Free Republic

The damage done. (MTA/Flickr) The Broad Channel A-train crossing is at right. (Bing Maps) The Rockaways have been one of the hardest hit areas of the city following Superstorm Sandy, with lives lost, houses destroyed, crime on the streets. It has also been a remarkably resilient place, with diehard New Yorkers beginning the daunting work of rebuilding. It will be a long time before the Rockaways returns to normal, though, and it turns out that goes for subway service to the area, too.At a press briefing Thursday night, MTA chief Joe Lhota said it would be some time before A-train...

Storm-ravaged and weary Rockaways residents cornered Mayor Bloomberg yesterday to angrily demand more aid for their devastated neighborhood. “When are we gonna get some help?” blasted one desperate woman, who had to be held back by the mayor’s security detail as Bloomberg stood by with a deer-in-the-headlights look. “When are we gonna get some bleeping help?” she demanded. “There’s old ladies in my building that don’t got nothing,” lashed out a man on video caught by a NY1 reporting crew. Bloomberg’s trip to the Rockaways wasn’t announced and wouldn’t have been caught on cameras if the news crew hadn’t happened...

<p>Storm-ravaged and weary Rockaways residents cornered Mayor Bloomberg yesterday to angrily demand more aid for their devastated neighborhood.</p> <p>“When are we gonna get some help?” blasted one desperate woman, who had to be held back by the mayor’s security detail as Bloomberg stood by with a deer-in-the-headlights look.</p>

The disgusting, lynch mob mentality that has arisen from the Trayvon Martin shooting case places us several notches towards race riots this summer. To the balanced observer, Zimmerman really does appear to have likely shot Martin in self defense. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and Barack Hussein Obama started babbling before all the facts were in. These collectivist droids seldom retreat from any lie ... they simply magnify it further. If George Zimmerman is acquitted the fuse will light. Remember Rodney King? If you live in an urban environment, don't be stupid. Pay attention! -------------------------cut-------------------------- EXTRA - 10/31/12 watch the...

America’s heart, soul, brains and muscle — the middle- and working-class people who make this nation great — have been beset for too long by sapping economic decline. So, too, New York breadwinners and families. ~snip~ Revival of the U.S. as a land of opportunity and upward mobility is the central challenge facing the next President. The question for Americans: Who is more likely to accomplish the mission — Barack Obama or Mitt Romney? Four years ago, the Daily News endorsed Obama, seeing a historic figure whose intelligence, political skills and empathy with common folk positioned him to build on...

CITY OF NEWBURGH — A Newburgh cop and three others were stabbed early Saturday at a party honoring a recent homicide victim. City police said the officer was stabbed multiple times around 2:35 a.m. at a Dry Dock nightclub event honoring Justin “J-Doc” Doctor, 23, who was killed Oct. 14. The officer was trying to arrest somebody involved in a fight. The cop received a stab wound to the neck, and was treated at St. Luke’s Hospital. The officer is now in stable condition at a trauma center, police said. Some 200 friends and relatives came out to 90 Broadway...

It would be dark soon at the Coney Island Houses, the fourth night without power, elevators and water. Another night of trips up and down pitch-black staircases, lighted by shaky flashlights and candles. Another night of retreating from the dark.

Mr. Cooper and a few friends stood talking on his house's porch. It was about 7:45 p.m. and they were the only people around. The ocean breeze was getting colder and stronger. He held his flashlight and looked out onto the street, which was still covered with sand. “There's no lights, there's no cameras, there's no alarms, there's no nothing. It's kind of scary, you know?” he said. His neighbor, Talentin Gutierez showed a reporter a borrowed generator, worth about $2,000. His was robbed the other day. Tonight, he will sleep in his car – wrecked from water damage –...

Another Obama-supporting newspaper jumps ship...

LIsten to KFI AM 640 The Lisa Ann Walker Show. She has family on Staten Island. KFI will offer the pdcast after the show airs. She reports lots of bodeis still being found. The news is not being reported becuase of the election and the possibiklty of another storm.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, it seems to be pretty clear that residents of New York City and the surrounding areas could use all the help they can get. However, a Davisburg man said some people in the area are more interested in “protecting their turf” than in distributing those supplies to the masses. Mike James, an independent trucker, said he and three other truckers were told to haul a load of transformers to the city to replace equipment anticipated to be lost in the storm. James, two men from Holly and a Flint man arrived in the city...

