Seen at Don Surber’s place, this tongue-in-cheek poll:
There are two points to be made here. Surber points out, correctly, that Alberta ain’t Alabama. Albertans are only conservative compared to, say, their Ontario compatriots. Adding AB to the U.S. would give the Socialist Party two new U.S. Senators and several U.S. House seats. This, by the way, is true of all the Canucki fiefdoms (“Fiefdoms, Kim?” Remember that the actual political leader of Canada — albeit of the rubber-stamp variety — is King Charles III, as Surber also points out).
In the larger sense, this is also true of Cuba, Venezuela and any of our neighboring countries — they’re all frigging Commies, and we sure as hell don’t need more of them in our blessed Republic. So, as my old friend Patterson would say, fuck that idea for a bowl of cherries.
And as much as the last suggestion (de-stating Minnesota) may seem appealing, that opens Pandora’s Box of Nastiness, because then we’d have to consider the idea of doing the same to (deep breath) California, Massachusetts, Illinois and New York. (Also, as attractive as it may seem at first, we should forget throwing out New Mexico unless we want an actual Mexican Salient sticking into our underbelly.)
Nah. Let’s keep all the kiddies in the house, so to speak, and just control their behavior the old-fashioned way: by whacking their little pee-pees, politically speaking, whenever they get too obstreperous.
As for Cuba, or Venezuela, make them U.S. Territories. They are subject to federal jurisdiction, but not sovereign. Residents cannot vote for the President of the U.S. and they only have non-voting representation in the House of Representatives.
We’re not into empire building, but we should run them until such time as we can ensure they can run themselves. I would not call this activity “nation building” like we’ve tried in the Middle East. But both Cuba and Venezuela were once vibrant, free countries, we’re “liberating” them. But they’d have to build their own nation. In the meantime, I’d like to see us just run them both directly for a while.
Yeah, that’s worked out real well with Puerto Rico. Sorry, I’m voting no to any new territories.
As an example, we did this with the Philippines from 1898 to 1946.
Surber points out, correctly, that Alberta ain’t Alabama. Albertans are only conservative compared to, say, their Ontario compatriots.
I make the same point about California when people talk about Cali’s relocating to Texas (or Florida, for that matter). Some argue that only the conservative Cali’s are moving and we should welcome them, I point out they are only conservative compared to other Cali’s. They ain’t the Texas level of conservative.
If we want more states, I believe there are several initiatives for say, Northern California to split into a new conservative state, Eastern Oregon also. That may or may not help the House, but it could certainly help the Senate.
California should be split into several other states. Keep a couple of the deep ports with the conservative sections of california.
I’d rather Cuba, Venezuela remain “free” puppet states or use the CIA to turn them into Javier Milei’s Argentina with severe consequences to socialists