Hunting lessons, campaign 2008

"Can ah git me ah huntin' license? (with poorly imitated accent)" -John Kerry

Hunting is about MURDER. Pure and simple. If that's not true then with todays amazing software and hardware capabilities a hunter could travel in a virtual world to any place on the globe and "hunt" any "animal" they choose. The realism could be as close to real with virtual blood and what not. If hunting was about being with family and friends these places would be popular. But alas hunting is about taking a life and showing junior that animals are meant to be coaxed into view so that you can learn to blow them away without feeling any guilt.

"Hunting is about MURDER. Pure and simple." Or eating. Pure and simple. Just imagine how many animals and whole species would perish if we became a nation of herbivores? The land necessary to feed so many people on vegetables alone would require huge swathes of habitat in national forests and parks to be destroyed to grow more plants and vegetables. That wouldn't do any favors for animals.

Hunting for sport, like these people do, is killing God's creatures.

What do I have to do to get a post? Susan is so right. I don't like any kind of killing unless its to sustain or protect a life.

Yeah Jeff,

It's so very important that we elect our Presidents based on more stupid (stuff) like how someone looks when they go hunting (Kerry) or who you'd rather have a beer with (Bush).

Thanks to the Rupert Murdoch/Rush Limbaugh led rightwing media clown show crowd, this country has had to deal with 7+ years of the most worthless, souless, pathetically inept Presidency in our history.

The swamp was right to try educating the Whole Foods shoppers in the blog arena about hunging.
Hunt for sport? Not the people Obama disdains.
They hunt for FOOD!
This shows just how out of touch with everyday Americans the Gobamas are.
They're also out of touch with feminism--because the equal rights amendment wasn't just about women--it was about MEN TOO.
Yet another example that this nationally unvetted candidate cannot be the top of our ticket. HRC is NOT the enemy.
What’s wrong with waiting 8 years, Obama and Gobamas? Wait for LBJ’s 3rd generation of Dixiecrats to kick the bucket.
I used to say that. And I may say that again.
But, give a listen to the audio posted by Mayhill Fowler (the not so pretty girl recently on the bus who savvily recorded the disturbing speech in California).
It’s a disturbing speech and shaking a ‘you are naughty’ finger at Hilary Clinton will not work.
In fact, the whole strategy for ‘dealing’ with his comment disturbs me even more.
Because, there seems to be a pattern emerging from not just the Obama campaign, but from the lips of Obama himself:
Exclude from the ‘movement’ or otherwise silence the non-enthusiastic or
‘offending’ middle aged white or elderly women.
Listen to the audio Mayhill recorded—and be sure to thank her and show your support for her. She will need it, if Tavis Smiley is any example of how people non-conforming to the Obama message of ‘hope’ get treated.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mayhill-fowler/obama-exclusive-audio-on_b_96333.html
His comments to the crowd that we need ‘new people’ in the Democratic party kind of chilled me to the bone. I find him very intolerant. I find his campaign intolerant. He responded to a question about his ability to really unite the party after such a divisive campaign by saying that “people get their feelings hurt” and they’ll be back (basically).
I don’t think that’s the case. People left his campaign because we felt it was using the wrong strategy and felt (but couldn’t quite put our finger on WHY it was fundamentally wrong-minded.
In his speech last night, in which he mentioned that ‘abstinence” and teaching appropriate behavior would be a good idea—heck—the people he BASHED last night have been speaking about this stuff for years! In fact, the Planned Parenthood crowd in Kalamazoo, Michigan (who later came to Chicago) managed to get a K-12 systematic sex education curriculum passed in the late 1970s. The JOHN BIRCH society worked to get it removed from the schools—and the Planned Parenthood clinic was actually bombed.
Would 70s style peaceful activists be part of the mature crowd Obama now wants replaced with his Gobama crowd? No. Not if he can help it.
That’s what it’s looking like to me.
Particularly when I heard Obama last night say talk about the pro-choice people he said were reluctant to infuse a “moral dimension’ into the abortion issue.
Patently false. Shame on Barack Obama.
Shame on him also for the recent clarification that in fact he DID attend a Muslim school (the public schools in Indonesia were like the community—women didn’t have to wear the veil, but…) seems like he was earlier being less than forthcoming. Even in liberal Islamic settings, women have a back of the bus status. I do NOT think Obama has been honest enough about this.
I think he’s sexist. Not just for the relentless bashing of Geraldine Ferraro, but for something really revealing in his speech last night, he ‘could not remember’ whether he’d had a conversation with his daughters about God. Well, if you’re in a 50’s throwback marriage where mommy is the main person interacting with the kids when they’re not in the expensive, enriching U of C daycare---then you perhaps are leaving a lot of that stuff to the wifey.
And perhaps that’s why Michelle (back when she let reporters cover her fund-raising) cut loose with the “ladies against women” style rant against Hilary (“How can she handle the White House when she ‘can’t manage’ her own house (sic).”)
The problem with sexism or any ‘ism’ is the elitism at its heart.
But there’s another reason why the Obamas must mature more before they’re at the top of the ticket.
They’ve let the newfound celebrity go to their heads.
Call it the ‘diva factor’.
Bonnie Raitt (you might remember she and Jackson Browne played a New Hampshire benefit for John Edwards’ superior approach—since adopted by Hilary Clinton—regarding nuclear power, greenhouse gases, and whatnot) chafed at being called a diva on a blues show last night. She said it reminded her of the old saw “Don’t look Miss Ross in the eye as she heads on stage.”
Barack Obama as diva.
Annie Oakley at least was a class act.

