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The owner of Thai Noodle House in Austin, Texas has been bombarded with criticism after he posted a racially-charged and offensive Facebook status regarding the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. On Friday, a gunman opened fire at the school, killing 20 innocent children and six adults before he took his own life. “I don’t care if a bunch of white kids got killed,” the restaurant’s owner Eddie Nimibutr wrote on his Facebook page shortly after the shooting occurred. “F**k Post-Racial bullsh*t. When kids from minority groups get shot, nobody cares. When Israel launched missiles at...

Conservatives complain Sandy bill includes millions in unrelated spendingBy Erik Wasson and Kevin Bogardus - 12/17/12 12:33 PM ET Conservative groups say the Senate’s $60.4 billion Hurricane Sandy supplemental bill is loaded with millions of dollars in spending unrelated to damage from the devastating storm. The bill includes $2 million to fix museum roofs in Washington, D.C.; $100 million for Head Start centers; $348 million for damage to parks, including the Statue of Liberty’s island; and $4 million to repair the Kennedy Space Center and other launch sites. It also includes funding for commercial fisheries disasters for as far away...

The argument from those stuffing this thing like a Christmas goose is that we should pay no attention to the fact that they’re up to their elbows because the suffering of those in the wake of Superstorm Sandy is far too great to expend time or energy on passing a clean bill—WHY DO YOU HATE STORM VICTIMS?! It’s hard to think of another situation in which spending far more than one should on things that have nothing to do with helping people in the course of allegedly helping people is considered compassionate while questioning such spending is considered stone-hearted. How’d...

During a special cameo appearance at the 12-12-12 Concert for Sandy Relief, comedian Adam Sandler paid tribute to the resilience of the NY/NJ metropolitan residents affected by Hurricane Sandy. Set to the tune of Leonard Cohen‘s oft-covered classic “Hallelujah,” Sandler and David Letterman‘s long-time sidekick Paul Shaffer performed a parody titled “Sandy, Screw Ya!” Name-dropping every famous New Yorker under the sun from Mayor Michael Bloomberg to Alex Rodriguez to Donald Trump‘s combover, the lyrics were as follows: “The terror of the hurricane / The unforgiving wind and rain / New York, the world held its breath as the storm...

The Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, Paul McCartney, Bon Jovi, The Who, Roger Waters, Billy Joel, Eric Clapton, Kanye West and many other artists will perform at the benefit to the Robin Hood Relief Fund and victims of Hurricane Sandy. The broadcast will be accessible by an estimated 2 billion people worldwide, according to the concert's website http://www.121212concert.org. U.S. television viewers will have a difficult time missing the event. The broadcast will be carried on 34 channels, from AMC to VH1 Classic. Even pay channels HBO and Showtime 2 and the newsy Bloomberg will carry the...

<p>At an oceanfront park in Long Branch, N.J., Tim Dillingham looks out over the beach in awe of how much the pounding waves and high waters of Hurricane Sandy have changed the Jersey shore.</p> <p>Dillingham is the executive director of the American Littoral Society, a coastal conservation group. Before the storm, he says, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spent years building up the beaches by pumping sand onto them.</p>

Even as the nation teeters on the edge of the fiscal cliff, the feds have found $30 million in extra lunch money to shower on city schoolchildren in the name of hurricane relief. New York City’s 1.1 million public-school students can each get a free school lunch every day in December (and could have last month, too) — even if their homes were undamaged by the superstorm or they have no financial need. Some parents are furious that the feds put this spending ahead of aid for storm victims scrounging for cash to pay for home repair and other basic...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama asked Congress Friday for $60.4 billion in federal aid for New York, New Jersey and other states hit by Superstorm Sandy in late October. It's a disaster whose cost is rivaled only by the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the 2005 Hurricane that devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Obama's request adds a huge new to-do item to a congressional agenda already packed with controversy on how to resolve the nation's budget woes and avoid the so-called fiscal cliff. "Our nation has an obligation to assist those who suffered losses and who...

Climate.gov’s Brian Kahn interviews Cynthia Rosenzweig, a climate impacts expert at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, co-chair of the New York City Panel on Climate Change, and director of the NOAA-sponsored Consortium for Climate Risk in the Urban Northeast. Why should New Yorkers care about sea level rise? First of all, sea level rise is a big issue for millions of people in the U.S., not just New Yorkers. Twenty-three of the 25 most densely populated U.S. counties are on the coast. In New York, the full brunt of Hurricane Sandy has shown how powerful and damaging the effects...

A non-profit clean energy group, Solar One, has been deploying solar generators to areas most affected by Hurricane Sandy. The group currently has several generators running in the Rockaways, and made a recent delivery to Midland Beach on Staten Island. The delivery went to a community-run center operating at St. Margaret Mary Roman Catholic Church. Adjacent to the church’s gymnasium is a building still without power. There, volunteers have set up services like a legal clinic, to help residents with their paperwork, and a free store, packed with donated goods like soap and canned foods. Outside is a small yard...

