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It seems absolutely freakin' crazy that only one month after a superstorm flattens the infrastructure of the East Coast, the Obama administration and Congress are having Very Serious Talks about cutting $4 trillion in spending. This infrastructure crisis is fueled by the climate change crisis we seem to be ignoring. That's in addition to the zombie banks, the mortgage crisis and the fact that we have far too many unemployed people with no jobs on the horizon and very little help from the people who are supposed to represent them.

NJ Gov. Chris Christie is asking for $36.8 billion for Sandy recovery, and because he did not drop his recovery duties and enthusiastically don a cheerleader costume and wave pom-poms for the Republican candidate, the Republican House will most likely find a way to make him (and Obama) sweat for the money. This is what passes for a democratic republic these days. These people are crazy. But their craziness is encouraged by the "bipartisan" deficit fever from both parties, given extra momentum by the White House and the eternal Quest For The Grand Bargain.

The Obama proposal includes a modest $50 billion infrastructure bank, which isn't even enough to clean up after the storm, let alone address our ongoing problems.

I mean, we have sh*t pouring into the waters off New York and New Jersey. Outright sewage being pumped directly into the waters off New York City, the urban center of the world. What, are we officially a rural Third World nation now? When did the Hudson and Passaic rivers turn into the Ganges?

And while all this is falling apart, President Obama is by most accounts more obsessed with the idea of striking a Grand Bargain as his legacy -- an extraordinarily short-sighted goal that seems more likely to leave a legacy of being the president who let the country fall apart on his watch. It's going to take more than a few hugs for storm victims to fix this, Mr. President. Bad politics and piss-poor policy!