Puerto Rico Crisis, Healthcare Dies Again

The 51st State of Emergency: While President Trump tweets on about protesting players in the National Football League, Puerto Rico is without food, water, and electricity while slipping into a humanitarian crisis. Medicine is running low and patients with chronic conditions can’t get treatment. Hospitals are without power and large areas of the island are cut off by landslides and broken bridges.

San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz told CBS News, that the Federal Emergency Management Agency told her to write a memo asking what she needs. “Help needs to get into people’s hands, now, not tomorrow, not later, now,” she said.

FEMA claims to have shipped in massive amounts of food and water, but reporters are having trouble finding where it’s being distributed. The Navy is sending a hospital ship, but it may not arrive until next week.

Up north, President Trump is patting himself on the back. “Everybody has said it’s amazing the job that we have done in Puerto Rico, we’re very proud of it.”

New York Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer, whose state has the largest population of Puerto Ricans off the island, said, “He insists that relief and recovery efforts are doing well or doing great. Sometimes it has no relationship to the facts on the ground as if this is a public relations campaign.”

The Gang that Couldn’t Legislate: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell gave up on the latest effort to repeal and replace Obamacare, declining to even call a vote. The indication is that he was short not just one or two votes, but embarrassingly short of support within his own party.

“We haven’t given up on changing the American health care system,” McConnell said. “We are not going to be able to do that this week, but it still lies ahead of us, and we haven’t given up on that.”

Having failed at the comparatively easy math of health care, the Republicans are turning next to the calculus of tax reform, which hasn’t been done since 1986.

11th Commandment: Evangelical Christian and former Alabama chief justice Roy Moore won the Republican nomination for senate in a race against the temporary incumbent, Luther Strange. He said it was God’s will. It’s a defeat for Trump and the establishment Republicans who supported Strange. Moore was thrown off the state supreme court — twice.

8th Wonder: Saudi Arabia announced yesterday that it will allow women to drive cars beginning next June. It’s the last country in the world to do so.

The country’s prohibition on women driving had become an international human rights issue, while also being a burden on working Saudi women who had to pay a driver.

Saudi Arabia is ruled by Muslim Shariah law, but there’s nothing in it that says women shouldn’t drive. It was the rule of a male-dominated culture in which some said it would lead to sexual promiscuity. One cleric even said driving would injure a woman’s ovaries.

Death be not Proud: The family of the late college student Otto Warmbier, who died as a result of his treatment in custody of the North Koreans, told Fox News about the shock of first seeing their son as he was being taken off an airplane.

Fred Warmbier said, “When we got halfway up the steps we heard this howling, involuntary, inhuman sound. We weren’t really certain what it was.”

Cindy Warmbier said it was so terrible she ran off the plane.

The younger Warmbier had been sentenced to 15 years in a North Korean prison for stealing a propaganda poster out of his hotel.

“Otto had a shaved head, he had a feeding tube coming out of his nose, he was staring blankly into space, jerking violently,” Mr. Warmbier said. He went on, “He was blind. He was deaf. As we looked at him and tried to comfort him it looked like someone had taken a pair of pliers and rearranged his bottom teeth.”

Otto Warmbier, 22, was taken to the hospital, and died six days later.

Lost in Translation: Representatives of the North Korean government have been trying to get Republican analysts in Washington to help them make sense of what President Trump says and threatens, The Washington Post reports. If they find such people, everyone in the world will want to talk to them.

Nation: Richard F. Smith has stepped down as CEO of Equifax after the computer hack that breached the financial information of 143 million people. — Four assistant college basketball coaches, an executive of the sports company Adidas, and four other people have been indicted on federal charges of bribery, fraud and other corruption. Investigators say bribes were paid to get college stars to work with certain agents and companies after they turned pro, or to steer high school stars to attend specific universities. — Tennessee Republican Bob Corker says he won’t seek re-election and will retire from the Senate next year.

Keeping Up: Khloé Kardashian is pregnant too.

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It's Been Said

"Christians, get out and vote, just this time. You won't have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what, it will be fixed, it will be fine, you won't have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians. I love you Christians. I'm a Christian. I love you, get out, you gotta get out and vote. In four years, you don't have to vote again, we'll have it fixed so good you're not going to have to vote."

  • Donald Trump courting the vote of the Christian right

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