They may have signed his no new taxes "oath," but in the end, when that bit of political theatrics stops working with voters who can't even afford to buy a turkey this holiday season, those oath-takers will be blaming him and making him the fall guy for the GOP's role in this mess.
Frank Sinisi, the president of Pronto, a food bank and service agency in North Bay Shore, said its usual suppliers of up to 2,000 donated turkeys for holiday distribution cautioned that "we can't make you any promises" this year.
While Americans were eating their bland turkeys this holiday season, the flinty Icelanders were feasting on a hardy breed of winter grouse called ptarmigan.
So yes, the IRS says, you can hand out turkeys and holiday food baskets to the underpaid, overworked Bob Crachits on your staff provided the gifts don't exceed $100 in value.
Its "tax cuts for 95% of the American people" are the tax-rebate equivalent of the ancient machine-politics practice of handing out free turkeys at holiday time nice gesture, but it does nothing to increase incentives for productive work, risk- taking and success, good things achieved by cuts in tax rates.
Even as technology has changed everything from ovens and meat thermometers to how turkeys are raised, Ms. Clausen said, callers' questions about cooking a holiday turkey have remained pretty much the same.
"My daughter would be serving turkey on a holiday, and he would have the artificial kind," said his mother, Joan.
Once the centerpiece of beatific togetherness, the holiday turkey, at least in movies of the last 20 years, has more often than not become an object of derision and a symbol of dystopian angst, the mood around the groaning board more kvetch-and-wretch than "We gather together to ask the Lord's blessing".
This week, people are hungry for three things: turkey, stuffing, and holiday sales.
