I hadn’t thought about that sketch in years but I think that really works

And did it spark joy?

The more you make the back end unreliable, the more the front end is eschewed. Nobody is buying your kit if you signal you will brick it on a whim.

What he really wants is Canada as a non-voting occupied territory, not a state.

I want someone in the press to ask him what he thinks the effect of adding Canada to the union would be on the electoral college, when as a single state it would be wildly to the left of California.

You have indeed

The L5R roleplaying game has some awesome mechanics that I swiped for Siege Perilous. Fantastic game and setting. Borderline criminal that they’ve stopped working on it.

I tried tipping at a nice hotel the way the author suggested some years ago, and the desk clerk got flustered and went to tell her manager on me. Almost died of cringe and was left wondering wtf I’d done wrong. Haven’t tried it since.

Looks to me as though the Democrats would be the ones to seriously benefit from actually annexing Canada. There’s nothing in this for Trump beyond scaring a weaker trade partner when he’s about to try to strike a new and much shittier deal.

And yeah sure they could take over 🇨🇦 by force and just pillage what they wanted without absorbing us into their “democracy.” They’ve always been able to do that at will. But there’s no scenario in which this is a less costly option than just trading with us. Which is why the US never has done it.

The only way to do it for Republicans would be to annex 🇨🇦 and then find some way or reason to keep us as second class citizens, unable to vote, unable to effect the electoral college. Thats an unattractive sales pitch and one that is unlikely to result in compliance.

Either way, legitimately absorbing 🇨🇦 loads the US with 41 million new people whose politics skew way left compared even to Democrats. This is a non-starter for Trump politically within his own party. It’d be like the early 19C debates over admitting new states to the union.

Now, Trump is a man who knows his electoral college math better than he knows the names of his children. In which of these scenarios does he come out ahead? 🇨🇦 as one big state would be a second California. 🇨🇦 as individual states would *not* be swing states, except maybe Alberta and Sask.

Or say 🇨🇦 is absorbed and each province becomes its own state. Territories can probably go on being territories.

But what about peaceful options? Say🇨🇦 is absorbed peacefully and becomes the 51st state. Just one state for the whole country. Doesn’t seem likely but sure let’s take him at his word.

It could be done as a military occupation and a territorial non-state status for 🇨🇦, kind of like Puerto Rico. Plausible but *extremely expensive.* Much, much more expensive than just buying stuff from 🇨🇦, and with a high risk threshold that we wouldn’t go quietly.

From my perspective an actual US annexation of Canada needs to be put in the following perspective:

I kept my PhD embargoed and non-public for years on the explicit advice of my publisher. It was not a secret, it was a non-compete issue for sales of the book that was based on the PhD.