Thanksgiving Funny/Sad

Via Wonkette  Commenter Memzilla:

Are You Off Work Thanksgiving? Do Not Shop Where the Workers Aren't

Think Progress: 

On Thursday, most Americans will gather together with family and friends to have dinner and celebrate Thanksgiving. But not everyone will be able to enjoy the holiday the way they’d like.

Eleven brands say they will be open on Thanksgiving this year, requiring millions of workers to show up for shifts during the national holiday.

CREDIT: Dylan Petrohilos

"Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday because, more than any other, it is uniquely American"

In other words, Mr. President, the gold-seekers in Jamestown and the god-botherers at Plymouth were the original undocumented immigrants.



Full transcript here:

Shop Stores That Treat Workers Like Human Beings

Of course you are not shopping today, when it means encouraging the slave-driving plutocrats exploiting their employees.

And you're not shopping tomorrow, on Buy Nothing Day.

But when you do start your holiday shopping, stick with the stores that acknowledge their employees' humanity by closing on Thanksgiving.

Costco, of course.  Dillard's. Burlington Coat Factory. TJMaxx and Marshall's. JoAnn Fabrics. Designer Shoe Warehouse. Petco. Barnes and Noble (just this once) Crate and Barrel.

Not to mention every locally-owned, non-chain store you can find and buy something in between now and New Year's.

Think Progress:

Instead of shopping at Macy’s or J.C. Penney, for example, consumers have the option to go to Nordstrom or Neiman Marcus. Instead of Walmart, Kmart, or Target, they can go to GameStop, Barnes & Noble, or Bed, Bath & Beyond. Instead of Sports Authority, shoppers can get outdoors gear at Patagonia or REI.

And consumers may be prepared to stand in solidarity with retail employees who say they don’t want to work on the holiday. Less than one in five people who say they’re going to shop over Thanksgiving weekend say they’ll do it on the holiday itself, a drop from nearly a quarter last year, while the majority aren’t even going to shop in actual stores. Half of Americans say they think shopping on that day itself is a terrible idea. That may be why opening early didn’t juice holiday sales for the stores that made workers come in on the holiday last year.

Slice the Mythology Out of Thanksgiving

Not happy feasters eager to share and be friends, but invaders bent on genocide.

Tim Weed at TPM:

It’s what might be called the Thanksgiving Myth — and it’s not wildly off base as far as it goes. But some important context is missing. This is a problem, because a nation’s foundational mythology determines its self-image and deeply affects the behavior of its government and citizenry.

From 1616 to 1619, a series of virgin-soil epidemics spread by European trading vessels ravaged the New England seaboard, wiping out up to 95 percent of the Algonkian-speaking native population from Maine to Narragansett Bay. The coast was a vast killing zone of abandoned agricultural fields and decimated villages littered with piles of bones and skulls. This is what the Pilgrims encountered when they landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620. Not a pristine wilderness, but the devastated ruins of a once-thriving culture, a haunting boneyard which English libertine Thomas Morton later described as a “newfound Golgotha.”

Between the freakazoid Puritans who viewed the natives as demons, and the slightly later thieves desperate for land, what Native Americans remained to assert ownership quickly became a convenient enemy.

In May of 1637, colonists from Connecticut and Massachusetts Bay, with a group of their Indian allies, set fire to a fortified Pequot stronghold on the Mystic River. An estimated 700 Pequots perished, mostly women and children, and the few survivors were shipped to Bermuda and sold into slavery. On the heels of the virgin-soil epidemics that had decimated the native population, the ghastly specter of genocide had reached the shores of America. In 1675, bloody King Phillip’s War put the finishing touches on what was more or less the total extermination of the eastern woodland Indians.

It is an inescapable fact, therefore, that this proud country was born in the aftermath of a shameful ethnic cleansing that is largely absent from the collective memory. It behooves us to refresh that memory. How would the current debate over immigration change, for example, if it were to be conducted in the light of a more honest consideration of our own deepest origins? Would self-righteous distinctions about “legal” vs. “illegal” immigrants have the same emotional currency? Recent popular histories such as Nathaniel Philbrick’s Mayflower and Jill Lepore’s The Name of War have taken us some distance in this process of revision, but we need to keep telling ourselves the true story until it is enshrined in our national consciousness. It’s high time we updated the Thanksgiving Myth.

