What doesnt get mentioned is that the tradition of pardoning a turkey(as if it were a criminal-what crime did it commit?) was started by a Turkey meat producer organization. Also--most of the turkeys pardoned die from all the chemicals they were forced to take.

Being meat free is so easy. Howard Lyman says giving up milk is probably more important(and he was a dairy farmer before becoming vegan). But I havent had turkey in over 20 years.

"So do the right thing. Instead of stuffing a turkey this year, stuff the tradition for turkey for Thanksgiving right where it belongs - in history's trash can."

Can we also throw the turkey who is doing the pardoning in the trash can too?

"Can we also throw the turkey who is doing the pardoning in the trash can too?"

Grr! 1-20-09 can't get here soon enough!

Bush pardoned the turkeys, but only after he had them tortured first...the FBI now had actionable intelligence and is on the lookout for terrorist mastermind "Gobble bin Gobble"

Imagine a vegeterian world. So much suffering would be eliminated; in terms of health of people and for the birds and animals.

Why I am a vegetarian:

Slaughterhouses are perhaps the most violent places on the planet. Animals are routinely sent kicking and screaming through the skinning and dismemberment process, every one bleeding and dying exactly like they would if they were human beings.

Farms today treat animals like so many boxes in a warehouse, chopping off beaks and tails and genitals with no painkillers at all, inflicting third degree burns (branding), ripping out teeth, and hunks of flesh.

Animals transported to slaughter routinely die from the heat or the cold, or freeze to the sides of the transport trucks or to the bottom in their own excrement. Dairy cows and egg laying hens endure the same living nightmare as their brethren who are raised for their flesh, except that their time on the "farm" is longer. They are still shipped to the slaughterhouse and killed, at a fraction of their natural life span.

There is simply no excuse for anyone who considers herself or himself to be an ethical human being, let alone an "animal lover," to be supporting these kinds of practices, all of which are routine and universal throughout the industries which turn animals into eggs and meat and dairy products.

If I can't watch it happening, I want no part of it. I enjoy watching fields tilled and love picking apples and tomatoes and carrots and other vegetarian products. If slaughterhouses had glass walls, as Paul McCartney is so fond of saying, we would all be vegetarians.

Every time I sit down to eat, I make a decision about who I am in the world: Do I want to add to the level of violence, misery, and bloodshed in the world? Or, do I want to make a compassionate and merciful choice?

There is so much violence in the world, from war torn regions of Africa and Europe, to our own inner cities. Most of this violence is difficult to understand, let alone influence.

Veganism is one area where each and every one of us can make a difference, every time we sit down to eat. I find it empowering that I can make an option for peace and compassion every time I eat, simply by not encouraging violence and misery against animals.

Visit www.Meat.org to see how meat is made.

The birds are probably exempted so that idiots like Cheney can go hunting. This need to kill on the part of some shows the level of their barbarism.

It is nice to see more people calling for Al Gore to make a personal change by laying off meat at the very lest.

Why I am a vegan:
1. No unnecessary killing
2. I do not condone forms of slavery

For the most part I find discussions about "animal rights" sickening. It paints a picture of slave owners discussing how best to treat their slaves. We ought to leave animals be, and minimize our impact on their existence.

Siouxrose, what about the "likeable" Huckabee stating that he is sure that there will be duck hunting in heaven?

Jon Stewart carricatured it well, paraphrasing Jon: "Your [Huckabee's] version of heaven is duck hell."

While channel surfing the other day I happened upon a Martha Stewart show where they were showing all the different kinds of turkeys.

These birds were all gorgeous and running around. To show the different varieties to Martha, the owner of the turkey farm picked them up and put them on a table and showed the beauty and markings of their feathers etc.

But he treated the animal like a "thing". He was feeling the bird's "thighs" and feeling it's chest to show how you can tell it's "ready" for slaughter.

I haven't eaten an animal for 30 years. The last time my four sons talked me into cooking them a turkey for Thanksgiving I remember taking the carcass out of the box, washing it and putting it in the roaster pan. Then I saw little pin feathers here and there and started crying. My boys came to me and realized how it hurt me to cook the dead turkey.

