Puerto Rico’s medical services are in critical condition in the wake of Hurricane Maria.
The strongest storm to hit the island in decades has left hospitals flooded, strewn with rubble and dependent on diesel generators to keep the neediest patients alive.
The precarious shape of the island’s medical facilities is adding to the misery and devastation of this U.S. territory, whose 3.4 million residents are American citizens. For some, the only option is to evacuate to the United States for treatment.
We’re just going to let them all die, aren’t we? I hate this fucking President.
O. Felix Culpa
So do I.
MobiusKlein
Pretty much yeah.
I say ignoring the plight of 3 million Americans is impeachable.
The Moar You Know
Those Hispanics weren’t going to self-deport themselves, what with being citizens and all.
Yeah, he’s going to let them all die.
Mary G
I tweeted, emailed and called DiFi, Kamala and Issa. They said they would pass on the message. I kind of lost it with Issa’s office by saying that when people start to die the blood will be on Darrell’s hands, along with Trump’s tiny digits.
Corner Stone
This cancer survivor, Laura, on Ari Melber’s show has got brass balls for days.
debbie
Trump’s Katrina. May he choke on it.
?BillinGlendaleCA
In Trump’s demented calculus, they don’t vote for President so they’re not Americans.
Snarki, child of Loki
Clearly, PR needs to say “FU Trump, we’re done with your crap” and join Cuba.
Cheryl Rofer
Speaker Ryan said that maybe they could get something going by mid-October.
If the Democrats don’t paint these sociopaths as what they are in the next election, I may leave the country.
zhena gogolia
I burst into tears today when my student said she wishes she could be there with her family (they’re okay, but I assume her mother is maybe concealing the worst from her).
GOD DO I HATE DJT!
schrodingers_cat
@Cheryl Rofer: Are you an ex Republican by any chance?
rikyrah
SEVEN TIMES THE POPULATION OF NEW ORLEANS.
and, they’ve been thrust into the 18th century
Villago Delenda Est
@Cheryl Rofer: Speaker Ryan should get off his worthless Randian butt TODAY and start doing something.
Marcopolo
It was the second thing I talked to my electeds about after Graham/Cassidy. None of the staffers I spoke w/ said their boss (Blunt & McCaskill & Rep Clay) had a position on it & they sounded like I was the first constituent who had brought it up.
Davebo
It’s simple. Have the DNC charter several cruise ships and starting hauling Puerto Ricans to Florida and Texas by the tens of thousands, re-uniting them with their families there and register them to vote.
ruemara
They’d have to guarantee they’d die quietly and nicely and leave all the good properties to rich white folks. Because you have a sociopathic, racist government right now with self-inflicted calamities in the media every FUCKING hour.
Cheryl Rofer
@schrodingers_cat: Yes, I am, but at least twenty years back. How could you tell?
Ksmiami
The GOP is a death cult – rinse and repeat – we may have to fucking ask Cuba for help.
Cheryl Rofer
Jeffro
@Cheryl Rofer: i’m trying to picture what any typical American would do without power or water for three weeks …
… it’s not a pretty picture .
Let’s turn our phone calling fire power on Congress and the White House and every phone number email and Twitter handle in the media that you can get a hold of : HELP PUERTO RICO NOW!!!
NotMax
“What, and foster a culture of dependency?”
“If you live in the tropics, you’ve got to expect these sorts of things.”
/R bleating points
George Spiggott
@Davebo:
Demkirk.
FlipYrWhig
Nuyorican laureate Pedro Pietri drops some knowledge: Puerto Rican Obituary (1973).
Corner Stone
@Cheryl Rofer: It’s a hammer blow but that is assuming Rand Paul sticks to his No. Which is tenuous at best. We need Murkowski to come out with a strong statement as well.
Ohio Mom
@Cheryl Rofer: I will Collin’s office and cry tears of gratitude — seriously, my eyes are welling up.
Thank you for letting us non-tweeters know.
