Can't say as I agree

[degringolade]

Edo period (1603–1867) / Hiroshige/ Alighting geese at Massaki

Back to grinding.  No Problem.  No Enthusiasm.  Chop Wood, Carry Water.

Didn't really do squat yesterday.  These last slothful days are what I worry about for the retirement.  Getting up and moving suits me just fine, but being fired up to get out the door when there isn't something concrete to do on the other end is hard for me to accomplish.  Sloth is a problem of mine that I will need to work on.

It will be interesting to see how things went while I was gone.  Ideally, the folks around didn't even miss me.  I hope. 

Screed:

So, both Israeli candidates for president have decided to annex parts of the West Bank.  That is going to go over big. 

It will never happen, but we gotta get out of the Israel Business.  Look, my heritage pretty much says that being anti-Jew really isn't an option. I am not even anti-Israel.  But man o' man if there was ever a situation that just cannot be won, that one is it.  

I have a feeling that someone is going to throw the first punch soon.  I also have a sneaking hunch that the NeoCons will get their deepest wish and go to war again.  It is getting to that time when we will be coming home decisively beaten. 

Look, unless we want to go full on Mongol or Hun, there is really no way to win there.  The demographics are all wrong.  The religious hatred is too deep.  If we go in, there will be blood, lots of it, and a lot of it will be on our hands.  If there was a valid strategic interest, I suppose I could go with it, but the more I look, the less like a good idea it appears to be. 

Comments

Praise for Inaction

[mschmidt]

It seems that the common worry about retirement comes down to the thought of having freedom and “wasting” it with inaction. What is lost in this worry, is the fact that there is nothing wrong with inaction in itself. Far more pain and suffering is caused by human action than inaction. The rationale for inaction is: first, do no harm.

Think of the wonderful increase in human inactivity that would occur if humans started following this simple guideline. With inaction, a human automatically moves themselves above all the humans that are in the process of doing something idiotic and harmful, which is probably half of the human race at least.

In your case now, you do not have the freedom of retirement; you are only on vacation and work is still there a day or two off. So, deciding on inaction now is not the same as doing it every day in retirement; now you are doing what you normally don't get to do.

Someday the City of Milwaukee might conduct a tour through your apartment showing future generations where the revered writer lived humbly when he created the famous character Waude. On the table will be rock-hard gummy bears in a small container sitting next to some old-fashioned writing device. And there he sat every day from daybreak to 4pm, when he got up and took a three mile walk in a big circle that ended up at the barstool you will see at the next stop.