Staten Island: Just Too Damn White...

Why has Staten Island been forsaken? Instapundit:

“The demographic of the folks devastated in low-lying Staten Island is that of Obama’s ‘bitter clingers’; white, working class, play-by-the-rules folks. The feeble non-response to their suffering is a perfect mirror image of the allegations leveled against W for his alleged indifference during Katrina.”

Now, if it were the white people on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, well...Obama would be there, clucking for his donor base like a mother hen.  But Staten Island is blue-collar white, and these are the first people the president wrote off in his 2012 re-election campaign.

Or could the callousness of Mike Bloomberg and the federal government be due in part to Staten Island's unique voting proclivities? It is almost an inverse Austin, Texas...it's an oasis of red in a sea of blue.  And Barack Obama has a long, long memory:  Certainly one that goes back to 2008:

While Barack Obama won 88 percent of the votes in the Bronx, 85 percent of Manhattan, 79 percent of Brooklyn and 74 percent of Queens, Staten Island went for John McCain, giving the Republican senator 52 percent of the borough’s vote, according to unofficial returns tabulated by The Associated Press.

Those results again underscored the distinctive position that Staten Island has had in the fabric of New York City and its political life.

“You see that kind of voting there because Staten Island has a lot of Republicans and the people we used to call Reagan Democrats,” said John H. Mollenkopf, director of the Center for Urban Research at the City University of New York Graduate Center.


Again, going back to the BP oil spill...take a look at the states affected, take a look at the governments involved, and it becomes quite clear why Obama's main concern was shaking down BP for a few billion to cover the bills, with the po' white folk of the South a secondary consideration.

And remember that Staten Island is he only borough in New York City with a non-white majority:

Whites are the racial majority in Staten Island. Of the borough's 491,000 people, over 372,000 are white, which is over three-quarters (75.7%) of the population....Compared to other New York City boroughs, Blacks are a relatively insignificant percentage of Staten Island's residents. Only one out of every ten residents is Black compared to one out of every four residents in New York City overall.


Yeah, how does Reverend Wright's protege feel about that stat, I wonder? And who else has the president (and the mayor) been at loggerheads with lately? Oh, yeah..

In terms of religion, the population is largely Roman Catholic, and the Catholic Church exerts strong influence on many aspects of the island's social and cultural life. The Jewish community is large enough that it would be significant in most other parts of the country, but it is slightly less numerous compared to other parts of the New York Metropolitan Area.


Whites, Republicans, Catholics and Jews.  And the residents wonder why they have to scream bloody murder before the federal government finally decides to act (more ought of fear for pre-election optics than any concern for the local population, no doubt).

Sandy was the perfect storm, as far as Staten Island was concerned.  A collision of an unusual meteorological event with liberal callousness and disdain for those who don't think like them, and don't look like them.

So they starve and weep and die of thirst, while Mike Bloomberg prepares a footrace on their still-fresh graves, complete with...free bottled water.

You can almost cry.  I will....I was born and raised there.  And I am watching my hometown be destroyed not just by a storm , but by the callousness and hatred of those whose job it is to care...