Comments on: Morning Links

By: RWW

RWW — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 19:17:46 +0000

Starving a dog and over feeding should not get the same treatment!

They should get the same legal treatment: none at all.

By: RWW

RWW — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 19:15:45 +0000

#8: It looks like the Caribou was bracing itself against a strong wind. I dunno, I’m not convinced it’s fake.

By: Temujin

Temujin — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 04:28:14 +0000

#19:

Me too. :-( And I’m a cat lover for cryin’ out loud.

By: Burrow Owl

Burrow Owl — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 03:10:25 +0000

RE: The dog and the cupcakes…..

From the looks of that critter’s eyes, I’m pretty sure that those are Alice B. Toklas brownies disguised as cupcakes.

By: pris

pris — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 00:40:41 +0000

Bill S’s article was wonderfully written- bet no one can read that article with a dry eye.

By: mike

mike — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 22:53:36 +0000

RE: One final toss for The Dooze

I think I have something in both of my eyes…

By: Tokin42

Tokin42 — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 21:52:06 +0000

#15

have the chubby ones thyroid levels checked. It’s cheap to check and the meds, if needed, are also inexpensive.

By: SusanK

SusanK — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 21:18:46 +0000

I think when the woman said she had no idea what would happen if the dogs didn’t lose weight, she meant she wasn’t warned that they would be STOLEN from her by a purported animal-rights organization, not that she didn’t think it was unhealthy to be fatty.

By: KBCraig

KBCraig — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 21:04:29 +0000

Hijinks on the caribou. It’s obvious from the matted fur and the positioning of the legs and head that it froze while laying on its left side. Look at the last pic, and rotate it 90 degrees.

By: Marty

Marty — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 20:38:16 +0000

I have 2 labs- they’re outside all the time and are fed the same. One looks like an ideal lab- muscular, perfect form. The other is 20 pounds over-weight. She was fat when we rescued her and she’s stayed that way. She’s happy, active, and fat.

Maybe the humane society should steal the dog and euthanize it to teach us a lesson.

fucking busy-bodies.

By: Michael

Michael — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 20:25:40 +0000

I know a person who let one of his puppies die because he did not maintain its watering bowel, or feed them daily. He did not even have to go outside, it was in a small enclosed room in a basement, where the dogs were kept 24/7. (He didn’t bother to keep the room clean, either!) I saved the other puppy, by making sure the someone took responsibility for caring for the surviving dog. The isolation technique was also an attempt to make the dogs “good guard dogs”. That is the type of person who should not have dogs, especially Rottweilers!

I do not see overfeeding as abusive. It may be misplaced love. Being fat does not necessarily hurt anyone. And I hate it when people have the nerve to point out that I am fat! My sister has a very fat terrier that she overfeeds. He is dieing of testicular cancer. Dogs have a short life, anyway. Why not make them happy! I have had many dogs in the past. All of them are dead now, the fat ones and the skinny ones! Those two dogs looked very happy! But, I am not a pet psychologist!

Taking the dogs because they are overweight is nanny state behavior at its best! Why would libertarians support such behavior. Starving a dog and over feeding should not get the same treatment! One is intentional negligence. The other is from being soft hearted!

By: Aresen

Aresen — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 18:26:15 +0000

#11 | chance | January 26th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
@Aresen

If these dogs had been severely underfed, there wouldn’t even have been a news article on it, much less people defending her. By the woman’s own admission, she had reverted back to overfeeding the dogs, and due to her disability cannot properly excercise them. Even if the ASPCA does hate people as you say, I don’t think they have overstepped their bounds here.

I gather you’re OK with taking fat kids from their parents, then, on the grounds that overfeeding them is just as cruel as starving them.

By: Zeb

Zeb — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 17:40:19 +0000

Of course the RSPCA has overstepped their bounds. They are her dogs. That wouldn’t be sufficient grounds to take children away (well maybe in the UK). These are dogs. Pets are property.

By: chance

chance — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 17:29:39 +0000

@Aresen

If these dogs had been severely underfed, there wouldn’t even have been a news article on it, much less people defending her. By the woman’s own admission, she had reverted back to overfeeding the dogs, and due to her disability cannot properly excercise them. Even if the ASPCA does hate people as you say, I don’t think they have overstepped their bounds here.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 16:27:24 +0000

I second Nicole. Companies make these cloying campaigns because that’s what people want. If the average person is low on gas and sees an Exxon station and a Chevron station coming up, the idea is that they’ll remember the ads, think “oh, Chevron’s a nice company, they’re trying to save energy/fight global warming” and pull into that station. Basically, they don’t want to become Wal-Mart or McDonalds and lose market share based on the fact that they’re perceived as evil by a big chunk of the populace. Starbucks and Chevron are both inching closer to that point, and they’re trying to inch their way back.

Oh, and the proliferation of nanny-state laws chronicled here (and on Jacob’s blog) are proof that people like being told what to do. People will think that certain companies are good if the companies are nagging them into doing what’s right. And I’m not sure I’m that annoyed by it as long as I’m not being coerced into doing what some idiot legislator thinks is right.

By: Aresen

Aresen — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 16:25:55 +0000

@chance # 3:

My father was a vet. I know that it is not good for dogs to be fat.

But it is a hell of a lot more stressful on them to be taken from their owners.

The RSPCA is being cruel to the dogs and the owner. The cruelty to the dogs is just a means of hurting the owner. It is being done deliberately and with malice aforethought.

The RSPCA, like many “animal rights” groups, hates people.

By: Aresen

Aresen — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 16:20:26 +0000

I suspect bullshit in that frozen caribou. Those quadrupeds that can fall asleep standing (which would have been the first stage of the caribou freezing to death) adopt a characteristic square stance that allows them to lock their knees and thus remain standing.

By: Dave Krueger

Dave Krueger — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 16:13:19 +0000

The real cause for the do-gooder campaigns is America’s obsession with social responsibility. The corporations are simply climbing on the bandwagon to impress potential customers to increase sales. That’s what corporations do.

The problem is that most people don’t even have a clue what capitalism really is. They don’t see it as a simple voluntary exchange of value to the benefit of both parties. They see capitalism as a bunch of parasitic corporations sucking the life out of “the people”. When you hear the mainstream media, as a result of the current financial turmoil, ask whether we’re seeing “the end of capitalism”, it becomes stunningly apparent just how woefully ignorant the public is about even the bare essentials of economics.

Corporations are just responding to that demonization by trying to convince the public that they are on the side of saving the planet from humanity and if we all do our part, maybe we can avert the impending doom, a sense of which now permeates almost every aspect of western civilization.

I dislike the campaigns, too. But I’m libertarian. Just another voice from the radical fringe.

By: Radley Balko

Radley Balko — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 16:02:30 +0000

#5 — Oops. Thanks! Fixed.

By: Mojotron

Mojotron — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 15:56:42 +0000

I think that the “Hoosier makes good” link is wrong, couldn’t find much good going on in that catholic church child molestation coverup:(