I am a single woman and because I refuse to compromise on eating meat I have avoided dating many, many men. It especially seems to grate on them when I say I won't even allow dead animal tissue in my house and certainly will never allow it to be cooked in my kitchen.

Reminds me of a line by Tom Conti: "I never eat anything with a face." And I always say, "If it would come to me if I called it, I can't eat it."

A Happy and hopefully "Cruelty Free" Thanksgiving to everyone.

And thanks to Bill Maher for the article.

Abbybwood

check out this video www.mercyforanimals.org/HOR

also some relevant reading;

"Slaughterhouse" by Gail Eisnitz www.hfa.org/hot_topic/slaughterhouse.html

"The Dreaded Comparison" by Margorie Speigel

sorry, try this link for "The Dreaded Comparison",

www.mercyforanimals.org/5outrage10.html

Vegetarian..

Doesn't the ritual of "the US president pardoning a turkey" speak volumes about the American historical hypocrisy and its relation to the contemporary politics of empire in the United States? The killer PARDONING a victim??? Isn't it Scapegoating? Here the criminal is portraying the victim as a criminal, and by "pardoning" the "MYTHICAL CRIMINAL" (i.e. turkey) the REAL CRIMINAL (US president, the representative of Americans) portrays himself/herself as benevolent. What an irony!!!

One effective way of concealing the REALITY from history is myth-building. Thanksgiving Day is at the heart of the US myth-building. From childhood every year on the day of Thanksgiving and also in the educational institutions, Americans hear a story about the hearty Pilgrims, whose search for freedom took them from England to Massachusetts. There, aided by the friendly Wampanoag Indians, they survived in a new and harsh environment, leading to a harvest feast in 1621 following the Pilgrims first winter.

What is concealed by this American myth is by 1637 Massachusetts Governor John Winthrop was proclaiming a thanksgiving for the successful massacre of hundreds of Pequot Indian men, women and children, part of the long and bloody process of opening up additional land to the European invaders. The pattern would repeat itself across the continent until between 95 and 99 percent of American Indians had been exterminated and the rest were left to assimilate into the European society or die off on reservations, and thus have been out of the view in their own land.

That means, Thanksgiving Day is nothing but European invaders celebrating the genocide of the owners of the land (the Native Americans). The SCAPEGOATING of the Native Americans is clearly revealed in the way the Native Americans are described by the first president, George Washington as "wild beasts", and Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, as the "merciless Indian Savages". Those five or one percent Native Americans are pardoned, while the rest 95 to 99 percent of the Native Americans were butchered and FEASTED by the European invaders.

Isn't this American imperial myth still being used in the US foreign policy to bomb and kill innocent people of sovereign countries around the world, to invade sovereign countries, to make the owners of the land as ALIENS in their own land, and to plunder the wealth of these countries?????????

A girlfriend took me to a slaugherhouse in 1976; I've been vegan since.

Watching videos does not work with most people anesthetized on Hollywood porn. You have to hear, smell and feel the frissance of fear in a slaughterhouse.

Meat-eaters suck.

Great to see a good number of CommonDreamers vegans or vegetarians! Thanks, Bill Maher, for raising the issue here. Thanks especially for your challenge to Al Gore.

My wife and I go tomorrow (Thanksgiving) to a vegan potluck in Berkeley.

deepa,

That is what I teach students in my history classes. It always is interesting to see how angry they become and wonder why they were not taught that in high school. It also is fun teaching them the truth about Christopher Columbus.

Howard Zinn's book "A People's History of the United States" is a good source to consult.

No, you should encourage Bush and Cheney to eat as much high colesterol, high fat, probably toxic chemical infused, (hopefully negligently raised in China), turkey meat as they can stuff down their gullets. Given the pitifully understaffed, underfunded USDA inspection department, there is an excellent chance that if you give them the bird, they might die.

Too bad a lot of us will while we are waiting for them to do so.

I am a carnivor and make no apologies for it. I feel no guilt or remorse for the food I eat.

Thanks Bill Maher and thanks for
the insightful comments, info and
links from the CD community.

And I thought those turkey bacon
subs were healthy...

