Oh Canada: We Will Neither Cower Nor Bend
More insane idiocy from the petty huckster clown king whose idea of governance is threatening lawsuits, trade wars, buildings that won't put his name on them; bungling war and peace; flaunting Nazi loyalty queries and sadistic images of black men in chains; and distracting from it all with the dumbass geographic circlejerk of inventing “LAKe AMeRiCA.” The Internet was born for this: Cue Donald Ducks, the Straits of Our Moose, Lake Dead Pedo Bestie, Lake Superior President Obama, and Lake Stupid Fucking Moron.
Last week, after God killed the wrong 80-year-old in the 784th year of a presidency that feels like "being in middle school when there's a substitute teacher and a student has a medical emergency," yet more banal slop issued from a needy racist sociopath so stupid he once seemingly conflated the Very Hard words "transistor" and "transgender" to claim Biden's CHIPS Act offered billions to domestic tech companies but "if you weren't transgender, (you) didn't qualify." Jesus. No wonder, à propos of nothing, the widely deemed "worst president in U.S. history" took time out from his busy mob boss schedule to declare himself the bestest - take that Honest Abe - after his faithful Human Printer dug up a similar 1948 Life Magazine chart, which is "exactly the kind of thing a healthy, high-functioning person shares."
Other things he did, abetted by a confederacy of dunces, stooges, techno-fascists, warmongers, crypto dorks, "unfuckable hate nerds" and "an actual Jewish Nazi": Having hit the six-month mark of his Iran debacle, he giddily proclaimed, "Mission Accomplished!" despite a. the only thing achieved is handing a newly empowered Iran control of the Strait of Hormuz as U.S. gas prices skyrocket and the economy implodes, b. he evidently missed the part where George W's 2003 banner aboard an aircraft carrier became a queasy punchline, c. he did so amidst reports his and Kegsbreath's said debacle has pushed the US military into a "beyond critical" shortage of money and missile interceptors in the case of an enemy attack, forcing them to shift funds around "in imaginative ways" - because everything he touches dies and we probably will too.
A fragile child, he demands fealty to even his ceaseless clusterfucks. Thus the latest inane authoritarian hokum from a Department of Homeland (sic) Security that alas hasn’t lost any of its fascist fervor since the brutal puppy-killing days of ICE Barbie. Its new, dystopian, “genuinely deranged” missive: A glowering image of Dear Dumb Leader with the dark challenge, “Did you remain loyal?”, which chillingly fails to consider just what atrocities they’re demanding allegiance to. The answer came in a post that swiftly followed: Sadistic footage of shackled Haitian immigrants, targeted after losing Temporary Protected Status for no reason but mindless, racist cruelty, being shuffled onto planes in pouring rain to the sneering tune of a Creole song about returning home - complete with fawning close-ups of the chains on their feet. Well done, sick fucks.
Meanwhile, the trail of destruction goes on apace. In D.C., after the East Wing and reflecting pool - we like the meme of him studying it with, "All I see is scum" and a lackey saying, "Well, it is a reflecting pool, sir" - we've reached the mobsters' "offer-they- can't-refuse" phase on the besieged Kennedy Center. Having repeatedly lost in court, the regime now threatens to demolish the not-long-ago-flourishing Center unless a tantrum-throwing 10-year-old gets his name "prominently added" to its exterior with "appropriate respect" of his efforts to "save” it from a fictional "death spiral" that's rendered it "dilapidated, outdated, decrepit and embarrassing to the Nation’s Capital," which is some pot/kettle. If they can't plaster his ghastly name over it - inscription, plaza et al - they'll replace it with "an outdoor amphitheater," aka a lawn.
They're also pushing to sell off part of Yosemite National Park, like everything else, to the highest bidder, though the seller is such an imbecile he still cringingly says "Yo, Semites!" He's such a petty dolt he's also skipping this year's 9/11 remembrance at Ground Zero because he wasn't allowed to give a Nazi speech there, opting to give it at the Pentagon before rushing off to the Irish Open at his crappy golf course, 'cause priorities. Having trashed jobs, health insurance, food aid, the environment and most of our global alliances, he blew up trade talks with Canada, calling its endlessly nice residents "nasty people," and holding a clownish Oval Office event to sign an idiotic executive order renaming Lake Ontario to “LAKe AMeRiCA,” which he's "been thinking about for a long time" with what's left of his tiny brain. (Here he is on trade: The stupid, it burns.)
