Friday Hound Blogging

Hey, green shoots and stuff huh? Looks like the economy is improving a little if you can say going from apocalyptic ruin to bleak depression is an improvement. No wonder the Mittbot doesn't care about the poors...Happy days are here again.

Well, a rising tide floats all boats right? So even the overlords must be feeling hope growing like the brightening pink glow of the sun, heralding a new day. Or maybe what they're feeling is their feet getting wet, because their boat? A little leaky if you take our point.

No matter. The economy, like we said. Soon the rubes will be flocking back to the tracks and the long awaited renaissance of greyhound racing will have arrived. Then we'll be plugging those holes with dollar bills, right boys? But we have to get ready. We have to be prepared for the crowds that are about to be unleashed on us. Get it? Unleashed? See we're talking about dogs here, so leashes? Never mind. What's up Volusia county?

The Volusia County Council decided to hold off on deciding if they want a referendum on the question of slot machines in county pari-mutuels, places where betting is allowed.

Slots? OK, well yeah, slots are a thing, but we're interested in what is going to happen to the greyhound racing tracks. What's first on the agenda? Expand the parking lot? Build a bigger clubhouse?

Those in the greyhound business, like Todd Byers, says if tracks get slots then they could be out of a job. Byers heads the Daytona Beach Greyhound Association.

Or add more races. We forgot about add more races because...wait. Out of a job? How you figure that?

Daniel Francati, the general manager with the Daytona Beach Kennel Club and Poker Room said his company has no plans to end live greyhound racing at its track. Yet Byers thinks if slots are introduced, the track owners will have no other financial incentive to keep live racing.

  No financial incentive? What the heck does that mean? We're talking greyhound racing here man, greyhound racing! Greyhound racing is recognized as one of the nation's largest spectator sports by the The American Greyhound Track Operators Association. You need to get your head on straight. No financial incentive, what a load.

There's no question most of Florida's dog tracks are losing money on their greyhound races.It could be a lot worse for the tracks if not for the 4.7 million dollars in subsidies they get every year from Tallahassee.

 Oh, no way. No freakin' way. The greyhound industry pays its own way, man. Just ask them. There's got to be some kind of problem with the way the system operates in Florida, some glitch or bureaucratic mess up. There's profits out there, we just know it. Oh, we've got it, let's go look at another state. A state where the system is operating efficiently. How about Arizona?

Arizona is one step closer to ending greyhound racing. Last week saw the passage of House Bill 2536,which will significantly reduce the number of days that live greyhound racing is required for a track to also operate simulcast betting.

There. See what happens when you have cooperation between the industry and government. You get mutually beneficial...wait, what? In the Senate you say? Oh. Uh...well. Hey, how about Iowa? In Iowa the gambling industry tried to bribe the state to end greyhound racing, but the heroes in the legislature resisted them, realizing what a good deal they had going for the citizens of the Hawkeye state by having greyhound racing. Now there's a system that's got to be operating on all cylinders.

A renewed $70 million battle to allow casinos to end greyhound racing moved ahead Wednesday in the Iowa Senate.

Dang. OK Pat we give up. You got anything?

Pat C Heya is a very happy, affectionate little girl. She loves to go for walks and play with her stuffies. She is your typical “couch potato.” She does well in her crate. She is friendly with strangers. Pat C Heya would do well as an only dog or with others. She would do well in a single-family home or a family. She has not had any exposure to children. For more information about this dog, and other rescued racing greyhounds looking for homes, go here. If you don't know about the plight of racing greyhounds go here.

Hey, You Think Free Enterprise Is Free?

Full disclosure: We here in the marbled halls of IM Central are card carrying members of the XY chromosome club. That being said, we'd like to weigh in on the Susan G Komen, Planned Parenthood brouhaha.

First of all, when you hire a person who hates Planned Parenthood to be your vice president, you shouldn't be surprised when bad things happen to Planned Parenthood. We mean, come on. When she was running for governor of Georgia Karen Handel said:

Handel has made no bones about her anti-abortion -- and anti-Planned Parenthood -- position. In a July 2010 blog post, Handel explained, "since I am pro-life, I do not support the mission of Planned Parenthood ... In fact, state and federal law prohibits the use of taxpayer funds for abortions or abortion related services and I strongly support those laws. Since grants like these are from the state I’ll eliminate them as your next Governor."

OK, so the people of Georgia were smart enough not to elect her, but The Komen Foundation? Apparently not so much. Pay attention ladies.

So according to the Komen people, the real reason they ended their relationship with Planned Parenthood was because they were under investigation:

"Komen spokeswoman Leslie Aun said the cutoff results from the charity's newly adopted criteria barring grants to organizations that are under investigation by local, state or federal authorities. According to Komen, this applies to Planned Parenthood because it's the focus of an inquiry launched by Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., seeking to determine whether public money was improperly spent on abortions."

OK Susan, may we call you Susan? How about Bank of America, also under investigation. Last time we checked it was still all Chamomile tea and cranberry scones out in the sun parlor between you two. Oh, and would that be the same Bank of America that made donations to Planned Parenthood? Why yes, yes it would.

