Per the NYTimes, “Still Waiting for FEMA in Texas and Florida After Hurricanes”:
…Outside the White House this month, President Trump boasted about the federal relief efforts. “In Texas and in Florida, we get an A-plus,” he said. FEMA officials say that they are successfully dealing with enormous challenges posed by an onslaught of closely spaced disasters, unlike anything the agency has seen in years. But on the ground, flooded residents and local officials have a far more critical view.
According to interviews with dozens of storm victims, one of the busiest hurricane seasons in years has overwhelmed federal disaster officials. As a result, the government’s response in the two biggest affected states — Texas and Florida — has been scattershot: effective in dealing with immediate needs, but unreliable and at times inadequate in handling the aftermath, as thousands of people face unusually long delays in getting basic disaster assistance.
FEMA has taken weeks to inspect damaged homes and apartments, delaying flood victims’ attempts to rebuild their lives and properties. People who call the agency’s help line at 1-800-621-FEMA have waited on hold for two, three or four hours before they even speak to a FEMA representative.
Nearly two months after Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas on Aug. 25, and six weeks after Hurricane Irma hit Florida on Sept. 10, residents are still waiting for FEMA payments, still fuming after the agency denied their applications for assistance and still trying to resolve glitches and disputes that have slowed and complicated their ability to receive federal aid…
In the Washington Post, “Many Trump voters who got hurricane relief in Texas aren’t sure Puerto Ricans should”:
… “He really made me mad,” said Maddox, 70, who accused Trump of trying to pit those on the mainland against Puerto Ricans, even though they’re all Americans.
“I don’t know,” said her husband, Fred Maddox, 75. “I think he’s trying.”
He continued: “It’s a problem, but they need to handle it. It shouldn’t be up to us, really. I don’t think so. They’re sitting back, they’re taking the money, they’re taking a little under the table. He’s trying to wake them up: Do your job. Be responsible.”
The divide in the Maddox household is one playing out across the country, as those who voted for the president debate how much support the federal government should give Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory without a voting member of Congress that is not allowed to vote in presidential elections…
A survey released last week by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that a majority of Americans believe that the federal government has been too slow to respond in Puerto Rico and that the island still isn’t getting the help it needs. But the results largely broke along party lines: While nearly three-quarters of Democrats said the federal government isn’t doing enough, almost three-quarters of Republicans said it is…
A cynic might wonder if Trump and his enablers want you to be fighting over scraps while his cronies loot the treasury.
Jeb Lund, in the Daily Beast:
… Until now, America has been willing only to let the quiet calamities fester and infect and degrade, often with far more lethality, injury and contempt for cost than overnight disasters. Look to the Superfund site upstream or the refreshing orange electric-goo creeks of coal country. Or look to the drinking water of Flint, Michigan, which began poisoning its people in April 2014 and “became a crisis” in September 2015.
But the big ticket stuff—the telegenic suffering of real civilizational collapse that pops on camera next to the yellow of Anderson Cooper’s slicker and the stark green camo of a Humvee—well, that we still gave a damn enough to handle.
But maybe the big lesson of the Bush Administration’s bungling of Hurricane Katrina wasn’t that government always has to show up but rather that there is a constituency out there that no longer cares if the really visually sickening catastrophe goes not just ignored but worsened. That there is a tiered system—maybe even color-coded—of which citizens need rescuing. That there’s a virtue to cutting out the deadwood by salutary neglect. That a penny saved is a penny earned toward rescuing more critical voters. That we have to destroy the island to monetize it. That each new disaster is a chance to discover whether a new precedent of designating an expendable citizenry starts with you…
Trump said again this week that the devastating hurricanes are examples of why America needs tax cuts. pic.twitter.com/aohLSjxzKT
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) October 22, 2017
lollipopguild
“Mr. President, North Korea just nuked Las Angeles and San Francisco!” Trump: Serves them right they didn’t vote for me anyway.”
ruemara
Hate these people. Fuck you, Fred. Fuck you with a chainsaw. And fuck every last one of your buddies in Houston talking about how maybe PR doesn’t need that help and how they’re basically used to living in a 3rd world so they should be fine.
