Give thanks for all you were given and all you were able to give.

Here’s wishing a happy Thanksgiving to all my readers, my friends and my family. Thanksgiving is that most unusual of holidays, marking no religious celebration, a day set aside for everyone to give thanks. Thanks for what? That’s up to the individual. We all have things for which we are grateful, some universal, some very idiosyncratic and personal. That’s the beauty of a day  without hard and fast rules for what exactly is being celebrated, you can make it about what is important to yourself and your loved ones.

Without going into the oft-repeated and conflicting stories of the origins of Thanksgiving, it is today an American tradition falling on the last Thursday of November, as decreed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863. There wasn’t a whole lot to be thankful for in America in 1863, what with the nation being torn apart by a bloody civil war. This was the first truly modern war, using the deadly new technologies of highly mobile and accurate heavy artillery, machine guns, rockets and repeating rifles, producing an unprecedented death toll made even more horrific by the fact that both armies were killing their own countrymen. America’s perverse grip on slavery had to be pried loose only at gunpoint.

Perhaps Lincoln figured we needed a day to count our blessings, such as they were, recall better days and hope for peace and brotherhood once again. Whatever his thinking on that, Thanksgiving as a national holiday was one more great idea from a man full of great ideas, so maybe one more thing to be thankful for is Abraham Lincoln, who didn’t instruct us on how or what to be thankful for. As for myself, this year will be a no-brainer as far as being thankful, even if it is painful. On November 13th my mother died, so this will be my family’s first Thanksgiving without her in our lives, so that’s where the pain comes in. The thanks I will give is for having my mother in the first place, a very special human being with many gifts that she shared with everyone she met without a second thought.

Mary Elizabeth Prunier Crespo was a gentle, kind, loving, generous and patient person, both by nature and by conscious effort, since her four children tested her patience and kindness daily, and the world in general tends to wear people’s goodness out if you let it. Mom never let the bastards wear her down, an she remained until her last breath a loving and generous optimist who brought out the best in anyone who came into contact with her. Her brother, my Uncle Joe, put it best at the funeral of his big sister: “She was the smartest of us, and had the most talent, but she never rubbed it in…”

And Mom had plenty of smarts and talent, returning to work when her children were in their teens and rising to become a senior budget analyst for the City of New York. As far as talent, she was a gifted oil painter, and left our large extended family plenty of artwork to beautify our homes and remind us of her always. She also played the guitar, created needlepoint images and built elaborate dollhouses with tiny furniture with working drawers and hinges the size of a fingernail clippings. She was a voracious reader, a habit she instilled in her four children. Her politics were liberal and highly moral, demanding of American leaders an adherence to the best American ideas and ideals.

A child of the Great Depression and World War 2, Mary Crespo knew poverty and national trauma and always sided with the better angels of the human spirit, hating no one, encouraging all to be the best they can be, and loving the cultural cornucopia that is New York City. And she was a giver, giving of herself and her gifts freely, quietly donating to charities and spending time with anyone who sought her out, and who always came away feeing better about themselves and a world that could produce such a person. She was not only my mother, but the best friend I ever had.

Today I give thanks for the outrageous good fortune to have known such a person, and better yet, having been her child, her student and her admirer. This first Thanksgiving without her in our lives will be hard, but none of us will skip the celebration of this Holiday that she made so memorable to so many. When we were young, our house was filled to bursting with cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents, laughter, Scrabble games (she still regularly bested myself and my sister in our weekly Scrabble games) and most of all, love. And since you get to pick just what it is you are thankful for on Thanksgiving Day, this year I am profoundly grateful to have been the son of a magical human being, one who’s lessons will always live on (including that it’s just fine to cook some chickens instead of that dry-ass bird turkey on Thanksgiving), who’s fierce love and unquestioned support will prop me up until my own final breath. Happy Thanksgiving, Mom. It was an honor and a great privilege to share your life.

Plan ahead. You never know when you’ll need bail money and a new identity.

Today’s guest blogger is Federico “Freddy Fees” Carbone, a member of the Credit Card Cartel and underboss to Vincent “Vinny Visa” Vitale, the undisputed Don of America’s largest organized consortium, who exercises authority over the heads of the Five Families: Visa, Master, Amex, Discover and Slate.

