I take offense at being called an out of touch effete elitist Democrat

[EFerrari]

because killing animals for "sport" or for photo ops is disgusting to me.

I lived approximately here with my family for five years:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=11425+Clayton+Road+San+Jose&sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS284US285&um=1&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&resnum=1&ct=title

When we got there, there was nothing but old cars and a bunch of dying fighting cocks and thirty years worth of pollution.

We put in a vineyard, two fields of corn, vegetable gardens. We built up a flock of poultry, stabled horses and whatever else we thought we might need. We dealt with predators including coyotes, a chupacabras, ants who were trying to reconquer the Earth and the idiots at the County who thought we should all go back to the burbs because we weren't greasing their hands fast enough to get our permits.

There is a stream that has been cleaned out and flowing again because my crew and I worked at it for three years. And during that time, as a midwife, I attended births all around the South Bay, did cat rescue AND did the books for the whole place. No reality problem right there, at all.


So, don't tell ME I'm an effete urban Democrat whose elitist attitude can't stand the sight of blood, who needs plastic wrap around my beef or who is out of touch with "middle America". Just don't go there. On the other hand, if you want to call me out for thinking that Republican politicians who suck up to the oil lobby pose as rugged "naturalists" at the expense of innocent life, go right ahead. Because that's true.

More, you don't have to have lived on a working ranch as I did to recognize corporate-backed Republican PR posing as "just folks" the way this campaign to sell Sarah "corrupt as hell" Palin is being sold. If you do need help with that, maybe YOU are out of touch with middle America because most of us can recognize air-brushed bs when we see it.



This is the tractor I couldn't save. It had sat there for twenty five years. Maybe if I weren't such an elitist, I would have had it hauled away and put in a golf course. lol

[bluestateguy]

1. I will never go hunting

but I will support and defend the rights of those that do. It's not a hobby that I choose to partake in, though I won't criticize those that do. In return, I expect to have my choice respected and not mocked by hunters.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

2. I live in the broccoli of NJ.

Everyone hunts around here, for the most part. They also eat what they hunt. They only consider the antlers good for stirring the chili pot. Occasionally someone around here will take a big buck with a big rack or non-typical antlers. That said, they would much rather go for a smaller, more tender animal. They eat what they take. It is part of the culture here.

I don't hunt. I do fish. I don't judge hunters as a whole. I consider trophy hunters vermin. Clear enough? ;-)

[EFerrari]

4. How hard is that?

:shrug:

[BlooInBloo]

3. Just like vegetarianism-in-America generally, it is a rather bourgeois thing....

And I'm a city boy.

To not like it yourself: fine. To knock others for hunting: bourgeois.

[EFerrari]

7. I've no real problem with hunting. My problem is with killing animals

to build your cred. :shrug:

[BlooInBloo]

8. She was raised in Alaska - hunting the entire way, I assume....

Dunno if a 5 year old is doing it for her cred.

She may be trying to parlay that way-of-life thing into political cred for the stupid electorate, but that doesn't make it any less a way-of-life thing. It just means she's cravenly opportunistic. :P

[EFerrari]

10. I was raised Catholic but that doesn't mean

I can't rethink the stuff I was fed as a child.

She's a great Republican, that's for sure. If she could stand on a pile of dead Iraqis, she'd probably be ecstatic.

[BlooInBloo]

12. self-delete - this is going nowhere.

[EFerrari]

13. I thought we had a bridge for that.

It's all good.

[BlooInBloo]

15. bwahahah!

:P

:loveya:

[EFerrari]

16. This woman is Junior clearing brush in eye liner.

:shrug:

:loveya:

[proud2BlibKansan]

43. LOL

[nichomachus]

22. Calling other people bourgeois is bourgeois

[BlooInBloo]

36. (facepalm)

[Fearless]

51. Uh-oh... can someone tell Marx... I don't want to get between that...

:rofl:

[lonestarnot]

5. SFP! Get down James Brown!

:applause: :toast:

[EFerrari]

6. I loved that damn tractor. It was the coolest thing you've ever seen.

You haven't seen nothin' until you see a cock take his hens for a nice free range walk in the morning.

lol

[lonestarnot]

23. I've seen that! So I guess I've seen some'n!

I have a pic of my kid next to an oldie like that. A treasure.

[EFerrari]

27. Their walks are so cool, they look like the UN letting out for lunch.

Oh, and our chupacabras wound up being one of our dogs. We changed his name from "Bill". He was relocated to a re-education camp up the penninsula. lol

Palin is about fakery just like McWar is. Nothing for our hunting DUers to get all upset about. She'd pose next to her cold dead mother if it would be good for her career.

