Dowd, Palin the huntress, and protecting wealth
Maureen Dowd seems deeply offended by Sarah Palin’s shooting a moose on the latest episode of her TLC Alaskan show (actually, Dowd seems to be deeply offended by nearly everything Palin does, including drawing breath).
You may wonder why I continue to even bother with Dowd or what she thinks. But I find it a continual wonder that she writes for a prominent newspaper. She is also a fascinating example of the full bore Palin Derangement Syndrome so prevalent among liberals, women in particular.
But Dowd doesn’t stop with Palin and the unlucky moose; she also draws the following analogy:
…[T]rigger-happy Sarah represents the Republicans, who have spent two years taking shots at the president, including potshots, and tormenting him in an effort to bring him down.
So Obama is like Sarah’s victimized moose, stalked and hunted by Republicans during the entire two years of his presidency (note especially the sadism implicit in the word “tormenting), and finally cornered, weakened, and bloodied.
Dowd then ends her piece with the following observation about Obama and the Bush tax cuts:
It’s not that hard to explain to Americans in distress that the protection of vast fortunes should not be the priority of government.
That just may be the most extraordinary and revelatory sentence in the entire column. Dowd appears to be implying that an income of $250,000 a year (the amount involved in the disputed tax cut extensions) constitutes vast wealth (although it’s hard to believe she really believes that, given the circles in which she moves). But more importantly, is not one of the main functions of government to protect the property of everyone, rich or poor or in-between? As far as I know, if wealth—whether “vast” or middling—is amassed without robbing anyone or breaking any laws, the default position is that it belongs to the person or persons who earned it.
Yes, the rich pay taxes, as well they should. But there’s nothing special about being rich that entitles other people to take more and more your money just because they’re in “distress.” And a government that sees the money of the rich merely as fruit ripe for the picking, and not worthy of being protected, is in big trouble.
We sometimes forget that, in Thomas Jefferson’s original drafts of the Declaration of Independence, he wrote of governments instituted among men to protect such rights as “life, liberty, and property“.
When you get right down to it, if you aren’t allowed to own property, or if the government reserves the right to confiscate your property for any or no reason, then you’re a serf or a slave. Protecting the rights of one person to property (against, say, gangs of highwaymen) is one of the fundamental roles of government, right up there with national defense.
The trouble comes when the government is called upon to protect citizens’ property rights from the government itself. That’s asking for a government of saints, which we don’t have and will never have. And that’s why our founding fathers insisted on the power belonging to the people.
…that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, – That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it…
How does that sound to you, Ms. Dowd?
respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline
Daniel.
Everybody knows Jefferson had slaves. Any other questions?
Dowd may referring, by inference, to estate taxes. People can have great wealth without necessarily having sky-high income to be taxed.
Say somebody got a lakefront home forty years ago, put some money into it and discovered that the real estate crash didn’t touch lakefront property. Might have $2 mill right there, earning not a dime. And a 401k of $1 mill, paying $40,000, on top of a pension of $40k. There’s a three-millionaire with a taxable income of $80,000.
The very, very rich can have their money in munis, taking the reduced earnings–that was in ordinary times–compared to other vehicles along with the non-taxable nature of muni interest. What happens to the income tax rate is of no interest to them, except as they promote raising it to show their compassion and whatsit.
If Buffet is so sincere, let him write a check to the treasury for 90% of his net worth and post the receipt in the ‘net. HT. Instapundit–I think.
Have you noticed that liberals, or whatever they are calling themselves today, have a morbid obsession with sex, race and money? These people get indignant because Bill Gates has a billion dollars. I find such behavior bizarre.
Palin shot a Caribou NOT, I repeat NOT a Moose. They are different animals.
As for the number of shots fired. The rifle given to her by her father had not been sighted in before the hunt so all the shots fired from the first rifle completely missed the animal. The second rifle was sighted in properly and Palin shot and killed the Caribou with one shot. Not checking that your rifle is sighted in before a hunt is a mistake, the fathers mistake, as he owned the weapon.