Freddy Fees here, giving you the inside dope. Not like it’s gonna help you, but just to let you know who’s boss. Lots of you suckers have been getting little pamphlets in the mail from your credit card companies, letting you know that the vig is going up, way up. Only we don’t call it the vig anymore (short for “vigorish,” a Yiddish word by way of Russia, meaning “winnings,” but used to figure a loan shark’s or a bookie’s take, always a hefty rate). We call the vig an interest rate these days, compounded hourly or by the second or however they do it lately, we got computers for that stuff. Just figure it to be plenty, pushing 30% or more plus “hidden fees,” the kind of thing the government used to put guys like us in jail over. No more.

Us gangsters finally wised up and went mainstream and now we’re running all the major credit card companies. We got Vinny Visa to thank for all these hikes in the vig. Vinny’s the Boss of All Bosses in the credit card racket and what he says goes. And Vinny says you suckers are gonna get squeezed just a little bit more, or a whole lot more if you read the fine print.

See, the Feds are cracking down on the rates credit card companies can squeeze out of working stiffs, but as usual they gave us fellas in Vinny Visa’s corporate gang plenty of notice, so we had time to jack up the rates moon high, so that when the deadline comes for lowering them, we can roll them back to sky high. In other words, right back to the backbreaking levels that got the Feds all worked up in the first place. Lucky for Big Credit, Vinny Visa has lots of well-placed “fixers” in Washington, only he calls them lobbyists these days. Sweet.

A fixer is a guy who knows where the bodies are buried, knows what kind of girls (or boys) a Senator likes to fool around with, who’s in big debt to his bookie or some casino, who likes to travel first class and don’t care who’s paying the freight, who has a junkie kid or wife they don’t want advertised, and who likes cash and expensive jewelry in hand in exchange for their vote. Washington’s lousy with fixers, and Vinny Visa’s got ours working overtime these days. Makes us wonder why we didn’t get into this racket a long time ago instead of working outside the law. We still get a huge vig, and nobody’s going to jail for loan sharking.

Not only that, but you wanna talk about respect? We got it in spades, the best seats in the best restaurants, luxury boxes at any stadium you can name, private jets, limos, big tax breaks and bonuses up the wazoo. You flash the name Visa, Amex, or Master Card on a business card with some fancy title and chumps are falling all over you, opening doors, lighting your smokes, standing you drinks, whatever. Women? Forget about it, they’re all over a made corporate man! And these days we get to put our houses and all our other swag in our own names, no ballbreaking detectives or D.A.s confiscating what we earned.

Funny thing is, we’re pulling the same crap we always pulled, adding extra fees, upping the vig whenever we feel like it, and we still get to grab assets from the stiffs who don’t pay, only this time the cops and the marshals do it for us, all legal and legit. No more leg breaking and bombing joints, which was a waste since you can’t collect from no burnt-down business or a guy in the hospital. Only rarely do we have to whack a guy these days, and we take extra care to make it look like a heart attack or an accident.

Me, I kinda miss putting two behind a guy’s ear to send a message, but Vinny Visa don’t want nobody gettin’ a whiff of the mob being behind the credit card scam. He don’t want nobody to blow this sweet gig, especially after a bunch of his boys went a little crazy with the phony mortgage scams in ‘08 and almost killed the cash cow we all been milking. Funny how some guys get handed millions and millions for doing practically zip, more dough than they’ll ever need, and then they want more.

Me, I was all for whacking the bunch of ‘em before they turned rat, but Vinny cooled us down and told us he’d handle it. If you noticed, a few of the main bums died of “strokes” and “heart attacks,” and some others are doing major time in the slammer, and nobody’s talking to the D.A. or it’s the poor house for their whole family. Vinny says that put the other dopes in line in a hurry, and so far the Feds are none the wiser, even handing us more billions of you suckers’ tax dough to make up for what those dopes blew. Go figure. I gotta admit he’s got a point, but I’m kinda old school and woulda liked taking a few of those greedy punks for a little ride.