"All it takes is a good pen and some intelligence,” he said, only batting one for two in a pretend-name-changing event labeled, "Making the Great Lakes Even Greater.” Then - what a feckin’ playacting infant - he drew a line through the doomed lake and intoned, “We have notified various people who needed to be notified...This is official.” He said he’d instructed craven lickspittle and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to "take all appropriate actions." Burgum slavishly wrote, “We’re on it, Mr. President!”, thus becoming the only person on Planet Earth to take this puerile claptrap seriously, evidently unaware an executive order is not a law and every ship entering the Great Lakes has to go through Canada's Welland Canal, including $26 billion in U.S. trade, and it would be a shame if Canada up and supersized their tolls, and thank you for your attention to this matter.
Uncle Bernie and most of America promptly responded they'd rather have affordable health care, thanks, also housing, food, education and cancer research. Nova Scotia's Conservative premier Tim Houston, "not exactly a firebrand," opined, “We’re into some real foolishness now. It’s Lake Ontario, buddy." Canada's newly combative Prime Minister Mark Carney, out of fucks to give, noted that long before Europeans came the lake was named by Native Americans using the Huron word "Ontari’io," for, "The lake is beautiful, the lake is big." "The name is more than 400 years old," he said. "Canadians know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario - then, now and always." The Canadian Resistance Army, who earlier defended penguins, also chimed in, declaring, "We're going to trade war/Beavers and moose won't take it any more."
Above all, it was agreed, “LAKe AMeRiCA" is what God invented the Internet for. The names spooled out in a gleeful torrent.
Lake Release the Epstein Files. Lake Gulf of Mexico. Lake Are We Doing This Again. Lake Micropenis. Lake Natalie. Lake Huron Thin Ice with Melania. Lake Universal Healthcare. Lake Eerily Overweight Pres Dick J. McRectum. Lake Felon. Lake Not Eerie. Lake Oh Canada. Lake Small Dick Energy. Many chose Lake Obama. Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers created the politically incorrect Lake Retard: "See, I can sign napkins that say things too." One decided to "just keep calling it Lake Epstein, like the Founders wanted." Mapquest, unlike cowering Google, not only declined to change the lake's name but invited viewers to "spread some geographic joy" and "name it whatever you want." One result: Lake Who Uses Mapquest Anymore.
Many noted the traditional Great Lakes litany of "H.O.M.E.S" had entirely logically become "S.H.A.M.E." People renamed their toilet bowl to Lake Trump. The White House to Home of Diaper Butt. Mar-a-Lago to Poopy Pants Palace. The United States of America to the Epstein States of Pedophiles, or just South Canada. President Trump to President Dickhead. California to Amerifornia. Strait of Hormuz to Strait of Our Moose. People mocked his thieving choice of one of the smallest and dirtiest Great Lakes. They noted, "Nobody in Ontario gives a single solitary fuck what Assclown McCrappy-Pants says about anything." They griped the name change "really screws with the lyrics of Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."
"What are they trying to distract us from this time?" they asked. Response: "The previous distraction." Some coddled the needy child-king: "Good for you, li'l fella." Some railed: "Jesus Christ, can somebody just get him a coloring book already?" Some were still baffled by how low we've gone: "Wait, this is real?" Some refused to go there: "Nope." Some summoned the great Talking Heads: "As things fell apart/Nobody paid much attention." And some fought back against the incessant bullying. After the Center for American Progress released a report finding billions spent on ICE thugs and National Guard swarms had no real effect on reducing violent crime, Trump threatened a $5 billion lawsuit if they didn't retract it. The center stood firm against "a transparent attempt to silence us." "We will neither cower nor bend in the face of it," they said. And, still and all, we will snark away.
Update: Talk about "Do not obey in advance": After defying the petty madness, usage of Mapquest has surged to about 50 times its usual rate, leapfrogging past Google and Apple Maps to become the most-downloaded mapping app, and the fourth most popular of all apps excluding games in the US. Along with their "spread some geographic joy" invite, they posted a mocking, all-caps retort: "OUR MAPS ARE BIG AND BEAUTIFUL. PEOPLE COME UP TO US AND SAY WE'LL GET THEM PLACES. AND WE DO!!" Lol.
