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Rep. Elijah Cummings has passed at the age of 68 from 'complications due to longstanding health challenges and had been having health issues in recent weeks.

You know someone is going to ask this: Has it been verified by anybody else?

It's the same person that asked earlier. Still, I thought we already went over this as well.

Theres always going to be a portion of that, but I really don't know. Kind of hard to statistic that because you can't ask the dead (obviously).

Exactly, just saying guns are more prevalent doesn't answer the question of why the suicide is happening. As I said though, I only know about the US rates and why, not Canada, which Volo is talking about without any statistical context as to why it's happening in Canada (not so subtle nudge at you Volo).

Initially I though it was maybe a fair point, but overall it's very 'shoot self in foot' and displays the kind of disconnect that rich people have. Well, here in the US (don't know the Canadian data) it's linked to the economic difficulties in rural areas like the job losses and just general economic decay, but I don't think an answer to 'why do white men suicide the most when they are in 'easy mode' (in your words)' exists because it's not that simple.

I wonder if the 'safe zone' would qualify as a land grab? After all, they're imposing a 'border' where they think the border should be. I've also read in some places that some people are worried that the conflict might spill into Iraq, though I'm not sure what that would entail, the Turks trying to impose a 'safe zone' in iraq? re Turkey pulling the US in: I've seen some commentators saying that Turkey might draw the US back into it via NATO obligations or something, but the relationship between the US and Turkey is pretty low right now. I don't think Turkey would be eager to extend a hand to the US and ask for help and Trump would be under pressure to not get involved in wars again from his base, especially in an election year.

More Syria developments, Trump is now ordering most of the ~1,000 troops are being withdrawn (using a plan made back in Feb) primarily to avoid getting caught in the crossfire of opposing armies since the Turks seem to intend to expand further south than thought and the Kurds are trying to get the Russians and the Syrian government to help attack Turkey. Various sources: https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/13/politics/us-troops-syria-turkey/index.html https://www.axios.com/us-forces-withdrawal-syria-turkish-attack-052a464c-0535-4af1-b25a-704b213afd41.html https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/13/trump-us-troops-northern-syria-turkish-assault-kurds https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-50034802 Trump is running the risk of possibly needing to come back into Syria some way or other in the future, but given that Syria is starting to become almost unrecognizable compared to when the civil war started, it'd probably be an even worse clusterbleep the next time around that we have to go back in. Trump even stated that if ISIS resurges, he's willing to go right back in. Plus, it's not likely that the Kurds will ally with us again

I figured that out when I checked wikipedia after looking at your post, but you saying 'sweet, sweet COLA' earlier kind of threw me off.

And I thought you were referring to Cocoa-Cola earlier, given your propensity for sarcasm, I thought you were being silly by talking about Cocoa-Cola.

Obama did campaign on the populist strain somewhat though, that's probably where you got the impression. Nowhere near the same tappage as Trump did, obviously. Pretty sure we've had genuine ideologue and/or revolutionary (the Founding Fathers aside, though William Henry Harrison was the last President to grow up during the Revolutionary War) Presidents before though, it's just that we have 20/20 hindsight and can thus interpret 'ideologue' and 'revolutionary' in different ways and nuances.

Maybe it was a misquote that got deleted?

I wonder if those two have ever gotten reverse pranked? Like they tried to prank someone and ended up getting pranked themselves because the target quickly caught on and turned the tables on them.

Wait, it's a funeral service company? lolwut. Aren't there other limo operators? heh.

Uh, I'm pretty sure Iran and Russia would be very pleased with the partial pullout. Whether they are happy with Turkeys actions though are another matter entirely.

The logic of some people just astounds me, Trump is saying that we shouldn't help the Kurds because they didn't take part in Normandy and other WWII battles, which he got from a conservative op-ed article (shown in the link). By that op-eds logic, we shouldn't be allies with Israel, because they didn't exist as a nation to take part in WWII! Or for that matter, any number of countries that didn't exist or directly take part in the battles mentioned in that op-ed. Just some absolutely bonkers logic.....

Moving on I guess? To nobodys (except maybe Trump himself) surprise, China says no to Trumps meddling request. Besides the fact that it would be a really dumb move to jump into the political buzzsaw that is happening, especially when Trump just fingered them out, they've (well, one commentator I guess) said that it'd be political blackmail for Trump to do that. I guess maybe Trump thought China would be as subservient/desperate as Ukraine was.

Looks more pomeranian, corgis don't have fuzzy ears. Anyways, welcome to the community @Shyla!

The way he has gone about it looks pretty kneejerk. @Guard Dog The answer to just how much of a mistake Syria was (arguably, not intervening earlier may have also been a mistake, but we're talking about a hypothetical at this point) may not be really known until the dust completely settles and the historians have at it, but meanwhile, I agree, the challenge is to not screw it up any further. FIFY since the unspoken part is really "Lets stay out of European matters as we REALLY don't want to get sucked into the fights between the great powers". Of course though, it's a handy excuse since the US had it's hands full at the time and you probably couldn't come up with a more diplomatic excuse for saying "No thanks, we don't want to get sucked into European conflicts, besides, we have our hands full". Found the conflict mentioned and it doesn't say anything about France approaching the US about it, though looks like it ended up being an attempt to throw around diplomatic weight rather than a war. No idea how much diplomatic sway the US had at the time. Arguably the problems started slightly further back with the Spanish-American war when the US started getting a taste of imperialism.

Anyways, Trump is getting a hell of a lot of pushback for what is a kneejerk reaction to a complicated situation that requires careful thought. There's no 'Alexander the Great splits the Gordian knot in two with a sword' solution for this one. Maybe a more appropriate analogy would be a Gordian knot connected to several rube goldberg machines that are both independent and react to each other, with some cords leading to disaster and some not, cutting all of them at once would guarantee disaster. Then again, maybe a Gordian knot+ my addition is a poor analogy for the whole Syria situation?

Not sure what you think the Democrats chances are of winning the Senate, but they have a majorly uphill battle to get a majority. Even flipping three is going to be difficult. Still, anything's possible. I could have sworn Obama tried, at least initially to take a reconciliatory approach, but the Republicans didn't want it, or act like they wanted it. Given how deep the polarization is though, I'm not even sure what a reconciliatory approach would look like other than maybe massively pivoting towards the center and the other side has to want to reconcile in order for it to even start in the first place.

That's basically what the link in my previous post was. Anyways, I wonder just how far the 'I was only following orders' defense would work out for Pence? Even though his political future depends on latching to Trumps ass as tightly as possible like a male anglerfish, he is expected to have some independence.

Trump is desperately trying to find a scapegoat. IMO he should throw Pence under the bus some more, or maybe even Giuliani, which I suspect will happen at some point.

I agree on the point of investigating it rather than immediately concluding as it looks like and is certainly irresponsible behavior as some commentors on the ABC article says.

If you read the article, the guy had a confrontation with other relatives earlier that night and the banging was at the back door, where you wouldn't really expect visitors to be.