Kudos to Palin. A real woman, a real American, a real conservative.
I watched the show and enjoyed it for what it was, a chance for a father and daughter who have not had much quality time together in recent years, to renew that old bond.
I knew almost immediately that it would drive the libs up a wall. Killing wild animals and butchering them for all to see. Just too barbaric, too Neanderthalic for the denizens of eastern salons.
It could have been done much less in your face, but it appears to me that Sarah is wanting to taunt her detractors just because she can.
There were some glitches. Sarah’s dad’s gun was not sighted in. She took four or five shots that were clean misses. She switched to Becker’s gun and made a kill with the first shot. Later, they checked the sighting on her dad’s gun and found it was way off. Most experienced hunters sight their guns in just before going out to hunt. Chuck Heath, Sarah’s dad, is an experienced hunter, but he’s 72 and may have forgotten when he last sighted in his gun or the sighting may have been altered when the gun was in transit to the camp.
The issue that no one asks about is, “How much did that caribou meat cost per pound?” My guess is that it was in excess of $15/pound. Equivalent protein could be bought at a market for less. I have fished for salmon in Alaska and always joked that it was delicious, but for the price I paid to get it, it better be delicious. Foraging for food was a big part of life in Alaska at one time, but unless you live out in the boonies now, there’s plenty of food that is much cheaper right there in the super markets.
However, as much as anti-huntyers will hate this show, it was another great advert for Alaska.
I think Dowd’s comment about the government not having a high priority on protecting vast wealth ranks on my Truth in Misunderstanding scale with Charles Degaulle’s statement that France helped the US out in World War II, and the unions’ anti-slogan of “freedom to work – for less.”
Oops! Make that union comment “right to work – for less.”
The very, very rich can have their money in munis, taking the reduced earnings—that was in ordinary times—compared to other vehicles along with the non-taxable nature of muni interest.
Oh please, please let them put all of their money into California municipals. Please. Watching rich liberals see their wealth wiped out when CA municipalities default because of liberal policies …mmm… it doesn’t get any better than that. That would convince me there just might be a God after all.
I found these representative and all too predictable comments posted on the Aaron Sorkin article (Puffington Host):
“We should let deer and all animals live their own lives as we do. Only arrogant humans think it’s ok to take a life. It is killing plain and simple and I want to know who gives anyone the right to kill another being??? We are all earthlings!”
– scifibird
“I once caught a fish and tried to kill it and slice it open the way I was supposed to, and it made me want to cry, just to see it gasping on shore like that. I couldn’t do it. I once had to kill a new born mouse that had no mother. I nearly threw up doing it. Some of us are able to kill, some, like SP, enjoy it. Others simply can’t. I don’t know what is different inside of us — but my compassion for the creature, and my awe at the mystery of life, make killing animals for me very difficult.”
– heyletsevolve
Of course, any facts are irrelevant to the requisite moral indignation. The point of their writing is entirely to demonstrate to themselves, to each other, and to the world in general, that they are superior beings.
In a liberal’s dictionary, thinking and masturbating are synonyms. When we insist they at least make an attempt at the former, and refrain from the latter in public, we just confuse the poor dears.
Hunting and eating meat do involve the acceptance of the fact that one is eating a dead animal (and it’s not morally wrong). A sign of maturity is making peace with life and death. Dowd clearly has not done that yet. Nor have most anti-hunting veggie people.
Megan,
Loved that line that only humans think it is ok to take a life. Hasn’t the idiot ever heard of carnivores like the various species of cats. Do these people ever think? And isn’t it culturally insensitive to essentially tell people of native northern cultures that they should move south for the winter when their artic gardens aren’t producing?
Dowd, like Frank Rich, Charles Blow, etc., always come out with a Palin hit piece a couple of days after some bad news for Obama (i.e. Unemployment numbers, etc.).
From their apartments in the upper west Manhatten, Palin is the biggest problem this country faces. Not unemployment, not a crappy economy, not terrorism, not cancer. Palin is the biggest threat. So, I’d take anything MoDo says with a grain of salt.
