Land? Yes. Green? No. Is that where he thought he was building his next golf course based on its name?
We've tried to buy Greenland a few times since after the civil war. Denmark always says no. The only scandal is that Trump thinks through some nifty negotiation technique he's going to change their minds. Of course, all he's actually doing is wasting people's time and annoying the shit out of everyone involved. The US would probably make more use of Greenland than Denmark ever will though.
What would we actually want with Greenland? Do they have some oil reserves that I haven't heard about?
"Scapegoating" guns is less about taking your rights away and more about reality. It's impossible to quantify a person's state of mind in terms of how mentally ill a person is, mostly because there isn't a way to define with any certainty what levels of mental illness exist. Especially when so many mental illnesses occur on a spectrum. As a result, there will never be a law that states that you must be this sane to own a gun. There is no field sobriety test for mental illness. On the other hand, you can write all the regulations you want on a physical object or state of being because there are specific properties, like size, weight, dead or alive, did you steal or not, etc. Even if there was a way to quantify mental illness, it still wouldn't prevent mass shootings. No amount of care for mental illness would prevent crimes of passion, temporary insanity, or someone with shitty values with a gun and an opportunity. The only surefire way I can think of to reduce the risk of gun violence is having fewer guns in circulation. It doesn't make any logical sense to me that more guns would decrease the number of opportunities for gun violence to occur. That would be like me being told that instead of lowering the water level of a pool to help prevent drowning, I should add more because it'll make people swim harder.
Probably not, but just because it hasn't been found doesn't mean it's definitely not there. The main industries to be developed would start with fishing and mining. Of course, the military wants to set up additional bases there. Greenland isn't hugely valuable (as far as we know today) but there's economic opportunities there for people that could stand the climate. Right now most of the population is still Native American.
Perhaps it’s the opening salvo of northern territory grabs for when climate change forces relocations from the south?
Indeed. It's not unreasonable that the US would have an interest in Greenland, the unreasonable part is thinking that modern liberal democracies buy and sell territory that have indigenous populations on them in 2019, that Denmark would be at all interested in giving up their existing claims to the region, and to act like a petulant child about it when told no. Also that the President is focusing on a pipe dream when there are a ton of more pressing issues to deal with.
Greenland still has a massive ice sheet on top of it; we'll be well and truly fucked by the time it gets down to bare grass and can be lived on. As clutch mentioned it is likely much more about strategic positioning in an increasingly accessible arctic ocean.
Maybe the whole climate change will be over quick like in The Day After Tomorrow? The New York Public Library is only like 4 hours away if I need shelter.
There's no shortage of land on the islands and coastline that's habitable, not that it would be an enviable place to live for most people. There's natural resources that add to the value substantially in addition to military interests. Greenland isn't worth shit compared to land marginally closer to the equator, but it's not an inhospitable dead zone like most of Antarctica.
Meanwhile on the other side of the pond, Boris Johnson's grand plan to make the gauge of the rod that's about to be rammed up the UK's ass slightly smaller is... for Ireland to abandon EU trading rules and adopt ones from the UK. Ireland for their part responded by getting piss drunk and signing songs about the Easter Rising. Jesus Christ Boris, if this is what you're counting on to avoid disaster, the disaster is going to be worse than I thought.
Meanwhile, a leaked government document reveals that they know they’re already completely fucked and which holes they’ll be taking it in even.
Johnson isn't well equipped to deal with the current crisis, and I don't have a high opinion of him as a prime minister, but it's the deadlock in parliament that's going to sink Great Britain. There is no deal parliament would pass or agree to. None. If I was British I would be bracing myself for an inflation crisis. So much so I would convert my savings to another currency.
They should have been working on a transition since the referendum. They've done jack shit. It's fucking incredible. It was always going to be a bumpy road, making a change of that magnitude. Much too large for any document or collection of documents to predict and account for all the variables, but to let themselves get caught with their pants down 3 YEARS after the referendum? It speaks volumes about how modern partisanship can run a country into the ground.
If I was British I’d try my best to get the fuck out. Unless I was living in the country and could sustain myself for several months up to a year plus living entirely off what I grew and raised (eating children doesn’t count), then I’d GTFO immediately. There’s no way this doesn’t end in widespread shortages of everything from food to gas and massive civil unrest.