• 389^th Thanksgiving; History, Facts and Trivia
• Fox’s Ailes: Obama ‘Different Belief System Than Most Americans’
• LA Plastic Bag Tax Headed to Court
• Chamber Leader pledges to fight Obama
• China Needs 3,750 Jumbo Jets By 2029
• U. S. Catholics Hold Exorcism Classes
• Soros Media Matter Touts Pro-Nazi Book
• Independent Voters Ever More Independent
• Did Gloria Alred “Singlehandedly” Sink Meg Whitman?
• Beam Me Up Scottie: Antimatter Bottled
• California Redistricting Commission Gets Its Crayons.
• Pope’s Historic Shift on Condum Use.

An analysis by NPD, a Long Island research firm, of the 15 grocery items that make up the typical Thanksgiving dinner for four have increased eight percent since just last year including a 20-pound Turkey to a total of $53.64.

In 1621, the Plymouth colonists and Wampanoag Indians shared an autumn harvest feast that is acknowledged today as one of the first Thanksgiving celebrations in the colonies. Only 53 of the 102 Pilgrims lived to see that first Thanksgiving nevertheless  gathered to thank God and the Indians who provided almost all the food.

For more than two centuries, days of thanksgiving were celebrated by individual colonies and states. It wasn’t until 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, that President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day to be held each November.

In September 1620, a small– approximately 113 by 65 foot ship (no one know for certain) called the Mayflower left Plymouth, England, carrying 35 crew and 102 passengers-an assortment of religious separatists seeking a new home where they could freely practice their faith and other individuals lured by the promise of prosperity and land ownership in the New World. After a treacherous and uncomfortable crossing that lasted 66 days, averaging just 2 miles per hour, finally dropping anchor near the tip of Cape Cod, far north of their intended destination at the mouth of the Hudson River. One month later, the Mayflower crossed Massachusetts Bay, where the Pilgrims, as they are now commonly known, began the work of establishing a village at Plymouth.

Throughout that first brutal winter, most of the colonists remained on board the ship, where they suffered from exposure, scurvy and outbreaks of contagious disease. Only half of the Mayflower’s original passengers and crew lived to see their first New England spring. In March, the remaining settlers moved ashore, where they received an astonishing visit from an Abenaki Indian who greeted them in English. Several days later, he returned with another Native American, Squanto, a member of the Pawtuxet tribe who had been kidnapped by an English sea captain and sold into slavery before escaping to London and returning to his homeland on an exploratory expedition. Squanto taught the Pilgrims, weakened by malnutrition and illness, how to cultivate corn, extract sap from maple trees, catch fish in the rivers and avoid poisonous plants. He also helped the settlers forge an alliance with the Wampanoag, a local tribe, which would endure for more than 50 years and tragically remains one of the sole examples of harmony between European colonists and Native Americans.

In November 1621, after the Pilgrims’ first corn harvest proved successful, Governor William Bradford organized a celebratory feast and invited a group of the fledgling colony’s Native American allies, including the Wampanoag chief Massasoit. Now remembered as American’s “first Thanksgiving”-although the Pilgrims themselves may not have used the term at the time-the festival lasted for three days. While no record exists of the historic banquet’s exact menu, the Pilgrim chronicler Edward Winslow wrote in his journal that Governor Bradford sent four men on a “fowling” mission in preparation for the event, and that the Wampanoag guests arrived bearing five deer. Historians have suggested that many of the dishes were likely prepared using traditional Native American spices and cooking methods. Because the Pilgrims had no oven and the Mayflower’s sugar supply had dwindled by the fall of 1621, the meal did not feature pies, cakes or other desserts, which have become a hallmark of contemporary celebrations.

Thanksgiving Day is celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November in the United States. President George Washington issued the first national Thanksgiving Day Proclamation in the year 1789 and again in 1795. The state of New York officially made Thanksgiving Day an annual custom in 1817.

Random bits and pieces include:

• The traditional cornucopia was a curved goat’s horn filled to the brim with fruits and grains. According to Greek legend, Amalthea (a goat) broke one of her horns and offered it to Greek God Zeus as a sign of reverence. As a sign of gratitude, Zeus later set the goat’s image in the sky also known as constellation Capricorn. Cornucopia is the most common symbol of a harvest festival. A Horn shaped container, it is filled with abundance of the Earth’s harvest. It is also known as the ‘horn of plenty’.
• The first known thanksgiving feast or festival in North America was celebrated by Francisco Vásquez de Coronado and the people he called “Tejas” (members of the Hasinai group of Caddo-speaking Native Americans).
• 91% of Americans will eat turkey this Thanksgiving.
• 280 million turkeys will be sold for this Thanksgiving.
• Turkeys have roamed North America for 10 million years and were likely the first domesticated animal.
• More than 40 million green bean casseroles are served on Thanksgiving.
• The Mayflower criss crossed the Atlantic a few more times until in 1641 it disappeared without a trace with all crew and over 100 passengers.
• Thomas Jefferson thought Thanksgiving was a silly idea.
• University of Maine’s Dr. Harold Chute, DMV is the father of the “cheap chicken” because it was he who eradicated the parasite that often devastated flocks of chickens and turkeys dramatically lowering production costs. I happen to have known him meeting him at the University while consulting there.

