To Kill or Not to Kill

Tempers and emotions run high in the U.S. over the slaughtering of horses. The process of killing them is highly scrutinized for being inhumane, but the alternative may be just as bad.

A bill passed through Congress on November 18^th lifted a five-year ban on slaughtering horses for meat. There is widespread support to try to stop this from happening.

The Humane Society has started a horse slaughter petition. “It is vital that we renew our push to pass the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act that will prohibit horse slaughter from returning to the U.S. and end the export of American horses for slaughter,” said the Humane Society in a statement on their website.

Terry Shine, runs a horse rescue operation in Live Oak, FL. “It’s awful, just awful. I’ve seen the videos. They took videos in the kill plants from 2004-2007,” said Shine. “The horses cry. They use a bolt gun to kill them and sometimes it doesn’t work. They hung a colt up by his hind legs while he was still alive. It’s all in the video.”

Though, the process may not be that humane, it pales in comparison to what the horses are going through because of the ban. The country is flooded with horses that don’t receive the proper care they deserve. Horses starve and suffer from poor treatment. And the ban isn’t saving all of them. They are still being slaughtered only now they have to be hauled long distances for slaughter in either Mexico or Canada.

“Ending the kill market made it so you can’t give a horse away. People are letting ‘em loose.  I sold two horses at the cow sale for $54, and that wasn’t each, that was for both of them. Didn’t cover the cost of having the vet pull the Coggins test so I could transport them,” said Vinnie Seccafico, old horse-trader from the 60’s and 70’s, horse breaker, trainer and farrier.

PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) founder, Ingrid Newkirk, supports the decision to lift the ban. “There was a rush to pass a bill that said you can’t slaughter them anymore in the United States. But the reason we didn’t support it, which sets us almost alone, is the amount of suffering that it created exceeded the amount of suffering it was designed to stop,” she said on the Christian Science Monitor.

This is a good development for the horse market and for horse owners. New and more humane slaughtering factories will be opening up in the U.S. bringing back lost businesses. Nebraska, North Dakota, Georgia and Missouri are considering opening slaughter plants. “My boy saw it on the internet. Got to get out there and buy me some horses while the prices are still cheap,” said Calvin Yates, a long-time cowboy and horse trader from St. Cloud, FL.

It’s a tough call and a controversial subject. Everyone loves the thought of a wild horse running free across the open prairie. But the plain fact of the matter is there are too many horses right now in the United States. And the reason the market is flooded is the bill that shut down the killer plants.

citizen Journalists

The new wave of citizen journalists are the heart and soul of what is taking place in the Middle East.
Citizen journalists have the ability to work around Government structures meant for censorship. A news organization’s IP address can be shut down by the Government, but someone with a cell phone calling a sat phone to a proxy server in California is exempt from these restrictions.
These citizen reporters bring a new tool for the media to cover an event, even if it’s broadcasted through the camera of a cell phone. In places like Syria, that don’t allow foreign correspondents inside their country it is a necessary weapon in the fight for freedom.
Censorship may be a driving force in still many places of the world, but as we have seen through the Arab Spring it is a diminishing force and may one day become limited to self censorship.

Chinese Weibos

Through the advancement of technology it’s getting harder for China to suppress what their people can
say or hear.

China is one of the most controlling countries in the world. However, they do have freedom of speech, but there are ways for their Government to sensor almost any news that they want.

China has a law that they can suppress any information they feel will reveal secrets to the outside world. This gives them free reign to stop any information from being printed in the news that may threaten the control of their regime.

But with the advancement of technology the Government can’t stop news from leaking out to the public. Recently a train crashed in Beijing and the Government tried to cover it up, but the people who saw it happen immediately spread word of it through the use of microblogs called weibos. This attempted cover-up revealed corruption in the railway corporation and made their government look weak for not being able to stop the information from spreading. The Chinese railway system is the fourth largest business in the world. It has more employees than Wall-Mart and the U.S. Government. They have their own court system and police force. In an attempt to cover up the train crash they buried the railway cars.

Weibos are a Chinese form of Twitter that are becoming extremely popular there, and they can spread the information to thousands of people in minutes. “I call it the microblogging revolution,” said Zhan Jiang, a professor of international
journalism and communications at Beijing Foreign Studies Institute. Zhang said that microbloggers have played more and more of a major role in coverage, especially breaking news.

