March 4, 2009

My heroine Jeane Kirkpatrick (first female U.S. ambassador to the United Nations) once stated, “The defense of freedom begins at home, and the price of freedom is vigilance and courage.”

Man, was she right. For the past four years, most of my life has been devoted to honoring those words, fighting to defend the freedoms of Americans against the “animal rights” (AR) movement.

This fight has made something clear to me. In this country, freedom is never stolen from us by a thief in the night. It gets handed away, a piece at a time, by those of us who are weak, cowardly, or uncaring.

Our freedoms are being systematically destroyed in an epidemic of anti-pet, anti-farmer, anti-animal use laws sweeping our nation. The driving force behind these laws is the richest "animal rights" organization on the planet. The deceptively-named Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) disclosed over $206 million in assets in it's 2007 Annual Report. “Over” is the operative term in the previous sentence. How much exactly do they have? Nobody knows. Try to “follow the money” of HSUS and you enter a maze of subsidiaries, shadow groups and overseas holdings so dizzying that Tony Soprano and Al-Qaeda leaders would be impressed.

There is nothing humane about the “Humane” Society of the United States. Those who know the truth about the organization have come to typing their acronym in a more accurate fashion: H$U$. While they send endless fundraising requests to help them ostensibly "end the suffering", they spend barely 4% of their budget on actual pet shelters.

Think HSUS cares about animals? Think again. Imagine a highly publicized case of child abuse in our country. Picture the most horrific conditions a large family of children could have to endure. Now try to imagine yourself running a website internet ad campaign pleading for contributions for care of the children. Now imagine the same scenario when YOU NEVER HAD CARE OR CUSTODY of any of those poor abused children. Can’t imagine it, right? You can’t imagine exploiting the mental, psychological and physical torture of children, can you? Let’s go one step further. Try to imagine collecting vast sums of money in your deceptive campaign, and then telling the people who really were taking care of the children that therapy couldn’t possibly rehabilitate their troubled minds, and was a waste of time - that these children were doomed to a lifetime of being violent, a menace to society.

Yes, that’s a horrible scenario I just compelled you to picture. (I apologize. It hurts me too.) Before you start thinking I’m sick to even “go there”, let me tell you something about the “Humane” Society of the United States. Picture the above situation, but instead of a large group of children, substitute the terribly tortured fighting dogs that belonged to Michael Vick. Instead of you that was lying and claiming you were raising money for the care of vulnerable and tragic victims, it’s the “Humane” Society of the United States. HSUS never had care, never had custody of the Vick dogs - but lied, lied, and lied some more, and convinced God-only-knows-how-many compassionate, check-writing Americans that they were taking care of those victims of abuse.

The link below shows the captured website page of HSUS that did exactly that: http://www.consumerfreedom.com/images/hsus_clip.png

The Irony Police are pounding on the door. These dogs had endured pain and violence almost their entire lives. For what? To be exploited for cold, hard cash - collected by men who saw the dogs as nothing more than a means to an end.

Then Michael Vick was arrested, and his dogs were rescued from their hell on earth. What happened next? HSUS continued the tradition of exploiting them for money. And after HSUS had collected what they must have deemed an appropriate amount of money for one of their most evil scams ever, they recommended the dogs be killed.

How soulless does a person have to be to cash those checks?

(By the way, the Vick dogs weren’t killed. They were given a second chance. HSUS’s advice was rejected, and the dogs were taken in by a group who began the work of rehabilitating them. One of the Vick dogs is now a certified therapy dog.)

Wayne Pacelle, President of HSUS, has stated:

“One generation and out. We have no problem with the extinction of domestic animals.”

The next time you read about proposed mandatory spay/neuter (MSN) legislation (this won’t take long - these laws are sweeping the nation in a steamrolling of the Constitution that would have made our Founding Fathers take up arms) - remember that quote from Wayne Pacelle. By the way, mandatory spay/neuter laws DON’T decrease the number of dogs and cats taken in and killed by shelters. There are MORE shelter intakes and euthanasias in areas where MSN has been passed into law. Which you and I think is awful. But it’s a good thing if you’re Wayne Pacelle, and your philosophy is, “One generation and out.”