Mike J
@Davebo: Cruise ships can’t carry THAT many people. 3,000? 5,000? At 20kts, Miami is still 48 hours away.
Cheryl Rofer
The only thing I can think of is what Jeffro suggests:
eric
I bet if you told the GOP that Puerto Rico was a fetus, it might get their attention.
chopper
as somebody said in the earlier thread, somebody needs to tell trump that the ‘rico’ in ‘puerto rico’ means ‘rich’. he’ll be there in a flash.
Roger Moore
I think we have to get the plight of Puerto Ricans big play on Morning Joe and Fox and Friends. It has to get the attention of the Toddler in Chief, and that seems to be the only reliable way of doing so.
Cheryl Rofer
@Ohio Mom: What I’m seeing on Twitter is what Corner Stone said: that people are not trusting Rand Paul. So we need another NO vote.
I’m glad Collins came out as a NO, but I can’t see why it took her more than twenty seconds to do that. The suspense is another type of abuse of US citizens.
Ohio Mom
@chopper: Trump knows where Puerto Rico is, he had a golf course there that went bankrupt. Maybe his inattention is a reflection of a longheld grudge?
Roger Moore
@eric:
I don’t think so, because they’d assume it’s a non-white fetus and thus doesn’t count.
schrodingers_cat
@Cheryl Rofer: You have unrealistically high standards for Ds and are quite willing to forgive your former party if they acted just a bit more sane than their current avatar.
ETA: I wish there were more ex Rs like you and JGC.
NotMax
@Cheryl Rofer
Because she’s thirsting for the adulation attendant upon being deemed THE killing vote.
SATSQ.
Major Major Major Major
@debbie: like I said this morning, it’s been eight months and already he’s had his Katrina. At least he beat Bush’s record for Days Until Major Terrorist Attack.
JPL
If they took a knee during the anthem, Trump would tweet. Earlier I mentioned that I was pleased they weren’t included on a travel ban list. I would like to know though, if the asshole thought he could.
ruemara
@Major Major Major Major: Don’t challenge the universe. Not with this fucker.
schrodingers_cat
@Roger Moore: The few Puerto Ricans I know IRL look pretty white to me. They do have Spanish names and their English is accented.
Corner Stone
Trump still tweeting about the NFL.
Ohio Mom
@Cheryl Rofer: Yes, there seems to be a lot of kabuki in the Senate — the ACA Repeal efforts are the first time I’ve paid such close
attention to the machinations. This playing coy about how they are going to vote is sadistic.
My favorite was this summer when Portman couldn’t say how he’d vote because he had to study the bill — and he’d been on the secret committee that had drafted it! Like he had no idea what might be on it and would have to sit there with a highlighter and a calculator.
The Moar You Know
One of the things that’s been grinding me a bit about this site since the election is that very, very few people here seem to understand the nature of the government that’s been placed in power. It’s not a government for all Americans. Far from it. You will not shame them into being so, you will not force them into being so. They don’t care. They have at least another year and a quarter to do whatever the fuck they feel like, and they know that even if everything goes to shit for them in 2018, they’ll just walk away. Dems will let them, just like they always have before, and it’s not like they have a reason to be afraid in private life afterwards. Liberals refuse to do that. So because we’re “better” than them, they will get away with this. Over and over and over again. They’re not leaving. It’s their country as far as they are concerned. And they’ll help their own, which are not Puerto Ricans and damn sure ain’t you or me. Which brings me to the scary part: if you’re living in a blue state and something goes very sideways, this is what you can expect from the government you pay taxes to, and perhaps even work for, or put your life on the line for: nothing.
JPL
@Major Major Major Major: Just wait
OT.. WTF with Graham saying we are going to become like Greece, and then supporting another tax cut rather than paying our bills. I hate these people. While I’m at it, I don’t want him to throw Price under the bus right now.
