So Dubya walks into Viet Nam, see. Sounds like the start of a joke, and it is. The guy who thinks he’s the President garbles the English language frequently, but the people who tell him where to go, who to see and what to say usually keep him from stepping in it too deep. I suppose they think his visit to Viet Nam will deflate some of the obvious comparisons between that little U.S. adventure in southeast Asia and the current one in the middle east. But the words someone put in Dub’s mouth had quite the opposite effect. Referring to Iraq, he said, "We’ll succeed unless we quit," obviously suggesting that the U.S. should have continued making war in Viet Nam instead of finally getting the hell out of Dodge. Then he said that he was amazed to be standing in the country which had so tormented the U.S. Let’s see, The U.S. bombed their cities and defoliated their country with agent orange, and Bush ducked out on Viet Nam by getting into the National Guard and not showing up for duty, but he thinks Viet Nam tormented the U.S.

Now compare that brilliant remark to the one which John Kerry, a Viet Nam vet made about not doing your homework and ending up invading Iraq. Which one do you think is more worthy of public scorn and subsequent apology?

A genuinely brilliant quote from a letter in The Chronicle this week: "In Viet Nam, we didn’t fail because we quit; we quit because we failed." Along those lines, none other than Henry Kissinger said in a TV interview this week that a military victory in Iraq is impossible. He ought to know. He engineered a lot of the Viet Nam war and he eventually developed enough sense to get out. And as long as we’re reminiscing about Viet Nam, an Associated Press story last week revealed that in 1966, when approximately 400,000 U.S. soldiers were inhabiting Viet Nam and the New York Times was questioning the wisdom of that occupation, a taped phone conversation caught Lyndon Johnson saying that a bunch of commies were running The Times. Substitute the word "terrorists" and see how far we’ve come in 40 years.

Janet Reno and several other Justice Department lawyers from the Clinton administration, and even a couple from the Reagan administration, filed papers this week with a federal court blasting the Bush gang over the detention without charges of a suspected Al Qaeda operative whose name I won’t attempt to pronounce. We’re not talking about Guantanamo. This is a guy who lived in the U.S., whose suspected terrorist activities were in the U.S., and who has been held in a military prison in the U.S. for over five years.

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A couple of quick local notes: Nevada City clerk Cathy Wilcox-Barnes is laying the groundwork for a lawsuit against the city over having her full-time job with the city pulled out from under her. That’s no surprise. She doesn’t want the job back, but she wants the city to come up with a severance package for her 20 plus years of employment and indemnify her against any future claims. If this ever got into court, we might actually sort out this little "he said; she said" drama, but that’s not likely. The City Council will discuss it in closed session next week, and a settlement offer is the likely outcome. Her critics note that her dual role as an elected official and city employee was a problem. Now she’s in the dual role of elected official and litigant against the city.

And Kilroy is here again. Neighbors and passers-by are complaining about the unsightly wrecking yard on the south side of Grass Valley. You may recall that Kilroy had a similar beef a few years ago at the original location in Nevada City. I’ll be the first to admit that there’s not much you can do to make junkyards pretty, but we all need one somewhere. Maybe the county could lease space to Kilroy’s at the McCourtney Road landfill; consolidate all our garbage in one location.

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Manuel Lopez Obrador and his supporters still believe they were screwed out of the presidency of Mexico in July, so they’re setting up a shadow government. On Monday, a ceremony was held in which Obrador took an oath of office as the legitimate president of Mexico. The goal is to use their perceived majority to prevent Felipe Calderon from actually governing the country. Given Obrador’s history of politics in the streets, things could get interesting south of the border. Calderon’s government obviously won’t let Obrador and his followers go too far, but throwing your political opponent in jail doesn’t exactly polish your image as a political leader. If Obrador’s people can project a non-violent presence, it could be a unique and significant experiment in democracy.

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Despite the ample opportunities for sarcasm and wisecracking about politics local and global, it’s Thanksgiving, and even if you’re discouraged and miserable, it’s a fine occasion to take note of positive things and acknowledge our blessings. We don’t usually apply a political context to this holiday, despite the backdrop of relations between native Americans and European settlers. Some of our other national holidays celebrate the sacrifices and victories of war, however, and that makes Thanksgiving political as well. We’re thankful, as we should be, for the rather comfortable standard of living we enjoy, and those war related holidays are just the flip side of that record. So when you say grace over your holiday feast, pray that the warmongering in today’s world doesn’t destroy the prosperity for which we’re thankful.