Good Morning 99 percenters!

It is hard to believe that November is almost over. It seems like yesterday that I was getting ready to attend my high school reunion during the first weekend of November and now Thanksgiving is upon as.

When I was growing up, we usually spent Thanksgiving with my aunt and uncle and three cousins who also lived in St. Petersburg (St. Pete). My aunt's parents and her older sister often came so that was why we would do Thanksgiving at their house. I was the oldest of the five cousins, but even when I was in high school, I was still relegated to the children's table. At that time, I did not like it, but I realized much later that the children's table was a lot more fun than the adult table. Otherwise, I really do not remember anything particularly unique about our family Thanksgivings back in those days.

After my husband and I first got married, we would alternate holidays with his family and my family. It was much of a chore trying to balance things out between the two families living nearly 300 miles apart. My mother in law always wanted everyone to be there for Thanksgiving dinner, so it often in resulted in us having two Thanksgivings every other year. In recent years, we have chosen to spend both Thanksgiving and Christmas here in NC, away from family. Sometimes we share Thanksgiving with friends, but this year it is a quiet one with just the two of us. My husband is a real traditionalist, so it will still be the full big Thanksgiving dinner.

Which brings me to turkey.

Let's talk turkey. I am going to be brutally honest here. I really could care less about turkey and even less about leftover turkey. It is one of those things that just does not get me excited. If fact, if turkey was not served, I would be perfectly fine. But my other half loves turkey and especially leftover turkey in every form imaginable. So I will gut it out.

Over the years, we have served our turkey three different ways: oven roasted, fried, and smoked. My least favorite is oven roasted which often seems greasy to me. If you have never had fried turkey, you might be surprised that it is not at all greasy and is very moist. The problem with fried is that it is messy to cook and requires a lot of oil. For the last several years, we have smoked our turkey and this is by far my favorite way to eat turkey. It is the only way i will eat leftover turkey too. So this year, on Thanksgiving morning, my husband will fire up the Big Green Egg smoker and we will smoke our turkey.

So like previous years and despite my dread, I will survive the turkey and all the rest of the gluttony. Heck, just give me my roasted vegetables, dressing with lots of celery in it, and whole berry cranberry sauce. And I will be happy.

Here are just a few news items to start your day and perhaps start a conversation on this Open Thread. Our suicidal rush headlong into World War III is what is on my mind today. What is on your mind this morning?

Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it and the United States has been repeating its sordid history in the Middle East for far too many decades.

The Land of the Free and Home of the Brave has a long and iniquitous history of overthrowing democratically elected leftist governments and propping up right-wing dictators in their place. U.S. politicians rarely acknowledge this odious past, let alone acknowledge that such policies continue well into the present day.

As per usual, Chris Hedges says what we all instinctively know and our leaders and the media refuse to acknowledge. This article is worthy of a diary of its own.

Violence generates counterviolence. The cycle does not stop until the killing stops. All that makes us human—love, empathy, tenderness and kindness—is dismissed in wartime as useless and weak. We revel in a demented hypermasculinity. We lose the capacity to feel and understand. We pity only our own. We too celebrate our glorified martyrs. We endow our sanctified dead with the lofty virtues and goodness that define our national myth, ignoring our complicity in perpetuating the ceaseless cycle of death. Our drones and airstrikes, after all, have decapitated far more people, including children, than Islamic State.

In much that same vein, this article from Common Dreams examines the seeds of massive discontent that our failed Middle East policies have sowed.

Interventions multiply our enemies. Every village raid, every drone strike, and every shot fired in anger on foreign soil produces anti-Western passion. Some are shocked when that passion leads to violent reaction. They should not be. The instinct to protect one’s own, and to strike back against attackers, is older than humanity itself.