- - - - - - - - -

The land necessary to feed so many people on vegetables alone would require huge swathes of habitat in national forests and parks to be destroyed to grow more plants and vegetables. That wouldn't do any favors for animals.

Posted by: Jeff | April 14, 2008 4:13 PM

Once again Jeff get's the facts wrong.

I'm no vegetarian, but that doesn't change the fact that the land we use to farm to provide animal feed would actually be much more efficiently used to grow food directly for human consumption. There would actually be less land required to feed us, not more.

http://cires.colorado.edu/~maurerj/vegetarian.htm

"Raising livestock for meat is one of the most inefficient uses of land. One acre of land could produce 50,000 pounds of tomatoes, 40,000 pounds of potatoes, 30,000 pounds of carrots or just 250 pounds of beef. To produce a year's supply of beef for a family requires over 260 gallons of fossil fuel, or approximately one gallon of gasoline per pound of grain-fed beef. Finally, it takes 2,500 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef; to produce one pound of wheat requires 25 gallons. "

I still love meat, but that doesn't excuse Jeff's twisting of the facts.

said it reminded her of the old saw “Don’t look Miss Ross in the eye as she heads on stage.”
Barack Obama as diva.
Annie Oakley at least was a class act.

Posted by: Sojourner Truth | April 14, 2008 4:41 PM

HEY, WHERE ARE THE SWAMP MONITORS?!?!

How long are you going to let this idiot (see above comment) continue to spam your blog????????

I dunno where some of you get your information from, but eliminating hunting would not give wild animals with high reproduction rates, like rabbits and deer, a better life.

Most would simply die on roads as nature clashes with human interference in their habitats.

Growing up in Pennsylvania I saw way too many automobile versus deer accidents and the both human and animal carnage they left behind to ever be convinced that the deer population should not be culled through sensible sport hunting done for food.
I'm sure the people in the audience from Wisconsin, Iowa and downstate Illinois would agree that hitting deer with cars and trucks instead of hunting them with guns and arrows doesn't give the animal any more humane a death.

More crazy scare tactics from Jeff, I see. What an absurd, laughable and patently false claim you just made. Hilarious!

Where's Mitt "Varmint Hunter" Romney when you need him?

