The Island Of Misfit Americans, Con't

Five years after Hurricane Maria destroyed most of Puerto Rico's power infrastructure as the Trump regime all but guaranteed continual poverty, austerity, and misery there after the Trump regime privatized that power grid, another storm has hit the island and knocked out power to the entire population, and we'll see if the response this time is any different as millions of Americans suffer again.

Hurricane Fiona made landfall in Puerto Rico on Sunday afternoon after knocking out power to all of Puerto Rico, its governor said, as forecasters warned that the storm could bring as much as two feet of rain and cause life-threatening floods and landslides.

Nearly 1.5 million customers were without electricity on Sunday afternoon, according to poweroutage.us, which tracks power interruptions.

Because of the hurricane, the power grid was out of service, the governor, Pedro Pierluisi, said on Twitter. “Protocols have been activated based on established plans to address this situation,” he said.

The collapse of the electrical grid came five years after Hurricane Maria battered Puerto Rico and knocked out the island’s power. Since then, unreliable electricity has been a mainstay of life on the island, leading to a slow recovery and widespread protests by frustrated residents.

The power company LUMA warned on Sunday that full power restoration could take several days. It said that the storm was “incredibly challenging” and that restoration efforts would begin when it was safe to do so.

“The current weather conditions are extremely dangerous and are hampering our ability to fully assess the situation,” it said on its website.

Hurricane Maria struck the island as a Category 4 storm and produced as much as 40 inches of rainfall and caused the deaths of an estimated 2,975 people. On Sunday morning, Fiona strengthened from a tropical storm to a Category 1 hurricane.

Fiona made landfall, meaning the eye of the storm crossed the shoreline, along the southwestern coast of Puerto Rico near Punta Tocon around 3:20 p.m. local time, the National Hurricane Center said.

Significant flooding had already occurred, and it was likely the rain would continue through Monday morning, said Jamie Rhome, the acting director of the National Hurricane Center.

“It’s basically going to park itself over the island tonight and produce very, very, very heavy rainfall,” Mr. Rhome said.

While still a tropical storm, Fiona brought flooding to Guadeloupe, an island southeast of Puerto Rico, and there was at least one storm-related death in the capital, a government official said on Saturday.

In Puerto Rico, rainfall totals could reach 12 to 16 inches, with local maximum totals of 25 inches, particularly across eastern and southern Puerto Rico, forecasters said. The rain threatened to cause not only flash flooding across Puerto Rico and portions of the eastern Dominican Republic but also mudslides and landslides.

Fiona had winds of about 85 miles per hour and prompted hurricane warnings for Puerto Rico and the coast of the Dominican Republic from Cabo Caucedo to Cabo Frances Viejo, the center said.

 

Several days is better than the months after Maria, and Biden is not Trump. Emergency efforts by this administration will be swift and effective.

 

But the larger problem of Puerto Rico's American population remains: no representation in Congress or in elections, and as with DC, the GOP will block any attempt at statehood because it would make control of the Senate more difficult for them. 

We'll see what the response is this week.

Retribution Execution

It took less than a few hours from his Senate acquittal for Trump to start in with his latest round of targeting Americans as his political enemies in order to make them suffer for slighting him.  First up on the list: Puerto Rico.

The White House issued a veto threat Wednesday over a $4.7 billion emergency aid package intended to help Puerto Rico recover from a series of damaging earthquakes.

The statement came ahead of a vote planned for Friday in the Democratic-controlled House to pass the aid package.

It’s the latest in a series of confrontations between the Trump administration and congressional Democrats over disaster assistance to Puerto Rico. The U.S. territory is still waiting on billions of dollars approved by Congress for recovery from Hurricane Maria more than two years ago, though the administration recently agreed to release some of the money subject to several conditions.

As part of that effort, Puerto Rico’s governor on Wednesday signed a grant agreement that is meant to allow the territory to access $8.3 billion in Department of Housing and Urban Development funding related to the hurricane.

Still rebuilding from the 2017 hurricane, Puerto Rico was hit by a series of earthquakes beginning in late December, including a 6.4-magnitude temblor on Jan. 7 that killed one person and caused widespread damage and power outages. Aftershocks have continued, with a 5-magnitude earthquake hitting just Tuesday.

The House Democrats’ $4.67 billion aid package would include $3.26 billion in community development block grants, $1.25 billion for repairs to roads, and tens of millions more for schools, energy and nutrition assistance.

The aid package was unlikely to pass the Senate in its current form.

In its veto message, the White House Office of Management and Budget called the House legislation “misguided.”

“Neither Puerto Ricans nor the American taxpayers benefit when emergency aid is misallocated, lost, or stolen through waste, fraud, and abuse,” the veto message said. “Multiple high-profile cases of corruption have marred distribution of aid already appropriated and have led to ongoing political instability on the island."

If "Trump is blocking aid because he says the government is corrupt but really he just wants to hurt people" seems a tad familiar to you, well, it's supposed to be, only Trump is doing it to an American territory and not, say, Ukraine.

And if you think that's bad, Trump is going directly after 2020 Democratic Candidate Michael Bloomberg, and all of New York for daring to defy him.

The acting secretary of Homeland Security announced on Wednesday that New York state residents can no longer participate in certain Trusted Traveler Programs, including Global Entry, due to provisions in the state's new "Green Light Law" supporting undocumented immigrants. 

The law, which went into effect in December, allows undocumented immigrants to apply for New York driver's licenses while protecting applicants' information from immigration enforcement agencies. 

"Today, we sent a letter to New York indicating, because they took these measures, that New York residents are no longer eligible to enroll in these Trusted Traveler Programs," acting Secretary Chad Wolf told Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Wednesday. 

New York state residents cannot "enroll or re-enroll" in the programs "because we no longer have access to make sure that they meet those program requirements, so we need to do our job," Wolf added. 

The letter states that the Green Light Law will impede Immigration and Customs Enforcement's "objective of protecting the people of New York from menacing threats to national security and public safety," according to a copy obtained by Fox News and confirmed to CNN by a source familiar with the letter. 

Since the law "prevents DHS from accessing New York DMV records in order to determine whether a (Trusted Traveler Program) applicant or re-applicant meets program eligibility requirements, New York residents will no longer be eligible to enroll or re-enroll in CBP's Trusted Travel Programs," the letter adds. 

The letter lists four such programs that are managed by US Customs and Border Protection: Global Entry, which allows for faster clearance in customs for participants when they enter the US; NEXUS, which allows for quicker border crossing for qualified travelers between the US and Canada; Secure Electronic Network for Travelers Rapid Inspection (SENTRI), another program that allows for quicker clearance for qualified travelers when they arrive in the US; and the Free And Secure Trade (FAST) program, which allows for quicker clearance for commercial shipments crossing the US border from Canada or Mexico. 

The letter does not mention the Transportation Security Administration's Precheck program, in a seemingly targeted effort to punish New York for the law while limiting problems at airports for TSA.

