The only thing that can help this region now is to end coverage for pre-existing conditions and slash entitlement, social services, and government assistance programs. Just like they voted for.
Man. When it’s not you, it’s easy to think things are patched up and OK. Gotta imagine how much worse it must be in Puerto Rico, though.
FL went for moron and rejected Clinton. Little did anyone know how much they would need the smarts she would bring to the job including finding and deploying a competent FEMA director who so far is only saying to the suffering populace “be patient.”
I’m not belittling the survivors of Michael one bit, but is it possible that we are all now collectively suffering from a different storm sans category that is devastating the entire country, one named Donald?
I know how horrible I feel with our present government and how truly depressing it is and continues to be for the foreseeable future. What I don’t know and can’t imagine is not having a home to come back to and a community in tatters. It would definitely take your attention away from the Donnie problem.
There was an interesting diary entry at Kos about the distress following events like Michael particularly given the liklihood such events will increase in frequency and ferocity this century viz
Included is an entry on an alternative to grief, a revival of community like the Jewish Bund, ...a “humane, socialist, secular and defiantly Jewish” political party that ...believed that “the diaspora was home,” and embraced a concept known as do’ikayt, or “hereness.”It is, in Albrecht’s words, “the pain experienced when…the place where one resides and that one loves is under immediate assault (physical desolation)…the erosion of the sense of belonging (identity) to a particular place and a feeling of distress (psychological desolation) about its transformation.
“In short, solastalgia is a form of homesickness one gets when one is still at ‘home’.”
Full disclosure: I am a climate change pessimist – believing that we have dawdled too long to evade 2C w/ the next leg to 3C and beyond no longer a distant possibility; e.g., Steffen et al – with the concomitant belief that dry-land and subsistence agriculture will fail or completely collapse on every continent within the lifetime of those now living. Human migrations of staggering proportions seem likely w/ sources of hope few and far between; all the more badly needed for that. JMO
Welcome to the 3rd world. This is the future. I do what I can to reduce my carbon & trash footprint, but I still live really well compared to most humans. Like all Americans, my introduction to bare existence living is coming.
And now they are the patients.
In voting for moron they voted to destroy ACA.
I’m not sure if ‘third world’ is the right term, but you’re basically on the money. The GOP-Koch agenda is about transforming this country into a socio-economic environment that resembles the Third World, in particular South American societies like Argentina and Brazil, with this notable difference: that the inequality and widespread poverty and existential precariousness will not be the result of inadequate or incomplete development of an initially impoverished or post-colonial country, but rather the result of the dismantling of a very rich country and the redistribution of its immense wealth to a small class. We need a term to describe a country that was once First World but voluntarily transformed itself into a Third World-like place.
On a different note, these coastal Florida cities are no longer viable. I do not want my tax dollars to go to insuring cities against inevitable massive flooding, nor do I want them to go bailing out banks that issue mortgage loans on properties that are liable to destruction and will not secure the loan. It’s insane. Florida should be gradually and systematically evacuated and our resources should be allocated to fortifying more defendable coastlines and boosting the most effective measures against climate change.
True in a way, yet the Donnie problem is also intertwined with their Michael problem, because Donnie and his confederacy of dunces generally have no idea what they’re doing, and when they do it’s even worse.
Back in the late 60’s we used to refer to the mechanism as neo-colonialism: exploiting the mother country for the benefit of the few rather than exploiting colonies.
There certainly need to be some hard discussions about that as well as allocating resources to areas that are no longer defensible, both in terms of too much water and too little; e.g., desert metro areas.
In related news, the Trump Badministration has just declared Michael to be a pre-existing condition, not eligible for any coverage.
Control yourself, man!!!
The sarcasm detector in my house just went off and I had to open the doors and windows.
It will take an hour to get back to normal.
And that’s when Republican government cuts and runs.
I’d guess PR isn’t normally at the level of mainland US, but imagine how many people there have been mentally altered for life after hurricane Maria!
Republicania
Trumpistan.