Thanks and Picks, Etc., Inspired with the Knowledge and Feeling of our Just and Natural Rights

If it's good enough for the Wall Street Journal to run the same column every Thanksgiving Day, it's good enough for us, especially because we have some NFL picks to get to.

So let's talk again about how it makes so much sense that Thanksgiving is the favorite holiday of so many Americans.  Starting with the holiday's roots:

Brewer and Patriot Samuel Adams, who invented Thanksgiving, declared:

"Thursday, Dec. 15, 1796, as 'a Day of Public Thanksgiving and Praise to Our Divine Benefactor' . . . recommending 'earnest Supplication to God' that 'every Nation and Society of Men may be inspired with the knowledge and feeling of their natural and just rights' and 'That Tyranny and Usurpation may everywhere come to an end.'"

Less tyranny and more rights.  Good luck finding a better reason to supplicate.  Space is all kinds of big, so there's always room for more rights. 

And who/what/wherever the rights come from, the act of thanking anyone/thing for any one of them, including the ones over the gravy boat, requires acknowledging that those rights came/come from some/one/thing/place else.  That very act, by definition, makes one less of a jerk.*  The whole thing being as good as any that the nation takes a day off each year to do.  The concept is so fundamental and pure that the holiday's proven immune to commercialization and bastardization.

And there's also football, which, if not something that's proven immune to commercialization and bastardization, is still something that most of us can agree on. So on to the picks.

Lions +11.5 over the Packers (2 units):  America's team today, these Lions.  Seems like an eternity since they weren't embarrassed on the holiday.  But it's a new scene there now.  And after coming out on top last week in The Game of the Year, the Lions are flying high.  While there's a chance the Packers rack up 90 today, and that Stafford throws seven picks in response to last week's record breaking five-touchdown performance, we have to think the Lions will be especially prepared to put on a fine spread for their guests today.  And there's also the Kitna connection, which gets us to the next play. 

Cowboys -13.5 over the Raiders (3 units):  Because Thanksgiving is a time to reminisce.  And one thing you might have guessed but still might not know about us and Smittypop, is that we used to dominate the Northeast Ohio ballcard scene.  In those days is when we met our first bookie, the only things we'll tell you about him being that he lived in Brunswick, is some five years older than us, and in addition to being our bookie,** was a ballcard dealer, Renaissance man, and our hero.  So you can imagine what it was like for us in 1998 when Jon Kitna stepped in for an injured Warren Moon for the season's last five games, not just as the Seahawks QB, but as a bona fide covering machine.  After winning with him in that first week we immediately developed the impenetrable theory of, "Yeah, Kitna, haha!"  We then shortly came to call him "ATM."  And if he didn't cover in all five of those games, it had to be at least four, because we came out of the run unprecedentedly large.  A new beginning, really. 

Which is all to say that Tony Romo's back hurts (he took a syringe into it this week), and Kitna's the Cowboys' backup.

Plus, what kind of bummer would it be for Jerry Jones to build such a fancy house and have everybody over on Thanksgiving only to be embarrassed by the likes of the Raiders (who, incidentally, caught the Bengwads last week on a prototypical let-down week)?  Even if Jones is the jerk that some folks make him out to be, if a jerk is going to have a billion dollars, he might as well spend it on things like "the largest domed [football] stadium in the world, [with] the world's largest column-free interior, and [world's] largest video screen."

And it's an old line, but a good one, about what kind of bummer it is for the Raiders to have to come in on a short short week to spend Thanksgiving battling a team that's used to doing it every year.

Most else equal, it's a bummer for anyone not to be home on Thanksgiving, and most else seems equal enough for the Giants and Broncos tonight for that to apply (the Broncos might really be finished if they don't win tonight), so we'll take 5 points and the Broncos over the Giants at Mile High in the night game.  Only 1 unit though, mostly because we won't have access to the NFL Network tonight. 

Which gets us back to tyranny, usurpation, and natural and just rights.  Something to supplicate on, for sure.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.  Thanks for reading and otherwise participating here at Frowns. 

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And thanks to HuffPo for the photo, and this gallery of animals eating.

*Along these lines, and in compliance with the Frownie Fairness Doctrine, we'll note the consistency here with the Thanksgiving toast proposed in today's New York Times, to "what we cannot know and could not have guessed, and to the unexpected ways our lives will merge in Thanksgivings to come."

Also, Studies have shown that gratitude is a primary contributing factor to happiness.

**One of us had come to use a different book by 1998, but it was all the same as re: us and Kitna and 'the book.'

***Special thanks to the Cheddar Bay Crew.