Two years ago, it was high tide for Bush’s popularity. Though the picture might be a year or two too early, the military folks will sure be happy when it becomes real. The tide has changed.
Happy Thanksgiving.
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November 23, 2005
Turkee
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President Bush has put an end to terrorism — well, for two turkeys anyway.
In an act of clemency Guantanamo prisoners can only dream of, Dubya yesterday freed two gobblers 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.
Marshmallow and Yam were due to receive a police escort to the airport, then fly first class to L.A. After the parade, they’ll live out their days at a Disneyland ranch.
pardoning a turkey is a long time pr stunt dreamed up by the national turkey federation to officially remind all americans to eat commercially-farmed turkeys for thanksgiving. it’s a welcomed collaboration between agribusiness & govt – providing a good photo op for the prez, works as a channel to lobby for industry interests & keep a finger on poultry regulations, and helps to alleviate concerns about the mass slaughter of turkey among the public (esp children). i’ve read that the pardoned turkeys don’t live very long in their new homes b/c they’re not bred for longevity, just white meat.
Posted by: b real | Nov 23 2005 22:31 utc | 3
I think that Talibani and the blokes in Egypt for that conference were given a free reign. The USM are fighting back. The bitter pill will be the oil contracts that are being reported at the moment.
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Nov 23 2005 23:10 utc | 5
Breaking News . . . 6:40 PM EST
(Disassociated Press)Two tom turkeys pardoned earlier today by President Bush, and given a police escort to the airport for a flight to Disneyland, were erroneously placed on a CIA “extraordinary rendition” flight to Jordan.
The birds have already undergone several hours of questioning in-flight, exploring remarks they made about all the chickenhawks present at the Rose Garden ceremony.
No efforts will be made to retrieve them, as they are now deemed “unfit for Disneyland,” sources say.
Posted by: Antifa | Nov 23 2005 23:44 utc | 6
Apparently the initial cause of the disturbance was the revelation that last thanksgiving the Prez had not only been photographed with a dead turkey, the turkey had been painted and made up by a ‘food dresser’.
“I aint gonna hit the slap and drag for no white boy” one turkey was reported to have said.
Following that the other turkey is reported to have flown at the perenially dazed and confused, cardboard cutout C in C screaming “remember the first Virginia massacre.”
A senior administration official denied reports that the trouble was instigated by an already intoxicated president, who concerned that the turkeys seemed a little tense, asked them “If they would care to chill out with a line”
Apparently the turkeys were mortified that anyone could ‘forget why they would be a little tense this time of year’.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Nov 24 2005 0:18 utc | 7
I love zany photos.
I’m sure some of you might know that the turkey almost became the USA national bird.
Such is the cruelty of life. To be so close to the position of the eagle, but instead to be cast out and flung down forever with the stigma of being a turkey in America and devoured with endless carnivorous insanity. An unfortunate destiny.
I sense an optimism in this country that has been missing for several years and I believe that the concentrated, unflagging efforts of so many of us, both in America and around the world, have finally brought this administration to its knees.
I would like to wish you all a glorious Thanksgiving. I know I’m thankful.
Posted by: jm | Nov 24 2005 7:55 utc | 8
The President peered into Marshmallow’s eyes and … —B
Remember when Bush said he looked into Putin’s eyes and saw a kindred spirit. Could peering into the eyes of a turkey have the same result?
Posted by: Ensley | Nov 24 2005 13:47 utc | 9
Here’s a real turkey for you all:
DoD Corporation [NYSE: WH] Annual Report
Profit and Loss Statement (in millions)
Profits:
Gross Operating Income: $0
[And always has been $0. And always will be $0.
US arms sales, of technologies developed by US taxpayers’ funding, goes instead to the defense contracting corporations, of which the profits
thereof go to officers, and investment elites.]
Net Profits on Income: $O.
Losses:
Continuing Losses: $450,000M per year, indexed
to a fake GDP which includes those same losses!
One-Time Special Charges: $300,000M (projected)
Obligated Future Charges: Between $300,000M
and $1,200,000M, depending on whether you are
listening to the corporate CiC, or SecDef.
ACTUALS:
Taxpayer ROI: -0%
P/E Ratio: N/A
Moody’s Rating: C
[Lowest security. Extremely poor prospects of offering financial security or principal return]
– – –
[Disclaimer: These are forward-looking statements. As with any investment, future returns may not match historical averages.
Defense investing entails high risk, and
tax-payers chance loss of part or all of
their investment, and their retirement.]
Sick joke, of course, it’s *our money*,
and the Corporate Board of Senators and
Representatives, which we elected and who
hold exclusive legal authority to fund and
declare war, are in bed with WH’s officers!
Could anything be more “corrupt and shameless”?
– – – –
!!Don’t forget our vets in Veteran’s Hospitals!!
