Monday Reading

As always, please go to the links for the complete articles/ op eds.

Anxious human windsock Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins' home state newspaper has seen the real Brett "KavaNut" Kavanaugh, and therefore has seen enough:

...Based on what he demonstrated in his own testimony, Kavanaugh lacks the character and judgment to serve on the Supreme Court. 

In his widely watched appearance, Kavanaugh revealed that he has an explosive temper and resorts to bullying when he feels threatened. He was understandably under stress and fighting a high-stakes battle for his reputation, but his temperament was tested during the hearing, and he failed the test. 

Kavanaugh also showed himself to be impermissibly political for a job that is supposed to be above politics. We’re not naive. We understand that federal judges are nominated by presidents and confirmed by senators, and that electoral politics influences their decisions about who gets to serve. 

RIPPING OFF THE MASK 

But we have never had a Supreme Court nominee who ripped off the nonpartisan mask the way Kavanaugh did Thursday and identified himself as an enemy of a political party that represents the policy preferences of millions of Americans. He blamed his predicament on bizarre conspiracy theories, claiming that his troubles stemmed from “pent-up anger about President Trump” and opponents seeking “revenge on behalf of the Clintons” and were not the result of allegations that emerged while he was being evaluated for an important job. After his partisan rant, Kavanaugh will never be able to judge a case without the animus he expressed being considered a factor in his decision. This is not the road we want to take.  (our emphasis)

Are you paying attention, Sen. Collins?

Meanwhile, the FBI background investigation initiated by fellow anxious human windsock and retiring Arizona Republican Sen. Jeff Flake has been (contain your shock) sharply constrained by the White House, despite pathological liar Donald "Rump" Trump's claims to the contrary:

Officials said the F.B.I.’s “limited” supplemental background check of Judge Kavanaugh could be finished by Monday morning. Set in motion late last week by three Senate Republicans, the inquiry was supposed to shed further light on accusations that Judge Kavanaugh engaged in sexual misconduct during his high school and college years and help resolve the fierce national debate over whether he should win confirmation to the Supreme Court. 

But the investigation’s apparent narrow reach has infuriated the judge’s critics, who said he should be subjected to a wide-ranging examination of his drinking and possible sexual misconduct. 

Instead, the F.B.I. was directed by the White House and Senate Republicans to interview just four people: Mark Judge and P.J. Smyth, high school friends of Judge Kavanaugh’s; Leland Keyser, a high school friend of one of Judge Kavanaugh’s accusers, Christine Blasey Ford; and Deborah Ramirez, another of the judge’s accusers.

Marcy Wheeler has an unvarnished take on the "fig leaf" investigation (and faults Dems and the media for their early buy-in):

This was about the easiest thing in the world to predict. Jeff Flake issues some hollow self indulgent bullshit to make himself look like the last great reasonable man, and it is all garbage being run as cover for a complicit Trump White House and weak Senate Republicans (and at least one faux Democrat) desperately and cowardly seeking any fig leaf possible to allow them to put a craven, partisan, angry and drunkard historical sex offender on the United States Supreme Court for the next three to four decades.

They're steering the FBI away from corroborating evidence that could be provided by both Dr. Ford's and Ms. Ramirez's contemporaneous friends and acquaintances.  Also, no checking into the lies KavaNut told during multiple confirmation hearings.  We'll have to leave that up to investigations by the new Democratic House.

The Miami Herald has a heart- wrenching article about the continuing suffering of our fellow Americans in Puerto Rico, over a year after Hurricane Maria:

The face of forgotten Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria could well be that of José Luis “Chegüi” Aponte Cruz, who lost his livelihood and everything in his home when the ferocious storm pushed the roiling sea a mile into this poor beachfront community, sweeping away much of what lay in its path. 

Maria smashed apart the bright yellow concrete beach kiosk where people once came for Chegüi’s famed bacalaítos, or codfish fritters. The storm took his freezer, his fridge and his stove, his tables and chairs, all uninsured. A year later, denied loans or government aid to reopen in a food truck, he has — like much of Puerto Rico — barely begun to recover. [snip]

An analysis by Miami Herald parent McClatchy of public data for FEMA’s housing assistance program found that, as of June 1, Maria survivors in Puerto Rico received an average of $1,800 for repair assistance. In contrast, survivors of Hurricane Harvey in Texas last year got $9,127. 

