Thanksgiving 2024

"Over the river, and through the wood,
To Grandfather's house we go;
the horse knows the way to carry the sleigh
through the white and drifted snow."
     Lydia Maria Childs, "Over the River and Through the Woods," 1844

This Thanksgiving we have two sons in the house, age 43 and age 33, both single. No grandchildren.

My wife and I are part of a boomer phenomenon --  people in their seventies with children but not grandchildren.

The two sons home for Thanksgiving aren't unusual in being childless well into adulthood. About 25% of American men over 40 are childless. Women are delaying childbearing, choosing education or career as a first priority. An increasing number of women don't want children. At 1.66 children per woman, the U.S. is well below replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman. Some women get around to it as their fertility clock runs low; some don't. At age 35-39, 22% of women are childless.

There are a lot of reasons for not having children. Children are expensive. They disrupt an education/career path. Household formation starts later, when people pair up and buy a home. Expectations and norms have changed, so childlessness is normalized. And contraception made childbearing a choice.

My grandmother is one of 10, the little girl toward the right, standing beside her mother holding the infant. There are eight children in the photo. Two more are still to come. The oldest two men at either end are in their 20s. Children were assets who could help with farm chores. My great-grandfather was 40 when he married his 16-year old bride. 

Housing has gotten expensive relative to earnings. Between 1950 and the present, the general rate of inflation raised prices just over 13 times. It takes $13.10 to buy what a dollar bought in 1950, at the height of the baby boom.

Housing inflated faster than general inflation.

1950 housing advertisement 

Those houses would have been small -- about 1,000 square feet. One bath. No dishwasher. No air conditioning. No garage. They would not have been to current code on insulation. There would not have been a city requirement of curbs and gutters and capture of rain water into a storm drain system. But at the general inflation rate of 13.1, the larger of the two homes, plus some closing costs, would have cost less than $110,000 in today's dollars.

My parents had three children. In 1955 they moved from a small rental into a Medford subdivision. The subdivision consisted of homes of about 1,100 to 1,300 square feet. They had one or one-and-a-half bathrooms and a one-car garage. They were bought up by families similar to mine: a husband, a wife, and two or three children. My parents' house in my elementary and junior high years was at 401 Oregon Terrace in Medford, Oregon. It isn't an apples-to-apples comparison to the houses in the newspaper ad because it has been added onto. 

Google Maps photo

But this house in the photo, next door at 407 Oregon Terrace, is roughly comparable, with three bedrooms, one bath, and 1,183 square feet of space, according to Zillow. It has a one-car garage. Zillow estimates a current price of $324,500. This isn't a perfect comp, but both 407 Oregon Terrace and the ones in the ads are what realtors might call "starter homes." The price of the current home in Medford is three times the calculated $110,000 value of the houses in the ad, had those houses inflated at the general inflation multiple.  

No single factor explains the fertility rate, and therefore the paucity of grandchildren, but the cost of housing affects choices young adults make. Young adults face a much higher hurdle for creating new households and the physical and psychological "nest" into which a new baby, or a second or third, fit.

Thanksgivings are smaller now. And grandchildren don't arrive by horse-drawn sled, if they arrive at all.

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Thank you, McDonalds

I give thanks to the clean bathrooms at the McDonalds at the Cottage Grove exit on Interstate 5.

The large coffee was only $1.60. And a clean bathroom. What a deal.

The car trip from Medford to Portland, Oregon, is a straight shot up I-5, about 275 miles and four and a half hours. Cottage Grove is the midpoint.

I appreciate McDonalds and their clean bathroom policy, so I stopped there.  First things first. I entered the restaurant and went to the men's room. It was well-lit, clean, and shiny, just as I had hoped and expected.

It smelled fresh. The floors were clean. The men's room door pushed out. To enter, one had the choice of using the handle or the forearm pull. Nice.

People criticize McDonalds' food and pricing. It's too expensive and the food has much fat and sugar. I don't join in the criticism.. You can buy a nice salad there. I have done so. My guess is they don't serve a lot of salad bowls but they are available to eat in or take out. They aren't just for show. They are priced consistently with other items. It is pretty simple: McDonalds sells what people choose to buy. McDonalds puts the calories right there next to the item and its price. If people started asking for steamed brussels sprouts and a kale salad alternative to lettuce and stopped buying french fries, McDonalds would adjust. 

