The White House calls the disaster in Puerto Rico a "good news story," implying that the federal government is doing a great job there.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump put out a tweet today that seems to imply that the US needs to consider whether or not it wants to help Puerto Rico, which, by the way, is actually part of the United States.
Here is the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, responding to some of this:
Hat tip: Media Matters for America
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I do wish Trump would just die or leave or be impeached or something, and leave governing to decent human beings with empathy and compassion and interest in SOMEONE besides themselves. That parasite is doing nobody any good other than himself.
Does it make sense to rebuild if it is all going to get ruined in another hurricane in a year or two?
Did it make sense to rebuild the portions of New Orleans that are 9 feet below sea level?
Should Federal flood insurance rebuild the same 60,000 home 40 times?
These are indeed big decisions.
RickA is correct as far as he goes. They should be classified as climate refugees and moved up and to the north using a tax levied on the monsters (like RickA) who caused this problem.
Yes RickA, give up on Peurto Rico after all what use is it to the US. Allow all the inhabitants to move to a neighbourhood near you now as it seems to be one peculiarly isolated from weather disasters.
Oh and maybe all those affected by SLR in Florida can be moved too whilst the RickA and US is at it.
As US citizens they can move wherever they want. They are welcome to come to Minnesota.
>Allow all the inhabitants to move to a neighbourhood near you now
Lots of Puerto Ricans have been leaving the island over the last decade. Hard to get out of bankruptcy when that happens.
That said, this is fake news. There are thousands of government workers sent to Puerto Rico to help. The Jones Act has been waived for the island allowing foreign cargo ships, though I doubt it needed to be- most of the people calling for it want it repealed. The governor of Puerto Rico has been praising the work done by the Trump Administration.
MikeN
Just stop, you are embarrassing yourself: https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-responded-to-haiti-qua…
Whatever the response becomes there the largest immediate issue is logistical -- given the extent of the destruction moving supplies from ports to inland locations will be a nightmare.
"Yes RickA, give up on Peurto Rico "
Don't look for intelligent comments from him: many of these people are poor, so in his mind they are unimportant. Many of them aren't as white as he is, so again, they don't matter. That's how he views most issues.
Elspi, I know liberals are eager to reactivate the political damage they did to W after Hurricane Katrina, but they should try and recognize when it is just partisan sniping by the media.
Now they've gone from doing nothing for Puerto Rico to it's not as great a response as Haiti. The President actually has more leeway with regards to foreign countries for moving military forces. As with Katrina, the governor has to make certain requests for some people to come in, though being a colony I imagine the rules are bit different.
The damage to Work during Katrina was done by the guy he had running the recovery effort -- he botched it big time.
We saw that in Iraq.
People are dying of Trump's neglect and you are talking about political damage. There was advanced warning, there is no reason for the response not to have been much better than the response in Haiti. Anyone but a monster would see that.
This is a question that becomes more and more important as human-caused climate change progresses.
This is a question that becomes more and more important as human-caused climate change progresses.
This is exactly what will happen in terms of response to extreme climatic events as human-caused climate change progresses.
Indeed.
And the questions would be better-answered if climate change deniers and dissemblers ceased and desisted from their nonsense, and the problems would be far less severe if society and its political and business leaders had paid attention several decades earlier to the science of climate change.
Bah. Keybaord fail...
This is a question that becomes more and more important as human-caused climate change progresses.
This is a question that becomes more and more important as human-caused climate change progresses.
This is exactly what will happen in terms of response to extreme climatic events as human-caused climate change progresses.
Indeed.
And the questions would be better-answered if climate change deniers and dissemblers ceased and desisted from their nonsense, and the problems would be far less severe if society and its political and business leaders had paid attention several decades earlier to the science of climate change.
And what of the billions of non-US citizens who are and will in future be disproportionately and negatively affected by the carbon emissions of the First World? Will they be welcome to flee the climate mess thus created and settle with the rich 20% of the planet?
