Happy Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Day is an uniquely American holiday, at least the one at the end of November. American families will gather for a big meal, traditionally of Turkey, as well as thankfulness and fellowship.

The holiday commemorates the first Thanksgiving, begun by the English settlers at Plymouth, Massachusetts, to show thanks for their survival of their first winter of 1620-1621, and their first successful harvest, made possible in large part by the Native Americans. The first Thanksgiving feast, attended by the Native Americans and the Pilgrims, lasted 3 days, history tells us.

The holiday was made official during the Civil War by a proclamation by President Lincoln. The holiday is meant to remind Americans of their many blessings and to remind them also of their obligations to the less fortunate. Many Americans will spend the holiday volunteering in soup kitchens, serving up donated turkey dinners. Many restaurants will open their doors to the poor and feed them without charge. Thanksgiving is a day when no one in America need go hungry, except by his own choice.

Each year, by tradition, a turkey is donated to the President of the United States, and his family. Until President Kennedy, they ate the turkeys. Kennedy let his go. Since President Bush the Elder, the turkeys have received an official presidential pardon, and allowed to live, unlike so many millions of their brethren.

I don't want to get in the habit of posting too many videos. The one below will be the last one for a while. It shows the pardoning ceremony yesterday of a turkey named Courage, by President Obama. I hope you will watch it.

I wish all my fellow Americans a happy Thanksgiving, and blessings to our esteemed non-American readers as well.

A special Happy Thanksgiving to the wonderful South African families who are today celebrating their second Thanksgiving because of my influence. You honor me and my country. God bless each of you. Ndiya kuthanda.

And to a very special friend who is traveling again as I write this - you know who you are - Godspeed, and I hope there is enough cake left to take a picture of for you. There probably won't be, since I have already started eating it.

Government is not necessarily the problem?

I have heard that as much as one-third of health care costs are for administration. Paperwork.

I don't know now where I heard that or if it is even true, but I saw a doctor being interviewed on TV last night (can't remember his name, but he used to be Obama's physician) and he said that he had two full-time employees whose job was just to fill out paperwork for the insurance companies.

Another thing he said, which I found very interesting, was that the time-consuming part was not really the government Medicare stuff, as one might think, but the private insurance forms. He also said the government/medicare pretty much left him alone, and that the harassment and pressuring to lower his standards of patient care were coming from private insurance companies too, and not the government.

Well, if true, that is an eye-opener because I had always assumed that any nightmarish paperwork and regulations would be coming from the government. Not so, this doctor says, and he also says (because of that fact) he has no fears of a national health care program run by the government.

I am still digesting that, and, of course, one of my digestive enzymes is that he was formerly Obama's doctor, so I'm guessing the good doctor was born loving big government. Still, it is food for thought. I may be won over to this national health care thing yet. Still many questions to be answered.

The Obama administration's missile defense system against the North Korean and Iranian nuclear threats.

And while we are still on the subject of playing the saw...

It is a little known fact (which some people still don't believe, or choose not to believe, or blindly deny outright) that Itzhak Perlman got his start playing the saw on weekends in roadhouses along highway 90 on the Gulf Coast and in southern Louisiana during the late 1960s, complete with chicken wire to protect him from thrown beer bottles, and over the years, through dedication and determination, improved and perfected his craft (and suffered through an instrument change) until finally he was invited, along with fellow roadhouse veteran Yo-Yo Ma (originally a washboard and table spoon player by the name of Titan Uppe), to play at Obama's inauguration earlier this year. Believe it or don't.

May god strike Bush down if I am not telling the truth.

Giants among us

As the queen looked helplessly at her bodyguard, a look of obvious fright frozen on her face, the Duke of Edinburgh expresses dismay that they were not told in advance the Obamas were nearly 8 feet tall.

"They certainly didn't look it in any of the things we had previously seen of them on television,"  the duke commented afterward, "and I must say it came as rather a shock when they first strode ponderously into the room."

But no harm done, and Her Majesty seemed openly relieved as she discovered the Obamas are apparently quite tame.

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Incidentally, the Duke of Edinburgh still holds the Guinness Record for the number of medals worn by an individual who in real life was only a lieutenent.

In other news...

Oh, never mind. You have probable heard of the Queen and Michelle's little affair already.

The Chosen One is in Europe for a few days

President Obama is the best man, the right man, for the job. He is going to get us out of this economic mess Bush got us into. I really respect his intelligence and experience.

April fool.

Okay, so McCain wouldn't have been any better.

Where is a fighter like Gordon Brown when you need him?