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Re: Thanksgiving, George Washington Said It Best in 1789

George Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation

Thanksgiving Proclamation
New York, 3 October 1789
By the President of the United States of America, a Proclamation.
Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor– and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness. Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be– That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks–for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation–for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his Providence which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war–for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed–for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted–for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.
And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions– to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually–to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed–to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shewn kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord–To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease of science among them and us–and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best. Given under my hand at the City of New York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.
Go: Washington

Time For the TSA To Go

The TSA: J. Edgar Would Be Proud

By Josh First, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

November 14, 2010

Microsoft has an outstanding, humorous advertisement for its new phone, about deeply distracted people being bonked, run-over, run down, wedded to, and finally swatted by their significant others (including a hot wife in black lingerie), all of whom incredulously ask “Really?” as they fail to compete for attention with the now-ubiquitous smart phone.

Watching the Transportation Security Administration staff sink daily ever deeper into increasingly petty and personally invasive tests of authority with their fellow citizens, one can’t help but ask incredulously, “Really”?

Reminiscent of cartoonish Cold War hysteria, its goofy duck-and-cover culture, and the subsequent tweedy 1970s classroom studies of how otherwise ordinary Germans cheerily saw their fellow citizens off to the Nazi gas chambers, TSA flight screening procedures are now so invasive, so wacky, and carried out with such zeal by many who seem otherwise unemployable and dull louts, that we must come to one sane conclusion: Time has arrived to terminate the TSA.

If you are going to ask for evidence to support this stark premise, then either you haven’t flown recently, you don’t know someone who has flown recently, or you haven’t been following the daily news in bold print at the top of the page.  Or maybe you are like most, and you just want a recount of the juicy, amazingly invasive, confrontational, un-American experiences that American travelers are having at the hands of TSA’s official gropers and voyeurs.

News reports of crazy, inexplicable conflicts between TSA staff and milquetoast passengers are epidemic.  The nature of these conflicts show a bunker mentality at the TSA institution level, and a personal “Screw with me will ya?” power-tripping attitude at the TSA personal staff level.  Maybe this combination works well in Saudi Arabia, or in that (faux) bastion of openness, Indonesia.  I got it in Jordan once, until I flashed my USA Diplomatic and Official Business passport; then I got rose petals and an armed escort ride.  In America, the “I-Am-An-Important-Bureaucrat” approach to service works….not so well. 

Americans reject petty bureaucrat arrogance; it’s what sparked our founding revolution.  The new Super-Collider X-Ray machines at airports expose every micron of your genitalia and breasts for everyone around to see, for perverted TSA staff to save to file and watch at home over mac-n-cheese after work, and for you to feel very small about, indeed.  The hands-on pat downs of children’s genitals, men’s crotches, and hot babes’ voluptuous breasts are, to borrow a crutch word once again, simply crazy.  Bad enough to be touched in the No-No Area by a stranger you haven’t yet had a drink with, it’s worse when that stranger is of the opposite sex and appears openly to be enjoying both your discomfort and also how your body parts feel in their hands.  And it’s even worse when it’s your little girl getting groped by a burly guy with the sensitivity of Attila the Hun or, in the alternative, the weird intentions of a Hannibal Lecter.  But if you ask them to stop, out you go.

Bottom line: It’s all just plainly uncomfortable for the travelers, and evidently great sport for the TSA staff.

If you “opt out” of the tell-all X-Ray that’s so powerful it keeps you glowing in the dark for the rest of the year, then your choice is auctioned off by the nearest TSA agent who bellows “OPT OUT,” an invitation to being surrounded by security guards.  They sense that you are potentially hiding something, and also that you are fresh meat for one of their public displays of unlimited personal power.

Challengers to groping (pat-downs are a thing of the 1700s past, when the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of naughty searches was first envisioned) have been immediately handcuffed, yelled at, held indefinitely or at least until their flight is missed, and ejected from the airport without cause or pretense of an explanation.  Flight tickets have been ripped up in the face of travelers by vindictive TSA staff whose greatest joy is now not in protecting you, but in humiliating you and causing you to miss your flight.  Simply because she can.  Holy crap!

The TSA has been an evil and now obviously failed experiment, greatly enjoyed by al-Qaeda and Muslim terrorists everywhere.  It has inflicted great unhappiness and divisiveness upon the American people, with very little to nothing beneficial to show for itself, except that those tweedy sociologists will be studying it for the next fifty years, like they studied German Nazi culture by artificially pitting blue-eyed students against brown-eyed students.  As its staff became emboldened first by necessity, then by official policy from the Obama administration’s ever-present reliance on Big Government with its Big Groping Hands and Super Big X-Ray Machines, it became a public laughingstock of out of control government.

New but already a relic, the TSA’s insularity and bizarre personnel culture is already elevating it to  mythical status.  By the time this beast is put out of its misery, it will be recalled fondly and with an involuntary shudder like J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI was once recalled by those who had to live through that other un-American period.

Please, God, help us defeat al-Qaeda.  Please disband the TSA.