Hello to the end of summer, and goodbye to the great Dolly Parton. All flags are at half-staff for America’s last sweetheart. Let’s get to all the other news.

→ Lake America: Our new foreign and trade policy is basically to rename things America, as punishment. That’s what Donald J. Trump is threatening to do to Canada if they don’t agree to our trade terms. You like your little Lake Ontario? You think that’s nice? Too bad!

The president announced on Truth Social: “The United States is giving serious consideration to changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America in that we don’t expect to be doing much business with Ontario any longer.” We punish other nations by calling their waters America. It’s like schoolyard bully colonialism. In late-breaking news, he went and did it:

I think we just bring back old-fashioned colonialism and take Canada, a failed state, and keep the name Ontario, or Muskoka, or whatever funny words they use up there as a courtesy. It’s not enough to call it America and overlay funny text when you can make it America. But Trump is too busy posting a ranking of past presidents with himself at the top as The Greatest.

Anyway, another reason to invade Canada: the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) has issued new guidelines for how to report on September 11th. Here’s from the internal memo:

“Do not refer to the Sept. 11 attacks as terrorist attacks. The hijackings led to passenger jet crashes in Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania, and Manhattan. The World Trade Center (WTC in second reference) was destroyed.” The memo was reportedly authored by Basem Boshra, senior director of journalistic standards and public trust at CBC News.

“The hijackings led to passenger jet crashes.” By next year it’ll be that it was just a total accident, a setback for passenger plane safety. After that, it’ll have never happened.

→ The two Dan Sullivans: In the Alaska Senate race, a curious contender has arrived to defeat the incumbent Republican Dan S. Sullivan. His name is Dan J. Sullivan, also a Republican. The mainstream media is pretending the whole thing is totally legit, just a funny, quirky thing. Well, to quote the excellent Election Law Blog: “When Dan J. filed his notice of candidacy, he claimed his name was ‘Dan S. Sullivan.’ ‘S.’ is not Dan J.’s middle initial, but the middle initial of the incumbent. No explanation is given as to this ‘error,’ and the trial court characterized this as an ’understandable concern’ that was ‘quickly corrected.’ ” So it looks like Dan J. initially tried to fake even having the same middle initial as the incumbent, seemingly with the intent to confuse voters. That obvious bit of trickery is rarely mentioned in the mainstream coverage, not on CNN or by the Associated Press, who like to pretend it’s just a curious coincidence of two well-meaning candidates with the same name. Cute and funny, not election fraud! You can’t throw a rock in Alaska without hitting a dozen Dan Sullivans these days! (To be fair, in 2014, there were also two different Dan Sullivans on the Alaska ballot, but in two different races.) Anyway, you have to trust these outlets when they tell you that our elections are completely secure, and produce results that represent the will of the people. Oh yeah, the fake Dan Sullivan has donated to Democrats in the last two election cycles, and he’s been working on this campaign with a Dem strategist.

The goal here seems to be to steal a few confused points away from the real Dan so that his challenger, the Democrat Mary Peltola, wins. I’ve got a wild idea: If Mary Peltola is good, then you don’t need to cheat! I’ve literally never met an interesting Dan Sullivan in my life, let alone two. I bet Mary can do it without fraud!...