The coffee is inexpensive compared to fancy coffee places where a drip coffee might be four dollars. Their "large coffee" is in fact large, about 16 ounces. It is hot-enough, but not quite as hot as I like. McDonalds got sued for serving it too hot and McDonalds adjusted. Pretty-hot coffee makes sense, since it served in a paper cup to people who usually drink it in their cars. Spills into one's lap is a predictable issue.

There were nine cars in the drive-up window line, moving about one every 45 seconds, but inside the restaurant was nearly empty at 10 a.m. McDonalds appears to be primarily a take-out place, except for people like me who want to use the restrooms.

I had a good experience at the front counter, which moved quickly. This man, Owen, smiled and asked for my order. I requested a large black coffee. He said it was $1.60. He asked if I wanted to round up to give the change to the Ronald McDonald House. I said yes, and he said thanks. He stepped behind him, poured coffee into the large cup you see in the photo. Then he poured the contents into the coffee container I had brought in, a solid insulated container with a firm lid that would keep coffee hotter. It filled my cup. 

I asked him if I could take his photo.

Owen: "Sure go ahead."

Me: "How long have you worked here?"

Owen: "Well I’m retired. But I’ve been here three years. I got bored. So I came here. I like it. They treat me pretty good."

I said I was glad to hear it and that this was a nice place with clean restrooms.

I won't complicate this note of gratitude with a report on the rest areas along I-5. I stopped and took some photos there, too. They are an alternative in a desperate pinch. I much prefer a clean, well-run McDonalds like this one. A clean restroom is part of the McDonalds value proposition, and I want to acknowledge it.

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Picking a market top

Higher and higher and higher and higher

"I said your love (your love keeps lifting me)
Keep on (your love keeps lifting me)
Lifting me (lifting me)
Higher and higher (higher and higher, higher)
Alright, now sock it to me"
          Recorded by Jackie Wilson, "Higher and Higher," 1967

You can't pick a market top. You see them afterwards, when it's too late.

We have entered a crazy zone. Watch out.

Maurizio Cattelan's conceptual art piece "Comedian." 

This art piece sold for $6.2 million to a crypto millionaire, Justin Sun. He got the bragging rights. 

Sun wrote:

This is not just an artwork; it represents a cultural phenomenon that bridges the worlds of art, memes, and the cryptocurrency community. I believe this piece will inspire more thought and discussion in the future and will become a part of history. I am honored to be the proud owner of the banana and look forward to it sparking further inspiration and impact for art enthusiasts around the world.

Some things in life get pulled back to a base line or some natural equilibrium. Pendulums come to rest. 

But sometimes things go crazy. A force feeds itself. We have all experienced the loud squeal of a feedback loop when a person holding a microphone stands in front of a speaker. This doubling and redoubling often comes to grief, most often in financial markets, but elsewhere, too. Social contagions are as real as financial market bubbles. We hit maximum progressive wokeness in 2019 when Democrats jockeyed to be the presidential nominee feared being thought moderate or centrist. Many Democratic candidates outdid themselves. "I'll see your medicare for all, and raise you with gender affirming surgery for illegal immigrant prisoners."

I believe MAGA support is a similar social contagion. Election denial, January 6 violence, porn star payoffs, stealing from his foundation, the E. Jean Carroll judgment Haitians eating Ohio pets, the Trump Bible grift, the golden sneakers, the Truth Social public offering, the Matt Gaetz nomination -- nothing is too much to dampen enthusiasm for Trump.  At some point we will may hit maximum-MAGA and trigger a reversal in mood, but that hasn't happened yet. Crazy things can persist longer than one can afford to bet against them. 

We all know about the tech stock bubble and then the mortgage bond bubble. We look back and think it was all so obvious. I think we are there again now. I think this art-piece is a signal.