"We are a people who are greater together than we are on our own."

And greater still when together in peace than when together in war, Mr. President.



Full transcript here.

Despite Obamacare Success, Kentucky Still Infested With Elected Conservatards in Possession of Twitter Accounts

Do they not realize that reporters can read their twits? Or are they genuinely proud of twatted crap like this?

Joe Sonka last week at Fat Lip:

We’re rapidly approaching the Thanksgiving holiday, and with that in mind, state Rep. Brian Linder, R-Dry Ridge, decided to share his thoughts on the season via Twitter:

Wait… Did he really… No…

After a brief Twitter firestorm, Linder deleted the tweet, giving me this explanation:

Uh huh. So it had nothing to do with Pilgrims defending themselves from — or genocidal elimination of — Native Americans, rather how “gun control” advocates want to ban turkey hunting? I’ve heard of legislation to make background checks stronger to prevent violent felons and people on terrorist watch lists from purchasing guns, and I’ve heard of legislation banning the sales of assault weapons and large capacity clips, but I’ve never actually heard of legislation to confiscate shotguns and outlaw turkey hunting, I must say.

LEO spoke with state Rep. Reginald Meeks, D-Louisville, who is of Native American ancestry, about Linder’s comments. Meeks says that he is “flabbergasted,” but hopes that it will provide a “teachable moment” about American history:

“Let’s take this as a teachable moment. The fact of the matter is, it wasn’t guns or weapons that ensured the survival of the Pilgrims. It was the fact that native people taught them how to hunt, taught them what to hunt, taught them how to plant, what to plant, when to harvest, what to harvest, how to build shelters. All of those survival skills they needed were taught to them by Native Americans. From the native standpoint – he said if they had gun control we wouldn’t have Thanksgiving – the fact of the matter is, if native people had better immigration policies, we wouldn’t have Thanksgiving…

So let’s take this as a teachable moment, and hopefully this representative, and others who share that ideology that guns and the use of guns will solve all problems, let’s hope they will take this as a moment to learn the facts and the truth. And that’s the only way we can take something as arrogant and misinformed as that statement and try to make it a teachable moment…

He’s just reflecting an attitude that exists in this country that believes pro-gun ideology is the solution to every problem. And as long as this country has that ideology, we will continue to come into conflict with ourselves and others on the outside of this country. And it’s just amazing that here we are in 2013, and those ideas are still pervasive.”

Thanksgiving Abuse at Pizza Hut

UPDATE: Pizza Hut caves.

Well, shit.  I avoid Domino's because of their freakazoid anti-abortion owner, and I avoid Papa John's because of their repug conservatard anti-Obamacare owner, so I have been depending on Pizza Hut for all my football game pizza/pasta/wings needs.

No more.

A Pizza Hut manager in Indiana says he was fired because he refused to open on Thanksgiving Day. Tony Rohr, an employee of more than 10 years, told his managers that Pizza Hut could “be company that stands up and says we care about our employees and they can have the day off.”

They instead asked him to write his resignation. Still defiant, he explained his decision in the letter:

I am not quitting. I do not resign, however I accept that the refusal to comply with this greedy, immoral request means the end of my tenure with this company [...] I hope you realize that it’s the people at the bottom of the totem pole that make your life possible.

For employees at Pizza Hut, Thanksgiving and Christmas were the only two days of the year they were guaranteed to have off. When Pizza Hut, retailers, and other restaurants choose to open on Thanksgiving, many American workers that already struggle to take holidays off have little choice but to comply. The U.S. is the only advanced economy that doesn’t guarantee paid vacation days.

This year, more stores than ever are opening during the Thanksgiving holiday to get a jump on Black Friday sales. But some have defied the pressure to open and will instead let workers enjoy time with their families. The stores that open, meanwhile, risk consumer backlash for leading the trend.

Some of the larger retailers pay employees extra for working the holiday, but there is no guarantee. A Ohio state lawmaker wants to change that with a bill that would have stores pay three times normal wages if they open Thanksgiving. Rhode Island, Maine, and Massachusetts already have laws that bar big retailers from opening on Thanksgiving Day.