Let us not forget my Champion,
Dennis Kucinich is vegan and has
been for a long time,

I see "WWJD" BS (it also the acronym for Bumper Sticker) all over the place here in Bushland, Texas down behind the fundmentalist Baptist curtain; now this equally inane WWJB BS. I think I'll have a bumper sticker made with "WGAF;" you can figure it out for yourself I'm certain.

To the carnivore who makes no apologies and feels no guilt or remorse for the food he/she eats:

WAKE UP! 18% of greenhouse gases are the result of people eating animals. That is more greenhouse gases than all the cars, trucks, planes and ships combined!

If you have this information and continue to eat animals, you are telling the next generations that you do not care about their lives.

PLEASE WAKE UP! Change your diet and be a part of the solution instead of a part of the problem.

anon a mouse: "I am a carnivor [sic] and make no apologies for it. I feel no guilt or remorse for the food I eat."

Excellent, you are already a step closer than most Americans, who do not even bother to stop and think about what they ingest, and keep conning themselves that they are "compassionate, good people."

Bill Maher,
Thank you for helping to spread the message about the greenhouse gases created by farming animals. Climate change is a crisis, and people can take immediate actions now to reduce greenhouse gases.

I can't believe that there is such a failure on the part of Al Gore and so many environmental groups to push the issue of farming animals. Their focus is on expensive technology products that will take 10 to 20 years to develop.

Keep spreading the word. Stopping eating meat is probably the most important thing that people can do right now, and will almost immediately result in reductions of greenhouse gases. And as a bonus, we can save money on our grocery bills at the same time.

Peace.

I say lets put the Turkeys out of their misery and eat up.

Problem is, there are too many people to feed if everyone became vegetarians. Most of our corn is already going to make ethanol for gasoline.

But don't worry, the global elite have a plan to reduce 80% of the worlds human critters, and after that, there will be plenty of food for those left, and we(they) can all become vegetarians, or even eat meat from animals that are treated somewhat humanely before being slaughtered.

Another Veggie/Vegan here ---

What most amazes me is that the animal-eaters have such a strong desire to DENY --- to not see -- to hide from themselves --- the VIOLENCE involved in animal-eating!!!

This is a long chain of violence which must be broken --

Thanks Bill!!!

Keep talking about it --- !!!

Great piece, great comments. I have been a vegan for over 20 years. A vegetarian/vegan diet is the most important single thing anyone can do to help the earth and all of the living beings it sustains. With all the violence and hatred in the world currently, it is even more important.
I look forward to a great day of feasting on tofurkey with all the trimmings.

Why do we divide ourselves into groups like meat eaters and vegans? Golly gee folks, it's always good if you feel in your heart that it's right not to consume animals. It's known as a sense of integrity. Your conscience was pricked and the thought of killing animals to feed yourself is persoanlly repugnant.

My concern is that I sense allot of judgements being hurled here. Vegans, cultivate an inner peace in your own decision. If you radiate peace, others will notice and want to know your secret--then you can tell them you stopped eating animals.

If you've found what works for you, that's great. But intolerance toward people who aren't in the same place is just another form of violence. And aren't most of you claiming that it is your abhorrance of violence that makes you vegan? Perhaps it's time to take your compassion to the next level, and include people you don't agree with. Just a thought....

starofthesea

Bravo...

Jeez, I guess you haven't noticed all the negativity directed toward vegetarians and vegans. I don't even tell people that I am a vegan anymore because i can't take the hostility and intolerance, probably borne of defensiveness, from people who immediately want me to know that I shouldn't try to "force" my "opinions" on them. What I don't understand is why more people don't object to being told that they have to eat meat by huge corporations like McDonalds and ADM.

I've been eating Ramen about 5 times a week since I lost my part-time job. I'm invited for a Thanksgiving turkey with all the trimmings tomorrow, and you can bet I'll be there with "bells on," as they say!

this is how birds should be treated, before killing them...quickly.

http://www.bang-bangs.com/artfulchicken.html

Don't worry, he has pardoned another turkey, Scooter Libby, and is likely to pardon others, such as Harriet Myers, Alberto Gonzales and Karl Rove, if anyone ever gets up the courage and moral decency to prosecute them. Given the number of felonies he's committed in office, his last words as president might just be "pardon me."