Canada vs. the Epstein Statesof AmericaImage from Bluesky
Trump Killing Roadless Rule Would Put 400 Species on 'Extinction Fast Track,' Study Finds
A conservation group that ripped the Trump administration's recent move to repeal a rule protecting 45 million acres of national forest lands warned Wednesday that the proposed rollback would put 400 species on an "extinction fast track."
The Center for Biological Diversity released a study, titled "Deadly Incursions," that lays out how rescinding the landmark Roadless Area Conservation Rule would "open pristine public lands to road construction, commercial logging, and industrial development," damaging "natural areas, clean water, and wildlife protected under the Endangered Species Act."
"From the old-growth rainforests of Alaska's Tongass to the sky island ranges of the Southwest and the headwaters of the Appalachians, the most imperiled wildlife in America's national forests all need large, connected landscapes where nature's systems still function," the report reads. "The roadless rule has protected those landscapes since 2001."
The center found that if the rule ends, "7.4 million acres of designated critical habitat and nearly 1,800 miles of protected rivers and streams would be put at risk. This would pose a catastrophic threat to 88 federally protected animals and plants across the country with designated critical habitat in or affected by roadless areas, including grizzly bears, Canada lynxes, and native fish. Over 300 more species protected under the Endangered Species Act are found in roadless areas, but do not have designated protections for the places they live."
The document explains that road construction and logging don't just impact creatures on land. They also "cause significant soil erosion, sending sediment into waterways—raising water temperatures, smothering spawning beds, and degrading water quality downstream. This threatens imperiled aquatic life such as Chinook salmon, bull trout, candy darters, freshwater mussels, and frogs whose critical habitat may be outside roadless areas."
In addition to devastating already imperiled wildlife, from "Mexican spotted owls and Gila trout in the Southwest," to "rare butterflies and wildflowers nationwide," killing the roadless rule would have various other negative impacts, the analysis details. "Many roadless areas contain mature and old-growth forests that absorb and store vast amounts of carbon," and logging would release it, worsening the global climate emergency.
A Mexican spotted owl perches in a tree. (Phoo by Shaula Hedwall/US Fish and Wildlife Service)
The report also highlights that "national forests are the largest source of municipal drinking water in the United States, serving more than 60 million people in 33 states," and logging and road construction would increase pollution risks. Wildfire risk would also rise, the study stresses, citing research that found fires were four times as likely in areas with roads than in roadless forest.
The publication further points out that "the Forest Service manages approximately 370,000 miles of roads—roughly eight times the length of the nation’s Interstate Highway System—and faces a multibillion-dollar maintenance backlog. Expanding the road network into previously undeveloped areas would increase long-term infrastructure and maintenance costs paid by taxpayers."
Randi Spivak, the center's public lands policy director, said Wednesday that "our national forests are home to some of America's most iconic animals, from grizzlies to hellbenders. These forests provide clean drinking water to countless communities. Bulldozing more roads through them will mean dirtier water, fragmented wildlife habitat, and greater wildfire risk."
"For a generation, the roadless rule has kept our wildest places wild," Spivak said. If President Donald Trump "succeeds in scrapping it, he'll do irreversible damage to our wildlife, water, and the wild places that define the American landscape."
After Trump's agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins, announced early last week that the Forest Service had filed a proposal to fully rescind the roadless rule, the administration on Friday took aim at another policy meant to protect public lands: the Travel Management Rule.
"This is yet another egregious attack in the systematic dismantling of public lands management of our national forests," declared Dan Hartinger, senior director for agency policy at the Wilderness Society. "Paired with the proposed repeal of the roadless rule, this destructive agenda sells out future generations' enjoyment of our forests in order to hand them over for corporate profits."
Thomas Delehanty, senior attorney with Earthjustice's Rocky Mountain Office, also blasted the administration for targeting the roadless rule and "attempting to open up our national forests to more off-road vehicle use that will degrade the landscape and disturb wildlife and other land users."
"Some places in our national forests are meant for quiet, undisturbed recreation and protecting sensitive wildlife, including endangered species," said Delehanty. "This rule would open all roads and trails to ORVs by default, meaning areas set aside for hiking, hunting, or horseback riding could soon be fair game to four-wheelers and dirt bikes."
