Ken Salazar Is OK with Me

Ken Salazar, complete with bolo tie.


To hear the right-wing reactionaries tell the tale, Barack Obama has sold his soul to the Humane Society of the U.S. and PETA.

And their evidence for this?

The shocking news that a couple of lunatic organizations on the far-left fringe decided to endorse Barack Obama for President rather than the senile John McCain and his gum-chewing sidekick whose credentials seem to have been limited to her bodacious set of double Ds.

Woooeeeee! All I can say is I'm sure glad I don't hunt with these folks!

Talk about missing sign!

Take the obvious stuff -- like who Barack Obama has put in charge of the U.S. Department of Interior.

The Deparment of Interior controls a HUGE amount of land in this country:

• 264 million acres of Bureau of Land Management country (an area three times larger than all of Great Britain);
  
  
• 96 million acres in the National Wildlife Refugee system (an area larger than all of Great Britain);
  
  
• 84 million acres in our National Parks system (an area about the size as Great Britian);
  
  
• 55.7 million acres of Indian Reservation land (an area about the size of England), and;
  
  
• The Bureau of Reclamation (which supplies water to about 1/3 of all the people in the American West).
  
  

And oh yes, the Deparment of Interior also controls the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, and it is also in charge of implementing the Endangered Species Act.

And who did Barack Obama put in charge of all this?

A hunter.

A western hunter.

A western hunter who wears a cowboy hat.

A western hunter who wears a cowboy hat and who supports trophy hunting of Polar Bears.

A western hunter who wears a cowboy hat and who supports trophy hunting of Polar Bears, and who thinks we need to start rounding up and humanely shooting feral horses on western lands where they are so overpopulated they are wrecking the ecology.

A western hunter who is a longtime member of the Congressional Sportsmen's Caucus "whose sole purpose is to preserve and strengthen the rights of hunters and fishermen."

A western hunter who signed on to Dick Cheney's amicus curiae brief in the Heller (gun) case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

So that's Ken Salazar.

A friend of the lunatics at PETA, and the direct mail mill known as the Humane Society of the United States?

I don't think so.

But did the folks on the right even notice?

Do they even understand what agencies decide things in Washington?

No. And apparently not.




So who did Barack Obama tap to run the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the agency in charge of commercial breeding of livestock, crop support, and farm policy?

None other than Tom Vilsack, the former Governor of Iowa.

Have you ever been to Iowa?

Every job in the state is connected to farms, pigs, cattle and crops.

You cannot get elected to home room monitor in that state unless you are pro-farmer and pro-agricultural livestock production.

This is a state with 3 million people, 4 million cattle, and 19 million hogs.

You want to talk chickens? Fine. Iowa leads the nation in egg production with 52.4 million chickens producing 13.9 billion eggs a year.

You want to talk turkey? Fine. Iowa, produced 274 million pounds of turkey last year.

All told, over 6.60 billion pounds of red meat were produced in Iowa last year, as well as 4.28 billion pounds of milk.

So that's Tom Vilsak, and that's where he comes from. He's their kind of guy.

Is Tom Vilsack a friend of the PETA lunatics and the direct mail mill known as the Humane Society of the United States?

No, I don't think so.

But did the folks on the right even notice?

Do they even understand what agencies decide things in Washington?

No. And apparently not.

But of course, Barack Obama tried to do more. He tried to get former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson to join his Administration as Secretary of Commerce.

Now, on a good day I am only luke-warm to Bill Richardson. I cannot tell you why. Something... Dunno; maybe it's the fact that he's always smiling while he works out the angles. He's either a great diplomat or a used car dealer, and I'm unsure of which.

But I can tell you that Bill Richardson is a hunter.




So am I worried about Barack Obama embracing some sort of extremist Animal Rights agenda that is going to stomp all over hunting and the commercial raising of livestock?

NO.

This country is clearly full of lunatics on the far right and the far left, but I am pretty sure Barack Obama is not one of them.


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