The Wahkiakum County Eagle - Established as The Skamokawa Eagle in 1891

To The Eagle:

Finding nothing in The Eagle two weeks ago, we thought the great Wahkiakum DDT (Debate on Donald Trump) was off with the kids on summer vacation, but as of last week, it is apparently back on full throttle.

Memo to James Roberts: Welcome to the fray. Good letter in last week's Eagle, but it kinda bent my psyche, 'cause I couldn't figure out whether I was writer 1, 2, or 3. Did a neighborhood survey and applied statistical analysis: Turns out I was writer number one and seven sixteenths. A more professional survey by Pew Research Center indicates that 43 percent of millennials have a positive view of socialism, but only 14 percent of people over 65 have the same view. Most of us old geezers have read the book and know that Uncle Karl called for despotic leaders to march the (surviving) proletariat into the communist neighborhood of the socialist paradise. Margaret Thatcher said that the problem with socialism is that you keep running out of other people's money, which seems to be the problem with our adventures in that direction, with Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security on the brink of insolvency.

Memo to J.B. Bouchard: Apologies for disturbing your shibboleths' rest. I generally follow the principle of letting sleeping shibboleths lie, and also believe most awakened shibboleths lie, too. The Stockholm Conventions also did not ban DDT, but actually called for its use in what they called the "malaria vector" which includes sub-Saharan Africa, so the EPA remains the bad actor in the malaria problem. Also, the U.S. was not a signatory to this convention.

Memo to Poul Toftemark: The grandfather of the Paris Accords was the Kyoto Protocols which prompted the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine to start its Petition Project. The petition stated succinctly that there was no scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases would cause global warming or other disastrous climate change, but there is substantial evidence that increased levels of CO2 have had beneficial effects on the plant and animal environment of earth. It has been signed by 37,487 American scientists including 9,029 PhD's, and was presented to the senate, which defeated the proffered treaty overwhelmingly. The worst side effect of the Paris Accords was prompting several state attorneys general to start lawsuits against various corporations for being "climate change deniers" -- an appalling assault on freedom of speech.

So, Trump stumbles along, so far doing more good than harm, and unscathed by left-lib angst and bluster. Actually, he's his own worst enemy -- the term "hoist by his own petard" may soon be replaced by "tangled by his own tweets."

Howard Brawn

Puget Island