Trump sent Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf on Tucker Carlson's White Supremacist Power Hour to exclusively announce that the regime was punishing Bloomberg's state of New York, and my guess is this is only the first of many assaults on the Empire State as long as they keep defying Dear Leader (and as long as the State of New York continues its multiple cases against the Trump Organization.)

Again, this is happening mere hours after being acquitted on an abuse of power charge.

Meanwhile in the Department of "justice", Attorney General Bill Barr released new guidelines for investigating political candidates: any investigation of any presidential candidate or their top staff must now be approved by the AG and top officials first.

In the memo, Mr. Barr established a series of requirements governing whether investigators could open preliminary or full “politically sensitive” criminal and counterintelligence investigations into candidates or their donors.

No investigation into a presidential or vice-presidential candidate — or their senior campaign staff or advisers — can begin without written notification to the Justice Department and the written approval of Mr. Barr.
The F.B.I. must also notify and consult with the relevant leaders at the department — like the heads of the criminal division, the national security division or a United States attorney’s office — before investigating Senate or House candidates or their campaigns, or opening an inquiry related to “illegal contributions, donations or expenditures by foreign nationals to a presidential or congressional campaign.”

Past attorneys general have said that the department must take extra care with politically sensitive campaign-related investigations in an election year. But Mr. Barr is the first to require that the F.B.I. consult with the Justice Department before opening politically charged investigations.

Now everything has to go by Barr first before an investigation can even begin, meaning he can kill any probe into Trump, just in time for the election.  A policy of guaranteed interference by requiring interference in investigations sure seems like something you can trust this regime to do, right?

Oh, but it gets worse as Trump took his victory lap this afternoon from the White House East Room.

In an extended rant following his acquittal in the Senate, President Donald Trump on Thursday crowed over his firing of former FBI Director James Comey.

“Had I not fired James Comey, who was a disaster by the way, it’s possible I wouldn’t even be standing here right now,” Trump said.

He also complained about the investigations into him and his campaign.

“And we were treated unbelievably unfairly, and you have to understand we first went through Russia, Russia, Russia,” he said. “It was all bullshit.”

You can't make this up.  This has been just the last 24 hours.

Maria, Mofongo And Malice

The most corrupt administration in American history continues as we find out now that of course rebuilding Puerto Rico's power grid after Hurricane Maria was going to be a massive grift job, and of course former FEMA officials were on the take to the tune of thousands.

A former top administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency was arrested on Tuesday in a major federal corruption investigation that found that the official took bribes from the president of a company that secured $1.8 billion in federal contracts to repair Puerto Rico’s shredded electrical grid after Hurricane Maria.

Federal authorities arrested Ahsha Tribble, FEMA’s former deputy administrator for the region that includes Puerto Rico, and Donald Keith Ellison, the former president of Cobra Acquisitions, prosecutors in Puerto Rico announced. They were accused of conspiring to defraud the federal government, among other charges.

A second FEMA employee, Jovanda R. Patterson, who worked as a deputy chief of staff in Puerto Rico under Ms. Tribble and was later hired by Cobra, was also arrested, said Rosa Emilia Rodríguez Vélez, the United States attorney for Puerto Rico.

Ms. Tribble and Mr. Ellison had a “close personal relationship,” Ms. Rodríguez Vélez said, in which Mr. Ellison lavished Ms. Tribble with gifts in exchange for her to use her influence inside FEMA to give Cobra an advantage.

The gifts ranged from a helicopter tour over Puerto Rico to securing an apartment in New York, the authorities said. They included airplane tickets, including one first class ticket from San Juan, the Puerto Rican capital, to New York, and hotel stays in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Charlotte, N.C.
Mr. Ellison and Ms. Tribble traveled together and stayed in the same room, Ms. Rodríguez Vélez said.

In return for the gifts, Ms. Tribble is accused of performing official acts to advance Cobra’s interests. For example, according to the indictment, in February 2018, after the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority reported an explosion at a transmission center, Ms. Tribble insisted that the public utility hire Cobra to make repairs or risk not getting reimbursed by FEMA — even though leaders of the utility insisted they could do the same work at a far lower cost.
“They took advantage of one of the most vulnerable moments in the history of Puerto Rico to enrich themselves,” Ms. Rodríguez Vélez said.

President Trump has repeatedly cast Puerto Rico’s leaders as incompetent and corrupt. Tuesday’s arrests, however, did not involve any Puerto Ricans, but rather a longtime federal employee now serving under the Trump administration.

Six people, including two senior Puerto Rican government officials, were arrested by the federal authorities in a separate case in July on charges of steering $15.5 million in federal contracts to politically connected consultants. The case stirred unrest against the governor at the time, Ricardo A. Rosselló. A leak of hundreds of pages of a private text chat between him and his inner circle days later unleashed two weeks of mass protests that led to Mr. Rosselló’s resignation.

Investigators in the latest case found no evidence that any staff member at the power authority, commonly known as PREPA, was involved in the scheme, prosecutors said.

Cobra is a subsidiary of Mammoth Energy Services. Peter Mirijanian, a Mammoth spokesman, said the company has been working with the authorities.

“Mammoth is aware of and has been cooperating with the government’s investigation into Ms. Tribble and Mr. Ellison and will continue to do so,” he said.

Nope, this was all FEMA, getting rich the way Trump does.  The only difference is that nobody's going to arrest him.

Last Call For An Indefensible Decision

Donald Trump is more than happy to make America suffer as much as possible until he gets his border wall with Mexico, and if that means diverting billions in funding (illegally by the way) from existing Pentagon base repair, construction, refit and maintenance project to his silly wall, then so be it.

The Pentagon's announcement that it will divert $3.6 billion in military construction funds to help fund President Donald Trump's border wall has sparked bipartisan anger from lawmakers who learned Wednesday that their states will be impacted by the decision. 

Domestically, just under $1.8 billion is being shifted away from projects in 23 states and three US territories. 

Additionally, the Pentagon will defer more than $1.8 billion in military construction projects overseas to free up over $3.6 billion in funds for 11 wall projects on the southern border with Mexico, according to a complete list obtained by CNN Wednesday. 

In total, 127 domestic and overseas projects are being put on hold to help fund the wall that Trump initially promised would be paid for by Mexico. 

Among the sites affected are facilities used to store hazardous waste, repair Navy ships and conduct cyber operations, that had been identified as being in need of repair or additional construction. 

Puerto Rico was among the hardest hit of all US states and territories as it will see more than $400 million in funding for planned military construction projects diverted to the wall under the Pentagon's plan. 

Trump has consistently sparred with Puerto Rican officials while he's been in office following 2017's Hurricane Maria. 

"Most of the projects in Puerto Rico were a result of Hurricane Maria," a senior US defense official told CNN. 

"We've got a rebuild effort that we have ongoing here and I mentioned these projects aren't scheduled to award for more than a year. These are projects that we have on the list something we can use now and backfill, we've got time to do that." 

Overseas, $771 million in projects at various locations in Europe will be impacted. These projects, including airfield upgrades and staging areas in Eastern Europe, are meant to improve the defense of US allies from Russian threats. 