Baud
Mrs. Maddox needs to divorce Mr. Maddox.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
How the hell does Julian Assange get 280 characters and I don’t?
Baud
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): He has bigger lies to tell.
Gin & Tonic
@Baud: Nailed it in one.
FlipYrWhig
I know Fred “Dumbfuck McDumbfuckface” Maddox got this shit from Fox News and Trump, but the gross thing is that he was already well-primed to believe it, because he is a white Republican and hence has a head filled with primal racial resentment waiting to be activated.
jl
“I don’t know,”
Points to that Trump supporter for honesty.
Edit: if that species of Trump supporter goes sour on the Big Donny, Baud 20201 needs to focus on them. Ripe recruits for the base.
Baud
@FlipYrWhig: Yeah, Fox is on all of our cable packages too. They made their choice.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
This is vile, disgusting, unself-aware, and fact-free all at the same time. Methinks Fred Maddox should get a million harassing phone calls because of that shit he just vomited out.
His last name reminded me of that Randy Newman song:
cmorenc
It’s impossible for facts to break through the bubble of the sorts of folks who keep Fox News on in the background all day and night, when they’re not watching sports or other relatively nonpolitical (fantasy) entertainment. There is a bank of four TVs in front of the workout stations at my local gym, the left-middle one tuned to CNN and the right-middle, one tuned to Fox, the other two on the outside tuned to sports. Since both are closed-captioned, I can more or less follow both simultaneously when in their vicinity – it’s as if the two networks are covering entirely different countries with entirely different facts and people, despite any superficial similarities in the situations covered. But of the two, the Fox universe is inarguably far more insular to contrary facts or perspectives. And when they do bring on purported people from the left for “balance”, most are seemingly selected the same way the Harlem globetrotters select players for their regular opponent, the Washington (I think it’s generals) – someone their right-wing ideological hosts can easily dominate in discussions.
Mike in NC
Shocked that some 75 year old white dude in Texas takes a dim view of Puerto Ricans, because they’re practically the same as those dern Messicans he’s hated for decades.
Baud
@jl:
Baud!/Character from Planet of the Apes! 20201!
Jeffro
I was starting to think up one of my classic hysterically funny responses here and then I see the Daniel Dale has already relayed Trumpov’s actual thoughts on how hurricane damage + needy Americans = even more reason for tax cuts
Beyond parody
jl
@Baud: You’re virtual. So, 2020, 20201, makes no difference. Harold Stassen, step aside!
Mike in NC
Oh, and today Trump took full personal credit for rolling back ISIS. I shit you not. Was on the network news.
boatboy_srq
@jl: You live in the Air & Space Museum? Whodathunk.
Jeffro
Also, has Fox or Breitbart or SOMEONE inspected grieving widow Mrs. Johnson’s kitchen countertops yet? If not, why not? False flag! I knew it!
/Alex Jones
boatboy_srq
@Jeffro: Amazing, isn’t it, how unending suffering is now justification for 0.01%ers to be less inconvenienced.
Patricia Kayden
How the hell does cutting taxes for the wealthy equate to the hurricanes suffered by Floridians, Texans, Puerto Ricans and U.S. Virgin Islanders? Nothing Trump says makes sense or is true.
And who is shocked that Trump supporters don’t believe that Puerto Ricans (and probably Virgin Islanders) don’t deserve a penny of Federal aid? I’m not.
Yutsano
EDIT: okay the thread isn’t borked.
Who here is shocked that the FEMA response is totally inadequate? Anyone? Bueller?
Arm The Homeless
Every time I see one of these, “Trump-voting fascists say ignorant,bigotted things” type of article I just sigh and throw another Trump fan’s application into the ‘Deny’ pile.
