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Gov Romney Refused Emergency Funds — And Talk — For 2006 Flood Victims

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Mitt Romney, as Massachusetts Governor in 2006, refused to distribute his state’s copious emergency funds to Lowell city residents who had lost their homes to “the great Mother’s Day floods of 2006,” as Esquire’s Charles P. Pierce reports:

The right-leaning Lowell Sun was particularly displeased.

We find it inconceivable that Gov. Mitt Romney claims the state can do nothing to help those residents still struggling to rebuild homes and businesses after the May flood. Massachusetts is sitting on millions in unspent emergency funds from Hurricane Katrina and more than $1 billion in cash reserves, yet Romney has failed to even respond to the Lowell delegation’s requests to discuss additional aid for victims. The governor’s spokesman — since Romney can’t be bothered to comment now that the photo opportunities have dried up even though some residents’ basements haven’t — said the state will not consider spending its own money for flood victims until it’s clear how much cash the federal government will give.

A local online news site reported the scene like this:

Crews floated boats down flooded streets to rescue people trapped in their homes, overflowing pipes spewed sewage into streets and rivers and hundreds fled homes and businesses Monday as New England braced for its worst flooding since the 1930s.

The flood waters overwhelmed sewage systems and drowned waste water treatment plants. Burst pipes in Haverhill have been dumping 35 million gallons of waste a day since Sunday into the Merrimack River. And the flood at a regional treatment plant in Lawrence was threatening to shut down the power there, which would send sewage into the Merrimack at a rate of 115 million gallons a day.

“This is a level of crisis which is beyond anything these communities have ever experienced from water in their history,” Gov. Mitt Romney said Monday.

“It’s going to get worse before it gets better,” Romney said.

Romney then went on “Good Morning America” and “described the flooding as ‘almost Biblical’ and said ‘We’re sort of making jokes about Noah and taking two of each kind of animal because we haven’t ever seen rain like this’,” according to Wikipedia.

And then his PR stunt show was over.

Reporting that “abdicating on government flood relief was one of the first steps” Romney took to paint himself as, well, a “severely conservative Governor” — to quote Mitt himself — Esquire’s Pierce, a constituent of then-Governor Romney, adds that Mitt “pretty much had given up his job as governor and was gearing up for the seven-year run at the presidency that will climax, one way or the other, next Tuesday night.”

Imploring readers his Esquire readers to “trust us,” Pierce — whose report is laced with other ugliness about Governor Flip Flop — closes with this intimate assessment:

“We know this guy. There’s a reason why he’s going to lose this state by more than 20 points. The only thing about him that you can depend on is that there’s never any room in the lifeboat for The Help.”

For more local color, consider this from a right-wing local Massachusetts blogger, writing about the flood and Romney’s response, dated May 17, 2006:

Our elected officials are on the front line, and their mettle is on the line now too. We were pleased with first impressions, but all too soon our Republican Massachusetts leaders of choice revealed their feet of clay. We caught Lieutenant Governor Healey saying something to the effect that this sort of thing would be common now, given global warming.

…

At the same time, the man who would be Leader of the Free World — Oh, sweet Mitt of life, at last I’ve found you? — played a most disagreeable disgrace card on “Good Morning America” with the silken, fawning Diane Sawyer:

“We’re continuing to be very, very careful and going through our neighborhoods, securing them, and making sure there is no looting of any kind,” Romney added.

The remarks puzzled local officials, who reported no incidents of looting in the Bay State, New Hampshire or Maine, and prompted experts to question if Romney was raising red flags for no reason — or for political reasons.

Politics are the way of the world, but without knowing anything more about it, this one left a bad taste in our fiercely independent New England, home-rule mouth. We aren’t like those folks down yonder in New Orleans, our local-pride first response told us. Mitt owes us more respect. Kerry Healey, too. We weren’t born yesterday.

Nor were we.

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Melania Trump Hails Herself as a ‘Visionary’ at Women’s History Month Event

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March 12, 2026

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First Lady Melania Trump, in remarks at a White House Women’s History Month celebration, hailed herself as a “visionary” as she gave advice to guests.

“As a visionary, I know success is not born overnight, but rather takes shape after long, and sometimes challenging process,” the First Lady said. She also described herself as “a mother, humanitarian, philanthropist, and entrepreneur.”

Mrs. Trump also mentioned her new film, “Melania,” saying that she “shaped its creative direction, served as a producer, managed post production and activated the marketing campaign.”