Bitcoin is as imaginary and ephemeral as are Non Fungible Token images of apes. Bitcoin is a post-modern, idea, a bit of arch irony -- rather like the conceptional art piece of a banana taped to a white board. You need to "get it." This art piece is indeed a "cultural phenomenon." It makes sense among grad students and faculty in university art departments and rich people who want to be understood as being equally sophisticated. This purchase is like CRT, Critical Race Theory, in that it makes sense to the highly sophisticated person able to see the reverse-twist that shows that both sides of opposites are equally true. Get it? That is why racial discrimination isn't racial discrimination; it fixes racial discrimination. (I get it. I just don't agree with it.)

Bitcoin is limited in number and therefore has manufactured scarcity. There is only one of these pieces of art that got famous for having sold at auction for $6.2 million.

Is this purchase of the duct-taped banana going to look reasonable in a year? It might be sellable at even higher price. But I see its value as a signal to the world of maximum craziness. Somebody marks the top, like the person who made that last purchase of AOL or Cisco just before the internet bubble popped in March of 2000. 

When playing musical chairs, how does one know when the wise people have already left the game and the music will soon stop? One way is to realize that the game one is playing is musical chairs.

I may well be early, but I don't think I am wrong.

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Is Trump the peace candidate?

There are still "peace-Democrats."

These are liberal Democrats who question the 20th century bipartisan consensus that we are the virtuous peacemaker in the world.

The U.S. conquered and occupied the continental U.S. It became a colonizing empire with the conquest of Hawaii and its claims over Spanish possessions after the war with Spain. We picked sides in World War I; we allied with the Soviet Union to defeat the Axis powers in World War II; we intervened covertly in overthrowing governments --including democracies -- around the world. 

San Francisco 1967

Many current "peace-Democrats" came of age during the war in Vietnam. That war aged poorly. It offended American values as news creeped out that we were killing millions of civilians, and using body counts as a way to measure our success. American leaders misunderstood the war, and thought it a fight to contain China, when it was better understood as a war of independence by Vietnam against both Chinese and Western colonialism. Once the U.S. lost the war and departed, Vietnam quickly became what we wanted all along: an independent Vietnam. So many killed, and for what?

Democrats are trying to decide how they lost. Inflation? Biden's delay? The trans issue? Harris' failure to do a Sister Souljah moment to break with wokeness? Maybe some people found reason to think that Trump was the peace candidate.

Jack Mullen is no fan of Donald Trump. But Democrats, especially ones that retain their anti-war, anti-imperialist, anti-CIA-interventionist orientation, have some reason to hope that Trump is all bluster and bullying, but not in fact eager to use the American military. Possibly the real Donald Trump, the man skeptical of deep state orthodoxy, is also skeptical of the military-industrial complex and wary that our intelligence agencies will mire us in foreign wars. Possibly "America First" is less xenophobia and racist than it is a calculation that we have problems enough at home and need not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy, as John Quincey Adams put it. 

Jack Mullen has written here about two subjects: sports and American foreign policy. He is a Duck fan and a veteran of the Peace Corps. He lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife Jennifer Angelo.

Guest Post by Jack Mullen

                              America the Superpower

Most post-election analysis of Donald Trump’s victory centers on a wide range of discontent, be it illegal immigration or prices at the grocery store. A sour mood shrouded the electorate to the point that any positive accomplishments of the Biden-Harris administration were seen as government business as usual.

Trump’s appeal was not just on domestic issues. He swung hard at foreign policy and hit the mark on forever endless wars that began with our involvement in Vietnam, and despite a small lag in time, resumed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Early in his 2016 campaign, Trump blistered laggard NATO nations who Trump rightly pointed out took for granted American finances and troop deployment in Europe. It doesn’t take a college graduate to figure out that a large chunk of money being poured overseas year was done at taxpayer’s expense.

Defense contractors get fat and sassy with the increasing bipartisan funding that goes unobserved by all except Wall Street. Democratic and Republican Congresses and Democratic and Republican administration rarely raise a peep over defense spending. That is until Donald Trump arrived.

George Washington advised against America’s involvement in foreign wars, but a little skirmish with Mexico in the 1840s, and a trumped-up war with Spanish Empire in the late 1890’s seemed worthwhile. The prolonged war against Native Americans was seen as an extension of America’s Manifest Destiny. These were not overseas wars (sorry Philippines, you are too small to register in most Americans' consciousness). Nineteenth Century America took Washington's advisement to heart.