Besides, MoDo’s real problem is that she doesn’t have some hunky outdoorsy type man (i.e. todd Palin) to help out around the penthouse apartment. If you know what I mean. 😉
No analysis of the Federal Papers is needed.
I meant Federalist Papers.
Liberals want to look out at America and see neat little energy eficient track houses with obedient little democrat voters in them. None of this inventing, creating, innovating and filling needs in the marketplace silly business. That way the privlidged and government connected don’t find the deplorable conditions of a guy owning three convenience stores making more than a politician or union boss.
“You may wonder why I continue to even bother with Dowd or what she thinks.”
I too wonder why I bother looking at her columns…they’re so predictable. It’s as if George W. Bush were still president or he’s morphed into Sarah Palin.
Sad, that a once-great newspaper can’t find another Bill Safire to write columns for it.
Ms. Dowd, meet Mr. Stossel:
Hint: lack of property rights.
I hear all the MSM reporters talking about how we need to borrow to pay for the tax cuts. Can they hear what they are saying? Why do you have to borrow to let me keep my own money?
We have a spending problem, not a revenue problem.
Only arrogant humans think it’s ok to take a life. It is killing plain and simple and I want to know who gives anyone the right to kill another being???
On planet Liberal lions and tigers are apparently herbivores, as are the fuzzy polar bears. And there’s no need for humans to kill. Anyone can get meat without killing; just go to the supermarket. It comes wrapped up on a styrofoam tray. No killing involved.
We are all earthlings!”
We are all earthlings? Even Dennis Kucinich? /g
Dowd, Sorkin, Huffington, and a whole lot of other people could benefit from spending a week in a place like the Masai Mara in Africa. There you are transported back to the environment where our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived.
There is a natural food chain and every animal has their part to play. (We humans weren’t at the top until we got guns.) The big cats cull the herds of grass eaters. But they don’t eat all of the carcass; just what they need to fill themselves. Then come the smaller predators, birds of prey, and finally the hyenas who polish off the bones. It is quite a drama of birth, life, death, and rebirth all played out in an area that supports vast numbers of animals, birds, and insects.
Alaska is a Mara of a different type, but the drama of the natural food chain, birth, life, death, and rebirth are all on display there. At one time this environment was well known to most humans, but the rise of the industrial revolution has taken us away from it and to people like Dowd, etal, it seems foreign and even a bit threatening.
Harvesting game and fish was a common way of helping with the food bill when I was a kid. We lived on a trout stream in Colorado and from the time I was six my job in the summer was to catch trout for the fridge. We used to kill a buck deer and sometimes (if we were lucky) a bull elk every fall to help with the food bill. It was just a way of life that has changed. Today there is a herd of elk living on the golf course in my old hometown. There is no hunting and all the fishing is catch and release. But that way of life still exists in Alaska and a few other less settled rural areas in the lower 48.
I pleasantly accuse vegetarians, including relatives, and the animal rightists, of promoting global warning by their opposition to killing and/or eating CO2-generating critters. It’s an enviro-sin to eat only that which consumes CO2 and gives back O2, is it not?
Done. I’m gonna go reload another 50 shells. It’s bird-killin’ time!
Kudos (twice) to Occam’s Beard. I hope I can stop laughing before bedtime….
But there’s nothing special about being rich that entitles other people to take more and more your money just because they’re in “distress.”
there isnt?
deleted long piece pointing out again that one shold understand the difference between collective behavior and regular normal individual behavior. Dowd is a collectivist who is writing for a collectivist paper, and writes what she writes by getting her cues from higher up.
deleted long addition explaining that if one understood the missives and maxims of collective ideology, then one would understand things EASILY.
Dowd is a good cell in the body politic
Palin is a bad cell, a cancer, an individual
Obama was seen to be a brain cell
(Soros mentions not supporting him)
now Obama is a bad cell, too individual..
