If Minnis had a decent set of gonads, this clucking waddling duck Cash, who has had his wings clipped but good forever when it comes to politics, would be banished to the politics-free wilderness where he belongs.

It's not too difficult to imagine a new Chinese-Russian world order that has a friendly strong foothold in places like the Bahamas and Cuba for decades to come.

U.S. foreign policy as regards the Bahamas is to destabilize its economic and financial condition as quickly as possible through the international lending agencies that it still controls (e.g., IMF, World Bank, International Development Bank, etc.) in order to thwart as much as possible the establishment by the Chinese of a strong hold base of operations just off the coast of Florida. The U.S. cringes at the very thought of the Bahamas granting China's military apparatus deep water naval bases and access to the Tongue of the Ocean trench for the upcoming latest generation of very stealthy Chinese warships and submarines armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons. The U.S. has to some extent brought this nightmare upon themselves by allowing our traditional democratic processes, welfare safety net and health care and educational systems to be seriously comprised by decades of illegal immigration from Haiti. We needed foreign aid from the U.S. and not burdensome foreign loans the various international lending agencies controlled by the U.S. The U.S. is going to pay a dear price for its short sighted and unfriendly attitude towards the Bahamas unless it quickly makes the necessary policy changes to right the wrongs of its current failed policies towards us as a nation on its doorstep.

Ryan Pinder seems quite content to have banks in the Bahamas provide the personal banking information of many Bahamian citizens to Uncle Sam under its FATCA initiative simply because of the PLP's stupid and ill-advised policy of letting Americans buy Bahamian citizenship. If you are a Bahamian by birth married to an American who has signing authority with you on any of your bank accounts with a balance over B$50,000, you can expect Ryan Pinder to cause all of your bank account information to be turned over to Uncle Sam even if your American spouse residing with you in the Bahamas for many years has never had any U.S. income tax filing requirement. Pinder just doesn't seem to give a damn about the privacy rights of non-American indigenous Bahamian citizens! Pinder has also gravely under estimated the number of wealthy prominent Bahamian voters there are who were born in the U.S. but (unlike himself) have lived in the Bahamas all of their lives and have not renounced their U.S. citizenship. Many of these Bahamians are big financial backers of the PLP or FNM. Because the Bahamian passports of these dual nationals show they were born in the U.S., banks here in the Bahamas will be called on to turn over to the IRS all of their personal banking records thereby subjecting them to draconian "failure to report" penalties imposed by the IRS. If the IRS penalties (which can amount to 50% or more of the highest balance in the bank account for each calendar year in which there was a failure to report) are not settled, the dual national could find him or herself indefinitely blacklisted by the U.S. government for travel to the U.S. It doesn't matter whether the bank accounts are denominated in Bahamian dollars or another currency. Bottom line: In his negotiations with the U.S. government/IRS regarding FATCA, Pinder failed to have provisions put in the IGA to protect the privacy rights of non-American Bahamians married to an American (e.g. housewife) who has never had any U.S. taxable income and has been residing in the Bahamas for many years.

Bowe and Lowe need to remind themselves of the harsh reality of our current political system. It's a fundamental precept that our government, be it FNM or PLP led, knows everything there is to know about growing the size of government, and knows diddly squat about growing the size of our economy other than through the concession laden fire sale of our diminishing natural resources. Get real fellas....we don't need new taxes to grow government by feeding its insatiable appetite to excessively regulate everything and everyone. This is the big problem with the U.S. government and U.S. economy at the moment and you would think we would have learned something from it. What we do urgently need are meaningful new policies aimed at shrinking the size of our government, enforcing existing tax laws, improving the quality of education/vocational skills, reducing crime, creating jobs and so on. Adding more taxes without a change in the failed policies of the past will only see the size of both our government and national debt grow at an ever increasing rate until.......

Bernard Nottage should be strung up by his short curlies on this one, whether it be for knowing or not knowing such a criminal act was and probably still is in progress that causes grievous harm to our national security and strips every Bahamian of their basic privacy rights by law.

The same applies to the U.S. operative Ryan Pinder who is content to provide the personal banking information of many Bahamian citizens to Uncle Sam under its FATCA initiative simply because of the PLP's stupid (or should I say Sean McWeeney's ill-advised) policy of letting Americans buy Bahamian citizenship. If you are a Bahamian by birth married to an American who has signing authority with you on any of your bank accounts with a balance over B$50,000, you can expect Ryan Pinder to cause all of your bank account information to be turned over to Uncle Sam.....be damned all of your privacy rights as a non-American indigenous Bahamian citizen!

I guess it was just too difficult for him to claim no knowledge of something that had his finger prints all over it. Seems Greenslade may finally be kicking in gear no matter who is involved. Oh well, on to the next one!

McWeeney may lay claim to being a person who has read many books, but as my dear grandmother has said time and time again: "You can never acquire common sense simply by reading books as it is a valuable attribute that only the worthy will ever possess."

It's laughable that Freddie Boy always thinks he's got everything and everyone figured out when in fact it's most of us who have him figured out for what he is and he just can't see it for the life of him. One only has to read Wiki Leaks revelations about the U.S. government's view of Freddie Boy to quickly understand that they too have long ago figured out Freddie Boy for what he is......a pseudo-intellectual dimwit who's full of himself and allergic to anything American. Brent has provided no news here for most of us.

The FNM would have come out of the Darron Cash matter much stronger had they not cut a deal with Bank of The Bahamas (BOB) which, as a bank majority owned by government, is controlled for all intents and purposes by Perry Christie as both PM and Minister of Finance. It seems all of the PLP's major skeletons (and some of the FNM's skeletons) are buried at BOB and it's likely the leadership of the FNM has now agreed to discontinue pressing BOB on its purported corrupt lending practises allegedly involving past and present MPs, Senators, their family members and their business cronies. By giving Perry the upper hand at the expense of vigorously pursuing the purported treasure trove of corruption at BOB, the leadership of the FNM appears to have thrown away a golden political opportunity for the cheap price of having the door closed on the Cash matter. What a shame, especially as Cash's political wings are now clipped forever in the eyes of most voters. What a shame!