A strong isolationist current almost prevented the U.S. from entering World War I. Woodrow Wilson’s Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan, resigned in opposition to the large European War that threatened to suck us across the Atlantic. We entered that war, and for better or worse, became a superpower, sometimes a reluctant one, sometimes not.

The dissatisfaction with our military leadership over the last 30 years with our failed wars and the incalculable costs to America’s veterans and their families, most of whom are from red states, helped give Donald a path to regain the White House. Voters were wary of plowing more money into an endless war in Ukraine and the Middle East. The ball now rests in the hands of Donald Trump as the most powerful man in the world.

 

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Easy Sunday: Expect a circus

We are seeing the initials FAFO often now in social media circles. What is FAFO?

The clean version for the initials is "Fool Around and Find Out."

(The commonplace version is, "fuck around and find out.")

Actions have consequences. 

Democrats expect Trump to be a bad president. They expect him to make mistakes of over-reach. His "strongest weakness" is hyperbole. He had a born-salesman's gift for understanding what a great many Americans are thinking, and a blarney stone's gift for selling it. For a decade he has been the center of attention in our public life, the person who has driven the story of American politics. For four years he has said that everything is terrible, Biden crime family, worst economy in the history of the world -- and that he will fix things. He has made extravagant promises. He promises to keep every promise. And he seems to be going right at it full speed with his first appointments.

Democrats are debating. Should they resist at every turn? They will try but he has control of both houses of Congress. There is another school of thought: Let Trump be Trump. Give him enough rope to hang himself. Trump will self-destruct. Trump's former White House aides and cabinet officers were guardrails in his first term. Now he is appointing loyalists. He can do anything. He has immunity. The public wanted a destroyer? Let's find out how they like it.

If Trump does any more than five percent of his "mass deportation" promise, he will disrupt millions of families and cause immediate disruption in the labor market. If Trump succeeds in killing the ACA , millions of people will lose health insurance and be exposed to medical bankruptcy; rural hospitals will close. If Trump imposes new, higher tariffs, businesses will howl in protest and prices will rise. 

This week a Trump-nominated judge blocked expanded access to overtime pay to millions of low income -- but salaried -- employees across the U.S. This decision will allow employers not to be required to pay overtime on salaried employees earning over $35,568/year, the level set by Trump's Labor Department back in 2019. The rule involves four million workers. It moves the threshold from the higher Biden-proposed number, $58,656, back to the lower Trump figure. That is a blow to exactly the kind of working people who shifted their vote to Trump.

Trump has the curse of the super-salesman. Campaigns are the "fool around" phase of public communication. He sold benefits, not costs and consequences. Trump's greatest weakness is the reverse side his greatest strength. Some of the most vulnerable people in America will be hurt by Trump’s policies. They will find out. 

                                                   --- ---

[Note: Thanks to Dr. Mardy Grothe and his interesting and insightful Sunday morning newsletter for the phrase "strongest weakness." Grothe does not write about politics. He writes about literature, character, and living well. https://drmardygrothe.substack.com] 

You might try looking it over and subscribing. It is a pleasant way to start your Sundays.]

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Subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.]

Era of Crisis

Rendezvous with destiny.

There is a school of thought that the broad outlines of human events are shaped by an overarching timetable. 

The theory is that nations and cultures go through periods of rebirth, growth, maturity, and then a crisis that shapes some new status quo. The exact details are fleshed out based on the vicissitudes of elections, climate events, technological change, wars, and the personalities of leaders, but the big picture is set.  

According to futurist authors William Strauss and Neil Howe in their book The Fourth Turning, those life-cycle periods fall into approximately-eighty-year cycles of four generational “turnings.” The authors believe we are now in the final or fourth turning, which is that time of crisis when the whole system turns into something new, initiating a new era or "saeculum."

High school classmate Wayne Taylor is a molecular biologist, medical researcher, and university professor at Charles Drew University and UCLA. He collaborates with Citizens Climate Lobby to slow climate change and promote solar energy for a livable world. As a holistic “big picture” thinker concerned with ecology and the future, Wayne is a close student of the structure outlined by Strauss and Howe. Taylor wrote me predictions about upcoming events. He writes that if we get through this crisis alive, and if we work together to preserve our democracy and vote, we just might come out the other end better for it.