LD calling cards help them through the holidays.
Posted by: Tom Turkey | Nov 24 2005 15:33 utc | 10
Two things about the first presidential turkey trot to Iraq: The President had to slip in unanounced – for security reasons. In other words, instead of entering like a flight suit-clad victor, he had to sneak in like a thief in the night.
And inasmuch as all those shots were taken indoors, he could just as easily have hired a bunch of actors and filmed his “visit” in a tent somewhere in Texas and simply claimed it was Iraq, while a double flew briefly in an out to make it look real on the ground there…
Nobody in the mainstream press mentioned these things back at the apex of Bush’s popularity.
Posted by: ralphieboy | Nov 24 2005 15:42 utc | 11
Tom: No, no, no. Here’s the real turkey:
Funding for Homeland Security Disaster Preparation: [which is wholely unaccountable to Congress, and as FEMA showed in New Orleans, effetely unexecutable] $27,500M
Funding for National Energy and Water Development:
$27,300M
Your Continental Congress in action….
Posted by: Terrence Michaels | Nov 24 2005 15:54 utc | 12
Posted on americablog.
A Thanksgiving Prayer, by William S. Burroughs
For John Dillinger
In hope he is still alive
Thanksgiving Day, November 28, 1986
————————————
Thanks for the wild turkey and the Passenger Pigeons, destined to be shit out through wholesome American guts
thanks for a Continent to despoil and poison –
thanks for Indians to provide a modicum of challenge and danger –
thanks for vast herds of bison to kill and skin, leaving the carcass to rot –
thanks for bounties on wolves and coyotes –
thanks for the AMERICAN DREAM to vulgarize and falsify until the bare lies shine through –
thanks for the KKK, for nigger-killing lawmen feeling their notches, for decent church-going women with their mean, pinched, bitter, evil faces –
thanks for “Kill a Queer for Christ” stickers –
thanks for laboratory AIDS –
thanks for Prohibition and the War Against Drugs –
thanks for a country where nobody is allowed to mind his own business –
thanks for a nation of finks – yes, thanks for all the memories… all right, let’s see your arms… you always were a headache and you always were a bore –
thanks for the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams.
Posted by: jj | Nov 24 2005 21:01 utc | 13
@jm,
Imagine if the turkey had been named as the National bird. We might be eating roast bald eagle on Thanksgiving, which had been bred for massive amounts of white meat on giant eagle farms.
With turkeys instead of eagles on our coins and currency, pay day would be the day that the “turkey screams.”
American Airlines’ regional partner would be called “American Turkey Airlines.”
Finally, if someone was acting obnoxiously at a party, everybody would say, “What an eagle!”
Posted by: Joe F | Nov 26 2005 0:31 utc | 14
Also, Joe F,
If you get the ball in the hole two strokes under on the golf course, it would be a turkey!
Posted by: jm | Nov 26 2005 0:43 utc | 15
DM- thanks for the links you’ve been sharing as of late. good stuff. (i’m still laughing over some of those shrub pix from the other day, esp the image of bush & his ‘jimmy leg’)
Posted by: b real | Nov 26 2005 6:35 utc | 17
Hey jj, let’s hope Malooga is around to enjoy the Bill Burroughs references.
Isn’t it true that his first book, Junky, (author nom de plume’d Bill Lee and printed upside down as a double paperback with a fictional detective story) and certainly Naked Lunch, were championed by those beats who knew him well, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac and probably others like Lawrence Ferlingetti.
Thanks to them for dragging Burroughs into reality long enough to report and publish his observations from the seamy underside. Certainly a great revelation to a library-going and used-bookshop haunting naif as I was — unbelievable truth delivered in prose too good to ignore.
Burroughs survives in anecdocatal tales by writers like Jim Carroll and dozens of filmed appearances as well — really an unmistakeable persona, the voice alone is unique in my ears.
And the writing, “he never repeats himself.” What a great character! WB appears in Drugstore Cowboy at the end, as a ex-junkie priest counseling the main character played by Matt Dillon.
Read anything you can by this author, you won’t regret a moment.
Posted by: jonku | Nov 26 2005 11:05 utc | 18
It’s interesting that Kerouac Ginsberg and co always considered Burroughs to be the ‘real’ writer. Much of that would have been the fact he was older, already a Columbia graduate when they were starting. Plus of course his affection for the seamier side of life would have titillated these nice suburban boys. Well maybe not Kerouac who had actually lived the hard life through neccessity rather that Burrough’s choice.
But there is no doubt he entranced them with his talent with language and his outrageous party tricks. I dunno I found some of his later works with it’s weird use of paedophilia as a metaphor, not only obssesive but also a bit lame as if he had found society at a point where he believed most had become ‘unshockable’ so he went as far over the top as he could.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Nov 26 2005 23:27 utc | 19