Be Thankful for AgriCULTURE and Reject AgriBUSINESS

Jim Hightower at Nation of Change:

An arrogant, brusque, narrow-minded and dogmatic agricultural economist, Butz had risen to prominence in the small — but politically powerful — world of agriculture by devoting himself to the corporate takeover of the global food economy. He was dean of agriculture at Purdue University, but also a paid board member of Ralston Purina and other agribusiness giants. In these roles, he openly promoted the preeminence of middleman food manufacturers over family farmers, whom he disdained.

"Agriculture is no longer a way of life," he infamously barked at them. "It's a business." He callously instructed farmers to "get big or get out" — and he then proceeded to shove tens of thousands of them out by promoting an export-based, conglomerated, industrialized, globalized, and heavily subsidized corporate-run food economy. "Adapt," he warned farmers, "or die." The ruination of farms and rural communities, Butz added, "releases people to do something useful in our society."
The whirling horror of Butz, however, spun off a blessing, which is that innovative, freethinking, populist-minded and rebellious small farmers and food artisans practically threw up at the resulting Twinkieization of America's food.

They were sickened that nature's own rich contribution to human culture was being turned into just another plasticized product of corporate profiteers. "The central problem with modern industrial agriculture ... (is) not just that it produces unhealthy food, mishandles waste, and overuses antibiotics in ways that harm us all. More fundamentally, it has no soul," said Nicholas Kristof, a New York Times columnist and former farm boy from Yamhill, Ore. Rather than accept that, they threw themselves into creating and sustaining a viable, democratic alternative. The "good food" rebellion has since sprouted, spread and blossomed from coast to coast.

This transformative grass-roots movement rebuts old Earl's insistence that agriculture is nothing but a business. It most certainly is a business, but it's a good business — literally producing goodness — because it's "a way of life" for enterprising, very hardworking people who practice the art and science of cooperating with Mother Nature, rather than always trying to overwhelm her. These farmers don't want to be massive or make a killing; they want to farm and make delicious, healthy food products that help enrich the whole community.

This spirit was summed up in one simple word by a sustainable farmer in Ohio, who was asked what he'd be if he wasn't a farmer. He replied: "Disappointed." To farmers like these, food embodies our full "culture" — a word that is, after all, sculpted right into "agriculture" and is essential to its organic meaning.

Although agriculture has forestalled the total takeover of our food by crass agribusiness, the corporate powers and their political hirelings continue to press for the elimination of the food rebels and ultimately to impose the Butzian vision of complete corporatization. This is one of the most important populist struggles occurring in our society. It's literally a fight for control of our dinner, and it certainly deserves a major focus as you sit down to your Thanksgiving dinner this year.

To find small-scale farmers, artisans, farmers markets and other resources in your area for everything from organic tomatoes to pastured turkey, visit LocalHarvest.org.

Where Do All Those Turkey Feathers Go?

The answer to that and more from Mother Jones: Your Turkey Explained in 6 Charts.

Do me one favor: help reduce the massive amount of edible turkey we throw out every year by cooking the carcass and leftover meat into soup.  It's time-consuming but not difficult, and a decent-sized carcass will make a couple gallons of soup you can freeze in quart containers and eat all winter

Here's a good recipe.

Pigeons, Eels, Chestnuts, Cornmeal and Water

Traditional Thanksgiving food is whatever provides to you and your guests the feelings of celebration and gratitude the holiday represents.

But if your goal is to replicate the first Thanksgiving, the dishes are not going to look familiar.

From the Smithsonian:

Turkey was not the centerpiece of the meal, as it is today, explains Wall. Though it is possible the colonists and American Indians cooked wild turkey, she suspects that goose or duck was the wildfowl of choice. In her research, she has found that swan and passenger pigeons would have been available as well. “Passenger pigeons—extinct in the wild for over a century now—were so thick in the 1620s, they said you could hear them a quarter-hour before you saw them,” says Wall. “They say a man could shoot at the birds in flight and bring down 200.”
Small birds were often spit-roasted, while larger birds were boiled. “I also think some birds—in a lot of recipes you see this—were boiled first, then roasted to finish them off. Or things are roasted first and then boiled,” says Wall. “The early roasting gives them nicer flavor, sort of caramelizes them on the outside and makes the broth darker.”

