The waiver is only for ten days, and that time starts immediately.
How long do you think it will take foreign ships to get loaded and travel to Puerto Rico from their point of origination? It will be days, if not weeks.
As a comparison, the US Navy ship USNS Comfort, leaving from Norfolk Virginia will take at least five, if not more, days to reach Puerto Rico. At a speed of 17 knots, the Comfort travels at about the speed of an average container or fuel ship.
Even if a foreign fuel or container ship was already loaded and ready to go this morning, it is clear that very few, if any, could arrive and unload in less that 5-7 days.
This means, at the very best, Trump’s “waiver” has maybe five days of use to Puerto Rico, an island of devastated American citizens that will be rebuilding and recovering for years.
Trump’s “waiver” is a public relations fueled sham.
Enrollment for 2018 Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) starts on November 1 and ends on December 15. The current administration has cut the funds to announce when people can enroll. Please reblog and #Resist
they have also scheduled some 12-hour “maintenance sessions” to occur on sundays during the enrollment period so be aware of those as well.
Also there’s one scheduled for the first night so be aware of that.
They’re basically doing everything in their power to make it as difficult as possible so young and healthy people don’t bother signing up in an effort to kill the program that way. Please don’t let that happen spread this around and sign up.
There’s a special place in my heart for creators who aren’t very good at being progressive but keep trying anyway until they start to get the hang of it. I’m talking the Wachowski Sisters, who made the mess that was Cloud Atlas but then came back and did Sense8 (which has its own issues but is so much better). I’m taking about Moffat, who cannot stop saying the wrong things and needed multiple years and a lot of reminders before he realized that he could make a working class black lesbian the companion but then he did it and it’s so good. I’m talking about Terry Pratchett who was constantly improving and trying to be more aware and more cognizant of diversity in his works, until he finally started putting in one or two explicitly LGBT characters. It might take them a while to get the memo, but they’re willing to listen and they’re willing to change. That’s important.
I don’t know, it kind of reminds me of a lot of older people I’ve known who were really passionate about progressive causes but hadn’t been “in touch” since they protested on their college campus. (Aunt Kathleen, I appreciate your support but there have been so many studies on gender since the seventies and we’re pretty sure it doesn’t work like that any more.) It’s not always easy to stay up to date on developments in philosophy and science and politics, much less articulate that coherently and sensibly. Sometimes people are going to be a little slow on the uptake. What’s important is that they keep trying. Especially when we’re talking about already established popular creators, who can help normalize new paradigms and make diversity more generally accepted, who already have a platform and can share it. It’s all too easy for celebrities to get criticized once and retreat into a shell of denial and never try to address the issues. Being able to improve and move forward is a superpower as far as popular media is concerned.
I know that it’s a luxury afforded mostly to already established media darlings, white people are allowed to slip up and take their time in a way lots of other people aren’t, but I still feel like it’s important to see creators actively evolving and becoming more fair-minded in a very human way. Your average middle-aged individual is going to need a few running starts before they figure things out, and they are going to say terrible things on accident (Yes, Aunt Kathleen I know what you meant but it’s still not a great thing to say. The words that came out of your mouth were bad). Holding them accountable until they slowly but surely improve and then watching their work improve too is very enjoyable.
Lots of people tend to dismiss those in that category of “problematic creators” entirely, but I view it as an exciting adventure. There are too few people in this world willing to change. Look, this month it seems like Uncle Steven is finally starting to go to bat for his suspicion that gender doesn’t determine personality. And Aunt Kathleen discovered singular “they” pronouns!
Coming quick at you, all the help that had been sent to my Island, is apparently on hold. Also the U.S. won’t open the borders so other countries can send aid and Trump is tweeting about it’s our fault. Puerto Rico has been an U.S. territory since 1898 and to this day we have no control of what comes through our borders because of The Jones Act.
