assistance. Pongo paid for her room for tonight and is scrambling to get her contractors to finish the repairs on her home this weekend.
Pongo visited the FEMA Recovery Center in Leonardo on Thursday to verify that her temporary housing was to be extended. She was left with the impression that her temporary housing was in place. The Leonardo FEMA office which had been so helpful earlier this week said they could not help her today.
Governor Christie announced on Thursday that FEMA’s transitional housing program had been extended for two weeks until January 25th. Evidently someone at FEMA gave Christie bad or incomplete information.
Governor Chris Christie will be appearing on the Sunday morning talk shows of ABC, CBS and NBC this weekend.
Christie will be live with George Stephanopoulos in ABC’s “This Week”, 10am in New York and rebroadcast at 10:30 am in Philadelphia.
The interviews with CBS’s “Face the Nation” and NBC’s “Meet the Press” will be taped. Face the Nation airs at 10:30 am in both New York and Philadelphia. “Meet the Press” airs at 10:00 am in Atlantic City and at 10:30 am in New York and Philadelphia.
Following his live interview with Stephanopoulos, Christie is scheduled to attend the 25th Annual Governor’s Military Review at the New Jersey National Guard Training Center in Sea Girt at 11am.
Unless Stephanopoulos is broadcasting from Sea Girt, Christie will very likely be traveling from ABC’s studio in New York to Sea Girt via helicopter. Expect Democratic whining on Monday.
The mainstream media is gleefully parroting the results of a new Quinnipiac/CBS/NYT poll released yesterday afternoon showing Mitt Romney trailing Barack Obama in three key swing states (PA, OH and FL).
Trailing badly, Save Jerseyans.
But stop the presses! Unfortunately for Romney haters, this poll’s sample was absurdly unrealistic. In fact, an absolutely ideal, hugely historic Democrat turnout model could only exist in David Axelrod’s or Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s filthiest dreams. And we don’t need to go there, nor would we want to.
Do NOT believe the polls, Save Jerseyans! It’s a sick joke. I don’t know if it’s indicative of bias, stupidity, or a base desire to “create” big news and attract an audience. My suspicion is that they’re using 2008 or better-than 2008 turnout models to zap your enthusiasm.
Thanks to the left stream media America is learning that while a student at an elite Michigan prep school, Mitt Romney was a prankster who sometimes went too far. At least two of his pranks were cruel bullying incidents. He lead a blind teacher to walk into a closed door and he traumatised an apparently gay classmate, who later came out, by forcefully cutting off his bleached blond hair, according to a poorly sourced exposé in the Washington Post.
Thanks to the right stream media, sourced in part by Barack Obama himself, we are learning, four years late, that while in high school the President was a heavy drinker, pot and cocaine user, who hung out with communist radicals. He bullied a “plump, dark” Black girl.
We’re likely to be in for a lot more of these types of stories over the next six months. We’ll also be in for disingenuous complaining from both the right and left about each others tactics. All of this is a positive development for America.
Especially at the presidential level, it is the duty of political opponents to do thorough opposition research and to pitch what they find to the media. If the free media doesn’t run with the findings, it is the duty of political opponents to buy media to expose their opponent’s foibles. Then the free media will investigate, report and opine on the veractity of the charges. It is the duty of responsible journalists to verify or debunk opposition research pitched to them and the public and report accordingly.
The traditional media, which is leftist for the most part, took a break from its presidential vetting duty in 2008. Likewise, Barack Obama’s political opposition, the Clintons and John McCain, took a pass on vetting Obama. The Obama camp and the traditional leftist media brilliantly employed the race card to thwart Obama’s vetting.
Both Obama and Romney should be vetted, by each other’s campaign and by the media, over the next six months. It is not unprecedented for the media to vette an incumbent President. CBS’s Dan Rather famously got in wrong and lost his job over Memogate during George W. Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign.
As we enter the vetting season, one of the side benefits will be that the biases of the vetters will be revealed to a skeptical public. As the Internet continues to transform how we get our information and plays a more significant role in political campaigns, the truth that there is no such thing as an unbiased media source will become more and more apparent.
