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[Starver]

(Heh, I'm almost tempted now to see if I can get a city-wide local event funded. "Internet-free sunday" once a year. We have "automobile-free sunday" once a year already, with lots of outdoor events and fun things to do for the kids.)

"Visit www.internetfreesunday.org for details! Follow us at @internetfreesunday, subscribe to us on Flickr, download our App, to keep track of activities on the day!"

[sluissa]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[bloop_bleep]

^ Pretty much sums up our current condition.

[MrRoboto75]

Meanwhile, Rex Tillerson may have signed his own political death warrant by admitting that he called Trump a moron once.

A lot of people have called Trump a moron.  Honestly, its rather tame.

[martinuzz]

I thought the problem was that he only called him that once?

[EnigmaticHat]

Like... the usual. Money and more direct resources, send in military aid (engineering corps, etc.), ease up on some of the shipping bullshit at least for recovery related matters, not minimizing the import of the disaster (e.g. don't fucking say it's not one relative to katrina), etc., etc., etc.

It being an island and off the coast causes problems but it's not like our disaster relief folks and military engineers don't friggin' know how to handle disaster relief and rapid infrastructure setup, island or not. Just needed to be rounded up, loaded up, and set loose. Some ways some of the folks involved are frankly going above and beyond even for disaster relief, but, y'know, more help always helps.

Oh no I meant for me personally is there a charity that won't waste half the money?

[Lord Shonus]

Despite common belief, most charities do not "waste" much money. The Red Cross, for example, passes on nearly 90% of donated money (in the form of aid supplies, personnel, etc) and uses only a small portion for administrative expenses.

Even those that have higher expenses, however, generally do so because the administrative and similar expenses are actually needed to run an organization of that size and comply with the necessary regulatory environment.

[sluissa]

"passing on" that money doesn't necessarily mean it's done in a useful manner though. A few well known charities (I can't remember exactly, so I'll refrain from naming names) have been caught "passing on" money in really really dumb and questionably corrupt ways.

[Lord Shonus]

You might want to relook into that. Most of those stories (despite being extremely widely reported) turned out to be hoaxes.

[Frumple]

Despite common belief, most charities do not "waste" much money. The Red Cross, for example, passes on nearly 90% of donated money (in the form of aid supplies, personnel, etc) and uses only a small portion for administrative expenses.

Even those that have higher expenses, however, generally do so because the administrative and similar expenses are actually needed to run an organization of that size and comply with the necessary regulatory environment.

That, yes. If you're stateside, you might consider checking the EPA's website to see if they note any particular non-profits that are throwing down as major effort leaders. Can also poke around local non-profits, check with nearby first responder organizations to see if they or someone they're in contact with has been funneling personnel and are accepting donations to help defray costs, and so on.

Not as sure for PR, but I know for a fact that latter's happening to various degrees with the continental cleanup efforts (cousin's in the business/field, has mentioned official-ish efforts in passing), and to an extent even helping with that helps out PR -- more and sooner resources get freed up elsewhere is more and sooner resources available that can potentially be diverted towards the island.

If you don't want to or can't send money, even just raising awareness online or in person pretty much never fails to help to some degree. Take some time and suss out which orgs are doing the most/more vital stuff and spread the name around a bit, whatever.

[misko27]

Alternatively, if you are sufficiently wealthy you could just airdrop cash directly onto San Juan. It's unconventional, sure, but no one (at least, no one living there) is going to argue with the results.

Related: Trump said that Puerto Rico's debt as going to have to be 'wiped out', which was interpreted by Wall Street as meaning the debt would be, you know, wiped out. Unsuprisingly, this sent Puerto Rico's debtors into a panic attack, forcing the white house to play down the remarks.

Unrelated: The GOP pro-life congressman caught suggesting to his mistress that she get an abortion is going to retire.

[Rolan7]

1) It is NEVER ok to "Silence" anyone, no matter how completely and thoroughly one dissects and disproves what they have to say. The proper thing is to dissect and disprove what they have to say, then allow them another chance to speak. (Failure to do so results in dogmatism, despotic censorship, and worse.)

Never silence anyone.  Let them chant while you spend time and money researching their beliefs and finding effective, if complicated, counter-arguments.  They wouldn't see that as "the weakness" core to their beliefs.

And once you do respond, surely that amount of attention won't legitimize their cause.  In-depth arguments, especially from the government, will definitely convince these mobs to stop and think.

There's a reason that markets are paused when crises happen, and there's some discourse that is literally poisonous and viral.  Because humans brains do not act rationally when we're stressed...  And there are a lot of very stressed people right now.  It is summer in Paris.  It is the best of times, it is the worst of times.