As lights have begun flickering on in Lower Manhattan, residents of the Rockaways in Queens continued struggling without power, heat or food for a sixth day as their neighborhood slowly descended into chaos. With little police presence on the storm-ravaged streets, many residents of the peninsula have been forced to take their protection into their own hands, arming themselves with guns, baseball bats and even bows and arrows to ward off thugs seeking to loot their homes. It has been reported that crooks have been disguising themselves as Long Island Power Authority workers and coming by homes on the peninsula...

The National Weather Service is becoming increasingly concerned that a “tortuously slow” nor’easter could bring high winds, coastal flooding, heavy rains and inland snow to New Jersey by mid-week, which could seriously disrupt recovery efforts in the storm-battered Garden State. The storm isn’t expected to be anywhere near the intensity of Hurricane Sandy, but could pose a larger threat because New Jersey has been left extremely vulnerable due to the damage suffered during the storm. Winds could reach 50 miles per hour during this storm, the weather service said, stalling efforts to restore power and causing additional outages. Buildings compromised...

Amid tense reactions to long lines and closures at metropolitan New York gas stations, federal authorities decided to request that the Defense Department deliver 24 million gallons of extra fuel to the area and lift restrictions on deliveries from foreign ships, the New York Times reported. The fuel shortage has been one of the most pronounced consequences of Superstorm Sandy. The Defense Department will hire hundreds of trucks to deliver 12 million gallons each of gasoline and diesel fuel from commercial suppliers to staging areas in New Jersey. A delivery of that size would fill about 800,000 vehicles with 15-gallon...

A business coordinator at a power company in western Georgia told The Daily Caller Friday afternoon that workers from his electric-utility employer were not permitted to help restore power to New York consumers because they would not join the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW). The revelation comes on the heels of similar stories TheDC has reported about power crews from Alabama and Florida who volunteered to fix downed power lines after Hurricane Sandy left millions in the Northeastern United States in the dark this week. “We’re not a large utility, so we were only able to send up two...

Residents of Manhattan's 19-building, 1,191-apartment Jacob Riis projects, have been without power and water since late Monday evening, and there's been no sign of help from local government. In all, city officials estimate some 49,000 public housing residents have been stranded by the storm, left without the resources to escape or find alternative lodging. When Getty photographer Mario Tama ventured inside, he found residents huddled in living rooms lit by solitary candles and gas stoves running constantly for heat. Here are a few images from Tama's visit on Thursday: The Jacob Riis project is located on farmost edge of the...

Mayor Bloomberg has snubbed Borough President Markowitz’s impassioned plea to bring the National Guard to Hurricane Sandy-scarred Brooklyn — arguing that approving the Beep’s request would be a waste of federal manpower and turn the borough into a police state. “We don’t need it,” Mayor Bloomberg said on Wednesday during a press update on the city’s ongoing Hurricane Sandy cleanup. “The NYPD is the only people we want on the street with guns.” Markowitz demanded the National Guard’s help just an hour before Bloomberg’s press conference, claiming that the NYPD and FDNY are “brave — but overwhelmed” by all the...

Natural disasters usually follow the same political trajectory: First the incumbent experiences a bounce as he tours the impacted area, shows his concern, and pledges help to his beleaguered constituents. But then reality sets in and the shortages, delays, mishaps, deaths, and devastation becomes apparent and people turn against the incumbent. George W. Bush had his Katrina. And now Barack Obama has his Sandy. Last week, Obama asserted a kind of ownership of the storm by touring New Jersey in the now infamous embrace of Republican stalwart Governor Chris Christie. Now that we are all appalled by the lack of...

Here's the big lesson from mega-storm Sandy: Mother Nature sneers at high tech, mocks modern convenience and couldn't care less about what kind of person you are. She will smack you if she wants to. As we have become addicted to machines, many of us have forgotten about nature. We must have gizmos. Sandy laughed and took them away. Power, gone. Internet, dark. Cellphones, not happening. Even your landline phone, not available, because "all circuits are busy." Suddenly, it's 1850 with one exception: battery-operated flashlights and radios. So what is the lesson here? Actually, there are a few. First: No...

New York state law allows for an extra day of voting if turnout is drastically suppressed because of a natural disaster like Superstorm Sandy. That could potentially postpone state, congressional and even presidential election results beyond Tuesday’s Election Day. State Board of Elections spokesman John Conklin confirmed Friday that the law permits election commissioners to create a second day of voting if the turnout in any county is less than 25 percent of the total number of registered voters...