Letters by Boz

Shooting Cats: Evil

From the great folks at Alley Cat Allies: 

Lately Alley Cat Allies has heard from our supporters and seen more than one news item about people who should know better—elected leaders no less—suggesting that the best way to handle feral cats is to shoot them.

To take action against this horrible practice, go here.

If only it were possible to arm the cats with little tiny firearms of their own...

Newest Sadistic Thrill for Animal Hating Scum

Police in Shelton, Conn. have arrested 19 individuals in connection to a canary fighting ring. In order to satisfy their deranged need for bloodsport, scummish people would apparently watch as these beautiful creatures were made to fight to the death. What type of person looks at this defenseless creature and thinks to himself, "I want to see that bird fight for its life!"? A sick person. I could care less about "culture" or "tradition." Animal fighting -- chickens, dogs, horses, whatever -- is just disgusting and wrong, and those who indulge in it are mere sadists.

 

Obama Crazies and the Spirit of 1776

The September 28, 2009 issue of New York has a good (if somewhat cursory) article about the nuttiness of some anti-Obama activists. A few pictures of the various cretins can be viewed here. (The chubby hick chick giving the middle finger pretty much sums up the class and intellect of these people.) Most of the things throwing the wingnuts into conniptions are lies and mistruths we've all heard countless times already: Obama is a Muslim/Nazi/Socialist/Communist, he wasn't born in the U.S., and so on. 

One small item did catch my attention. One sign at a Scranton, PA teabagging party apparently read, THE ANSWER TO 2009 IS 1776. What, I wonder, was so great about 1776? In 1776, country was involved in a bloody war. Hundreds of thousands of blacks were held in slavery, while countless whites were locked into the virtual slavery of indentured servitude. Participation in politics was pretty much reserved for white, male property owners, leaving huge chunks of the population disenfranchised. Essentially, the U.S. in 1776 was a far more tyrannical place than the U.S. in 2009. Free, libertarian 1776 America never existed except in the fevered minds of some reactionaries, and is just as fanciful as the supposed Marxist dictatorship we live under now.

The Literary Palin

The Tina Fey Effect

Andrew Sullivan highlights an interesting aspect of the Sarah Palin phenomenon. While she has managed to excite the Far Right, often to a disturbing degree (see Rich Lowry's tent-pitching ode), she has managed to give some independents the creeps:

The Oct. 1-2 Rasmussen poll found that 43 percent of independents say Mrs. Palin is "hurting" Mr. McCain's chances to win the presidency, compared with 35 percent who see her as "helping" and another 22 percent who saw no impact or were not sure. Overall, the poll respondents split about evenly - 40 percent to 41 percent - on whether Mrs. Palin was an asset to the ticket.

I was still giving McCain the benefit of the doubt up until the point he chose snowbilly Palin as his running-mate. Now I hope the GOP presidential campaign crashes and burns.

Palin... the GOP's "Fatal Cancer"

The Huffington Post has a short piece quoting a recent interview with David Brooks:

[Sarah Palin] represents a fatal cancer to the Republican party. When I first started in journalism, I worked at the National Review for Bill Buckley. And Buckley famously said he'd rather be ruled by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty. But he didn't think those were the only two options. He thought it was important to have people on the conservative side who celebrated ideas, who celebrated learning. And his whole life was based on that, and that was also true for a lot of the other conservatives in the Reagan era. Reagan had an immense faith in the power of ideas. But there has been a counter, more populist tradition, which is not only to scorn liberal ideas but to scorn ideas entirely. And I'm afraid that Sarah Palin has those prejudices. I think President Bush has those prejudices.

Wow, that really nails it. The GOP celebration of all that is ignorant, provincial, anti-intellectual, philistine, and yes, hickish is truly dispiriting. Give me a Rockefeller Republican any day over a Redneck Republican.

The Debates

I don't bother watching political debates. Why should I? Really, I think only three types of people waste their time with them:

1. Politicos who are paid to comment on debates, or who are so in to the elections they actually find the whole circus entertaining;

2. The bland masses who believe that watching the candidates drone on at each other is part of their civic duty;

3. The clueless 15 percent or so of voters who are still undecided and are hoping for some sort of debate-inspired epiphany.

None of the above applies to me. That being said, I did catch a bit of the Biden-Palin debate on NPR. Goshdarnit golly-gee... she really does answer questions as if she's in another beauty pageant. She's also either rather dumb or rather deceitful (probably both) as illustrated by this exchange:

 BIDEN: Two Mondays ago John McCain said at 9 o'clock in the morning that the fundamentals of the economy were strong. Two weeks before that, he said George -- we've made great economic progress under George Bush's policies.... Nine o'clock, the economy was strong. Eleven o'clock that same day, two Mondays ago, John McCain said that we have an economic crisis....

