In case you’re wondering, the apostrophe in the title is not a contraction for “is”. It marks the possessive and refers to the large amount of garbage in Puerto Rico. Apparently Puerto Rico’s landfill sites are overflowing, and this has been recognised as an environmental problem for years.
It would be amusing to do a whole post about the deficiencies of waste disposal in an unincorporated territory of the United States without ever mentioning what brought the subject to the forefront of my mind. I seek to amuse, so that is what I am going to do, although readers from the future who seek context might like to click on one or two of the names to which I link below.
I did a quick internet search for articles containing reference to “Puerto Rico” and “trash” or “garbage”, but containing no reference to “Hinchcliffe” or “Trump” or “Biden”. Here are some news reports from the last few years that demonstrate that Puerto Rico’s garbage problem is not new:
Trash Crisis Leaves Puerto Rico Near ‘the Brink’ – Global Press Journal, February 16th 2021.
Puerto Rico Landfills: Is the Problem Around Capacity or Noncompliance? – Waste360, August 7th 2019.
An island littered with trash: How Maria highlighted Puerto Rico’s poor waste management. Accuweather, 29th March, 2018 (“Maria” is a reference to Hurricane Maria.)
The following quite lengthy report was apparently published just today. I admire them for resisting the temptation to bring politics into it:
Puerto Rico Trash Problem: Understanding the Crisis and Working Toward Solutions – The Environmental Blog, October 30th 2024.
Re that comedy bit, I’m not Latina, but I turned it off immediately, gross and not funny. But if Latinos don’t vote for Trump based on that, I can explain why they should vote for him anyway. First, Trump didn’t do that, it was just a bad hire by staff. Now all political campaigns know entertainers have to be briefed on the mission, and use the expression “big tent.”
Also, the Trump campaign insulted me even worse than having some bad entertainment at a rally. JD Vance referred to childless cat ladies. IMO, that was a mistake. There are many childless cat ladies, myself included, who are Trump voters. Some day I’ll vote for JD Vance. If Latinos would sell out their country because of a bad joke, maybe this isn’t their country. The USA is my country, even if some politicians think everyone should have babies whether they want to or not. They’re wrong, but the other guys are so wrong on everything else, it’s not even close.
Why can’t they do what the Dutch did to expand the island?
In the modern “Critical Theory” world telling-the-truth is a serious crime..
For example, people in Britain are in prison for two or three years for saying that the murderer of some little girls was an Islamic terrorist – this is a vicious LIE he establishment said, the murderer is a “Welsh Christian”, well now it turns out that…. which the establishment knew from the start (it was the establishment who were lying). But the people in prison will not be released and the man who killed himself (after being sent to prison, for years, for calling police “scum” something the left do every day and are NOT sent to prison for) will not be returned to life.
As for Puerto Rico – yes it has a terrible garbage problem, indeed its government is horribly disfunctional and aid money sent there from the American taxpayers (people in In Puerto Rico do not pay taxes to Washington) seems to vanish.
But, precisely because it is true, people, including comedians, are NOT allowed to say it.
Meanwhile, senility having loosened the tongue of “President” Biden (a person who could get hardly anyone to turn up to his events in 2020 – yet, supposedly, got “81 million votes” for his policies of sexually mutilating, “Trans rights”, eight year old children) gave his opinion of the American people.
According to Mr Biden – the American people (or at least the ones that vote for President Trump) are “garbage”.
Yesterday, in my home town, I took down quite a few posters (full sized posters) and stickers – pushing Communism, a doctrine responsible for the murder of over 100 million people, and whose supporters want to murder endless more millions of people. Whenever I go into town these totalitarian posters (pushing mass murder) are everywhere – which is one of the reasons I do not like going into town.
If the police found the Communists putting up those posters would they be arrested and sent to prison for two years – as happens to people the courts consider “right wing”?
Somehow I doubt the Communists would be sent to prison for two years for putting up little stickers – or even for the full size posters they put up.
You couldn’t make this up. Scandal about Puerto Rico apparently being called garbage at a Trump event.
Biden follows this up by calling half the American population garbage. LOL LOL. If he wasn’t so senile I’d think he may be actually trying to actively help Trump win!
But he did not know that he was going to be a VP candidate when he said it, if i am not mistaken.
We all say things that we do not wish to be remembered at job interviews.
That might have been part of Biden’s mischievous plan to take the Democratic Party down with him.
It wasn’t, seemed pretty based to me.
I should have added above that while they won’t, Republicans would be best to just impose some kind of independence on Puerto Rico to permanently prevent the democrats adding what would be a permanent blue state. I mean they could sweeten the deal by letting Puerto Rico have a free trade agreement, a defence treaty, even foreign aid. But make the place independent, at least formally.