Now things are looking peachy again, at least for us, and even with the rate limits coming, our fixers are making sure we got plenty of loopholes in the new rules; transaction fees, membership dues, transfer charges, and a whole bunch of other shakedowns. All legal, too. Once you buy a bunch of Congressmen and Senators, there’s no need to pay off judges and every cop on the beat. Hell, these guys are giving us things we didn’t even ask for! I think they’re a bigger bunch of crooks than we ever were.

Anyway, suckers, don’t go looking to Uncle Sam to get your credit card vig knocked down. He’s on our side now, and the same amount your vig gets reduced is what we’re gonna stick you with in “handling fees.” Just get used to paying and paying and paying and never getting off the hook. Dream on about ever paying down the principal, it’s gonna be all vig every month, and even when you don’t buy nothing, your tab still goes up. It’s a beautiful thing, and gravy for Vinny Visa’s boys. And don’t even think about switching credit card companies. He had a sit down with all the bosses from Amex, Master, Discover, Slate and all the smaller credit gangs.

Vinny laid down the law and made sure we’re all charging the same killer vig and piling on the hidden fees. He don’t want any wars between gangs. Bad for business and only attracts heat from the law. Anybody wants to go to the mattresses, he tells ‘em there’s a stroke or a heart attack waiting for them too, and foreclosure on the wife and kids’ houses. No one wants to go back to the old days of being public enemies, even though that’s what we still are. Just as long as people think otherwise, we can go on ripping ‘em off like we always done, and as far as I’m concerned, always will.

The best thing about this racket is that credit is just as addictive as heroin without having to deal with the crazy Afghanis on the one end and the desperate junkies on the other, all the time dodging cops and other thugs every step of the way. The longer we can keep this recession going, the better our business is. Hard times make for desperate suckers, and they even start buying groceries on their credit cards, so they’ll be paying for those Cheerios and hamburgers for years to come. This racket is just too sweet to quit.

No one on their death bed ever regretted not spending enough time in New Jersey, Canada or in karaoke bars.

Sometimes things happen around the Holidays, odd things. Nothing to be done about it either. Can’t fight City Hall or outrageous fate. You can tear out your hair over it, rend your garments, get busy with the wailing and gnashing of teeth routine, or you can roll with the punches. And when it’s life that’s doing the punching, there’s no one to blame, no one to defend yourself against or from whom to seek retribution. It’s just life, and that’s the way it goes sometimes. Nothing personal, just your turn in the barrel. It’s random. We might wail “Why me?” The answer might be; “Why not you?” Sometimes things just happen, things like this:

You have a Thanksgiving gathering in your home, first time you get to host the big event for the entire extended family. It seems your parents have gone on a second honeymoon this year, and the honors are yours. The pressure is enormous, the comparisons to other family members’ memorable feasts are many. You prepare for weeks, you and the lovely wife, polishing every stick of furniture, even painting the place like you’ve been meaning to do for the past decade.

Then you shop for enough food to feed a regiment. You don’t want to get too creative and mess with the traditional Thanksgiving menu, so you go the turkey, yams and cranberry sauce route, plus about a dozen other things in huge amounts, more than everyone you’ve ever met could eat in one day.

And you pull it off somehow, first time out of the gate! The house looks great, the food is perfect and when the table is set it looks like that Norman Rockwell painting. Only trouble is, that it’s not the Norman Rockwell family sitting down to the feast, it’s your family. By the time you serve dinner, Uncle Charlie is roaring drunk and telling dirty jokes, Aunt Rose is kicking him under the table and your 22 year-old nephew Joey, your big brother’s kid with the dozens of face piercings and death-motif tattoos announces he’s a strict carnivore and will eat only meat, preferably raw beef.

His teenage brothers and sisters, two sets of boy-girl twins, have been smoking pot in your garage and can’t stop giggling. Your 92 year-old grandfather decides to lead the family in saying grace and forgets the words halfway through. Four times. Granny, who’s nearly deaf, shouts to all that she hopes Gramps doesn’t soil himself like he did at the 4th of July barbecue.

The meal finally starts and your 5 foot, 2-inch tall, 300-pound Aunt Millie starts critiquing each dish, usually in a negative way, and just to be absolutely certain she doesn’t like anything you cooked, fills her plate several times. Uncle Charlie slips your 9 year-old kid a 5 spot to keep the ice cubes and bourbon coming, and teaches him what the words “douche bag” mean.

