A Thank You Letter to President Trump, From a Grateful Canadian. Somebody had to say it. Might as well be a real estate agent in Charlottetown. Mr. President, on behalf of a country that has spent 158 years being pleasant, apologetic, and largely unnoticed , thank you. You have done more for Canadian self-awareness in a few years than a century of Heritage Minutes ever managed. Thank you for reminding us there is an entire world out there that wants and needs what we produce, and for the shove, not always gentle, toward broadening our trade beyond one large, conveniently close customer. Thank you for elevating the stature, the awareness, and the significance of Canada in the minds of Americans who, respectfully, were overdue for some education about their neighbour to the north. Thank you for taking Canada from an occasional footnote or moose in a pool closing story in your news broadcasts to the lead story in many of them. Nothing sharpens a national identity quite like being talked about. Thank you for reminding Canadians, and, to an even greater extent, Americans , that a democracy works best when its people are informed and educated enough to tell the difference between competence and an undeliverable promise. Thank you for helping the world see that we matter, and for positioning us, almost by contrast, as a case study in good governance, fair trade, and ethical political practice. Thank you for uniting Canadians from Victoria to St. John's around something we can all agree on, which, frankly, only ever happens on rare occasion during the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Thank you for the great national rediscovery of the grocery store aisle, turns out reading the label on a jar of pickles is a patriotic act now. Thank you for accelerating our exit from the habit of keeping all our eggs in one very large, unpredictable basket. Thank you for the sudden, unusual spectacle of provincial premiers agreeing with each other, and occasionally with Ottawa. Thank you for reminding snowbirds that a Canadian dollar buys rather more in our own stores in February than it does in Florida. Thank you for helping us to remind ourselves that Canada is an exceptional place to travel and explore. You’ve also enlightened growing numbers of your own people to this fact. We remain, as ever, your polite, and thanks to you, considerably harder to overlook neighbour to the north.
Fear not, as soon as your elections are over in October, your politicians will stop their silly posturing, negotiate a more fair trade deal, and this tempest in a teapot will blow over. I suppose that they should be congratulated on this attempt to change the subject and get some excitement into your national elections, but this is not a real political or news issue down here. Other than the fact that it has been amusing to see the outrage and fuming over the renaming of a body of water, nobody really cares.
Big deal as to Trump signing a deal with Denmark over Greenland. He got nothing new except that he's now going to rename it Orangeland.
Green, Orange, Blue, what's in a name, anyway? Greenland is not so green and probably should be called IcyGrayland based on its climate. Btw, this actually is all about the Arctic and its strategic value, including its mineral resources. China was aggressively nosing in and Trump has been putting a damper on their efforts and he knows that the EU will continue to be useless. Greenland is a piece of that chess move. My understanding is that the U.S., is now going to increase its military presence there (much to the chagrin of the troops forced to be based there, I assume) as a result of this agreement.
The proposed agreement grants the United States permanent access to mineral rights on military bases and allows the U.S. to develop minerals located on its sites without going through the local Greenlandic government process. While the U.S. will not have exclusive ownership over all of Greenland’s resources, the deal includes significant economic provisions: Veto Power: The U.S. will have the power to bar non-NATO countries (specifically China and Russia) from tapping into Greenland’s vast critical mineral sectors or making "sensitive investments" without U.S. approval. Base Operations: The U.S. will have sovereignty-like rights to extract minerals from its military installations, mimicking arrangements seen in British sovereign base areas. No Full Sovereignty: The deal does not transfer overall sovereignty or exclusive mining rights for the entire territory to the U.S.; Greenland retains its right to self-determination and regulates its own mineral sector outside of U.S. bases and restricted investments.
Trump just got played by little Denmark. The "deal" is the exact same deal that was signed by the U.S. and Denmark back in 1951. The only amendement to it is that Trump can now build 2 new bases for his Golden Dome project. So why did Trump cave in? It's because he is desperate to show something to point to as a success before the midterms.
LOL, no one cares about this deal, politically, in the U.S. As I mentioned previously, this is a powerful message to Xi who just happens to be visiting the White House today. What a coincidence! This will have zero impact on the midterms. Trump plays chess while the fake news and its readers only understand checkers.
@jrbiz you are living in a vacuum/fantasy bubble. Support for the Iran war is at only 26% while the orange felon's overall approval rating is at 32%. He will try to subvert the election, claim that it was rigged and say that it was therefore illegal. He is getting impreached in early November and jailed once the Epstein files are finally opened. Orange jailhouse jumpsuit...ironic/poetic justice.
Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) is a pernicious disease that is happily fueled by the fake news and the fake polls industry. For example, take the Epstein hoax: consumers of fake news have no idea that in the 1990"s (long before Trump was a politician), Trump banned Epstein from his Mar-a-Lago estate because he was trying to recruit Trumps' young female employees. They also have no clue that a recorded tape exists in the Palm Beach Sheriff's office in which Trump called the sheriff to report that he believed that Epstein was up to no good (again, in the 1990's.) Trump and Epstein were obviously not friends nor involved in any shady enterprises. But TDS makes its victims easy prey for hoaxes.
@jrbiz the entire world is laughing at Trump and has lost respect for him. You are on the wrong side of history but take heart. Twenty years from now we can all read your posts where you are defending Trump, and the whole world can have another good laugh.
She is 91 years old, dressed in a hospital gown, her hands cuffed. Arrested for armed robbery. The judge couldn't believe his eyes. Helen and her husband George, 88, have been married for 65 years. He suffers from severe heart failure and needs daily medication to survive. They live on a fixed pension and struggle to make ends meet. Last month, their supplemental insurance expired because they couldn't afford the payments. When Helen went to pick up her prescription, the bill wasn't $50, as usual. It came to $940. She left empty-handed. For three days, she watched the man she loved struggle to breathe. Desperate, she returned to the pharmacy. Taking advantage of the pharmacist's distraction, she slipped the medication into her purse. She hadn't even reached the door before she was apprehended. The police charged her with armed robbery. During her detention, her blood pressure skyrocketed and she was rushed to the hospital. The following morning, still wearing her thin dress, she was brought to court. "I didn't know what to do anymore," she murmured. "He's all I have left." The black judge looked at her – small, trembling, 91 years old – and shook his head. "Take off her chains," he ordered. "She's not a criminal. She's a failure of our system, the US system." He immediately dismissed the charges and ordered emergency assistance for her and George.
I pay $5 per prescription item, nothing for repeats (we can get 2, a 3-month supply) unless I've been to a private specialist, and then it's $15 - but only until I reach the cap, which is about halfway through the year. Some meds aren't "funded" but for most of us they are. I don't think I could live in the US based on the medical inequity, lots of other factors too, but the way healthcare is run is distressing. In my naivety, when I arrived in Texas last year, I saw a billboard promoting a Methodist health provider, and my first thought was "faith healing, really?" because it's just so weird to me to have religious institutions running hospitals.