It's Thanksgiving It's Thanksgiving buy a bird buy a bird

Stuff it's butt with dressing
Stuff that bird
That was the song that Dad used to sing while drinking coffee and watching the parade. I remember getting up to be with him while he taught me the fine art of cooking turkey and getting everybody else to do the rest of the work. It was and for some still is one of the last great deals that we have.
I'll cook a 18 pound bird and provide you with stuffing and gravy, you get me :

Mashed Potatoes

Yams, varieties can vary candied to just whipped crazy with marshmellows

Green Bean Casserole. No dish known to man can compare in mass appeal. I dare you to find one that surpasses it.

bread of all types

ham (Honeybaked ham is proof that we can all live together in peace and harmony, well except the jews and muslims, and vegitarians and vegans, and whole foodists and macrobiotics, but otherwise everybody)

Cranberries is a sauce form

I'm sure there's more but you get the gist of it.

My mom made the best dish. I never liked and to this day do not care for, as a rule, Peas. But she did this thing with the tiny baby peas, mushrooms and onions. I accredit this dish with my love of mushrooms as an adult.

I am thankful today, amidst so much turmoil. We who are sitting at home, who have a home. Anyway it is my favorite holiday. I like to cook turkey. I like making gravy. I've learned how through trial and error and listening and watching my mother.

Thanksgiving is a day for men to enjoy football and women to be thankful that they can send the men out to the store for whatever they want or forgot. We just sort of all come together in the name of the Turkey.

So I got the bird out. 98 minutes later and I'm able to sit down to finish this blog entry.

Friends are arriving
Food is at ready and appetites are honed to a supernatural sharpness.

a haiku for you

Gravy drips oh my
dogs are wondering, can I?
we all sit in place

I want to say to my brother that even though you are not coming to Oregon to see my life I love you.
I want to say to my sister who knows me that I am with you even though there are miles between us.
I want mom to know that she has taught me well
Catie you need to know that we can be happy and I appreciate your efforts at making our lives better
Jennifer, you need to know what an organic turkey is
Uncle Bob and Aunt Claudia I hope your Thanksgiving was filled with Love and fun.
Carolyn and Reggie, you were always so fun to be with. I miss you.
And you know,
I miss Dad, a lot

Happy Thanksgiving

War! Good God! What is it good for? Absolutely NOTHING!

So we see now that this is NOT the end of major combat operations in Iraq.
The assault on Fallujah is well underway. The American troops plus three of those brave Polish troops and a few Brits are going house to house, mosque to mosque killing everything they can. The Coalition Forces have refused to allow any man to leave the city. They refuse to allow aid workers to bring in supplies like food and water.
We seem to be involved in a full-blown war. So not that it really matters now but WHY doesn’t any Conservative like my brilliant brother or blogger Kevin feel deceived or betrayed by the insistence that this is not a major war against Islam or that this is simply a quick mission to restore Democracy in Iraq? Bushies want to play with the facts. First we are told these are ‘enemy combatants’ and this is not a war that would require us to adhere to the Geneva Convention so we can detain them etc…
Now we are told that HELLO WE ARE AT WAR with these people.
So what is it?
Is it both?
Who are we at war with now? Islam? Iraq? AlQueida?
If it is Islam why are we not invading Saudi Arabia? They had the majority of the 911 terrirists anyway. They have more oil; they have more Moslems than Iraq. Also there is Indonesia. They have the MOST Muslims anywhere. AND!! They have oil too!
How about it? Are we at war with Iraq? Why do we have a government in place if we are at war with them? We should just say we are conquering your sovereign nation and there is nothing you can do about it. But no we are “Liberating” them…. Whew it really seems convoluted.
AlQueida???? Well if it were AlQueida we would not be in Iraq at all. We would still be in Afghanistan … oh wait we are…. Ummm okay then back to Saudi Arabia… And Yemen and Qatar and all the other Islamic nations that support AlQueida.

This is the type of Corporate Citizen that we do not need

NEW YORK - Internal e-mails and other documents from Merck & Co. Show the company fought for years to keep safety concerns from undermining the drug's commercial prospects, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

Under Bush this type of behavior would go unpunished.

The interest of profit supersedes a responsibility to conduct business in a ethical and moral fashion. A 'frivolous' lawsuit would hamper Merck's ability to pass off poison as medicine and make billions in profits.

How is a system where this type of corporate malfeasance is accepted as ' the cost of doing business' better than living in Cuba?

Stop trying to make excuses for the evil nature that corporations have adopted by and large in the name of shareholder profit and accept that we need to change the system. Restricting lawsuits will not accomplish corporate responsibility. We need more lawsuits. Corporations are evil when they allow this type of behavior to continue and the Government is complicity when they attempt to curtail the individual from holding the corporation accountable.

I would like to know what you think the Government should be responsible for.

Elliot Spitzer is a man who is taking corporate interests to task in a Court of Law. I think we need more of this type intervention on behalf of the citizens. What do you think?