As a Canadian, obviously I would take an help offered, but I do strongly believe that Greenland is where we need to draw the line in the sand. Again, I don’t think Trump has the stomach for an actual war. I think he knows how much that would sink his popularity with the people who most strongly support him. A war with Canada would be an especially difficult sell.

I’m not remotely dismissing the possibility that it could happen. Trust me, my wife is in the CAF, she’d be on the front fucking line if it did. There’s shit I know that I can’t even fucking talk about when it comes to those kinds of conversations. But I think the key here is that he’s really looking for quick easy wins. That’s Trump’s whole mentality. It’s all about what you can steal before anyone notices you got away with it. He’s a conman and a thief by nature. Greenland is where NATO can show Trump the will to stand up to him, and deny him the easy, cheap wins that he wants. It won’t end the threat, but at this point I’m really not sure if anything NATO does can end the threat of the US without a world war. I think the only thing, realistically, that can be done is to buy time for the people in America to get their fucking shit together and end this nightmare.

The rest of NATO need to put troops in Greenland, today, with clear orders to fire on any invading force, even if its the US.

If there’s one clear and obvious pattern with Trump’s use of military power, it’s that he likes quick, easy, low cost military operations. One day of airstrikes, one special forces raid, declare victory, go home. Either he or the people around him understand that America has no stomach for a war right now. The American right have been beating the anti-war drums hard for the last decade. But surgical military operations win public because they’re already over before anyone can react. Look, see, no Iraq style quagmire. Trump gets it done, no problems. Not like those other idiots.

All of which adds up to the conclusion that Trump will not want to spark a war with the entirety of NATO. But he’s extremely confident that if he steals Greenland fast enough, NATO won’t want a war to take it back.

This is why the defence of Greenland has to be pre-emptive. A clear commitment to a fight, before the US can put boots on the ground. Do that, and Trump will back down. The right wing politics of today are not the right wing politics of 2001. He doesn’t want a war, he wants an easy victory. We cannot offer him one.

Oh, yeah, I mean the prize committee have turned the thing into a fucking joke as it is. It was a farce when Obama got one for simply not being quite as openly pro war as Bush was, and I genuinely cannot even begin to fathom why Machado deserves one.

I assumed “for corporations and the wealthy” would be sufficiently implied.

Machado will give him the plaque or whatever the fuck it is they hand out, and we’ll see it on his desk with the name taped over and “Donald J Trump” written in sharpie. He’s such a child that he’ll absolutely believe that’s the same thing as actually being selected to receive the prize.

And given the insane deficits Trump is already running, they really need that tariff money.

Well, yes, but also that wouldn’t have applied in this case anyway. Politicians manage the public purse, they’re not personally liable for it.

Oh, that’s wild. I knew about the refunds, but had no idea there was a speculative market for them.

No, the indications are very strong that they’re going to rule against him on this one. The supreme court like Trump, but they like big business better.

The delay is probably over the question of how to handle the tariffs that have already been collected. In principle, they would have to be refunded, but doing that would blow a massive hole in the budget, at a point where the US is already carrying the kind of debt load that looks really scary to investors, and has slashed incomes to essentially nothing with all their tax cuts.

I know there’s a lot of really scary stuff happening with this administration right now, and I really don’t want to seem dismissive of that (its certainly scaring the shit out of me), but honestly, this just seems like Hegseth wanted to ride in the cool plane cos it makes his peepee feel big. Not sure we should read any more into it. If something big was going to go down, it would be Trump on the “doomsday plane”.

and funny

Citation fucking needed there bud.

“And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.”

“It’s a lot more complicated than that –”

“No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.”

“Oh, I’m sure there are worse crimes –”

“But they starts with thinking about people as things …”

- Carpe Jugulum, Terry Pratchett

So, remember that whole thing about how “Nazi” is short for “National Socialist” (in German), but they weren’t actually socialist, they just called themselves that because it was popular with the working class at the time?

Yeah, this is exactly how that worked. Their philosophies were openly and explicitly fascist, but every now and then they would steal a popular move from a socialist playbook to keep the voters happy, while they continued to strip away freedoms and militarize their populace and economy.

This is, legitimately, a fantastic idea. Everyone should be doing it. It doesn’t even remotely solve the problem of inflated home prices, but it would help, and the fact that just the proposal alone knocked 10% off Blackstone’s share price is all the proof you need of that. But it’s the kind of good idea that fascists roll out when they really need you to shut up sit down like good little piggies while they get on with covering up what Trump was doing with Epstein, murdering innocent civilians, and expanding the new American Empire.

Do I believe he’ll actually go through with it? On balance, probably not. But that’s really not the part you should be focused on right now.