So what's the real story here? Come on, come clean.

In a statement posted on its website and a video on YouTube late Wednesday, Komen said its action had been "mischaracterized" so the organization needed to "set the record straight."
In the video, Nancy G. Brinker, who founded and leads the organization, said that the decision was made as part of a broad effort to use donations more efficiently.

Efficiency huh? Well, hard to argue with that, we mean it is a business and all, costs and whatnot, so you've got to...wait a minute...wait just a minute...this is brilliant...this is...oh man, business colleges all over the country will be studying this for years.

Look, the Komen foundation's product is breast cancer right? No breast cancer, no need for Komen. So the board looks down the road and asks itself, how can we preserve market viability? Well, one way to do that is to make sure breast cancer stays around and what better way to do that than to make sure the women who are most likely to get it anyway because they are poor and lack basic healthcare are given some...erm...how to say this politely...extra challenges to overcome thus ensuring an ongoing supply of customers and a continuing need for pink  runs, walks, days, teas, bake sales, whatever.

Now that's the entrepreneurial spirit right there. That's the return to the belief in free enterprise all the republican candidates are saying we've lost in this country. America is back baby!

OK Class, Open Your Books To Page 49 Or The Nice Policeman Will Shoot You

Frequent reader(s) of this blog will remember the bright and joyous melodies of their youth have turned dirge-like and melancholy with the passage of years...erm...we mean will remember that on several occasions we have written about our less than stellar record as inmates of our local educorporate training facility. Now, we would have been the first to admit to you that we weren't what anyone this side of a fifth of Jack Daniels and water, hold the water would have called a model student, but at least no once called us felons.

The charge on the police docket was "disrupting class". But that's not how 12-year-old Sarah Bustamantes saw her arrest for spraying two bursts of perfume on her neck in class because other children were bullying her with taunts of "you smell".

OK, now before you go getting all up on your high horse because the police arrested a 12 year old girl who was being bullied instead of the bullies, remember, this is an improvement over their former policy which is simply to shoot the kid.  Plus we also don't know if the bullies were acting on their religious principles when they bullied her either.

"I'm weird. Other kids don't like me," said Sarah, who has been diagnosed with attention-deficit and bipolar disorders and who is conscious of being overweight. "They were saying a lot of rude things to me. Just picking on me. So I sprayed myself with perfume. Then they said: 'Put that away, that's the most terrible smell I've ever smelled.' Then the teacher called the police."

If you're like us, right about now you're wondering what are the odds that an overweight misfit young women would be mistreated in a middle school setting. Well, we can tell you it might happen more than you think, which is why teachers receive specific and intensive training in dealing with these behavioral anomalies. We mean come on people. Teachers are college educated professionals, licensed by the state, well versed in the ins and outs of child development and maturation, classroom disciplinary techniques and proactive listening skills. Of course, the police have guns so why bother with all that touchy feely stuff? There's tests to prep for!

Sarah was taken from class, charged with a criminal misdemeanor and ordered to appear in court. Each day, hundreds of schoolchildren appear before courts in Texas charged with offenses such as swearing, misbehaving on the school bus or getting in to a punch-up in the playground. Children have been arrested for possessing cigarettes, wearing "inappropriate" clothes and being late for school.

 This may seem harsh to you, but in Texas they know that these students must be prepared for the job market. A job market where, if you aren't a guard, you must be a prisoner.

"We've taken childhood behavior and made it criminal," said Kady Simpkins, a lawyer who represented Sarah Bustamantes.

Well, sure it sounds bad when you say it like that, but look here's the deal. Kids are a net drain on the economy. They have to be fed, clothed, housed, they get sick and need to go to the doctor, and on and on and on. They're the classic welfare kings and queens, man. Take, take, take, and what to they give back? Bupkus. But try and ask them to do just a little for their own upkeep and it's like you spit on the flag or something. Well, the free ride's over in Texas, right boys?

The Texas state legislature last year changed the law to stop the issuing of tickets to 10- and 11-year-olds over classroom behavior. (In the state, the age of criminal responsibility is 10.)

Oh crap. You bunch of bleeding hearts. What's next, infant  nutrition assistance?

Friday Hound Blogging

I'm going to step out of character for a moment today to talk about the Skechers Superbowl commercial. You've probably heard about it. It's ostensibly about how Skechers shoes can make a little French Bulldog faster than racing greyhounds. It was filmed at Tucson Greyhound Park.

When word of the ad first leaked out greyhound rescue groups all over the country responded by attempting to get the company to reconsider. In this effort Grey2K became a rallying point, eventually organizing a boycott campaign when the company refused to kill the ad. You can read about that effort here.

The Skechers company responded by saying that no dogs were injured in the making of the commercial, and it was just meant to be a humorous bit of advertising fluff designed to sell their product. Elements from the greyhound racing industry rallied to the company arguing since no one had actually seen the commercial yet, no critique of it was appropriate.

