Coates Island
This is Mallets Bay where we sail. That dark land off on the left is Coates Island. For the last 145 years, it has been owned by the Coates Family. There are 40 camps (small cottages) on the island, three of which are currently for sale. On Saturday we got to tour the Island, courtesy of the Coates Family. So nice!
"A new ABC News-Washington Post poll [Click] finds that while 52% of Americans sees the Democratic Party as a party that stands against President Trump, just 37% consider it a party that stands for something." So, has the argument "I'm not as bad as the other candidate" run out of steam? Where does that leave folks who have run on that argument throughout their political careers?
ReplyDelete--Alan
I can't off-hand think of an instance where that approach has been effective long term. It can certainly work in a single election. I'm thinking particularly of the 2010 Illinois Senate election, which ultimately came down to, "Who do you distrust least?" But Kirk was defeated for reelection.
DeleteQuote from a Washington Post article I saw on the Chicago Tribune web site: "Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said President Donald Trump would trigger 'a cataclysm' if he fires Special Counsel Robert Mueller or pardons himself, even as one of the president's lawyers said pardons aren't being discussed.
ReplyDelete"Schumer said he can't imagine his Republican colleagues, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan, 'just standing by' if Trump moves to dismiss Mueller or pardons himself or someone close to him who's under investigation."
I'm not linking to the entire article, which strikes me as rather rambling.
Seems to me it's foolish to pin one's hopes upon Republican decency. It would please me mightily to be proved wrong on this one, but I won't hold my breath.
DeleteAnd it seems worth while to post this from Secrecy News, a service of the Federation of American Scientists; apologies for the length:
ReplyDeleteTHE CHANGING US ROLE IN THE WORLD
By its actions and its refusals to act, the Trump Administration is changing the profile of the United States in global affairs.
Whether demonstrating disdain for longtime allies, disrupting diplomatic relationships and international agreements, or cultivating ties with authoritarian figures in Russia and elsewhere, President Trump seems to be radically altering the character and meaning of American foreign policy. But to what end?
A new report from the Congressional Research Service tries to sort through the situation, and to advise Congress on its options under the circumstances.
For the last 70 years, the U.S. has sought "to promote and defend the open international order that the United States, with the support of its allies, created in the years after World War II," according to CRS. That may no longer be the case.
But exactly how the direction of U.S. policy is changing, whether it should change, and what it should change to are all subject to dispute. The new CRS report, by specialists Ronald O'Rourke and Michael Moodie, presents the fundamental policy questions on a fairly abstract level, without mentioning Putin, Merkel, Duterte, or other leaders with whom the Trump Administration has acted to modify U.S. relations.
See U.S. Role in the World: Background and Issues for Congress, July 12, 2017.
Scorning multilateral trade agreements, the Trump Administration risks diminishing the U.S. role in setting the rules for international trade, another new CRS publication said. A pending Free Trade Agreement between the European Union and Japan could also work to the disadvantage of U.S. firms by "increas[ing] the relative price of U.S. goods and services exports to both the EU and Japan, lowering their competitiveness in key U.S. markets." See The Proposed EU-Japan FTA and Implications for U.S. Trade Policy, CRS Insight, July 14, 2017.
The change is already well under way. I am of the opinion that it actually started under Bush The Younger, but the acceleration under DT is breathtaking. It effect on the status of the US dollar as a reserve currency is something to consider seriously. Remember the theory that the war on Iraq was precipitated by the Iraqi move to set up an oil market that did not use the US dollar.
ReplyDeleteAlan
Let us hope that the Truth will out and it that it will out SOON! I'm really tired of waiting for people in authority to prove what we've all suspected all along, so we can finally throw the bums out and get on with being a country.
ReplyDeleteA very frightening read.
ReplyDelete