As I mentioned in the WDT, I was in the DC area last weekend getting the kid settled in for her last year of college. Prior to our trip I was wondering what kind of military presence we’d run into. Turns out we saw it almost immediately. The Americans on this board will be happy to hear that our tax dollars are being used to house military personnel in local hotels. There were maybe two dozen soldiers (MPs) at our hotel. We saw them in the lobby, loading into vans for transport, having breakfast, etc. They looked young and bored, for the most part. If you didn’t know better you would have thought they were there on vacation, if a tad overdressed. Saturday night we went into DC. We saw no National Guard in any of the Metro stations , including those stations named in news reports as being specifically targeted . Which was fine by me- I’ve been going to DC for 40 years and the Metro there is one of the cleanest and safest systems I’ve ever seen. We headed to an area in south DC that has tons of bars and restaurants. It was a great area, and there we saw a cluster of three NG, looking even younger than the ones at the hotel, talking to each other and watching the musicians. I didn’t see them interact with anyone. We also saw three DEA agents ( it seems counter productive that they wore clothing identifying themselves as such) and they were just hanging out and eating. Going back to the Metro station we did see another cluster of DEA and National Guard at the entrance ( but none actually in the station). They didn’t interact with anyone, just stood around looking bored. All in all it was pretty low key. You could tell none of them were interested in being there and were just killing time. Aside from the obvious constitutional and political implications it wasn’t threatening or imposing. Maybe I was jaded because of my post 9/11 experiences. For years you couldn’t move around New York city without seeing military personnel holding rifles and ready for action, so it really didn’t seem odd to me.
When the joke doesn't land: https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lxussdw7ua25 Probably the only time I've felt a twinge of sympathy for Doocy.