I Love A Parade

[Joseph Patrick]

From Gerry Milligan

I do not think that anyone reading this enjoys a parade as much as I do, but our president wants a military parade on Pennsylvania Avenue. A military parade is not the Rose Parade or Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. In my time serving in some third world countries I saw a couple of military parades. One word describe them: BORING! First, military persons passing by a reviewing stand, over and over. Then there are the tanks and armored personnel carriers chewing up the road with their treads. If it happens on the fourth of July with the heat and humidity of Washington D.C. the roads will be really trashed. And we get to pay for it. Not my idea of fun. I hope that our president's ego does not over rule cooler heads, but really doubt it.

[Haruo]

I hope the countermarchers (and there will be some) will not be attacked or arrested, and will not do anything that in my opinion warrants arrest. Ellin Jimmerson recently broached an idea (throwing Moonpies at the troops) that I thought was risky in that regard.

[Sandy]

My Dad worked at a military base when I was growing up, and I remember going to the Armed Forces Day parade. We sat in bleachers at the side of a flat area of ground that was called the Chaffee Parade Grounds. The post commanding general and his staff rode in jeeps at the front, there was an army band, and the rest of the parade was each company lined up marching past. This was in Arizona, so after the first four or five companies had marched past, the dust started to rise off the parade ground. That was the parade. The arm base, Ft. Huachuca, was headquarters for the strategic communication command, and was the technology and electronics proving ground, so there weren't any tanks or military equipment to parade.

I saw the estimates for the cost of this Trump boondoggle. Maybe we could take those tax dollars and finish getting electricity to Puerto Rico and water for Flint.

[Rvaughn]

[Haruo]

Well, I wasn't able to discuss it in any detail with her, because she was only interested in the responses of veterans and those currently serving in the armed forces. The basic question was how to counterdemonstrate in a clownish sort of way, in imitation of the way some town in Germany has responded to an annual Neo-Nazi get-together that takes place there.

[Rvaughn]

I haven't read or heard much about this parade, but I assume those would be real American troops marching in it. If so, throwing anything at them, however clownishly, is a very bad idea.

[JE Pettibone]

[Haruo]

[Haruo]

For reasons unknown and perhaps unfathomable, my phone has started adding diareses to most but not all of the y's I type on it.

[Sandy]

[KeithE]

[JE Pettibone]

Ed: Keith,"foreign spies with cameras" No, Keith those are Japanese tourist.

[JE Pettibone]