Fuck ’em all and I hope they all get ass cancer
lgerard
The Betsy DeVos plan for America
Frankensteinbeck
The cynic is overdoing it, believing everything must come down to calculated greed. Love and Hate are just as powerful, or more. There’s lots of room for Trump and his enablers to want to fuck over everyone they don’t like and loot the treasury as separate actions. He has attracted enough greedy assholes that probably some of them think they’re doing something cleverly diversionary, but the overwhelming unifying trait in his cabinet is bigotry. They are mean shits who need no monetary reward to murder as many of the vulnerable as possible.
Major Major Major Major
Did y’all see Trump’s op-ed in the onion? Happy Monday, Everyone! Looking Forward To Another Week Of Infecting Every Aspect Of Your Daily Lives!
gene108
@Patricia Kayden:
Trump is a conman. His voters are his marks. As long as they are buying what he is selling, he can keep the good times rolling in.
He needs to keep them engaged, so they don’t wander off and figure things out for themselves.
And he is getting a huge assist from right-wing media, which is working overtime to keep the marks in line.
chopper
at least these shitheads are consistent about taxes.
SFAW
@Patricia Kayden:
As I often say: Lying Littledick has not intentionally told the truth since he started his campaign. (And probably long before that.)
Whenever truth comes from that prolapsed pig rectum that he calls his mouth, it has either been because he forgot which lie he was trying to tell, or because he made a mistake (such as his “understanding” facts-and-figures, or similar — meaning he was trying to regurgitate some bullshit “fact” from Fox or John Solomon or Alex Jones or their ilk, and got it wrong).
It’s a strange world where Kim Jong-un is the more rational of the two.
jl
@Frankensteinbeck: I think the cynic has a point when it comes to GOP House leadership and many reactionary members, and some in Senate, though Senators have to worry about honest elections, so it moderates what nonsense.they are willing to spout on tV.
And Drump has put several of the worst of those Congressional GOPers into his cabinet.
You think Ryan and McConnell don’t know what they want to do, and plan accordingly? Looks more and more like their ability to execute may be lacking, though.
kindness
Why the animus about Puerto Rico receiving help? Even after being told they are American citizen’s too many ‘of those people’ (Republicans & bigots) prefer to still think of Puerto Rico like some 3rd world islanders same as Guam. They want to think of themselves as better so they don’t only think bad down, they punch down by telling their reps not to give American citizens the same thing they want. To me, that whole kind of thought process would be telling me there is no better there. There is no superiority among the cruel. Just their own bloody hands and cold dead hearts. Another on their long list of reasons why Americans need tax cuts (shovel money up to the top 0.5%).
FlipYrWhig
@Patricia Kayden:
He’s been told that a tax cut will stimulate the economy. He’s able to stop chortling over the word “stimulate” just long enough to try to blurt out some nonsense that attempts to make that point.
different-church-lady
FUCK NO. This isn’t the less of Bush II bungling New Orleans — that was the moment the country finally saw his for what he was. He paid for it in the polls — back when this country still had its soul reasonably intact.
This is the lesson of Trump and Twitter: make hatred fun for white America and you can hurt whomever you want. Bush didn’t teach us that. Trump and Bannon own it. It’s not that Trump’s people “don’t care” — it’s that they want him to be deliberately malicious.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@kindness: In March, John Oliver did a segment on the US territories, talking about voting rights. It’s still relevant, I think.
different-church-lady
@kindness:
Because Trump has it. Therefore they have it. There is no deeper reason. This a cult of personality, plain and simple.
FlipYrWhig
@different-church-lady: A cult of personality fueled by shared racial hatred. “Puerto Rico” means brown people speaking Spanish, somewhere, and some live in New York City, so that’s like 4 red flags right there. I’d bet they feel the same way about New Orleans (black people), Miami (black and brown people), and California (liberals), but not Houston, because that’s in Texas, which is like honorary shitkicker regardless of the demographic reality.