It is possible that the birds were stuffed, though probably not with bread. (Bread, made from maize not wheat, was likely a part of the meal, but exactly how it was made is unknown.) The Pilgrims instead stuffed birds with chunks of onion and herbs. “There is a wonderful stuffing for goose in the 17th-century that is just shelled chestnuts,” says Wall. “I am thinking of that right now, and it is sounding very nice.” Since the first Thanksgiving was a three-day celebration, she adds, “I have no doubt whatsoever that birds that are roasted one day, the remains of them are all thrown in a pot and boiled up to make broth the next day. That broth thickened with grain to make a pottage.”

In addition to wildfowl and deer, the colonists and Wampanoag probably ate eels and shellfish, such as lobster, clams and mussels. “They were drying shellfish and smoking other sorts of fish,” says Wall.

SNIP

The colonists did not have butter and wheat flour to make crusts for pies and tarts. (That’s right: No pumpkin pie!)

SNIP

White potatoes, originating in South America, and sweet potatoes, from the Caribbean, had yet to infiltrate North America. Also, there would have been no cranberry sauce. It would be another 50 years before an Englishman wrote about boiling cranberries and sugar into a “Sauce to eat with. . . .Meat.” Says Wall: “If there was beer, there were only a couple of gallons for 150 people for three days.” She thinks that to wash it all down the English and Wampanoag drank water.

Have A Union Thanksgiving

 From Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money:

A useful list of food products for your Thanksgiving made in union shops. If you have a choice, choose union-produced food.

WlMart Expects Barely-Paid Employees to Carry Even Poorer Employees

Just when you think Walmart has hit the bottom of the corporate evil well, they dig down another level. Or two.

Think Progress:

A Walmart in northeast Ohio is holding a holiday canned food drive — for its own underpaid employees.

“Please Donate Food Items Here, so Associates in Need Can Enjoy Thanksgiving Dinner,” a sign reads in the employee lounge of a Canton-area Walmart.

Kory Lundberg, a Walmart spokesman, says the drive is a positive thing. “This is part of the company’s culture to rally around associates and take care of them when they face extreme hardships,” he said. Indeed, Lundberg is correct that it’s commendable to make an effort to help out those who are in need, especially during the holidays.

But the need for a food drive illustrates how difficult it is for Walmart workers to get by on its notoriously low pay. The company has long been plagued by charges that it doesn’t pay its employees a real living wage. In fact, Walmart’s President and CEO, Bill Simon, recently estimated that the majority of its one million associates make less than $25,000 per year, just above the federal poverty line of $23,550 for a family of four. When the Washington DC city council passed a living wage bill requiring Walmart to pay workers a minimum of $12.50 per hour, the chain threatened to shut down its new stores if Mayor Vincent Gray didn’t veto the bill. Gray vetoed the bill.

Walmart’s low wages come at a public cost. Because low-income workers still need housing and health care, taxpayers end up doling out millions in benefits to bridge the gap faced by many of the store’s retail workers. They have also led to strikes at Walmart stores from Seattle to Chicago to Los Angeles in recent weeks.

Even if the canned food drive successfully gathers enough to help out the Canton store’s low-income workers, many of them might not even be able to have the food on Thanksgiving. That’s because Walmart is one of a group of retailers that will open its stores for Black Friday sales beginning at 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving afternoon.

Because Walmart doesn't pay enough for its employees to eat actual human food, the Walton family suck up  $150 billion dollars from the pockets of the rest of us.

Yes, that's capitalism at its finest. Capitalism at its finest is a crime..

Shop at The Stores That Respect Workers' Thanksgiving

The fact that stores in the U.S. get away with ruining the one uniquely American holiday is more than suffiicient proof that socialism will never prevail against vicious capitalism here.

From Nation of Change:

This year, more than a dozen retailers will open their doors on Thanksgiving Day, leaving millions of workers with little choice but to forgo their holiday to jumpstart the biggest shopping weekend of the year. With profits in mind, Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Kmart, Macy’s, Kohl’s, J.C. Penney, Toys R Us, and more, have announced early Thanksgiving hours.