All true. All completely irrelevant. Our concern isn't the greyhounds in the commercial, they have been rescued. It is their brothers and sisters in the kennels surrounding the Tucson track and at tracks all over the country we are concerned with. The Skechers commercial trivializes their suffering, obscures the abuse they endure and disrespects the fact that thousands of greyhounds are injured and die every year in the barbarous industry that is greyhound racing.

The company says its intent was just to give us a chuckle and get us to think about its sneakers, but I would ask Skechers CEO Michael Greenburg, if he would approve of a funny commercial about dog fighting? About bear baiting? You would say, those activities are illegal, but that greyhound racing is currently sanctioned in no way mitigates the pain a dog suffers as its leg is shattered in a race, the abuse it endures locked in a crate upwards of 22 hours a day on a bed of shredded newspaper in a dark kennel, or the suffering as it slowly starves to death because its owner has walked away.

The supporters of greyhound racing who sided with the Skechers company also missed the point, but they have raised missing the point to an art form. I have engaged many greyhound racing supporters over the years in a variety of arenas, and I've learned that from their perspective, the first rule of debating greyhound racing is don't talk about greyhound racing. Scan a section of comments to an article about greyhound racing, blogs, message boards, or letters to the editor and you will see that a discussion that starts out about the cruelty of greyhound racing very quickly becomes one about Nazis, starving children, vegetarianism, or any of a myriad of subjects, as long as it's not greyhound racing. This is to be expected I suppose. I'm a trained rhetorician and I would find myself hard pressed to mount a defense of an industry built upon the commodification and exploitation of innocent living creatures for profit--and not much profit at that.

I'm willing to accept that the Skechers company did not know about the reputation of the Tucson track when they chose it for filming, a reputation I've written about many times on this blog--specifically to this point, here and here--but now they do, and with knowledge comes responsibility. To refuse to acknowledge the misery that surrounded your commercial, Mr. Greenburg, is to tacitly accept it, and to accept those responsible for it.

This Saturday Grey2K is sponsoring a nationwide protest against the Skechers company. People will be in front of Skechers stores all over the country handing out fliers and explaining the horrors of greyhound racing. Whether you are the activist type or not you can participate by simply educating yourself on the plight of racing greyhounds. If there is any good to come out of the Skechers commercial it will be that it raised the profile of greyhound racing and allowed even more people to see it for the despicable practice that it is.

Jessica’s Smile is very affectionate and asks for attention. She is very playful and comical. She can be a little strong-willed. She is a very smart, quick learner. She does well in crate and will even go in it to take naps. She loves to go for walks and also does well in the car. She loves her stuffies. She is very inquisitive. She has learned to do the stairs and is learning basic commands. Jessica’s Smile would do well in a single person home or with a family. She would do well by herself or with other dogs in the home. She would do well in a home with well-behaved children. For more information about this dog, and other rescued racing greyhounds looking for homes, go here. If you don't know about the plight of racing greyhounds go here.

Next Up: If Only They Hadn't Started Putting Floride In Water

We're coming to you today from the Inevitability Is Inevitable Department here in the marbled halls of IM Central. I³ is a division of It's Not Passing The Buck If God Tells You To Do It, Inc. A Respect Ma Moral Authorataa Company.

Slooshing through the inter toobz this morning looking for Stoli specials when what to our wandering eyes should appear but: Bishop of Tenerife blames child abuse on the children.

Well, of course you do. So far you've blamed everything except frogs and the New England Patriots, so why not? In the interests of fair and balanced though, we're willing to watch as you make a logic pretzel in support of this rather pungent bit of rhetorical effluvia. Please. Do go on:

His comments were that there are youngsters who want to be abused, and he compared that abuse to homosexuality, describing them both as prejudicial to society. He said that on occasions the abuse happened because the there are children who consent to it.
‘There are 13 year old adolescents who are under age and who are perfectly in agreement with, and what’s more wanting it, and if you are careless they will even provoke you’, he said.

OK first, all 13 year old adolescents are under age, maybe that's where you got confused, but this whole "provoke" thing? Aren't you guys always telling us we need to resist our baser urges? Aren't we supposed to fight provocation towards immoral acts? And isn't that why we need people like you, because we are weak and you guys have had training in this area? Come on man, you're supposed to be the SEAL Team Six of resisting temptation. You're the professionals of  temptation resistance, the people we're supposed to aspire to be. And now you're telling us you got tripped up by a 12 year old who forgot to button his shirt all the way up? Dude, this is like the New York Yankees getting beat 10 zip by the north Little Rock Bayview Rest Home Seniors Coed softball team. Twice. You sure that's the argument you want to go with?

A later statement from the Bishop's residence on Tenerife explained that the Bishop did not intend to imply that ‘an event as condemnable as the abuse of youngsters’ could be justified.

 Oh. Well that clears it up.

One thing though padre. If kids are a source of temptation even highly trained professionals such as yourself can't resist, why are you always telling us to have more of them? Just asking.