Thanksgiving has wings and goes where it must go. – Victor Hugo
Today in the United States is Thanksgiving Day, a day specifically set aside to be thankful for what one has. One would hardly know it nowadays; as with nearly every other American holiday, it is thought of more for the way it is celebrated than for the ideas it was established to commemorate. And so Independence Day has become a day to barbecue, impossible to distinguish from Memorial Day and Labor Day except for the presence of fireworks; New Year’s Day and Halloween are days to get drunk; Christmas is the day one gives gifts for which one has shopped for over a month, and Thanksgiving is merely an excuse for eating like a pig before rushing out the next day (or even that night) to join a mob which will trample children, old people and store employees in an idiotic quest for a few bargains the merchants take a loss on so as to drag the hordes into their facilities. Even the word is vanishing from the calendar; chain stores put up their Christmas decorations on the Day of the Dead, Thanksgiving week is called “Black Friday Week“, and even the day itself is eclipsed by the traditional entree served at the feast, so the Philistines all go about belching “Happy Turkey Day!” at one another. Ugh. Please, American readers, allow me to repeat the advice I’ve given y’all for the past two years: “celebrate this day…with those you love, giving thanks for what you have rather than just stuffing your face and planning to buy more tomorrow.” And though my readers outside the US don’t officially celebrate this as a holiday, I wish all of you peace, prosperity and good fortune as well. Blessed Be!
Bingo Maggie. I am thankful every single day for all the blessings in my life – this morning especially for the first-of-the-season Canadian snowstorm which has turned the world around me fluffy white 🙂
In fairness to the nickname “Turkey Day” which you detest, one of the most beloved Thanksgiving traditions returns today at 12PM EST, and it would never have started if it weren’t for the nickmame “Turkey Day.” 25 years ago, Joel Hodgeson started a T.V. show where he played a human marooned on a satellite with two robots he created, and all three would be forced to watch horrible science fiction movies. This show was called Mystery Science Theatre 3000 or MST3K. Since bad movies are called “turkeys”, on Thanksgiving Comedy Central used to run a marathon of MST3K episodes on “Turkey Day.”
Comedy Central eventually cancelled MST3K and the Turkey Day marathon, but the tradition returns day here on-line. Hope you fellow Mysties enjoy it!
It’s starting in less than 10 minutes!
[YouTube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_jrJCRlItM[/YouTube]
Happy Thanksgiving Day, Maggie, and the same to all our American cousins.
Happy Thanksgiving to all! Dammit, I’m not in the states right now and can’t celebrate this!
Thanksgiving is supposed to be the time that everyone preaches ObamaCare to their relatives who’ve lost their healthcare coverage due to the President and the Democratic party’s meddling in our lives isn’t it? Well at least that’s what the “Organizing for America” website says it’s for!
To me – Thanksgiving always meant two things …
1. A good excuse to get EVERYONE in the family together – and when it happens at my folks place there is literally no place for the men to sit down – it’s standing room only.
2. When I was deployed on a submarine … it was a unique time to sit down to a meal and remember our families back home and the ones we were out there on the tip of the spear protecting.
Y’all have a great Thanksgiving … and remember, that as fucked up as Obama’s America has become – there STILL ARE worse places in the world!
Please, no partisan bullshit; ALL politicians meddle in people’s lives regardless of their “party” (which, like a cat’s color, says nothing about the animal’s behavior). Take Nanny Bloomberg, who has called himself all sorts of “parties” but still keeps being a control freak; here’s his contribution to causing stupid political arguments today.
Sorry I was just pointing out that OFA has a new meaning for Thanksgiving – and a fairly unique and annoying one! 😀
And right now it’s becoming personal for me … I have three ways to go for medical insurance – my TriCare Prime (which will turn into ObamaCare and force me on to the exchanges. My wife’s employer’s plan – which will be increasing it’s premiums and deductibles or …
I can bite the bullet and join this union healthcare plan that I have access to through the government. I refuse to join the union – but I still have access to it and it’s a Cadillac plan that will be protected from premium and deductible increases. Yeah – it’s the Federal Worker’s plan you’ve all heard about and I have, on principle – REFUSED to partake in it up until now.
And I still don’t want any fucking part of it and it has me so angry I want to choke something besides my chicken.