The argument here is not so much the eating of animals or not, it's primarily about the way food animals are raised and slaughtered, it's an abomination. Most likely you will not ever be allowed into a slaughterhouse, it's very difficult to get in to witness the horror. The primary way to see the goings on is by undercover video footage, fortunately many have bravely gone into that hell and chronicled the horrendous conditions.

Whether or not one is a meat eater, if they were to sit and witness the killings, they'd have to be nearly brain dead to not be affected at some level.

Large animals such as cattle, pigs, sheep, goats, horses (yes horses) are supposed to be stunned before being butchered, but due to time constraints many miss their mark, the animals end up being skinned alive fully conscious and with deafening screams, appendages are sawed off while the animal writhes uncontrollably, eventually succumbing to the pain and going unconscious, eventually dying. I've seen many, many such videos and it's beyond sickening.

Pigs in factory farms are kept from ever seeing the light of day, in pens where they cannot stand, (that keeps the meat more tender), on metal slats so their shit and urine is drained onto tubes that empty into huge pools outside the facility, polluting waterways and the atmosphere.

Where's the respect for these beings? We become horrified when a pet dog is injured by a car, or is mistreated. We will spend thousands on vet bills to help our pets but we turn a blind eye to the million upon millions of other animals carelessly butchered every day, after living a life in complete misery. What hypocrisy.

To those who say "well a pig or a cow is not the same as a dog", true, some pigs I've known are smarter than some dogs. Have you ever watched young calves play together? Ever spend time with a horse?

Like so much of our culture we have become detached from the sacredness of our food source, everything is nicely packaged, with artificial coloring, sanitized and made to look appealing, disguising the trail of tears that led to the dinner table.

Bill Maher sees the broad picture. If only more progressives could do the same. Progressives like to "think outside the box". It is time for them to do so when it comes to nonhuman as well as human animals. Cruelty is cruelty. Torture is torture.
I am also glad to see that Maher is challenging Al Gore to dig into some Tofurkey and to stop being so timid about discussing how meat eating is exacerbating global warming.

When is Al Gore going to toughen up? What's he afraid of? Even Glenn Beck ran a segment last summer about Gore's hypocrisy on not being a vegetarian.

Too heavy books, recommended if you really want to get into the weighty implications of what we're doing to animals.

"Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust"

"Dominion: The Power of Man and the Call to Mercy"

"You can judge a society by how the treat their animals"
-Gandhi

Al Gore is found of quoting "What you do to the least of us, you do to me." He should wise up and see the full connection of those words.

Many thanks to Bill Maher for his thorough and concise piece on the ethical treatment of animals.

A writer for the now defunct Animals' Agenda once pointed out that to argue that one should go veg for health reasons is kind of like saying, "Rape is wrong because you might catch venereal disease." No. In both cases, the moral reasons are the real reasons to abstain.

Because we live in such a narcissistic society, it's not surprising that Americans are won over by the health arguments first. I commend Bill Maher for focusing on the ethical treatment of animals first and the health arguments last.

This thanksgiving I recommend all neocons load up on meat dishes this thanksgiving with all the trimmings!

As for me, my life has improved dramatically upon becoming a semi-Vegan. But it was not from a choice of being kind to critters. After all, you have cutting teeth because you evolved as a partial meat-eating descendant of apes (is my understanding.) I got off meat because of ingestion of 40 years of processed foods in plastic packages full of animal fat and hormones, feed chemicals and god knows what else has given me the GOUT.

You don't want the gout. Your foot joints turn to Jell-O, you cannot even crawl to the can because every breath tears cartilage and joint surfaces to shreds as you scream. You might give waterboarding a try if they will just stop the uric acid from melting the inside of your body apart! You are ready, willing and able, to change your ways if given another chance. Talk about nearly finding religion! Another chance means giving up fat of any kind, and most alcohol. Another chance means taking drugs the rest of your life so you can walk.

Beef is the devil. Poultry is iffy. Fish is O.K in sparing amounts (preferably sashimi [raw] for you heart.) And just forget about anything other than four servings of fruits and vegetables.