Luke, there's no twisting of the facts at all, there. Whether it's more efficient to grow wheat than raise beef cattle or not (and I NEVER compared the two) it doesn't change the fact that HABITATS would have to be destroyed to make room to feed a nation of herbivores. They would.

Species that are already dying and live in places like national forests and parks would be hardest hit because those untouched habitats would have to be turned to farmland to feed the huge increase in demand.

It's not one or the other, Luke. Cows can always graze areas that are unsuitable for planting. That's why cattle farming was a staple of our growing nation. Were you asleep in school when they taught the course on why cattle production became big business in the west? Because it can be done ANYWHERE on land deemed unsuitable for other products (crops) in our early agricultural economy?

Livestock is not the biggest evil in the world, no matter what you have heard. Old growth forest is being cut every day to grow soy, sugar, corn, and bamboo to feed the "green" ideal. Just because something is defined as "green" doesn't mean it is.

A study from a Cornell University using ecological footprint analysis (a calculation of the land area required to produce enough energy and resources to support an average person's consumption habits) suggests that eating a little meat is ecologically more efficient than eating a vegetarian diet.

All in all, they found that the land available in the state of New York could feed more people if everyone ate around 63 grammes of meat/eggs per day than if everyone ate a higher fat vegetarian diet.
Here's the full study: http://journals.cambridge.org//action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=1091328&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S1742170507001767

I grow tired of being told I'm trying to scare people and told I don't know what I'm talking about by people who clearly haven't studied the subject NEARLY as much as I have, too. So Susan Whitehurst do yourself a favor and keep quiet, okay? You'll be less embarassed in the long run. Luke, I've given you a landmark research university study as evidence. Do you really want to argue a point that even you, yourself, don't believe in?

Another one for Susan Whitehurst or whatever her real name is. Scottish man proposes 80 square mile wilderness reserve with natural ecosystem including reintroducing native animals like wolves. European Union rejects proposal because it is cruel to let animals eat each other. Pathetic.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/04/14/eamoose114.xml

I only support the killing of delicious animals.

Herbie--don't torture the logic impaired.
I do hope people can see there's a huge difference between agri-chemical farms (like the ones Obama's delivered the pork, er earmarks for in the land o lincoln) and the organic farmer, the hunter, the cheese-eater, the middle aged women and men the arugula smoothie swilling one disdains?

Hunting was done by Native Americans to feed their people; it was not done for sport or waste. Moreover, only a select group of a tribe did the hunting.

In these times of waste - where the government actually pays farmers to not grow crops or to destroy crops to accommodate the market, it is pitiful that a nation such as ours cannot feed the entire world on just what we throw away, both in meat and vegetation.

We need to restrict hunting, and only allow it in dire times of lean necessity. Those families whose ancestors hunted probably did so what of necessity, not as a sport.

When the VP Chney hunts, he probably is not bringing the felled animal home to be made into vittles. That in itself speaks of a sadistic bent to his personality - where he gets pleasure out of killing for sport, maybe compensating for his lack of bravado since he dodged serving his country.

"We need to restrict hunting, and only allow it in dire times of lean necessity."
Posted by: the truth | April 14, 2008 7:22 PM

The truth is that you're an ignoramous. Hunting (which is strictly liscensed and controlled by the way) culls populations of prey animals, like deer, elk, rabbit etc. Without hunting, these species would over populate then starve. So hunting (whether for sport or necessity) serves the function that now depleted species of wolves, coyotes and cougars used to serve.

Furthermore, there are many people for whom hunting has always been (even today) an important source of food and extra income. And I don't mean just Indians. Many people living in the Northern Great lakes region (Michigan, Minnesota, northern Wisconsin) for example hunt by necessity... and always have.

Truth, I'm glad you're not going out on a rhetorical limb with that "probably" or anything.

What do you say about the clashes of habitat and rapidly reproducing herds? Do more deer, and occasionally people, getting killed by cars and trucks in downstate Illinois, Iowa and Wisconsin make their fates somehow better?

Or what about the rodent population here in Chicago? It's particularly bad this year.