So we have two of Trump's favorite targets to harm: Puerto Rico and NATO.  We're coming up on two years since Hurricane Maria savaged Puerto Rico, and Trump is still doing everything in his power to cut them off.

Meanwhile, US bases in Eastern Europe are getting short changed just as Russia's ramping up nuclear weapon production as the IMF treaty between Washington and Moscow is dead.

Trump's pettiness is now the chief driver of both foreign and domestic policy.

The Aftermath Of Maria, Con't

Things have gotten so bad in Puerto Rico that Gov. Ricardo Rosello has left his party and will not seek re-election as the island calls for his resignation amid massive protests.

Puerto Rico’s governor on Sunday said he would not seek re-election next year but refused to resign as the island braced for more protests by demonstrators demanding he step down over leaked chat messages.

A day before a planned general strike and street demonstrations in the bankrupt U.S. territory, Ricardo Rossello, 40, said he respected the wishes of Puerto Ricans and would not seek a second term in November 2020 elections.

He also said he would resign as head of the New Progressive Party (PNP) but would remain as governor until the end of his term in January, 2021.

“I know that apologizing is not enough,” Rossello said in a video posted on Facebook. “A significant sector of the population has been protesting for days. I’m aware of the dissatisfaction and discomfort they feel. Only my work will help restore the trust of these sectors and lead the way to real reconciliation.”

His comments drew outrage from the many Puerto Ricans, with videos on social media showing San Juan residents leaning out of apartment windows banging pots and pans in a third day of so-called “cacerolazo” protests.

The July 13 publication of offensive chat messages between Rossello and top aides has unleashed simmering resentment over his handling of devastating 2017 hurricanes, alleged corruption in his administration and the island’s bankruptcy process.

“‘#Resign Ricky isn’t just a call for him to resign from the party, but from his seat as the top official,” tweeted Linda Michelle, an industrial engineer and Puerto Rico radio personality. “Whoever wasn’t sure about going to the march tomorrow has now made up their mind to go.”

Puerto Rico’s non-voting representative to the U.S. Congress, as well as Democratic presidential candidates and lawmakers have called for the governor to step aside after nine days of sometimes violent protests.

“Once again: Rosselló must resign,” tweeted U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in response to his video.

But Puerto Rico’s Senate President Thomas Rivera Schatz, a member of the pro-statehood PNP, said Rossello’s actions “put an end to part of the controversies and trauma hitting our people” and his ruling party now had to rebuild confidence in their leadership.

In the online chats revealed by Puerto Rico’s Center for Investigative Journalism, the center-right governor and his top allies referred to politicians, celebrities and ordinary Puerto Ricans in misogynistic, homophobic and offensive terms.

The speaker of Puerto Rico’s house of representatives appointed an independent panel on Friday to investigate whether the chats warranted impeachment and gave it 10 days to deliver a report.

And my only question is where's the general strike in the US?  Where's the massive protests?  Where's the impeachment inquiry here stateside?

Why aren't we treating Trump like Rossello?

Trump Cards, Con't

Again, I keep hearing how Donald Trump is all talk and no action on things.  At the same time, I keep seeing Trump continually violating presidential norms to do whatever he wants.  18 months ago Trump was obsessed with North Korea, and apparently he made it clear that while he was visiting Puerto Rico to survey damage from Hurricane Maria that he can start a nuclear war anytime he feels like it.

He was there to survey the path of destruction left by Hurricane Maria. But when President Donald Trump visited Puerto Rico in October 2017, the island's dire predicament was hardly the only topic on his mind. 

People familiar with the visit said the President was distracted by other matters -- including his then-devolving war of words with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un -- as he toured devastated neighborhoods and took an aerial tour of the damage. 

At one point, Trump pointed to the "nuclear football" -- a briefcase always in the President's vicinity that can be used to authorize a nuclear attack -- and claimed he could use it on Kim whenever he felt. 

"This is what I have for Kim," he said, according to three people familiar who witnessed the remark.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the incident. 

So why are we only hearing about this now?  Guess.

The episode came amid an increasingly acrimonious period that saw Trump boast of the size of his "nuclear button" and threaten to rain "fire and fury" on North Korea. Since then, he and Kim have developed a warm friendship and met for two summits. 

But at the time, the casual reference to his nuclear capabilities was another sign of the spiraling rhetoric that marked his early interactions with Kim. 

And, to some officials, it was an indication of Trump's disinterest in the plight of Puerto Ricans, who suffered for months without power and limited resources as their island recovered from the walloping storm. 

"There were other topics that were being discussed and my view is that the sole focus of that trip should have been on Puerto Rico," said Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló in an exclusive interview on Thursday.

Trump had made life hell for Puerto Rico, abandoning Americans because Trump hates them so much for being Americans when he doesn't think they count.

Now Gov. Rossello has returned the favor.

Last Call For Heck Of A Job, Trumpie, Con't

Meanwhile, Puerto Rico continues to suffer 18 months after Hurricane Maria and the Trump regime has all but abandoned the island and its people.

The federal government provided additional food-stamp aid to Puerto Rico after the hurricane, but Congress missed the deadline for reauthorization in March as it focused on other issues before leaving for a week-long recess. Federal lawmakers have also been stalled by the Trump administration, which has derided the extra aid as unnecessary.

Now, about 43 percent of Puerto Rico’s residents are grappling with a sudden cut to a benefit they rely on for groceries and other essentials.

And while Congress may address this issue soon, the lapse underscores the broader vulnerability of Puerto Rico’s economy, as well as key parts of its safety net, to the whims of an increasingly hostile federal government with which it has feuded over key priorities. 

Puerto Rico will again need the federal government’s help to stave off drastic cuts to Medicaid, the health-care program for the poor and disabled, as well as for the disbursement of billions in hurricane relief aid that has not yet been turned over to the island.

The island would not need Congress to step in to fund its food-stamp and Medicaid programs if it were a state. For states, the federal government has committed to funding those programs’ needs, whatever the cost and without needing to take a vote. But Puerto Rico instead funds its programs through a block grant from the federal government, which needs to be regularly renewed, and also gives food-stamp benefits about 40 percent smaller than those of states.

After initially vowing to reject the food-stamp funding, President Trump has agreed to the emergency request to help Senate Republicans pass a broader disaster-relief package, which may be taken up for a vote this week.

But at an Oval Office meeting on Feb. 22, Trump asked top advisers for ways to limit federal support from going to Puerto Rico, believing it is taking money that should be going to the mainland, according to senior administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share details of the presidents’ private remarks.

The meeting — an afternoon session focused on Department of Housing and Urban Development grants — ended abruptly, and Trump has continued to ask aides how much money the island will get. Then, Trump said he wanted the money to only fortify the electric grid there.

Trump has also privately signaled he will not approve any additional help for Puerto Rico beyond the food-stamp money, setting up a congressional showdown with Democrats who have pushed for more expansive help for the island.

A senior administration official with direct knowledge of the meeting described Trump’s stance: “He doesn’t want another single dollar going to the island.”