You wanna help Puerto Rico? Call your Representative and your Senators and tell them to waive/repeal/ban The Jones Act.
We need to reconstruct and rise up again, not to be dragged while we’re down. We don’t need to be reminded of the country’s debt when there are towns that can’t be reached almost 7 days after Hurricane Maria, when power is still out and there’s no running water and communications are down. We don’t fucking need some inept talking about our debt, instead of opening the borders so doctors and engineers come and help, so other countries nearby can come and bring provisions too. So roads can be open and people can be helped.
Again, you wanna help? Call your Representative and your Senators and tell them to waive/ban/repeal The Jones Act.
Sometimes we feel powerless. This doesn’t have to be one of those times.
There are 3.5 million people in Puerto Rico (Americans, not that it matters) with limited or no access to potable water. And there’s a law called the Jones Act that is impeding supplies from getting through.
The law says that ships going between US ports must be built in America, sailed by Americans, and fly the American flag. Problem is, only two percent of all the world’s cargo is carried by compliant ships. And most of those are off somewhere else.
President Trump can waive the Act to allow foreign vessels to dock. He waived it after hurricanes Harvey and Irma. He needs to do it again.
Please call your representatives and have them demand a waiver for Puerto Rico. Here’s how:
1. Call the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121 and follow the prompts to reach your Senator/Congress Member.
2. Read the script below, filling in the blanks with your information.
“Hi, my name is [NAME], I am a voting constituent living in [CITY/TOWN] and my zip code is [ZIP CODE].
I’m calling to urgently request that [YOUR SENATOR / CONGRESS MEMBER’S NAME] please call DHS to demand an immediate waiver of the Jones Act so that additional rescue and relief resources can get to Puerto Rico.
The destruction caused in Puerto Rico by Hurricane Maria has been significant, comparable in scale to Katrina. The federal government’s response needs to be increased immediately. We cannot allow a Caribbean “Katrina” to unfold. The safety of 3.5 million U.S. citizens is at stake.
3.4 million people are without power in Puerto Rico after the devastation of Hurricane Maria, and it could be up to six months before power is restored. You can find several good ways to donate to relief efforts in the link above. In the link below from Vox, you can read more about how these mass power outages threaten public health: https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/9/25/16361050/puerto-rico-power-outages-deadly
I-Dressup is a social media site aimed at teen and tween girls, where users play and interact with fashion. Six days ago, Ars Technica’s Dan Goodin contacted I-Dressup to tell them that they were leaking more than 5.5 million cleartext passwords, and that a hacker had already downloaded 2.2 million of them.
The travel ban is back. It’s permanent. It hits a number of America’s counterterror partners. And its rationale is—at least partially—an official secret.
The White House announced on Sunday evening that President Donald Trump has implemented strict new limitations on which people from a few troubled countries can visit America––including countries that the president himself acknowledges are valuable partners to the U.S. in efforts to combat terrorism.
The United States now has dramatic limitations on which nationals from seven countries—Chad, Iran, Syria, Libya, North Korea, Venezuela, and Yemen—can travel here. The limits are slightly different for each of those countries, and they’re indefinite; unlike the first travel ban, which was only in place for a few months, this one has no stated end date.
The United States has a significant military presence in some of the banned countries. The U.S. is essentially waging a proxy war in Yemen, it’s at loggerheads with Iran—a tension the president eagerly highlighted in his U.N. speech last week—and it has Special Operations forces on the ground in Somalia, Syria, and Libya. During the Obama administration, the U.S. also had a small military presence in Chad and considered it a hub for military activities in Africa.
Despite the assistance these countries’ governments have provided to the U.S.—and despite the presence of American troops on their soil—they are singled out under the ban.
The proclamation specifically says the U.S. government “looks forward to expanding” its cooperation with Chad, Libya, and Yemen. It’s pretty safe to guess that the new travel ban won’t make those countries any more eager to expand their partnerships with the American government.
A Middleground 