Canada to cut off electricity to US states: "Need to feel the pain"
Canada to cut off electricity to US states: "Need to feel the pain"
U.S. President Donald Trump has imposed a new round of tariffs targeting Canada, Mexico and China.
Summary
Ontario Premier Doug Ford warned that Canada could cut electricity exports to the U.S. in retaliation for Donald Trump’s new tariffs on Canadian goods.
The U.S. imposed a 25% tariff on most Canadian imports, citing border security concerns. Ford emphasized that U.S. states like New York and Michigan rely on Canadian energy and should “feel the pain.”
Canadian officials also announced $155 billion in counter-tariffs.
If enacted, energy restrictions would likely raise prices in the U.S., escalating trade tensions between the two countries.
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As an American, I agree 100%. Canada needs to kick our ass. We deserve it.
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I agree with the sentiment but those states are all pretty blue. Trump might just let it happen to widen the divide and somehow claim that it's punishment for not bending the knee.
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those states are all pretty blue.
Minnesota is. Michigan tends to be (especially now that our districts are drawn independently), but we voted for Trump as a state. And New York is mostly red except for NYC.
I almost want to see our power bills skyrocket in Michigan. But at the same time I know full well the dipshits who voted red (including my own family) will blame everyone else before they blame the people who might end abortion. So it won’t matter. They won’t learn. Instead we’ll all suffer because of their idiocy and they’ll continue to think that we’re winning.
(In fact they’ll be thrilled because it will mean increased oil and natural gas production to close the gap in demand.)
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There are no blue states. It's red country and blue cities.
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Vermont in particular is heavily dependent on imported energy.
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Maybe you guys should just kick out the traitors that very obviously work for a foreign government.
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We wanted to. Unfortunately, the corporations run the country and so we have no effective opposition party. The Democrats are as beholden to big money donors as the Mazis.
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Good for them, maybe our economy will collapse too, and an angry mob will storm the white house and kick Trump out. He can emergency evacuate to Russia, and we can find an administration that isn't insane.
Heyy.. a guy can dream.
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sort of the best case scenario
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Best case Ontario.
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Cept that is what the rich want. Shit to fall apart. Cuz then they get to buy shit up for cheap and consolidate even more wealth.
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We won't do shit until we are literally starving. Look right here at Lemmy, non-stop memes and stories about how what horrible economic shape we're in. So how is everyone fat?! Meanwhile, I go to work and look at what's for sale, at what prices, and think, "Jesus, people pay for this?!"
Even the Great Depression didn't have us storming the White House. Think on that.
tl;dr: Americans aren't near broke enough to band together.
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You say that but the other team went far into your capitol and they looked well nourished enough.
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Very true.
But we're speedrunning the fall of America.
Give it another year or two. You'll start seeing widespread violence. We can only cross our fingers that it gets directed properly toward our traitorous government.
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The great depression had the bonus march. They camped in front of the white house and were dispersed with tear gas and cavalry charge led by Douglas MacArthur.
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Yeah, thats why I said a total system collapses. And that's not out of the question.
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Feel free to get on with that angry mobbing.
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I wish we weren't pinning our hopes on angry mobs. But you play the hand you are delt.
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Considering he won an undisputed election and at least a quarter of his base are gun nuts, plus police love to use excessive force & violence, that scenario would probably play out poorly for pretty much everyone. I would say try to show conservatives how terrible he really is, but that's not going to happen in Lemmy. I'm not even conservative, I'm anti-authoritarian centrist but even I find this place extremely hostile to conversation with anyone who doesn't embrace the group-think.
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(Copy-pasting from another thread)
I like Cory Doctorow’s plan.
The reason Canada got tariff-free access to sell to the US in the first place? Canada agreed to enforce penalties for tampering with digital locks, following the premise of the Digital Milennium Copyright Act.
If the US is going back on the deal, then Canada should too. Make it legal to jailbreak all US tech.
Doctorow advocating for this plan:
- On Democracy Now
- On his blog
- On his podcast
- In the Ursula Franklin lecture at the University of Toronto’s Innis College (I especially enjoyed this one, but it is the longest)
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Thanks for sharing this info mate...It's a eye opener....Just fuck the technocrats.
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Big up DemocracyNow. Every American should have them as one of their sources of news.
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Now that’s an idea! Hit us back where it hurts, right in the oligarchs
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Doctorow likes to put it as “hitting them right in the dongle”.
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We could stop respecting US copyright laws everywhere outside of the US. That would be hilarious.
I mean I already don't respect them, but legally they still matter unfortunately.
