I had much more fun today penning a piece about sangria for my other blog, Le Food News, but the world continues to unfold in usual and unusual (in politics usual=unusual, n’est-ce pas?) ways and requires commentary.

The Iraqi commission is reportedly set to recommend a reduction in force in Iraq, while our president continues traveling the world, saying there will be no withdrawal before Iraqi stability. I’m not sure what the solution is in that country, but if Nixon’s solution for Vietnam was to go to China, what’s Bush’s move–to go to Iran and Syria? Any bets on that one?

Charles Rangel, one of the now-majority Democrats poised to take over Congress, has announced he will seek to reinstate the military draft once he assumes control of the House Ways and Means Committee. Of course, this honorable donkey never met a war he thought shouldn’t be fought, either on the ground or on principles, but he reasons that drafting middle-class kids will cause major white parent trembling.

The last thing middle-class youth want to do, for the most part, is fight for their country and certainly to die for it. Witness the draft riots during the Civil War and the antiwar counter-culture during the Vietnamese War. These were all white folk phenomena. “Hell, no, we won’t go” seems to have been the majority rallying cry since the French and Indian War. (World War II was a well-planned exception.)

Of course, I use “white” not as a racist or pejorative term, but as nomenclature for what this culture produces along with its residue of middle-class wealth and entitlement–a privileged class that wants to reap but not sow.

Draft, yea or nay? How comment and vote ye?

Should he, or shouldn’t he? Bush, that is, in weighing whether troop reductions or a complete withdrawal is in order in Iraq. Even many Iraqi leaders and insurrectionists publicly agree that the U.S. forces’ presence is making matters worse, not better, so that indigenous observation would seem to militate (pun not intended but works) against Bush’s plan to stay the course until the country is stabilized. According to these Iraqis, the U.S. is the cause of the turbulence.

If that’s the case and we’re not appreciated there, even a die-hard, military-first conservative such as myself has to vote for acquittal—Get the heck out before we lose further lives and respect. If Iraq becomes subsumed by a greater Iran, so be it. That’s the cost of empire building in a country where the citizenry can’t support a war that lasts longer than the evening news. And while we’re at it, how about vacating South Korea and the ingrates there as well? If the North takes them over, they had it coming. The South Korean stepchildren is now a robust 60 years old and complaining too much; time to boot him out into the real world.

On this day in 1789, President George Washington proclaimed a day of “thanksgiving” for the adoption of the Constitution that still rules our nation, although these days it is viewed through various prisms and feats of literary and legal prestidigitation that were not present back then. (Try reading the Constitution to find either “right of privacy” or “separation of church and state” mentioned anywhere in its text–there’s a good starting point.)

When I read that good ol’ George had proclaimed a day of thanksgiving for the Constitution, I began reflecting how doubly thankful he must have been as the so-called first president. Interestingly, American history has chosen to ignore the eight or ten presidents who preceded George, but read up on John Hanson, our first elected president, and you’ll see that he was a man and leader of some accomplishment. The Great Seal of the President that is used to this day was created by President Hanson. Curious that we no longer recognize him as ever having been our president but still use his seal as the official emblem of the presidency.

(For further intrigue, you can research Samuel Huntington, the first “non-elected” president of the country. If you count Huntington and his successor, there were ten presidents before George, eight if you count from Hanson.)

Good ol’ Ben had some fine points to make in desiring the turkey rather than the bald eagle as a symbol of the new nation. In essence, he saw the turkey as courageous but the eagle as a lazy loafer. He may have had a point, so in the aftermath of gobbling up (pun intended) so many turkeys nationwide yesterday, let’s look at Franklin’s exact words, which were conveyed in a letter to his daughter, on the issue of the turkey as national bird:

ALL HAIL THE TURKEY

The historical “first” Thanksgiving was celebrated in 1621 by 52 colonists, mostly Pilgrim women and children, and 90 Wampanoag “Indians,” who reportedly brought four deer to the feast. Little beyond these four deer was written down in accounts of the feast (of which only two scant references remain), but for sure turkey and cranberry and pumpkin pie were not part of the festivities occurring somewhere in the months of September to November. Potatoes were also definitely not consumed since they weren’t even cultivated in the colonies yet.

The Wampanoag comprised the majority population, and records indicate that they celebrated “thanksgiving” every day. I think they probably had it right–we owe our thanks 24/7, to use modern parlance, though we certainly have lost our reverance for what a miracle it is to provide a bounty of food to hundreds of millions every day.

One Sara Josepha Hale more than 100 years later discovered writings about the Pilgrims’ thanksgiving and petitioned the president to declare it a national day of celebration. (President George Washington had proclaimed a one-day celebration on Nov. 26, 1789.) Five years later, Abraham Lincoln did just that, declaring the last Thursday in November a “Thanksgiving” holiday.

In truly modern American appreciation of all things bountiful, President Franklin Roosevelt later moved the holiday back to the fourth Thursday to provide more of a Christmas shopping cushion for retailers, transforming a day of thanks into the beginning of rabid consumerism. Eat, drink, be thankful–but don’t leave home without your credit card. The Wampanoags seem to have had a better idea of the whole event.

I have to agree with those who find this repulsive, as a home-style video that surfaced at YouTube shows a BofA employee singing (with all his heart and pretentious soul, one must add) a version of U2’s “One” that celebrates the merger of Bank of America and MBNA–at an official company function!

Tragedy and farce combine ever further on the YouTube site when an employee of BofA writes of the video song that, in effect, it’s better to be a whore and make six figures than live an honest existence and make $19K a year. So sad that the only value we can find anymore is the almighty dollar. Happy Thanksgiving!