Free Republic

<p>Kneel down. Put your hands together. Offer thanks right this very moment to whatever deity you desire that that you are not 18 years old and gay and living in the state of Kansas right now.</p> <p>This gratitude, it is a given. This is so much of a given you might not even need to hear why. You just say to yourself, oh my freaking God, I can only imagine.</p>

<p>So then from way, way over there in Ukraine comes this hilarious bit about how the country's customs officials just confiscated a whopping 19 tons of frozen U.S. chicken parts that smugglers claimed was sugar.</p> <p>That's right: The crooks were trying to smuggle American-grown chicken into Ukraine territory, which is all well and good except it's very illegal, given how the U.S. genetically modifies billions of its chickens and injects them with hormones and chemicals and toxins and feeds them ground-up chicken parts mixed with chicken feces and saws off their beaks and packs them by the tens of thousands into tiny nauseating disease-ridden cages in massive "Matrix"-like hellhole factory farms and treats them worse than you treat a skin boil.</p>

<p>As if 600-year-old redwoods give a damn for your politics.</p> <p>As if struggling salmon care a whit for the Catholic Church's sneering homophobic stance on gay marriage. Like Alaskan elk think your viewpoints on war are far too lopsided to hold sway in the national dialogue.</p>

<p>So then about a month ago the vice president of these beautiful and deeply confused United States, he of the struggling defibrillator and the shockingly nefarious wife and the gnarled calluses from working Dubya's puppet strings, he of the thin-lipped sneer that makes babies cry and women wince and foreign policies crumble like feta cheese in the freezer, well, Dick goes himself a-huntin'.</p>

<p>In response to Schick-Wilkinson Sword's new premium razor, the Quattro, which sports a stack of not two, not three, but four full blades, Gillette has launched an ultra-manly super-deluxe high-tech new razor that sends electric pulses through the handle to induce hair to stand on end and requires a battery and is colored "electric green," like a video game.</p>

<p>Just look at 'em, popping out babies like crazy and draining the welfare system like there's no tomorrow, all while remaining completely unable to either get or stay married in their sad, un-Christian, gangsta-rap lives. Pathetic.</p> <p>And oh my God, those damnable gays. Would you just look at them, fighting for basic human rights, whining about wanting to get married, as if they knew anything about God's manly, flag-waving, 100 percent heterosexual love?</p>

<p>Let us imagine the discussion: "Boys, the nation's in massive reeling record-breaking debt and morale's at an all-time low and disposable American soldiers are dying brutal horrific deaths every day over nothing at all except our greed and flagrant cronyism and corporate petrochemical profiteering.</p>

<p>This is the year of the end of Bush. This is the year of the end of the end of the nasty hissing political Scylla that is CheneyRummyAshcroftRove. This is the year we say good-bye to the collective spiritual and intellectual gouge. This is the year we all wake the hell up.</p>

<p>Well gosh golly it took only upward of 500 dead U.S. soldiers (and counting) and more than 2,500 U.S. wounded (and counting) and more than 10,000 dead innocent Iraqi citizens (and counting) and countless tens of thousands of hapless dead Iraqi soldiers (and counting).</p>

<p>This Thanksgiving, as you sip the wine and hug the family and toast the friends and hoard the stuffing and curse the airport security, remember to give thanks you are not G.W. Bush. Hey, it's important.</p> <p>1) Be thankful that you do not have to suffer Dubya's massive crushing karmic burden, as wrought by inflicting heaps of environmental disaster and vicious unnecessary war and a stunning string of lies lies lies like a firehose of giblet gravy splattered all over the planet.</p>