Government minders frequently delete posts they don’t want to spread, but there are many ways around this problem. Weibos get reposted so fast and the screenshot gets saved making it hard for the Government to delete posts. If a post uses a word like human rights the system automatically deletes it. So far the weibos are still up and running and gaining in popularity.

The Chinese try to keep control, and they have some control over Weibos, but it is limited. Weibos do have over 200 million users, so shutting it down would make their people unhappy and would cause a huge loss in profit from advertising.

It’s sort of a steam valve for the Chinese people to let them vent on these forums. They think if people get to complain on them it will make up for their repression.

It is not certain what China’s Government will do to try to stop weibos from letting their people spread information freely. Past events have shown the amount of brutality they are willing to enforce to keep control.

The protests at Tiananmen Square weren’t successful in getting the word out to the army stationed in rural areas. With the ability of their people to communicate freely and organize quickly with weibos, we could eventually see another Tiananmen
Square.

Florida Spearheading the Fight Against Obamacare

Even though, Florida has the third most uninsured residents in the country Governor Rick Scott recently turned down federal money related to the Obama health care plan.

Pam Bondi, Florida’s Attorney General filed a lawsuit against President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform, claiming that the bill is
unconstitutional.

Scott ran for Governor as an opponent to Obamacare, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that he is rejecting grant money that is tied to it. During his run for office, Scott went on Newsmax.tv and said, “Obamacare will be a job killer. Employers will not be able to cover the cost of their employees and be forced to move their jobs overseas.”

However, Scott kept some of the money that was offered to the state. He kept $13 million for an abstinence education grant, but he turned down $11 million in funding to educate teens about pregnancy and HIV.

Justice Roger Vinson of the U.S. District Court in Pensacola ruled against healthcare reform and called it unconstitutional. A Virginia judge ruled similarly to Vinson, and Obamacare will be taken up by the Supreme Court of Appeals.

In response to Vinson’s ruling Pam Bondi said in her weekly newsletter, “I am encouraged by the judge’s response to our arguments that the health care law’s Medicaid expansion unconstitutionally coerces the states by forcing them to assume billions in uncompensated Medicaid costs. The health care law vastly exceeds Congress’s legitimate authority.”

Bondi ran for office with the intention of upholding the constitution and fighting the federal health care law, and she’s kept her word by taking on Obamacare.

Republicans called the bill a tax. Obama’s administration recently came out saying that it is a tax, but they’re allowed
under the constitution to raise taxes to pay for the bill.

Bondi adamantly forced the issue on her website that the health care bill goes against the constitution by forcing Americans to purchase healthcare. “Simply put, the federal government failed to justify Congress’s decision, for the first time in American history, to force citizens to purchase a product,” said Bondi.

Vermont’s Democratic Representative Peter Welch is working to defend the bill. He went on CBSNEWS and said, “We can fight and take a stand to defend the healthcare provisions that make a difference to American people.” One of the provisions he talked about was patients with preexisting
conditions being able to receive affordable insurance under the reform.

The health care bill is being challenged in more than 20 states. It isn’t certain whether the courts will rule against Obamacare or not. If they rule that it upholds the constitution, there could be a change in policy for the Governor and attorney general.

Michele Bachmann

Michele Bachmann just announced her presidential bid. I would like to discuss something that I have yet to see discussed about her. How can someone be a conservative if they have 23 foster kids? The foster care program is a totally liberal program. There are some good foster parents out there. Bachmann is probably a decent mother, but the amount of tax payers money she recieves for these kids has to be astounding. For one child a foster parent can make up to $30,000 a year. The foster care program is a broken program that turns children into paychecks for the foster parent to spend on themselves. Bachmann needs to go on tv and give back some of this taxpayer money. If not, she is a bad person and even worse a hypocrite to the conservative party.

Jobs?

The economy is kind of out of control right now.  It’s really hard to find work even if you have a degree. There are people everywhere with Bachelor’s degrees working as waiters or bartenders with outrageous debts from student loans.  In a sense if you’re not extremely talented it’s probably not a good idea to go into a career field other than nursing or information technology. But with the way things are going those jobs could start to disappear as well. It makes more sense to start selling marijuana than to enroll in college. It would even be better to skip high school and start working at McDonalds. A manager at McDonalds can pull down about 40,000 dollars a year with a G.E.D. and no student loans.  There are certain parts of some states like Texas that aren’t still feeling the recession, but it’s hard to move somewhere when you don’t have a job. Sorry, I guess I had a case of the Mondays.

