Thursday, January 29, 2009

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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11 comments:

Caveat said...

I agree but then, I'm not a hunter or a farmer/ I also think Obama is the best thing to happen to the US in a long time.

I'm a pet owner though and we are under neaer-constant attack across the continent.

Mind you, the Federal government doesn't have much impact on that situation anyway - it's mostly state/provincial and municipal governments that are overregulating pet ownership, especially dog ownership.

PBurns said...

I'm a pet owner too, but I have to tell you I do not feel under attack. In fact, I feel kind of wooed. I get free catalogs all the time, the state of Maryland is asking me how my fox trapping season went (I have a permit but do not trap), and the County shelter will subsidize my rabies shot if I go there to get the innoculation. More dogs are being adopted out of pounds than ever before. Even in the pit bull arena, things are not all bad: ABC TV had very nice piece on Good Morning America this morning (with Dianne Sawyer) featuring two old ladies that adopted a stray pit bull, and Pit Bulls were just featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Will there always be battles? Sure, but in the real world in which I live I do not feel under attack. And, for the record, I live in Virginia is whichis home to PETA. My address is in the book and I am a pretty public figure. But no one attacks -- or should I say that at least no one has attacked twice ;)

Patrick

Caveat said...

I personally am not under attack. I'm looking at the big picture, per usual.

Think back a few decades to what having a dog was like. Fast-forward to today.

Little by little, dog ownership has become difficult to say the least in many parts of the continent.

As for 'pit bulls', don't get me started :>)

Daniel Gauss said...

Slightly off-topic, but I wonder if Gov Bill had to go through the NM Oryx lottery to bag his gazelle.. open to residents only, and you only get to win it once.. in a very limited season held only on the White Sands Missile Base.. That's once in your lifetime, so you better be a crack shot. Somehow I think Bill (whom I like) got a free pass.

PBurns said...

Richardson did not have to go through the Oryx lottery because he was not hunting on public land, but on private land. It turns out that Ted Turner's 360,000-acre (562 square mile) Armendaris Ranch is right next to White Sands, and Oryx have established themselves on his property as well.

Richardson shot this animal in 1985, with one shot, from a distance of about 100 yards.

For the record, my understanding is that Richardson is mostly a bird hunter, and yes he is dove hunter, so chalk that up as a another place where he might flip the bird (pun intended) to the HSUS and PETA.

Patrick

Daniel Gauss said...

I was actually on the Armendaris a couple of years ago.. (although I was told at the time it was half-million acres).. Went to shoot (photographically speaking) an AKC bird dog trial.. neophyte that I was, didn't realize I needed a horse! Not a lot of pictures. Had to sign a book-sized liability waiver to spend any time there. Lots of jackrabbits, and zero cattle. Manager said "Ted hates cattle".
Nobody said anything about Oryx being about, but then we just spent time on about .001% of the ranch; or less. ;o)

PBurns said...

Ted Turner hates cattle because they are like locusts. They may *look* a little like buffalo, but they do behave the same way.

Cattle will hover around a stream or water hole and completely denude it, break down the banks, and never move off the waterside unless they moved off with force or fence. Buffalo, elk, deer, etc. will not do that, and so they are much easier on the land, and tend to graze the whole ranch. Buffs also do better with predators, hard weather, calving, and the rest. They are God's intention for the American west, and the land was built for them and they built the land. I can understand Ted Turner's bias on this one. It's not just aesthetics.

P

jdege said...

It wasn't so much that Obama was endorsed by HSUS, it was that Obama responded to HSUS's questionnaire by pledging support for nearly every animal protection bill in Congress.

http://hslf.typepad.com/political_animal/2007/12/the-president-3.html

The NRA took what Obama said to HSUS at face value and opposed him. HSUS took what Obama said to HSUS at face value and supported him.

What's become clear, now that he's been in office for more than a week, is that he was lying to them.

PBurns said...

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jdege, that would be interesting if it were not complete bullshit.

There were only two candidates running for President unless you are a Ron Paul retard: Barack Obama and John McCain.

McCain was the NRA's #1 enemy for years prior to this election (he even did a gun-grabbing TV ad as you know), and they endorsed him anyway because (surprise!) that's what right-wing automaton organizations do: they endorse the GOP candidate and they jerk around their voting guides so they can do that. I documented the record here >> http://terriermandotcom.blogspot.com/2008/09/do-you-really-trust-john-mcchange-on.html

Obama had a WORSE record than John McCain with the Humane Society until Obama started to run for President, which is when HSUS jerked their voting record around in order to support Obama. I documented that here > http://terriermandotcom.blogspot.com/2008/10/is-john-mccain-bunny-hugger.html

Where guys like you consistently get it wrong is that you do not actually LISTEN to the candidates or try to understand them, nor do you think for yourself.

Instead, you start with a conclusion, only listen to evidence that supports that conclusion, ignore contrary evidence, and then when you are WRONG you say you were lied to.

But in fact you are just a brain-dead right-wing zombie with a broken political frame. I know a lot of left-wing brain dead zombies with broken political frames as well. But as far as I am concerned, you are all the same because A ZOMBIE IS A ZOMBIE.


Patrick

jdege said...

What McCain was, or what the NRA thought he was, or what Obama's record prior to the election was, or whatever.

None of it changes the simple fact that HSUS thought that Obama supported animal rights because he told them he supported animal rights. True, they may have been fools to have believed him. but he did respond to their survey with what the considered to be the "right" answers.

PBurns said...

jdege -- go away.

Seriously.

You do not give a shit about animal rights, you do not give a shit about dogs, you do not give a shit about conservation, and you do not hunt. All you want to do is argue politics. You are a troll.

You know that, and I know that.

So go away.

And, for the record, though I think the HSUS is a sack of shit and I actively got out and kill things most weekends that I can, I would vote the same as Obama on almost all of that questionnaire.
Does that make me a bunny hugger and HSUS toady too? LOL.

From now on, I am making this blog a Zombie Free Zone.

We are now Zombie Free!


P.