Americans have always thought of Canada as a little America Jr, our nation’s hat, etc., to the extent we’ve thought about them at (very little). Turns out we are nothing alike, Canada isn’t even a country in any conventional sense. Good luck to my mutual up there, seems bad!

Trudeau has a dilemma. Somebody, probably Cynthia Freeland who is (unlike Trudeau) not an idiot, has clued Trudeau in that interprovincial tariffs and GST have been strangling the Canadian economy for a long time, and this is a drag the country can no longer afford if the US isn't an extremely benign and forgiving trade partner. But fixing this problem starts some dominoes falling. Quebec, which has an extremely powerful and coddled dairy industry, run by the Canadian version of the Mafia, has lobbied its way into a 300% tariff on imported dairy. That's going to be impossible to defend if interprovincial tariffs go away - even if other Canadian producers don't undercut them, American dairy coming over the border will. The profits from the Mob's money machine will go poof. This is going to sound crazy, but a well-informed friend tells me (and a bit of web research backs him up) that Quebec might very well secede over this, and the Ontario government knows it. The Parti Quebecois has not gone away. The scenario goes like this: flush with mob money, PQ gins up and wins secession referendum. J. Random Voter doesn't grasp that what he has voted for is to keep the corrupt dairy industry afloat and the Mob's profits fat, but that's what happens. If Quebec secedes, it breaks Canada. Newfoundland and the Maritimes, isolated from the rest of the Anglo region and not viable on their own, have no good alternatives to applying for U.S. statehood. There's an active secessionist movement in Alberta that the U.S. has very carefully refrained from encouraging. Albertan oil is the economic engine of the country, and Albertans resent that they're heavily taxed so Ontario can funnel t.ransfer payments to other provinces. If the Ontario government is unable to keep Quebec and the Eastern seaboard in the Union, Trump might get his 51st state because Alberta heads for the exits. But the fun doesn't stop there. The Maritimes aren't a big deal, but without Alberta and Quebec, Canada is an economic basket case, and the viability of the Union is probably down to single-digit years.

472k subscribers for Jen Rubin/Norm Eisen's Substack is the most blackpilling thing I've seen for the Democratic base yet....these people are probably beyond saving.

🚨BREAKING: Elon Musk says that there is a literal limestone mine where they store all the US Government's retirement paperwork built in 1950 that they need to go up and down every time they want to retire someone from Federal Government. The speed in which they can retire people is limited by the speed of the elevator shaft. Yes, actually.