Don’t get me wrong, I hate the asshole, but he is just going to return to my town
skerry
Czanne
Okay: The USNS Comfort is 8 days out, at minimum. She has not been activated, she takes 5 days to deploy, and 72 hours travel time. She needs to be deployed ASAP, because every day is one of delay. I understand that deploying Comfort before Maria got north of Norfolk put Comfort in the crosshairs, but Maria is weakening, she’s in the Gulf Stream, and she should be parallel with New Jersey by Friday, so Comfort is safe to go and start pulling in her (non-military) crew and staff. The shipping channels should be clear by the time she can get underway.
Both Dover and Charleston have big birds, so they can do the air bridge without on the ground refueling in Puerto Rico. They just need orders, too. If the first four flights are fuel, Puerto Rico can start pushing out a distribution network.
That means calls to members of Congress. They just charged $700M on the nation, for the military; they can allocate some of that to disaster relief.
This isn’t that expensive. It just requires will.
Roger Moore
@schrodingers_cat:
Whiteness is a social construct; it doesn’t have to follow any sensible rules. People with Spanish-sounding names default to being non-white, no matter what color their skin is.
Major Major Major Major
@The Moar You Know: ‘k. So?
sukabi
@Cheryl Rofer: did he seriously say that about aid to Puerto Rico? 3.4 million citizens have been without food, water, electricity and a devastated infrastructure for 4 going on 5 days and MAYBE they can get something going by mid October? I vote to drop all those sociopathic mutherfuckers in the middle of Puerto Rico.
eclare
@Ohio Mom: That is another part of this that is so sadistic: if you have healthcare under the ACA, you’ve been under mental stress that I can’t even imagine since November 9. It’s so cruel and mean, yes, half of the country voted for people who want you to die. Forget North Korea, Republicans are the bigger threat.
Schlemazel
I had called my 3 national reps this morning but all are Dems. Maybe I should call back & suggest they make a stink.
I am sure however that we really can’t afford to save PR as we need $700Billion for more tanks & planes. Priorities, you understand.
Davebo
@Mike J: 3 ships, 3,500 per ship, 2 trips per week!
gene108
@eric:
Republicans don’t care about fetuses. They care about controlling reproduction.
I think Wonkette had a story last week about increased miscarriages in Flint, due to the water problems.
Hasn’t moved the fundies to action.
Cheryl Rofer
@schrodingers_cat: Um. I thought that Ryan’s position that he’d wait a couple of weeks to begin to think about sending aid spoke for itself in sociopathic tendencies. I tend toward understatement. As they say, RTs don’t indicate agreement.
@sukabi: That’s what I saw reported on the Twitters.
Mnemosyne
@Cheryl Rofer:
I’m guessing that the R’s are quietly holding aid to Puerto Rico hostage unless they get to kill Obamacare.
I hate these fuckers. So, so much.
Mike in NC
Melania doesn’t want to get her expensive stilletos wet.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@Corner Stone: That fills me with rage against him and the people who voted for him.
ruemara
@Czanne: I’ve been using my limited social media reach to organize faxes and calls on Congress to do their job to help PR & USVI. Every call, every fax you can do will probably save lives. These are not just American citizens, these are human beings and their government would happily consign them to death and our media is complicit. People at my job had no idea we hadn’t done anything in PR yet. Everyone is “but it’s not on the news” & “I thought we had sent help already”. People do not know and frankly, are largely focused on healthcare. Understandable but not everything has to be about you to pay attention to it.
A Ghost to Most
@schrodingers_cat:
I’m a life-long Dem and liberal, and I am going nowhere but up in the hills.
Jeffro
@Czanne: amen. Call call call. And be sure to bang on the talking heads too – force multipliers
gene108
@Corner Stone:
And the media still breathlessly covering it.
Puerto Rico not so much.
The Simp in the Suit
The number of people who don’t know that Puerto Ricans are natural-born US citizens is simply staggering. I suspect if that ONE fact was stated in every news program, there’d be more action.
But, stupid Americans, etc…rinse, repeat.
