Current Affairs Donald Trump POS: Judgement cometh and that right soon

[SteveSC]

Isn't that basically just the NRA argument though? Mass shootings are a time for thoughts and prayers, and it's wrong to politicise them by discussing gun control?

I think this is the perfect time to discuss why Puerto Rico has been so poorly run for so long, because it is probably the only time that Puerto Rico will ever be discussed in the United States (which barely even knows about its own jurisdiction), and the only time there will ever be any impetus to do anything constructive. If we wait until the crisis subsides, then the possibility of, say, debt relief or modifying the Jones Act will be nil.

And it seems like a false dichotomy to suggest that FEMA doing its job properly can't occur alongside raising awareness of what has made Puerto Rico (or Houston) so susceptible.

That is not to edify Trump though - he is not "attacking the local government," which he does not understand well enough to form a cogent critique; rather, he is picking a personal fight imbued with racist insinuations with the mayor of San Juan specifically, who, whatever her party's record, has been extremely energetic and committed to helping her constituents, and to demanding that the federal government - ie: Trump - do its job. And in any case, the reason why PR has been so badly managed has at least as much to do with Washington and Wall Street as it does with the island's relatively weak leadership.

How about he support and show tactfulness before he insinuates and goes on the offensive? The hurricane devastated the area that is not on the local government nor would they have been able to cope even if they were better run.

Texas and Florida's local governments didn't fare well either and insisted on help as they were overwhelmed and they are far better run.

It's like a missile thrown at Pickford from the crowd and then blaming Koeman for being a sh*te manager.

 

[tsubaki]

This Iran speech could literally have been written by the Saudis.

 

[tsubaki]

Rouhani's rebuttal to the Trump speech was far easier to understand, even in Farsi.

 

[Tubey]

Will never get over the fact the USA voted this moron in. It's like a bad movie.

Actually defended him on his approach to DPRK, but in retrospect it's all just racist warmongering from a bigoted idiot.

 

[toffy]

Will never get over the fact the USA voted this moron in. It's like a bad movie.

Actually defended him on his approach to DPRK, but in retrospect it's all just racist warmongering from a bigoted idiot.

And Hillary would have been the better choice ?

 

[abelard]

And Hillary would have been the better choice ?

Correct

 

[Tubey]

And Hillary would have been the better choice ?

Obviously. She's awful, but Trump is on another level of awfulness.

 

[DanEFC92]

And Hillary would have been the better choice ?

Unquestionably.

 

[peteblue]

Correct

Hahahahaha...... I see she’s selling a book, I wonder who wrote it for her........

 

[peteblue]

Unquestionably.

This is when you lose all credibility........she was and remains useless.....why do Americans believe that the wife of a former president is the best person out of 300+ million to be their leader. She is what she has always been, a smarmy know it all who insists she knows best........

 

[DanEFC92]

This is when you lose all credibility........she was and remains useless.....why do Americans believe that the wife of a former president is the best person out of 300+ million to be their leader. She is what she has always been, a smarmy know it all who insists she knows best........

Hmm who does that remind us of?

 

[peteblue]

Hmm who does that remind us of?

Hilary Clinton.........

 

[DanEFC92]

Hilary Clinton.........

Yeah, you’ve already said that.

Terrific patter.

 

[abelard]

I don't think it is as by starting an argument about the existing governance, most particularly with the San Juan mayor but also in general, it immediately puts up barriers between FEMA and the local politicians. You had the FEMA director go on tv and say he "filtered out the San Juan mayor's complaints as political noise" - that can't be helpful to anyone.

Unfortunately poor local officials will always have in the back of their minds how things look rather than their full focus on the recovery effort. The federal government attacking them will only make it more likely they concentrate on blaming FEMA for the issues whilst it does zero to help the good local officials with their immediate needs. It also allows FEMA to bury any of its own shortcomings under a "look what we have to work with" excuse - as president he should be holding both sides to metrics such as how many people have clean drinking water and not allow any sidetracking into political squabbling and mutual fingerpointing. I thimkmthings suchnas the Jones act or the debt relief are s

I do agree however with a lot of your latter points and that there is a concern that after the emergency response period is over that Puerto Rico will be forgotten in a way that New Orleans could not but tbh I think that an ongoing problem with Trump anyway, I'm not sure Houston is getting much post storm federal attention either.

Well, I think I did mention that Trump's twitter war was foolish... and FEMA's pathetic scape-goating has been roundly ridiculed. They're not incompetent and disinterested just because Trump offered them an excuse. My point is that it's a mistake to see this, or Houston, as solely a natural disaster. Political decisions and legacies are central to both, and shouldn't be ignored out of some misguided mainstream-media sense of disaster propriety and decorum.

The hurricane is the reason why the power went out in Puerto Rico. But decades of chronic mismanagement and exploitation are the reason why it won't be back on again for six months, or why there is no drinking water and insufficient food. Likewise in Houston: terrible zoning (like blanketing floodplanes with concrete); decades of dumping toxic waste in residential neighbourhoods with abandon; Republican cuts to environmental and emergency response agencies; and rising sea-levels and increased hurricane frequency/intensity due to head-in-the-sand denialist tantrums on global warming all made things needlessly more severe.

For these situations to improve, much less to avoid such cascading catastrophes the next time a hurricane comes along, we need to go beyond seeing Trump as the singular cause of evil in the world, and beyond the usual "thoughts and prayers" routine - which a certain mental dead-end Texan with emotional dysentery demanded in the Houston thread.

 

[abelard]

This is when you lose all credibility........she was and remains useless.....why do Americans believe that the wife of a former president is the best person out of 300+ million to be their leader. She is what she has always been, a smarmy know it all who insists she knows best........

I never said she was the best person out of 300+ million. I said she was the best person in a group of two that also includes Donald Trump.