Trump doesn't consider Puerto Rico to be part of America.  He thinks it's a foreign country, along with tens of millions of his cult.  They continue to suffer in squalor and pain and the titular leader of the country wants them to all rot in hell.

After all, they can't vote for him.  So why should he care if they live or die?

If Trump could end federal dollars to California, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts and Hawaii overnight, he's do it in a heartbeat.

Hell, he still might.

Last Call For Shutdown Meltdown, Con't

Yesterday I pointed out that California Gov. Gavin Newsom is defying Trump and is pulling National Guard troops from dog-and-pony show border duty, in order to serve other, far more useful purposes.  The Trump regime's retaliation today was lightning-swift: California will now foot the bill for Trump's wall as we head towards another Friday shutdown deadline.

The White House is firming up plans to redirect unspent federal dollars as a way of funding President Donald Trump’s border wall without taking the dramatic step of invoking a national emergency.

Done by executive order, this plan would allow the White House to shift money from different budgetary accounts without congressional approval, circumventing Democrats who refuse to give Trump anything like the $5.7 billion he has demanded. Nor would it require a controversial emergency declaration.

The emerging consensus among acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and top budget officials is to shift money from two Army Corps of Engineers’ flood control projects in Northern California, as well as from disaster relief funds intended for California and Puerto Rico. The plan will also tap unspent Department of Defense funds for military construction, like family housing or infrastructure for military bases, according to three sources familiar with the negotiations.

“There are certain sums of money that are available to the president, to any president,” Mulvaney said on “Meet the Press” Sunday. “So you comb through the law at the president's request ... And there's pots of money where presidents, all presidents, have access to without a national emergency.”

But the strategy is far from a cure-all for a president with no good options, and it has already sparked debate within the White House. Moving funds by executive order is virtually certain to draw instant court challenges, with opponents, including some powerful members of Congress, arguing the president is encroaching on the legislative branch’s constitutional power to appropriate funds.

Some Trump officials, including those aligned with senior adviser Stephen Miller, have argued internally that the gambit might be even more vulnerable to court challenges than a national emergency declaration. And in a sign of the political fallout, the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee has argued that tapping military construction money would hurt the armed forces’ potential readiness.

Until now, Trump officials had focused on the drawbacks of a possible national emergency declaration. But as the alternative option of moving money by executive order has come into clearer relief ahead of a Feb. 15 deadline for a spending deal with Congress that could avert a new government shutdown, so have the risks of that alternative option.

“It will create a firestorm, once you start taking money that congressmen think is in their districts,” said Jim Dyer, a former staff director for the House Appropriations Committee. “You will cause yourself a problem if that money was directed away from any type of project or activity because I guarantee it has some constituency on Capitol Hill.”

It's funny that Republicans in Congress are uneasy about Trump doing this.  He all but promised to make California and Puerto Rico lose federal disaster funding and in fact Trump has threatened California multiple times before when Jerry Brown brought up the subject of removing National Guard troops from the border late last year, and Brown folded his hand.  But Newsom giving Trump the finger this week apparently had made up Trump's mind for him.

Trump's empty threats may not be so empty after all, but the question is will the Roberts Court let him get away with it?

We may find out.

Last Call For Trump Cards, Con't

Above all, Donald Trump is motivated by petty vengeance against slights both real and perceived.

President Donald Trump is privately lashing out at one of his top allies, Ron DeSantis, angrily accusing the Florida Republican gubernatorial nominee of publicly betraying him.

The president has told close associates in recent days that he views DeSantis — who won his Aug. 28 GOP primary thanks to Trump’s strong support — as profoundly disloyal for distancing himself from the president’s assertion that the Hurricane Maria death toll was inflated by Democrats for political purposes.

“Ron DeSantis is committed to standing with the Puerto Rican community, especially after such a tragic loss of life. He doesn’t believe any loss of life has been inflated,” the DeSantis campaign said last week after Trump tweeted that "3000 people did not die” in Puerto Rico.

Trump’s comments unnerved Republicans across Florida, which is home to a burgeoning Puerto Rican population, leading DeSantis and other Republicans — including Senate hopeful Rick Scott — to publicly break with the president’s remark.

DeSantis’s reaction, however, particularly piqued the president. Trump views the former congressman as politically indebted to him, people familiar with the president’s thinking say, because he believes DeSantis owes his electoral success to him. The president has privately maintained that he was correct with his comments about the hurricane’s death toll, and has expressed frustration that DeSantis crossed him on the matter. 

Trump’s anger toward DeSantis is rooted in the extraordinary level of political capital he expended on behalf of the former congressman, who was little-known at the time he began his campaign for governor.

The president — over the wishes of some advisers — endorsed DeSantis in the primary, flew down to the state to campaign with him and lavished him with praise on Twitter. DeSantis, in turn, tied himself closely to Trump, at one point even running a TV ad which featured his infant child wearing a MAGA outfit.

One person close to the president described the situation as a “divorce.” At the moment, Trump has no plans to travel to Florida to campaign for DeSantis in the November general election, according to two GOP officials familiar with the president’s schedule.

You will lie for Dear Leader, or you will be destroyed by him.  Dear Leader's truth is the only truth. The Faithful Real Americans believe Dear Leader's truth, even when it is a lie.

Twenty-four percent of Americans believe that Hurricane Maria caused many fewer than 3,000 deaths, the survey finds, while 43 percent say the 3,000 figure is about right. Another third say they’re not sure.

Different respondents to the poll saw different versions of the question. Half of those surveyed were told that the Puerto Rican government had reported a death toll of 2,975 based on the results of an official study, and that Trump had rejected those numbers without offering any evidence that the figure was incorrect. The other half were simply asked for their estimation of the death toll, without any additional context.

The results among both groups, however, were nearly identical ― not only as a whole, but also when broken down along political lines. In both groups, more than 80 percent of Hillary Clinton voters accepted the official tally, but only about a tenth of Trump voters did.

Less than ten percent of Trump voters believe nearly 3,000 people died in Puerto Rico.  Less than ten percent of these cultists believe thousands of Americans died.

For the rest, there is only Trump.

Heck Of A Job, Trumpie

Dear Carolinas:

Having grown up in Western NC and having went through Hurricane Hugo in '89 (real surprise to find a tropical storm 350 miles inland, lemme tell ya) I know what's about to happen to you this weekend.  It's not going to be pretty, and if you're in the path of the storm, get out.

Having said that, I never had any doubt that federal disaster relief was going to be there when my family needed it.  Thirty years later, my family is being threatened again by a massive storm, and the jackasses in charge aren't exactly filling me with confidence.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) said this week that millions of water bottles meant for victims of Hurricane Maria have been left undistributed at an airport in Puerto Rico for more than a year.

CBS News journalist David Begnaud reported on Wednesday that FEMA acknowledged that loads of water bottles were brought to the island in 2017 in the wake of the hurricane and that it turned them over to the "central government."

However, a photographer working for a Puerto Rican police agency, Abdiel Santana, noticed that the water was still sitting at the airport runway one year later, according to Begnaud.