Cheryl Rofer
FWIW:
Feds rush aid to Puerto Rico amid growing pleas for help
Millard Filmore
@gene108:
It might move the fundies to accuse the mothers of neglect or even murder for not taking proper care of the fetuses.
MomSense
@Cheryl Rofer:
Yes!! We have been working our asses off calling, faxing, and getting everyone we know to do the same.
And a big thank you to David Richard Anderson Mayhew for giving us the info we need to be good advocates.
Ok everyone, let’s go kill this thing!
HumboldtBlue
This story seems to fit the recent narrative, what with all the flag-humping, and though it’s not directly related to Puerto Rico it strikes the chord that resonates with the folks who come here each day.
More than 48,000 Puerto Ricans served in Vietnam.
Damned at Random
Call your Congresscritters and insist on aid package for Puerto Rico and US Virgin Islands BEFORE their next recess. Threaten to attend their next town hall and make a stink ala the teabaggers if they come home before attending to this crisis. That is their job.
Corner Stone
His
onlylast three tweets so far today have been about the NFL. Mainly about how Gen John Kelly backs his stance against the NFL. This is not normal, I don’t care how deranged he has been the last 18 to 24 months.edited
Ian G.
Not have a half-wit white supremacist reality TV clown as president. SATSQ.
That first “s” is for “sad”.
NotMax
Not to in any way minimize the depth and breadth of the disaster, but the predictions of months and months for restoration of power apply to the entirety of the island.
Expect electricity to begin flowing back, intermittently perhaps, to some parts of San Juan (IIRC, about 2/3 of the populace is there) before that. And when that first bulb flickers to life the MSM will immediately lose any interest in continuing to cover the story.
Full Metal Wingnut
@MobiusKlein: Merikans??? They’re Portereekins!
Mnemosyne
@Cheryl Rofer:
I was saying in another thread that I suspect FEMA and DOD quietly moved ahead with their plans while consulting the Orange One as little as possible.
But both Puerto Rico and the USVI are going to need major aid packages to rebuild their infrastructure.
Jeffro
By the way there literally is a trump tweet for everything someone from MSNBC dug up one from 2013 where he was bashing Obama for getting involved in football nonsense ( The Redskins name controversy )
rikyrah
Matt FullerVerified account @MEPFuller
Ron Wyden asks Bill Cassidy for a yes or no answer whether the bill protects people with pre-existing conditions.
Doesn’t get one.
https://twitter.com/MEPFuller/status/912401963060531204
rikyrah
SINCE we are calling,
why can’t we call our Rep and SENATORS to ask – WHERE THE PHUCKING BILL IS FOR PUERTO RICO.
and, add the ZEGK and the Turtle on that list.
Smiling Mortician
@The Moar You Know: Not really sure who you’re lecturing here, but most of us really do already know this stuff.
Arclite
Those Puerto Ricans have bootstraps, don’t they? Why aren’t they using them?
/S
jl
Mitt Romney does some spare-time substitute presidenting to help out the Trumpfer. Maybe it will get attention of GOP leadership of Congress?
Mitt Romney
@MittRomney
Just spoke w/ fmr Gov @luisfortuno51: “PR on brink of humanitarian disaster.” USVI too. DC must put aside controversies, prioritize rescue.
https://twitter.com/MittRomney/status/912378064524464130
Edit: found via Josh Marshall’s twitter feed.
burnspbesq
@MobiusKlein:
You say that, I say that, but there isn’t a ghost of a chance that any Republican will say that.
Shalimar
@Jeffro: I have been without power for almost 2 weeks after a hurricane before. Water was back on in under a week.
Short answer: national guard passed out MREs and bottled water, otherwise we would have had to move in temporarily with family in a state that had electricity.
Seanly
@eclare:
I have healthcare through my employer and I am in constant stress about Graham-Cassidy. I live in a red state so I know the heartless motherfuckers will make it so I have crappy insurance. I am diabetic and my wife is a cancer survivor/bone marrow recipient with neuropathy and now shingles. We both work but wouldn’t be able to afford even higher premiums and out-of-pocket maximums. I know that a return to lifetime maximums would probably be retroactive so maybe I’d keep my insurance but my wife would be uninsurable. Fuck these asshole senators.
