Happy Thanksgiving

 

The fine print

 

Happy Thanksgiving Day

I hope it's not our last in a democracy, such as it is.

Hey look - Trump DID tweet out a Thanksgiving message

Presidential

It's Turkey Day

The real turkey Trump pardoned:

I have a feeling Trump was intending an insult with the pardon, considering the timing - when he was pardoning the other turkey.  Which is a stupid, stupid "tradition". And especially awful at a time when the Trump administration is rushing to execute a number of real people before he leaves office.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:  I know the asshat Matt Gaetz is not trying to call Flynn "the Thanksgiving turkey," but that's exactly what he's done, nevertheless.  And it's not wrong.

Hadn't even thought of that.

UPDATE:

You can't shame Trump and the GOP, Tim.  They don't care.  And neither do their voters.

UPDATE:

UPDATE:

Cult 45!  I like it.  I'm gonna use it.  If I can remember it.

UPDATE 12/8:  Judge Sullivan dismisses the case against Flynn.

Manufacturing dissent

Christ.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Pardon me?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

And on this Thanksgiving Day...

What do you think Donald Trump is most thankful for?  You guessed it: himself.

The Coast Guard's "brand has gone up"

Buzzfeed has the transcript of The Most Notable Loser's gibberish speech yesterday to Coast Guard personnel.

Should we leave the media here to do the questions or should we tell the media? "It's Thanksgiving. Let's let the media stay. Anybody have any questions about the country, how we're doing or any of those things? Wow. I love it when you don't. That means you're doing great. I love that. That's the greatest. The press I know doesn't have any questions. If you do, we won't take them but that's alright. The press has plenty of questions."

And yes, he used the time mostly to brag. In case you didn't know it, the Coast Guard's "brand" is going up, thanks to Hurricane Harvey.

[A]s bad as that hurricane was, and that was bad one. That was a big water job, right? It kept coming in and going back, they couldn't get rid of it. They'd never seen it. I guess it was the biggest water dump they've ever seen.

Also, this:

The Navy, I can tell you, we're ordering ships, with the Air Force I can tell you we're ordering a lot of planes, in particular the F-35 fighter jet, which is like almost like an invisible fighter. I was asking the Air Force guys, I said, "How good is this plane?" They said, "Well, sir, you can't see it." I said, "But in a fight. You know, in a fight, like I watch on the movies."

Go ahead and read the whole thing. It's a jewel.

That's what half the world is thinking about us now, but is The Most Notable Loser perhaps thinking of Mike Flynn?

The first Thanksgiving

Annually, upon Thanksgiving, right-wing blogs will feature someone writing about how the Pilgrims landed here and established a system based on rudimentary socialism, which failed, sending the colony spiraling into famine, and then moved on to a “free market” model that allowed them to survive. This historical canard—which likely had its origins in a 1968 newspaper column, and Cleon Skousen, Glenn Beck’s favorite lunatic, promulgated it as well—may never die, but Kate Zernike of The New York Times did the best job of debunking it in 2010. The short version: The Pilgrims established the original system to increase their profits and abandoned it because internal bitching, not unlike that heard on modern-day talk radio, began to affect the colony’s political stability. There was no famine. Also, they got better at growing corn on the land they’d stolen.

[...]

Before establishing themselves at the Plimoth Plantation, and thereby setting in motion the genocidal boosting of an entire continent from the human beings who already were here, the Pilgrims went first to Holland, where they found life very hard. The language barrier locked them out of the local economy and locked them into poverty. They also found the mercantile, sophisticated Dutch society full of immoral influences.

[...]

Poverty is at the root of the holiday season on which we are now embarked, in what also happens to be one of the uneasiest years the country has seen in over a century. Poverty is an element in the true Thanksgiving story, and it certainly is a critical element in all Christmas narratives. That goes for both the ones in the gospel, and also the secular kin that have grown along the path first blazed by Charles Dickens, who fairly can be said to have invented the modern secular Christmas narrative, although I tend not to blame him for every new Hallmark holiday movie anymore.

