Hasta La Gadget!

Today is Halloween, or as it’s known in political circles, “the end of surprise season.” Donald Trump will record robocalls for Mitt Romney, making the telegraph the only form of telecommunication he hasn’t ruined. And David Axelrod promised to shave his mustache if the president loses Michigan, Pennsylvania or Minnesota. Sadly, Eric Fehrnstrom has yet to say whether he’ll get Lil’ Wayne-style teardrops tattooed on his face if Romney loses North Carolina. This is HUFFPOST HILL for Wednesday, October 31st, 2012

OBAMA SURVEYS WRECKAGE IN NEW JERSEY – AP: “President Barack Obama is telling people recovering from Sandy’s devastation along New Jersey’s coastline that ‘we are here for you, and we will not forget’ Obama joined New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and other officials to inspect damage from the massive storm that struck the East Coast. He saw flooded neighborhoods and sand-strewn streets during a tour that came less than a week before Election Day. Obama says the federal government is ‘here for the long haul.’ Christie, a supporter of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, says he ‘can’t thank the president enough’ for his concern and compassion during the storm.” [AP]

Obama totally won that devastating natural disaster! Slam dunk touchdown home run GOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAALLLLL: “President Obama gets sky-high marks for his response to Hurricane Sandy, which cut a brutal path along the country’s East Coast on Monday, according to the latest release of the Washington Post-ABC News tracking poll. Nearly eight in 10 likely voters say the president has done an ‘excellent’ or ‘good’ job dealing with what’s been labeled a ‘super storm.’ Almost as many give positive reviews to the federal government’s response generally. Even two-thirds of those who support Republican Mitt Romney in next week’s presidential election say Obama is doing well in this area. ” [WaPo]

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PARIS — France says it has deported a radical Muslim preacher known for his anti-Semitic speeches and calls for violent holy war.

Mohamed Hammami, who preached at the Omar Mosque in Paris, was expelled to his home country of Tunisia on Wednesday.

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ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Shell Oil’s flotilla of Arctic Ocean vessels is heading for warmer waters.

Royal Dutch Shell PLC announced that it concluded exploratory drilling on Wednesday, its mandatory cutoff date before winter. It completed preliminary drilling at one well at the Burger-A Prospect 70 miles offshore in the Chukchi Sea and one at the Sivulliq Prospect 18 miles offshore in the Beaufort Sea.

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NEW YORK — When Jo-An Tremblay-Shepherd, 34, set out from her Brooklyn apartment on Monday morning to visit NYU’s Langone Medical Center neonatal intensive care unit, she expected to ride out the storm with her hospitalized son Jackson, who was born prematurely, at 27 weeks, on Aug. 31. She wasn’t expecting that a half-day later, she would watch a NICU nurse carry her baby and his oxygen tank down nine flights of slippery stairs, guided only by flashlight.

“It was wet, and it was dark,” Tremblay-Shepherd told HuffPost. “The nurse had to take him down the stairs for liability reasons. It was crazy to watch.”

According to NYU, 20 babies were evacuated from the NICU early on Tuesday after power went off and the hospital’s backup generators failed. Lorinda Klein, a spokeswoman for the hospital, said some patients whose breathing had been assisted by machines “were being bagged,” meaning hospital workers manually squeezed air into their lungs.

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A new HuffPost/YouGov poll finds that a large majority of Americans think the federal government should help provide assistance to those impacted by natural disasters. Some politicians, including Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, have in the past supported cuts for FEMA, the agency that provides such relief — though Romney’s campaign said this week that he would not cut FEMA.

According to the survey, 64 percent of Americans favor the federal government providing assistance to communities impacted by natural disasters, while only 19 percent say that relief should be left to state and local governments.

Even among Republicans, a 48 percent plurality said that the federal government should provide assistance, while 37 percent said it should be left to the states. The survey was conducted using YouGov’s online panel on Oct. 29-30 and has a margin of error of 5 percentage points.

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