NotMax
@rikyrah
They’re busy researching what the exchange rate is between dollars and taquitos. Which they believe is the name of the local currency.
“Whaddaya mean they also use greenbacks? Who knew? That can’t be right.”
MomSense
@Jeffro:
Let’s do it!
Raven
@Roger Moore: Most Puerto Rican’s I know have English sounding surnames.
debbie
Just a quick break for today’s winner of the Cute Award.
JPL
@Cheryl Rofer:
Pure evil
Adam L Silverman
@Czanne: USS Kearsarge Amphibious Readiness Group, including their amphibious element the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) is on station with the other two amphibious landing ships in the group USS Arlington and USS OakHill, USS Wasp has been added to the float and is on station as well. The float includes the US Army 602nd Area Support Medical Company.
efgoldman
@Arclite:
They all got soaked and mildewed.
Patricia Kayden
@Cheryl Rofer:
I’m afraid to ask for what because there is no way that he thinks mid-October is a reasonable response to an emergency which has wreaked havoc on fellow U.S. citizens. WTH is wrong with him and his fellow Republicans?
NotMax
@Arclite
The straps are all that remained after the boots were destroyed.
burnspbesq
@Mike J:
Gotta start somewhere, and the optics will be devastating.
JPL
Last time I checked, it appears that the boss f..ked up his post.. Where is Alain when we need help.
Adam L Silverman
@Corner Stone: Odds of Gen. (ret) Kelly actually doing so?
Mnemosyne
Uh-oh. John broke the thread above. Someone should go fix it.
rikyrah
The CBO comes through
https://mobile.twitter.com/TopherSpiro/status/912436750412328963
Cheryl Rofer
@Mnemosyne: That’s what it looks like. Let’s hope that there is more help on the way.
The entire electricity grid will probably have to be rebuilt. And roads probably will need work. That dam will need reinforcement or replacement. And I’m sure there’s more I haven’t heard about.
JPL
@Patricia Kayden: They have a limited water supply, and I can’t imagine the health care costs by waiting. I might mention again that I hate these people
debbie
Screw Trump acting like he should toward Puerto Rico. We got five ex-Presidents who will do it for him.
Adam L Silverman
@Shalimar: That rules Mississippi out.
Corner Stone
@Adam L Silverman: I am not taking a bet against it.
eclare
@Seanly: You should not have to deal with this terror. No one should.
Corner Stone
@debbie: Not good enough. What we really need in this situation is Zombie Reagan to pitch in. After all, this humanitarian crisis is about to turn full on zombie PDQ.
TenguPhule
@Cheryl Rofer:
What makes you think the Republicans would let us escape?
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: Huh?
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major:
Russia’s interference to get Trump into office was a major terrorist attack.
The damage is still ongoing.
Mnemosyne
@Raven:
Interesting article I’ve posted before on the currently most famous Puerto Rican in the world — his mother’s maiden name is Towns but her family came to Puerto Rico from Mexico, so a genealogist did some digging and discovered that he’s descended from a slaveowner’s son who ran away with one of the slaves and they lived together as husband and wife in reasonable happiness until his death. It’s a fascinating story.
Mike in NC
@Patricia Kayden: Apparently there were no lobbyists from Puerto Rico willing to buy Paul Ryan a $300 bottle of wine to wash down his lunch.
Mnemosyne
@Adam L Silverman:
It’s fixed now. All I was getting was the title and the flashing light.
TenguPhule
@Adam L Silverman:
For about 20 minutes, John’s post was the only thing showing on the main page, no comments allowed, no side bar, just a fuck-ton of ugly ads under it.
jl
@Patricia Kayden:
” Speaker Ryan said that maybe they could get something going by mid-October. ”
My God, these people are horrible.
