Found here

Palin disregards the environment

By JOHN TEEL
Special to the Courier Press
Tuesday, September 16, 2008

I shudder at the thought of Sarah Palin as vice president because I live in Alaska and know how violently misaligned Alaskan culture is with the rest of the United States. Not only is there an entire country physically separating Alaska from the United States, but there is a cultural divide just as wide.

Palin governs a culture stuck in the 19th century. Although she has an 80 percent approval rating as governor, keep in mind that most Alaskans are very different from most people in the United States.

Nearly everyone in Alaska owns several guns, enjoys trophy hunting, and thinks we should drill for oil anywhere and everywhere. In Alaska many people still use outhouses, rarely bathe or comb their hair, and it’s normal not to have electricity and running water. Does this sound like you and your family?

If New York City had the population density of Alaska, there would be one person living on Manhattan Island. Alaska is like no other state, and in most regards it’s a foreign country with a foreign culture.

Alaska was colonized by greedy people who wanted to get rich fast through the consumption of natural resources (minerals, wildlife and oil). Little has changed in a hundred years, and every industry in Alaska still exploits the land, sea or wildlife.

Natural resource extraction is the backbone of Alaska, and it runs through every aspect of Alaskan life. Palin represents the modern face of these pioneer day interests.

Let me highlight some of Palin’s atrocities occurring right now in Alaska:

Palin offered a bounty of $150 for each right front leg of freshly killed wolves; Palin supports aerial hunting of wolves and bears, even though Alaskans voted twice to ban it; Palin used $400,000 of state money to fund a media campaign supporting aerial hunting; Palin is a champion for big oil and supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; Palin believes man-made global warming is a farce; and Palin opposes listing polar bears as an endangered species and is suing the federal government over it because she thinks it will limit her oil exploitation.

The list of her atrocities to the natural world goes on and on.

It is not just a vehement disregard for the environment that makes Palin’s policies so horrific. Palin believes that creationism should be taught in public schools; Palin opposes abortion even in cases of rape and incest; and Palin is currently under investigation in Alaska for abuse of power.

If Palin ever becomes president, we can kiss the natural world goodbye, along with the freedom we treasure so much in this country. Palin is bad for the planet and bad for America.

John Teel of Homer, Alaska, is a native of Evansville. He is an engineer and wildlife advocate. For more information, visit his Web site, GrizzlyBay.org.

So I checked out GrizzlyBay.org, and found the Sarah Palin page, which includes videos & pictures I’ve seen and probably already posted. Below are three I haven’t.

I used to work for an obscure little glass factory, American Heritage in Gurnee, that specialized in Coat of Arms goblets — my department “was” the Sanson Institute of Heraldry, which might be less obscure. One of the salesmen was Masten Gregory, who in a previous life was a world-renowned race car driver. He and others at that company were friends or acquaintances of Mario Andretti and Paul Newman. Our warehouse stored Paul’s car that Mario drove. For our company picnic, we spent a day in Wisconsin watching both of them race. So I never saw Paul up close and personal, but I did see him race. I found this on PETA’s site, and didn’t know he was animal-friendly, although I do buy his vegetarian dog biscuits.

Paul Newman Remembered as Friend to Animals
Posted at 06:13 PM

With the passing of Paul Newman, animals and the people who care about them have lost a dedicated friend and advocate.

Beyond his work as an actor, Newman’s companies—Newman’s Own and Newman’s Own Organics—placed a particular emphasis on minimizing the suffering of animals. PETA’s shopping guide at VegCooking.com features a dozen Newman’s Own products that don’t include animal-derived ingredients. Newman’s Own Organics also introduced a line of foods for dogs and cats that benefit animals in more ways than one: The products are not tested on animals, and the profits from the sales are donated to animal protection organizations.

To pay tribute to this extraordinary man, let us carry on his tradition of showing kindness and compassion to all beings every day.

The Breast Is Best! PETA Asks Ben & Jerry’s to Dump Dairy and Go With Human Milk Instead

For Immediate Release:
September 23, 2008

Contact:
Ashley Byrne 757-622-7382

Burlington, Vt. - This morning, PETA dispatched a letter to Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, cofounders of ice cream icon Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Inc., urging them to replace the cow’s milk in their products with human breast milk. PETA’s request comes in the wake of news reports that a Swiss restaurant owner will begin purchasing breast milk from nursing mothers and substituting breast milk for 75 percent of the cow’s milk in the food he serves. PETA points out to Cohen and Greenfield that such a move on their part would lessen the suffering of dairy cows and their babies on factory farms and benefit human health at the same time.

