It is worse than I thought - and I thought it was bad.

Aside from the 4^th of July, there is no other holiday in America that is in every respect for all Americans.  Indeed, I’ve been with recent immigrants from many countries who eagerly look forward to joining in our Thanksgiving rituals and meals, because it is for them an important rite of passage to becoming Americans and showing their feelings of gratitude for being here in our land of opportunities.

Thanksgiving, also, says much about the American character, that we early on officially enshrined a national holiday for giving thanks.

In 1789, George Washington issued the first national Thanksgiving proclamation with these words: “Now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the 26th day of November next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be….”  (Read the whole proclamation.)

As you make your plans for Thanksgiving, this early post is to remind you of why we celebrate and dedicate ourselves, in gratitude for all we’re given, achieve, and share, thanks to G-d and each other in America.

John Stuart Skinner in his classic 1883 The Dog and the Sportsman put it this way:

I have frequently felt something like remorse, when, on picking up a wounded
one, I have met the forgiving expression of its full and bright, yet soft hazel
orb. How many of the beauties who dazzle and enslave us would be proud of such
an eye.

It's called And Another Thing...

Toon via Lucianne.

The Moonbats want to get rid of "Fighting Sioux." The Indians want it kept. How does "The Fighting Sue" sound instead? Or "The Pacifist Sue"? Beat us, please.

Somebody read Sarah Palin's book

Via Gateway on the weekend healthcare voting:

Senate Dems Will Only Deliberate 10 Hours Before Vote to Nationalize Health Care

The bill will nationalize the nation’s health care industry, increase costs, ration care, tax cosmetic surgery, cut Medicare, charge a monthly abortion fee, and take away your freedom.

Please take time tomorrow and Saturday to call your US Senator.

It only will take a minute.

** HERE IS THE PHONE LIST.

Don’t let the democrats destroy our health care system.

Support for this disastrous bill is down to 40% with 52% opposing.

At Am Thinker:

According to a recent paper by Drs. June and Dave O'Neill of Baruch College, the City University of New York, two national studies--the National Health Interview Survey and the Current Population Survey--put the number of folks who don't have health insurance because they can't afford it at 21.6 million. That's almost exactly the number that Dr. Reid's big spending plan would leave uninsured.

After spending $848 billion, of course. 

Maybe it won't insure anybody, but it will achieve control of us. That's the point.

Pethokoukis does the odds on the heath care takeover.

Next on the Dem agenda: Legalizing illegals.  Pete DuPont says Congress is hard of  hearing, but they are not. They have a small window of opportunity to ram through their wish list before they are voted out next November. These are not issues that there is a national consensus about. Bad politics, bad news, bad everything.

Seven trees? Isn't the hockey stick graph dead already?

Will Osama need to be read his Miranda rights? Before some SEAL shoots him?

How times have changed. The CA students once protested for free speech. Now they protest about Gimme gimme. What pathetic, whining, entitled children this country has raised. Yes, I worked my way through UMass, and I am the better man for it. The young benefit from challenges. I did.

Big, Bigger, Biggest: Three Examples of Government-Induced Failure

They don't build 'em like this anymore. My lousy photo does not do justice to this house, which I assume to have been the parsonage of the First Congregational Church of East Haddam, right across the street.

In the old days, the minister was given a house to use and land to farm as part of his compensation. In the real old days, he was paid via town taxes too: The Congregational Church was the established church of CT. Not that that meant all that much: Congo churches did, and still, vote on everything - including their doctrine and their choice of pastor - within their own congregation. Zero hierarchy, for better or worse. Every person was/is considered to have his own hotline to God.

The wife typically ran the farming business: it paid the bills and kept her out of the pool halls.

The social psychology of subways 

The importance of social networking in life:

...the history of humanity is a history of social networking all the same, according to Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler, authors of Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives. “Our connections affect every aspect of our daily lives,” they write.

Men often treat their friends better than women do.
Duh. h/t, Retriever

The '09 rally vs the '82 rally. I think the '09 rally is full of hopey.

