Larval Countdown

So The Larva delivers a "State of the Statehood-Seeking Commonwealth" (I'm quoting someone) speech that had all the underlying smarminess of a wimpy brat's Christmas letter to Santa: Ignore what I did, forget what I didn't do that I should've done, but I'll be better next year! 

Uh-huh. Do tell. Pass the peanuts, willya?

The speech was part Valium (boring), part LSD (tripping), part Rohypnol (amnesia) and part moonshine. As a drug cocktail it led to the hallucination that the National Guard needs to be activated to control the rampaging criminal element of Our society and flung like camouflaged bullets at the miscreants.

Oh, wait. The Larva actually said that.

With an economy sinking for the fourth year in a row (-3.8%) and Luis "The Larva" Fortuño's cockleheaded fiscal minions pumping $12 billion and counting in COFINA bonds like a crazed crystal meth hooker yanking a donkey's...tail...for another hit, pushing Our debt level to exceed Our dwindling GNP (for you Fools out there: it means We owe more than We produce), Our crime problem is important, but the solution isn't the National Guard: it's national guarantees.

Let's start with this: We don't trust The Larva. We don't think he can do the job. (As to what that "job" is...read on.) Don't believe Me? Early supporter Aníbal Vega, Mayor of Toa Baja, was quoted after the speech as saying that We need to give this governor another year before We decide if he will be the candidate in 2012. This isn't Me speaking: it's one of The Larva's early champions and a back-office power in the governor's party. Another year? Pifflegab. Many of Us checked out on him in 2009 and many more, if not most, will do so in 2010. (I checked out on him in 1983. I'm prescient that way.)

Unless. Unless The Larva can show Us that what We ask for can be guaranteed again.

See, We don't believe anything the governor says or promises because he simply can't deliver it. Lower taxes? Bah. Jobs? Puh-lease. Improved education? Laugher. Better health care? My head hurts. Reduced crime? Pull My other one. Calling out the National Guard will not reduce crime because (a) It's too expensive to sustain long enough to make a difference, (b) these weekend wannabes are not trained as a police force and (c) they aren't there to reduce crime, they are there to protect certain people from crime.

Guess who? Yup: the hyena in-crowd, the whiteys running the show into the ground, the "guaynabitos" and "colegiecitos" clogging the system with their apathy to Our society (but ass-sniffing devotion to theirs), rampant greed and short-term mentality.

For it is a short-term mentality: why else would Mayor "Tick-Tock" Vega utter a veiled threat 3 years before the elections? The power struggle between The Larva and Thomas "Tantrum" Rivera is open warfare (see under "Departments of Education, Health and Justice"), but the party--the ass-sniffing hyena in-crowd, to quote something I wrote recently--is already taking stock (lock and barrel) and seeing that in 2012, this gang-bang party will come to a crashing halt. For although the commonwealth party is to opposition power and leadership what dead possums are to Peterbilt trucks, it is becoming increasingly clear that The Larva's vacuum of leadership will suck these (state)hood(er)s down and out of power.

Pardon Me while I readmire that last paragraph. Yes, readmire is a word. Leave Me alone.

In this day and age, it's very hard for a government leader to guarantee anything except his or her own lack of integrity. But We don't need iron-clad guarantees for the good stuff, We need probable guarantees, the oxymoronic but comforting "definite maybe" that says that with a little luck and maybe the once-in-a-decade appearance of leadership, We can improve Our situation. We don't all have to believe it, only most of Us. And that is the true role of leadership: to make the goal believable, to make it achievable and thus move Us to action. Without it, We spiral ever downward, probed every painful step of the way like Gulf Coast fishermen in an E.T. medical invasion.

So, what have We seen with the "State of the Statehood Push in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico" pseudo-speech? Better yet, what have We heard? Not a drachma of leadership, or even a hint that leadership is maybe possibly on the way.  All We heard was the ticking of an ever-louder clock and the whooshing sound of Our future being sucked down an ever-increasing drain.

Oh, and the clop-clop of semi-shined army boots marching to ensure that "they" don't bother "Us."

The Jenius Has Spoken.