Landing on UK airfields. Fueling up. Preparing to fly off and be defensive.
Kinda like how William, in 1056, had his flotilla of ships, carrying infantry and cavalry with intent to conquer England starting at Hastings?
Defense was not on Willliam’s mind so don’t ask me what Starmer is thinking. He’s a knight.
France and the UK drew different conclusions from US opposition to the Suez attack in 1956. The UK “deep state” made the default option to stick as close as possible to the US, needing it for intelligence sharing and support for the UK’s nuclear delusions. For the French political establishment it reinforced longstanding caution about the US’s reliability, dating back (I suspect) to the collapse of the proto-NATO security pact after WW1, and fuelled subsequently by different reasons for left and right.
Another problem with the U.S. system of government is the lack of any kind of votes for people in Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the United States Virgin Islands. People who live there are American citizens. However, they have no votes in the Senate, the House of Representatives, or the electoral college. Many Americans don’t know that these people are American citizens. You occasionally hear some Americans complain that people born in Puerto Rico should go back where they came from, since they mostly speak Spanish better than English. That’s irrelevant, of course. The moment they move from Puerto Rico to one of the fifty states, they get to vote there, since they have always been American citizens. That’s true of the other four territories too.
The U.S. has been somewhat slow in making the recently acquired areas into states. It was a somewhat faster process for the first 48 states. In those cases, they generally were relatively quickly made into states and thus had Senate, House, and electoral college votes. It was a slower process making Alaska and Hawaii into states and thus getting votes. Washington, D.C. was always part of the U.S., and yet it didn’t get even electoral college votes until 1961. It still has no votes in the Senate or the House.
If Puerto Rico were a state, it would gain two senators. Almost certainly Democrats, yet the other side doesn’t play fair (or even bring up this entire notion of statehood for PR).
Either 5 or 6 congressman and I’d assume the GOP has already mapped out the gerrymandering to give them at least 2.
Plus, what about the 435 limit? That was temporarily lifted to 437 when Florida and Alaska were admitted in 1959. Then reapportioned so 435 restored.
So just Puerto Rico would likely get one from California, New York and Florida as per what the census says. How they pick them, I don’t know yet my WAG is trump has non-constitutional voice in it.
For the others, I don’t know much. The Marianas were (are?) used for low wage labor so “Made in the USA” can be put on garments. Maybe some of the others.
If it were all set to happen at once, the GOP has got an angle on how they win. Otherwise it’d be like annexing Canada, as a whole or keeping the provinces. A long time Democratic Congress,
This whole “Canada as a state” or “Canadian provinces as states” needs to be put to bed.
The plan is to have Canada as a territory to be exploited for resources, or possibly a vassal state to be exploited for resources. In neither case will there be any political representation whatsoever.
Canada being a U.S. state was simply another one of Trump’s stupid offhand ideas. It has never been popular, even among his supporters. About two-thirds of Americans think it’s a stupid idea.
Besides, Trump doesn’t want existing US states to have any say in how things are run. Everyone and everything is supposed to belong to him and do whatever he says.
Saying he wants Canada to be a state is just a way of him saying “MINE!” like a toddler.
Most residents of Puerto Rico don’t pay federal income tax. They do pay federal payroll taxes.
Is this also true of American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the United States Virgin Islands?
It has, however, had an unbelievable effect in Canada. We are talking it seriously. You may think it is foolish for us to do so, but there has been a 150° shift (not quite 180) in how Canadians view America, and has at least dampened the positive view of Americans. This effect is real and enduring.
We know the class bully is just picking on us because he perceives us to be weak, but… who wants to be friends with the class bully?
It’s complicated. As far as I can tell, some of those places pay the equivalent of a federal income tax, but it gets used only locally.
Not at all from my POV and many others (including non-Canadians). trump has already shot missiles at Iran and declared victory, and now he’s created a melee from Cyprus till you leave the Suez Canal.
Alas, the pictures I’m seeing of the American KIA (?) so far are of a captain and high level seargents. Looks to me like Army cameo. The Iranian Army has a high reputation (from where I’ve no idea), yet they’re fighting on their own land.
trump can do what he thinks he wants in his first use of military aircraft (outside the illegal assassination in his last term) yet if Hegseth has put boots on the ground with a mission, i’ve no doubt the victor yet at what cost?
ETA: Just to address Canada - if this is all they’ve got Congress - yes they exist - can shut down any incursion into Canada day 1. Yet if the Bacardi family gives their okay, Cuba will be next.
Missed edit:
USS Tripoli, 31st MEU Heading to the Middle East
3,200 marines.
A bit off-topic. Yet the “special relationship” country that has no Churchill would rather the USA gets their air-fleet of “defensive” aircraft aloft to “defend” whomever the USA was lying abotu defending.
The damage being done to America’s reputation as a reliable defence partner is generational, and will not be repaired for many years, and in some cases never. Of course the French have never trusted America since Suez, but we seem to have collectively blocked that out of our memory.
Never? Wow! I congratulate you on your ability to predict the future for the rest of the infinite history of the universe. You know about the book The History of the Human Race published in 2,078,961,543 A.D. It contains a chapter about the U.S. which is fairly complementary to it up to the final sentence and then it says, “Then Donald Trump was elected and no good ever happened there for the rest of time.”
Y’know, we really need to slow down when writing. But we’ll never forget when Japan bombed Tampa Bay. 
(Latest Census computation for PR admission scenario: 4 House seats.)
(Senate, looking at it from here on the ground, would be almost certainly 1/1 of each caucus upon admission and until the first couple of full terms come around.)
At best, not only will all those foreign leaders, diplomats, and military allies Trump has crapped on have to die, the young ones they they are mentoring will have to mature, pass on their wisdom, then shuffle off this mortal coil as well. Two generations, minimum, more likely three or more.
Close enough to ‘never’ for most people.
Moderating:
You can make your points without the world-weary, snarky attack on the poster. Or if you can’t, don’t respond. Dial it back. A lot.
Krugman’s latest has the data showing how far the US’s reputation has fallen in the eyes of our allies:
It has fallen the least in the UK, but has still fallen quite a bit.
You think that Canadians don’t have access to CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC and all the other media that infiltrate our cable systems and airwaves? It’s a freaking epidemic, an overwhelming flood of Americanism, and as Noam Chomsky famously said, those media “adopt the basic framework of state and private power, mostly uncritically.”.