Your thirty-something, thrice-divorced sister-in-law Mildred who gets very tense around the holidays has solved that little problem by taking a handful of tranquilizers and is now hanging all over Cousin Joey as he chews on a raw steak he thawed out in the microwave, telling him she doesn’t care one bit if everybody thinks he’s a maladjusted little shit, she thinks he’s one sexy freak show of a man. Joey grunts between bloody mouthfuls and slips a hand up her dress.

Your 15 year-old daughter is sitting next to them, rolling her eyes and texting a blow-by-blow account of the dinner to her friends. Your brother Rick the know-it-all blowhard who married a woman who’s father created a lucrative do-nothing job for him at his import-export business is drinking egg nog and brandy concoctions and repeating the political theories of Rush Limbaugh louder and louder as if he made them up himself until his wife tells him to shut the hell up a dozen or more times.

Your son announces that Uncle Ricky is douche bag and Uncle Charlie tells another dirty joke while Cousin Joey and Mildred disappear into your son’s bedroom. Your daughter abruptly announces that she hates you all and wishes she were dead and disappears into her own room in a huff while Joey’s siblings go back to the garage to smoke more pot.

Your son calls his pothead cousins a bunch of douche bags too while he fetches more ice cubes and bourbon for Uncle Charlie while you and the lovely wife clean up dinner and prepare for dessert. It turns out that the pot smoking teens have already devoured the lemon meringue and coconut custard pies with their bare hands and are wiping themselves on the curtains. Luckily you have about six other things for dessert.

Your wife is crying silently as you shoo the teenagers back to the garage and put on the coffee. Your daughter emerges from her room and drags your son into the kitchen to help, then starts hugging your wife and crying along with her in the kitchen, telling her that Joey and Mildred are making a racket in your son’s room, at which point the kid makes a beeline to his bedroom and flings the door wide open and snaps on the light before you can catch up to him, with everyone from the dining room table right behind him.

You hear your son yell; “Whoa, cooool!” while your Uncle Charlie tells Joey to give her a good one for him, Aunt Rose kicks him in the shins again, RIck tells no one in particular that this is President Obama’s fault for tearing society apart and Gramps starts singing the national anthem when he hears the word “President.” You shut the light and the door and herd everyone back to the table for dessert. Now Grandma’s in the kitchen with your wife and daughter crying with them and you drag them to the table too. It’s time for coffee and dessert, and there’s still pies, some peach cobbler, candies and brownies.

The marijuana crew load their plates with sweets, as does Aunt Millie, while  Gramps falls asleep in his plate of pumpkin pie. Joey and Mildred emerge from your son’s room, grab their coats and announce they are off to Vegas to elope while your son screams at them that they made his bed all gooey and they’re a couple of douche bags. Uncle Charlie drinks a toast to the young lovers and gets yet another kick in the shins from Aunt Rose.

Your wife and daughter are silently weeping into their coffee and dessert and the stoners are sucking the laughing gas from the whipped cream canisters, and then they go to your computer, change all your settings and download a bunch of creepy video games. Your brother Rick’s wife is telling him to shut the hell up and go watch some football or something and all of a sudden Gramps wakes up and makes a dash for the bathroom, not quite making it in time, earning a “stinky old douche bag” from your son. Your parents’ sudden decision to go on a second honeymoon on Thanksgiving weekend doesn’t seem so surprising anymore.

The double sets of stoned twins raid the fridge for leftovers while Uncle Charlie and Aunt Rose argue over the car keys. Aunt Millie packs a giant doggy bag as Rick and his wife collect their teenagers and say goodnight. Grandma announces loud enough to be heard in the next state that this was the best Thanksgiving ever, and that you should be the permanent family host for Thanksgiving every year from now on. You reach for Uncle Charlie’s bourbon and wonder just how hard it is to fake your own death. Happy Thanksgiving!

Contrary to poplar belief, no rock & roll stars ever knew the secret to life. Surprisingly, this secret was entrusted to the late Marcel Marceau, the famous French mime, who mistakenly thought he could impart it through his silent mime act, forgetting that most people really hate mimes. Hopefully, the next person entrusted with the secret will lay off the tights, striped shirts, invisible boxes and silly makeup and actually speak to us.

