3 min read
Oh, Jesus. Not Greenland again. And a mutuality of interest at work. The president needs a new distraction, and the governor of Louisiana needs not to be in Louisiana for a while. From The New York Times:
Within hours of landing on Sunday in Nuuk, Greenland’s capital, Mr. Landry was touring the town in a cold drizzle when one Greenlander gave his entourage the finger. After he offered some MAGA hats to Greenlandic children, several shook their heads. He even told some kids that if they came to his mansion in Louisiana, they could have “all the chocolate chip cookies you can eat.”
Pardon me while I go put a bag over my head.
“We have our red lines,” he told DR, Denmark’s public broadcaster. “And no matter how many chocolate cookies we get, we are not going to change them.” Mr. Landry’s high-profile visit—his first since being appointed in December as Mr. Trump’s point person on Greenland—comes at an exceedingly awkward time. Confidential negotiations over Greenland’s future have been unfolding in Washington, and officials have told The New York Times that Greenland’s leaders are wary of the direction in which the talks are headed.The United States is insisting on a much bigger role in Greenland, perhaps not as drastic as seizing the island as Mr. Trump has threatened, but with major oversight over the country’s economic and security affairs. The Trump administration wants effective veto power over any sizable investment deals to box out competitors like Russia and China, officials said. And the American officials are pushing to insert a forever clause into a decades-old military agreement so that if Greenland ever becomes independent, U.S. troops will remain on the island
If we really wanted these demands, maybe we shouldn’t have elected for the second time an incompetent know-nothing with a brain full of amyloid and spiders.
Greenlandic officials are watching Mr. Landry’s trip closely and have taken issue with an American doctor accompanying the governor to assess the medical situation. The Danish territory’s health care system, which is publicly supported, is one of the top reasons Greenlanders cite for not wanting to join the United States. They fear losing their Scandinavian-style social net under an American system that to them stands for vast inequality and dysfunction.“Greenlanders are not experimental subjects in a geopolitical project,” said Greenland’s health minister, Anna Wangenheim.
Maybe if Landry wanted to portray himself as a happy American hat-mongering Cookie Monster, he shouldn’t have shown up in military fatigues. Pro tip. And I would like to nominate minister Wangenheim for HHS secretary in the next Democratic administration.
In any case, Landry’s probably happy to be in the sub-Arctic these days. He was a good little puppy and ordered Louisiana’s pet legislature to redistrict the state after the Supreme Court declared a new Day of Jubilee in the case of … wait for it … Louisiana v. Callais. Since then, many of our fellow citizens in Louisiana have embarked on a campaign to recall Governor Landry. From the Shreveport Times (and the delightfully Dixie-monickered Presley Bo Tyler.):
The political movement “Louisiana Deserves Better” has created a statewide petition to recall Governor Jeff Landry over recent leadership concerns. The recall campaign’s mission is to “hold elected officials accountable to the people of Louisiana.” The organization needs more 600,000 signatures on their petition, which has been approved by the Louisiana Secretary of State, to recall Governor Landry. There is also another statewide petition to recall Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, which needs 600,000 signatures by November 2026. Many residents have flocked to sign the petition after recent governmental leadership issues like voting rights, environmental policy and government overreach.
My experience with the Scott Walker recall in Wisconsin doesn’t make me optimistic of the success of one in blood-red Louisiana. But inconveniencing people like Landry and Murrill is doing god’s work all on its own.