"FEMA says the water, and we’re talking what could be millions of bottles of water, were brought to the island by FEMA last year. FEMA tells me the water was turned over to the central government," Begnaud said in a video posted on Twitter Wednesday night.

"The question is what happened after that. Where was the breakdown?" Begnaud asked.

He added that “the water was kept in an area that was pretty hard-hit during the storm and could have used all the water they could have gotten."

The finding comes as the Trump administration continues to face scrutiny over its response to the hurricane, which ravaged Puerto Rico.

According to an independent study conducted by George Washington University, nearly 3,000 people died as a result of the hurricane — a number that represents a sharp increase from the initial estimate of 64.

To recap, a runway tarmac's worth of pallets of bottled water rotted for a year and nobody admitted they knew about it until CBS spotted it from the sky.

More Details pic.twitter.com/jyPGRqiIy3

— David Begnaud (@DavidBegnaud) September 12, 2018

Almost 3,000 people in Puerto Rico died because the Trump regime dropped the ball, and there's more than a little evidence they did so out of political spite by a truly evil orange man.  So when they say the Carolinas and Virginia and Maryland are going to be OK, and that my family is going to be OK, well you'll excuse me if I don't take that at face value.

The Disaster In Puerto Rico Continues

The government's own report on FEMA's obscenely bad response in Puerto Rico is brutal, and it proves just how inept the Trump regime handled the aftermath of Hurricane Maria ten months ago.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency experienced personnel shortages, was caught with a critical lack of aid supplies, had trouble coordinating logistics and found itself struggling to do the work of the territorial government while responding to Hurricane Maria’s devastation in Puerto Rico last September, according to an official after-action report released late Thursday.

Despite repeated Trump administration efforts to play down federal failures in responding to a humanitarian crisis on the island territory, the new report is a public acknowledgment of systemic failures during what was one of the most destructive hurricane seasons — and costliest disaster responses — in the nation’s history.

[Read the FEMA after-action report]

It shows that responses to Hurricane Harvey in Texas and Hurricane Irma in Florida taxed the agency and left it understaffed and out of position for the catastrophe that unfolded in Puerto Rico, where millions of U.S. citizens suffered through widespread communication blackouts, massive infrastructure failures and lengthy power outages.

FEMA officials said Thursday that the responses to back-to-back mainland hurricanes sapped federal disaster resources and left an extraordinarily short window to prepare and build up for Maria. Once Maria hit, they said, they had difficulties with logistics and had a hard time coordinating with local officials in Puerto Rico, who were themselves victims of the storm.

The sobering report runs counter to the White House narrative that President Trump presented at the time, when he praised FEMA’s performance and characterized the devastation on the island as not being “a real catastrophe like Katrina.”

The three major hurricanes that made landfall on U.S. soil — along with wildfires and other natural disasters — ravaged the country and its territories in 2017, affecting nearly 50 million Americans and U.S. nationals spread across the South, West and Caribbean. The disasters cost nearly $300 billion, according to FEMA estimates. 

It was a critical failure across the board, one that cost thousands of lives.  It should have ended the Trump regime as US citizens were killed by government malpractice, but then again, America itself isn't exactly working for the people these days, and especially not for the people of Puerto Rico. 

Someone's head has to roll for this, and increasingly it looks like the political fallout will land on the heads of politicians in San Juan and not Washington as suddenly the DoJ is very interested in the island's government finances.

A mayor and two former government officials in Puerto Rico face public corruption charges in separate cases that involve a total of $8 million in federal and local funds, authorities said Thursday. The suspects are the mayor of the southwest town of Sabana Grande and the former directors of finance for the northern town of Toa Baja, which has struggled to pay its employees amid an 11-year recession.

U.S. Attorney Rosa Emilia Rodriguez told reporters that the former officials from Toa Baja are accused of using nearly $5 million worth of federal funds to pay the town's public employees and municipal contractors.

"Not only is that illegal, it's immoral," she said.

Officials said former finance director Victor Cruz Quintero deposited some $2.5 million worth of funds from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development into the town's general and payroll accounts in October 2014.

He also is accused of making similar deposits and transfers of more than $1.75 million in funds from HUD and the Department of Health and Human Services from September 2014 to February 2016.

Toa Baja's former interim finance director, Angel Roberto Santos Garcia, is accused of making similar transactions worth $650,000 using funds from those two federal agencies.

It was not immediately clear if Cruz and Santos had attorneys.

Rodriguez said the investigation into alleged corruption in Toa Baja is ongoing because officials believe other people are involved.

Puerto Rico's finances were a mess long before Hurricanes Maria and Trump killed thousands, and there will have to be a reckoning for it all, but let's not forget that this level of sheer dereliction of duty was monstrous, and wouldn't be tolerated in any US state or by its voters.  In a territory that has no real political representation however, well...

We see how that went.

The Maria Massacre: Los Olvidados Muertos

The shocking report last week that the true death toll in Puerto Rico from Hurricane Maria last September exceeded that of Hurricane Katrina or 9/11 is something America is no longer being silent on, and if Democrats have any heart, they absolutely need to pound the Trump regime on its devastating failure that cost thousands of American lives.

Days after a new study from researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health estimated that the death toll from Hurricane Maria may be as high as 4,645 people, mainly because of delayed medical care, hundreds of protesters gathered on Saturday in the shadow of the United Nations to demand that the international organization audit the number of casualties.

The Puerto Rican government is reviewing its official death toll from the storm, which it said in December was 64.

“If it were 5,000 kittens, there would be outrage,” said Elizabeth Yeampierre, executive director of Uprose, a Latino organization in Brooklyn. “If it was 5,000 dogs, there would be outrage. If it was 5,000 blonde-haired, blue-eyed women, there would be outrage.”

The protest was organized by the Collective Action for Puerto Rico, a coalition of faith-based and labor organizations. Protesters held signs saying “Puerto Rican lives matter” and “If you are not angry you are not paying attention.”

They took off their shoes as a symbol of the people who died as a result of the storm but who were not immediately counted, and called for more attention to be paid to the hurricane’s aftermath in the form of more assistance for people still struggling on the island as hurricane season begins.

“Sisters and brothers in this country forget that the people of Puerto Rico are our fellow Americans,” said Linda Sarsour, who was one of the lead organizers of the Women’s March in Washington. “They deserve to be treated just like any American in any part of this country.”

United Nations officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump failed Puerto Rico, and thousands died as a result.  Period.  And there's every reason to believe that the actual death toll could be higher.

Researchers behind the study, which was published on Tuesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, visited close to 3,300 randomly selected households across Puerto Rico. They found that 38 people from those households died in the months after the storm.

Using their independent estimate of the number of deaths, researchers calculated the mortality rate after the hurricane and compared it with mortality rates from 2016. Researchers found a 62 percent increase in the mortality rate from Sept. 20, 2017, when the hurricane hit, through Dec. 31, 2017, compared with the same time period in 2016.

