Eminently Quotable Quotes
by sarabeth at 6:00 am on January 8th, 2008 in Corruption, General, Republican Clown ShowThere was such a bumper crop to be harvested, I decided to offer up a bouquet of quotes.
First up, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, expressing his view that execution delayed is justice denied (despite much evidence that it may actually work in the opposite direction for way too many people to make execution conscionable):
Scalia, however, said such a move (i.e., taking the time necessary to issue a definitive decision about the three-drug execution method currently being weighed by the Supreme Court) would mean “a national cessation of executions” that could last for years. “You wouldn’t want that to happen,” he said.
Oh, no, no, no! Certainly not. Better to kill them now, when we think they’re guilty, rather than be able to release them tomorrow when they turn out to be innocent after all, ha ha.
Let’s stick with executions for a moment. Here’s “Donald Verrilli, a Washington lawyer who is a veteran of capital cases”, and if you knew this already, you’re a better man than I, reader mine:
“The risk here is real. That is why it is unlawful to euthanize animals the way Kentucky executes inmates,” Verrilli said. Kentucky bars the use of the paralytic on animals. An overdose of barbiturates is commonly used on animals.
Blew my mind, that one. We execute convicted (but not necessarily guilty, of course) criminals using methods that are illegal for putting animals to sleep. No disrespect to animals intended, but that I cannot wrap my mind around.
One of the post-Iowa stories has been how the media still loves McCain every bit as much as it did all those years ago, when McCain had a sharply different presidential candidate persona. All kinds of “journalists” and pundits smoothly proclaimed that fourth-place McCain was somehow the big Republican winner in the Iowa cock-ups. But best of show goes to Newsweek’s Jon Meacham, who emitted this singular piece of flatulence:
To me, the great story about Sen. McCain is, when in doubt, give principle a try.
Either Meacham simply means that McCain hardly ever is in doubt, or you can light that with a match.
Moving right along, why should we give short shrift to those whom voters insist on giving short shrift to? In the spirit of living up to the whole equal opportunity thing, here’s the Duncan Hunter campaign:
“Folks, there have been doubters, but let us put all doubt asunder,” the campaign says. “If we win or place well in one more early primary … the White House is within our grasp.”
This is after coming in a distant third in Saturday’s Wyoming caucuses (which riveted the entire nation) with 8% of the vote (after Mitt Romney’s 67% and Freddie Thompson’s 25%). First, there is the enormous self-delusion—one third-place finish plus one “placing well” in an early primary will almost make him President? Second, there is the insult to our intelligence arising from the word “more”. Guys, that 8% showing is not placing well. Third, there is the violence to the English language being perpetrated by the word “asunder”. And regular readers know how much that always hurts me. I thought asunder was reserved for the tearing up of things in a rage, or the breaking of divinely blessed matrimonial compacts, and that doubt was usually put aside? I better put those notions asunder, I guess, since the Hunter campaign has just torn them aside.
And why not give the last word to Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska? The poor guy really doesn’t get many opportunities to get in a good dig at someone else over pork-barrel spending. But John McCain gave him a golden opportunity with his rash claim that he has “never asked for nor received a single earmark or pork barrel project for my state”, which doesn’t exactly — to use a now old-fashioned phrase — uniquely comport with the truth:
Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK), a notorious porker, was overjoyed that McCain had joined his side. “One man’s pork is another man’s alternate white meat,” said Stevens.
Gary wrote:
Justice Scalia is frightening and I agree with the basic thrust of your post.
One notable correction: 99 percent of the animals we killl are killed barbarically,and are made to suffer long before that. Farmed animals are exempt from the Animal Welfare Act and birds are exempt from the weak and underenforced Humane Slaughter Act.
9 out of 10 animals slaughtered in the U.S. are chickens. We breed them to grow so fast that they often die of heart attacks while still growing. Or they fall over and cannot get up because their legs cannot support their upper bodies, which are genetically engineered to be obese; thus they die of dehydration, possibly within inches of water.
At only seven weeks old - the equivalent of childhood - they’re starved for one to four days, picked up by their legs, and crammed into small cages on trucks. The cages are completely open to the weather. At the slaughterhouse, the truck may sit, parked, with the chickens on it, for 1 to 12 hours.
In the slaughterhouse, the chickens are grabbed once again and hung in shackles upside down. They’re dunked into a “stun bath” that doesn’t knock them them out but paralyzes them so won’t kick arond when their throats are slit. An employee called the “cutter” has about two seconds to sever both of the chicken’s carotid arteries. Because of teh huried pace, he doesn’t always get a clean cut. Next, the chicken is plunged into near-boilng water to loosen his feathers.
