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Canada has been a long-time friend and ally of the United States.

The longest non-militarized border on this planet.

And, can you say "NORAD?" I knew you could.

Why is Pres Trump treating Canada as an enemy and Pres Putin as an ally?

Haskell Free Library and Opera House
en.wikipedia.org

... The Haskell Free Library and Opera House (French: Bibliothque et salle d'opra Haskell) is a Victorian building that straddles the Canada"United States border, in Rock Island (now part of Stanstead), Quebec, and Derby Line, Vermont, respectively. The Opera House opened on June 7, 1904, having deliberately been built on the international border. It was declared a heritage building by both countries in the 1970s and 1980s.

The library has two different addresses: 93 Caswell Avenue, Derby Line, Vermont, and 1 rue Church (Church Street), Stanstead, Quebec. ...

Overview

The building was designed by architect James Ball in the Queen Anne Revival style. The first floor houses the book collection and reading rooms and a 500-seat theater occupies the second and third floors.[3]

The library collection and the opera stage are located in Stanstead, but the main entrance and most opera seats are located in Derby Line. Because of this, the Haskell is sometimes called "the only library in the U.S.A. with no books" and "the only opera house in the U.S.A. with no stage". There is no entrance from Canada; however, there is an emergency exit on the Canadian side of the building. All patrons and visitors must use the U.S. entrance to access the building. Patrons from Canada are permitted to enter the United States door without needing to report to customs by using a prescribed route through the sidewalk of rue Church (Church Street), provided that they return to Canada immediately upon leaving the building using the same route.[4]

A thick black line runs beneath the seats of the opera house and diagonally across the center of the library's reading room to mark the Canada"United States border.[5] The stage and half of the seats are in Canada; the remainder of the opera hall is in the US. The building has different postal codes (93 Caswell Avenue, 05830 and 1, rue Church (Church Street), J0B 3E2) and different telephone area codes (+1-802-873-3022 and +1-819-876-2471) in its two respective countries. ...


Why does Pres Trump want to destroy this long-time friendship with Canada?


Every senior citizens' nightmare, and if the DOGE bros have theire way, I expect will hear more stories like this:

Johnson is 82 and still kicking. Yet sometime last month, someone or something led Social Security to both tag him as dead and start clawing back his benefits.

Johnson's strange trip through the netherworld began in February, when a letter from his bank arrived addressed to his wife, Pam.

"We recently received notification of LEONARD A. JOHNSON's passing," it began. "We offer our sincerest condolences ... "

At first she figured it was a scam--her husband, after all, was sitting right there. But then the bank got to the point.

"We know this is a difficult time, and we're here to help," the bank wrote. "We received a request from Social Security Administration to return benefits paid to LEONARD A. JOHNSON's account after their passing."

"There's nothing you need to do--we've deducted the funds from LEONARD A. JOHNSON's account."

Uh oh. It itemized how $5,201 had been stricken from their bank account, on the grounds that Ned wasn't justified to get those benefits--because he was dead. That was for payments he'd received in December and January.

Ned found that his February Social Security check hadn't been paid, and he's yet to receive his March check, either. His Medicare insurance had been canceled. . . .

What followed was a nearly three-week battle to resurrect himself. He called Social Security two or three times a day for two weeks, with each call put on hold and then eventually disconnected. Finally someone answered and gave him an appointment for March 13. Then he got a call delaying that to March 24.

In a huff, he went to the office on the ninth floor of the Henry Jackson Federal Building downtown. It's one of the buildings proposed to be closed under what the AP called "a frenetic and error-riddled push by Elon Musk's budget-cutting advisers."

Canada reconsidering F-35 purchase amid tensions with Washington

www.cbc.ca

Doe 174 should film a F-35 commercial on the White House lawn to boost slumping sales.

Gotta keep in mind that, unlike pretty much every other prez in hisotry, Trump wants the economy to fail. It assists him in manipulating the stock market and profiting from shorting it.
#4 | Posted by censored

Trump also wants the government to fail. Hello? That way he can justify all the cuts and executive orders he has already written as well as the ones he has ready to go the moment he is able to declare even more emergency orders that will give him unlimited and unfettered power over just about everything and in such a way that not even the courts will be able to stop him.