The study found that the official death toll of 64 was a “substantial underestimate of the true burden of mortality after Hurricane Maria,” and that the estimated 4,645-person death toll could exceed 5,000.

Puerto Rican officials said in December that they planned to revise the official death toll, counting direct and indirect storm deaths. The commonwealth commissioned a study on Hurricane Maria deaths from the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University, which is expected to release the first part of its review this summer.

No matter how you estimate it, the reality is that the "official" death toll of 64 is one of most mendacious government lies in existence. Los Olvidados Muertos, the Forgotten Dead, will not be forgotten any longer.

Especially in November.

The Maria Massacre

I'll make it simple for you.  The Trump White House lied about Hurricane Maria's death toll, and underestimated it by about 99%.  A new Harvard study found nearly 4,700 Americans in Puerto Rico died from the storm and the failure to provide relief and medicare care in the aftermath.

And those deaths are on Donald Trump's hands.

At least 4,645 people died as a result of Hurricane Maria and its devastation across Puerto Rico last year, according to a new Harvard study released Tuesday, an estimate that far exceeds the official government death toll, which stands at 64.

The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that health-care disruption for the elderly and the loss of basic utility services for the chronically ill had significant impacts across the U.S. territory, which was thrown into chaos after the September hurricane wiped out the electrical grid and had widespread impacts on infrastructure. Some communities were entirely cut off for weeks amid road closures and communications failures.

Researchers in the United States and Puerto Rico, led by scientists at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, calculated the number of deaths by surveying nearly 3,300 randomly chosen households across the island and comparing the estimated post-hurricane death rate to the mortality rate for the year before. Their surveys indicated that the mortality rate was 14.3 deaths per 1,000 residents from Sept. 20 through Dec. 31, 2017, a 62 percent increase in the mortality rate compared to 2016, or 4,645 “excess deaths.”

“Our results indicate that the official death count of 64 is a substantial underestimate of the true burden of mortality after Hurricane Maria,” the authors wrote.

The official death estimates have drawn sharp criticism from experts and local residents, and the new study criticized Puerto Rico’s methods for counting the dead — and its lack of transparency in sharing information — as detrimental to planning for future natural disasters. The authors called for patients, communities and doctors to develop contingency plans for natural disasters.

Maria caused $90 billion in damage, making it the third-costliest tropical cyclone in the United States since 1900, the researchers said.

That death toll equals the deaths from 9/11 (2,800 plus) and Hurricane Katrina (1,800 plus) combined.

These are Americans who died.

And eight months later Puerto Rico is still a disaster zone.  Donald Trump lied about it and they are still lying about it.

He is a monster.

Do we understand now what we're up against in November?  What the combination of the Republican pillars of austerity, racism, and government neglect leads to?  Do we get it now?

Are we going to go vote these assholes out before they kill us all or what?

Last Call For Doing The Electric Slide

Turns out that Whitefish Energy was all set to bilk Puerto Rico out of tens of millions for getting the lights back on, and they couldn't even do that right.

The small energy outfit from Montana that won a $300 million contract to help rebuild Puerto Rico’s tattered power grid had few employees of its own, so it did what the Puerto Rican authorities could have done: It turned to Florida for workers.

For their trouble, the six electrical workers from Kissimmee are earning $42 an hour, plus overtime. The senior power linemen from Lakeland are earning $63 an hour working in Puerto Rico, the Florida utility said. Their 40 co-workers from Jacksonville, also linemen, are making up to $100 earning double time, public records show.

But the Montana company that hired the workers, Whitefish Energy Holdings, had a contract that allowed it to bill the Puerto Rican public power company, known as Prepa, $319 an hour for linemen, a rate that industry experts said was far above the norm even for emergency work — and almost 17 times the average salary of their counterparts in Puerto Rico.

A spokesman for Whitefish, Chris Chiames, defended the costs, saying that “simply looking at the rate differential does not take into account Whitefish’s overhead costs,” which were built into the rate.

“We have to pay a premium to entice the labor to come to Puerto Rico to work,” Mr. Chiames said. Many workers are paid overtime for all the time they work. Overtime pay varies by type of worker, union membership, mainland utility company and many other factors.

The markup is among the reasons that federal officials are scrutinizing all other contracts involving Puerto Rico. The control board that oversees Puerto Rico’s finances is seeking more authority over the billions headed the island’s way, including the power to review big contracts and randomly inspect smaller ones.

Two weeks after Prepa abruptly withdrew the contract from Whitefish following strong criticism by federal and congressional officials of the company’s expected ability to perform the work needed, more questions are being raised about the deal, including how much it will actually cost. Whitefish will keep repairing power lines until Nov. 30.

As the Trump administration prepares to spend billions of dollars on rebuilding Puerto Rico’s infrastructure, the Whitefish deal — hatched in a dim powerless room six days after a storm packing winds of nearly 150 miles an hour knocked down thousands of power poles and lines — has served as a cautionary note about the potential for soaring costs that are common in the wake of disasters.

The Whitefish Energy contract is not serving as a "cautionary note" at all. As Naomi Klein warned us about some ten years ago with Dubya, it's serving as an instruction manual for the Trump regime.  The entire year of 2017 has been the GOP's brutal application of Klein's "Shock Doctrine" theory in action.

It will only get worse. They're not hiding it anymore because they don't have to.

Last Call For A Power Play In Puerto Rico

As millions in Puerto Rico remain without power, the Trump regime is turning to private industry to restore the power grid on the island.  The Senate is expected to finish up a $36.5 billion disaster relief package for Florida, Texas, California and Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands this week, and the biggest recipient of Puerto Rico's power grid contract, some $300 million to start with, is going to...a two-person company in Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke's hometown.

For the sprawling effort to restore Puerto Rico’s crippled electrical grid, the territory’s state-owned utility has turned to a two-year-old company from Montana that had just two full-time employees on the day Hurricane Maria made landfall.

The company, Whitefish Energy, said last week that it had signed a $300 million contract with the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority to repair and reconstruct large portions of the island’s electrical infrastructure. The contract is the biggest yet issued in the troubled relief effort.

Whitefish said Monday that it has 280 workers in the territory, using linemen from across the country, most of them as subcontractors, and that the number grows on average from 10 to 20 people a day. It said it was close to completing infrastructure work that will energize some of the key industrial facilities that are critical to restarting the local economy.

The power authority, also known as PREPA, opted to hire Whitefish rather than activate the “mutual aid” arrangements it has with other utilities. For many years, such agreements have helped U.S. utilities — including those in Florida and Texas recently — to recover quickly after natural disasters.

The unusual decision to instead hire a tiny for-profit company is drawing scrutiny from Congress and comes amid concerns about bankrupt Puerto Rico’s spending as it seeks to provide relief to its 3.4 million residents, the great majority of whom remain without power a month after the storm.

“The fact that there are so many utilities with experience in this and a huge track record of helping each other out, it is at least odd why [the utility] would go to Whitefish,” said Susan F. Tierney, a former senior official at the Energy Department and state regulatory agencies. “I’m scratching my head wondering how it all adds up.”