Numerous eyewitness accounts reveal that many chickens are fully alive and conscious during this whole process. It is not an exaggeration to say they’re tortured.
Due to their lifetime confinement in ammonia-filled sheds, they often have broken bones and lung disease before entering the slaughtehouse. Once hung by their legs, they show fear and depeerately hide behind their wing or behind the wing of the bird in front of them. One ex-slaughterhouse worker said that although the birds are paralyzed when their throats are cut, they “scream with their eyes.”
According to interveiws with slaughterhouse workers in Gail Eisnitz’s book “Slaughterhouse,” pigs who resist being hung are bludgeoned with metal pipes. Many pigs are not fully “bled out” when they are plunged into the scalding tanks. They thrash wildly for up to two minutes and then drown.
Abundant video evidence shows bored or frustrated slaughterhouse workers impaling live chickens on poles, slamming trukeys into walls using full force, and commiting other sadistic acts.
At hen hatcheries, male chicks, which are useess to the egg industry, are killed by suffocation, being thrown into a wood-chipper, or dumped in a garbage can until they die from exposure or dehydration. This is on their first day of life.
In the fur trade, animals, after being raised in tiny, featureless wire cages, are anally electrocuted or bludgeoned to death. Videos show workers skinning the animals when the animals are clearly still alive and aware. Then there are steel leghold traps, conibear traps that gradually tighten as the animal tries to escape, and underwater traps in which animals struggle for up to a twenty minutes before drowning).
What about animal shelters? Several states still use gas chambers. On numerous occasions, witnesses have reported cats and dogs, stuffed into the devices, struggling frantically until they die. The diligence and care used in “humane injection” can vary wildly by shelter as well.
It goes without saying that each of the ten billion animals we kill and often put through agony in the U.S. each year are innocent. Most are very young, also.
No one wants to be killed the way we kill animals. No one wants to be treaded that way, either. Humans or animals.
Thanks for listening.
Posted 08 Jan 2008 at 11:09 am ¶
Gary wrote:
Sorry about all the typos. Was in a hurry.
Posted 08 Jan 2008 at 11:13 am ¶
sarabeth wrote:
Oh dear, what did we do to deserve this?
And even after I wrote “No disrespect to animals intended”, huh?
Posted 08 Jan 2008 at 11:44 am ¶
Gary wrote:
No disrespect intended here, either. But most people have little idea of animals are killed, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to inform. Again, I know your intentions were good; so were mine. I probably should have prefixed my remarks. Cheers.
Posted 08 Jan 2008 at 11:55 am ¶
Gary wrote:
Not sure if my last comment went through. At the risk of wildly over-commenting… My remarks were intended primarily to show the audacity of Mr. Verrilli’s position, not as criticism to you. I should have made that clear. I like your blog!
(BTW, Scalia is no friend to animals either, being an old hunting buddy of Dick Cheney’s. He seems to have a rather coarse and un-empathetic view of sentient life all around.)
Posted 08 Jan 2008 at 12:23 pm ¶
sarabeth wrote:
I have also heard privately from friends about the Verrilli quote. And I want to clarify the following:
1) I do not believe, and did not mean to suggest, that animals are generally euthanized more humanely than human beings are executed (either in Kentucky or elsewhere in the U.S.).
2) Nor did I mean to suggest that Kentucky has a particularly enlightened attitude towards euthanasia. I have no doubt that many legal methods of euthanasia are quite barbaric indeed.
3) What I really meant was something like: in Kentucky they realize that the 3-drug execution method is a cruel way to kill — to the point that it is illegal to use it on animals, even though other cruel methods are still deemed to be okay — and they still allow human beings to be executed this way.
My point was that we execute humans in barbaric ways, not that animals are killed humanely.
Posted 08 Jan 2008 at 2:11 pm ¶
Gary wrote:
I agree on all counts. Let’s treat all sentient beings with more respect.
Posted 08 Jan 2008 at 3:37 pm ¶
sarabeth wrote:
Our spam filter demons have gone berserk today. My apologies to anyone trying to follow this thread for the the mysteriously disappearing and reappearing comments.
Posted 08 Jan 2008 at 3:45 pm ¶
sarabeth wrote:
As a general rule, if someone wants to sound off on a topic (related to a post) that they feel passionately about, we very much prefer shorter comments pointing to longer discussions elsewhere, if possible.
Posted 08 Jan 2008 at 3:48 pm ¶