Ditto’s for Bloomberg!! I saw that because I’m avid AllahPundit reader – but if you want serious comedy with commentary … Go with Ace of Spades ( http://ace.mu.nu )
While I am sorry to hear you cannot be in the States to celebrate Thanksgiving with your family, I would ask you this: what are you going to do with that anger? Stew in it and curse your three unpalatable choices? Or decide that life’s too short, make the choice that is best for you and your family at this given moment, and take whatever action you can to remove the Democrats from power in the upcoming election so the Republicans (or Tea Party or Libertarians or whoever) can repeal the ACA, and replace it with either something else or nothing at all?
Full disclosure: I am not currently affected (being active-duty military) so I personally am simply watching and waiting and trying to make the best decisions for myself, as I have no wife or children. I’d love to be with my parents or siblings right now, but work circumstances have kept me from doing so.
As for OFA and Bloomberg, I thought they were someone’s idea of a joke. But seeing they are legit made me just think “seriously?” In cases like that I find ignoring to be the best course of action.
Happy Thanksgiving to all of you as well.
I don’t make decisions that way … what’s best for me is one thing – but what’s the right thing to do is another and the way i try to roll. When they conflict – I get angry. Decision’s been made – I’ll ride on my wife’s insurance and keep Tricare Prime as secondary – until it becomes ObamaCare and then we’ll see what happens. This decision means I’ll be out a lot of $$ … but it means my integrity will be intact. I don’t know about you – but I do not think gov employees should be exempted from ObamaCare and I will not contribute to compounding that felony unless I’m forced to.
And I’m sorry for bringing politics into it but my grievance at this juncture isn’t with Republicans – since not a single one of them voted for this abomination.
“I don’t know about you – but I do not think gov employees should be exempted from ObamaCare and I will not contribute to compounding that felony unless I’m forced to.”
I don’t know what you want me to say. Are you referring to Congress, or every employee of the government? As I said before, I’m active-duty and thus fall under TriCare, which might in for drastic changes itself soon, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. Either way, you can make of these what you will:
http://www.factcheck.org/2013/05/congress-and-an-exemption-from-obamacare/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2013/10/16/did-obama-exempt-1200-groups-including-congress-from-obamacare/
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/09/27/is-congress-exempt-from-obamacare/2883635/
I know we don’t really care for what’s called “mainstream” media around here given the last two are newspapers, but I wanted to find more than one source on this.
“And I’m sorry for bringing politics into it but my grievance at this juncture isn’t with Republicans – since not a single one of them voted for this abomination.”
You’re right, of course, but this is honestly something I’ve tried to figure out. No Republicans voted for it, and claim that the law was a “backroom deal” they were excluded from having any influence on. But going back to when this all started at the beginning of the President’s first term, were Republicans actually excluded from the process by the Democrats? Or did they in essence exclude themselves because they were so opposed to what Obama wanted to do, thus robbing themselves of the opportunity to influence the final product, or even find a way to tie it up indefinitely in Congress, thus de facto killing it?
I’m not trying to spin this in either the Democrats’ or Republicans’ direction. It’s just one of those ‘chicken or the egg’ type questions to me right now.
Anyway, back to the subject at hand. I had a nice Thanksgiving and I hope that wherever you are right now, you managed to find some way to celebrate Thanksgiving too.
Is EVERYTHING politics for you?
Politics is actually the oldest profession – it’s not prostitution! 😉
A priest, a politician and a prostitute were in a pub, having some craic. Somehow, they got into an argument about whose was the oldest profession. The prostitute, naturally, claimed that as hers was called “the oldest profession”, she had claim. But no, said the priest, for without my Lord, whose representative I am, there would be no world, for he created it all when all was void and chaos. So, mine must be the oldest profession.
And who, said the politician, do you suppose created the void and the chaos?
(And enjoy your Thanksgiving, Maggie!)
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
Happy Thanksgiving. I am glad I found this site. It is pleasing to know that the end of prostitution prohibition has found such a thoughtful voice.
That should have read “the ending of prostitution prohibition has found such a thoughtful voice.”
Happy Thanks giving everyone, a day that we all shall be thankful for everything.
What is now called Obamacare was an invention of the conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation. For all the bellyaching about Obamacare, I think it’ll turn out OK, because after all it turned out OK when it was implemented in Massachusetts by that notorious liberal Democrat, Mitt Romney. Oh, wait…
I would think that an old Navy guy would have C.H.A.M.P.U.S. I’ll admit, though, that I’ve lost track of how (government-provided) veterans health insurance works these days.