Not My Beer Comercials

There’s a Bill in Congress to stop all alcohol adds. I don’t think it would stop anyone from drinking, and I love em. There is strong support to petition these ads due to the fact that the number one killer of college students is drunk driving. There is also the fact that smoking decreased substantially after cigarette ads were banned. However, the banning of those ads coincided with a loss in popularity and public awareness of the dangers of smoking. There is still plenty of product placements of cigarettes in movies and tv shows to make up for the commercials. If you ask me I would say that product placement has a much stronger appeal for minors. If a kid watches a celebrity that they idolize smoke it may cause them to light up. What’s next McDonalds, And where would we be without TV ads for Hooters, incontinence pants, Go Daddy or Levitra “woody” pills?

What the Cut

The new budget is calling for cuts throughout Washington that will affect all of us. Cuts are being made to squeeze funding from education, public facilities, transportation, the E.P.A. and other programs. These cuts will seriously have some kind of effect on all of us. However, no one is taking in account all of the downsizing that will take place throughout Washington. The Republican Party is for smaller government, but they would have to be naive to think that these cuts could be seen as a good thing. One of if not the most important duties of our Government is to serve as a watchdog to make sure our liberties as Americans are being upheld. This is what separates us from an illiberal democracy like Iran or Russia. Americans are guaranteed certain constitutional liberties, like that whole freedom of speech thing. Our economy is rebounding. If you disagree, just look back at 2008. But we still hold a large deficit which must be paid. This deficit was caused by less Government control of Wall Street. They were allowed to give out bogus loans to try to make as much profit for themselves without thinking about the consequences they would have. The state of California is in debt over deregulation of Energy. The private sector did everything they could to steal money from the state by causing power outages and constantly raising the price of electricity. This is what caused them to go 90 billion dollars in debt. Even if you’re a Republican you can’t possible think less government control over the banks and electricity were good things. I’m not opposed to cutting military spending or say spending cuts to homeland security or some cuts to Washington. But the budget cuts proposed by Paul Ryan go too far in cutting down Washington and also cutting middleclass Americans medical benefits.  Ryan wants to try to fix the economy without raising taxes, but the tax cuts for the rich put in place by Busch are also part of the reason for our deficit. Could the Republicans please stop trying to take money from the large majority middleclass and giving it to the wealthy 1%.

Wall-Mart

I was in Wall-Mart and two fat ladies walked by at the same time knocking boxes of cereal from the shelves. It was an amazing sight to see the items on the shelves seem to bend in time and space when their bodies bumped into them. At least they weren’t riding those mobile-buggies I see around everywhere. But in all actuality, all of them were probably occupied. I was at Wall-Mart after all. With the steady increase in obesity I think I need to invest in the Rascal and Hoverround. With all our pooplation slowly starting to look like the people in the movie Wallie, I don’t see how this plan could fail.

Oh Florida

60% of Floridians are now dissatisfied with Governor Rick Scott. It’s hard to get 60% of the people here to agree on anything. He’s only been in office for four months, so that’s a complete 180 degree change in popularity. The reason this guy was elected is because if something gets shown enough times on TV people will probably believe it. In his ads he spent a record amount of money claimed he would create 400,000 jobs. Come on, some of the population should have known that was all b.s. In a poll during the election more people said they would vote for Sarah Palin than those that said they thought she was qualified. Popularity does count for a lot. “My Plummer thinks I should vote for this guy, so that’s who I’m going with.” A large amount of people here, cough, cough, Baptists, cough, tend to get their political advice from church. It’s always nice to go into church and get told who to vote for. So, God told you who to vote for, but he didn’t say to stop raping little boys or stop cheating on your taxes? All the States in the South are referred to as “The Bible Belt” and Florida is definitely the buckle on that badboy, and that belt is getting stretched out from all of the Golden Corral we consume. I was in KFC not too long ago, and I had to leave because an obese woman was arguing with the cashier because she couldn’t substitute her vegetable for extra gravy.  I got this picture in my head of her dipping her chicken in the gravy, and I was no longer hungry.