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Do it unilaterally without discussing with US.
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Or even better: Discuss it with Ukraine, US gets no say in the deal. And if drumpf disagrees, the reply will be "you don't want electricity."
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I actually had a good laugh at this... Then I had to login to my second account to up vote this twice.
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... so that people probably die? Really?
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Be mad at trump
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The only people who are dying are those who are trying to defend their country from a mad man intent on concurring them and those who are fighting in support of that mad man's goal. Ukraine does not want to bow down to Putin's tyranny. Putin should leave Ukraine to the Ukrainians, then the killing can stop.
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They need to do this and make it absolutely clear that it is 100% Trump's fault. They cannot be allowed to make the claim that canada did it unprovoked or for the lulz.
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Trudeau got in front of the cameras today and spelled this out. Our government chose to take this action, and Canada is having an entirely reasonable response. Once the tarrifs end, we can go back to where we were, but in the meantime, Americans need to learn how much they rely on Canadian trade and need to understand that this is entirely our government's fault.
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There really is no way to back to where we were. We can only go forward from here. This is a bell that can’t be unrung.
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The people who voted for Trump or stayed home are not going to understand that. They are the snowflakes and so caught up in their feelings that they can't be reasoned with.
Every day there's more "leopards eating faces" stories and in pretty much every single one, the face-eaten dumbarses Don realize that what happened was part of the plan all along.
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What Canada needs to start doing is violating US copyright and stealing their IP. Sell jailbreaks for American hardware.
That was part of the free-trade deal, so why would Canada keep up that side of the bargain?
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This!! This should have been the very first thing! Retaliatory tariffs hurt the consumers, companies and so the economy overall. Reversing the insane IP laws that prevent people from modifying, repairing, upgrading their American products would open business opportunities and lower costs for Canadians.
The main issue is the benefit will be seen on medium term, not days/weeks, and if it is under threat to be reversed again as soon as Trump backs down on his tariffs, not many will take the risk to invest in the maintenance and repair sector.
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One jailbreak for Quest 3, pls. 😋
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Do it Canada. The dumber half of our country needs to learn the hard way. And, unfortunately, the smarter half has to go along for the ride.
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Exactly. The entire reason Trump is President again is because we did not take the serious extreme and required actions after the 2020 elections to ensure that him, his supporters, and enablers could never participate in American society again.
The same mistake we made after the civil war we decided that we would be generous and go easy on those who betrayed us. We are still paying for that mistake we are still paying for the mistake with Trump. The only thing fascist understand is violence in the only way fascism ends is through violence.
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The dumber half of our country needs to learn...
The won't. You need to target trump's real support, which is Russia and billionaires. Going after his voters is like kicking a dog for eating it's own puke. The poor animal just isn't capable of understanding what it did or why you kicked it.
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Isn't Canada donating seized Russian assets to the Ukrainian war effort?
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Don't get too excited. Ford loves to talk tough but he's a fucking pussy.
We'll see what actually happens. No one here is holding their breath.
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Hey pussies can take a pounding.
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R.I.P. Betty White
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So he’s a big ballsack?
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LCBO is actively removing American products from shelves.
I do think there's more technical problems related to decoupling a massive load from the grid, but Ford does seem to be following through with at least some of the promised retaliations. Time will tell if he keeps it up.
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Does he have anything in plan to protect Canadians rather than just revenge on the US? Like in BC they're pushing the buy local, cutting down American liquor sales, and realloting some money to prep for what's expected to be all the upcoming layoffs.
All I've seen from Ontario is Ford saying he'll kick America's ass metaphorically but is there anything in place to protect the local jobs that'd be lost if they were to cut off all that electricity?
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Not sure, I don't live in Ontario anymore so I'm not so plugged in on provincial politics. It would certainly be very like Ford to make all these big aggressive moves but ultimately fuck over Ontarians in the process. But like I said, I'm not aware of the details, so that's just baseless speculation.
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The Fords aren'tgreat at Making ng stuff work. They're better at stopping things.
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Do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it.... America needs to learn, I say this as an American.
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Honestly, I don't think there's going back to any level of normal. Maybe by quickly destroying the system, we will be able to quickly rebuild it (after all the destruction to everyone's lives)
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On the slim bright side maybe just maybe this might make the US think of renewable energy, it’s why China invests so much into it to prevent relying on countries for oil.
Ehh who am I kidding, that’s not going to happen at all.
