The population of the US Territory of Puerto Rico is 3.195 million US citizens. In 2017 the island was struck by two major hurricanes that inflicted horrible and long-lasting damage. Congress authorized $20 billion in relief aid but so far only $1.5 billion has been released; the balance being held back by Trump’s Department of Housing and Urban Development headed up by the always insensitive and incompetent, Ben Carson.

Even before the first palm frond flew, Trump seemed to have a log in his rectum about Puerto Rico. When the island was damned near wiped out his response was to fly in and enjoy himself tossing rolls of paper towels to those assembled in a small room. That was followed by a war of words with the mayor of San Juan, issuing verbal shit-hole tweets about the island and its way of life, and stonewalling federal attempts to provide rapid and lasting aid to an island that has been a part of America since the Spanish-American War of the late 1800s.

Then, as if Puerto Rico hadn’t been beaten up badly enough, along comes a 6.4 earthquake, the largest in a hundred years, that reeked even more mayhem on our island and our people.

What prompted this rant was reading this morning that just today Donald Trump has finally permitted the release of another $8.2 billion of the original $20 billion. This means that two years after the storms Puerto Rico will just now able to draw on half of the money allocated for relief.

Now, what about the earthquake. Well, so far neither the Congress nor Trump has taken any significant steps to address this newly arrived pile of shit.

You know, I really don’t like engaging in conspiracy theories but I just have to ask myself. Does this ignoring of the needs of US citizens in our Caribbean territories (most of this, by the way, applies to the US Virgin Islands) have anything to do with these people not having the right to vote? Would Bone Spur give them their due if they were white, spoke English, and could vote?