PALIN: John McCain, in referring to the fundamentals of our economy being strong, he was talking to and he was talking about the American workforce. And the American workforce is the greatest in this world, with the ingenuity and the work ethic that is just entrenched in our workforce.... That's a positive. That's encouragement. And that's what John McCain meant.

So McCain and Palin just happen to have a totally different definition of economic fundamentals than the one used by analysts, investors, and, yes, economists. Darntootin', they're mavericks even in their use of the English language!

Cat Hating Hicks

This is truly repugnant. Idiots Out Wandering Around (Iowans) in the podunk town of Randolph are now offering a bounty on stray cats. Kill a kitty, get $5. I'm sure all the animal-hating psychos who get off on killing beings weaker then themselves will be thrilled. The mayor, Vance Trively, complains that the cats are overrunning the town. Of course, the humane, moral way to deal with the problem would be to contact Alley Cat Allies and set up a trap-neuter-release program, which would incidentally be more effective anyway. But no...

The mayor said several suggestions have been made, including neutering, trapping and asking for donations.

"You couldn't get a donation to save a cat in this town for the life of them," Trively said.

What does it say about the hickfolks of Randolph that they would prefer to pay to slaughter cats then to get them fixed?

Remembering Buckley

Someone asked me a few weeks ago if I  would ever consider going on one of those annual National Review cruises. Weeks trapped aboard a ship with a bunch of earnest conservatives discussing politics? Not my cup of tea. But I did admit it might be worth it just for the chance to meet William F. Buckley, Jr.
    Alas, that chance will now never come.
    William F. Buckley was my first exposure to conservatism. In my early twenties I found myself becoming increasing disillusioned with the vaguely democratic socialist  political philosophy I had embraced since my teens. One day I stumbled on to a collection of Buckley's essays at a used book store. Despite my left-leaning sensibility, I had always had a sneaking admiration for the conservative gadfly, largely from watching "Firing Line" with my great-grandparents as a child. So I decided to buy the book, The Jeweler's Eye, in hopes of getting a new perspective on politics. It was a revelation to me. At the time, the conservative tone was being largely set by Rush Limbaugh, who was a bit obnoxious for my taste and actually served to keep me away from the Right. Buckley's writing was anything but obnoxious. It was clever, erudite, and witty, and he more than anyone else set me on the road to conservatism.

Sino-Sadism

The current issue of The Economist features a short piece on the inhumanity towards animals that is rampant in China, as well as the very small movement arising to change the situation. First, how badly are animals treated in China?

Animals are treated dreadfully in Chinese farms, laboratories, zoos and elsewhere. There are grim factories where thousands of live bears in tiny cages are tapped for medicinal bile. At safari parks, live sheep and poultry are fed to lions as spectators cheer. At farms and in slaughterhouses, animals are killed with little concern for their suffering.

    Reformers face an uphill battle. Primitive folk medicines often require substances found in rare animals, leading to the wanton slaughter of endangered species such as tigers. Pathetically, a common reason Chinese men seek out these remedies is because they hope to enlarge their penises. Sorry, but to borrow a phrase from an old malt liquor ad, dead tigers ain't goin' make yo jimmy thicker. Still, brave souls are trying to change things.

According to Zhou Ping, of China's legislature, the National People's Congress, few Chinese accept that animals have any rights at all. She thinks it is time they did, and in 2006 put forward China's first national animal-welfare law. Her proposal got nowhere, and there is no sign of progress since. “There is so far”, she says, “only a small voice calling for change.”

Campaigners are not discouraged. Jill Robinson, a Briton, spends most of her time in Sichuan province, caring for bears rescued from bile farmers, who are compensated in return for shutting down their operations. She says support from local young people is rising fast, and attitudes are starting to change. If China can stop binding women's feet, she asks, why should it not abandon cruelty to animals?

    It is very sad that China, a nation which gave the world the beautiful, nature-friendly philosophy of Taoism, now is known for environmental degradation and barbarism towards animals. And of course, a fair amount of barbarism directed at their own people as well. But they get to host the sham spectacle of the Olympics, so I guess they're an OK country after all, right? Maybe the Olympic Committee will honor their host nation by featuring  the disgusting Chinese sport of horse-fighting! From the  Daily Telegraph:

To start the horses fighting, a mare in heat is usually presented to the animals and quickly removed.... Horses that do not immediately engage in battle are whipped, or gunshots are fired to provoke them. The stallion left standing is declared the winner.

    Shockingly, these fights are "even included on some tourist itineraries in parts of the country."

Maybe as China gets richer, things will change for the better. Sadly, I'm not holding my breath (though I would if I were in smog-ridden Shanghai!), Incidentally, as a longtime Hawaii resident, I am proud to report that local actress Maggie Q. is very active in trying to change attitudes about animals in China. Good for her! And more importantly, good for China's animals! (By the way, Maggie was great in the last Die Hard movie.)