# 387, November 22, 2005
COLUMBUS: President Bush may still be in Asia. He had to give up his idea of buying the Great Wall from China. Carl Rove reminded him that we are trillions of dollars in debt, mostly to China, and he would have to ask China for a loan to pay for it. Not likely China would want to pay for their own Wall.
Mr. Bush was going to fly directly from China to his Texas ranch for Thanksgiving. But he heard Cindy Sheehan would be there to greet him so he went to Mongolia instead.
Did you read where Mrs. Sheehan sent a letter to Barbara Bush, complaining about how she is raising her son? Now, how embarrassing is it when you’re a middle-aged man, President of the United States, and this lady sends a note to your mother? She wrote: “Little Georgie won’t go along with the other boys and girls. They want him he to take back the things he said 3 years ago and he absolutely refuses to give in to them. Mrs. Bush, I don’t know what you have been teaching him at home, but it’s got to stop!”
The Bush family will find a way to get together for the holiday turkey, but they may have to ride in on horseback from the back side of the ranch to do it.
The big oil companies made billions in profits. General Motors and Ford lost billions. Exxon may not want to share the wealth with the American taxpayer, but if these automobile companies stop building cars, who is going to buy their gas? Farmers want everybody to make their fuel from corn and soybeans, so where does that leave our oil men.
If the Pilgrims had known how this country would turn out do you think they would have stayed in England? Not a chance.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Historic quotes from Will Rogers: (on Thanksgiving)
The following two pieces are from Will Rogers’ Sunday night radio broadcasts on April 7 and April 14, 1935.
“Now that brings us down to taxes. The big yell comes nowadays from the taxpayers, the big taxpayers. I bet you when the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock and they had the whole of the American continent for themselves, and all they had to do to get an extra hundred and sixty acres was shoot another Indian… Well, I bet you anything they kicked on the price of ammunition. I bet they said, “What’s this country coming to!” You know, what I mean… like we’re doing now. “What’s this country coming to! We have to spend a nickel for powder.”
Of course, they got the lead back after they dissected the Indian, but…”
(April 14, 1935)
“Well now, anyhow, another little announcement. On last Sabbath evening, I referred to the Pilgrims, our Pilgrims landing on Plymouth Rock. Well, boy, you ought to wait ’til I heard from New England. I split New England just wide open. It seems there’s a town up there called Provincetown, and they have adopted a slogan which says, “Don’t be misled by history or any other unreliable source. Here’s the place where the Pilgrims landed.” This is by unanimous vote of the Chamber of Commerce of Provincetown. Provincetown has been made the official landing place of the Pilgrim. Any Pilgrim landing in any other place was not official.
If he landed on Plymouth Rock, well, it just served him right, that’s all. It served him right. Nothing but a chicken should be named after ’em…, Plymouth Rock. That’s for the town people. You country people got that gag. That’s for the town folks. Plymouth Rock, not a White Leghorn. Country folks is smarter than city folks anyhow. You never have to explain a joke to country folks. Who but a chicken, or a seal, or a Pilgrim would land on a rock anyhow?
Now in the first place, I don’t think that this argument I have created up there is so terribly important. The argument that New England has got to settle in order to pacify the rest of America is, “Why were they allowed to land anywhere?” That’s what we want to know. As a race there has never been any comparison between the Pilgrim and an Indian. Now I hope my Cherokee blood is not making me prejudiced. I want to be broad minded, but I am sure that it was only the extreme generosity of the Indians that allowed the Pilgrims to land. Suppose we reversed the case. Do you reckon the Pilgrims would have ever let the Indians land? Yeah, what a chance! What a chance! The Pilgrims wouldn’t even allow the Indians to live, after the Indians went to the trouble of letting ’em land.
Well anyhow, the Provincetown officials sent me a lot of official data, that when the Pilgrims landed they found some corn that the Indians had stored and that the Pilgrims were about starved and that they eat the Indians’ corn. And they claim that the corn was stored at Provincetown. You see, the minute the Pilgrims landed they got full of the corn and then they shot the Indians; perhaps because they hadn’t stored more corn.”
But they’d always pray. That’s one thing about a Pilgrim, he would pray. Mostly for more Indian corn. You’ve never in your life seen a picture, I bet any one of you have never seen a picture of one of the old Pilgrims praying when he didn’t have a gun right by the side of him. That was to see that he got what he was praying for.“