Mitt Romney continues to shamelessly capitalize on Hurricane Sandy, now by teaming up with NASCAR and driver Richard Petty and holding a “storm relief event.” There is nothing Team Romney can do, except ask people to donate to the Red Cross. That’s it. He clearly is using a natural disaster — one which has already killed at least eleven people, including two children — for political gain.
READ: Mitt Romney: Keeping Federal Disaster Relief Agency Is ‘Immoral’
“The event was originally billed as a two-part campaign stop in Ohio that also included a stop in Lima,” the Columbus Dispatch, in “Romney event: For real, it’s on,” reported today:
Monday, the campaign initially scrapped both plans, but later opted to make the Kettering event a storm relief event because of Hurricane Sandy. The event is scheduled for 11 a.m. at James S. Trent Arena, and NASCAR driver Richard Petty and Alabama lead singer Randy Owen are also scheduled to attend.
Gross.
Mitt Romney is now all but literally an ambulance chaser.
Millions of Americans are without power. Here in New York City, lower Manhattan is submerged in tens of feet of water, a hospital is reportedly on fire but the fire department can’t get to it, I’m looking out my window across the Hudson River and seeing the coast of New Jersey completely dark — no power, sans the  occasional bright green flashes caused by generators exploding.
Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands have been evacuated, airports, transportation, schools, will be closed for the week.
And while all this is happening, areas like Pennsylvania and West Virginia are forecasted to get several feet of snow.
We can expect billions upon billions of dollars in damage, and Mitt Romney is campaigning off this disaster — and impeding disaster relief efforts.
“Meanwhile, his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan, will drop by campaign offices in La Crosse and Hudson, Wisconsin to thank volunteers for delivering or collecting items for storm relief efforts,” CNN reports tonight.
Team Romney, as The New Civil Rights Movement reported earlier today, wrongly told people to donate canned goods and blankets, and even used their van, reportedly, to collect supplies.
“All well and good except, of course, that it’s the opposite of what disaster relief experts advise you to do,” John Aravosis wrote earlier today. “In fact, they warn that such efforts actually “hinder†relief.  Had the Romney campaign bothered reading the Red Cross Web site to see WHAT was needed, or even simply asked someone at the Red Cross,they’d have known this.”
This is not surprising, but reeks of Romney’s 9/11 Libya attack on President Obama, claiming the President weakened America’s presence in the world — while no details were known and four Americans, including our Ambassador, were killed.
Let’s not forget Romney’s international trip, which itself was a man-made disaster.
If Mitt Romney wants to actually help Americans, he can suspend his campaign and let us get on with our lives, he can donate some of his massive personal wealth to the Red Cross, he can roll up his sleeves and — actually, scratch that. It would become a PR event.
Is it possible that a President Romney during Katrina would have done an even worse job that Bush & Co.?
Let’s never forget Katrina, and how Team Romney is trying to repeat their idiocy.
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Image: NASA via Flickr