Your Thanksgiving Turkeys
by Tom Sullivan
News reports of the annually banal pardoning of the White House turkey triggered memories of that video where Sarah Palin blathers on about whatever Sarah Palin was blathering on about, word-salad-wise, while behind her a workman looks on while he slaughters a turkey.
Several of our current GOP presidential candidates thought it might look more dignified if the turkey they were mock-pardoning was in black tie:
Gotta say the hands visibly holding the turkey's legs from underneath a velvet cushion are bit of a distraction, if not quite as Palinesque as a workman holding a turkey's legs while bleeding it out into a trough.
It got me thinking about other "turkeys." Martin Longman at Political Animal recalls how Palin's run for vice-president meant her party had to — en masse — spend two undignified months pretending that the truth doesn’t matter, nor any standards for holding high office:
And so, now, seven years down the road, it’s gotten to the point that Republicans have realized that they can say anything they want and just blame media bias if anyone calls them on their lies.
Palin basically invented this is a survival strategy after she fell on her face in her first big interview with Katie Couric. It’s now more than a survival strategy. It’s the Republican Party’s modus operandi.
Politico lists some of the looniest quotes from the 2016 campaign trail so far, including Jim Webb's grenade story and Donald Trump's "blood coming out of her wherever" smear of Megyn Kelly.
And Peace on Earth and Good Will towards y'all too:
The organizer of a recent armed anti-Muslim protest at an Irving mosque published the names and addresses of dozens of Muslims and “Muslim sympathizers” online Wednesday.
David Wright III copied an Irving city document that included the personal information of people who signed up to speak before the City Council voted in March to support a state bill aimed at blocking Muslim influence.
Wright, who organized Saturday’s armed protest against the “Islamization of America” outside the Irving Islamic Center, posted on Facebook “the name and address of every Muslim and Muslim sympathizer that stood up for … Sharia tribunals in Irving.”
David Dayen found this turkey buried in the Times:
Shouldn't this be the first paragraph and not the 16th? https://t.co/691TDqepHM pic.twitter.com/auZC5mNPPl
— David Dayen (@ddayen) November 26, 2015Finally, Stephen Colbert gets to the bottom of how one securely ships a specially stuffed turkey:
Happy Thanksgiving.