Rottenchester

The only thing I hate more than the senseless, wasteful war in Iraq is the idiocy of the smelly hippie peaceniks who oppose it. They are laughably ineffective and deserve all of the scorn that is heaped on them here and elsewhere. Their protests give aid and comfort to war supporters, and cause immeasurable damage to those who try to intelligently oppose the war.

The Roch CL postings of the last few days are great examples of the complete impotence of the hippie peacenik "movement":

Let's begin with the the hippies' opening salvo, which was a load of incoherent rambling about the supposed evils of military recruitment. This horseshit is taken from Page 1 of the "Hippie Peacenik Handbook", where, right after a discussion of the importance of tie-dye and patchouli, hippies are instructed to equate the current struggle with Vietnam.

In Vietnam, poor minorities were drafted, and middle-class non-minorities were able to get educational deferments. Because of this 30 year-old set of facts, hippies assume that the military is still up to its same tricks and is coercing today's high school students to enter the military.

This strategy is politically stupid for two reasons: First, it goes against our shared experience of volunteer military recruitment as a relatively benign process. Second, and more importantly, it puts the hippies in a pissing match against the military. A lot of those recruiters who the hippies are calling evil are decorated war heroes. They are honorable men and women who risked their lives in battle. Any successful anti-war strategy must not belittle the brave sacrifice of our troops.

The second hippie strategy is to paint this war as a "war for oil". Of course, this lets the hippies indulge in their favorite pastime: sneering at the "bourgeois" middle-class riding in their SUVs with yellow ribbons.

Here's the hippie "logic" behind this sneer: those people in SUVs are using more oil than the rest of us, so they are the bad guys. I'm a hippie and since I drive a Prius/VW Van/bicycle and use less oil, I'm morally superior. Those SUV drivers display yellow ribbons to show their support for the war that will keep supplying them cheap oil for their gas-guzzling SUV.

The first part of this argument ("I use less") is just stupid. The US consumes the lion's share of all the world's resources. Any US citizen, whether he drives a Prius or an Avalanche, sucks down a huge amount of oil as a member of our society. Hippie, you are a pig like the rest of us - accept it.

The second part of the argument (Yellow Ribbon = War Monger) is even dumber. Whenever hippies see a yellow ribbon, they should see a possible convert to their cause. People displaying ribbons actually care enough about the terrible sacrifice of good young men and women to go out and buy a ribbon and display it. The yellow ribbon means "I want our troops back home soon." Isn't that pretty close to your position, hippie?

So, hippies, if you're still listening, here's what you need to do:

1. Lay off the military - they're just doing what our corrupt and idiotic leaders are telling them to do.

2. Broaden your base: SUV-driving yellow-ribbon-displaying soccer moms hate war. Reach out to them, don't sneer.

3. The "war for oil"/Cheney/Bush/Halliburton/etc. argument is weak. The general point, that we are too dependent on foreign energy sources, is broadly accepted. Leave your Halliburton hobby horse at home.

4. Take a bath. You stink.

Someone spammed a post about Gay Marriage last month, and, even though it was a cut-and-paste posting, the OP was nice enough to include a picture of two girls kissing.

I'm all for any institution that will result in more pictures of girls kissing, so of course I put my full support behind homos getting hitched. Plus, the religious conservatives get pissed off when girls kiss, so whenever two lesbians get married, its double-fresh, double-good fun: I get to see pictures of both kissing women and red-in-the-face Jesus Freaks.

But, aside from the big dose of self-gratification that Gay Marriage brings to your pal Rottenchester, I'm afraid that, once I calm down, I have to admit that my homosexual friends are fighting the wrong fight. They should forget about "marriage" and concentrate on civil unions and spousal rights.

The problem with "marriage" is that it is such a loaded term. Every discussion of gay marriage conflates two different notions of marriage: the religious and the secular.

Every religion has their own definition of marriage. Catholics, for example, think that marriage is forever (unless you're rich and/or a Kennedy) and don't even recognize the validity of divorce. Protestants are more middle-of-the road. Some Mormon sects will still let you marry multiple wives, as if one weren't an immediate surplus.

From a secular point of view, marriage is simply the recognition of a special obligation between two people. The happy couple are telling the state, and their friends and neighbors, that their lives are intertwined, and that they have assumed certain special obligations for each other.

This bare-minimum, secular commitment is far less than what most religions expect from marriage, so calling it that just confuses the issue. "Civil Union" or "Pledge of Spousal Rights and Responsibilities" are better descriptions, even if they don't roll of the tongue or conjure up a vision of a teeny-tiny bride and groom (or bride and bride, or groom and groom) on a white cake.

