Happy Thanksgiving Cont'd

Endangered?

Forget the rapidly diminishing oil supply and the rising prices of heating this winter, a true national crisis is upon us: there is a looming cranberry shortage. Sure, we're in good shape for Thanksgiving, but the outlook darkens considerably over the six weeks between Turkey Day and Christmas, when 25% of our nation's cranberries are consumed. And as Jared Diamond has shown us, when a population starts running low on a resource they inevitably begin exploiting it in a more ruthless fashion.

We must defend our valuable bogs from overuse, lest cranberries become hunted to extinction (like the poor, benighted mincemeat tree). Sure, we can't fuel our automobiles and aircraft with cranberries (yet), but if the cranberry supply is exhausted we will have no foodstuff whose sauce so perfectly retains the shape of its container (unless you count catfood, and I'm not that short on money (yet)). So conserve your cranberries people, winter's comin'.

Happy Thanksgiving

Turkey pardoning commentary from the New York Daily News:

"In an act of clemency Guantanamo prisoners can only dream of, Dubya yesterday freed two gobblers [Marshmallow & Yam] from the food chain and sent them off to Disneyland. . . . The President peered into Marshmallow's eyes and stroked the bird's fluffy white feathers with a tenderness usually reserved for members of the Saudi royal family."

My personal vote for the annual turkey naming was Krauthammer & Hitchens, but apparently that doesn't have the zing of Marshmallow & Yam. Also, if you have a spare moment this weekend between regular tryptophan ingurgitations and the Lions-Falcons game, you might check out this edifying article.

Most Valuable Pujols

Thank you, Jesus, for letting me hit that curveball 500 ft.

Big ups to Albert Pujols, 26-year-old Cardinals phenom and 2005's National League MVP. As anyone who saw him take Brad Lidge deep in Game 6 of the ALDS knows, Pujols is a beast at the plate. Sadly, this award reveals to the non-St. Louis audience that his skills as an orator are positively, well, Bushesque. When asked to comment on the new steroids restrictions passed yesterday, he had this to say:

"I think that if you get caught the third time, I mean that's real bad, you should get abandoned from the game. You shouldn't be able to be caught the third time because after the first time, if you don't learn from that, from 50 games that you sit down without getting paid, that's pretty bad."

Stick with first-base, kid.

October 2004

Lately I've been getting most of my political news from NPR while driving around in Manhattan traffic. Between the taxis and "Scooter", it's a wonder that I have a shred of sanity left. I was pretty mellow about the recent exposure of governmental malfeasence, even the non-indictment of Official A (aka Karl Rove). It doesn't surprise me that the Bushies are stonewalling and being as obtuse as ever.

But then I read the editorial by the always insightful E.J. Dionne, Jr. in this morning's Washington Post. He astutely points out that, because of administration prevarication and the foot dragging of journalists, the indictments were handed down in October 2005 instead of October 2004. October 2004, you may remember, was during the presidential election. So, if you're keeping count, by obstructing a federal prosecutor, the Bushies avoided an indictment in the White House one month before the vote. Without obstruction, John Kerry is president. They truly are evil geniuses (and geniuses who, if they can just stall until Christmas 2008, will never need to find out what a prison cot feels like). As Dionne puts it: "Has anyone noticed that the coverup worked?"

If they didn't have video of the baby panda taking its first steps on the same homepage, there might have been violence.