It's time once again for an absurd Thanksgiving ritual. 
 
 On Wednesday, the National Turkey Foundation will carry two plump male turkeys over to the White House and lift them onto a table. President Obama will give them goofy names like Caramel and Popcorn. Then Obama will "pardon" the turkeys and, instead of lopping off their heads and tossing them in an oven, he will let them live out the rest of their lives at the estate in Mount Vernon. 
 
 To be fair, the president has to do lots of frivolous public events like this one every year. But the turkey pardon stands out as being especially dumb and worth abolishing. Here's why: 
 
 -- It's not even a real tradition! The National Turkey Federation has donated two turkeys to the White House every year since 1947. Harry Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower did the sensible thing and simply ate the birds. No pardons there. 
 
 Some accounts credit John F. Kennedy with the first official turkey pardon, but like most JFK mythologizing, this is overblown sentimentality: Kennedy merely sent one of his turkeys back to the farm because it wasn't big enough. "We'll let this one grow," he groused of the inadequate offering. (Others credit Abraham Lincoln, who once spared a turkey destined for Christmas dinner when his son Tad pleaded for mercy, but that clearly didn't catch on for decades.) 
 
 Ronald Reagan was technically the first president to "pardon" a Thanksgiving turkey, in 1987 — but he did it as a joke to distract the press from scandal. Reporters had been hounding the president about whether he planned to grant pardons to key Iran-Contra figures like Oliver North and John Poindexter. Reagan merely quipped that he would have pardoned that year's turkey had it not been en route to a petting zoo already. 
 
 Two years later, in 1989, Reagan's successor George H.W. Bush made the turkey pardon an annual ritual. But it all started as a glib one-liner meant to deflect attention away from White House lawbreaking. Hardly a sacred convention. 
 
 -- The pardoned turkeys aren't that much better off — because the life of a turkey is misery and pain. This is going to get gruesome, and I'm sorry about that. But modern-day domestic turkeys aren't bred to have a happy life. They're raised to be as large as possible so that they can be slaughtered as soon as possible and produce the greatest volume of delicious turkey meat. 
 
 Some fun facts: Turkeys bred for eating now grow to an average of 30 pounds — much bigger than wild turkeys.* (The two turkeys on their way to the White House are over 37 pounds apiece.) These domesticated turkeys are often so fat that their skeletons are unable to support that weight. They frequently develop bone deformities and degenerative joint diseases. They're incapable of breeding on their own. They often suffer heart failure or bleeding around the kidneys. 
 
 So it's no coincidence that, as US News & World Report and National Journal have discovered, most pardoned turkeys die within a year of being granted a reprieve anyway. The White House wants us to believe these turkeys are living out a life of leisure on the farm and bopping along to their favorite Lady Gaga tracks. Not so: 
 
 For the record, I'm not opposed to raising turkeys for food (and, yes, it's possible to get humanely raised turkeys). But it's not clear why we need an elaborate White House ceremony designed to obscure where that food actually comes from. 
 
 -- It's a mockery of the presidential pardon, which is an all-too neglected issue. Maybe this isn't surprising, since the turkey pardon was basically invented as a way of mocking presidential pardons. Still, it's worth mentioning. 
 
 After tomorrow, Obama will have "pardoned" 10 turkeys in all (turkeys that, as best we can tell, haven't actually committed any crimes). By contrast, he will have only pardoned or commuted the sentences of 40 actual living human beings. 
 
 The latter is a record low for modern-day presidents. At the same point in his presidency, Ronald Reagan had pardoned 313 people. Harry Truman had pardoned 1,537 people: 
 
 Last year, Sam Morrison, an official who spent 13 years in the Justice Department's Office of the Pardon Attorney before retiring in 2010, described the prevailing attitude toward pardons this way: "They tend to view any grant of clemency not as a good thing, as a criminal justice success story, but almost as a defeat — that you're taking away something from what some good prosecutor achieved." (The Justice Department disputed this characterization.) 
 
 Over at National Journal, Ron Fournier pointed out that, at the bare minimum, Obama could grant clemency to all the people still serving extra time in prison under the old crack-sentencing guidelines — guidelines that Obama himself opposed as excessive and which Congress reduced for all new prisoners in 2010. So far, however, there's no sign that the White House will do this. 
 
 The White House does, however, have a flashy Web site up letting you vote on your favorite soon-to-be-pardoned turkey. Yes, there are hashtags. 
 
 * Fixed the weight numbers. ||||| Story highlights Each year, an American president "pardons" a turkey or two just before Thanksgiving 
 
 President Barack Obama has sent his turkeys to Mt. Vernon for their "twilight years" 
 
 But a pardon just means the birds aren't stuffed and eaten; they're not expected to live long 
 
 American turkeys are bred to be consumed, many of them at Thanksgiving 
 
 Along a pastoral lane at George Washington's Mount Vernon estate sits a sizable wooden pen built specifically to house the two turkeys that will be "pardoned" at the White House on Wednesday. 
 
 The well-appointed pen includes a small coop to protect them from weather and foxes, and an area for them to strut their stuff for camera-toting tourists. 
 
 But there is one thing that is missing: other turkeys. That's because all the turkeys ever pardoned at the White House are dead, including the six already given a pass from the roasting pan by President Barack Obama in previous years. 
 
 "The bird is bred for the table, not for longevity," said Dean Norton, the director at Mount Vernon in charge of livestock. "Some of [the pardoned turkeys] have been pretty short lived." 
 