It adds up because Zinke wanted to bring home the bacon for his home state.  Guy still thinks he's a Congressman and of course this is a crapload of money awarded in a no-bid process because "emergency".

Whitefish Energy is based in Whitefish, Mont., the home town of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. Its chief executive, Andy Techmanski, and Zinke acknowledge knowing one another — but only, Zinke’s office said in an email, because Whitefish is a small town where “everybody knows everybody.” One of Zinke’s sons “joined a friend who worked a summer job” at one of Techmanski’s construction sites, the email said. Whitefish said he worked as a “flagger.”

Zinke’s office said he had no role in Whitefish securing the contract for work in Puerto Rico. Techmanski also said Zinke was not involved.

Techmanski said in an interview that the contract emerged from discussions between his company and the utility rather than from a formal bidding process. He said he had been in contact with the utility two weeks before Maria “discussing the ‘what if’ scenarios” of hurricane recovery. In the days after the hurricane, he said, “it started to make sense that there was a need here for our services and others.”

Just a total coincidence, I'm sure.

The scale of the disaster in Puerto Rico is far larger than anything Whitefish has handled. The company has won two contracts from the Energy Department, including $172,000 to replace a metal pole structure and splice in three miles of new conductor and overhead ground wire in Arizona.

Shortly before Maria ravaged Puerto Rico, Whitefish landed its largest federal contract, a $1.3 million deal to replace and upgrade parts of a 4.8-mile transmission line in Arizona. The company — which was listed in procurement documents as having annual revenue of $1 million — was given 11 months to complete the work, records show.

Yeah, these guys are the best experts in restoring power in the entire country, two guys whose biggest ever project took 11 months to fix five miles of power lines in Arizona when Puerto Rico has tens of thousands of downed transmission and distribution lines.

But sure.  These guys will help Puerto Rico get the lights on, as the island heads into its second miserable month without power, water, sewage, and hope.  Did I mention Zinke's son worked for these guys?

Totally not relevant, I'm sure.

They're not even pretending anymore that it isn't all about the graft and the grift.

Last Call For Crossfire Hurricane

One month after Hurricane Maria ravaged Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, millions of Americans remain in a dire humanitarian crisis, with hundreds of thousands lacking food, water, shelter, electricity, and access to basic services.  Maria by the numbers:

Here is a by-the-numbers account of how things on the island currently stand. 

Provisions 

• More than a third of Puerto Rican households, or about 1 million people, still lack running water according to CNN.
• FEMA says it has distributed 23.6 million liters (6.2 million gallons) of bottled and bulk water in Puerto Rico. That figure includes water for hospitals and dialysis centers
• These deliveries equate to only 9% of the island's drinking water requirement, going by the World Health Organization's (WHO) assessment that each person needs at least 2.5 liters (2/3 of a gallon) per day. Some residents are so desperate for drinking water they have broken into polluted wells at industrial waste sites.
• The shortfall is far greater when you consider the WHO also recommends 15 liters per person per day for basic cooking and hygiene needs. Dirty water ups the risk of diseases like cholera and at least one person has died as a result of being unable to get to dialysis treatment on time, CNN reports.
• Some 86% of grocery stores have re-opened. But they are not necessarily stocked.
• FEMA says 60,000 homes need roofing help. It has delivered 38,000 tarps.

Power and Personnel 

• Less than 20% of Puerto Rico's power grid has been restored and around 3 million people are still without power, says CNN
• The news broadcaster adds that 75% of antennas are down so even those able to charge phones are unlikely to have cellular service.
• All of the island's hospitals are now up and running, with most using back-up systems, but only a quarter are being supplied with power from the grid, says Axios
• According to CNN, FEMA has deployed 1,700 personnel in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, which were also ravaged by Hurricane Maria. That's 900 less that the 2,600 FEMA personnel reportedly still in Texas and Florida, but the agency told CNN that around 20,000 other federal staff and military have been deployed in response to Maria.
• Thousands of people have donated money or volunteered to help Puerto Rico. Among them, celebrity chef José Andrés says he's serving 100,000 meals a day on the island.

Puerto Rico is a disaster area and remain so for months if not longer.  Look at Haiti in the wake of that devastating earthquake almost six years ago, and how the country is still struggling for even day-to-day functions.  There's good news, but at this rate Puerto Rico will get statehood before it gets power.

The disaster continues, and it remains Trump's fault.

Collective Trumpunishment

The Narcissist-in-Chief's ego has gotten so swollen and infected that as Paul Krugman points out, Americans are going to die as a direct result of this kakistocratic administration.

When Hurricane Maria struck, more than a week ago, it knocked out power to the whole of Puerto Rico, and it will be months before the electricity comes back. Lack of power can be deadly in itself, but what’s even worse is that, thanks largely to the blackout, much of the population still lacks access to drinkable water. How many will die because hospitals can’t function, or because of diseases spread by unsafe water? Nobody knows. 

But the situation is terrible, and time is not on Puerto Rico’s side: The longer this goes on, the worse the humanitarian crisis will get. Surely, then, you’d expect bringing in and distributing aid to be the U.S. government’s top priority. After all, we’re talking about the lives of three and a half million of our fellow citizens — more than the population of Iowa or metro San Diego. 

So have we seen the kind of full-court, all-out relief effort such a catastrophe demands? No. 

Admittedly, it’s hard to quantify the federal response. But none of the extraordinary measures you’d expect to see have materialized. 

The deployment of military resources seems to have been smaller and slower than it was in Texas after Harvey or Florida after Irma, even though Puerto Rico’s condition is far more dire. Until Thursday the Trump administration had refused to lift restrictions on foreign shipping to Puerto Rico, even though it had waived those rules for Texas and Florida. 

Why? According to the president, “people who work in the shipping industry” don’t like the idea.

And as Krugman adds, it's not just Puerto Rico, it's healthcare too.

Obamacare repeal has failed again, for the simple reason that Graham-Cassidy, like all the other G.O.P. proposals, was a piece of meanspirited junk. But while the Affordable Care Act survives, the Trump administration is openly trying to sabotage the law’s functioning. 

This sabotage is taking place on multiple levels. The administration has refused to confirm whether it will pay crucial subsidies to insurers that cover low-income customers. It has refused to clarify whether the requirement that healthy people buy insurance will be enforced. It has canceled or suspended outreach designed to get more people to sign up. 

These actions translate directly into much higher premiums: Insurers don’t know if they’ll be compensated for major costs, and they have every reason to expect a smaller, sicker risk pool than before. And it’s too late to reverse the damage: Insurers are finalizing their 2018 rates as you read this. 

Why are the Trumpists doing this? Is it a cynical calculation — make the A.C.A. fail, then claim that it was already doomed? I doubt it. For one thing, we’re not talking about people known for deep strategic calculations. For another, the A.C.A. won’t actually collapse; it will just become a program more focused on sicker, poorer Americans — and the political opposition to repeal won’t go away. Finally, when the bad news comes in, everyone will know whom to blame.