As I commented over weekend, over 100 years ago, federal disaster relief was appropriated and supplies sent within 24 hours.
For SF earthquake, TR ordered supplies within 24 hours, leaderless House (revolt against Speaker was underway, I think) got unanimous approval in 48 hours.
Jeebus Cripes.
We need us some UN sanctions on this country.
Trump and his crew are obsesses with sports customs regarding national anthem, for which there aren’t even any work rules, let alone federal laws on workplace behavior. Sheer nonsense. And note again, Trump manages to whip up his own trouble over nothing. What a toxic fool.
Adam L Silverman
@Corner Stone: Odds are it went like this:
The President: “General, do you think athletes should respect the troops and the flag?”
Gen. (ret) Kelly: “Yes Mr. President.”
The President: “I need to tweet something, give me five minutes before the next whatever it is on the schedule.”
Gen. (ret) Kelly: “Yes Mr. President. I’ll be in my office.”
schrodingers_cat
@Cheryl Rofer: Actually I was referring to an earlier post where you wanted us to understand Rs.
TenguPhule
@The Moar You Know:
This is always subject to change.
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: Pay your subscription in full next time and you’ll get the whole thing.//
TenguPhule
@JPL:
Rich cheat their taxes, everyone else follows suit, economy collapses.
Sounds legit.
Adam L Silverman
@TenguPhule: If that doesn’t scream Balloon Juice ambience, I don’t know what does?
TenguPhule
@sukabi:
Hasn’t Puerto Rico suffered enough?
Corner Stone
@Adam L Silverman: You have way more faith in order and institutions than I do.
Here’s how it went down:
Trump: AAARRGGLLE BAAARRGLE!
Kelly: Hmmm…
T: F’nuh Fagah!!
K: Yes, sir.
T: {poop noises} click click click
Cheryl Rofer
@schrodingers_cat: Ah, okay. I have some more in mind along those lines. It wasn’t really that we need to understand Rs, but rather that we are all going to continue to live in this country. We can’t continue the division that they have created. E pluribus unum – one nation out of many.
TenguPhule
@Adam L Silverman:
The flashing emergency claxon fit right in.
Cheryl Rofer
@Adam L Silverman: I think Corner Stone’s version is more likely. Or that Trump never bothered to talk to Kelly, just tweeted.
Steeplejack (phone)
@George Spiggott:
Good one.
TenguPhule
@Cheryl Rofer:
Sorry, that bird has flown, was shot out of the sky and is now roasting at 350 degrees in a rock oven with a sprinkling of salt and garlic.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
What do we have to do? Make all the Puerto Ricans white. That’ll get them some help right quick. I know I can’t be the only one to have said this, but I just came in here.
Adam L Silverman
@Corner Stone: @Cheryl Rofer:
Pretty much could have gone either way.
schrodingers_cat
Its the last week of September and it was again in the 90s with what felt like 100% humidity. I can has fall?
HuCat
@Mike J: b’lieve @Davebo meant, a sufficient number of cruise ships per destination to transport 10s of thousands, rather than piling ppl to just two vessels.
Czanne
@ruemara: Yep, me, too. I dug up and distributed the address for Naval ops command last night. I probably made some public affairs officer’s day suck, but I also clocked hundreds of retweets today. (Which doesn’t happen for me.) Lobbying the Pentagon is much harder than lobbying Congress, but it can be done. Postcards are the easiest, though not fastest, because Pentagon doesn’t put their phone numbers and fax numbers out there. (Gee. I wonder why?)
@Adam L Silverman: I heard that this morning. (Being a Seabrat can be irritating, but as an informal network, it’s actually aces for knowing what deployment situations look like.) Comfort still needs to go, for the same reason it needed to go to Haiti.
TenguPhule
@schrodingers_cat:
I’ve got bad news for you.
Thanks to Global Warming, that is fall.