[lonestarnot]

28. McMoose is a loser no doubt about that. Wannabees usually are.

Poor Bill the coocoowi! Did he ever come back from the camp? LOL

[EFerrari]

30. Little Bill got a good home in San Mateo. No chickens to snatch there.

He was a good kid, just a little over zealous. lol

[lonestarnot]

31. My three are maniacs on the roof rat population that has plagued the area in which I call home.

Just yesterday they got one. I posted it as an omen to the vote theft. LOL

[Cleita]

9. Hunting for food, which in many parts of America is still part of

the economy of rural people and how they feed their families, and trophy hunting are two opposite things in my humble opinion. As a camp ground host I have met both. I really hate the elitist trophy hunters and the gas guzzling pick up trucks and SUVs they ride in on. What they do is trample on the rights of all species including ours to exist.

[EFerrari]

11. Exactly.

[Bluerthanblue]

18. I'm with you on this Sfexpat-

Hunting for food, and using the meat, is one thing. Trophy hunting, and bragging on your hunting- insuinuating that anyone who doesn't hunt is somehow 'less than' you is W R O N G.

IMO

[EFerrari]

19. They did the same thing when they bought Bush the pig farm.

This is just the pig farm II. :shrug:

[Chovexani]

14. My feelings exactly.

[EFerrari]

17. I think somehow our hunting DU friends get their backs up

and that may be because we don't talk about this very well and that's a shame.

That's not my issue with this issue. Most hunters I know are nothing like Sarah Palin.

This Palin person would strap herself to a rocket if it were 1962 and she'd pretend to lift off. That she's using dead animals to round out her resume is just the frosting on the cake.

[Chovexani]

20. Dead animals as props cause there's nothing ON her resume

Personally, I'm as citified as they come, and would never hunt. But I don't have problems with people doing it for food, you know?

Palin is one twisted sister though. You were right when you called her Shrub in eyeliner. I wonder how many photo ops we're going to be subjected to with her taking assault rifles to some hapless wildlife :puke:

[EFerrari]

21. She's horrible and especially for women's health. So we can't confuse

the mendacity of her promo with responsible hunting.

Someone bet me about the last time she ever touched anything she shot with her assault rifle.

[TreasonousBastard]

24. I don't hunt any more and rarely fish...

because, well, because there just isn't much sense to it any more. Wild food animals and fish are just getting scarcer and scarcer. (No matter how many deer you tell me you saw in your yard last week-- somehow they know when the season is)

Anyway, these are skills once needed for survival and still good to have and shouldn't die away. The problem is to understand how the thrill of the hunt differs from the kick in killin'

[flvegan]

25. Empathy and compassion have no place in the Dem party.

Your distaste for trophy hunting and the trophy display of a kill via photo, even if one is going to eat it upsets you, makes us weak, you bourgeois city slicker. We want blood, and we want it slathered all over!

I can't wait for the live feed of Obama putting rounds into a bunch of lesser beings to prove just how manly he is. That'll be awesome.

I heard Biden was going to shoot meerkats from a helicopter, fucking furry little ground weasels! What a photo-op! USA! USA!

Now, go eat your dirtburger you pathetic little vegan.

:sarcasm: because someone is bound to not get it

[EFerrari]

26. It's amazing how many people pop up to defend this Palin person

just because she has access to an assault rifle. WhatEVER.

[JitterbugPerfume]

29. cruelty is always wrong

whether it is your fellow human beings, other animals or the environment . killing for thrills is just wrong

[bertman]

32. sfexpat2000, you've really got a burr up your ass on this one, don't you?

I'm sure you're a good person. Well, not exactly SURE, but I figure you are because of some of the things you've written on other threads, but your work on this thread and the Palin hunting thread is off the scale--on the irrational side.

First, let me say that I know nothing about Sarah Palin except what little I have read in the last three days, therefore, I don't know if she would do what you accuse her of doing for political gain.

My first question for you is: How do you know this animal was killed for "sport" and not for food? Second question: Is having someone take a picture of you with a bloody caribou you have killed really what you consider a photo op? And, my final questions to you are:: Do you know this person? Or are you judging her based on her right-wing, fundamentalist reputation?

Is it not possible that she and her family are all hunters who enjoy that lifestyle and are able to live it because they are in Alaska? Or are you positive that she is just someone who is "posing as a naturalist"? I guess the fact that you did your fine homesteading/farming (or whatever you want to call it) on land that was surely once the home to hundreds of species of innocent animals who no longer can live on it due to your selfish need to domesticate the land for your personal benefit, doesn't enter into your thinking at all. Or have you rationalized that your dominion over the land is different from a hunter's dominion over it?

Honestly, it wouldn't have entered into mine either except that you have such a venal take on everything that you read into this Palin woman's hunting photo that I am really astounded by it.

As far as recognizing that Sarah Palin is a corporatist choice, well you won't have to convince many of us on DU that she is. She wouldn't be on the ticket if she weren't.

P.S. the tractor part was a nice touch.