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maybe this might make the US think of renewable energy
Probably the opposite. There are a lot of blue states in the NorthEast importing Canadian hydro as a cleaner energy source than burning fossil fuels. I’m sure the repugnicans line will be something like “if only they used good old American coal from Wyoming or West Virginia”
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china has thier own internal problems, thats probably the least of thier worries.
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China invests so much into it
China is building two coal plants per week. And their "green" programs are just facades to take Western money.
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Play stupid games win stupid prizes. Glad that Canadians are standing up for themselves.
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USian here, don't think twice, fucking do it.
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Let the southern bastards freeze in the dark...not permanently, just a brief period, followed by an export tax. Cut power once in March, then again throughout the NBA playoffs in April.
At this point we should do this whether or not Trump reverses course. Make it clear there is nothing he can do to avoid it.
I'm sick of this market fuckery back and forth. I'm convinced he's trying to depress the Canadian dollar and the value of Canadian companies and industries, so that oligarchs in the US can buy them up. It's a hostile corporate takeover of our country. Fuck him, we need to go hard - permanent tariffs as long as Trump is in office...and we need legislation to ensure 51% Canadian ownership of strategic resources, as well as no American investment right now. If necessary, we need to nationalize strategic resources and industries.
What we don't need is a fucking tax break for the rich. We're on a war footing right now and our leaders need to accept this. The people have largely accepted it.
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I don't think he actually cares about Canada specifically. The point is to alienate the US from its allies and reduce any kind of powerful diplomatic mediators or military deterrents so Russia and similar traditionally colonial powers can just start seizing whatever territory they want.
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I think there are two things he wants here..and by "things he wants" I mean things that will make him and/or his wealthy oligarch buddies rich and grow their power.
The first and more near-term goal is the upcoming tax cuts for the rich, which will be trillions of dollars. To fund this, he sees at least three vehicles, that he has been pushing despite the failings of all three: (1) savings from DOGE, (2) the new gold visas, and (3) tariff income. All of these ideas are absolutely dogshit for creating income, but he seems to think they will. In his previous time in office, he even tried to use tariffs in this way. He sees tariffs as income and he's made it clear. He knows the tax cuts will be hugely unpopular so he has to build up a story as to how they can be afforded. In the meantime if a bunch of rich short sellers make money off of market manipulation, so much the better.
The second goal, and probably more in line with the objectives of the oligarchy in the US as a whole, is to make Canada even more subservient economically to the US. They want a quiet corporate takeover of Canada. They want to depress the value then but it all up, after which we're even more fucked than we are now. We need to cut this option off and just accept that we need to nationalize these industries, and restrict or even exclude American investment. I think the Canadian government should own at least 51% of key strategic resources, such as telecom, oil, hydro, potash, and media.
In summary, the Americans are now our enemies and should be considered as such. They want to damage our country and assume control of it. They are outright saying this. We need to stop being so fucking naive, and take solid action to prevent it.
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Southern states are not the ones receiving the bulk of Canada’s energy coming into the United States.
https://www.csis.org/analysis/mapping-us-canada-energy-relationship
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Don't announce it, just do it and observe the panic...and then the begging for it to come back but with a 25% hike in prices.
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Why is the fairness meter of the article "unfair left leaning", when it just reports on something someone said?
I don't see any opinion piece there, but pretty much just direct quoting
How can this be even left or right leaning? Oo
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In the US, reporting on simple facts makes you “radical left” while obvious propaganda makes you “right leaning”.
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Reality has a liberal bias.
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Yeah, wherever I talk with right wingers, who support fascists and extreme right radicals, it's always the extreme radicale left in opposition.
Because everything, that's not on their extreme right site, seems to be radicale left...
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We Americans have a serious problem labeling anything we disagree with as "those other guys". I might even say it's our main problem. We wouldn't be where we're at today without the divisiveness and team mentality.
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You're supposed to click where you think it should go. It's a voting mechanism.
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Because many people in the US (and elsewhere, sadly) are not media-literate enough to understand the difference between the veracity of an article and their opinion about it.
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Whole world needs to put 300 percent tarrifs on the US until they realise they are 5 percent of the world and aren't in a position to bully others.
China's going to eat their lunch if they keep things as they are.
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A quarter of the world's GDP, just saying.
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GDP is largely a bullshit metric anyway.
Two economists are walking in a forest when they come across a pile of shit.
The first economist says to the other "Ill pay you $100 to eat that pile of shit." The second economist takes the $100 and eats the pile of shit.
They continue walking until they come across a second pile of shit. The second economist turns to the first and says "l pay you $100 to eat that pile of shit." The first economist takes the $100 and eats a pile of shit.