Prometheus Shrugged
@NotMax: One of my co-workers is from Mayaguez (about as far away from San Juan as you can get on PR.) Most of her family is still there. She has been getting reports from her mother who says that, not surprisingly, things are awful and getting worse by the hour. One under-appreciated problem of not having electricity in a more remote area is that none of the ATMS work. So, there’s no cash flow. Without some distribution system in place for basic goods and services and transportation (e.g. from the national guard), there’s no way for anyone to actually buy supplies like cooking fuel or to buy gas to drive to a distribution hub. This seems completely obvious once someone mentions it, but not something that most of us would think of immediately (myself included). One more reason to literally flood the island with military and humanitarian support.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@The Moar You Know:
What would you have us do? Kill them?
Seriously what we could possibly do to make them “fear” us?
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@TenguPhule:
Cut that shit out. They’re not the Thought Police.
schrodingers_cat
@Corner Stone: I think your version is more likely. Kelly didn’t mind being summoned at the Alabama rally like a pet puppy. I don’t see any evidence that he is a voice of moderation. He has been making statements about the unconstitutionality of DACA which sound standard issue wingnutese. Not to speak of his tenure as the DHS head, where he just threw up his hands and let CBP and ICE run roughshod over undocumented immigrants and those arriving at the airports during the first travel ban.
NotMax
@Mnemosyne
Are you intimating that Menudo are not the most famous Puerto Ricans in the world?
:)
Omnes Omnibus
@rikyrah: When I called today, I brought up Graham-Cassidy, disaster relief, and the right to vote amendment recently introduced in the House. I will do the same tomorrow. And the next day….
boatboy_srq
@JPL: See my earlier comment here.
TenguPhule
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: No seriously, you need a valid passport to leave the country.
That is administered by the State Department.
Which is currently being run into the ground.
If things are not turned around fast and hard, people may literally be unable to escape when it all falls into the crapper.
schrodingers_cat
@JPL: I thought in wingnut land we are Venezuela.
Adam L Silverman
@Czanne: No argument regarding the Comfort.
gbbalto
@Prometheus Shrugged: I think this is an unprecedented disaster, far worse than Katrina in scale and number of people affected. The entire economy – being able to operate businesses and farms and pay employees, they being able to work and earn money, and pay for even basic food, clothing, shelter, and energy – is ruined. I don’t see any sort of consideration of the long term. It’s not like a week or three without power, where the local economy will suffer but can ride out to some extent and hope to recover. PR and the USVI(and the BVI, Dominica, St Martin, etc) are going to need big time help for months and years to even get back to where they were (which was sketchy enough for most of the people to begin with).
ETA: Fortunately, a lot fewer deaths than Katrina as far as we know now – I’m looking at the long term economics
sukabi
@TenguPhule: well yeah they (PR) have, but it’s way past time the congressional sociopaths have to actually live with what they sow.
Adding that the exPresidents OneAmericaAppeal has added Puerto Rico and USVI to their list of places donations will go.
Barry
@George Spiggott: I re-read today about the Berlin airlift. We provisioned 2 millon Berliner for fifteen months, ultimately delivering an average of over 8,800 tons of food and fuel per day.
That was 69 years ago. Nothing stands in our way but political will to act.
J R in WV
@Cheryl Rofer:
Chery, don’t feel bad about being a Republican in the long-ago. My dad was a Republican, and when I was a little kid I remember him putting on a suit and tie to go march with the local NAACP, must have been in the early 1960s, I was, as I say, a little kid, and barely understood dad was going to be called names for standing up for what was right in his beliefs.
Today’s Republican party is far away and long ago different from the Republican party of the 1960s. There were social liberals who believed in integration back then in the Republican party. Shrodinger’sCat may not have been here long enough to know about the Rockefeller wing of the party, so I’m going to cut her some slack. You don’t need to do that, but I will since she didn’t call me a Republican.
J R in WV
@Barry:
We don’t even need to use an airlift to supply Puerto Rico, we can use Sea-lift command to move thousands of tons per trip. But no, that would cost a lot of Federal Money!!!