Check the net for your stolen ID

Voters say what we say: To Create Jobs, Voters Say Cut Taxes and Stop Spending

Hewitt: In A Sane World, This Report Would Kill Obamacare.

Related: Harry Reid has a health care tax increase for you. Of course he does.

Some scientists puzzled: Why doesn't nature fit our computer models? Mother Nature defies your human models, sillies.

Jerry Brown and ACORN

Circling Sharks Smell American Blood

Neoneo: The liberal meme de jour: those cowardly conservatives, afraid of the US criminal justice system

Vanderleun's book: Let It Bleed

Did Holder stiff Senate on Justice Dept. lawyers who defended jihadis?

Some Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee were taken aback Wednesday by Attorney General Eric Holder's refusal to reveal conflicts of interest involving Justice Department lawyers who, before joining the Obama administration, worked on behalf of Guatanamo detainees.

This is cute, BL:

It's called "Indian" because it is made with corn (maize) meal - the staple food of North American Indians.

Simple rustic ingredients. No sugar? You use molasses. No flour? You use corn meal. The only trick is to make sure it is neither too firm nor too runny. Serve warm.

Here's a bit of the history of this dessert, with a good recipe.

Remain strange and unpredictable, Bob. We like you that way. This is a good Minnesota Polka:

Here's her book tour schedule. Alas, nothing in New England. She should go to Boston.

From VDH with Palin-odes:

The AP supposedly hired 11 fact-checkers to discredit Ms. Palin’s memoir (Did Fox News hire 11 to question the very questionable things found in the two Obama memoirs?)

(I wondered, as did Jammy, whether the AP will assign as many to studying the details of he health care bill: "Considering the AP assigned 11 "fact-checkers" to pore over Sarah Palin's 415-page book, I figure they'll assign a proportional amount to this, right? That would be 55 of them, assuming they're interested.")

From Wehner on Palin (good piece):

If you believe, as I do, that the GOP once again needs to become the “party of ideas” — as it did under Ronald Reagan — then Palin is not the solution to what ails it. At this stage, based on the interviews I have seen with her, she doesn’t seem able to articulate the case for conservatism in a manner that is compelling or even particularly persuasive. She is nothing like, to take three individuals I would hold up as public models, Margaret Thatcher, William Bennett, and Antonin Scalia — people brimming with ideas, knowledgeable and formidable, intellectually well-grounded, and impossible to dismiss.

True, but those folks are not American politicians -

Finally, a word from our commenter MM on our Palin-mania post yesterday:

Sarah is doing a lot of things right. Holding true to her principles in spite of the ugly backbiting of the liberal media, remaining a faithful wife to Todd and a good mother to their children -- these are admirable things. Since I come from 'flyover country' myself, I have learned to discount what the limousine liberals have to say about most things and people. They view the world through a skewed lens of anger and resentment. But I still haven't figured out why they reveal their worst and ugliest selves whenever Sarah Palin is mentioned or comes on the scene. As a New England based commenter said on Neptunus lex the other evening, by all rights, by all they say they believe in, feminists ought to love her. She got her college degree, she married her high school sweetheart, she has five children, and she has been a successful governor of the largest state in the Union, and got a more than 60% approval rating from her constituents..

What's not to like? Of course, she has had more real world experience in managing effectively a large complex enterprise, meeting payrolls, and solving problems by concentrated effort. But what's so bad about that? Ohh, right. I forgot. Our present President hasn't done any of that. No governing ... no meeting payrolls ... no solving difficult diplomatic problems.

I guess you just have to hate a woman [or a man] who can do all of the above, successfully.

Or maybe it's just because she's beautiful. And her husband adores her. And encourages her in her achievements. Yeah ... that's probably it.

‘I love the tea party movement,’ she said. ‘It’s beautiful, it’s healthy. It’s part of that good healthy competition that’s needed in a political party.’ She contrasted the somewhat tumultuous state of the GOP to what’s going on in the Democratic party today. ‘It seems like the Democratic party is filled with more sheep-like individuals, who go along and get along,’ she said.”