This isn't about liberals vs conservatives, it's about vicious hate groups infesting a respectably incorrect political party.  Have we forgotten how hard the Republicans fought against Trump, up to the very end?

[Frumple]

Heh. No, I'm pretty sure folks remember exactly how hard the GOP fought against trump, till that "end", and since. Also how hard they've been fighting against other things over the years.

Been doing a bang up job on voting rights and suffrage, ferex. Lots of enthusiasm, plenty of prolonged and persistent effort from many portions of the party.

Unrelated: The GOP pro-life congressman caught suggesting to his mistress that she get an abortion is going to retire.

Huh. So Price has been doing work as a GOP role model, I see. Normally they tend to keep that thing under tighter wraps.

[Max™]

I must say it is nice knowing that the healthcare thing is finally out of the way for now, and that the SC is looking at the gerrymandering case again.

This is humorous but also fairly justified since some random comment that was merely construed (wrongly) as being "on the other side of the debate" (with the sides of the debate largely existing within Max's head) was instantly and unqequivocally associated with hardline nazi apologism.

I never said they were a sympathizer, did not intend to imply that I thought they were one, and merely noted the moral high ground line like "oh but wait, there's an exception to that statement!" If anybody thought I was implying that: my bad, I do not think any of you are nazis, sympathizers, or anything of the sort. Yes it seems like a dead horse, but the past times I've seen neonazi shit in the news it wasn't a bunch of fuckers in matching outfits marching with torches to rally around a confederate statue, and it seems important to keep reminding people that this is a thing happening which none of us want to see progress down the pre-existing roadmap which these fuckboys seem to have in mind.

The meta is simply: fuck nazis.

There are lots of ways someone can clearly express to the rest of the world that they're a hateful douchebitchboy, they could join the KKK, they could become a hardcore Tea Partier and go for a seat in the House, get a spot as a talking head on Fox News, get elected president, become a diehard Confederate Re-enactor with a healthy dose of drunken redneck, and everybody will recognize that you're a shitty person with a healthy dislike of anybody darker than you.

None of those involve taking up the cause of a group that actually started a program to exterminate a particular group of people for not being their sooper speshul brand of white. Becoming a former Representative KKK member who reports for Fox News doesn't require one ever actually stating "that Hitler guy was great, he's my hero" but calling yourself a nazi and wearing swastikas and throwing salutes kinda does, doesn't it?

I mean, there's no chance that the neonazi movement is a secret plan to rehabilitate the nazi image by doing charity work and community outreach, so it's ok as a society to say certain things disqualify you from participating in society.

Like, you go up to someone and tell them you wanna screw their little kids, or brutally murder and eat their mother, you're clearly not interested in being a member of society anymore, right? Telling you to get the fuck out of here is appropriate in this situation, and similarly I am comfortable saying advocating genocide and supporting it as a cause would be a "get out of society free" card.

Earlier someone said "so where does it stop, Max™?" and then listed off stuff like skin color and religious affiliations and whatnot, but only Martinuzz really seemed interested in the detail that nazis can just stop fucking being nazis, while the other hypothetical groups can't just decide to stop being whatever they are.

[Reelya]

Discounting all the times when it's failed to happen, which could quite likely outweigh the times it's succeeded.

And I'm not sure how this is supposed to change my view on your wholly misinterpreting the historic left.

It's an entirely false statement to equate enlightenment liberalism with things like the USSR. While both could be called "left", they are in fact derived from completely different traditions. Equating two completely unrelated things because both are on "the left" is the same as for example equating Evangelical Christianity and Neo-Nazis because both are on "the right". We don't say "beware of Christians because Nazis".

Marxism rose because 19th century Europe was ruled by right-wing dictator-kings who colluded with exploitative capitalists, and they didn't have elections (or only the wealthy could vote). With no elections, mass revolution becomes the most plausible solution to the oppression issue. Communism was therefore a response to traditional conservative rule, and economics. It's only the places that had liberalism e.g. free elections and fair property / labour rights that avoided rebellion or near-rebellion of the working class.

"traditional conservatives" in fact lost the battle of ideas in the 20th century, even more so than the communists. Conservatives fought tooth and nail against every pro-rights constitutional reform, freedom of religion, and voting rights for citizens. At every point they were the ones saying "no". However ... every "conservative" movement now parrots ideas from traditional liberalism as their bedrock - e.g. they appeal to liberal democratic values, liberal economic policies. These are prefaced with "liberal" because it's liberals who came up with the ideas, and conservatives who rejected the ideas. But the conservatives lost the argument so badly that they then embraced liberal ideas and now relabeled half of them as "conservative values". Anywhere that held onto "traditional conservative" policies either collapsed, was destoyed by rebellions, or is a dirt poor hellhole. They are basically non-existent entities in the modern world.