Snorri Godhi, fair enough, but Vance has a history of similar remarks. My main point is that we all have our identities, but if this or that comic or politician insults my identity, that isn’t a deal breaker if there are more important issues. I hope enough Latinos understand this. And I think many do.
I want to bring up something Vance said about Simone Biles withdrawing from the Olympics because of an injury. I don’t remember the exact quote, but I find it alarming when someone who isn’t an Olympic athlete dumps on someone who is. Was she supposed to risk a more serious injury to prove to Vance that she’s a trooper?
This sort of thing is what one has to notice about this or that politician. Vance needs to improve his boundaries in public. I never cared at all about Trump’s old cat-related comment, because it didn’t actually insult anyone. Who hasn’t said something awful about the opposite sex in private? But Vance says awful stuff about women in public. Aside from that, he’s a good candidate and I’ll definitely vote for him for president. I already voted for him for VP the other day.
Martin: Puerto Rico and other US terroritories shouldn’t be independent. No matter what they do or who they are, it could always be worse. An ethnic minority with a culture of poverty is like soil to plant communism. China and Russia go around the world looking for opportunities like this. Do we need another Cuba? Anyway, I’ve known plenty of Puerto Ricans when I used to live in New York, and they’re pretty cool, we should keep them and gradually improve the relationship.
Your call… but if the democrats become able to make Puerto Rico get statehood and they get 3-4 House seats and 2 blue senators that will be likely all democrats permanently…well don’t claim you weren’t warned.
Letting everyone become an American isn’t a virtue.
I do remember the quote (mostly), and I don’t remember it being so much a slur against Biles as it was a comment on American values.
What he said (back in 2021, I think) was that we are so far into victim culture that, when we should have been saying “too bad she had to drop out because of her internal demons”, the press pushed it mostly as her incredible act of bravery.
He was commenting on our warped outlook about strength and weakness. Weakness is now a virtue, while strength is merely something that confers responsibility.
I had no issues with what he was saying. I didn’t see it as him commenting about her so much as it was him commenting about us.
Re: Puerto Rico as garbage barge.
I have friends who are PR, all three of whom watched that comedian. They tell me they laughed.
They also tell me: PR really IS a garbage pit. It has huge waste disposal issues, plus the people really do throw stuff everywhere. It’s cultural. Sometimes a hurricane ends up doing good things, as it tends to wash a lot of garbage away.
Every PR knew he wasn’t calling the people garbage. He was joking about the problem they all already knew about.
Not a great choice to speak at a political rally, obviously. A bit too blunt. But funny. Even Jon Stewart says so.
bobby b: If Vance wants to be president someday, he should learn the third way. Recognise a minefield and don’t walk through it. Trump says cringe things, but he’s Trump. When you’re a star, they let you…it’s true! Vance isn’t Trump, he has to learn to stay out of things if he can’t say the perfect thing.
Here is a template for this situation: I appreciate what Simone has brought to our team, and I support her self care. Only she knows what’s best for her. I look forward to seeing her return when she’s ready.
See how easy that is? A public figure should never, never use any human being as a negative example for some political principle, unless that example is an enemy. Criticize Putin’s combover, but not Bibi’s.
feral lunch lady: I agree entirely. But keep in mind that we’re speaking about how he didn’t foresee how his statement could be misinterpreted, and not about any badness inherent in his actual statement.
My take was, he wasn’t being a jerk, he was just being carelessly unpolitical. I bet he’s learned a lot about that since then!
@feral lunch lady
I looked up the quote in this NYT article:
“I think it reflects pretty poorly on our sort of therapeutic society that we try to praise people, not for moments of strength, not for moments of heroism, but for their weakest moments,”
I’m not sure it was a particularly smart thing to say, but I don’t think it was meant as a criticism of her. Take it for what you will, but I think he is making a valid point if rather inarticulately phrased. And I think it is dangerous to ever be anything short of laudatory when speaking of a genuine American hero. A woman who excels at what she does, loves her parents, loves and celebrates her country, and doesn’t think her amazing ability to flip and twist somehow qualifies her to tell you or I what to think.
Any nuance is lost in the audacity.
I suppose though, when you have a corpus of ten million words recorded in the public record, some of them are surely a bit muffled because of the foot in your mouth. I’ve written many words on this blog and I can assure you there are lots I’d like to take back.
Personally I tend to be suspicious of people who always say the right thing – especially politicians.
Alisa – yes, it means that such people are scripted. That they are not speaking from the heart – not saying what they truly believe.
Such people are not to be trusted.