[glitch]

34. See a mirror. nt

[Cleita]

35. I'm from California and maybe a hundred miles down the road from

where the OP posted her google map. I live in rancher country too, similar to what she describes. No one has domesticated the land without regard to personal benefit other than developers who take over and bring in big box stores like Wal-Mart, grading and paving over what was once ranch and agricultural land that provided room for wildlife and preserving trees and streams. We don't hunt here. We try to balance our species and their habitat, but I am getting upset with the Department of Fish, Game and Wildlife people killing ever cougar they come across that get's entangled in the tourist havens usually trying to hunt for ducks. They don't seem to want to solve the problem with anything other than killing the beast. I find the trophy hunting culture she seems to be part of and encouraging for tourist dollars to be ugly and heinous and part of the Department of Fish, Game and Wildlife's culture.

[EFerrari]

42. Cleita -- are you still there? I miss the red winged black birds

sitting in tall grass and showing off for each other. And between the squirrels and the ants, it's amazing there is a bit of dirt left in one place. We had a great view of the valley on clear days. You never knew who was going to show up at dusk on the way to the creek. It was a great place to live and more so after we wanded the areas where the former tenants and owners had left all kinds of goodies lying around. You wouldn't believe what we took out of the ground. :crazy:

[Cleita]

45. I still get red winged black birds at the times of year that they come around.

I still get a lot of birds coming around, but they are stressed and fewer. I don't see as many quail and other native species.

[bertman]

44. Cleita, how can you say no one has domesticated the land without regard to personal benefit . . .

with a straight face? (typeface)?

Almost every piece of land in America or the world for that matter, is a living organism with millions of creatures big and small that inhabit it. But, of course, you and I don't consider our little garden and homesite to be invading the ecosphere because it sustains US and our family. But, au contraire, we humans are ALWAYS displacing the critters who lived on the land before we domesticated or built or farmed or gardened or whatever. The land where your home is now located was once habitat for some wild creatures. Innocent, wild creatures.

Look, we ALL kill innocent wild creatures directly or indirectly. Some choose to kill them for food in their natural habitat. Does that make them less honorable than those of us who let our building contractor destroy the habitat that critters once inhabited.

Personally, I think it's the natural way of things even if we use bulldozers, but I understand that killing creatures with bulldozers by clearing their homes off the face of the earth is not nearly as bad as shooting them for food for one's family.

[Cleita]

46. The ranchers where I live are very protective of what is a rather

delicate environment. We understand encroachment and it is coming. My home is still a habitat for wildlife but one of my new neighbors, who has bought property here and is from some other place, has been trying to clear the land of the brush and woodland that supports the native species. We are fighting the person, but our governor and the people who have come in with him are kinda not being cooperative.

[EFerrari]

52. We've had a similar battle with the people on the very next hill.

That's how close we are to bulldozers. There was a building moratorium for years in the foothills but it looks like if you know what to kiss and when, that goes out the window.

[EFerrari]

40. There is so much wrong with that, you can't even see wrong

from where you are.

There were MORE native birds and animals on the land AFTER we cleaned it up, not fewer. And Sarah Palin has probably not done anything that didn't forward her career since she was eleven.

[bertman]

54. Whatever. But you never answered my questions.

[glitch]

33. Agreed and well said. Bush in eyeliner LOL.

What is sad is that some people do still fall for it.

[aikoaiko]

37. Hunters, even subsistence hunters, have been under attack for a long time

I don't care why you kill an animal as a long as it was lawful.

[Chovexani]

39. Good thing they have guns then, hmm?

Oh, wait.

[hunter]

38. Seeking the office of that great hunter Dick Cheney...

The kind of hunter who shoots you in the face and then expects you'll apologize for standing in front of the gun.

[EFerrari]

41. Really. You'd think John McMore would be more careful.

lol

[TahitiNut]

47. 16.1 mi (about 25 mins) to my place on Carlton Avenue in Los Gatos

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&saddr=11425+Clayton+Road+San+Jose&daddr=120+Carlton+Avenue,+Los+Gatos,+CA&hl=en&geocode=&mra=ls&sll=37.34778,-121.912537&sspn=0.376644,0.475159&ie=UTF8&z=12

[EFerrari]

48. Los Gatos is so pretty. And 'way expensive.

It used to feel like a village. I haven't been there in years except to take someone to court. That doesn't really count. :)

[TahitiNut]

49. Yup. I loved it ... even on the "wrong side" (east of Hwy 17)

It was handy to everything I loved ... over the "hill" to Santa Cruz, Capitola, and south to Monterey ... up the "hill" to Skyline Drive and Alice's Restaurant ... along the "hill" to Ranch San Antonio Open Space. Best place I've ever lived ... and I've lived in a LOT of places.

[EFerrari]

50. For a while I commuted from Boulder Creek to Cupertino.

Swing shift and on 9. What the hell was I thinking?! There was a great shortcut up behind Stevens Creek to put you above Saratoga on Hwy 9. Geezus, I must have been insane. It wasn't even a ROAD.

It was a great place to grow up, if you had to grow up at all. :)

[and-justice-for-all]

53. If anyone is an elitist...

it is the guy with 7 houses. Repigs have never been in tune with the American people either.

[EFerrari]

55. That's right and there is always the double standard:

Cindy McSame's successful father lived the American dream, the Kerrys are elitists. :crazy: