34.10 - The meaning of the White House response to Puerto Rico

The meaning of the White House response to Puerto Rico

Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico on Sept. 20. It was the worst storm to hit the island in 90 years.

The hurricane completely destroyed the island's power grid, leaving all 3.4 million residents without electricity. Communication networks were crippled, with 95% of cell networks down and 85% of above-ground phone and internet cables knocked out. Many interior roads were impassable. Cities were flooded.

As a measure of how bad it was, as of October 5, two weeks after the storm hit, over 90% of the island was still without electricity and nearly half the inhabitants still did not have access to safe drinking water. The economy has come to a virtual halt because only a quarter of the island's ATMs are dispensing cash - and virtually none of the limited number of stores that are even open are in a position to accept credit cards.

And what did The Rump do? He delayed sending the Navy ship Comfort, an ocean-going, complete medical facility fashioned out of a supertanker, on the flimsy grounds that it could not get close enough to any port to avoid using helicopter support to get patients to and from the ship - which is what the Comfort usually does! It was a damn supertanker, for pity sake. It normally can't get closer than a mile or two offshore and has a helipad for just that reason.

The Comfort didn't finally arrive in Puerto Rico until October 3.

It took him eight days to waive the Jones Act, a 1920 law requiring that goods going by ship from one US port to another be on US-flagged vessels. By comparison, in the case of Hurricane Irma, that Act was waived even before Irma made landfall in Florida.

And when, more than a week after the storm hit, the mayor of San Juan went on the media to beg for more help, he responded in tweets that it was a partisan attack and that there was "such poor leadership by the mayor and others who are not able to get their workers to help. They want everything done for them when it should be a community effort."

And then wrapped that up by saying during his self-congratulation tour of the island that Hurricane Maria was not a "real catastrophe" like Hurricane Katrina.

So in short, TheRump is saying that Puerto Ricans are a people who whine about nothing, don't want to work, and want everything done for them.

My gosh man, why not just hang a sign around your neck reading I am a racist and be done with it?

It's long past dog whistles, it's foghorns. It's not winks and nods, it's billboards. It's like an episode of "Name That Tune" except instead of giving hints by playing just a couple of notes the band plays on and on and louder and louder until everyone's head aches with the noise.

We all know it. You base surely knows it and probably doesn't care. You are a slimy, racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, white supremacist bigot. We all know it - so why not just get it over with and say it and stop wasting our time with your halfhearted evasions?