In many if not most cases, advocates and homeowners say, FEMA grants were hardly enough to replace lost appliances, furnishings and clothing, much less to make repairs sufficient to allow people to remain living safely at home, the purpose of the emergency aid.  (our emphasis)

As the article points out, Puerto Rico has been left to fend for itself by the incompetent, racist Trump regime and a Republican House and Senate only interested in enabling that rotted out regime.

We conclude, as always, with a strong recommendation to check out Infidel 753's excellent round- up of links to interesting blog posts from the last week (the post we did yesterday on 1914 Paris in color was via him).

Puerto Ricans Won't Be The Last Americans To Suffer Because Of Trump's Incompetence

Michelle Goldberg writes on how malignant narcissist Donald "Rump" Trump's incompetence, as tragically displayed in his bumbling of Hurricane Maria relief for Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, will some day have an inescapable impact on millions more Americans:

Many Americans — maybe most Americans — have yet to experience the material consequences of having an unfit president. Trump inherited a growing economy, and it got a short-term boost thanks to tax cuts whose ultimate cost won’t be felt for some time. The majority of the crises Trump has faced have been self-inflicted. America’s reputation is collapsing abroad, but that doesn’t yet affect most Americans directly. The country is just starting to feel the effects of Trump’s trade skirmishes. The consequences of his assault on environmental protections have been serious but diffuse. The people whose families are being ripped apart by his immigration policies are largely noncitizens who cannot vote. 

We’ve been at once lucky and unlucky. It’s a blessing that much of the country has escaped physical disaster, but eventually the bill for having a cruel, scatterbrained demagogue in the White House will come due. The longer it takes, the more he’ll be able to consolidate power and exploit his position for private gain. America has become like one of Trump’s casinos, surface glitz hiding corruption and rot that Trump will ultimately make others pay for. (our emphasis)

Goldberg kicks off her article by noting that Rump attended a meeting on hurricane preparedness this past Wednesday at the headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Administration. The topics Rump covered?

According to The Post, Trump spoke about the coming North Korea summit meeting, polling on the midterms, the Taiwanese company Foxconn, his love of coal and his administration’s “great” popularity. He claimed that the government saved $1.6 billion on Air Force One after he got involved in negotiations. The Post reported, “Military officials have not been able to explain where Trump got such a figure.”

But the victims, living and dead, of Hurricane Maria?  Nada. 

What Matters

In the short attention span of our celebrity- fixated culture, it was not at all surprising what dominated the news in the past 72 hours (spoiler alert:  it was not the New England Journal of Medicine's report on the actual likely Hurricane Maria death toll in Puerto Rico):

To the extent that a death toll serves as a rough measure of the severity of a natural disaster, we learned on Tuesday that a part of the United States experienced a disaster that was as much as 70 times more severe than had been reported—or understood by most Americans. San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz made a vital point when she said Tuesday, “These deaths and the negligence that contributed to them cannot be forgotten. This was, and continues to be, a violation of our human rights.” 

Yet, according to Media Matters, the nation’s cable networks had trouble focusing on the staggering news about Puerto Rico because they were all wrapped up with Roseanne. “Cable news covered Roseanne for over 10 hours. They covered Hurricane Maria’s death toll in Puerto Rico for just over 30 minutes,” explained a review by the group, which noted that Fox News devoted a mere 48 seconds to the news from Puerto Rico. (our emphasis)

Four thousand six hundred and forty-five fellow Americans perished from September 20 through December 31, 2017, as a result of Hurricane Maria (a "conservative" number according to the report's authors).  That compares with 1,833 who perished in Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

It's not just Puerto Rico that's suffered terribly and has been largely ignored. Never forget your fellow Americans of the Virgin Islands, who absorbed Hurricane Irma just before Hurricane Maria hit:

With its health care system crippled, the Virgin Islands government and federal relief agencies decided to move patients, and Correa was flown to nearby Puerto Rico. Less than two weeks later, with Hurricane Maria approaching, some of the medical evacuees were moved again, this time to the mainland.  