Walking a little more, the first economist looks at the second and says, "You know, I gave you $100 to eat shit, then you gave me back the same $100 to eat shit. can't help but feel like we both just ate shit for nothing." "That's not true", responded the second economist. "We increased the GDP by $200!"
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All based on the dollar belling the oil reserve currency, when other countries switch America's going to be the first fourth world country.
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For now.
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Not for long at this rate.
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As an American, fucking do it, and make sure DC and Red states feel the most pain. And don't have some qwar ass back door conversation/deal to end the tariffs. Refuse to end them until he goes on live television and reads the following
"To all my fellow Americans, the best Americans from the best America, in hind sight, as it concerns tariffs with our closest geographical allies, I was wrong. The decision I made was stupid, and it was made by an idiot, me. Unfortunately I don't have the intellectual or business aptitude to actually determine what a good decision would be, as opposed to a bad decision. In fact, I am as stupid as the idiots who voted for me. This was the idea that I thought I would be fantastic and I was completely wrong and it's the only idea I had. I apologize to Canada and Mexico, both their leaders and citizens"
It would crush him to make a sincere public apology and backtrack. And he'll still get lynched before the end of year. Because he fucking deserves it.
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Canada ought to put forward two points.
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Any tariff trump makes will be matched, and will run for 90 days longer than trump's tariff (make that shit show up big on quarterly earnings numbers)
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Any tariff that trump merely mentions publicly, or in private negotiaions, will immediately start a retaliatory tariff from Canada.
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just mentioning will put companies into a panic.
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Unfortunately, most of Texas will be fine... ish. Well, as fine as they usually are, which isn't great. I'm really surprised more people aren't up in arms about how much this state fucking sucks ass for literally everything.
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Do it, but sadly it will affect the Blue States.
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I wouldn't be surprised if Trump threatened military action in return, should Canada go forward with it. I mean, it sounds crazy to write it, but is it really too crazy for Trump?
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Absolutely would not surprise me one bit.
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Is it too much to hope this little spat somehow crashes the housing market and this generation can finally own a home? that would be so cool.
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Yeah… unfortunately everyone’s pay check will also tank so you still won’t be able to afford it.
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“Bread was a nickel a loaf, but nobody had a nickel.”
-old man when asked about the great depression
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Sadly, it would probably crash all of the markets, meaning no one would be able to afford a home because nobody has a job.
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It probably is supposed to crash the housing market, so that private equity can swoop everything up.
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It's nearly universally too much to hope for capital to fail. In Canada, the CMHC and the BoC would make every effort to ensure that housing would not depreciate in value; if you want, you can think of it as essentially their job to make sure you stay a poor renter if you're under 50.
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One of Canada's worst politicians says he'll do something useful for once.
Incredible watching the downfall of American hegemony in real-time.
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I'm Canadian and I don't think we should be doing this in the middle of winter. Plus it's going to affect blue states, which will only make the MAGA fuckface idiots glad that the libs are being owned.
We should repeal US IP protection laws instead and cut out their potash. Make technofeudalists and rural conservatives scream.
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I don’t think we should be doing this in the middle of winter. Plus it’s going to affect blue states
US citizen here, in a blue state. Do it, you're doing us a favor. Let's get those guys up there to get out the pitchforks, let's see people freezing on the news.
The current blue is purple, let's make it blue again.
Libs need to be in the streets. The Maga viewpoint will fall as the stock market shutters and their kids are in danger of getting drafted to fight a war on two sides.
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American here in a state bordering Canada. We get energy and trade with Canada. Our winter is basically over.
Please cut the power for an hour. Make it daily. Increase it to 2 hours. Do it at the most annoying times.
Hospitals and such have backup power systems, so a short outage wouldn’t directly harm anyone. (I’m sure some elderly shut in will coincidentally die of old age and it would get blamed on the outage) But it would get everyone’s attention and mostly be really fucking annoying for some people.
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Thank you. Californian over here. I am disgusted with what our government and the magtards that voted them in are doing. Do what you need to do to defend yourselves but please keep in mind Americans are not all awful.
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However much I'd like to see it happen, I do see problems in cutting them off too. It's not easy to cut power on such scale, but if possible, i'd be in favor of intermittent outages. Random on/off periods of random length. The only thing that sucks much more than no power is unreliable/unpredictable power.
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Ford didn't care about Canadians when he did nothing about the housing shortage for the last 4 years, I wonder why he pretends to care now?
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Pretend to care just won him another 4 years as premier so why wouldn't he?
