THANKSGIVING

I am not a holiday type of guy. Oh, I like giving the kids presents, watching them open them, and even playing with them for about 30 minutes on Christmas, but then it's time for everyone to go home and leave me the heck alone. My wife calls me a scrooge, but I just don't care for Christmas. If that makes me a scrooge – so be it. Halloween is fun if you're talking about an adult event, but trick or treating with the kids? No thank you! I'm sure a lot of it is that I've gotten to that age where if I wanted to deal with children I would deal with my own, and since I have no biological children then I'd just as soon not mess with any children.

But for some reason Thanksgiving just works for me. I guess it's the idea of taking a some time off to reconnect with your family and friends and be thankful for what you have. Oh sure the crowds and mess can be a pain in the butt, but a simple time to be thankful for the people in your life is just what the doctor ordered. Heck I try to be grateful year round, but having the entire country shut down so I have no choice forces me to take that time to give thanks for what I have, and I just find that time cathartic.

For instance, despite all of my health issues, I am grateful for the life I have. I am also grateful for:

• My first Little Brother, he is now in college, and though he will never realize it until I am long gone and he has a child of his own I got far more out of our time together than he ever did.
• My current Little Brother even though we've only been matched for a short time I am looking forward to our new adventures.
• My wife. Even though I want to strangle her occasionally, she has been a Godsend during the last year with all the surgeries and other health issues.
• Our medical system which has given me far more time on the planet than I had any reason to expect or hope for.
• My mom for always being, well... my mom
• My friends, and they know who they are, for the last 35 years (are we really that freaking old?) of being there.
• So much more I can't list them all, but you get the picture.

So, this Thanksgiving holiday be sure and root for your favorite team. I will even though the Cowboys stink this year, and enjoy more food than you should ever poke down your face in one sitting. But remember to take a moment, and realize and be thankful for what you have. I will, and I will be a better person for doing so. After all that is the reason for the holiday. The turkey and football are just nice added bonuses. Oh, one more for the list. :D

HOW LONG UNTIL TAXATION BECOMES SLAVERY?

So, if the average American's tax burden is 40% as per Wikipedia then that means that we work 146 days, or from January 1 until May 26^th with no weekends or holidays or sick time off just to have paid our taxes for the year. That's well over 5 months of continuous labor just to pay our taxes. So we enter each year as a literal financial slave to the government for nearly half the year. I submit the humble question: How long do we have to work for taxation to cross from civic duty to repression, and from repression to outright slavery?

For my part having to work nearly half the year is at least repression, and I would not fight defining it as slavery. And that's just the 'average' American. So, now that we have a new house of representatives that is supposedly conservative. Maybe we can get them to loosen these chains a bit, and we can go from being repressed to merely doing our civic duty as was intended by our Founding Fathers.

Of course we will have to hold their feet to the fire, but that will cost us in perceived benefits. At our current rate of taxation we can't afford all of our social programs so we will have to take the burden for our poor and downtrodden onto our own local charities, but it is a price I for one am prepared to pay gladly.

In the mean time our tax burden is about to go up in January merely because the Democratic house wouldn't vote in time to stop the current tax rates from sunsetting. I haven't the math to know how that will play out, but that nearly half a year is going to get longer, and in mind definitely cross over into slavery. I for one refuse to be a slave. Not sure how or what I'm going to do, but I will NOT be a slave to my government. They work for me dammit, not the other way around!