Is there a sadder or more pathetic sight than Senator Joe Lieberman’s face? No cartoonist could create a sadder sack of a caricature than his real-life features. It is said that as a person ages, one’s face more and more becomes a reflection of their personality. Could it be possible that Senator Lieberman is anyway near as sad and dour a human being as his face indicates? And does the Guinness Book of World Records have a category for impossibly sad sights? If so, maybe the following could be in line for consideration:

A wallet full of photographs of one’s dogs. What, none of the goldfish? While most people like dogs just fine, the idea that anyone is eager to see pictures of your overbred, nervous little pooch dressed in dopey doggie sweaters is just a tad delusional. And sad.

An aging gay man with a cold. Sorry, old gay brothers, no disrespect, but an aging queen with a bad cold is pretty pathetic to behold.

What’s sadder than Glen Beck fancying himself a one-man political movement? And an educator, no less! Hasn’t this dimwit embarrassed himself enough? Well, it seems the guy’s got a plan for his America. It’s unclear if “his” America is the same America the rest of us enjoy so much. Let’s hope not. Nothing worse than an angry moron with “a plan.” Those things never work out all that well for anyone but the angry moron.

People who used to be famous appearing on “Dancing With The Stars” is pretty sad, too. Unless of course they fall down, in which case it is funny.

A skinny department store Santa. Creepy, too.

An old guy trying to figure out how to actually make a call on the iPhone his daughter gave him for his birthday.

A really drunk guy desperately trying to look sober. Even sadder, a really drunk woman trying to look sober. Another double standard? Yes, yes it is. Fairly universal, though.

A kid who’s ice cream cone just hit the pavement. Bummer.

Senior citizen outlaw bikers. That blurry, elongated “Born to Raise Hell” tattoo doesn’t seem all that menacing when tearing down the sidewalk on your Mobility Scooter.

Dancing bears and tamed lions. Fearsome predators drugged, de-clawed, whipped and chained for people’s amusement are sad sights, except every so often when they slay their trainers in a rage. For that one shining moment they are the majestic predators they were born to be, at least until the police come along and shoot them down. Then they are sad sights once again.

A melting snowman. Frosty, we hardly knew ye!

A three-legged stray dog. This poor mutt’s picture isn’t in anybody’s wallet, but nine times out of ten is more dog than any pet, getting along somehow on 3 legs and his wits.

Famous faces Botoxed into immobility. That’s the best plastic surgeons can do these days? Some of their patients (victims?) are almost unrecognizable, looking like the Pillsbury Doughboy’s extended family, exhibiting zero character. Might be a good idea for Senator Lieberman, though.

Coal miners. Has there ever been a happy looking coal miner anywhere ever?

Empty houses. Seems to be lots of them around lately, abandoned in a hurry,  with reminders of family life strewn around weedy yards; swing sets, barbecues, maybe an old doll dropped in the grass. The houses themselves seem to be sighing, hoping someone will move in and bring them back to life.

Flag draped coffins. Yet another generation weeps and wonders why.

The easiest sort of genius to be is a math genius. 2 plus 2 always equals 4, and anything else you come up with must reflect reality. You don’t get to make stuff up, discover new numbers, or put your own personal stamp on mathematics. Mathematicians basically point out the obvious.

The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious (DOPOTO) has been keeping busy, as usual, performing our only function: observing events and pointing out the obvious. It is often a thankless task, since many humans enjoy interpreting reality to suit their own philosophies, even though the truth has been getting severe sprains from all the contortions it has been forced to bend itself into. Naturally the Department’s frowns on this sort of activity, but also notes that it is fairly harmless. The sky is no less blue than it was yesterday when someone emphatically insists it is green.

Be that as it may, researchers at DOPOTO have been noticing a few trends of late; good, bad and strange. The good development is that several United States Senators have suddenly remembered their job description and have decided to vote on potential laws before them in the Senate according the their merits and for no other consideration. A thorough scan of Department archives confirms that this has not happened within recent memory, with even the rescue monies for the 9/11 attacks and the Hurricane Katrina disaster having been loaded with “earmarks,” a polite euphemism for political patronage and earnest treasury-looting.

