In diplomatic parlance you're either a friend (ally) or a foe (enemy). Allies stand alongside each other whereas enemies stand opposed. When it come to US relations, we should all know by now who's bread gets buttered and who usually ends up with the very harsh short end of the stick. I fear Minnis's ego, saviour complex and power trip are all getting the better of him, causing him to become an increasingly annoying gnat to the US which risks the Bahamas getting smacked. Let's hope he can catch himself before he crosses the line and takes us over the edge.

@jackbnimble: Your first sentence fails to recognize that only the temporary government employees hired by crooked Christie-led PLP governmment in its campaign run up to the May 2017 general election were laid-off by the incoming Minnis administration. Those temporary employees were hired by the Christie administartion with the agreed understanding that they would cast their vote for the PLP. They were in effect PLP votes bought by crooked Christie using taxpayer funds and therefore fully deserved to be laid-off, even though many of them ended up supporting the FNM rather than the PLP. But the so called 'permanent' government employee head count has actually greatly increased since Minnis took office, including the padded head counts at the government corporations and government controlled SPVs. The 60% increase in VAT that occurred shortly after the May 2017 general election was not used as promised by the Minnis-led FNM government to reduce the size of our national debt but rather to increase the size of the government's 'permanent' employee head count in the hope of growing the loyal base of FNM supporters.

Amen brother!

Even if miraculously great reserves of oil do exist anywhere in our territorial waters, it would by no means be a panacea for our economic woes. Venezuela has the largest proven quantity of oil reserves in the world - more than even Saudi Arabia - and look what it has done for that country and the Venezuelan people.

The stance the US is now publicly taking towards any kind of oil drilling in our territorial waters, is also the same stance that it should be taking with respect to the cruise ships that ply our waters causing so much pollution and damage to our environment. US policy on this matter should at least be consistent, and the cruise ship companies currently known to cause the greatest amount of damage to our environment, especially Carnival, Royal Caribbean and Disney, should be banned forever more from our territorial waters. As a country we need to turn our backs away from these monstrous pollution emitting and shiit dumping floating hotels that are also filthy incubators for lethal pathogens like the Red China Virus.

You forgot to mention the 5,000 illegal aliens that are still coming to our shores each year, especially now when our southern territorial waters are not being aggressively patrolled by either our Defense Force or the US Coast Guard.

Commissioner Rolle will make sure nothing ever comes of this. No officers will be publicly named, severely reprimanded and/or sacked. And that's all fine with Minnis!

Also the US has the means to ensure any mess made in their waters gets cleaned up as was demonstrated in the Deep Water Horizon incident.

James Smith was all along dead wrong in allowing himself to be used by the foreign stakeholders of BPC in a most insidious way to try sway influence with our government and its regulators.

All it ever takes is a few well place phone calls by the right Bahamians who put the well-being of our country and its people over personal greed.

Many small and medium size businesses either went or were about to go 'belly up' under the outrageously high and burdensome taxes and fees, not to mention the many much more onerous regulations, imposed on them since the Minnis-led government took the reigns of governing. Since May 2017 the owners of these businesses have been crying out to Minnis that their employees and their customers alike (in fact all Bahamians) were suffering terribly under the crushing weight of the enormous increases in business costs and the cost of living generally. And all of this was well before Hurricane Dorian and the Red China Virus came along. Naturally, the questions now being loudly put by the Bahamian people to Minnis are:

*"Are you humane? Where is your heart? Where is your compassion? Do you have a soul?”*

Minnis really needs to take a good hard look at himself in the mirror, and I don't mean the one sided one he's obviously grown accustomed to looking at. Minnis as PM and Turnquest as DPM have lent new meaning to the devastating consequences of governing by spending, taxing and borrowing alone. Now is certainly not the time for them to double-down on the stupidity of their past mistakes. They need to cut our grossly over-bloated government payroll in a very meaningful way, and they're only going to get one chance of a big bite at that enchilada to try and save our country from financial ruination. And to make those cuts more politically palatable, they're gonna have to at the same time impose a whopping one-off wealth tax on all Bahamians who have a net worth in excess of $5 million.

You're gonna be in need of a whole hell-of-a-lot of medicating come early November.

With each passing day that locally owned businesses remain shut down, there is an increasing likelihood they will never recover and simply go out of business. This would significantly ratchet up unemployment. It would also put serious pressure on the capitalization of the commercial banks through higher loan losses. Not good. We are probably now at the point where the economic harm done to our country will likely result in more pre-mature deaths of our people than the Red China Virus itself.