Thanksgiving on the Upper West Side means being jarred awake by the sound of helicopters covering the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. This year, it also means Julia Child’s Duck Stuffed With Apples and Sausage.

And yes – I could totally pull off that dress.

Consider this an open thread for your cooking adventures.  I’ll post my duck saga as it happens, and you should send me photos to post as well.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4j1N3G37_SQ

But justice at last: AUSTIN – A Texas jury Wednesday found Tom DeLay, the former House majority leader and Texas political powerhouse, guilty in a money-laundering trial involving contributions to political campaigns…. Mr. DeLay faces up to life in prison on the money laundering charge. [NYT]

Two pardoned, two refused: “Two turkeys that ‘didn’t quite make the cut’ were delivered to Martha’s Table, a local nonprofit organization that serves homeless children and their families, the president said.” [CNN]

“As the morning drew to a close, though, major airports were humming along normally, and most travelers seemed more interested in getting to their destinations than in making a political statement.” [NYT, via Yahoo]

The votes have been cast, the results are in, and your television just lost its last reason for existing. If there were a plug on your TV similar to the plug in your bathtub that could be pulled to drain out all the glamour and gooodness in life, then that plug would have been unceremoniously pulled last night when teen pregnancy advocate Bristol Plain was finally voted off the most important talent show in America: Dancing With The Stars. Despite being the best bad dancer in the nation who gets better with every show (but is still, on the whole, bad) a nefarious cabal of un-elected judges pushed Bristol aside and instead took it upon themselves to hand the prize over to Jennifer Grey, a Hollywood insider whose only redeeming virtue is that she’s a talented dancer. The star-chamber judges clearly did this because they hate Bristol’s mother Sarah, for not aborting her son Trig when she had the chance. Readers will recall that Palin instead rushed back to Alaska on a 3 hour flight from Texas as soon as her water broke and there was a danger that the child might suffer the indignity of being born in the “lower 48” –thus making him an “untouchable” according to Alaskan Separatist Party lore. At any rate, if you’re still with me this far: Gawker has video evidence of Bristol losing (which I can’t see at work because it’s blocked, but which I’m sure is awesome heartrending).

The past few weeks have been intensely frustrating. Not because of the election — everybody saw that coming — but because of all the unsolicited misdiagnosed advice we’ve had to slog through since then.

It was the economy, stupid. It was always the economy. And it’ll still be the economy two years from now.

Unless, of course, it was the stories.

That’s the remedy a couple of pixel-pushers at HuffPo are hawking — Republicans tell better stories than Democrats:

Conservatives are the heroes of their own stories. Progressives need to internalize that same sense of pride in their efforts and then infuse their policy narratives with political champions.

Before we continue, let’s note for the record that “infuse their policy narratives” is a compelling example of shitty storytelling. In the movie version, the doctor would be smoking like a chimney in the examination room.

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