In total, more than 1,000 medical evacuees have been sent off the Virgin Islands, including critically ill patients, dialysis patients, people in nursing homes, and their caregivers, Davis says. The National Disaster Medical System, a federally coordinated partnership between the Departments of Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Defense, and Veterans Affairs, helped cover the cost of care and housing for 803 of the evacuees. The costs for the other 200 individuals has been picked up by the government, private insurance, or other sources, Davis says, and medical evacuations are still ongoing. 

The majority of medical evacuees were sent to Atlanta, with some elsewhere on the mainland or in Puerto Rico. Nine months after Hurricane Irma, the whereabouts of many medical evacuees are unknown. And the Virgin Islands, still struggling to rebuild in the aftermath of the hurricanes, can’t accommodate all of those who want to come back home. (our emphasis)

If we had a competent administration, and if we had a media that could compartmentalize the celebrity outrage- of- the- day as well as the shiny objects the Very Stable Genius and his co- conspirators strew around them every day, perhaps more attention could be brought to bear on the human disaster that's still afflicting our fellow Americans, and with that attention, focused action. It's too late for many of our fellow citizens, but the desperation of many thousands of others remains.

That's what matters.

BONUS:  More here and here.

Puerto Rico's Existential Crisis: The Darkness

This photo comparison from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of lights in Puerto Rico before Maria (left side) and last Friday (right side) is stunning and disgraceful. And the sociopath in the White (Supremacist) House is still patting himself on the back and blaming citizens in Puerto Rico for their desperate situation. Bigoted moron.

UPDATE: Suomi NPP satellite shows the latest "before/after" perspective of visible lights in #PuertoRico and #USVI (9/25/17) vs. (10/13/17) pic.twitter.com/YkGsq0iRFS

— NOAA Satellites (@NOAASatellites) October 13, 2017

Don't Forget Puerto Rico

The dystopian chaos generated by neo- fascist moron Donald "Rump" Trump is enough to give us all nervous breakdowns on any given day. As his failures mount and his dangerous unfitness for office is demonstrated in ever- sharper focus, we're facing the existential crisis we all knew would follow with his election (see post below).

But, in the midst of all the chaos, we can't neglect the human tragedy for our fellow Americans unfolding in Puerto Rico.

While Rump and his regime put most of their efforts into putting a happy public face on recovery efforts, reports from the ground tell us that, like everything coming out of this sociopathic cluster of pig people, it's a lie:

Federal officials privately admit there is a massive shortage of meals in Puerto Rico three weeks after Hurricane Maria devastated the island. 

Officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) say that the government and its partners are only providing 200,000 meals a day to meet the needs of more than 2 million people. That is a daily shortfall of between 1.8m and 5.8m meals. 

The scale of the food crisis dwarfs the more widely publicized challenges of restoring power and communications. More than a third of Puerto Ricans are still struggling to live without drinking water. 

However, Fema provides no details on food deliveries, keeping its public statements to the most general terms. On its website, Fema says it has provided “millions of meals and millions of liters of water”. 

In fact many of those meals are military ready-to-eat meals that civilians find hard to digest if consumed for more than a few days.  (our emphasis)

A burgeoning health care crisis is also unfolding:

Nearly three weeks after Hurricane Maria tore through Puerto Rico, many sick people across the island remain in mortal peril. The government’s announcements each morning about the recovery effort are often upbeat, but beyond them are hidden emergencies. Seriously ill dialysis patients across Puerto Rico have seen their treatment hours reduced by 25 percent because the centers still lack a steady supply of diesel to run their generators. Less than half of Puerto Rico’s medical employees have reported to work in the weeks since the storm, federal health officials said. 

Hospitals are running low on medicine and high on patients, as they take in the infirm from medical centers where generators failed. A hospital in Humacao had to evacuate 29 patients last Wednesday — including seven in the intensive care unit and a few on the operating table — to an American military medical ship off the coast of Puerto Rico when a generator broke down.  (our emphasis)

With reports of people in some areas getting infections from bacteria- laden floodwaters, and who are forced to drink from contaminated streams, the danger of a public health disaster is already upon our fellow 3.5 million Americans of Puerto Rico.  Meanwhile, what's the moron up to? Distracting his drooling base by attacking the media and threatening media licenses, of course.

Here's a link to resources for helping our fellow Americans of Puerto Rico. By doing anything, you'll be doing more than Rump ever dreamed of doing himself.