Stray Animals and the Poor

This week, the lieutenant governor of South Carolina, Andre Bauer, compared children who get subsidized school lunches to animals when he told a story about his grandmother instructing him not to feed stray animals. "You know why?" he asked in a speech, "Because they breed! You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a human ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that."

Like Missouri State Representative Cynthia Davis, who last year opposed government programs to feed hungry children and famously said “hunger can be a positive motivator,” Bauer, who pointed out the correlation between low test scores in school and children who receive subsidized lunches, concluded that it is free lunches that cause the low test scores, and not poverty.

Commentators have pointed out the insensitivity and ignorance of Bauer’s remarks and the inevitable conclusion: that starving poor children will reduce poverty because it will stop them from breeding.

Bauer, who plans on running for governor of South Carolina, has now apologized for his choice of metaphors, but stands by the sentiment—that providing food or assistance to the poor keeps them dependent, and thus contributes to the continuation of poverty.

But on top of apologizing for insulting the poor by comparing them to stray animals, and implying that too much free food is to blame for their poverty, perhaps Bauer should consider apologizing to animals for his faulty logic in the first place.

Why does Bauer (or his uneducated grandmother who originally taught him this lesson) think that the problem of stray animals lies in their being fed?

Dogs and cats are stray not because they are fed too much, or even because they reproduce too much. They are stray because they have been abandoned, and prior to their abandonment, they were most likely bred by someone who wanted to profit off of the birth of puppies or kittens, wanted to experience the “beauty of birth,” or simply did not take the responsible position and spay or neuter their companion animal.

That stray animals breed is a function of the fact that they were never neutered or spayed—this, like the fact that they were abandoned, is not the fault of the animal but the “owner” who was responsible for them.

Animals are stray not because they breed, or because they are fed too much, but because no one cared enough about them to start with. They were intentionally, carelessly, or casually bred, and were then left to fend for themselves when caring for them became too much work.

According to the Humane Society of the United States, 6-8 million former companion animals enter animal shelters every year, and of those, 3-4 million are euthanized. Many of those animals were surrendered by their families, and many were found as strays, wandering city streets. In either case, these animals were once bred or allowed to breed, by humans, and were ultimately abandoned to fend for themselves.

That Bauer, or anyone else who shares Bauer’s sentiments, could assume that feeding unwanted animals is what causes or even exacerbates the problem is not just ignorant and insensitive, but cruel. While feeding a stray animal will not solve the problem of homeless animals—spay/neuter programs, public education, increased shelter adoptions, and legislation mandating responsible care and treatment of companion animals are needed for that—it can certainly make one hungry animal’s life a little bit easier. That the potential future governor of South Carolina would deny hungry animals food, just as he would deny hungry children food, is a scary thought indeed.

Insane right wing bits

The last couple of days have seen so much right-wing insanity it seems much more efficient to just include them all in one post.


--South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford is one of a handful of Republic governors (including Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alaska, and Idaho) who is planning on turning down the federal dollars--most earmarked for education--for his state included in the Stimulus package. This will result in the loss of 7,500 teachers and the continued state of disrepair for South Carolina schools. (Democratic Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell says that those governors who turn down stimulus funds in a recession are not putting their citizens' welfare first, and are not acting in accordance with Christian values.)
--Fox News crackpot Glenn Beck blames liberal "political correctness" and the "disenfranchisement" of conservatives during the Obama administration for the killing rampage in Alabama.
--Ari Fleischer, the former press secretary for the Bush administration, publically said that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11.
--Republican Congressman David Vitter and John Shadegg are proposing a new stimulus plan that would reinvigorate the economy by opening up new areas of protected land for oil drilling, and would remove many of the environmental regulations that oil companies dislike.
--Republican party head Michael Steele once again stuck his foot into his mouth when he said that abortion should be a woman's choice during an interview with GQ Magazine; he later had to apologize and "clarify" his statements.
--Republicans have been up in arms about President Obama's use of teleprompters, as if teleprompters are some sort of new agey, left wing conspiracy (and as if every Republican lawmaker does not rely on them).
--Cook County (Illinois) Republican Chair Gary Skoien was evidently caught by his wife cavorting with two prostitutes in his children's playroom
--Chuck Norris wants to run for the President of Texas, once Texas secedes from the United States.


But in better news:


--President Obama signed an executive order rescinding George Bush's ban on federally funded embryonic stem cell research; this order will mean that scientists can now use stem cells from embryos created for in vitro fertilization procedures, and which would have been otherwise destroyed, in order to find the cures for human diseases.
--The White House is reviewing the idiotic "Don't ask, don't tell" policy that has resulted in the firing of over 12,500 gay service members (and 11 in January alone) since it was made official policy in 1993. Let's hope they make the right decision and scrap it entirely.
--President Obama this week created a White House Council on Women and Girls in order to address issues that specifically impact women

Let the Republicans have their disgusting new leader

Since Michael Steele's groveling apology to Rush Limbaugh for daring to say that his ugly, incendiary radio show is ugly and incendiary, conservatives and liberals alike are saying that Steele's reign as leader of the GOP is coming to a quick end, and that Limbaugh is now the defacto leader of the party.