Still, there are a handful of places — large and small, national and local — that are resisting the pressure in order to give their employees a real holiday.

“That’s one day that’s a family day,” an employee at the Charles Ro Supply Company, the country’s largest toy train store, said of its policy to remain closed on Thanksgiving Day. “Home life’s a little more important.”

Patagonia Head of Retail Marketing Vickie Achee explained the company’s decision to keep stores closed “so our associates can celebrate the holiday with their family/friends. This has been our tradition during our tenure in retail.”

Costco, Nordstrom, REI, Burlington Coat Factory, and American Girl also confirmed they’re closed on Thanksgiving.

While some closed stores may not be direct competitors to the big box retailers, staff also doubt some that will open, like Staples, are real contenders on the blockbuster shopping day.

Many companies that are opening on Thanksgiving have explained that employees are “excited” to work holiday shifts and to earn some extra pay. However, that’s rarely the full story. At Kmart, managers are reportedly denying requests for time off for Thanksgiving shifts that being at 6 a.m., even though the company claims this isn’t company policy. Meanwhile, part-time retail workers struggle with too few shifts on wages that pay well below a living wage, forcing them to work the holiday because they are already underpaid.

Even if they did have a choice, one in four workers do not receive any paid vacation time because the U.S. is alone in not mandating paid sick days, vacation, or holidays.

Kentuckians now have access to Thanksgiving-respecting, well-paid-unionized-worker Costco in both Louisville and Lexington, so we can say fuck walmart without any loss of convenience.

"To all the Americans doing your part to make the world a better place"

I forgot that President Obama's Saturday morning video address gets moved up for before major holidays. So it's belated Thanksgiving greetings to us all.



Full transcript here.

SNAP

Another bulls-eye from Divine Irony:

"Some Blessings We All Share"

Full transcript here.

The Wampanoag Side of the Story

This year, tell a better story.

From Indian Country Today:

Turner said what most people do not know about the first Thanksgiving is that the Wampanoag and Pilgrims did not sit down for a big turkey dinner and it was not an event that the Wampanoag knew about or were invited to in advance. In September/October 1621, the Pilgrims had just harvested their first crops, and they had a good yield. They “sent four men on fowling,” which comes from the one paragraph account by Pilgrim Edward Winslow, one of only two historical sources of this famous harvest feast. Winslow also stated, “we exercised our arms.” “Most historians believe what happened was Massasoit got word that there was a tremendous amount of gun fire coming from the Pilgrim village,” Turner said. “So he thought they were being attacked and he was going to bear aid.”

When the Wampanoag showed up, they were invited to join the Pilgrims in their feast, but there was not enough food to feed the chief and his 90 warriors. “He [Massasoit] sends his men out, and they bring back five deer, which they present to the chief of the English town [William Bradford]. So, there is this whole ceremonial gift-giving, as well. When you give it as a gift, it is more than just food,” said Kathleen Wall, a Colonial Foodways Culinarian at Plimoth Plantation.

The harvest feast lasted for three days. What did they eat? Venison, of course, and Wall said, “Not just a lovely roasted joint of venison, but all the parts of the deer were on the table in who knows how many sorts of ways.” Was there turkey? “Fowl” is mentioned in Winslow’s account, which puts turkey on Wall’s list of possibilities. She also said there probably would have been a variety of seafood and water fowl along with maize bread, pumpkin and other squashes. “It was nothing at all like a modern Thanksgiving,” she said.

While today Thanksgiving is one of our nation’s favorite holidays, it has a far different meaning for many Wampanoag, who now number between 4,000 and 5,000. Turner said, “For the most part, Thanksgiving itself is a day of mourning for Native people, not just Wampanoag people.”

Read the whole thing.

Give Thanks to the Ones Who Have Earned It

I am sick and fucking tired of people publicly "thanking" a non-existent invisible sky wizard for positive events brought about by the hard work and intelligence of actual, living, adult human beings.

This Thanksgiving, let's try to direct our thanks to those who are actually responsible.

