I found this on http://www.theholidayspot.com/thanksgiving/trivia.htm

Facts

1. Thanksgiving Day is celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November in the United States.

2. By the fall of 1621 only half of the pilgrims, who had sailed on the Mayflower, survived. The survivors, thankful to be alive, decided to give a thanksgiving feast.

3. Thanksgiving Day is celebrated on the second Monday in October in Canada.

4. The Plymouth Pilgrims were the first to celebrate the Thanksgiving.Thanksgiving

5. The pilgrims arrived in North America in December 1620.

6. The Pilgrims sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to reach North America.

7. The pilgrims sailed on the ship, which was known by the name of ‘Mayflower’.

8. They celebrated the first Thanksgiving Day in the fall of 1621.

9. They celebrated the first Thanksgiving Day at Plymouth, Massachusetts.

10. The drink that the Puritans brought with them in the Mayflower was the beer.

11. The Wampanoag Indians were the people who taught the Pilgrims how to cultivate the land.

12. The Pilgrim leader, Governor William Bradford, had organized the first Thanksgiving feast in the year 1621 and invited the neighboring Wampanoag Indians also to the feast.

13. The first Thanksgiving feast was held in the presence of around ninety Wampanoag Indians and the Wampanoag chief, Massasoit, was also invited there.

14. The first Thanksgiving celebration lasted three days.

15. President George Washington issued the first national Thanksgiving Day Proclamation in the year 1789 and again in 1795.

16. The state of New York officially made Thanksgiving Day an annual custom in 1817.

17. Sarah Josepha Hale, an editor with a magazine, started a Thanksgiving campaign in 1827 and it was result of her efforts that in 1863 Thanksgiving was observed as a day for national thanksgiving and prayer.

18. Abraham Lincoln issued a ‘Thanksgiving Proclamation’ on third October 1863 and officially set aside the last Thursday of November as the national day for Thanksgiving. Whereas earlier the presidents used to make an annual proclamation to specify the day when Thanksgiving was to be held.

19. President Franklin D. Roosevelt restored Thursday before last of November as Thanksgiving Day in the year 1939. He did so to make the Christmas shopping season longer and thus stimulate the economy of the state.

20. Congress passed an official proclamation in 1941 and declared that now onwards Thanksgiving will be observed as a legal holiday on the fourth Thursday of November every year.

So even though it is kind of a bleak Thanksgiving season there is still a lot to be thankful.  Be thankful for those around you (family and friends), your job (if you have one!), and all the many blessings you have in your life.  I know I’m thankful for my family and friends.  I don’t have a job at the moment but boy will I be thankful when I get one!

Have a great Thanksgiving!

Hello everyone!  Freedom Phil back for more wonderful political discussion.  Our nation has spoken, and in a historic move, elected Barak Obama as our first black President.  For those that watched his victory speech it was truly amazing.  Even a hardened political skeptic like myself couldn’t help but but be in awe of the speech and promise in it.

I think President-elect Obama is the most naturally gifted politician since Ronald Reagen — and nothing against the Gipper — probably a lot more intelligent.  I have many friends, some of them card carrying conservatives, that have fallen under his spell.  I can’t say I have quite yet because of a few things.

1. He’s isn’t President quite yet

2. So far the candidate of ‘change’ has appointed a whole lot of Clintonites.  Much of his transition team are former Clinton stooges and guess who he picked as his Secretary of State?  Hilary Rodham Clinton.

A few of the picks or likely picks…

Attorney General: Eric H. Holder Jr a former deputy Attorney General under (wait for it) President Bill Clinton.

Chief of Staff: Rahm Emmanuel a senior adviser under (wait for it) President Bill Clinton.

Commerce Secretary: Bill Richardson the former energy secretary under (you guessed it!) Bill Clinton.

Homeland Security: Janet Napolitano who had been appointed by (I think you might be detecting a pattern) President Bill Clinton as the US Attorney for Arizona.

Director of the National Economic Council: Lawrence Summers who was a former treasury secretary under (I know you’ve heard it before) former President Clinton.

Senior Counsel: Greg Craig served the Clinton White House in numerous roles including assistant to the President and Special Counsel to the White House (*starts to sing* ch-ch-ch-changes).

What might surprise you is that I’m actually glad of the candidates he’s chosen.  They show a couple things (at least in my thinking).  That one he’s going to make good on his claims to be a centrist (despite being very far left in his early career) and he’s picking people that definitely have experience in dealing with economic and foreign policy issues.

So Obama spoke about the need for a huge stimulus package that could cost another $700 Billion dollars on top of the $700 Billion for Wall Street, $30 Billion for the auto companies and an assorted $100 Billion on other company saves.  Where will it end?  And what about “Main Street” — how much will we see of this money?  I’m guessing we will get the usual.  A hot cup of jack squat, but we will have to see.

This current economic situation has touched me personally.  My job was eliminated as a consequence of the market.  It is pretty sad but I’m been trying hard for over a month to get another job and it is difficult.  This is probably the scariest economic situation our nation has faced since 1929.  Hopefully it won’t get that bad.

Again, I’ll reserve judgment on our soon to be President until he’s actually been in office.

Isn’t the price of gas just great?  I know I love paying over $4 dollars a gallon!  How about you?  Well one solution that isn’t mentioned much in combating this crisis is in the transportation industry.  By transportation industry I mean freight as well as passengers.  What would be the best way?  Obviously planes and automobiles have been standard fare (pun intended) for so long that I think we overlook maybe the best and most obvious solution: Trains.

And interesting study on fuel efficiency can be found here: http://strickland.ca/efficiency.html

I find it pretty interesting that Train fuel efficiency is so much higher and better than other modes of transportation. It seems like a simple no brain solution but…

There is always a ‘but’

1. It isn’t as fast. Typical freight travel across country by truck is 3-5 days, by train it leaps to 7-10. It takes longer to take a train from New York to LA then it would a plane. Obviously a huge consideration for people traveling.

2. Do people even remember trains? Outside a few loyal enthusiasts our culture has almost forgot the train. I think people look at them as anachronism’s of long forgotten age. Which is too bad.

It all speaks to our culture and those values (I’m using the word lightly) we hold so important like “I want that yesterday” or “now isn’t soon enough”. We can’t wait! Business can’t wait! Consumer’s can’t wait! I can’t wait!!!

In the meantime lets talk corn fuel and try and feel better about ourselves.

I have wondered for quite some time what McCain will do with the religious right of the Republican party. I’m not sure if they will ever make up but with out the estimated 10-15 million active voters McCain has no chance of beating Obama in the general election.

Evidently a group of 90 Evangelical leaders met Tuesday night to discuss this burning issue…to support McCain or not too. Hmm….no offense as many of those folks I hold in very high regard but isn’t there a bigger picture? How about the complete socialization of our American society? How about the government encrounching into our lives more and more and saying ‘you have one choice….OURS!!!!’ McCain and his issues aside that is what scares me the most about a President Obama (that and his connections with the Radical religious left which are far more ‘zealous’ then the religious right!).

Whilst I am no fan of the erstwhile Senator from Arizona I do believe he actually has one thing that many (read all) candidates have lacked in the last 50 years (maybe longer) in that he is driven by his principles. For the most part isn’t he fairly conservative? His voting record in the senate proves it at any rate. True he has jointly sponsored some terrible legislation with some of the Democrats from across the isle and I seem to remember Democratic pundits hinting that John Kerry should select him as his VP four years ago.

Of course the leftist media is trying to paint him as GWB II because they have fallen in love with Obama (the man can hold a rally – I’ll give him that) this same media that dared to suggest he join hands with John Kerry and unify the nation four years ago. Unfortunately some people will get duped by this.

At least one evangelical got it right when Mathew Staver, who heads the Florida-based legal advocacy group Liberty Counsel said, “A lot of conservatives fear Obama because of his beliefs.”

I fear him because he the socialist wing of the Democrats want to institute European socialism (let the government run your life for you!) into the US and I think Freedom is worth more than that.  Do you?

Technorati Tags: McCain, Republicans, Evangelicals, Conservatives, Obama, Socialism, Democrats, Kerry, Bush, Freedom, Liberty

I was thinking this last week about my own political ‘evolution’ in my life and wondering if people have had similar political adventures such as I have had.

When a young child I was a bit of an idealist politically (I believed that people were generally good and the government only wanted what was best for all it’s citizens). I found this a pretty useful definition for idealism:

Idealism is a thought process of how the material world adheres to ideas. Idealists follow a certain ideal concept and understand everything from its adherence to that concept.

Well you can imagine how traumatic for a young five year to deal with Richard Nixon (1974) and the Watergate scandal. Still I was primarily this young idealist up until I was 18 years old. I realize now this idealism came largely from my mom and stepfather who still waxed nostalgic about President Kennedy and the lost age of Camelot. I guess in a way they were idealist still despite the long defeat in Vietnam under Johnson and then Nixon and that influenced me. So I might even take another step to add that I was a liberal idealist with my own view of life and human nature shaped by that era that obviously had affected my parents so much.

The first blow to this idealism came when I was 17 years old. I saw my stepfather with a woman that wasn’t my mother. I guess he had embraced some of that Kennedy idealism that I was unfamiliar with. Personal ethics and politics were very important to me and this lack of personal ethics in my stepfather had a profound influence on me. If his way included this, it suddenly seemed quite shallow to me (of course being 17, my own world view was as big as the Pacific ocean but as deep as a mud puddle but I digress).

I began to explore alternate visions of the world as I was, to be fair, not as optimistic as I had been. I began a descent into what I think was Pragmatism.

1. Philosophy. A movement consisting of varying but associated theories, originally developed by Charles S. Peirce and William James and distinguished by the doctrine that the meaning of an idea or a proposition lies in its observable practical consequences.
2. A practical, matter-of-fact way of approaching or assessing situations or of solving problems.

As a result for the next 10 to 12 years I drifted a bit. I registered Republican but also was attracted to some Democrats (traditionally more moderate ones). Unfortunately for me Pragmatism tended to be an excuse for not really believing in anything (at least politically), as a true pragmatist can astride the fence between conservatism and liberalism quite easily, and pick and choose from both what it likes. Sounds ideal in some ways, but in reality I felt a constant inner struggle with a trend towards more conservative thinking and the shattered idealism of my youth. A good example of my pragmatism was my admiration for Jesse Jackson and his failed attempt to get the Democratic nomination. I was thrilled by his rousing speeches but concerned about his official policy (specifically taking more of my money for social programs which didn’t seem to work very well). I was torn between my heart and my head and was suffering from political vertigo.

In my early 30’s my pessimism deepened when I saw repeated examples of failed idealism, failed liberalism, failed conservatism, and failed pragmatism. I also realized that typically if the government has to take over something it can only go one way….get worse!

I figured at this point I had two choices:

1. Anarchist – “the view that society can and should be organized without a coercive state.”
2. Libertarian – “political philosophy which prioritizes individual liberty and minimize the role of the state.”

What would I choose? And how about you? What would you do or have done in your own political evolution?