(By the way, we can all follow Steele and other apologists like Congressman Phil Gingrey and South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, and can send our own apologies to Rush via the website I'm Sorry Rush.)

I hope all Republicans are excited about these developments, and about their new leader Rush.

I'm sure that they're thrilled, for example, that they have as their new King a man who says that
poverty levels are lower today than in the 1950s, that the poorest Americans are better off than middle class Europeans, that nicotine is not addictive, that condoms don't protect against AIDS, that there are more Native Americans alive today than when America was colonized, that American women were better off before feminism, and that Sarah Palin is qualified to be President. You certainly can't argue with facts like these!

So Republicans: congratulations!

How does Joe the Motherfucking Plumber have a book?

I know this isn't new news, but I guess I haven't been following Oprah's book club lately, and didn't realize that Joe the Plumber has "written" a book.

It's been reported that this douchebag, who is now one of the leading experts in the Republican party on such diverse topics as the economic disaster and the Palestinian/Israeli confict, has been doing readings at book stores to less than full crowds.

Yet my question is: how did he even get a book deal to start with? How did this semi-employed plumber manage to write one, and get it accepted and published within the few short months since he's enjoyed his fame? And why did anyone--anyone at all--show up at his book signings?

If I sound a bit bitter, it's because I am.

I've written or co-written six books, and all of them have taken years' of work, and sometimes dozens and dozens of rejection letters from publishers and agents. And then, once the books made it into print, publicizing them is yet more work, as is trying to get people to buy the books. So Joe's dozen attendees at his recent book signing at a Borders' in DC, while not Stephen King-worthy, is still pretty good, for a man who until a few months ago was an unknown plumber.

Granted, it appears that Joe hasn't gotten a lot of reviews for the book. In fact, in the "editorial reviews" section of the book's Amazon page, where reviews from Publishers' Weekly and Booklist are typically posted, Joe the Plumber: Fighting for the American Dream has posted quotes from folks like Margaret, who writes: "I had some major goosebumps several times. Read this book! You will be truly inspired" or from Glynnis who says " I just finished reading Joe's book and all I can say is WOW! I love how he thinks and expresses himself. I laughed during every chapter - it was so entertaining!"

Well, at least I didn't have to rely on my friends to write things like "I laughed, and I cried" as a substitute for my books' editorial reviews.

Nutbag conservatives hopping aboard the fail wagon

Unbelievably, more prominent Republicans are joining Rush Limbaugh in openly hoping that President Obama fails.

Oh, they say that they don't want him to fail in bringing the global economy back from the edge of disaster. They say they want his policies to fail, or as the Red State blog states, they want him to fail at "destroying liberty and freedom," since that is so obviously our communist President's intent. In fact, if Obama succeeds, that will result in, according to these crazies, the failure of the American dream, and, in fact, America itself.

For me, the American dream is about freedom, and liberty, and democracy, and equality, and human rights for all. What George Bush gave us, on the other hand, was a steady erosion of those freedoms in favor of a system in which corporate pals of the President accumulated vast amounts of wealth at the expense of the environment, the economy, and the vast majority of Americans.

What a disgusting bunch of selfish hypocrites. After they've championed policies for the past eight years that resulted in a astounding wealth for the few and greater poverty for the many, the gutting of this nation's environmental laws, a ginormous deficit, and a loss of civil freedoms, they pretend as if President Obama's policies will make things worse?

At least it will make it harder for Republicans to accuse Democrats, as they typically do, of being anti-American.

Stimulus package debate: Do Republicans want economy to fail?

So Obama's stimulus package, now filled with far more Republican-added tax breaks (which economists agree won't help the economy in the long term but which make Republicans look like they care about "main street"), is being debated in the Senate, with a vote expected tomorrow.

And even though economists (or, as the Republicans like to say, Socialists) maintain that direct spending on infrastructure is what is needed to stimulate the economy, Republicans continue to cut billions in proposed spending on education (who needs that?) and aid to states in the form of funds for health care, energy, roads, and other infrastructure. So ultimately, the bill that will be voted on (and which will be opposed by all but three moderate Republicans), will be a much worse bill, that will do far less, than the original House bill.

It's awfully easy to look at Republicans adding ridiculous amendments and removing important features from a bill they're going to oppose anyway, and think that they do it because they want the economy to fail. They certainly don't seem to want it to improve, given that their own proposal involves doing exactly the same thing that got us into this boat: cutting taxes for the wealthy. Because that will surely fix things this time.

And in other news, Obama bumped his head on Air Force One while traveling to sell the stimulus package to Americans!