Why does this difference matter? Well, in the past few months, I've been surprised by the number of otherwise tolerant people who get bent out of shape when they hear about gay marriage. I think this is because they think about marriage as something sanctioned by their church, and they have a visceral, irrational reaction to the state legislating what their church can do. Even if they are generally tolerant of homosexuals, "marriage" conjures up pictures of two guys kissing at the altar of the neighborhood church, and that just puts
them over the edge.

I think a lot of people who freak out over gay marriage are probably OK with some kind of social contract between gay couples that is sanctioned by the state. And what's wrong with that? If it leads to more girls kissing, I'm all for it.

I agree about starting today on a different note. I'm going to refer back to a post by the guy from Greece, not to argue with him, but to point out something interesting about his post. Along with some name calling, he committed an act of civil disobedience.

It is deleted now, but our friend posted an image of Mickey Mouse®.

Of course, as we all know, Mickey® is a registered trademark of the Disney Corporation. In fact, Mickey®'s protected status is the result of an extraordinary campaign by the Disney Corporation to promote the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. In 1998, after Disney spent over $6 million lobbying, this law was passed by a voice vote intended to hide the identities of the representatives who voted for it.

The Bono Act had one major purpose: it extended Disney's copyright on Mickey Mouse® and his friends. See, Mickey® first appeared in "Steamboat Willie" in 1928, and therefore Disney's copyright would have expired in 2003, 75 years after his first appearance. But the Bono act increases Disney's copyright on Mickey® until 2023.

Disney is happy to use public-domain material: Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and a lot of other Disney characters were created without Disney paying one cent of licensing fees. But even though they've profited from the public domain, they don't want to extend the same privilege to others. That's something worthy of protest.

So, guy from Greece, though I might not agree with anything else you say, I appreciate and endorse your copyright protest. You don't need to delete posts that make important points like that.

Today is a special anniversary: The "War on Terror" has been going on over a month longer than World War II.

Pearl Harbor to V-J day: 1347 days. 9/11 to today: 1380 days.

With that in mind, let's talk about the war that pretty much everyone supported: the fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

In today's Washington Post, there's an article about the continued resistance that US is facing from the Taliban. That's right, while we've been focused on Iraq, and while we've diverted forces from Afghanistan, the Taliban has been rebuilding. Evidence? Just ask a man on the ground:

"I thought the Taliban had fallen," [Army Specialist] Conlon marveled recently. "I thought this was going to be a peacekeeping mission."

The Taliban have long experience in slowly, patiently defeating foreign occupiers. The Soviets had a huge force there in the '80s and finally had to admit that they could not occupy the country and left. After they left, the Taliban regime oppressed women and children, and gave terroists like Bin Laden free reign.

Instead of buttoning down Afghanistan, and concentrating our forces and energy on defeating the Taliban once and for all time, we took our eye off the ball. The Taliban remain a threat to Afghanistan and we will be there for years trying to rout them from the mountains, where they've had a couple of years to hide and regroup.

The Bush administration's incompetence has let real terrorists regroup and re-arm. While Saddam sits in jail, the leaders of the country that sheltered Al Quaeda, as well as Bin Laden himself, are at large. Aren't these the people we want to bring to justice?

I must respectfully disagree with "again and again".  I think this is quite an interesting subject, and I plan on discussing it ad infinitum. 

I spent some time this weekend downloading and watching the Chicken Crusaders' video and reading every word on their website (http://wegmanscruelty.com).   I came away with three impressions:

1.  These are some well-organized, brave and smart people.  Anyone who is trying to advance a cause or agenda would do well to take a good look at their site and use it as a model.  Whether you agree or disagree with them, they deserve respect.  Four Rochester residents have worked hard and taken serious personal risk to speak out about what they view as an injustice.  They've accomplished a lot with very limited resources.  Anyone who whines about Rochester and how nothing happens here can take this as an object lesson on how some of your neighbors spend their time working hard to make the world a better place.

2. Wegmans was caught out fair and square.  A lot of their claims, both on their website and those made by their PR flack, are false.  Wegmans owes their customers a solid, verifiable plan to bring their egg operation up to their own (low) standard.   Wegmans has lost some of my trust, and from now on I will look at their food safety claims with heightened skepticism.  In business terms, this means that I will be reluctant to pay extra for Wegmans-branded "especially good" products like "Angus Beef", and I'll also mistrust the Wegmans store brand.  Wegmans response to-date, which is essentially stonewalling, isn't the behavior I'd expect from a Forbes #1 company.

