Ontario

Donald Trump must have been absent when his third grade class learned about the Great Lakes and the snappy acronym H-O-M-E-S (Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior) to help kids remember the names of the lakes.

His executive order to rename Lake Ontario to Lake America destroys that handy memory tool. H-A-M-E-S doesn’t cut it. And S-H-A-M-E would diminish the importance and majesty of the lakes. Trump told reporters he made the name switcheroo because Canadians are "nasty people" who "been ripping us off for a long time."

What right does the US have in renaming the lake in which 56 percent of its 614-mile shoreline is in Canada?

Lake Ontario also hosts the commercial (Toronto) and industrial (Hamilton) centers of Canada. The New York side pales in comparison, consisting of farmland, bluffs and Rochester. No offense is intended to The Flower City.

Canada gets to call the shots when it comes to Lake Ontario It may decide to keep things as they are, or re-christen it as Lake Carney in honor of its prime minister who is riding high these days for taking on America’s strongman.

Unfairly trashing Canada’s military. One of the most-viewed stories in The Financial Times on Aug. 25 is headlined “Embarrassing: Republicans and ex-military leaders recoil at Trump’s officials’ Canada attack.”

Claims by our obnoxious Vice President Vance and big-mouth Transportation Secretary Duffy about Canada either underinvesting in, or lacking a military, are especially disgusting.

Ben Hodges, former commanding general of the US Army in Europe, told the FT: “I served in Kandahar, Afghanistan in 2009-2010 alongside Canadian soldiers. They were skilled, courageous and effective. We were lucky to be on the same side with them.”

More than 40K Canadians served in Afghanistan. Canada suffered 158 deaths in Afghanistan.

Jim Stavridis, retired US admiral and NATO Supreme Allied Commander, said Canada has a brave and professional military. “It has deployed into combat with us many times, including D-Day,” he said. “Canadian troops under my NATO command faced intense fire in Afghanistan, where many were killed in action. I honor their memory and salute them.”

Shame on Vance and Duffy.

Parlez-vous francais? Trump denies Carney’s claim that the US made threats on Canada’s use of the French language. “I have never even thought of doing such a thing,” he posted on Truth Social. “I love French Canadians.” That love is not reciprocal.

I spent a couple of days in Quebec City this month and did not find any love for the US president among the Québécois. The name Trump is best left unsaid there.

The tour guide at the Citadelle seemed to take great pleasure to inform the group that the massive stone fortress was built by the British from 1820 to 1831 specifically to keep the Americans out.

The US did invade Canada during the American Revolution and the War of 1812.

There is a plaque in Quebec City to mark the burial sites of Continental Army general Richard Montgomery and his soldiers who attacked the city on Dec. 31, 1775. His body was exhumed in 1818 and reburied at St. Paul’s Chapel in New York.

The wrong general died. Benedict Arnold co-led the attack on Quebec City. He, of course, survived to betray his country.

Nice plug for AI. Hedge fund investor Stanley Druckenmiller’s Aug 24 Wall Street Journal op-ed piece criticizing his mentee & Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s intervention in the bond market made a big splash in the investment community.

And so did the revelation that Druckenmiller used AI (Anthropic’s Claude, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and Perplexity) to help create the piece.

The 73-year-old Druckenmiller said his family office is a big user of AI. “I was a B student in English, but an A+ in economics,” he told the WSJ on Aug. 25.

Druckenmiller defended his op-ed, saying it successfully conveyed ideas that he’s been speaking about for the past 15 years. He’s proud of his AI savvy and issued a veiled warning to the financial media. “There’s no one I know who doesn’t use AI for writing,” he said. It’s best to be wary of contributed articles.

Understatement of the year. Data centers could use “a little public relations help,” said Trump. He got that right.

Public opinion is so against data centers that Polaroid makes them the star in its ad campaign against over digitalization.

“Go jump in some water before the data centers drink it all up,” is the tagline of the ad effort. Ouch!

The instant camera company maintains that it isn’t anti-digital. “We know we have to live alongside it, but we’re deeply pro-human, and know what humanity gives us,” said Patricia Varella, Polaroid’s creative director, “And we know what we stand to lose if we don’t protect it. That’s a fight worth fighting.”

Data centers can go jump in a lake.