Saturday silliness
I remember Dave King, the lead singer for Irish punk band Flogging Molly, thanking the Pope for all the song inspirations he had given them. Looking at some of the ideas floated by our newly elected President-redux, it looks like the next four years should be interesting.
If anything, it’s hard to decide where to start just because of how many ideas floated in the last week or so are just so damn dumb. Where to start?
Taking over Greenland. Gotta be a worthwhile contender… an island whose inhabitants largely do not speak our language, has next to no ties with us other than a couple of cold war Air Force bases to my knowledge, and is tied with one of our own NATO allies, Denmark. Anyone here speak Danish? Thought not. (Although I will admit that back in the ’70s my wife and I took advantage of their liberal marital policies and were married in Copenhagen. After almost 50 years I don’t hold it against the Danes but I think she does.) Fox News Lots of natural resources there we could use and great strategic positioning near the SOSUS line, but either a costly purchase we frankly can’t afford (Musk won’t save that much eliminating the penny) or if we took it militarily, the only possible move guaranteed to draw the world’s ire MORE than the Ukraine invasion.
Taking over Canada. Well, lots of them speak English, so that’s a start – but an entire province speaks French. And Trump suggested the whole country as a 51st state? What, the provinces become really big counties? And why would they want to swap their bad socialized medicine for our pay-more-get-less system? They elected Trudeau repeatedly, too…so in this case we would be importing 35,000,000 potential Democrats as well as creating at least one, if not 10 or 13 red states. Yeah, what a GREAT idea. AP News
The Panama Canal – well, that one almost makes some sort of sense, since Jimmeh gave it all back to Panamanians in an incredibly stupid move. I am told this critical waterway has its ports at both ends owned by the China Overseas Shipping Company (COSCO – you’ve seen that name on shipping containers). Bad for us strategically, but what do we do about it? Relaunch the 82nd to take it back again? Sounds about on a par with China taking Taiwan, with less justification.Wiki
Oh, yes, and then there is renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Just speaking that idea already has countries like the UK essentially saying “uh, no” – and why? Sure, we border it… as does Mexico, a fair number of South American countries, and a bunch of islands, most of which we don’t own. PBS Now in a broad sense, “the Americas” does include all of these – but we want to change over 500 years of history jingoistically just because? (Could have been worse, he hangs his name on everything possible, he could have suggested the Gulf of Trump. Anyone want to bet that has not come out of his mouth at least once? A fool’s bet.)
Most of these, I hope, are just the kind of bloviating bombast Trump is known for. But he is doing one thing I find irritating: anyone notice that lately he is saluting the flag during the Star Spangled Banner? I’m cool with the President returning the military’s salutes (we all know we’ll hold that salute till the cows come home otherwise, right? The IndependentReagan started the Presidential salute return, and I’m good with that) but while he COMMANDS the military he is not IN the military, and holding that salute through the Star Spangled Banner is military. Vets, uniformed military – the list of folks who should do that isn’t that long. As someone who never served in uniform, he can hold his hand over his heart with the rest of the non-server folks. Just my (probably less than humble) opinion.
Change my mind?
Category: None, Op-Ed, Pointless blather, WTF?