Are his predictions wrong? If readers think they know better, present yours in the comment section.

Taylor

Guest Post by Wayne Taylor                         

                         Consequences of the election of Trump

What can we expect in the next four years of Trump’s second term as US President? Long-term view: Cheer Up. But for now, buckle up!

It will be a chaotic and divisive time of crisis in America, with economic hardship, war, resistance, and then resurgence of Democracy hopefully in 2028. Trump will appoint MAGA extremists as cabinet heads to dismantle essential U.S. agencies like DOJ, CIA, EPA, NIH, HHS, and FDA. Anti-scientific policies from anti-vaxers like Kennedy will cause terrible health outcomes, eroding trust in agencies like the FDA. Trump will install criminals to weaponize the Justice Department to attack his critics but dismiss valid charges against himself and fellow insurrectionists.

Marginalized Americans who voted to elect Trump will be those hurt most by the coming crisis. People wanted change, so they voted against incumbent Democrats; but they will be appalled by the dumpster-fire from Trump’s mean and short-sighted policies.

Economic Hardship. Trump’s full imposition of tariffs on imported goods will impose a sales tax on Americans of about $3,500 per family. This would largely increase monetary inflation which could by 2026 damage the presently-solid economy. Protective tariffs can be beneficial, but Trump would use tariffs to selectively enrich himself, and erode the U.S. economy.

Our economy will shrink due to Trump imposing massive deportation of hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers needed for essential jobs. This lack of willing workers could cause many farms and businesses to fail. To capture these mainly Hispanic folks, ICE Police would do house-to-house searches and racial-profiling in minority work sites. This will again, as in 2017, rip families apart, separate kids from parents, and disrespect older folks, including undocumented asylum-refugees.

MAGA Republicans in Congress might succeed in Trump’s promise to kill Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, seriously hurting our economy by ending good jobs and reversing climate change remediation, to prop-up fossil industries. That would delay the economically inevitable transition from fossil fuels to less-expensive solar and wind energy. But this would not stop it, since coal is already dead. MAGA hubris and over-reach in this extreme agenda will inflame popular revulsion of Trump and resistance against his corrupt cronies.

War. After Trump takes over the U.S. government in 2025, he will withdraw military support from Ukraine, by ending funding of weapons. He will divide NATO. Trump will pose as a “Big Man” bully with Russian dictator Putin to impose a truce on Ukraine, favoring Russia annexing the Crimean and Donbas regions. We will experience worldwide wars as Putin, sensing Western weakness, attacks Armenia, Poland, or Estonia to “regain” territory. NATO and the EU would fight to defend against Russia. The stress on Russians could foment civil war against Putin. In Israel, Netanyahu will inflame the Israeli-Iranian war to retain power and escape prison. China might attack Taiwan or seize Sudan in Africa. Nuclear war is a possibility.

World War III in forms other than a nuclear exchange is another consequence of international chaos. The United States would finally go to war to support the EU after 2028, to save ourselves and European allies from attacks by Russia’s Putin, an evil Fascist like Hitler. We would also help our allies Japan and Taiwan withstand Chinese aggression. Some forms of war would stimulate the economy, but explode national debt, causing unimaginable suffering and lost lives.

Resistance. Trump will be branded as un-American for colluding on the wrong side in the war to help authoritarian dictator Putin and China’s premier Xi. Congress will renew legislation for Trump’s huge tax-breaks to billionaires, but the public will see that as massive corruption. Trump will excite his base in the culture war by pardoning criminal Insurrectionists who invaded the Capitol on January 6th. Most people will be outraged at this immoral President, causing social and political backlash against incumbent MAGA politicians. This resistance will strengthen political support for Democratic leaders, especially men like Governor Newsom, who will have protected Californians from the oppressive dictates of Trump’s administration. Governors of blue states will work together to resist un-Constitutional federal authority. 

Resurgence of Democracy. In the U.S. election of 2028, Republican incumbents will be fired as a blue wave sweeps Democrats into power. Hopefully, if we win the war (the fourth turning crisis) the result will be the demise of MAGA pols at home and defeat of fascistic dictators worldwide. The winners will then establish new normal policies, including better wages for workers, women’s empowerment, renewed respect for science education and truth, with civil rights and freedom for everyone including minority citizens. It’s "Springtime in America," as the new saecular cycle begins.