Thankful for the food in front of you? Thank the farmers who grew and raised it, the taxpayers who subsidize those farmers, the illegal immigrants who slave - literally - to harvest it, the truck drivers who transport it, the grocers who sell it, and the people at the table who bought it, prepared it, cooked it and served it.

Thankful for your health and that of your family and friends? Thank the doctors, nurses and technicians who keep you healthy. Thank modern medical science, which is brought to us by poorly-paid researchers at public universities supported by tax dollars paid primarily by the 99 percent, and hardly at all by millionaires and billionaires.

Thankful for your job? Thank the taxpayers who fund the economic stimulus of government spending that supports our economy and is the only thing that actually does, in reality, create jobs.

Thankful for the technology that makes your life easier and all the cool toys it provides, from smartphones to the cloud to live streaming? Thank government agency DARPA, which really did invent the Internet (with support from congressman Al Gore).

Thankful for your home? Thank the skilled and probably unionized workers who built it, and the thousands of public employees - also probably unionized - who provide water and electricity to your home, maintain the roads around your home, and protect your home from fire, floods and criminals.

Thankful for your children? Thank the teachers and principals and janitors who toil thanklessly in the public school system to produce worthy citizens.

Thankful for your elderly parents? Thank Social Security and Medicare, and the many public employees providing services to the aged, from Meals on Wheels to nursing home inspections.

Thankful for the end of the Iraq war and the return of our troops? Thank President Barack Obama.

Thankful to live in the Greatest Nation in the History of the World? Thank the protesters, the rebels, the nonconformists, the communists, the pacifists, the socialists, the Black Panthers, the feminists, the gays, the atheists and every other despised activist who fought to fix what was wrong with this country, and who still fight every day.

There is no invisible sky wizard dropping presents on your head like so much birdshit. Everything you have, everything you've done, is the result of action by actual human beings, including yourself.

Occupy Black Friday: Blanket the Earth

Don't risk your health and sanity fighting the mob for cheap plastic crap this November 25; Occupy Black Friday by bringing cold weather gear to your local protesters.

The Rude Pundit:

Ever since I first mentioned the idea of getting cold weather gear to Occupy Wall Street campers around the nation, I've heard from dozens of people about what exactly they could do. Could they donate money? Where could they send gear? What is the plan?

Here goes:

1. The idea: on November 25, the day after Thanksgiving, people will gather in designated spots in cities around the country where there are encampments of OWS protesters.

2. They will have warm weather gear to donate to the protesters. This can be blankets, socks, sleeping bags, hand and foot warmers, sweaters, or anything you think can be used to keep the camping protesters warm throughout the winter. The items can be secondhand (and clean, you know). New items can be purchased whenever, preferably not on the exploitative day coined by marketers as "Black Friday."

3. People will gather in designated places in each city near the OWS encampments in order to donate the items. I will post a list of organizers next week. The organizers will say where the Blanket the Earth group should meet. For example, in Atlanta, they have decided to gather at 60 Walton St. NW.

4. Yes, donations at any time are great. But Blanket the Earth is not organizing as a group to accept donations of any kind. If you want to participate in the day, give someone who is going the items you'd like to donate. Also, I'm not accepting any monetary donations for this. If you want to donate money, that's generous of you, and you should give to things like Occupy Supply.

5. The goal here is to show our support not just through the kindness of monetary donations, but by being physically present to demonstrate that we're here for the protesters.

6. Yes, there is a chance that you may end up being the only person in your town to show up.

7. Organizers should send me a message on how people can contact them in their cities. Write, as ever, to rudepundit_at_yahoo.com (and you can send me questions there). You can also post info on the Blanket the Earth Facebook page or you can follow and respond on Twitter to @blankettheearth.

8. Spread the word. Use your own social networks to get out the information. Let's make sure the people who are the foot soldiers in this movement know that they are appreciated and that we have their backs.

More info to come, including where to meet in NYC. And you can check out this video that says some of the same info, except with OWS in the background:

If you haven't yet visited your local Occupation, you're missing the opportunity of a lifetime. Someday, someone will ask you what you did in the Occupation. If you, like me, can't say you were there all day and all night, you can still proudly say: I brought them coats and boots and blankets to keep them alive in the winter.