Mosaic A

Glass shards:
---A two year old boy is shot twice and left for dead on an abandoned stretch of road.
---A three year old girl is raped and killed.
---An eighteen-month old boy is slammed to the ground, suffering severe injuries.
---An eleven year old girl gives birth to her baby in a bathtub, her family's shame not fully concealed.
---A ten year old girl is pregnant, raped by her stepfather, and the baby could kill her at birth.
---A thirteen year old awaits news of the paternity of her child. One thirteen year old of many.
---We shake Our heads, lower Our gazes to the ground and wonder...

Clipping:
Credit where credit is due... Local rag Caribbean Business also dissed the energetically inane economic book authored by The Brookings Institute and the Center for the New Economy. (They only dissed TBI: Misplaced patriotism or the sense that the parent bears the blame because the child is too soft in the head to know what's what?) I said TBi/CNe were wallowing in 1960s thinking, which Caribbean Business also said, but they went two steps further, pointing out that one of the basic tenets expressed in the book dated from the 1950s, and another from the 1930s, both from local sources. Kudos to whoever caught these two references and a collective Sicilian salute to the purveyors of Tubercular Cyanosis.

Framed needlepoint:
Calling former governor and faux senator Pedro Rosselló "guilty" means nothing to him; you have to have a conscience to be bothered by lapses affecting it. But calling him "The Stupidest Governor in Our History" is certain to rile his skanky lizard brain because he swears he's smarter than anyone. He truly believes he's smarter than God, only God isn't cross-eyed. So calling him "Stupid", as in "Stupid Governor," "Stupid Senator" and "Stupid Political Hack" will genuinely irritate him, for he can't sidestep the moniker without displacing his "defense" against charges of corruption. So not only will he have to listen to "Stupid," he'll have to accept it or pay the consequences he can't be bothered to think about. Stupid Pedro is as Stupid Pedro does.

Ripped cloth:
Puerto Rico has, for the first time in over 40 years, dropped from #1 as the Caribbean's top tourist destination. The new king is the Dominican Republic, and Cuba is expected to displace Us within the next 2-3 years. Why? Lousy service, high costs, scatter-brained tourism industry leadership and government hyenas at the State and Municipal levels who can't bear the thought of money they can't take a bite of.

Rumpled toilet paper:
Our jellyfish governor, Aníbal Acevedo, is stressing that the budget is looking tight, but he's pinning his hopes on the sales tax revenue stream. Do tell, O Spineless One. Even if the sales tax raises $800-$900 million over a seven-month period, the budget is still compromised because there are insufficient mechanisms in place to manage and distribute the money properly. So imagine if you will hundreds of millions of dollars floating through a government system that is more leech than beaver... Oh yeah, the budget is toast and We're in a jam.

Frame:
The Jenius Has Spoken.