We have already seen the response to that. But in RickA world people are going to die anyway, so what if they die younger than the average. This is epitomised in his responses at:
Why is this year’s hurricane season so much worse?
In the vain hope that there was some humanity in the man and that his attitude was simply from lack of exposure to global realities that I offered this book as a learning tool:
What's Really Happening To Our Planet?
Where facts are presented in a way that even a lawyer could grasp - or so I thought.
The global problems facing humans, and all other species, are multidimensional because humans have had multidimensional impacts on the planet. Clearly the lawyerly mind is amongst those, "who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought." Peter Medawar. Probably why so many are politicians.
"They should impeach their president; The Puerto Ricans should!" -- POTUS
RickA may have a number of points. Where is the P.R government? Don't they plan for events that happen almost every year? Don't they encourage people to make storm resistant homes instead of those silly NewEngland style piles of destruction? The country wanted independence from USA now they cry for our free help?
As a free citizen all here who think we should help PR...well get out your wallets and stop being angry with a person's veiw and send money to an eternal sink hole, and be happy!
It is more than a little bit difficult to manifest compassion towards those who are suffering when you yourself are suffering a great pain. Our attention getter in chief is a chronic sufferer. It seems as though he has just never has just never been able to get enough attention to fill the inner void created by the childhood trauma of growing up in the Trump family. Is there a child psychologist in the audience?
Twitter allows our head twit to get endless attention. When NFL players grab attention with their non-violent protest, King Twit senses a distortion in the fabric of the attention universe and he reacts to his resultant fear by lashing out at the interlopers on his media turf. And now the Mayor of San Juan has had the audacity to challenge Donald's rosey misprepresentation of a hell scape, thereby pulling even more attention away from his royal presence. So he lashes out with his small childish psyche , puts his small hypnotic hands to a small keyboard and unleashes a CME into the giant twitter universe..
So, does Donald think that he is the chief priest of the flag religion? or God?
I'm sure that they do. Except that Maria-force hurricanes don't happen every year, and probably wouldn't have happened even once in a half century except that we've warmed the planet and juiced up the power of hurricanes.
Of course, if Maria-force hurricanes do happen every year, one wonders why it's only this year that clowns like you are bleating about the cost of aid... And if Maria-force hurricanes happen every year, one wonders why the infrastructure of Puerto Rico isn't almost entirely less that 12 months old...
And if Maria-force hurricanes happen every year, one wonders where is the catalogue of the dozens of such hurricanes that have apparently visited Puerto Rico over the last few decades. Perhaps you could list the cyclonic storms that constitute the annual Maria event to which you allude?
Yes, Levittown is a peculiarly Puetro Rican development...
1) Mainland USA benefits greatly from having its fingers in Puetro Rico.
2) As long as Puetro Rico is not sovereign, the mainland owns its problems.
3) Ever heard of international cooperation and support?
4) As it seems to be nonapparent to you I'll let you in on an elephant in the room - you sound like the type of white male libertarian turkey that doesn't want any of the girl turkeys or bronze turkeys coming near the top of his shit-heap. Unsurprising for someone who endorses the drivel to which RickA is prone.
"The country wanted independence from USA now they cry for our free help"
When was that? The last referendum had a whopping 1.5% of people voting for independence. 5 years earlier it was about 5.5%.
Excellent overview of the scale of the Puerto Rico problem from RobertScribbler with context to other large hurricanes that hit mainland US.
I don't think RickA or L.Long had any idea of the complexity of the Puerto Rico case and the inadequacy, at best, of the POTUS response which could be described as negligent, but then that is one thing Trump is good at.
In response to comments, I did a little more research and I found that PR is still a part of the USA and come under our protection. So Trumpkin should leave his golf club and get things done. as he should for any other state! Oh! Right! He aint doing much for Florida either!
Samantha Bee describes the nausea initiating 'tsunami of self congratulation' in this clip.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=163&v=658YZO_CmOk
Some may have been surprised by Puerto Rico's history. Note American invasion as soon as a democratic government was elected.