3.  The Chicken Crusaders need to broaden their focus to interest the average egg eater.  The main focus of their video, and the materials on their site, is how cruelly the chickens are treated at the egg farm.  But there's a lot more that should upset the carnivores among us.

Here's some of the alleged cruelty:  Baby chicks have the tips of their beaks trimmed off so they won't peck out they eyes of other chickens when they grow up.  Hens are packed tightly into cages and their shit falls on the chickens below them.  Some hens get tangled up in those cages and sometimes starve to death. 

At the end of their movie, a montage of chicken abuse pictures are shown while a folk singer drones on. At the end of this montage, a few of the chickens rescued by the Crusaders are shown pecking around in a field of grass.  Immediately before the montage, a Humane Society representative claims that the only humane way to raise chickens is "free range".

Frankly, I could care less about the fate of the chickens. I'm sorry, but the term "dumb cluck" didn't get coined out of thin air.  I don't think that we owe chickens a "free range" lifestyle, and I think the average egg consumer agrees. 

The Crusaders were so focused on the cruelty angle  that they forgot to mention a number of good reasons why every consumer of eggs should be pissed that Wegmans' farm is considered a "model operation".

Lets begin with the chickens shitting on other chickens.  The Crusaders seem upset about this because the chickens are losing some essential dignity by being shat upon.  Not true - they have no dignity in the first place, because they are goddamn chickens.

The second "horrible" thing that was happening in the egg barn was that the carcasses of dead chickens were left to decay along with the live chickens  A lot of these carcasses were caused by chickens getting tangled up in the wire of their cages.  Again, the Crusaders concentrated on how "gross" this was and how terrible it was that the living chickens had to spend time with dead chickens.  I didn't see any mourning chickens in the video, so I'm not worried about their grieving process.

Finally, the Crusaders were offended that the chickens were packed together so tightly.  Again, the basis for offense was how uncomfortable this made the hens, and, again, I don't really give a shit if they're comfortable, as long as they're grunting out a nice, white, Grade AA oueves.

In each of these cases (shit, dead chickens, and tight packing), my real concern is the health ramifications of the confinement operation.  By letting the chickens live in filth, by letting dead chickens rot in cages with the live chickens, and by packing them so tightly, the Wegmans' egg farm has introduced the risk of disease. 

To counteract this risk, they dose the chickens with antibiotics.  It is no coincidence that confinement farming is a late 20th century innovation, because it would be impossible to accomplish without high doses of antibiotics.  By introducing huge amounts of antibiotics into the ecosystem, these confinement farms are hastening the development of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria.  And that has a direct impact on me, because the number of effective antibiotics has grown smaller over the past few years.  This is a real, serious issue that wasn't even mentioned by the Crusaders. When I get an infection, I want the antibiotic to work, and the filth of these egg confinement operations is endangering my life, and the lives of you and your children, in ways that are non-obvious but real.

The second issue with the filth of confinement farming is the possiblity that the eggs will be dirty.  In the past few years, we've been taught to treat a fresh egg like a radioactive isotope or armed bomb.  I remember when Caesar Salad dressing contained -gasp- raw eggs!  Inconceivable as this is today, people regularly consumed raw eggs in previous generations without dropping dead. I've got to believe that the filth of the confinement farm has something to do with the food safety issues we're facing today.

So, I'm with the Crusaders:  Wegmans needs to clean up.  They need to stop letting chickens shit on other chickens, they must remove dead chickens quickly, and they need to move out the chickenshit more often.   But I come to this conclusion because confinement farming is a direct risk to me and my family, not because of some romantic views about the rights of chickens. 

The Crusaders have done a great thing by exposing Wegmans' egg operation as a dirty hellhole.  Now they need to find common ground with non-Vegan, reasonable people who are upset with the risks that confinement farming poses to our health.

Hurricane Katrina is a horrible tragedy. Every loss of human life is regrettable, especially if it could have been prevented.

That said, the politicians running to the microphones to bemoan this tragedy need to get a grip. Some of them are spouting off, comparing Katrina to last year's Tsunami and to Hiroshima. Others are actually crying on nationwide TV.

Here's my message to these blow-hards:

First, Mayor "This is our Tsunami" Halloway of Biloxi: No, it isn't. The Tsunami killed 310,000 people. There was no warning. Entire cities were wiped from the face of the earth. A lot of folks who were hurt or killed in Biloxi had been warned and chose to stay there.

Second, Mississippi Governor "Hiroshima" Barbour: 80,000 people were killed instantly in Hiroshima. Again, there was no real warning. The city was flattened. After the initial killing, thousands more died slow, painful deaths from radiation poisoning in the months after the bomb dropped. People are still dying today from Hiroshima-related cancers.