NY times owned by collectivist Sulzbergers, good cell
Fox, individual not helping the collective, bad cell
every time i read this same angle over and over and over… its mind numbing that we refuse to adapt and pick up on the rules of the game (or avoid reading what would teach them), and then have a lot of fun playing guessing games… (no no, dont tell me, its more fun if i get it myself)
Dowd DOESNT THINK, she portrays the party message in a fresh wrapper, which with others, gets you to read the same idea over and over and over again…
no morals..
only the leader has morals and they are special morals…
does your big toe go its own way?
keep looking at it like the big toe of the collective thinks for itself, has real opinions, and morals, and is truthful. the big toe does not have that, it serves its purpose, and thats all…
its metaphysics as a battle ground…
they do not think for themselves as they are a part of a larger body, and that body has only one head and brain. So, she has no personal feelings at all or her own ideals (catechism of the revolutionary suggested again), she serves the collective.
and she serves a matriarchal collective
so her arguments are not patriarchal based, but matriarchal based…
seems like i am the only one that understood the gibberish they have been teaching…
if male and patriarchal is bad, and the new matriarchal is better, then what are they removing and what are they replacing it with?
well, take the positive male things that our society ha been built on, and oppose them.
thesis meets antithesis yielding new synthesis
[with the addition of gaming the system to hold down one side so that the new synthesis is always socialism]
so emotional based argument (matriarchal) has replaced meritocratic debate (evil patriarchal), and so these missives have not much validity in them… but a lot of emotional bite, and fervor
their hate of Palin is the same hate they have always had of the individual…
their lack of hate (not love) of Dowd is because she is a good cell, not a cancer that does its own thing.
since they want a collective, a body, not an aggregate, any expressions that being an individual is to be quashed.
oscar wilde… very individualistic..
“Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.”
John Dos Passos
Individuality is freedom lived
John Stuart Mill
Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.
[edited for length by n-n]
Hmmmmmmmmmm: The government is in business protecting property?
Yeah, right:
http://www.the-spearhead.com/2010/12/09/big-lenders-getting-in-on-divorce-industry/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheSpearhead+%28The+Spearhead%29
And I thought that gay marriage was a sop to the trial lawyers…
i would like to say just one more thing i noticed..
that those who are on the left are domesticated humans. like house pets they sit at the window and brag to each other how superior it is to be a house pet and get their food the human way…
while the individual who is capable and not a chatchky, is in the yard killing a mouse or a bird and eating it.
see Megan Says: December 9th, 2010 at 5:08 pm above
they are basically crowing that they can no longer survive in the real world and function in the real world. they require a contrived society where everything is artificial and they don’t have to interface with reality other than what is necessary.
the one that couldn’t gut a fish, is someone that would die if things got bad, as well as others who relied on them.
very few hunters i have met relish the kill like movie actors, as far as i can tell they are more like the hyper-sexed… that is, the whole everything leading up to it is the big deal, not the culmination of it which stops that whole process (and starts the work)
to the house cat, or hamster at the window, all they can focus on is the singular moment that they find repugnant (and who taught them that? who taught them that being a victim like the oppressed was superior?)
their horror is contrived from lack of having to deal with the real world themselves.
Domestication: or taming is the process whereby a population of animals or plants, through a process of selection, becomes accustomed to human provision and control. A defining characteristic of domestication is artificial selection by humans.
if you see the world as classes then you just rewrite that as
or taming is the process whereby a population of proletariat, through a process of selection using redistribution of wealth, becomes accustomed to government provision and control. A defining characteristic of domestication is artificial selection by humans through social engineering, politically correct cultural bias, equality education, false consensus, abortion, welfare, redistributive and selective policy.
