Let Me Know of Any Recent Attempts on Your Part to Save Our Fellow-Citizens from Themselves

Thanksgiving.

Sarah Palin Clubs to Death a Fish on Reality Show Labelled 'A Snuff' Video by Animal Rights Group

There's so much more material if you've no rooting interest (which I still do; it ebbs slow), if, beyond kneejerk acknowledging yesyesyes Sarah Palin is indeed a dumbfuck with grifter-smarts, you look at the dishonest dumbfuckery of the attacks on her dumbfuckness - um, braining fish is the humane way to kill them; people misspeak - these next two years could be megaggigles rather than impotent rage.

Sarah Palin: "We Gotta Stand with Our North Korean Allies."

Also, "Labelled." Fucking Brits.

• Buy Nothing Day.
• The failure wasn't a failure.
• How the American class struggle works.
• Ruth Marcus tells you to sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up.
• Politics of consent.
• Shit floats.
• Palin's strategy.
• It's a sign of how successfully my disaffection is blossoming that the Hack List struck me as juvenile and gratuitous (where once I would have cheered it gratuitously), but leaving The World's Shittiest Human off the list renders the whole exercise juvenile, gratuitous, and FAIL!
• It's a sign of how successfully my disaffection is blossoming that Tom DeLay's conviction didn't make me cum when once it would have.
• The bitter new Washington. Drew isn't an awful hack, but she is a Villager, and her article is insight into what not-awful hack Villagers think.
• What leading progressives are thankful for.
• For your Thanksgiving Day consideration.

• By the Waters of Babylon. (h/t) 
• The Windhover.
• Robertson Davies.
• Banana breakfast. Vineland's reread is next year, Gravity's 2012. 
• Stereogum's 50 most anticipated albums of 2011. Good news? My Morning Jacket and Mogwai. Shitty news? The Motherfucking Decembrists and Fleet Motherfucking Foxes.
• New Destroyer!
• Crazy rulers of the world.
• Heart and soul. 
• Dear God.
• Frost. 
• Helicopter.
• I'm sorry I love you.

THANKSGIVING LETTER FROM HARRY

Carl Dennis

I guess I have to begin by admitting
I'm thankful today I don't reside in a country
My country has chosen to liberate,
That Bridgeport's my home, not Baghdad.
Thankful my chances are good, when I leave
For the Super Duper, that I'll be returning.
And I'm thankful my TV set is still broken.
No point in wasting energy feeling shame
For the havoc inflicted on others in my name
When I need all the strength I can muster
To teach my eighth-grade class in the low-rent district.
There, at least, I don't feel powerless.
There my choices can make some difference.

This month I'd like to believe I've widened
My students' choice of vocation, though the odds
My history lessons on working the land
Will inspire any of them to farm
Are almost as small as the odds
One will become a monk or nun
Trained in the Buddhist practice
We studied last month in the unit on India.
The point is to get them suspecting the world
They know first hand isn't the only world.

As for the calling of soldier, if it comes up in class,
It's not because I feel obliged to include it,
As you, as a writer, may feel obliged.
A student may happen to introduce it,
As a girl did yesterday when she read her essay
About her older brother, Ramon,
Listed as "missing in action" three years ago,
And about her dad, who won't agree with her mom
And the social worker on how small the odds are
That Ramon's alive, a prisoner in the mountains.

I didn't allow the discussion that followed
More time than I allowed for the other essays.
And I wouldn't take sides: not with the group
That thought the father, having grieved enough,
Ought to move on to the life still left him;
Not with the group that was glad he hadn't made do
With the next-to-nothing the world's provided,
That instead he's invested his trust in a story
That saves the world from shameful failure.

Let me know of any recent attempts on your part
To save our fellow-citizens from themselves.
In the meantime, if you want to borrow Ramon
For a narrative of your own, remember that any scene
Where he appears under guard in a mountain village
Should be confined to the realm of longing. There
His captors may leave him when they move on.
There his wounds may be healed,
His health restored. A total recovery
Except for a lingering fog of forgetfulness
A father dreams he can burn away.