Finally, to the Governor of Louisiana who was crying on TV last night: Listen, lady, the biggest city in your state is below sea level. Billions of federal tax dollars have been spent building and maintaining a system of levees that failed, and billions more will be spent to fix those levees, shelter everyone who lives in New Orleans, and fix up their houses. Governor, it is the taxpayers in the blue states that pay for your insanity who should be crying. We're the ones who are financing the choice New Orleans residents make to live like Bangladeshis (i.e., in a river delta), even though there's plenty of habitable land above sea level in Louisiana.

So, instead of flying around in helicopters to "assess the damage" (i.e., get TV cameras pointed at you), you politicians can just relax and wait for the check to come. We abortion-loving, war-hating blue staters are going to bail you out, as always. Go build more trailer houses on the Gulf Coast, we've got your back.

As usual, Michael Moore goes for propaganda points rather than facts.

I'm as disgusted as anyone about Bush's handling of the war in Iraq, but I don't think we can blame the Federal Government for what's happening in New Orleans. I think the corruption that has been a part of New Orleans and Louisiana government for the past century is the real culprit here.

Let's start with Louisiana: If I remember my US history and literature from high school, Huey Long was the first corrupt Louisiana governor to hit the national stage. Robert Penn Warren's Pulitzer prize-winning book All The King's Men was a thinly-disguised account of Huey's reign in Louisiana. Huey's relative Earl was notable for a few years in the late 50's and early 60's for being the only actively psychotic governor in the US (I am not kidding). Finally, Edwin Edwards, four-term Louisiana governor in the 80's and 90's, is currently serving time in federal prison for extorting kickbacks from casino operators.

And how about New Orleans: Anyone who's watched TV documentary shows in the past 20 years will have heard about the New Orleans police, perhaps the most corrupt in the nation. New Orleans was the murder capital of the US in the 90s. It isn't #1 today, but the murder rate has been climbing again. In August, most of the former administration of New Orleans was indicted for trying to skim money from an $81 million dollar energy saving contract.

The current mayor , who is new to politics, was elected out of nowhere in 2002 on a platform addressing the corruption in City Hall. Unlike the career politicians next door in Mississippi, he had the guts to call for an evacuation which probably saved thousands of lives. And, unlike those clowns, he isn't comparing Katrina to Hiroshima or the Tsunami.

The New Orleans and Louisiana governments have been fundamentally broken for some time. Broken governments don't have good disaster plans or adequate first responders. All their money and energy goes to graft, so their response is uncoordinated and ill-focused, and those heading up the responses are prone to tears rather than action. This is what we're seeing in Louisiana today. It is awful for the people who have to endure it, and some will die unnecessarily because of it.

Moore's notion that all that is needed is for GWB to send a few more helicopters is just ridiculous. There are thousands of refugees who need food and shelter. And federal resources are useless without local help and knowledge to get them where they're needed most.

For all the criticism that the government of Rochester and New York get here and in the media, New York works. Our police are not on someone's payroll. Our emergency services are excellent. When disaster strikes, a coordinated effort between utilities and local, state and national government get us back on the grid as soon as humanly possible.

In Rochester, we have a hard time comprehending what happens when government is broken. Unfortunately, we're getting a quick education via CNN and the Internet.

All you narrow minds who are celebrating Duffy's shit-canning of the ferry, listen up. You're missing the point. First, we had High Falls. Then, the ferry. Finally, Ren Square. Anyone with half a brain can see that this trifecta of shame will lead us to a glorious new economic resurgence. When Ren Square fails, the groundwork will be laid for Rochester to be part of the new disaster tourism trend. New Orleans is full of disaster tourists right now. In a few years -- about the time when Ren Square will be an expensive ghost town -- they'll be looking for a new thrill. And we'll be there for them, offering them entertainment that is cheap at twice the price. Now, I must admit that Roc is no match for Katrina-ravaged New Orleans, but our failures will be worth a least a senior-citizen bus trip during the off season. Old farts will come in droves to marvel at the sheer amount of money spent for absolutely no lasting result. The revenue gathered from these tourists, who will need vast supplies of adult diapers and denture adhesive, will pump hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars into our economy. At least some of these folks will stroke out when they hear how much was wasted, so our hospitals will also get a boost. So y'all just need some more patience. The money train is coming.

I'm an election junkie and this year there's a hotly contested race for Congress in my district.  So I've been spending my time maintaining a new blog, The Fighting 29th.  Check it out if you're interested in the race in New York's 29th district.