This can only mean that deep in his version of a heart Trump knows climate change is real.
Or, as in the New Yorker mail today, he really thinks it is green.
(I was going to do the Mercator Projection joke also, but I read the thread first.)
You could ask him why he’s interested in Greenland when, by his own words, the climate is just going to “bounce back” again and Greenland will soon once again be covered by a mile-thick sheet of ice. Of course his response will be that Barack Obama was born in Kenya although he, Trump, has not ever made that claim himself, although you wouldn’t believe what his investigators found down in Hawaii. The man just lives in his own delusions with no reference to the external inputs that we call “reality”, including the idea that anything he replies should have some relationship to the question that was asked.
The typically astute Andy Borowitz suggests that maybe Denmark should buy the US, which actually makes a lot more sense as the US could then get the health care and educational systems that it so desperately needs (not to mention decent social services and maybe even rational gun control!).
I, for one, welcome our new Danish overlords. Seriously, it would almost certainly be an improvement.
(And before anybody snarkily asks me why I don’t just move there then, moving would involve having to bestir myself from a sitting position in a way being annexed wouldn’t.)
Probably not Trump himself. He’s not intelligent enough to understand or care about the details of something like global warming. It wouldn’t surprise me, however, if big oil or big mineral interests are behind this move.
I stayed in Copenhagen a few days before a cruise, and this works for me.
One thing not considered: if we piss off the Danes, no more Legos!
I think you’ve already done it! :eek:
Relax! My 9-year-old-nephew could replenish the US’s supply (and Greenland’s).
How many divisions do Albania, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Montenegro, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey, and the United Kingdom have?
Given how Puerto Rico, aboriginals and non-whites have been treated by Trump, I doubt if Greenlanders would be willing to become part of the USA.
Right, the idea of wanting control of Greenland is not something beyond consideration. The idea of just buying it, in 2019, is what’s harebrained.
But now I want to see what SATWcomic.com will have to say about it.
OK, let’s run this one again and have it clear:
The Danes are the ones with Beer, Ham, Extreme Hardcore Porn, Vikings and Mermaids
The Dutch are the ones with Hashish, Cheese, Prostitution, Windmills and Tulips
Or is it the other way around?:p:D
Either one sounds damn good at this point, to be honest…
If we want bases there, then we can negotiate for the right to put bases there. We probably already do. If we want mining rights, then US mining companies can open a Greenland branch, and go through whatever procedures you do with the Danish and Greenlander governments to secure mining rights. Actually having sovereignty over the territory doesn’t really make much difference.
Exactly. You “buy” control of the place’s resources through investment and it’s cheaper and almost surely more efficient than wanting to buy the actual sovereignty. (And yes the US does already have a base.)
Danish food is much better. I tried getting Dutch food in Amsterdam once, and it was damn difficult. And in Amsterdam they roll up the sidewalks around 9 pm. I’ll take Denmark, thanks.
Possibly not for much longer if Trump presses the point?
(By the way, if he’s interested, we’ve got a slightly-worn Northern Ireland…)
Shetland. Sell them before they break away.
Tell Ivanka that if the US buys Shetland, she gets a pony. That’s all it will take.
Now there’s an idea! It would be an effective gateway (followed by Iceland) in our eventual encirclement of Greenland. After all, first things first.
Maybe the waters around it are valuable? Fish? Owning more of the Arctic Ocean? Oil?
I don’t know how to say Drill Baby Drill in West Greenlandic.
As the offer currently stands, its not going to be well received by the population. In general if you ask a bunch of Nordics if they want to exchange their citizenship, social and welfare system for the US one you’d get a hard no.
In this case you are actually looking at a population with serious social and economic issues. Unemployment, alcoholism, suicide. (The second worst suicide rate in the world is Guyana at 30 per 100 000. The worst is Greenland at 80 per 100 000. Down from 110. Thats not indicative of a happy population in a good place.) And these issues mean that they are far more dependent on their social and support system than most Nordics. So the Greenlanders response is going to be… what comes after a hard no? A lolno?
Thing is though, its not an impossible prospect.
Yes, Denmark is pretty set against it and isn’t going to change its opinion. But among western nations today its generally acknowledged that a populations right to self-determination is paramount, and Greenland is a self-governing territory. And the thing is… there are not a lot of Greenlanders. 56 000. The US may no longer be the economic hegemon of the world, but if the US really wanted something and it was a one-time expense, there is still considerable economic muscle.
If the US was to make an offer like… “We will give every man woman and child 2 million dollars tax free. Everyone who wants it can have dual citizenship. If you do not want that we understand, and you can have a permanent, lifelong right of residence. Stay if you want, or move to any place that is open to someone with an EU, US and Danish passport. Come back any time you want if you want.”
Then… well Greenland is not Denmark proper. I don’t think the Greenlanders have the same emotional investment in their territory being Danish that someone from Jutland or other parts of European Denmark would. And I don’t think they feel that their present situation is that great, unlike Danes who probably do not see a great deal of potential for improvement. There might even be a certain urge to stick it to Copenhagen. Trump got elected on the same kind of urge.
If the US can promise enough riches for the Greenlanders to win a vote with a convincing majority, I don’t think Copenhagen would have that much of a comeback. And the US still has the economic muscle to throw quite a bit of gold at a group of people that small as a one-time expense.
2 million for each citizen of Greenland is 122 billion dollars. The war in Afghanistan has cost about 975 billion with no results or gains, and keeps costing money.
If you took the joke to its logical conclusion, suppose Denmark comes up with eleventy grillion dollars and buys the USA. What happens?
Denmark becomes the USA. It gets shitty health insurance and lots of guns.
320 million voters versus six million. It’s easy to see who’ll make the rules.
As to Greenland, what the US would get, obviously, is a black hole in the budget. It would gain nothing else. Whatever Greenland offers in terms of resources the United States can simply buy; buying the territory is nuts. It’s like me solving my food problems by buying the grocery store rather than just buying groceries.
To get an idea of scale though, the largest Greenland rare earths mining project is estimated to have a net present value of around $1.6bil, not a large number compared to what’s albeit half jokingly thrown around on the thread.
In contrast back in 1940 when the US took de facto control of Greenland after the German occupation of Denmark, then later took official control for the duration of the war in a deal with Danish authorities in exile, the cryolite mines at Ivituut in Greenland were the only commercial source of that material in the world, used in the smelting of aluminum. The threat to the Allied aluminum industry of being cut off from that supply by German seizure or destruction of that mine was a much bigger deal than any resource importance of Greenland right now.
Cryolite had been synthesized prior to WWII, that’s how Axis aluminum production had to get by, and as the US/Canadian industry expanded in WWII it used a greater % of synthetic cryolite. Post WWII synthetic became dominant and the Ivituut mine shut down in the 1980’s. As of now Greenland isn’t the economic lynch pin it was in 1940.