Elite Humans have brought these populations under their control & care for a wide range of reasons: to produce food or valuable commodities (such as wool, cotton, or silk), for help with various types of work (such as transportation or protection), for protection of themselves and livestock and for scientific research, such as finding cures for certain diseases or simply to enjoy as companions or ornaments.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestication
i only had to add elite to beginning of the second paragraph to make it fit…
one of the main features of domestication is the inability of the domesticated to function or survive outside of that situation. Corn cant live without humans. Nor can many show dogs, pigeons, and lots of others.
technically city people are more domesticated than country flyover folkd…
domesticated means regimened, equal… and that your home, food, and medical is taken care of for you (probably one payer).
you have no right to property
your ‘worth’ goes down when older
your not entitled to a retirement
inheritance unbalances the cage making it harder to deal with the other hamsters.
your productive capacity belongs to the farmer, and so your not allowed to do things that can hurt you like when you were free.
heck, they dont even let big animals have sex. in humans i guess they would have to split the sexes till they find each other repugnant, and then have something like in vitro and single parenthood turning kids over rather than those independent families.
you wouldn’t want your hamsters to move all over, so you have to make travel too expensive so they stay put.
end pt 1
HOW TO CATCH WILD PIGS
but that kind of information would be stored in culture and handed down, and you dont have that if we are not families, and free…. do you?
Megan: funny, I felt that same way the one and only time I went fishing and caught one. I don’t hunt, either, and probably would only do so if I were starving and had absolutely no alternative.
That said, it’s a personal thing. I have nothing against hunters, particularly when they eat the meat.
Neo said:
“Dowd appears to be implying that an income of $250,000 a year (the amount involved in the disputed tax cut extensions) constitutes vast wealth ”
One calculation I did on the figures for the Recovery act showed that it cost between 2.4 million and 5.8 million per job saved! At the upper end, you could pay a man $290,000 a year for 20 years to reach 5.8 million. So person making that much money is bad, but government spending that much money per supposed job saved is good! ( The raw numbers(cost and jobs saved) were from a yahoo article- which didn’t bother to do the math-go figure!)
lol
Its been years since I hunted-with the exception of a short half hearted attempt to kill some crows that were pulling up corn seedlings. Like someone mentioned above, it was often about the stalk or the ambush, not the actuall kill. As a kid I remember hunting with my older cousins with a squirrel dog (some people still eat those-but its a dying sport). The dog would go out ahead and tree a squirrel and then you would run thru the woods- sans rounds in the chamber-and get to the general area-often the squirrel was hiding way up there by the time you got there-or was playing tarzan jumping from tree to tree. Sometimes the squirrel would be too high in those pines for an easy kill with a 410 gauge shotgun loaded with bird shot-course i could have just been a bad shot-lol. Understand that squireels in the wild are often not half tame like those around cities- they often run from you.
A couple of weeks ago I went out to shoot my 12 gauge at non living targets-can, plastic bottle, etc-and accidently stirred up a wild rabbit-made me consider getting a liscence this year so I can thin the rabbit herd- but I suspect I would still feel bad after the kill. But I could do it if I had too. And then I would have to try my hand at cooking rabbit on the grill.
Dowd is not alone in this. All my liberal friends can talk about is the outrage of the rich getting richer. I am old enough to remember when liberals, misguided as their methods might be, wanted to lift up the bottom 10%. Now all they talk about is bringing down the top 10%.
Theres something else missing. Liberals hate the rich but not all the rich. Maybe it is just the non apologetic and indifferent rich that drive them crazy.
She is now a comic book hero. For real:
http://no-pasaran.blogspot.com/
You will have to scroll down to Saturday, Dec 4.
“On planet Liberal lions and tigers are apparently herbivores, as are the fuzzy polar bears. And there’s no need for humans to kill. Anyone can get meat without killing; just go to the supermarket. It comes wrapped up on a styrofoam tray. No killing involved.”
Years ago FoodTV had a fairly active message board I posted often on. My single most controversial comment was someone had killed a duck and wanted to know how to make it into food instead of a carcass.
IT erupted into a many page argument over the merits of supermarket meat vs wild game with respect to “morality” and what goes on. It has always been shocking to me the number of people who truly can not connect the idea that their hamburger was one a living thing, had to be killed (and killing something is inherently violent no matter how it is done), its organs removed, and then cut up into parts.
I’ve often thought that one thing that would kill a great deal of a liberals ideas is two days in a slaughter house – either that or they would come out so radical in an attempt to force their ideal world into being that they would become rabid. I think there is a reason why most hunters are conservative, there is something about taking an animals life and processing it that makes you confront what reality is – you can’t fool yourself into thinking that steak you are eating had some mystical magical way to get there.
I suspect that I am a bit older than most here. At any rate, I well remember that if you wanted to eat meat, it had to be harvested rather close to the consumer.
Sunday chicken dinner was walking around the yard on Saturday. Someone did the messy chores to turn that fowl into a dinner. Someone still does; we just aren’t involved.
Hog killing time was a big event on the farm. Usually, several families were involved because a lot of work was required to render the hogs. Someone dispatched them–hopefully with one shot. Then the messy part began. If you wanted ham and bacon, it had to be done. It still does, we just don’t see it.
Sarah Palin explained back in ’08 why hunting of caribou, and to a lesser extent moose, was so important in Alaska. I guess Dowd and others were not listening; or else the concept was too arcane for their understanding. There are no cattle herds in Alaska. There are no factory farms for chickens or pigs. (Dowd should check those out, if she has the stomach for it) Meat imported from the lower 48 is terribly expensive. The caribou herds are a very important element of their meat supply; and many Alaskans do the harvesting and the messy work of rendering. They do not hire illegal Hispanics to do it for them. The actions of the Alaskan hunter is considerably purer than those of the Urbanite who eats meat grown in horrible conditions, but which is presented in a sterile atmosphere at their market.
Vegetarians can claim to live on a different level; but, whether they actually do varies with the individual. Vegetarianism certainly does not guarantee virtue. I know because I was one for a time. Carnivores should have the decency to keep their mouths shut; especially with respect to folks who harvest animals from their natural habitat, or raise them in a free range mode.
A side note. Palin explained about the importance of the caribou as part of her defense against the other silly Leftist charge that she allowed hunting of wolves. She stated that the Alaskan wolf population must be balanced to protect the caribou herds. That too seemed beyond the comprehension of many whose dainty feet never touch grass or soil.
Of late there has been a resurgent trend to criminalize success in order to legitimize the redistribution of wealth.
This need to criminalize success is another reason why the left is obsessed with ‘growing income inequality’, when this growing inequality is actually a healthy sign of global economic integration raising the standard of living.
Dowd faults the Republicans for” taking shots at the President, including potshots and tormenting him in order to bring him down.” How terrible of them. I bet Democrats never did that with a Republican President. (Snark) Why do so many people feel they have to protect Obama? Does he need to be wrapped in cotton wool and only have nice things said about him? Does it make them racist is they would dare say anything negative about the policies and leadership style of the first African-American President? Perhaps Obama has always been applauded for mostly every thing he did his whole life. Well, grow up little Barry! Time to sit at the big boys table.
Odd the concern over movable wealth. I would like to remind everyone here that our property, at least our land, is on temporary loan from whatever corporation can acquire it in order to pay more taxes on it, according to Kelo versus New London,( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London). In spite of this no one has proposed an amendment to limit the power of the Supreme Court. Now we have a left wing extremist party laying claim to other people’s money as though they were confronting robber barons in the 1890s.
Can you see the natural progression; first they came for my neighbors land, then they made me buy health insurance I did not want, now they are coming for my bosses profits (which may cover my salary in a slow business cycle) next they may make me buy something I do not want nor can afford-for my own good, and it will reduce to me to penury and being a ward of the state, whose beneficence I will no longer be able to survive without.
When I was in college out in the hills, there was a butcher down the road from the apartment complex in which I lived. There were cows walking around the outside of the building, happily chewing grass. On the inside was a beef carcass hanging up. I had a date that night and asked for two New York strip steaks. The owner/butcher walked over to the carcass and deftly cut me off two lovely steaks, well over a pound each, which tasted great grilled and topped with sauteed mushrooms and onions.
Once, when I was a young kid, around 8 or so, we were visiting my father’s mother in West Virginia. Hanging upside down beside her house, with a .22 bullet hole in the head, was a pig. The next day, in the kitchen, were my Grandmother, aunt and Mom grinding seasoned pork meat and stuffing it into the intestines. That was some tasty, if very hot, sausage. And by hot, I mean the kind of hot where you cry while the sausage is cooking in the pan.
Now if ol’ MoDo ever saw such things, and ate the food after seeing such things, she might be taken seriously. But far too many think meat comes from plastic containers in a refrigerated section at the grocery store. I never had such illusions. Must be nice to live in such a fantasy world, though. Even after seeing all that, I still like my meat. If I knew someone who hunted, I’m sure I’d get some venison every year to make some stew. I wonder if MoDo only eats fish fillets, not whole fish? I mean, staring at that eyeball while diving into a whole fish would probably turn her stomach, or turn her vegetarian. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a vegetarian. Just means more meat and seafood for me.
Personally, I think Mrs. Palin has begun the long march towards becoming #45, and it is a fascinating thing to behold.
By the time this is all over with, we will have to redefine, or at least recalibrate, the definition of apoplexy.
More hysteria from the Left, of a piece with Operation Payback’s internet havoc, hoodlums in London attacking the Prince of Wales, the Berkeley City Council honoring Pvt. Manning, the Democrats tax revolt. This is going to get worse before it gets better, and it not clear what will be required for it to begin to get better. A failure of consequential reasoning is hard to overcome. Even if rich Leftists invested in California bonds and lost their money, they will still not be able to figure out why.
If, heaven forbid, we should get to Hobbesian state of nature, why the facts of life are conservative will be apparent to all.
My take, as a Boomer, is that BDS and PDS spring from the radical Boomers who now own the Democratic party, academia, media, and the school systems. Both Bush and Palin left the fold and therefore deserve the utmost contempt. Bush, like a good Boomer liberal, went to Yale, but then flew fighters for the National Guard and became a conservative. Here was the second Boomer president, why isn’t he a liberal?? Traitor!
Palin is even worse. While a bit young to be a real Boomer, she is the antithesis of the Boomer feminist movement. An independent (check), strong-willed (check), succesfull on her own without a man’s help (check), and yet holds traditional conservative values (OMG… what’s WRONG with her???) You can just hear the Boomer heads exploding.
Well said, Oblio.
As to what it will require to begin to get better…I am not optimistic. We are in for a long descent, as long as the Country Class keeps its head down. It is clear to me that serious bloodletting will be needed, whether symbolic or actual. Electoral victories will not suffice to quell the contemptuously violent, which includes the American Left. There is no substitute for a hammer when only a hammer will do.
Hmm…It looks more like Dowd doesn’t has a certain dislike good-looking women. Maybe she probably hasn’t gotten over being dumped for Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Sarah Palin is attractive, conservative, patriotic, and capable. And she can survive and eat well should civilization collapse. Take Dowd’s pen from her, and it’s the end of the world. No wonder Dowd is sputtering.
OOops!
Hmm…It looks more like Dowd doesn’t has a certain
dislike…
I meant:
Hmm…It looks more like Dowd
doesn’thas a certain dislike…Caribo
Life survives on death. For something to live something has to die. What do you think happens when corn is grown? I know for leftists it is hard to believe that the soil is alive with all kinds of things. We eat and we are eaten.
If you removed the predators from nature the others would grow to the point that the environment could not sustain them. They would die after they had totally decimated the environment in which they live. Leftists are extremely uneducated when it comes to nature, biology, et al.
Take a look at a beautiful reef community. There is a war going on as they eat and they are eaten.
He had not wanted to shoot. The sound
Of wings beating into the hushed morning
Had stirred his love, and the things
In his gloves froze, and he wondered,
Even famishing, could he fire? Then he fired.
Now the grace praised his wicked act. At its end
The bird on the plate
Stared at his stricken appetite.
There had been nothing to do but surrender,
To kill and to eat; he ate as he had killed, with wonder.
-Galway Kinnell, “To Christ Our Lord”
Vegetarians are just people who can’t hear carrots scream.
When i was young we lived in teh bronx, my grandparents were old country…
for special occaisions we would get our bird fresh or meat from a classical butcher.
its interesting how many times in a supermarket i see people cheated by cuts of meat that are not what they are and are arranged on the tray to look different. or how thin they are and so wont really have the full round of flavors that a real deal would have.
but i remember how my grandfather would tell me that this is why we say grace, because of what we have to do to live… and we would go to waht now would be called pollo vivo…
we would walk among the cages… and we would look at the color of the beak and eyes. how its feet were, were very important… with turkies, how red was the wattle, etc.
then the hard part… put your arm into a cage with a lot of birds and grab the one you want…
then, you have three choices… if your young like i was, and havent learned yet, you hand the bird over.
a little later, you snap his neck by swinging it around
and later, the way my family did, which is as your reaching into cage, and grab the bird, you hold it a certain way, you take it out, and if its ok, you close your hand, and hand it over to the ABATTOIR
they slit its throat, hang it to drain it, steam it, remove the feathers, and you go home and eat some of the best tasting food you EVER would have in your lifetime.
its a shame to walk the aisle and look at the chicken parts and see knuckle freeze, or black bone that was broken (ie, the birds leg was broken when it was alife, not after).
but we didnt need those cultural things…
all you have to do is compare the rabbits from watership down, with pet rabbits…
one has a culture and is free and the culture matches its survival and biology
the other has none, is a prisoner, and lives at the behest of another.
[and as a matter of trivia, rabbits can scream]
i remember real bacon…
Neo said:
Megan: funny, I felt that same way the one and only time I went fishing and caught one.
I think that’s the key right there, Neo: it was your “one and only time.” I guess most people brought up with modern values would feel the same. I don’t think there’s any argument against the fact that hunting and fishing have become, at this point, things that generally have to be taught, rather than things that are instinctual – as they are for every animal in nature; pace scifibird’s fatuous statement (“Only arrogant humans think it’s ok to take a life”), only humans, and modern humans at that, would even pause in the first place.
“I don’t hunt, either, and probably would only do so if I were starving and had absolutely no alternative.”
Fair enough. 🙂 I don’t hunt regularly myself, but I do do so on occasion – especially when this one club of mine has its annual dinner. They make a huge dish sort of like a beef wellington but with venison instead. It’s baked for almost 48 hours before they put on the pastry shell.
By the way, the whitetail is the animal responsible for more human fatalities in the United States than any other. Save a life, kill a deer.
expat asked,
“Do these people ever think?”
Well, remember what that word means according to their dictionary. So perhaps we should check with Joycelyn Elders.
Oh dear, was that racist?
Occam’s Beard said:
“On planet Liberal lions and tigers are apparently herbivores, as are the fuzzy polar bears.”
Indeed. And let’s not forget that even normal housecats quite literally torture bugs. It can take a cat over an hour to kill a palmetto bug, ripping it apart bit by bit. Cats are very cruel creatures. Or very scientific; take your pick.
“Anyone can get meat without killing; just go to the supermarket… No killing involved.”
Sadly, only a half dozen or so at best of the commenters on that Sorkin article pointed out his utterly ridiculous hypocrisy on the issue, even though many more disagreed with him on other grounds. I think it has to do with just becoming numb to the standard liberal nonsense – his position is no stupider than 99% of what we hear all the time. Most normal people skip past that sort of idiocy and look for something exceptionally – or at least uniquely – or at least recently – egregious.
We are all earthlings? Even Dennis Kucinich? /g
I think the jury’s still out on that one. Incidentally, am I the only one who flashed back to the “blow up the moon” skit with Sarah Silverman?
WE’RE EARTHLINGS, LET’S BLOW UP EARTH THINGS!