It truly is frightening when so many people like the author who have been educated and can write are as dumb as doors. Please lord, protect us from these people and their "problem solving" capabilities. Global warming indeed.

People have become desensitized to calamity,especially since 911.Just about every day is a calamity under Obama so you could go nuts if you didn´t separate yourself mentally from it.

NYC exemplifies just about everything that´s wrong with this country so they´re not getting much sympathy from the public.911 was an attack on our country,not just NYC and people rightly rallied around them.

People think Bloomberg is a crackpot which tells them you get the government you deserve.

It´s NYC types that re-elected Obama and flyover country will pay through the nose for it.

Of course I feel sympathy for people without electric and heat and having to eat out of dumpsters but that´s what you get from electing stooges like Obama and Bloomberg.Does anybody really doubt that NYC would have had a better response if Guliani was still in charge?

FEMA people were staying in $300 a night rooms,maybe glaring out the window and saying wow,I´m glad I´m not one of those idiots.There´s nothing more heartless or soulless than a liberal bureaucracy,one that will be in charge of your health decisions shortly.

Those who suffered the worst of the Sandy disaster weren´t Manhattan penthouse dwellers, but just normal people living in neighborhoods not expected to get flooded out in this way. Some of them have been there for generations. Why do we feel the need to lump all the victims into some sort of "they deserved it" pot?

And I offer a defense of the FEMA workers I met after Katrina. They, too, were just normal men and women trying to do the job assigned to them. I never heard one of them ridiculing those they were trying to help, much less referring to them as "idiots".

FEMA has been absent from the most seriously damaged areas of NY and NJ.

The msm may lie, but the survivors know better.

Red Cross has been collecting millions upon millions of dollars. Doing little or nothing for the survivors.

At one point they were handing out hot chocolate and cookies Then when the weather threatened again, they left. Never to return.

Here´s and problem, OP: It´s a fair bet that most of the people hit by Sandy are dems. They all expected gov´t to come running to the rescue in a New York minute.
Maybe this experience has opened a few eyes, but I doubt it.

There is very little gas available in my part of Pa. today. Is it all going north to the hard hit areas, or is this the first day of Obama´s victory over fossil fuel?

from what I understand 5, most of Staten Island residents are more conservative and vote Republican. The other boroughs, not so. I´m more inclined to believe the mayor´s office is shortsighted. Look how quickly power to Manhattan was restored. Wouldn´t want the world to see the center of finance and entertainment hit hard and on its knees.

I was actually starting to feel some empathy for Leon. His sister, his frail mother, their panic and inability to do anything about their situation. The hunt for gasoline to keep mother warm and safe and heated by a generator. All of these personal details assists one in ´´walking a mile in his shoes´´. And then - and then - Leon went all sideways on me and started in with the ´´global warming´´ nonsense.

He lost me - I´m sorry for his family - I´m sorry for his upended life. I´m sorry for the loss of books - that would break my heart also. I´m sorry he´s been reduced to a FEMA number. And I´m sorry that he is still so stupid...

Since Wieseltier is literary editor of the New Republic, he is able to get his prose published. He no doubt thinks it´s excessively sharp and artistic and no one at the organization can tell the horrible truth.

"...the solipsism of situatedness."
"...a halcyon archipelago of bourgeois contentment"

This piece deserves a mention in the Bad Writing Contest. On top of that it takes 4 times the verbiage to say what a normal writer could.