President Trump is testing the limits of emergency powers--again

Goitein, of the Brennan Center, says determining those limits is crucial. "There are powers that are available in a national emergency that are far more potent, including powers to shut down communications facilities, to control domestic transportation, to freeze Americans' assets without any due process or any judicial [approval]," she says. "So this question of 'What are the limits on a president's ability to abuse emergency powers?' is an absolutely crucial one for not just our individual liberties but for our democracy."

The question is how emergency powers are used--and for how long and with what limits.

Scheppele has studied how democracies, like Hungary, can turn toward autocracy. For her, the key question about the use of emergency powers is not whether they are legal--because lawful powers can be abused, she notes.

"The question is, does it move the president toward using powers that make it very difficult for powers ever to be taken out of his hands?" she says. "Autocracy is really about the executive capturing power and not letting it go."

With that in mind, she's watching to see whether declaring emergencies becomes a routine way for the Trump administration to push through policies over the objections of Congress or the public, sidelining the debates, compromises and checks and balances baked into democracy.

www.npr.org

I called Gillibrand and Schumer on Wed. and asked them to vote no on the Republican budget. I had one qualm, however: how would the shutdown affect the court cases being brought against Trump, Musk and OMP, some of which are starting to bear fruit? Two of my favorite online pundits have been weighing in on the topic: Josh Marshall and Marcy Wheeler.

Here are their latest takes, both of which are worth considering, IMO:

Looking Squarely at a Shutdown

It's hard to write clearly when you're being flooded with new information. But here goes. I've heard people arguing the "yes' on cloture" argument, essentially saying, "don't assume you can shut DOGE down, undo the damage. It's not a silver bullet." I can only speak for myself, but if anyone is thinking, based on the arguments I've made, that this is a silver bullet and if Democrats just do this we can shut this whole thing down, I haven't been clear. I will further say that while the things I've written over the last week or so make it pretty clear where I stand on this, I have several times over the last week had a hard think with myself: are you sure you're right about this? I'm not sure I'd say this is a close call. But it's a hard call, for me at least. Both options hold out possibilities of calamity and destruction I've never seriously contemplated before. That is simply where we are. I wish we weren't here. But we are here.

talkingpointsmemo.com

And:

Democrats Have to Stop Making Political Decisions with an Eye Towards 2026

I'm agnostic about whether a shutdown brings more advantage than risks.

One thing I am absolutely certain of, however, is that Democrats on both sides of this debate are framing it in terms of 2026. . . .This mindset has plagued both sides of Democratic debates for two months, with disastrous consequences.

Democracy will be preserved or lost in the next three months. And democracy will be won or lost via a nonpartisan political fight over whether enough Americans want to preserve their way of life to fight back, in a coalition that includes far more than Democrats. You win this fight by treating Trump and Elon as the villain, not by making any one Democrat a hero (or worse still, squandering week after week targeting Democratic leaders while letting Elon go ignored). . . .

I get the anger with Schumer--though I do think his concerns about the courts need to be taken very seriously.

But until Democrats stop thinking in terms of their own leadership in Congress but instead think exclusively about winning the political fight with people being hurt, not as Democrats, but as people opposed to fascism, they're going to be looking for power in the wrong places.


www.emptywheel.net

#5 | Posted by dann

Remember this?:

Donald Trump reportedly disparaged disabled vet who was severely wounded in Afghanistan and sang God Bless America'

Former President Donald Trump made disparaging comments about a wounded US Army veteran after he sang "God Bless America" during his presidency, according to a new report.

Trump allegedly made the remarks at a welcome ceremony for Gen. Mark Milley at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall in 2019, after Army Capt. Luis Avila, who was severely wounded in Afghanistan, sang "God Bless America," the Atlantic reported.

"Why do you bring people like that here? No one wants to see that, the wounded," Trump allegedly said to Milley in front of several witnesses as he walked over to congratulate Avila after the performance.

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