Would your state like to become Canada's 11th province?

Yesterday I wrote that the House ban on transgender people (meaning Rep. Sarah McBride) using single-sex bathrooms didn’t make it into the rules for this Congress. Alix Breeden of Daily Kos has an update. As was done after the election Speaker Johnson announced the ban, using his authority as Speaker to just do it. So the ban is back. A staffer says Johnson did it on his own so that House members didn’t have to vote on it (and have that vote on record). Over the last couple days I’ve had in a browser tab the Incidents page from CalFire zoomed in to Los Angeles and on to the north to see the extent of the Palisades Fire (over 21.3K acres or 33 square miles), the Eaton fire (over 13.7K acres, 21 square miles), and the smaller Kenneth, Hurst, and Lidia fires. The fires ignited in hurricane strength dry Santa Ana winds and have destroyed more than twelve thousand buildings, most of them homes. Thankfully, only ten deaths reported so far. Reports say this will be the most expensive disaster in the history of Los Angeles. This huge loss of housing will make the housing crisis much worse. Rebuilding will take years. Emily Singer of Kos discussed that this disaster will be the first test of the new Congress and the nasty guy. The test will be simple: Will they help through supplying disaster relief and recovery money, or not? Speaker Johnson was noncommittal. The nasty guy spread lies and hurled insults at Gov. Gavin Newsom. So... probably not. Biden already triggered federal emergency response and said he’ll be there “as long as it takes” (or until he leaves office in ten days). That link and the ones below include photos of the fire, which you may want to look at or avoid. Morgan Stephens of Kos has more about the lies Musk and the nasty guy have been saying about the fires. They’re more interested in the politics they can squeeze out of the damage than they are in the lives of the people who are now homeless. Oliver Willis of Kos reported that far right media is blaming the fires on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs. The claim is such programs undermine the effectiveness of business and government response. Supporters of DEI say that the programs make government more effective and please stop saying that white men are the only ones who are capable. Following the lead of the nasty guy far right media has “prioritized bigotry and politics over the lives of tens of thousands Americans.” I’ve written that the nasty guy wants to annex the Panama Canal, Canada, and Greenland. With force, if necessary. He’s also talked about renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. Breeden reports that officials in both Canada and Mexico are trolling. Elizabeth May, leader of Canada’s Green Party has an offer. Would California, or maybe Oregon or Washington be interested in becoming Canada’s 11th province? From a press conference on Wednesday:

No more one-year-olds who suddenly fall off the Medicaid list and their parents are in the news because they’re trying to do a GoFundMe to get their daughter to a doctor. And guess what? Those gun laws that your Congress is too afraid to pass because of the National Gun lobby? We already got our strict gun laws. That’s why we have the safest streets around the world.

She added Canada still offers the right to abortion. She has an offer for the nasty guy. He could get rid of all the states that always vote for Democrats. They’d even take Bernie Sanders off his hands. Drat. Michigan doesn’t always vote Democratic. Yet I think we have closer ties to Canada than California does. Off the Southern border Claudia Scheinbaum stood in front of a map of North America of 1607 with a big chunk of the center of the continent labeled Mexican America. “It sounds pretty, no?” As for the Gulf of Mexico, it was named 170 years before the US was founded. Stephens reported:

GOP senators were left bewildered after President-elect Donald Trump delivered a bizarre hour-long rant on Tuesday about annexing Greenland and the Panama Canal. Two top Senate Republicans voiced their confusion and uncertainty as to what Trump meant when he said he wanted to acquire Greenland and the Panama Canal during his press conference.

Bill from Portland, Maine, in a Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, included late night commentary. A good one:

“Canada can’t become part of America. That’s the country I pretend to be from when I’m traveling abroad.” —The Daily Show host Desi Lydic

In the comments of a pundit roundup for Kos is a cartoon by Michael de Adder. It is labeled “Canada invading the USA” and shows planes helping put out the Los Angeles fires. I had heard on Canadian news that planes had been sent and that one had already been damaged by striking a drone. There is also a cartoon by Max Espinoza and posted by BabylonBros. He added the trash talking would happen soon, but saw it is already happening. The cartoon shows an elephant watching a woman read her crystal ball. She says, “I see you blaming the L.A. fires on a water restoration declaration that doesn’t exist! Then, when that doesn’t work, you’re going to blame DEI, gay kids and illegal immigrants!” Singer reported:

Donald Trump's co-president, Elon Musk, admitted on Wednesday that he probably can't cut $2 trillion from the federal budget as he had promised, running into the political reality everyone told him existed but that he refused to accept because he’s a billionaire who thinks he knows better than everyone else. In an interview with Mark Penn, the contemptible political strategist who once backed Democrats but now has become a Trump defender, Musk said that his toothless Department of Government Efficiency advisory committee can probably cut only half of the original $2 billion he promised to slash.