Celebrating Thanksgiving by getting in their faces

I was going to compile a round-up of Thanksgiving posts from the conservative blogosphere but there are way too many of them, and I've got to get going on my baking anyway. So here are just a few items. See right sidebar for many more.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, revealing how worried they are about 2010, promotes disinformation and indigestion. From Ruby Slippers we learn that, in keeping with Obama's no-red-no-blue-states post-partisanship, the DCCC has made up a handy cheat sheet for Obamatrons to bring home for the holiday. The Thanksgiving dinner talking points will help them more effectively get in the faces of their loved ones, whether they be conservatives, mugged-by-Obama independents, or wavering liberals.


These talking points are to be used only on the profoundly uninformed. The list of "accomplishments" is topped by this:

The Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act to save and create millions of jobs and provide the largest middle class tax cut in history.

As my #3 son would say, lolz! You can fool people about a lot of things but they tend to notice when they have no jobs. Mary Sue counters the "myth-busting."

Moving on, here's Rush Limbaugh's annual take on the Pilgrims:

"Nobody owned anything. They just had a share in it. It was a commune, folks. It was the forerunner to the communes we saw in the '60s and '70s out in California – and it was complete with organic vegetables, by the way. Bradford, who had become the new governor of the colony, recognized that this form of collectivism was as costly and destructive to the Pilgrims as that first harsh winter, which had taken so many lives. He decided to take bold action. Bradford assigned a plot of land to each family to work and manage, thus turning loose the power of the marketplace. That's right. Long before Karl Marx was even born, the Pilgrims had discovered and experimented with what could only be described as socialism. And what happened? It didn't work!"

"It never has worked! "What Bradford and his community found was that the most creative and industrious people had no incentive to work any harder than anyone else, unless they could utilize the power of personal motivation! But while most of the rest of the world has been experimenting with socialism for well over a hundred years – trying to refine it, perfect it, and re-invent it – the Pilgrims decided early on to scrap it permanently. What Bradford wrote about this social experiment should be in every schoolchild's history lesson. If it were, we might prevent much needless suffering in the future. 'The experience that we had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years...that by taking away property, and bringing community into a common wealth, would make them happy and flourishing – as if they were wiser than God,' Bradford wrote.

"'For this community [so far as it was] was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For young men that were most able and fit for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children without any recompense ... that was thought injustice.' Why should you work for other people when you can't work for yourself? What's the point? Do you hear what he was saying, ladies and gentlemen? The Pilgrims found that people could not be expected to do their best work without incentive. So what did Bradford's community try next? They unharnessed the power of good old free enterprise by invoking the undergirding capitalistic principle of private property.

"Every family was assigned its own plot of land to work and permitted to market its own crops and products. And what was the result? 'This had very good success,' wrote Bradford, 'for it made all hands industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.'

Excerpts from Mark Steyn's Thanksgiving piece from '07 which he still stands by:

But on this Thanksgiving the rest of the world ought to give thanks to American national sovereignty, too. When something terrible and destructive happens — a tsunami hits Indonesia, an earthquake devastates Pakistan — the U.S. can project itself anywhere on the planet within hours and start saving lives, setting up hospitals and restoring the water supply. . . .

If America were to follow the Europeans and maintain only shriveled attenuated residual military capacity, the world would very quickly be nastier and bloodier, and far more unstable. It’s not just Americans and Iraqis and Afghans who owe a debt of thanks to the U.S. soldier but all the Europeans grown plump and prosperous in a globalized economy guaranteed by the most benign hegemon in history.

That said, Thanksgiving isn’t about the big geopolitical picture, but about the blessings closer to home. Last week, the state of Oklahoma celebrated its centennial, accompanied by rousing performances of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s eponymous anthem:

We know we belong to the land
And the land we belong to is grand!

Which isn’t a bad theme song for the first Thanksgiving, either.

Can't resist. Here it is. (Gordon MacRae had some serious pipes.) Read the rest.

A few short takes (because I'm supposed to be cooking):

Michelle Malkin's rounds up the turkeys.

MotorCityTimes quotes Lincoln on what this holiday is for.

Secondhand Smoke quotes Cicero.

Marathon Pundit posts a Thanksgiving song.


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