Cartoon

Ammunition

Written by SK Ashby

(Cartoonist - Nick Anderson)

In other news, the Trump regime is reportedly pulling $271 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to help pay for immigrant detention.

In related news, it's hurricane season and Tropical Storm Dorian has now become Hurricane Dorian and it could make landfall on the southeast coast as a category 3 hurricane.

Finally, Irish officials are calling bullshit on Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson wants the so-called backstop, the fallback mechanism to keep the Irish border invisible after Brexit, stripped from its divorce agreement with the European Union. Johnson says the device risks shackling the U.K. to EU rules indefinitely.

In Paris on Wednesday, Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney challenged the U.K. to table realistic alternatives to the backstop.

“We can’t give up on something that we know works on the back of a promise without any idea as to how it’s going to work,” Coveney told reporters.

Coveney said Northern Ireland’s peace process was “fragile,” and needed to be protected. Earlier, he said that the backstop is “currently” the only viable solution to border issue and even if the EU wanted to reopen the divorce deal, it’s too late to do so ahead of the Oct. 31 deadline for the U.K. to leave.

“Even if we wanted to do that, which we don’t, we can’t do it in six or 10 weeks,” he said.

Johnson says the Irish backstop must be removed from the deal, but the backstop is the only thing that could prevent the return of a hard border in Ireland.

At the same time, Johnson intends to proceed with a no-deal brexit which will also lead to a hard border in Ireland.

I wouldn't blame anyone who gets the idea that Johnson actually wants a hard border because every option he's pursuing would lead to that. Magical thinking is no replacement for a real plan. That's what Ireland's foreign minister is saying.