Wherefore (HWAIR-for) adverb: For what reason? noun: Reason or purpose. Etymology from Middle English, a combination of where + for.

The age of Obama has provided a ratings boost for Fox News as its loudest personalities have relished the opportunity to play offense. Critics, of course, view Fox as an unabashed cheerleader for the Republican Party, an evil media empire spewing propaganda and misinformation at a gullible audience.

Top dog Roger Ailes says his network is just reflecting reality when it comes to the White House. “The president has not been very successful,” the Fox News chairman says in a lengthy interview. “He just got kicked from Mumbai to South Korea, and he came home and attacked Republicans for it. He had to be told by the French and the Germans that his socialism was too far left for them to deal with.” The 70-year-old Ailes goes on in this vein, saying the network isn’t singling out Obama for criticism but that its style “tends to be more direct” in challenging presidents.

Then he offers this observation about Obama: “He just has a different belief system than most Americans.”

Now, to make it worse, the airlines are charging a $15 molestation fee.- Leno

Los Angeles County has banned plastic grocery bags.

The Los Angeles supervisors should have consulted with county voters before they issued the ban and levied the ten-cent per paper bag charge.

Proposition 26 passed in the November election said that all local fees must be approved by a majority vote of the voters. The county is relying on a legal opinion that the 10-cent bag charge is really not a fee because the grocery stores receive the money, not the county.

However, government mandates the charge on the bags. When a government levies a fee on a product, income, or activity to raise revenue or enforce certain regulations then it is a government-imposed levy.

Expect a lawsuit will be filed against the Los Angeles County bag tax, fee, levy which will be the first test of the new law.

An amusing sidelight is the revelation that the bags grocery stores are selling exude lead, a known toxin, so is using those bags worse than the demon plastic bags? We shall see.

Despite some animal rights and leftists groups objections “Sarah Palin’s Alaska,” attracted almost 5 million viewers on TLC Sunday night, the biggest premiere in the channel’s history,

Determined to benefit from its bet on shellacking Obama in the midterm elections the leader of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday scolded the Obama administration for the “regulatory tsunami” its policies have created, which he called “the biggest single threat to job creation” in the country.

“We have never seen anything on this scale before. It defies all logic and common sense,” Chamber President Thomas J. Donohue said in a speech to the group’s board of directors. He vowed to fight many of the new rules outlined in the health-care reform law and the financial overhaul bill. “We cannot allow this nation to move from a government of the people to a government of the regulators.”

Donohue also waded into the contentious debate over tax cuts, calling on lawmakers to “immediately renew” all of the Bush-era cuts that are due to expire at the end of the year, including those that go to the wealthiest Americans.

President Obama and leading Democrats have maintained that only the tax cuts benefitting the middle class should continue, while most Republicans argue that all the cuts should be extended given the precarious economy and high unemployment.

The Chamber has been a frequent thorn in the administration’s side over the past two years, spending millions of dollars a week opposing some of the president’s top legislative priorities and filling the campaign coffers of Republican candidates.

In Poland they have started telling Obama jokes.

China will need more than 3,750 jumbo jets to meet market demand by 2029, the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC) said, adding it had struck deals to deliver 100 of its jumbo jets to Air China and five other airlines.

Over the next 20 years, air passenger volume in China will be the fastest growing in the world. It will expand at an annual 7.7 percent compared with a 5.2-percent growth rate for the global average, reported Xinhua citing a COMAC report.

The report was released at the eighth China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition that began Tuesday in Zhuhai city in south China’s Guangdong Province.

The demand for aircraft in China by 2029 will total more than $450 billion in value, or about 13 percent of the world total. There is a rumor a major U. S. manufacture will relocate it jumbo jet assembly plant to China if it gets a big chunk of its orders.

