455, and, now that we are going to finally start saying it again, Merry Christmas!

Donald Trump is a hotel keeper and real estate developer. Not an arms manufacturer. Peace is good for his businesses everywhere. Same goes for the Exxon fellow. You can't develop oil fields when armies are fighting over them.

Merry Christmas to you Jon and everyone else here! And it's curious Patrick why Trump has surrounded himself with Generals and Admirals, folks with a military background. With Pence taking all the daily Intel briefings, this is an odd way to start a foreign policy agenda. But of course, Ivanka and her husband will be in the West Wing for consultation!!! God, I wish Kellyanne was part of the coming Administration ;-)

Patrick, developed countries go to war to protect their Vital Interests. Those Interests always coincide with corporate interests, which concern only the maintenance of profit. In the 1950s, the CEO of GM, Charles E. Wilson, famously said upon becoming Secretary of Defense, "What's good for our country is good for General Motors, and vice versa" The idea that Trump is a simple bourgeois hotel keeper is dangerously naïve. He is an international plunderer of labor and natural resources. He is a Player with oligarchs like Putin. He is a top capitalist AND now the head of the government of the most powerful country on Earth. He has Vital Interests in spades and, as never before, the interests of Capitalist-in-Chief will be enforced by his country's weapons and its peasant blood. He is, by definition, amoral. Do not count on him for peace. Count on him to WIN, over your dead body and mine.