No, A.C.A. sabotage is best seen not as a strategy, but as a tantrum. We can’t repeal Obamacare? Well, then, we’ll screw it up. It’s not about achieving any clear goal, but about salving the president’s damaged self-esteem. 

It's worse than that.  It's collective punishment of the people who dared to vote against Trump in 2016.  He lost the GOP primary there to Marco Rubio, remember?  As a result, he is trying to cause as much suffering to those who, as far as Trump is concerned, no longer matter as Americans and therefore no longer deserve anything from the country other than the coercive power of the state at point-blank range.

This is about Trump making sure his regime hurts anyone and everyone who stands up to him in any way.  And if thousands of American citizens in Puerto Rico have to be sickened or even die from neglect in order to make that point, if millions have to lose their health care coverage and some will die as a result?

So be it.  Dear Leader Trump has spoken.

He is a monster, full stop.

The Island Of Misfit Americans, Con't

Something definitely slimy is going down in Puerto Rico with the Trump regime's "recovery efforts" as now lawmakers are being denied permission to fly to the island by the White House.

The Trump administration is restricting lawmakers in both parties from visiting storm-ravaged Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands aboard military aircraft this weekend in order to keep focused on recovery missions there, according to multiple congressional aides. 

The decision comes as the Pentagon is intensifying its relief efforts on the islands as the U.S. government struggles to respond to devastation caused last week by Hurricane Maria and earlier by Hurricane Irma. 

Multiple attempts have been underway in recent days for members of both parties to travel to Puerto Rico aboard military aircraft. Once there, they would have met with officials with the military and Federal Emergency Management Agency responsible for ongoing missions on the ground. 

At least 10 members of the House and Senate were hoping to go this Friday, according to two aides. Another trip of senators and House lawmakers would have gone on Sunday, said the aides, who were not authorized to speak publicly about the planning. 

But since Monday evening, permission to use military aircraft to make the trips has been denied by the White House and Pentagon, the aides said. One Republican aide familiar with the back-and-forth said that the administration and military officials had indicated that they need “resources for rescue and recovery, thus member travel will be restricted.” 

Trump said at a news conference on Monday that he would be traveling to Puerto Rico next Tuesday and may also visit the U.S. Virgin Islands, adding that he was told that is the earliest day he could do so without hampering ongoing relief missions.

So no Congressional oversight to see what's going on, and the Pentagon, which, you know, just got a $700 billion paycheck for the year, doesn't have the resources to spare for members of either party in Congress to inspect the island's recovery effort.

It's almost like they don't want any oversight.

Now, why would that be?

Last Call For The Island Of Misfit Americans, Con't

Pretty sure Donald Trump has no idea how much of a crisis is unfolding in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands this week.  It may be months before the power is back on, and without power, other systems are inoperable to the point of producing a major public health disaster.

Horrifying stories of Hurricane Maria’s impact on Puerto Rico’s sickest and most vulnerable are now trickling in: a newborn who couldn’t get a scheduled surgery for her heart defectbecause the storm closed down her hospital, an elderly woman with diabetes struggling to keep her life-sustaining insulin cool. 

One theme underlying many of these tales: Power outages throw the health care system into chaos. As Vox’s Brian Resnick explained, the storm knocked out power for the entire island, and five days later, most of Puerto Rico’s 3.4 million residents are still in the dark. Some hospitals are now running generators, but many households will have to wait up to six months for power to be restored. 

We often take electricity for granted, and don’t typically associate it with public health. A lot of the ways they’re tied together are hidden. But when the power is out, it becomes painfully clear how much the medical, public health, and sanitation systems rely on the electrical grid to keep people safe and healthy. 

Not long ago, researchers at Public Health England decided to scan the medical literatureto learn what was known about power outages and health with more extreme weather events threatening power systems around the world. They summarized their findings in the only systematic review of the research on the subject — and in this useful chart:

So imagine all the above systems down indefinitely: potable water, transportation, perishable food and medicine storage, communication, safety, and more.  On an island where all these systems are isolated and everything needed to repair these systems has to be shipped in.

Three and a half million people without these systems for months, best case scenario.

And Donald Goddamn Trump in charge of fixing it.

This is going to be an enduring nightmare.  Yes, flooded Houston and the wrecked Florida Keys face a similar situation, but the logistics of getting help to those affected is much easier than getting help to Puerto Rico or the US Virgin Islands right now.  There's not an immediate public safety crisis for millions brewing.  Yes, recovery for Houston and the Keys will take years, and there's a very good chance both those areas will get struck by another major hurricane again before they can fully recover.

But Puerto Rico, right now, today, is on the brink of disaster.  People aren't going to make it months or even weeks without help now, and Trump is too busy yelling at the teevee for it to matter to him.

This is precisely the scenario I expected would unfold with Trump running the show, and the results are going to be horrific.

The Island Of Misfit Americans

While Trump is doing everything he can to distract from his problems, more than 3 million Americans on Puerto Rico now face a second week without power, and the damage from Hurricanes Irma and Maria were so awful that the island's infrastructure may take months or even years to recover and the immediate humanitarian crisis is far from over.

It’s been less than a week since Hurricane Maria tore through Puerto Rico, bisecting the entire island, bringing 150 mph winds and torrential rains to some of its most populated areas. 

But the crisis in Puerto Rico, a US territory whose residents are citizens of the United States, is just beginning, and will likely last months or years. 

Puerto Rico’s entire power grid was knocked offline during the storm. The New York Times reports it could be four to six months before power is restored on the island. That’s half a year relying on generators, half a year without air conditioning in the tropical climate, half a year where even the most basic tasks of modern life are made difficult. And remember: 3.4 million people live there. 

Making life even harder: Cell service is out on almost the entire island, and communications are generally strained. Thousands of people living in the mainland United States with relatives in Puerto Rico have yet to make contact. At least six people died during the storm, but this number could rise due to the fact that news is moving slowly on the communications-choked island. 

Meanwhile, new crises keep forming in the wake of the storm. On Friday, the National Weather Service issued a dire warning about the Guajataca Dam in the northwestern corner of Puerto Rico, which is reported to be near the point of breaking, threatening downstream areas with deadly floods. Seventy thousand people — enough to fill a small city — have been asked to evacuate areas that could be flooded by the nearly 11 billion gallons of water the dam holds back. 

Puerto Rican officials believe the dam’s failure is imminent. “It could be tonight, it could be tomorrow, it could be in the next few days, but it’s very likely [the dam will break] soon,” Christina Villalba, a spokesperson with Puerto Rico’s emergency management agency, told Reuters.

Evacuations of residents in the path of the dam's flood plain are already underway but the island's inhabitants are facing dire circumstances, and this administration and the Congress that doles out the money don't seem concerned in the least to do a single goddamn thing about it.

Sure, the Texas and Florida coasts are still reeling from billions in damage and there are still hundreds of thousands of people dealing with flooded and destroyed homes and no power in the lingering early fall heat.  But that goes for all of Puerto Rico right now and the Trump regime does not give a damn.

We're on our own, guys.  This is life under Trump.