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Remember November 22, 1963

Where were you when you heard about JFK being assassinated?

I remember being in the hallway at Hedrick Junior High School having just left a class in algebra. I was 13. 

My other strong memory from the Kennedy era was from the year prior, October 1962, and the Cuban missile crisis. I remember feeling at risk of being cheated. It was unfair that adults were going to blow up the world before I even got a chance to kiss a girl.

Gunsmoke

Rebel Without a Cause

I saw adults doing brinksmanship, like the gunfight duels I saw on the TV westerns or like teenagers in a late-night hot-rod game of chicken. Most of the TV gunfights pitted a conscientious sheriff good guy against a bad guy. Those were reassuring. The sheriff always won. But sometimes the showdown pitted reluctant fighters who got into fatal fights to save face. A real man must not be "chicken." I had seen real-life fights between classmates at junior high. Boys fought for reasons of pride, to retain credibility with their friends. 

I saw the Cuban missile crisis through that lens. Kennedy feared being called "soft on communism." I figured Soviet leaders didn't dare look "soft" either. I recognized that this could escalate. An accidental push becomes a retaliatory shove, becomes a slap, becomes a punch, and in this case an exchange of nuclear warheads. We could all die. I would never get a chance to kiss anyone.

I worry about a president who got elected by being Mr. Dominant, but the American public seemed to like it. Win, win, win. Never surrender. A crowd showed up to watch James Dean. He was a rebel. A rule breaker. He had long hair and he fussed with it. He had charisma. Trump is widely hated, but he is admired, too. Trump doesn't have good character, but he wins fights.

Donald Trump seems incautious to me, a dangerous trait to combine with bellicosity. But Americans see something they like and made their choice. I am stuck in the back seat of the car he drives.

Larry Slessler wrote me a bit of personal history that demonstrates the hazards of international brinksmanship. Mistakes happen. Mis-communication happens. Slessler witnessed it firsthand. The Cuban missile crisis could have ended very badly.

Larry grew up in Medford, Oregon. He is a decade older than I am. He graduated from the University of Oregon and then entered the U.S. Army. That brought him to Florida and then to Vietnam.

Slessler

Guest Post by Larry Slessler

During Oct 1962, I was up to my ears with Cuban Crisis Intelligence Collection efforts. The center of my life was a War Room in Florida. In that room on one wall was a huge map of Cuba with all the potential targets if we went to war with the Soviet Union. Most of you don't know how close we came to WWIII and the mutual destruction of the United States and the Soviet Union.

 Many mind-numbing days into the crisis; we got a message from Washington D.C. that the next day members of the United Nations would be present for a briefing in the War Room, followed by U.N. overflight of Cuba. 

My CO called me in along with a Sgt. Luther. The CO gave us the task to take all the targeting information off the top secret map of Cuba and replace it with phony target data. The brass did not want to expose the real targeting data to the U.N. I had already put in a 12-hour shift, and this new project was going to take most of the night to complete. My norm was 17-18 hour days. I was exhausted every minute of every day.

 

Luther and I got started about 1800 hours. Taking only short coffee breaks and restroom visits we finished around 0400 hours. Luther and I said goodnight and headed off to our bunks for much-needed sleep.

 

About 90 minutes after our departure, orders from Washington D.C. came in canceling the U.N. visit and laying on photo recon missions. The primary aircraft were RF-101's. This aircraft would fly at 500-feet at around 500 miles per hour and take beautiful clear pictures for intelligence analysis. Flying low and fast were the only protection these recon pilots had. 

 

The FAILURE!  Pilots were called in and given target data. They launched multiple flight missions. But nobody knew that Sgt. Luther and I had falsified the targeting master map of Cuba. The net result was that every aircraft launched photographed targets that were not there. 

 

That day's missions were all failures. Millions of dollars were wasted. Pilots lives were in danger. There was 100% mission failure.

 

Luther and I never did find out whose military career ended with this SNAFU. We were just happy it wasn't ours.

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