Ajabu
@Patricia Kayden:
No “probably” about it. The USVI is overwhelmingly Black.
If anything, the VI will get less attention than Puerto Rico.
That’s a given.
satby
@FlipYrWhig: remember, these are people who think being born in Hawaii means you aren’t a citizen.
lgerard
Had to just shake my head at this
Evidently she believes that Puerto Ricans live in straw thatched huts and dance around bonfires for amusement.
And props to the guy congratulating himself for the moral superiority of having flood insurance without realizing it is subsidized by the taxpayers
rikyrah
@ruemara:
Tell it
different-church-lady
@lgerard:
Annnnnnnnnnnnnnd…. it never occurred to her there might be something wrong with that?
Matt McIrvin
@different-church-lady: I don’t know–if you look at GWB’s Gallup numbers, they were already in a downward slide over Iraq at that point, but you don’t really see a sudden drop at Katrina. It was just one damn thing among many. (And even after the true extent of the disaster was known, Bush was still a bit above where Trump is now–he didn’t slide significantly lower until the middle of the following year.)
I got into big arguments with a Republican friend around then–he insisted that Bush was blameless and nobody could have done better. I think the people who were outraged were mostly people who were outraged already.
jl
@Matt McIrvin: (Edit: I was just going to agree that the slide into irreversible deep unpopularity doesn’t happen all at once, even with FUBARS like Katrina, The cumulative weight of disappointment just drives things lower and lower. But comment below is what came out. Sorry.)
Dub couldn’t recover from one disaster before another one he was at least partly responsible hit him. And he really had no big headline ideas that would spur an overall comeback, which the silly media pundits kept predicting. He did have some smaller very good policy ideas, many of which matured and final versions of which were approved by Obama. And as I noted in a previous thread a few days ago, were labelled as commie muslin ideas promoted by the Satanic Barack Hussein Obama to destroy the country. And some of those were cancelled because of it, due to Obama and Democratic excess of caution and unwillingness to fight back.
So, Dub was overall a grim picture. Only thing we know for sure is that Trump is much less fit for office than Dub. So…. Hooo boy, what a mess we are in now.
boatboy_srq
@lgerard:
That there is some serious First World Fail.
SFAW
@Matt McIrvin:
He hadn’t counted on the heroic hero that is Lying Littledick, who has apparently given himself A+++++++++++++++ for the government’s response to Poo-air-toe Reee-ko (as that fuckhead calls it).
I sure as shit hope Robert Mueller is close to indicting that lying, evil, inhuman motherfucker.
boatboy_srq
@different-church-lady: When your science texts contain stuff like this, not quite so surprising.
Matt McIrvin
@SFAW: The big news about Mueller today is, of course, that he’s been looking into the whole Uranium One thing. I hope Mueller doesn’t turn out to be just as big a party shill as Kelly, that this doesn’t go the way I predicted several months ago and end up with Trump getting off scot-free and Hillary Clinton in prison.
SFAW
@lgerard:
Guess what, you stupid motherfucker? Before the hurricane, 96 percent of the island had electric power. I hope your lower intestine doesn’t suffocate you, dumbfuck, because your head is pretty far up it.
God I hate these people.
Frankensteinbeck
@jl:
Ryan and McConnell are definitely cynical planners, albeit the former is a dimwit and the latter… it’s hard to tell. It’s become clear that the thing he was great at was not actually all that hard to do, convince a bunch of Republicans to say ‘no’ to absolutely everything a black president wanted. I am positive McConnell is stone racist. He was the major white person who first announced they would all go apeshit when a black man became president. There’s plenty to suggest he’s a corrupt plutocrat-enabler as well, and just plain a mean shit. Ryan is a fruitcake zealot, of course. I can’t even tell if he’s racist, because it gets drowned out in his fetishistic ardor to hurt everyone who isn’t rich.