The major pilots unions are complaining about the use of full-body scanners and these pat-down techniques at the airport. Pilots say the searches make it almost impossible for them to smuggle in liquor - Leno

Overwhelmed with requests for exorcists, U.S. Roman Catholic bishops held a special training workshop in Baltimore last weekend to teach clerics the esoteric rite, the Catholic News Service reported.

The church signed up 56 bishops and 66 priests for the two-day workshop that began on Friday, seeking to boost the small group of just five or six American exorcists that the church currently has on its books.

“There’s this small group of priests who say they get requests from all over the continental U.S.,” Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois, was quoted as saying.

“Actually, each diocese should have its own” exorcist, he added.

Paprocki did not say why there was increased demand for exorcisms, which he noted were rarely performed.

While solemnly regarded by the Catholic Church, exorcism is a staple of Hollywood fright films — most notably the 1973 film “The Exorcist” — and regarded by many as superstition that lends a chill frisson to festivals like Halloween.

Catholic Church law stipulates that only properly trained priests can perform the rite — and then only with the permission of their bishops.

Possible signs of demonic possession include scratching, cutting, biting of the skin; profound displays of strength; and a strong or violent reaction to holy water.

This will be a rough week for President Obama. He’s got a lame duck Congress, he has to pardon a turkey, he has to eat crow, and the Chinese just flipped him the bird. It’s been a fowl week.– Leno

George Soros funded Media Matters for America has on numerous occasions mentioned Elizabeth Dilling’s “The Red Network” on its website. Dilling, who Media Matters calls a “Nazi sympathizer” spoke at rallies hosted by the leading American Nazi group of her day. She praised Hitler.

Media Matters then went on to smear Glenn Beck for simply reading the same  Elizabeth Dilling book back in June 2010 and reporting on it during his radio program.

Paradoxically as a teen Soros worked for the NAZI Jewish Council in Hungary after his family changed its name from Schwartz and disguised its Jewish faith.

“Sesame Street” just turned 41 years old. Before “Sesame Street,” the only way kids could learn was from books.-Jimmy Kimmel

American voters are roughly divided into thirds among: Republicans, Democrats and so-called Independents who are registered with neither. Most agree it is among those “independents” that national elections turn. Here’s what the November 2, 2010 showed among independents:

• More said their vote in a Senate race was to express opposition to Obama rather than to show support. This was true in every state where exit polls asked the question, and by margins of 2-to-1 or better in states such as Florida, Iowa, New Hampshire, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
• Majorities disapprove of Obama in all states but California, Delaware, Hawaii and Vermont, which traditionally lean Democratic during a presidential election. Obama’s job performance rating is lowest in West Virginia, where 76 percent disapprove. In Indiana, 69 percent of independents disapprove, and in perennially contested Ohio, 65 percent disapprove.
• Most express broad dissatisfaction with how the federal government is working. Roughly four in 10 are angry in Colorado and Missouri, while about one-third feel that way in Indiana, Ohio, Washington state, New Hampshire, Nevada, Wisconsin, Florida and Pennsylvania.
• A chunk said they want the government to do less after two years of Democratic domination in the nation’s capital. That’s almost a direct reversal of how this voting group behaved in 2008. Majorities of independents in each state surveyed except Democratic-leaning Hawaii said the government is doing too many things better left to the private sector and individuals.
• Supporters outnumber opponents of the tea party coalition in all but Delaware, Hawaii and Vermont. In Missouri, half of independents call themselves tea party backers, compared with 18 percent who oppose it. Nearly half of independents support the movement in 2008 swing states Colorado, Indiana and Ohio.
• More than half say their financial situations got worse in the past two years in Florida, Missouri, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio and Wisconsin. One in seven or less across the states said their financial fortunes have improved during Obama’s time in office.
• About four in 10 in six states - Arkansas, Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, South Carolina and Texas - said the $814 billion economic stimulus package hurt the economy. At least half want the health care bill repealed in 20 of 24 states where the question was asked. The exceptions were California, Delaware, Hawaii and Vermont.

About as many Democrats approve of Obama as Republicans disapprove.

A 66-year-old Wisconsin man went berserk Monday when Bristol Palin was not voted off “Dancing with the Stars and blasted the TV with a shotgun starting a standoff with local police. He was eventually taken into custody and jailed on an array of charges in lieu of $75,000 bail. The TV did not survive.

Activist liberal lawyer Gloria Alred may have had more to do with Meg Whitman’s defeat by snagging onto her former housekeeper and accusing Whitman of financial abusing the women because she was an illegal immigrant. After that news conference no amount of money, and Whitman poured $150 million into her campaign for California governor, could reverse what became a political death spiral, and she lost.