“The fact that human adults consume huge quantities of dairy products made from milk that was meant for a baby cow just doesn’t make sense,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “Everyone knows that ‘the breast is best,’ so Ben & Jerry’s could do consumers and cows a big favor by making the switch to breast milk.”

For more information, please visit PETA’s Web site Blog.PETA.org or click here.

PETA’s letter to Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield follows.

September 23, 2008

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, Cofounders
Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Inc.

Dear Mr. Cohen and Mr. Greenfield,

On behalf of PETA and our more than 2 million members and supporters, I’d like to bring your attention to an innovative new idea from Switzerland that would bring a unique twist to Ben and Jerry’s. Storchen restaurant is set to unveil a menu that includes soups, stews, and sauces made with at least 75 percent breast milk procured from human donors who are paid in exchange for their milk. If Ben and Jerry’s replaced the cow’s milk in its ice cream with breast milk, your customers–and cows–would reap the benefits.

Using cow’s milk for your ice cream is a hazard to your customer’s health. Dairy products have been linked to juvenile diabetes, allergies, constipation, obesity, and prostate and ovarian cancer. The late Dr. Benjamin Spock, America’s leading authority on child care, spoke out against feeding cow’s milk to children, saying it may play a role in anemia, allergies, and juvenile diabetes and in the long term, will set kids up for obesity and heart disease–America’s number one cause of death.

Animals will also benefit from the switch to breast milk. Like all mammals, cows only produce milk during and after pregnancy, so to be able to constantly milk them, cows are forcefully impregnated every nine months. After several years of living in filthy conditions and being forced to produce 10 times more milk than they would naturally, their exhausted bodies are turned into hamburgers or ground up for soup.

And of course, the veal industry could not survive without the dairy industry. Because male calves can’t produce milk, dairy farmers take them from their mothers immediately after birth and sell them to veal farms, where they endure 14 to17 weeks of torment chained inside a crate so small that they can’t even turn around.

The breast is best! Won’t you give cows and their babies a break and our health a boost by switching from cow’s milk to breast milk in Ben and Jerry’s ice cream? Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Tracy Reiman
Executive Vice President

I just heard a phrase tonight, “$700 Billion transfer of funds”.

I didn’t know what that meant, so I Googled, thinking it had to do with the Wall Street bailout. But that’s not what it is. It’s what we spend on imported oil.

So. I thought it was interesting that we spend the same amount on oil as the government is proposing to bail out Big Business. If that happens, and if there is any recoupment, why not use some of it to invest in clean energy (solar, wind, hydroelectric, etc. — not more drilling, not coal, not nuclear), and if we could become energy independent, especially by using free resources, we’d come out even with the money spent on the bailout. If done well, once the technology is in place, there should be no additional cost to consumers. Eventually, like what? in about 2 years after we go green, we’d be out of debt — not only the country, but the energy-consuming public who are hit by high gasoline and heating costs.

OK, so that’s my half-baked idea for saving the economy — and the environment. Who can develop that idea into a workable solution? I’m serious. It’s a $700 billion trade-off. (And if Big Oil’s lobbyists don’t want to lose their market share, they can contribute their portion of the bailout recoupment to developing clean energy. But once in place, no one should profit by it, because no one owns the sun or the wind.)

For example, I was looking at various YouTube videos today about the air car, the Japanese water car, a little bit about solar cars, but mainly about people who are either developing the technologies, or who have found ways to convert their existing cars to run on water or other things. Why not make engine conversion widespread as an intermediate measure to inventing green cars, instead of limiting it to a handful of mechanically-minded guys? That could keep the auto mechanics in business working on all the conventional cars. Why wait for the government to do something?

Even the Pentagon has shown interest in this:

How ironic that he died of food poisoning the day after he signed a contract with the Pentagon. Has anyone investigated that to see if it was truly a natural death? What has the Pentagon done with the technology since then? Why don’t we have water-powered cars yet?

Visit Gas Price Relief for conversion kits.

Japanese Water Car:

How much are we spending on the war on Iraq? If we ended the war, could that savings pay off this socialist bailout? Or, how about the Republicans & Democrats donating their campaign donation money to chip in? They make at least a million or two per fundraiser. All they spend it on are negative ads. I can’t think of a worse waste of money, from those millionaires who claim to understand what the middle class people are going through.

So. Do we have to worry about becoming a socialist country? Or worse? Was democracy and capitalism a bad experiment? Well, we were never a democracy. We’re a republic.

This first one was added on 9/26, when Wayne Pacelle was on The Ellen DeGeneres Show:
Ellen Says Vote Yes on California Prop 2

Sarah Palin: Alaska’s Dead Wolf Pups Demand Justice!

Target: Alaska Governor Sarah Palin
Sponsored by: Care2.com

This summer, Alaska wildlife agency personnel staked out a known wolf denning site – a practice that is illegal under Alaska law – and, using helicopters, gunned down 14 adult wolves from the air.

When they landed, they found 14 helpless pups in the nearby dens – infant wolves just weeks old – and methodically shot each one in the head. 28 wolves gunned down in all.

Due to a loophole in federal law, Alaska is the only state in the U.S. where a few hunters still use aircraft to shoot wolves or chase them to exhaustion before landing and shooting them point blank. But the practice of “denning” – the killing of wolf young in the den – is prohibited even under Alaska law. This killing of 14 wolf pups disturbs even longtime hunters in Alaska.

During her two years as governor, Sarah Palin proposed a $150 bounty for the severed foreleg of each killed wolf and introduced legislation to make it even easier to use aircraft to hunt wolves and bears. But it’s time that Governor Palin call for a thorough investigation into the killing of these 14 wolf pups, and bring any Alaska employees who acted illegally to justice.

Governor Palin presents herself as a pro-ethics reform politician. Please sign our petition to hold her accountable to her promises and send an email to your friends to spread the word.

deadline: Ongoing…
goal: 25,000

10,009
signatures! (as of when I signed it)

I found this at Daily Dollop today (from last June), but wasn’t able to find it anywhere else. So I can’t guarantee its authenticity. But if it’s true, it solidifies my opinion about our current choices. It is time to show the politicians that animals matter, and our votes matter, whether or not they choose to dismiss or belittle us.

McCain: Animals Taste Good

Seeking to highlight the difference between himself and his Democratic rivals, John McCain today announced that “animals are tasty” and said he looked forward to “eating a whole lot more of them before the campaign is over.”

“Animals aren’t smart enough to vote,” McCain told reporters. “If they were, they’d have people smarter than PETA campaigning to save them.”

If this is true, it may explain why McCain didn’t see the need to return his questionnaire to the Humane Society Legislative Fund.

But is it true? Or is it propaganda? Or is it one of those things that McCain simply told an audience that he thought might want to hear this kind of thing (like he did about the Confederate flag being a state issue out of ambition)?

Added later: After perusing Daily Dollop, I decided the quote above is satirical. But I may leave it, since McCain doesn’t mind twisting facts. Anyway, it fits well with the post below, which is quite serious. And my reaction to it was authentic and still stands. (I’m just glad I didn’t pass it along to PETA and all the other animal rights groups to try to sway their members’ votes, as I was inclined to do when I first read it.)

“One of the guiding principles of the Humane Society Legislative Fund is that we evaluate candidates based on a single criterion: where they stand on animal protection policies. We don’t make decisions based on party affiliation, or any other social issue, or even how many pets they have. We care about their views and actions on the major policy debates relating to animal welfare.

“It stirs controversy to get involved in candidate elections. But we believe that candidates for office and current lawmakers must be held accountable, or they will see the animal protection movement as a largely irrelevant political constituency. In order to have good laws, we need good lawmakers, and involvement in elections is an essential strategy for any serious social movement, including our cause.

“While we’ve endorsed hundreds of congressional candidates for election, both Democrats and Republicans, we’ve never before endorsed a presidential candidate. We have members on the left, in the center, and on the right, and we knew it could be controversial to choose either party’s candidate for the top office in the nation. But in an era of sweeping presidential power, we must weigh in on this most important political race in the country. Standing on the sidelines is no longer an option for us.

“I’m proud to announce today that the HSLF board of directors—which is comprised of both Democrats and Republicans—has voted unanimously to endorse Barack Obama for President. The Obama-Biden ticket is the better choice on animal protection, and we urge all voters who care about the humane treatment of animals, no matter what their party affiliation, to vote for them.”

Read the rest of the article to find out where the candidates stand on various animal issues. Hint: Palin was the deciding factor that inspired this endorsement.

I just found this while Googling for something similar I saw on ABC late tonight. (I didn’t find what I was looking for.)

(If everyone in the US cut their meat consumption by 20%, it would theoretically reduce the number of farmed animals we kill each year by 2 billion. But don’t just “eat less beef” only to switch to some other species. Go vegan.)