And your friends and family will stare at you like Bin Ladin himself, when it's your turn to order and all they have is dead animal carcass slathered up with dead animal fat and a nice glass of bovine hormone milk on the side. Wine? Nope damn crap has sulfides in it. Nothing is fit to eat. So you order water and a salad with no dressing (which you are sure has sulfates sprinkled on it) and out of the corner of their eyes they give you "the look" like you're doing all this just to make them feel guilty or, to make a statement that you're better than they are. And it's just amazing. Since they're neocons, they will constantly hand you road kill trying to change you mind, and you will be forced to say: "what the helll are you trying to do? Make me cripple? You know I can't eat meat!" "I'm sorry" they mumble and five minutes later they're doing it again.

So next you try to make them go out with you to a Japanese or Indian or Mid East joint that serves vegan dishes. And they stare at you now like you are Captain Nemo setting a table on the Nautilus with nothing but seaweed and barnacles for dinner.

It's damm hard to be a Vegan, I know. But I don't do it to spare critters. In this world of human suffering, I feel it is wrong to crank up the dog and turkey police, spare them, and let humans suffer as they do. Those silly Animal planet shows that ticket people scolding their dogs are a good example. What a waste of money and resources! What a police state! People should be kind to animals and to domesticated food because they're moral people not because they're afraid to go to jail for it.

When I saw the video of the Blackwater war criminal shooting citizens of Bagdad who were just trying to get away, while he exclaimed "Ha! It's just like a Turkey Shoot! BANG BANG! Hahahaha!" I knew right then and there that the long term prospects of our American empire surviving were about as good as the British or Romans before them. Thanks to our red neck hill billies in the white house and behind the trigger, we are now hated the world over.

But God I love Bill Maher!

In the middle of this depressing screwed up world that man can make me laugh harder than I do watching anybody else! If it wasn't for his show, I'd have thrown the t.v. away years before I finally did. It takes a long time to download his clips on the net but it's worth it.

Thanks for the laughs Bill!

So here's to a Happy Thanksgiving be you Heathy Vegan or Constipated Carnivore!

The fact is much of the world's populace depends on animal meat for adequate protein, especially for growing children. For example, try talking the Japanese out of fish consumption forevermore. We can however, work effectively to make meat production as humane as possible, something which is hampered by inciting shame, which only turns those that might act away.

Sorry, I got about halfway through the comments (a little bit past "anon a mouse"'s ridiculous version of biology) and had to scroll down to the end, so I hope I'm not repeating anyone's revelations here.

Vegan/vegetarian evangelists:

Humans are heterotrophs. That means we need to eat other organisms. Plants are autotrophs, which means they can make their own food. Organisms are defined as things that are "alive," in contrast to rocks and air and water. That means, as heterotrophs, we must eat other living organisms to survive. Life is life, death is death. Would you eat a live turkey? I hope not: it's much safer to kill it first. But would you eat other living organisms...even while they are still living? That fresh salad you ate for lunch: most of the cells inside were still alive when you ate it.

Life is life, death is death, and killing is killing. A vegan/vegetarian diet is a good thing: I wholeheartedly advise everyone on the planet to switch. But any time I hear someone try to say that humans aren't meant to eat meat, or that killing an animal to eat it is somehow more ethically taboo than baking a potato for dinner, I want to scream. We live because we kill, herbivore, omnivore, and carnivore alike. Get over it. Jettison the prejudiced bullshit about animals being somehow more "worthy" a life form than plants, because it's lightweight and unconvincing. Rethink your evangelical approach, because the fact is meat tastes pretty damned good, and the bleeding-heart tack obviously isn't up to the task of reversing 2 million years of endocrine evolution.

If meat is murder, then so is broccoli, and I'm a murderer. A vegetarian murderer. A liberal, vegetarian, recycling, mass-transit-riding, Kucinich-voting, botanist murderer. And I've got nothing to be ashamed of for murdering another organism in order to eat and survive. You can easily get fat, succumb to gout, depress your immune system, and even die from eating too much of this plant or that plant. My choice is to murder organisms that don't exact a heavy ecological toll on the planet, or on myself. If you want to change the minds of the rest of the people, do so using that choice as your talking point.

But spare me the "save the little critters" bullshit.

thewonderingyou, you've got it right except I'd add that water has micro livings things too. I good book that I recently read gets into this topic, The Power of Myth, By Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers.