The law in question is the Health Care Reform Bill, which was subject to a great deal of overloading with pork in the House of Representatives. This reassuringly sleazy behavior of the Representatives was fully expected to be repeated in The Senate. Several Senators have instead thrown a monkey wrench into the process of political observation by acting ethically and responsibly, one even going so far as to question the wisdom of political action committees spending $3 million on advertisements in her state opposing the health care bill.

She wisely noted that the debate is in Congress, not Arkansas, where lawmakers actually review the proposed legislation and speak to one another face to face, negating the need for media advertising campaigns to familiarize themselves with the facts. The advertising campaigns reflect what the Department considers a bad trend, with various organizations spending untold millions of dollars in media and print ads to attempt to make voters feel that they have some input into running the government beyond casting their votes for the candidates of their choice.

This is how representative government works; the actual elected representatives get to do the legislating. In other words, doing the job they were hired to do for their terms in office. If the voters are displeased with their representatives’ job performance, they can always fire them at the next election, but meanwhile must live with their choices. If they feel that their Senator or Representative isn’t doing their job properly, contributing money to lobbying organizations to formulate advertising campaigns designed to benefit only those lobbying organizations doesn’t help their cause.

Other than enflaming the sizable segment of society that is easily enflamed by just about anything, the ad campaigns are basicaly exercises in “alternate reality,” which is something that does not exist. But once one accepts the possibility of alternate realities, then it is but a short leap into bald lying and slander, and then calling lies and slander something else. The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious cannot refrain from pointing out that calling a hyena a lamb has never made a single hyena anything but a hyena.

While we welcome these several Senators into the realm of seeing the forest for the trees, long observation by DOPOTO cannot help but wonder how long this burst of integrity will last. Traditionally, when asked to behave morally and ethically, most elected officials are willing to give it a shot as long as there is something in it for them. As a class, they are deservedly famous for “not getting it,” and have earned their nation’s mistrust. Senators deviating from this norm are worth noting. The Department will keep a keen eye on these anomalous developments.

In the Strange Trends category, DOPOTO researchers and senior observers have noticed that the campaign for the living deification of Sarah Palin is quickly losing steam, well before the usual expiration date of these sorts of things. Apparently the American public has seen enough of her and has decided that she really is a dim bulb not worth wasting any more time over. Always a person of below-average intelligence, Ms. Palin swiftly rose to iconic status in the minds of many when she was picked to be the Vice Presidential candidate in the 2008 election.

When she did the unprecedented by becoming the first defeated vice-presidential candidate to remain a viable political presence, America’s disgraced right wing politicians believed they had found their savior and their ticket back into national power. While veteran observers of the obvious could only note what a lightweight and bizarre individual they had chosen as their poster girl, the woman was catapulted into even greater national fame by quitting the job of Governor of Alaska, essentially telling the people who elected her that they do not matter in the grand scheme of things.

Her lack of intelligence, her sleazy behavior and her dedication to alternate reality made her a natural in the Perverse Idol Worshipping Sweepstakes that has become a hallmark of American right wing politics since the curious elevation of the amiable but dim B-movie actor Ronald Reagan into the Pantheon of Great Statesmen, all reality be damned. And it worked splendidly, even to the point where they succeeded in getting George Bush the Younger elected president twice, even though he was so dumb he once attacked the wrong country.

Which leaves the Department wondering what went wrong with the Sarah Palin juggernaut. She is at least as dumb as Reagan and smarter than Bush The Younger (who isn’t?), so it is curious to observe that this natural for Right Wing Sainthood is seeing her star dim before its time. While DOPOTO would like to claim credit for people being able to see the obvious, senior analysts here feel that Ms. Palin has simply derailed her own train by actually speaking candidly once too often, revealing the painfully obvious even to those who scrupulously shun the truth.

Which, in a sense, is too bad. There was still a lot of mileage left in the pure entertainment value of Ms. Palin’s ascendancy, and the potential for a huge and embarrassing flameout. We here at The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious feel that she is cheating the American public by simply petering out into being an odd footnote in American politics before she had a chance to do anything truly bizarre. This is what it must feel like to be a voter in Alaska.

This was a report from The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious.