Happy As Kings

Puppy mills: Missouri legislature deaf to "will of the people"

For the second time since my husband retired to our military "home of record," the Missouri legislature is working to overturn a voter initiated proposition.  This time, the legislators want to reduce regulation of "puppy mills."

Voters as nuisances: Missouri lawmakers thumb their noses at direct democracy, 27 January 2011, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

What happened to the great conservative tantrum about the best government governing least?

One of our daughters is a veterinarian at a shelter and among her duties is the need to evaluate animals seized from some of these torture mills by workers from the Department of Agriculture. By "evaluate" I mean that she looks into their blinded eyes, smells their stink, touches the raw ends of exposed nerves and sees the dogs recoil, peers into festering mouths. Dogs come in with their blackened teeth rotted so far into the gum that the dog's jawbone crackles and breaks.  Some have ulcers on their eyeballs so that they are blind.  Some are missing feet.  Howsabout skin and muscle rotted to the bone?  Starvation? Some of the animals have skin that is burned from laying in their own shit and piss. 

Calling what some dogs lay in "feces and urine" papers over the putrefaction, removes the reek, sanitizes the stench of the inhumane treatment these chained and caged creatures cannot escape.  Nothing spares the dogs from months of maggots munching away at their very bodies, so where is the dignity in protecting our tender feelings from the words?  (I've spared you direct views of the pictures.)  Readers who have made it this far can click and close the window and the horror show is over, but for some of the animals, the only escape is the oblivion after the process of death by minutes that turn into hours, and days and weeks, months or god help them, years.

And as for allowing up to 180 days for a breeder to correct "serious" violations, imagine waiting six months for relief while marinating in your own filth -- without knowing that there was relief, without knowing about paperwork, without knowing that there was any end.

If the legislature won't work to protect these creatures over which some people claim dominion, then the voters must try -- even if it just means insisting upon enforcement of laws already on the books.

Homeschooling as a Form of Child Abuse

I'm glad I discovered that making people angry is the point of the blog with the above title as a post.  Now I needn't reply.  If you want to give the blog traffic, Google will take you there.

I'm also glad I never had to put up with that teaching style ... and I was in the Army.

Sarah Palin as "poor me"

Without meaning to, yesterday morning I saw the teleprompter reading by Sarah Palin concerning the assassination attempt/murders in Arizona.  The historicity behind the "blood libel" reference aside, what came across to me was that Mrs. Palin seemed to be saying that the true victim of the Arizona tragedy was herself, almost as if someone manufactured the atrocity to make her look bad.

I can't say that I watch any political programs because I don't like being party to my own manipulation. Although I comprehend that any post-production televised material is theatrically adjusted, its emotional content always sneaks past my mental political gatekeeper, so I avoid political theater, whether it fits with my conception of the world or challenges what I see.  I prefer the mute company of a newspaper.  Because of this, I'm not a seasoned Palin-watcher, or watcher of anything other than Dr. Who, Castle or Leonard and Sheldon. When I'm watching entertainment, though, I know the emotional manipulation is supposed to be part of the fun, like manufactured dancy double-entendre bubblegum music.  

To me, the double-entendre emotional load of Mrs. Palin, Inc.'s production concerning the Arizona tragedy was a horning in to the spotlight and tugging the victim shroud away from the dead:  Don't look at them, look at poor me. 

Why wasn't a written news-realease sufficient?

Even though I think that the assassin/murderer's intent may hold as much water as the intent of John Lennon's murderer, the coincidence of an assassination attempt on a target in Mrs. Palin's publicized crosshairs should give us pause and we should take the opportunity to consider what level of civility we wish to live with. 

Thought For the Day from this morning's newspaper:

Noble natures can adapt themselves to any change without loss of dignity; but those who are naturally insignificant make themselves ridiculous by taking refuge in their own sense of self-importance.

Margaret Sackville, poet and author

Read a book some people would like to ban, ...

... a cookbook.

A War on Good Taste, 31 Dec. 2010, Wall Street Journal

You see, the Barefoot Contessa is peddling disease and ruin, having published one of the unhealthiest cookbooks of the year.

Or at least that's the story published in a number of newspapers, thanks to columnists reprinting the "findings" of a "report" put out by a Washington activist group that styles itself the "Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine." A spokesman for the group denounced Ms. Garten and other celebrity chefs, such as Gordon Ramsay of "Hell's Kitchen" fame, for using "some of the worst possible ingredients." Among the poisonous compounds enumerated? Butter and cream.

I'm not in favor of unlimited butter and cream.  To be healthy, we 'just' need balance, in our food and in our lives (not always an easy thing to do).  

I'm also not in favor of mistreating food-production animals, but perhaps a good life on a well-maintained family-type farm would be preferable to no life at all (not that the non-existent animals would know)?  Or maybe I just like a world in which there are nosy brown-eyed cows gathering along a fence to watch any out-of-the-ordinary event (such as a person walking along the road).  Without a use for these cows, it's unlikely that humans would go to the trouble of keeping them around and we'd crowd them out like we do the other earthlings for which we have no specific use.

I don't own any of Ina Garten's cookbooks, and my cookbook shelves are over-full, but I may have to make room for one more.