Plants, trees, have feelings too.

thewonderingyou,

Well thought, well written commentary. A little vulgar... but it added the proper passion to your point. Your words make me want to "listen" instead of "switching off" to this debate.

Nanoo,

I'll agree with your comment in spirit, but the anal-retentive scientist in me still defines "water" as H20, devoid of all minerals and organisms. I'll grant that such a state of water only sparsely exists on this teeming planet, but when I use the term "water" in posts, what I really mean is the genuine article, the pure molecule. But my training in microbiology reminds me that even the purest mountain spring cannot escape the omnipresence of organismal life. And I'm really happy about that fact!

imfedup,

Thanks for the kind words. I spent a lot of time and thought on that post, so it really means a lot to me. The color of the debate about veganism and vegetarianism versus omnivory desperately needs fashion consultants, because while I personally love a black-and-white scheme, those hues need to be more precisely defined in this day and age. A deep gray masquerading as jet black just doesn't cut the mustard yellow.
Ohmigosh...I cracked a joke! Please don't tell anyone...

THOUGHT SHAMAN: The concept of heaven as a tangible sphere where one resides ever after has always amused me. I prefer to think we are energy that pulses on and off, when on, we take on some semblance of a life in a sphere that supports it; and when off, we're in a resting phase, likely reviewing our acts/thoughts from the most recent manifest experience.

DEEPA: I was invited to a Pow Wow for Thanksgiving. I have attended a few and am always appalled at the way "Warriors" are called to the circle to be honored. This little Mars-rules device makes Indigenous men identify with their conquerors by playing up to the myth of macho bravery. It insults me. My best friend (intuitive, sensitive, white male) was likely a native in former lifetimes. Privileged to grow up on the shores of Delaware, he was a modern Tom Sawyer who instinctively knew how to build a canoe, rendered forts out of dead limbs, and had an affinity with nature that would simulate sci-fi. He told me he feels the same way about these Pow Wows and turns around when they sing songs to Amerika's purported militaristic glory.

THE WONDERING YOU: While I do succumb to eat fish on occasion, I, too, have left meat behind. AS to the argument anything we consume involves the death of something else, the spiritual aspect of choosing what we eat is based on the LEVEL of evolution of the species we prey upon. Plants are considered lower on the totem pole of consciousness, and after all, our bodies decomposed return to feed the plants in a cycle that ultimately benefits both organic realms.

"Fifty million turkey corpses will go into American ovens this Thanksgiving. More than 9 billion turkeys and chickens are killed in the U.S. each year"

Its a turkey holocaust!! The turkeys should get their own homeland in the Middle East somewhere as compensation. Just have to dislocate another bunch of Arabs to do it.

When it comes to vegetarianism, why do the carnivor"E"'s always say something stupid, without thoughtful consideration of the facts, defensive, and based in nothing beyond their own instant gratification? I guess I shouldn't expect much from somebody who can't even spell the title they boldly and "without guilt" bestow upon themselves.

It is a shame that the mass marketing and slaughter of animals is so prevelant.

A far cry from my grandmother's day (and even my parents) when they raised their own animals with care and love for food, with thanksgiving.

Siouxrose,

That my comment elicited a response from you warms my heart. I have read your input on CD for many a month and I must say I have utmost respect for you.
But I must take pause with your perspective on evolution. Humans evolved roughly 60,000 years ago. Corn--as we know it--evolved (through the actions of humans) only several thousand years ago. I don't subscribe to the intuition that more recently-evolved life forms are more "advanced" in any way than more "ancient" lineages: evolution does not have a "goal" in mind. I also dismiss "consciousness" as a meter of evolutionary maturity, particularly in light of the dubious benefit to planetary well-being that "consciousness" (the quotation marks are intentional) has brought forth. To say that top-tier standing on the trophic scale (i.e. being an obligate carnivore or an opportunistic omnivore) has any bearing on one's spiritualistic view of life seems like a betrayal of my own personal understanding of what the goddess originally had in mind. Mind you, this is my own personal view of things, but I challenge you to rectify a heterotroph-biased world view with what I believe to be your otherwise holistic bent.
Respectfully yours. thewonderingyou.