  Charles P Pierce

Have a Hallmark holiday, pilgrims.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Oh, Yeah, a Turkey Was Pardoned

No, not Ed Snowden.

Yeah, just a little joke.  Actually, I'm all for pardoning Ed Snowden.  Not gonna happen.

WIIIAI reposted all her (?) Bush era Thanksgiving posts.  That's fun.  I highly recommend reading them all.  Here's a couple from 2007 and 2005, respectively:

The White House is having its annual Thanksgiving contest, in which the two turkeys to be spared the ax are named by the great American public. The choices offered by the White House this year are less creative than ever: Wing & Prayer, May & Flower, Gobbler & Rafter (Rafter?) (evidently a flock of turkeys is called a rafter), Wish & Bone, Truman & Sixty (the pardon-the-turkey thing was initiated by Truman 60 years ago, when I believe the turkeys were named Hiroshima & Nagasaki), or Jake & Tom. Surely we can do better. I declare this a CONTEST and open with my own entry: Water & Board.

[...]

Today, some American soldiers went to deliver candy and toys to the child patients in a hospital in Mahmoudiya, Iraq. You already know this story isn’t going to end well, don’t you? But let’s pause to wonder: how were they planning to spin the Thanksgiving tale for Iraqi consumption? Well, people fleeing their homes because of religious persecution, I guess Iraqis can relate to that. Puritanical religious fanatics whose goal is to stamp out every sign of free will and joy, especially among females, that might seem familiar too (Muqtada al-Sadr is of course Arabic for Cotton Mather, and I’m pretty sure somewhere in that new constitution is the phrase “thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”). White guys with guns arriving from a foreign land and taking control of all the natural resources? Check.

So the Americans went to the hospital, and a suicide bomb attack killed 30 or 34 people. Shouted one survivor, in a question that is in no way a metaphor for the wider situation, “Why did the Americans come here? They must have known they would bring the killers with them.”

  WIIIAI

Ah, the good old days.  At least with Donald Trump we will once again have the possibility of some photo-worthy times ahead.

Sorry, I don't know what happened this year. I just assume a turkey was pardoned.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

What Happens to Those Pardoned Turkeys

[This year's] turkeys were raised by Dr Jihad Douglas, whom Obama referred to simply as “Dr Douglas”.

  The Guardian

A wet dream for birthers. Barack Hussein Obama gets his turkeys from Jihad Douglas.

But what happens to the pardoned turkeys?

Over the years they’ve been sent to a variety of farms to live out their days in peace. This year, they’re headed to Turkey Hill Farm in Morven Park in Virginia, the same farm they were sent to in 2013 and 2014. Prior to that, between 2010 and 2012, the turkeys spent their final days at George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate. But that tradition was ended because it was not historically accurate, as Washington did not farm turkeys.

  The Guardian

Seriously, who complained about that? This is why more people don't get into politics.

From 2005 to 2009, the birds were sent to the happiest place on Earth, Disneyland Resort in California, or the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. And for many years before that, they resided in Fairfax County, Virginia at the aptly named Frying Pan Park.

If those early turkeys knew the name of the "park" they were headed for, they wouldn't have thought much of their pardon. But, thankfully, turkeys don't understand English, nor human intentions, or they wouldn't eat so much.

“The birds are fed in such a way to increase their weight,” Norton told CNN. “[Americans] want a nice big breasted turkey and so they are fed high protein diet and they get quite large. The organs, though, that are in this bird are meant for a smaller bird. They just can’t handle the extra weight, so they end up living not as long [as wild turkeys].”

[...]

“The bird is bred for the table, not for longevity,” [Dean Norton, the director at Mount Vernon in charge of livestock] told CNN. “Some of [the pardoned turkeys] have been pretty short lived.”

From a few months to less than two years.

Popcorn, one of the turkeys pardoned in 2013, died the summer after his short stay at the White House from “something heat-related."

An oven?