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Those bribe cheques certainly helped
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Ford was literally pro trump and congratulating him when he won, he pivoted almost immediately to gain favour with Canadians and it worked
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Whatever the reason is I just hope he doesn't suddenly turn and start supporting MAGA at some point. God knows he's corrupt, the shit he's doing and been trying to do here in Ontario is absolutely awful.
If I have to deal with another 4 years of Ford at least let him keep up the fight against Trump and his administration.
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virtue signalling, hes probably doing this for political pts.
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Turning the lights off and on is usually how you deal with a cranky misbehaving group of children.
So yeah. Let's do it just for the sake of the metaphor.
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Can't wait to see this happening. It's a language A bully like Trump might understand. might.
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Unless HIS power goes out, I’m not sure he’ll care. But I hope the people affected know where to lodge their complaints…
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This headline makes it sound way more imminent than I've been lead to believe. The first order of business is just messing with things like Florida orange farms and Kentucky bourbon, then we might escalate.
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Ford’s “smile” masks the grim reality of trade wars hurting everyday citizens on both sides. Effectively summarizes the stakes and implications of Ford's actions.
🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱
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I'm pretty sure Minnesota imports something like 60% of our energy - i'm at least glad we're past the worst of the winter weather but holy fuck is it going to suck
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Canada and US are in negotiations to renew the Columbia River Treaty, where the US pays Canada for flood control upstream. They protect the cities along the Columbia River, and the hydroelectric infrastructure on the River, and the bridges. If Canada decides to play hardball, there’s a lot at their mercy.
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Awesome Canada!
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On the other hand, our formerly quasi-municipal energy company is now owned by a Canadian conglomerate. I'd not mind unwinding that.
Like it or not, we are all connected across North America.
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Acellerate! MORE ACCELERATION!
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Hurting New York will only make Trump more popular with his base.
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Higher utilities will piss off a lot of anger prone people. Do it.
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Yes cut the power. Please do it. Let our stupid government realize they are royally fucking up.
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Gotta love living in a "democracy" where one team screws over the entire country and the co-dependent team cheers out of spite.
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Michigander here, he should absolutely do it.
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"to cut" is very different from "could cut"
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Doug Ford is the last idiot I want to hear anything from.
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Yeah, if there’s one piece of shit politician to sell out his country for a fat sack of cash, it’s Doug Ford. Gives zero shits about anyone’s strife.
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New York, the blue state? Canada is likely bluffing, as that's a wet dream for Trump.
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Western NY is super red. Saw loads of Trump flags on lawns in 2022, not even a presidential election year. Very kind and friendly people though.
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Ford is spineless. I doubt he has the balls to do this
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Please please please only do this during the day. 8AM to 5PM. Don't put the squeeze on the voters. They either didn't vote for trump, or they were so dumb that they did vote for trump won't understand why their electric bill went through the roof. Do this during the day to shut down the businesses that stumped for trump, sent him millions of dollars and bent the knee in the hopes the tax burden will get shifted further down the income scale.
But definitely do it!
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Sorry. 24/7, just like the tariffs.
It will hurt. That's the point. Maybe it'll hurt enough that y'all DO something about the absolute fuckery happening down there. Canada didn't ask for this shit.
I hate that this is where things are but pretty soon folks will need to get to the FO part of FAFO.
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You can't bomb people into loving you. A lesson hard learned in the Middle East.
Sure, you can run those tariffs 24/7, and it would be totally in your sovereign right to do so. However, that's not going to change anything. Trump may be a blithering idiot, but the Peter Thiels and Stephen Millers feeding him all those "bright ideas" certainly knew that equal tariffs from Canada would be the response. The line here will be "Canada is attacking you, and shutting off your power", and the trump supporters will gag themselves choking down that line of rhetoric as hard and as fast as possible. Thats not going to solve the tariffs problem for Canada though, it will only make it worse.
If you want revenge, equal tariffs. If you wanna actually stick it to the people that stuck you and force them to backtrack, go after the businesses bottom line.
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Don't put the squeeze on the voters. They either didn't vote for trump, or they were so dumb that they did vote for trump won't understand why their electric bill went through the roof.
The whole point of democracy is the voters have an impact. If nothing changes for the voters don't be surprised when they vote for the same party next time.
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70% of American voters allowed Trump to be elected by either voting for him or not voting. Only a minority of 30% tried to stand against him. I hope Trump has a hell of an impact on the 70%. Every one that cries that they voted for him but have lost their job or whatever fully deserve it. Nothing he is doing now wasn't known before the election. None of it is a surprise. The only surprise is that 70% of Americans supported him destroying their country.
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