June 23, 2018: President Trump - As Clueless as a Cod

 

6/23/18: The Great Deal Maker throws up his hands and tells Republicans who control Congress not to bother with an immigration deal. They could compromise among themselves, freeze out the Democrats, and get a bill to clean up the border mess on Trump’s desk Monday morning if they wished. Trump tells them to punt till after the midterms. 

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Trump: Dealing in reverse.

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This means the Great Deal Maker has failed again. He failed to make a deal on immigration, even after he said he wanted a “bill of love” and would sign whatever Congress put on his desk. Trump failed to make a deal on healthcare. Trump failed to make a deal to lower drug prices. Trump still can’t get Mexico to pay for his wall. Trump can’t get Congress to pay, either. He said he’d get a deal on gun control, promised he’d stand up to the N.R.A. and wimped out. He promised a deal on spending cuts. The federal deficit ballooned. He failed to get a deal on NAFTA, on Pacific trade, on trade with China, or on steel and aluminum imports from our allies. Like every president since 1948 he failed to cut a deal with Israel and the Palestinians. 

He can certainly be forgiven for the last. 

The president does have a possible deal in the works with North Korea, which would be great. Otherwise, he’s dealing in reverse. He killed the Iran deal on nuclear weapons and has nothing to put in its place. He killed U.S. involvement in the Paris climate accord, too. Currently, 194 nations remain signatories to the accord.

 

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SPEAKING OF THE CLIMATE ACCORD, as ocean temperatures continue to rise around the globe, scientists predict the Great Barrier Reef, which runs for hundreds of miles along the Australian coast, may be dead by 2100. All 29 reefs listed as World Heritage Sites by UNESCO will likely die. Twenty-five percent of all fish species that make reefs their homes could become extinct. As reefs die, coastal cities may see the costs of damage from flooding double, from $4 billion to $8 billion annually. 

 

Forget the long-term health of the oceans. 

How does Trump address the growing threats to the health of the world’s oceans? He rolls back regulations put in place to protect their health. Trump says he wants to cut excessive regulations and focus on “growing the ocean economy.” “From sea to shining sea,” he says, “Americans benefit from the ocean’s bounty – from the industries it supports and the jobs it creates.”  

Forget the long-term health of the oceans. Forget the oil spills. Ignore the chemical run-off that creates a dead zone the size of New Jersey at the mouth of the Mississippi. Forget dying reefs. Pretend you never heard of overfishing and threats to fish stocks round the globe. According to scientists who studied 7,800 species of fish a decade ago, if current trends continue, seafood resources will be nearly gone by 2050. 

It’s not just scientists who notice. In the early 1990s overfishing for cod off the east coast of Canada caused a total collapse. For twenty years the annual take for fishermen never fell below 400,000 metric tons of cod. By 1995, boats were bringing back something like 25,000 tons. The Canadian government had no choice but to set quotas to protect the fish that remained and allow the stock to recover.

 

According to the National Post, a Canadian newspaper, 

The return of the once mighty northern cod stock may be a boon for the natural world and, eventually, for the humans who haul them from the sea, process them and eat them.

 

After all, their disappearance 25 years ago almost killed the east coast fishing industry and seriously maimed the Atlantic provinces.

 

Similar stories are playing out around the world. President Trump doesn’t realize the danger because he doesn’t read. 

He’s as clueless as a cod.

A cod fish.