E.J. Dionne:
Happy Thanksgiving. That is not a political sentiment. Yet this year, everything seems partisan and even this most unifying of national holidays has become an occasion for ideological warfare.
The idea now popular in conservative circles is that all past interpretations of Thanksgiving are tainted either by malign forms of multiculturalism - did those white colonists really need help from the Indians to get their act together? - or by dangerous inclinations to socialism.
Some of our friends on the ascending right wing insist that it's a big lie to use Thanksgiving to celebrate how the Pilgrims pulled together and, with the help of God, prospered through communal assistance and a little help from their new neighbors. They buy the part about the Almighty but insist this holiday is primarily about the virtues of American capitalism and how free enterprise saved those folks at Plymouth.
David Ignatius:
Thanksgiving is America's favorite holiday because it's a time when we put aside our cares, much as the struggling Pilgrims did nearly four centuries ago, and eat a gut-busting meal without worrying about the "out years." It's a holiday for a bold but improvident nation, which sums us up today as it did at the first Thanksgiving in 1621.
But even though Thanksgiving is about optimism - our national secular religion that the "pie," metaphorically, will keep getting bigger - I would wager that around the groaning table this year, you'll hear revelers worrying about national decline. Certainly I've heard it a lot lately, from departing Obama administration officials, global leaders, and my family and friends. There's a sense that something is torn in the national quilt, and nobody quite knows how to mend it.
But at least he ends on a happy note.
So Happy Thanksgiving. It's part of the American character to worry about hardship and decline. But our history tells us that - if we keep our wits and hold tight to sweet reason, freedom and creativity - we always seem to prove the naysayers wrong.
Matt Miller says If you're grateful, pay more taxes:
At this season I can't help but contrast my military friends and their sense of civic virtue with certain well-heeled types now waging a different fight: a battle to keep marginal tax rates on top U.S. earners at 35 percent, instead of letting them rise back to Clinton-era rates of 39.6 percent. They mount their campaign at a time when we have already put the full bill for Afghanistan and Iraq (as well as for President Bush's Medicare drug benefit) on the next generation's credit card and as we cut taxes during a period of war for the first time in our history.
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It's not just holier-than-thou liberals but American military men and women who look at this behavior and ask, "Have these people no shame?" At Thanksgiving it's worth adding Buckley's query: Do well-to-do champions of extending the Bush tax cuts have no gratitude?
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But enough is enough. If our economic elites can't do their part, and instead insist on lower taxes at a time of war and surging debt, then the people with wealth and power in our society have completely lost their bearings.
Mark Morford comments on the new TSA guidelines:
Sweet Jesus, we should have thought of this ages ago. Why didn't we think of this ages ago?
It seems so obvious. You want to ignite some delicious outcry in this brutally divided country? You want to unite the wary populace around a single, seething hotbutton of patriotism, privacy and putrefied civil liberties?
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See, we've been going about this invasion-of-privacy thing all wrong. From Bush's illegal wiretapping to Facebook's wily account settings, the panic over personal privacy has been, until now, mostly about data -- your home address, credit card number, PIN, SMS chats, your filthy lawn appearing on Google street views, that sort of thing. It's all vague and rather abstract; we can't actually feel anything.
But this is different. This is literal. Nothing, apparently, sets us off more than some unhappy TSA worker -- an increasingly unenviable job, you gotta admit -- yanking you out of line and giving you the delightful option of getting your entire body X-rayed from ass to nipple, or being groped all over in case you might be carrying something explosive in your pants.
Is that not amazing, by the way? That a solitary "Christmas underwear bomber" has now changed the complexion of the entire country and inconvenienced tens of millions with a single failed attempt? Yes, all this groping is because of one guy, and he's not even Justin Bieber. How incredible is that? Who says an individual can't make a difference? Who says the terrorists haven't already won?
David Broder:
If you have any doubts about the real meaning of this month's midterm elections, let me refer you to the most notable winner in those contests. I am talking about Lisa Murkowski, the reelected senator from Alaska.
The distinctive feature of the 2010 election was the energy generated among the voters by the combination of a severe economic recession and the widespread disillusionment with Washington and national politics as practiced by Barack Obama and both parties.
Katha Pollitt has some questions for the Pope, now that he's declared condoms are okay -- at least for male prostitutes:
Is the pope Catholic? The whole world broke out the champagne the weekend before Thanksgiving when the news came that Pope Benedict XVI had approved the use of condoms in certain circumstances to prevent the transmission of HIV.
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Theoretically, every fertile woman who has sex is at some risk of serious injury or death from pregnancy. In the United States 569 women died in childbirth in 2006, and tens of thousands nearly die every year. The risks of childbearing, even in modern industrialized countries, is one reason having a baby should be a woman's conscious choice. Now that the pope has said people of both sexes can use condoms to protect themselves from a fatal sexual disease, can he not also, by the same logic, say women can protect themselves from the dangers of pregnancy?
New York Times:
After a year of increasingly depressing news about the unbridled, unaccountable influence of big money in political campaigns, a Texas jury stood up for honesty in campaign finance on Wednesday and convicted Tom DeLay, the former House majority leader, of money laundering. Unfortunately, there are now many new ways for politicians to commit acts similar to those for which Mr. DeLay was convicted, all of them perfectly legal.