Hurricane Sandy was swirling northward, four days before landfall, and at the Sea Crest Health Care Center, a nursing home overlooking the Coney Island Boardwalk in Brooklyn,workers were gathering medicines and other supplies as they prepared to evacuate. Then the call came from health officials: Mayor....Bloomberg,acting on the advice of his aides and those of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo,recommended that nursing homes and adult homes stay put. The 305 residents would ride out the storm.The same advisory also took administrators by surprise at the Ocean Promenade nursing home,which faces the Atlantic Ocean in Queens. They canceled plans to move 105...

Despite uncertainty over the fiscal cliff and a stagnant economy, the auto industry continues to exhibit strength.  Detroit’s Big Three, along with Toyota Motors, leveraged the effects of Hurricane Sandy in November, seeing sales continuing to grow as people replaced vehicles or completed purchases that had been delayed because of the storm.  While Sandy effect is expected to last a few more months, the companies expressed concern over the fiscal cliff debate. Chrysler and Toyota were the big winners this time, seeing their November sales jump 14% and 17.2% respectively.  Chrysler, which sold 122,565 units in the month, said it...

Man hit by vandals after helping Sandy cleanup Art McFarland, 1202/2012HUNTINGTON (WABC) -- Paul Nosak, a tree-servicer owner says he had always dreamed of bringing his company to New York and making a difference. Nosak was part of a clean-up outside the Huntington Baptist Church, where several huge trees had fallen on the roof. A local tree service originally said that the removal of the trees would have to wait until January...Nosak then saw the damage as he passed through the neighborhood by chance. He then walked into the church to offer his immediate services...A team of eight workers joined...

Solar Companies Seek Ways to Build an Oasis of ElectricityBy DIANE CARDWELL Published: November 19, 2012 When Hurricane Sandy wiped out the power in areas like coastal Long Island and the Jersey Shore, what should have been beacons of hope — hundreds of solar panels glinting from residential rooftops — became symbols of frustration. Despite the popular perception that installing solar panels takes a home “off the grid,” most of those systems are actually part of it, sending excess power to the utility grid during the day and pulling electricity back to run the house at night. So when the...

In the first congressional hearing on Hurricane Sandy Thursday, lawmakers from storm-hit states made appeals for billions of dollars in additional aid and said massive, destructive storms are "the new normal." Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., testified at a hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that "the path towards enlightened protection and preparation" must include infrastructure improvements such as flood gate repairs in Stamford, steps to stop flooding along the Housatonic River, and the establishment of microgrids for electricity and increased use of generators, especially at facilities for the elderly. "The sweep and depth of destruction in human...

TRENTON, NJ — Gov. Chris Christie says Superstorm Sandy caused $36.8 billion in damage in New Jersey. Christie is requesting that amount, which is greater than his state's entire budget, from the federal government. Christie says more than 30,000 homes or businesses were destroyed or sustained substantial damage from last month's storm.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Northeastern lawmakers are seeking $80 billion from Congress to pay for damage caused by Superstorm Sandy — a demand that could wreak havoc on negotiations for a deal on the deficit. Bloomberg (I) traveled to the Capitol on Wednesday to press lawmakers to approve the $80 billion supplemental appropriations bill — without offsets and with new levels of flexibility — to aid the recovery of New York and New Jersey. Senators from the two states are also urging the White House to seek a sweeping aid package next week when it asks Congress to...

WASHINGTON – It would be natural for state and city officials to talk about rebuilding after the devastation of the New York City area by Hurricane Sandy. But what is catching the eye and ear of those who have read “The Harbinger” and viewed “The Isaiah 9:10 Judgment” is the similarity of the remarks to those that reverberate throughout the bestselling book and movie and how they echo the words of the leaders of ancient Israel before that nation was judged and destroyed. First it was New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who said at the site of Ground Zero: “This...

Next month's benefit concert at Madison Square Garden for victims of Sandy received some added star power. Jon Bon Jovi, Eddie Vedder and The Foo Fighters' Dave Grohl are now slated to perform at the Dec. 12 show. They're joining a lineup that already includes Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Paul McCartney and Kanye West. Proceeds of the so-called "12-12-12" concert will go to the Robin Hood Relief Fund and benefit those affected in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

Full Headline = Sign of National Resentment for the American Way of Life: Kristof Angry About Private Generators During Sandy RUSH: Now, over the weekend, a columnist in the New York Times by the name of Nicholas Kristof wrote a piece. He's all upset about the electrical grid failing in the Northeast during Hurricane Sandy. But that's not what made him mad. What made him mad was the reliance that some people had on private generators. He was upset about that, that some people had them and other people didn't. Here's the short version, according to David French at National...