 Compared to domesticated animals, turkeys bred for consumption are usually plump and slaughtered after a period of months, and wouldn't be expected to live much longer on their own. So, a pardon really can extend their lives a lot, relatively speaking. 
 
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 The two turkeys pardoned in 2012 - Cobbler and Gobbler - died within a year of their White House appearance, despite what a spokeswoman at Mount Vernon said was diligent veterinary care. 
 
 Gobbler died on February 5, 2013, of natural causes. Cobbler lived a bit longer, dying on August 22, 2013, after he fell ill and had to be euthanized. Both are buried at Mount Vernon. 
 
 In the two years prior, three of the four pardoned turkeys died less than five months after their pardon. 
 
 The other turkey - Peace, who was pardoned in 2011 - lived 16 months after arriving at Mount Vernon. 
 
 So why do those birds -- and others bred to be eaten -- die faster than their wild brethren? 
 
 "The birds are fed in such a way to increase their weight," Norton, who has worked at Mount Vernon since 1969, said. "[Americans] want a nice big breasted turkey and so they are fed high protein diet and they get quite large. The organs, though, that are in this bird are meant for a smaller bird. They just can't handle the extra weight, so they end up living not as long [as wild turkeys]." 
 
 The differences extend beyond life expectancy, too. 
 
 "Your native bird can fly beautifully and roost in trees," Norton said, while the type that receive pardons "does not fly, has very short stubbly legs and typically last right up to Thanksgiving." 
 
 Final years? Figuratively 
 
 In 2012, when Obama announced the pardons for Cobbler and Gobbler, he hinted the birds were in their final years, telling the audience that they were headed to Mount Vernon "where they will spend their twilight years in the storied home of George Washington." 
 
 The word "years," however, seems to be an exaggeration. 
 
 The National Turkey Federation, a group that lobbies for the turkey industry and selects those to be honored each year at the White House, disagrees with any notion that the lives of these birds are cut short. 
 
 They are bred for consumption have a "life expectancy of about 18 weeks," said Keith Williams, spokesman for the turkey federation. "They are not raised as pets and animals are not pets." 
 
 Their short lives, Williams points out, says more about Americans taste for turkey and breeding practices than mistreatment or short lives. 
 
 Bred to be stuffed 
 
 Starting in 1960, farmers specifically started breeding plump turkeys that had large amounts of white breast meat -- a response to American demand. The differences between wild and bred turkeys, Williams said, stems mostly from diet. 
 
 "A turkey that is bred exclusively for eating, eats corn and soybean that have minerals in them," Williams said. 
 
 According to the federation, a whopping 219 million turkeys were consumed in the United States in 2011. On Thanksgiving that year, the group estimates 46 million were gobbled up. 
 
 Since 1970, around the time breeding practices changed, turkey consumption has increased 104 percent, according to the federation. 
 
 The practice of pardoning a turkey at the White House dates to Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 The story goes that around Thanksgiving, turkeys were brought to the White House and Lincoln's son, Tad, grew attached to one particular bird and begged his chief executive father to spare the fowl from the table. Lincoln agreed and the turkey lived. 
 
 It is unclear if the practice continued for the next 100 years. But in 1963, President John F. Kennedy decided to send his turkey back to the farm it came from, telling the National Turkey Federation they should "just let this one grow" instead. 
 
 Bush "41" sent them to Frying Pan Park 
 
 The tradition became official in 1989, under President George H.W. Bush. On November 14, weeks before Thanksgiving, Bush pardoned a turkey and the White House shipped him off to live his twilight year at -- Frying Pan Park -- in Herndon, Virginia. 
 
 Since then, a President has pardoned a turkey each year. 
 
 All of Obama's turkeys were sent to Mount Vernon. The birds spent the holidays in the public pen and then were moved to a livestock area out of view because they were not "historically accurate" to Washington's time period. 
 
 According to Norton, the turkey federation wanted the birds to be more prominently displayed. So this year, they will head to Morven Park, a historic estate in Leesburg, Virginia, on January 7. 
 
 The estate was home to Former Virginia Gov. Westmoreland Davis, who ran it from 1918 to 1922. Davis was a prodigious turkey farmer, according to Teresa Davenport, a spokeswoman for Morven Park. 
 
 As for the near certainty that the turkeys will soon die, Davenport said they "are going to do everything [they] can to make that not happen." 
 
 "These turkeys were raised in Minnesota, so they are used to cold winters," Davenport said. "A lot of the employees here are already on turkey duty."
– President Obama will "pardon" a pair of turkeys today and send them to live at Mount Vernon, and if that gives you a case of the warm fuzzies, you should know that both "Caramel" and "Popcorn" will probably be dead within the year. Every turkey the president has ever pardoned is dead, including the two pardoned last year, CNN points out, with one only lasting until February. In the two previous years, three of the four died in less than five months (the other held out an impressive 16 months). The reason: The birds are bred for food, not longevity. Their normal-sized internal organs can only hold up to their carefully engineered bulk for so long. A spokesman for the National Turkey Federation, the lobbying group that provides the birds, says they have "a life expectancy of about 18 weeks. They are not raised as pets." It's one reason Brad Plumer at the Washington Post wants to end the pardon—the others being that it mocks real presidential pardons, and isn't nearly the historic tradition it pretends to be. Of course, at this point columns decrying the pardon are becoming a tradition of their own.