HSUS Spokesman J.P. Goodwin has declared “My goal is the abolition of all animal agriculture.” Mr. Goodwin, formerly with the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) has a long arrest record and a history of promoting arson to advance the animal liberation agenda.

The cute-sounding ALF and ELF have a fondness for threats, intimidation, bombs and arson that have led them to the top of the FBI Domestic Terrorist Watch List.

How much do you know about the best way to keep pigs or chickens healthy and safe? Unless you happen to be a farmer, you probably know virtually nothing about such matters. And that’s exactly what the animal rights movement is counting on, when they show you short clips of videos designed to get you to vote for their ballot initiatives.

In a line that’s been repeated millions of times because it’s such a classic, Mark Twain wrote, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics.” If he were alive today, I suspect this famous quote would be longer: “There are four kinds of lies: lies, statistics, damn lies and videos.”

Oprah had Wayne Pacelle on her show last year, to promote California’s Prop 2, and they showed a short video clip of a farm letting hens out to cruise around a barnyard. I grew up on a farm in the Midwest, and I got to wondering how much they would have had to edit that video if a chicken hawk had done a “drive-by”. Here’s what they didn’t show you, and what Pacelle doesn’t want you to know. When chickens get scared, they pile up on each other in a frantic, terrified heap. The unlucky chickens in the lower layers get crushed. Broken bones and mortality rates are exponentially higher in cage-free hens, than in the safe battery cage hens which city dwelling California voters have now made illegal.

Oprah’s research department should be fired.

Prop 2 passed, and I’m sure the 3,000 egg farm workers headed for the unemployment lines would love to have a talk with Oprah.

Cause here’s the kicker. It would cost $500 million to implement the changes required by Prop 2. California taxes already make the state a business nightmare. Long before vegan Washington D.C. lobbyist Wayne Pacelle showed up on Oprah to do his snow job on voters, UC Davis published a study which stated clearly that Prop 2 passage would eliminate almost all of the California egg industry. Of course, Pacelle didn’t mention that on Oprah.

So, at the end of the day, even if you think there shouldn’t be caged hens, passage of Prop 2 didn’t achieve that. Pacelle knew it wouldn’t achieve that. It just wiped out 7-generation-family farms. Think about that the next time HSUS begs you to send money to end “factory farming.”

There are two sets of people who truly understand how to keep egg-laying hens safe, healthy and happy: egg farmers and their veterinarians.

If you don’t know much about chickens, you probably know less about pigs. This is another thing HSUS is counting on as they send requests for money and ballot initiative votes to “end animal cruelty.”

The next time you see HSUS brag about their “success” in passing the amendment to the Florida constitution which banned (on grounds of “cruelty”) the use of farrowing pens, I’d like you to think about what HSUS didn’t want Florida voters to know. Farrowing pens are used by farmers to prevent the sow from rolling on and crushing her piglets. (Whelping boxes for dogs are designed to prevent the same problem - even the most wonderful, doting mother can unintentionally kill a young puppy by laying on it, without this safety measure.)

The "Humane" Society of the United States paid expenses for out-of-state volunteers to collect the necessary signatures to put the Florida measure on the ballot. HSUS was simultaneously spending large sums of money on media ad buys, with emotional and deceptive ads which totally exploited the fact that hardly any voters are farmers, and they consequently don’t have a clue about what it takes to keep pigs safe, healthy and comfortable. Wayne Pacelle's mama didn't raise no fool, so for HSUS's "test case", they picked Florida, which had a grand total of two hog farms. While HSUS impresses uninformed voters with their victory over “factory farming”and Wayne Pacelle is laughing all the way to the bank, how many piglets are dying when they mothers lie down on them?

Let’s break it down. A donation to HSUS means you support exploitation of dogfighting, dead dogs and cats, terrified chickens getting crushed to death, and young little piglets getting crushed to death. (Not to mention skyrocketing food prices, unemployment numbers, and fatal disease - yes, we'll get to Avian Bird Flu later.)