Noting that “curiosity is a core value” that keeps her “ahead of the curve,” she said that her “unrestricted mindset” has led her to “build across very different sectors,” including, “fashion, digital assets, publishing, accessories, skincare, commercial television, and of course, filmmaking.”

Sharing advice and personal experience, Mrs. Trump told the audience, “Often alone at the top, I follow my passion. Listen to my instincts, and always maintain a laser focus.”

She also declared that the “strength of America is closely tied to the role women play in shaping their children’s character, education, and morals. The values cultivated within our communities shape the voice and vision of our next generation.”

“A woman’s influence strengthens our democracy, capital markets, and time-tested business institutions,” she said. “Across the country today, women are finding unique ways to balance career, ambition, and family.”

Image via Reuters 

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‘Seems to Be No Plan’ Expert Says on Trump Securing Iran’s Nuclear Material to End War

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12 hours ago

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March 12, 2026

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President Donald Trump says he is bombing Iran so it “does not obtain a nuclear weapon,” but a veteran nuclear policy expert is blasting his war strategy, warning there appears to be no plan to secure Iran’s nuclear stockpile — a failure that could leave the U.S. in the “worst of all worlds” while Iran is “holding all the nuclear cards.”

“This may be the worst planned war in history,” Joe Cirincione told Mother Jones. “I see no sign that they knew what they were doing. It seemed to be just literally bomb, bomb, bomb. There didn’t seem to be a plan for how you were going to get at that particular material. If there is one, it hasn’t emerged.”

He warns, “there seems to be no plan for how to end this war.”

“Almost all wars end by some sort of negotiation,” Cirincione says. “If you project forward several weeks, it’s going to have to end. Usually there’s some sort of arrangement that’s made to end a war.”

But, he says, President Trump “seems to be flying by the seat of his pants and making this up as it goes along,” so “we just don’t know.”

READ MORE: Trump Has ‘No Idea’ If Iran War Will Win Him Nobel Peace Prize

Cirincione warns that “it’s possible that Trump has put us into the worst of all possible worlds. He’s made it impossible for us to have a negotiated solution to this. And we can’t use any military means to solve the problem. So we’re left in this worst of all worlds, which is Iran is holding all the nuclear cards at the end of this war.”

Mother Jones reports that “with his war in Iran, Trump has created a big, possibly catastrophic problem: A half-ton of highly enriched uranium, which can be made bomb-ready, is somewhere…out there—available for use by Iran’s new regime or perhaps not fully secured and susceptible to theft or expropriation.”

So, what are the options?

“The United States either has to conduct some high-risk military maneuver where we would land people from the 82nd Airborne or an Israeli commando unit into the site at Isfahan and try to find the uranium, go down hundreds of meters underground, retrieve the uranium and pull it out or perhaps destroy it on site,” says Cirincione. He calls it “a high risk proposition.”

“What you’re left with is really the only other solution where we started: a negotiated deal.”

President Barack Obama signed one with Iran. Trump tore it up during his first term.

With a negotiated deal, “You have to get Iran’s agreement to secure that material, declare it, allow inspectors, and then either secure it under inspection or downblend it—the process in reverse, bring it down to a 3-percent or 4-percent level. That’s the only two solutions to this problem.”

READ MORE: ‘Trying to Look Cool’: Patel Roasted for Inviting UFC Stars to Train FBI Agents

 

Image via Reuters 

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Trump Has ‘No Idea’ If Iran War Will Win Him Nobel Peace Prize

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14 hours ago

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March 12, 2026

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President Donald Trump says not only does he not know if his war against Iran will help win him the Nobel Peace Prize, he also doesn’t care, and doesn’t want to talk about it.

“Trump claimed to have ‘no idea’ if Operation Epic Fury will ‘get him over the finish line’ with committee members,'” the Washington Examiner reported on Thursday, after a telephone call with the president.

“I don’t know,” Trump told the Washington Examiner. “I’m not interested in it.”

“No, I don’t talk about the Nobel Prize,” Trump also said, when asked if the topic came up in his recent talks with foreign leaders.

The Examiner’s Christian Datoc, who spoke to the president, reported via video that Trump “appears to be having a massive about-face about winning the Nobel Peace Prize amid his war with Iran.”

“He told me over the phone that he’s not sure if he’s deserving of this award anymore,” Datoc added. “This is a massive change in the president’s rhetoric from really anything he’s said over the past thirteen months.”

READ MORE: ‘Trying to Look Cool’: Patel Roasted for Inviting UFC Stars to Train FBI Agents

 

Image via Reuters 

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