November 29

 Happy day after Thanksgiving. We stayed home. It was a last minute decision because my brother invited us to an "if you can make it" dinner. We make a lot of those last minute decisions. We wake up feeling energetic but my the time we have our coffee and breakfast all the energy has dissipated. Or we say we need to do laundry on Monday but by Wednesday we still haven't done it. Thankfully very little in our lives is of any great urgency or need to absolutely accomplished at any given time--except doctor appointments. We planned to go up to the dairy we patronize on Tuesday. It was supposed to be the only shopping that day but we suddenly realized that we were already in the last week of the month and we had rent to pay. So we  put all of our errands into that day--dairy, grocery store, bank and rent. We were totally wiped out.

Bill Astore makes a number of points about our military, our use of the military and the military budget I have thought for some time. First, the Pentagon is the poster child for unaccountability. The problem is that there aren't any real measures by which to measure the Pentagon's performance. Our military hasn't won a war since WWII--and that was a coalition effort which we rarely recognize. Korea wasn't won--we, the Chinese, and the North Korean politicians merely agreed to go back to the pre-war boundaries and have maintained a de-militarized zone to separate the combatants. We didn't "win" the Vietnam conflict--Nixon merely "declared victory" and we left. We won battles in Iraq and Afghanistan but eventually lost the wars. We spent a hell of a lot of money for no real gain by any definition of "gain." Second, Astore mentions that many of the weapons systems were obsolete fifty years ago. However, the Pentagon has spent billions on new systems that have failed to perform as advertised. Third, too much of our foreign policy relies on the threat of military force. As the old saying goes " if all you have is a hammer all your problems look like nails." Unfortunately, that isn't likely to change since the incoming administration relies on threats of force--whether military or economic (tariffs). Fourth, I think our leaders need to rethink our relationships with foreign countries and entities. Unfortunately, I don't think the new administration is going to do that in any really constructive way. Simply getting out of NATO or abrogating our participation in the climate talks, etc., won't be constructive.

Jan in SanFran at CAN IT HAPPEN HERE has a good post for Thanksgiving.

Stray thought: news this morning reported bombs threats against both Republican and Democratic politicians. The time line in one of the stories I found indicate that the threats against Republican proposed members of Trump's cabinet were followed by threats against Democratic congresspeople. One would think that some Democrat-aligned idiot decided to swat Republicans and some Republican-aligned idiot decided to reciprocate. I guess I am a total skeptic and I wonder if there isn't a different party (or parties) playing both sides.