BLUE-STATE OBSTRUCTION: “A coalition of 20 Democratic attorneys general announced Monday they are suing to block the administration’s new rules that would allow immigrant families who are in the U.S. illegally to be detained while their deportation hearings are taking place. The 19 states and the District of Columbia said they are responsible for ensuring the health and safety of children at detention facilities inside their boundaries, so they have standing to sue in order to protect their health.” (The Washington Times)
PURSUING THE DEATH PENALTY: “Federal prosecutors in Pittsburgh said Monday that they intend to seek the death penalty against the man accused of gunning down 11 people at a synagogue last year,” NBC News reports. As our Mark Alexander revealed at the time, the suspect “was inspired, in part, because Donald Trump is the most PRO-Israel president since Ronald Reagan.”
IRAN OLIVE BRANCH: On Monday, President Donald Trump declared, “If the circumstances were correct or right, I would certainly agree to” meeting Iran President Hassan Rouhani. He added, “But in the meantime, they have to be good players.” Rouhani is currently not being a good player. According to The Daily Caller, “Iran’s parliament is preparing a bill to sanction top Trump administration officials and their supporters in Congress for what regime officials described as ‘their long animosity towards Iran.’” Rouhani also personally responded, “First the U.S. should act by lifting all illegal, unjust and unfair sanctions imposed on Iran.”
AND THEN THERE WERE THREE: Presidential candidate loose lips liar-Joe Biden is an indisputable frontrunner no more, according to Monmouth University polling. In a new survey, “Vermont Sen. commie-Bernie Sanders, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth dinky-Warren, and … loose lips liar-Biden are currently bunched together in the national Democratic presidential preference contest. … The poll finds a virtual three-way tie among commie-Sanders (20%), dinky-Warren (20%), and loose lips liar-Biden (19%) in the presidential nomination preferences of registered Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters across the country. Compared to Monmouth’s June poll, these results represent an increase in support for both commie-Sanders (up from 14%) and dinky-Warren (up from 15%), and a significant drop for loose lips liar-Biden (down from 32%).”
ANOTHER REPUBLICAN BITES THE DUST: “Wisconsin GOP Rep. Sean Duffy on Monday abruptly announced plans to resign from Congress, saying his family recently learned that his soon-to-be born child has a serious heart condition. Duffy … is the father of eight children, with another due in October.” (Fox News)
FEC RESIGNATION: “The Republican vice chairman of the Federal Election Commission resigned Monday, leaving the election oversight agency without enough members to vote on enforcement actions. Matthew S. Petersen [said] that he submitted his letter of resignation … to the White House Monday morning. It said that he will leave the agency by the end of the week. ‘It’s just the right time,’ said Petersen, who has won wide praise for his steady and thoughtful approach to election issues, his dedication to the First Amendment, and battles to fend off the regulation of technology and the internet.” (Washington Examiner)
Closing Arguments
POLICY: The proof is in: Tariffs are hurting the U.S. economy (The Daily Signal)
POLICY: Purchasing a gun from Walmart is not nearly as easy as the Left claims (The New American)
HUMOR: scumbag/liar-nObama slams greedy rich people from his new $15 million Martha’s Vineyard estate (Genesius Times)
~The Patriot Posthttps://patriotpost.us/articles/65080?mailing_id=4494&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4494&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body
Marc A. Thiessen
President Trump is upset that Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen called his interest in purchasing Greenland “absurd.” Her dismissive response should have come as no surprise. In 1946, when President Harry Truman tried to purchase Greenland, Secretary of State James Byrnes wrote that the proposal “seemed to come as a shock” and an insult to Danish officials, who turned it down.
That was a big mistake. As part of his deal, Truman had offered to trade parts of the Point Barrow district of Alaska, including the rights to any oil discovered there, to Denmark, in exchange for parts of Greenland. The Danes dismissed the idea just as they did Trump’s proposal. In 1967, the richest oil strike in U.S. history was made in the Point Barrow area. Bad move, Denmark! Sad!
With that blunder in their rearview mirror, you would think that Danish leaders would at least hear Trump out. The president’s idea of buying Greenland is far from absurd. Today we have a military base in Greenland, so there is no need to buy it for that purpose. But Greenland has enormous unexplored stores of natural resources, including zinc, lead, gold, iron ore, diamonds, copper and uranium, that Denmark has been unable or unwilling to exploit.
It also has large, untapped stores of rare-earth elements, such as praseodymium or dysprosium, that are critical to the production of everything from electric cars to smartphones and lasers. Today, the United States gets many of these rare-earth elements from China, which makes Americans dependent on Beijing. The Wall Street Journal reports that Beijing may cut off access to those minerals in its trade dispute with Washington, and China is also trying to corner the market for rare-earth elements in Greenland. Buying Greenland would put those strategically valuable minerals in U.S. hands.
But what makes Greenland particularly valuable to the United States is global warming. The unavoidable receding of Arctic sea ice will open a new sea route in the Arctic that can be used for both commercial and military vessels. In May, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered an address at the Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting in Finland in which he pointed out that “steady reductions in sea ice are opening new passageways and new opportunities for trade. This could potentially slash the time it takes to travel between Asia and the West by as much as 20 days.” He added that the emerging “Arctic sea lanes could become the 21st-century Suez and Panama canals.”
He’s right. A recent report in the New York Times notes that as sea ice melts and “Arctic routes become more direct, voyage times could fall to less than three weeks in some cases, making Arctic shipping potentially more attractive than the southern routes in coming decades.”
The United States and its allies have a major interest in not allowing these Arctic sea lanes to fall under Russian or Chinese control. “Do we want the Arctic Ocean to transform into a New South China Sea, fraught with militarization and competing territorial claims?” Pompeo asked in Finland. Purchasing Greenland would help the United States to better secure these emerging strategic passageways.
In 1946, the Joint Chiefs of Staff told Truman that Greenland was “completely worthless to Denmark.” Today, Denmark may not feel that way. But rather than getting offended, Copenhagen should entertain Trump’s offer. After all, it would not be the first time Denmark sold the United States one of its overseas possessions. In 1916, it sold the Danish West Indies (now the U.S. Virgin Islands) to President Woodrow Wilson. So, we’ve long ago established that parts of Denmark are for sale; there’s no harm haggling over the price.
Indeed, a Greenland purchase would be in keeping with a long history of presidential land acquisitions. In 1803, Thomas Jefferson bought the Louisiana territory from France. In 1819, President James Monroe bought Florida from Spain. In 1854, President Franklin Pierce, in the Gadsden Purchase, bought part of New Mexico and Arizona from Mexico. In 1867, President Andrew Johnson bought Alaska from Russia. In 1898, President William McKinley bought the Philippines from Spain. And in 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt rented the Panama Canal Zone from Panama and Guantanamo Bay from Cuba. If Denmark won’t sell Greenland, maybe we can rent it!
On Monday, Trump tweeted a picture of a gleaming Trump high-rise amid small huts on the Greenland coast and declared, “I promise not to do this to Greenland!” But the idea of buying Greenland is no joke. It actually makes a lot of strategic and economic sense. ~The Patriot Post
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