you guys live in a bubble of your own making, overlooking the picture is partly how we get here........ we had no damn business in Syria to begin with.

When the GOP claims to be the party of Law & Order, they spare no expense...

(https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/10/28/call-it-surge-vowing-nationwide-crackdown-trump-touts-tougher-and-more-militarized#) Trump announces The Surge. A national directive to crack down on violent crime and $600 million of surplus military gear for civilian law enforcement to gear up with.

Can anyone from Chicago or Kabul confirm the following?

How frequent are suicide bombings at weddings in Chattanooga? Asking for a friend.

Sure other Prezzies have given the police war gear but it's the timing of this announcement and the evil fuck-stick put in charge of rolling it out that is of concern. How long until chanting "lock him up" at a baseball game is labeled as violent gang behaviour? I am exaggerating, of course. Or am I?

(https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/10/26/russias-long-and-mostly-unsuccessful-history-of-election-interference-229884)

Until the election of Donald Trump, no sitting president had ever requested a foreign government’s help to discredit a political rival. Coupled with Trump’s appeal to Russia during the 2016 campaign that Moscow use its cyber power to uncover Hillary Clinton’s missing emails, not to mention his eldest son’s eagerness to accept anti-Clinton material from Kremlin allies, Trump’s willingness to allow foreign governments to influence American elections is historically unprecedented.

Just how unprecedented becomes clear when you look back at the long history of attempts by foreign powers (almost always Russia) to tip an outcome to their advantage. On multiple occasions since the start of the Cold War, Moscow has proffered money, dirt and manpower to undermine a candidate perceived to be harmful to their interests. But in nearly every instance, the interference never came to pass. And this is the starkest difference between Trump and other presidential candidates—and between Trump and every one of his presidential predecessors. Where Trump has welcomed such assistance—and, in the case of his controversial call to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, demanded it—other candidates, to a man, rejected the aid.

[...]

We have known for decades that when it comes to foreign interference efforts, campaigns are the front-line—the first targeted, and the first to know. And for decades, the campaigns’ refusals have stopped interference efforts in their tracks. As we already know, hostile regimes such as Russia successfully injected themselves into the 2016 election—without asking permission—coaxing armed white supremacists onto the street, stealing internal emails and planting fake news stories, and creating some of the most popular social media feeds during the election. And Russia is almost certainly gaming out how to reprise its efforts in 2020. The difference now is that the interference, after decades, has been sanctioned by the president himself.
[...]