rikyrah
Eric Holder will be on MSNBC this hour. on Rachel Maddow
SFAW
@Matt McIrvin:
I don’t think Mueller is a scaled-down version of Kelly (and the rest of the sociopaths surrounding Shitgibbon). But I imagine that, with enough screaming from Alex Jones and the other nutjobs, some brain cycles will be spent on Uranium. My bigger worry is that the right wing fuckheads will try to use it as an excuse to get Mueller fired.
rikyrah
Cutest thing you will see all day :)
https://twitter.com/BabyAnimalGifs/status/921345686674788353
Matt McIrvin
@jl: I think what really did him in was the rapid rise in gasoline prices after that, and then the total collapse of the world economy during the ’08 presidential campaign was kind of the icing on the cake.
(Obama was never remotely as unpopular as Bush got, but in hindsight his popularity varied pretty much inversely with gasoline prices too. I remember all the attempts to pin the rise in gas prices from January 2008 to 2011-2014 on him; of course, people with memories knew that the price of gasoline had temporarily dipped low in early 2008 because the goddamn global economy had collapsed. Now they’re pretty low but slowly rising…)
SFAW
@boatboy_srq:
I half-expected the text to start talking about the body’s “humours,” but realized that would be anatomy and physiology, not physices/general science.
Where did you find that moronitude, anyway. If I didn’t already know how fucked up the various red states are, I would have thought it was from The Onion.
boatboy_srq
@SFAW: Relayed from a friend who scanned it from an Xtianist elementary school textbook.
It’s no wonder empirical observation and scientific method are beyond the Reichwing when they deliberately teach not to use them. Even four-humour medicine and four-element physics/chemistry are still too advanced for these geniuses.
Mike in NC
@satby: People from exotic islands like Hawaii, Guam, USVI, and Puerto Rico cannot possibly be counted as Real Americans, or so I’ve heard from people living on another island: Long Island.
But her emails!!
@Mike in NC:
Are you sure the people weren’t from Staten Island and just working/visiting Long Island?
SFAW
@Mike in NC:
Interesting observation from someone who lives in a place that elected Thom Tillis and Jesse Helms.
SFAW
@But her emails!!:
Excellent point.
jl
@Matt McIrvin: I think general economic downturn, or widely noticed economic pain like gas or food price increases are approval killers. Then war that is perceived to be costly and unjustified or that is going badly for extended period of time (people get tired of ‘rallying around’ if there is no end in sight). War or other national security problem can either bolster or kill approval. As the Iraq quagmire got deeper and the cost more ghastly, and most of public learned it was all BS to begin with, that hurt Dub very badly. But it is gradual thing most of the time.
jl
@boatboy_srq: Benjamin Franklin getting uppity and thinking that he had figured out how electric charge worked, probably what drove him to leaving conventional Christianity. Science is dangerous.
Steve in the ATL
@boatboy_srq: holy fucking shit. That is terrifying.
And, according to the Velvet Underground, electricity comes from other planets.
burnspbesq
@lgerard:
Moral superiority, my ass. He probably couldn’t have gotten a mortgage without agreeing to get it and keep it in force.
boatboy_srq
@Steve in the ATL: Welcome to the educational world of the Anti-Science League. Source of Intelligent Design, Bartonian history, and other flat-earthly studies. The one bright spot is that these people’s kids will never beat out any young Juicers for any job besides Reichwingnut preacher/grifter.
VU rock BTW.
Steve in the ATL
@boatboy_srq: I hate that my daughter has wasted so many years on a BS in biology and a masters in advanced biomedical sciences when all she needs to know is “because Jesus”
JGabriel
WaPo via Anne Laurie @ Top:
I think he’s golfing.
Duane
@boatboy_srq: Please, someone tell me that science text is a joke.” Never felt electricity? Here , hold this wire.”
Steve in the ATL
@JGabriel: I think he’s trying…my patience
genghisjon
I’m waiting for Trumpco to start buying up Puerto Rico property at bargin basement prices.