Alred accused Whitman of owing the woman $10,000 in back pay, mileage and the like. Whitman who paid the woman $23 per hour never regained her footing, and some say her $60,000 per month political consultant is largely culpable for what was a completely incompetent political handling.

Regardless Whitman agreed last week to ante $5,500 to settle the legal complaint that was filed September 29 little more than one month before the election.

Despite accusations of political shenanigans nothing has been proven and Alred won’t explain how she came to meet and represent the housekeeper.

Nancy Pelosi has now been elected the new House minority leader. She was smiling from ear to ear, which is pretty impressive considering how far her ears have been pulled back. - Leno

In the movie Angels and Demons, scientists have solved one of the most perplexing scientific problems: the capture and storage of antimatter. The fictitious Star Trek’s Enterprise was powered to several times beyond the speed of light by antimatter.

 In real life, trapping antimatter has never been accomplished, until now. Competing teams in Canada and the U. S. have trapped 38 hydrogen antimatter atoms by cooling them to -272 degrees below zero and trapping the atoms in a super magnetic field at the CERN super collider facility on the French-Swiss border.

 When matter contacts antimatter they destroy each other releasing enormous energy bursts.

 The miniscule among of antimatter isolated and held for a fraction of a second is far less than required to heat a cup of water and of course far less than required fling a star ship across the galaxy. While a small step it is a scientific leap onto the edge of a new scientific frontier.

Twenty term Harlem Congressman Charlie Rangel (D) will become the 23^rd member of Congress in U. S. history to be formally censured. He was convicted in a trial by a House committee as a tax cheat and of other charges an ignominious accomplishment. Ironically Rangel headed the tax writing committee. The entire House now considers his punishment.

California’s first-ever citizens redistricting commission came alive last week with the random drawing of eight initial members who were finalists from a pool of nearly 31,000 applicants that had been winnowed over a year’s process. Under Proposition 11, passed by voters two years ago, the eight commissioners selected today will appoint six colleagues by Dec. 31 from 28 remaining finalists, with consideration given to racial, ethnic, gender and geographic diversity. The commission will redraw all lines including Congressional districts,

The panel ultimately will consist of five Democrats, five Republicans, and four independent or minor-party voters who will be paid $300 per day while engaged in crafting political maps by Aug. 15.

Creation of the independent commission stemmed partly from a backlash against a deal struck by legislative leaders in 2001 to draw lines that protected incumbents of both parties. That gerrymandering resulted in the so-called Ribbon-of-shame that is the 23^rd Congressional District that snakes along the California coast for 175 miles from Monetary to LA County looping inland around clusters of Democrat voters.

Only one of 53 congressional seats, and none of 120 legislative seats, changed hands in the two statewide elections prior to passage of Proposition 11.

If you’re British, you may as well enjoy the royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. You’re paying for it.- Ferguson

Real estate mogul/TV personality Donald Trump likes President Barack Obama personally. But the Donald isn’t too impressed with the president’s job performance, Politico reports.

“I respect him; I like him; I think he’s wonderful in many ways,” Trump said on MSNBC. “I think he has been not good for business, and honestly - and very sadly - the world does not respect this country, and therefore, I think the world doesn’t respect our leader. He’s a nice man, but I think he’s totally over his head.”

Trump’s name has been floated as a potential challenger to Obama in 2012 - principally by himself and the media. If he does run, it will be as a Republican, Trump says. “I’m a Republican.”

But he says he would “prefer not running,” noting that he’s “buying a lot of things right now - it’s a great time to buy things right now.”

There are unconfirmed reports that someones in Russia’s intelligence community believes the recent disabling of a U. S. flagged cruise ship was a result of a Chinese submarine launched missile that detonated an electromagnetic pulse warhead over the Pacific burning out electronics and setting its engineroom afire. That supposedly was followed by the November 10 mystery missile contrail that created such a hubbud in California that was a statement to the U. S.

In a new book to be released this week Pope Benedict XVI signals a historic shift in the position of the Roman Catholic Church by saying condoms can be morally justified. According to a report published exclusively in the Sunday Telegraph the 83-year-old Pontiff said it is acceptable to use a prophylactic when the sole intention is to “reduce the risk of infection” from Aids.

While he will restate the Catholic Church’s staunch objections to contraception because it believes it interferes with the creation of life, he will argue that using a condom to preserve life and avoid death can be a responsible act - even outside marriage.

The comment will be published in a book to be released worldwide this week.

In addition the Pope’s  harsh criticism the use of recreational drugs in the West and its impact on the rest of the world is particularly striking, describing drug trafficking as an “evil monster” that stems from the “boredom and the false freedom of the Western world.”