Friday Hound Blogging

Hello America and all the ships at sea! We're coming to you today from the It's Only A Problem If You Know About It Department here in the marbled (if somewhat dusty from lack of use) halls of IM Central. The IOAPIYKAI Department is part of the What You Don't Know Won't Hurt Us Corporation, a wholly owned subsidy of Trust Us On This, LLC.

Ah, Friday Hound Blogging. Truth be told we've missed our weekly visits to the overlords, or as we like to call them, high colonic residue with faces. Well, it seems while we were off getting our serious on, the Posse Commodatatis seems to have developed a social conscience and is taking on one of the burning political questions of our age.

The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and other animal rights groups are up in arms over a bill introduced in the New Hampshire legislature that would require any persons recording cruelty to livestock to report the animal abuse and submit the recordings to law enforcement authorities within 24 hours of the video’s creation. The HSUS claims that New Hampshire House Bill (HB) 110 would impose a “gag” on whistleblowers trying to expose animal cruelty. In fact, there is nothing in the bill that prohibits the shooting of undercover video, or imposes penalties for doing so.

Right. Except that forcing videos to be turned in within 24 hours would effectively destroy any chance the filming organization might have to demonstrate the practice was ongoing and not an anomaly (which is what you know the farm, or puppy mill, or greyhound kennel owners would say) plus providing a warning to the offending organization in time for them to appear to clean up their act.

But other than destroying one of your most effective weapons against abusers, what's your beef HSUS? (Get it? Beef? See because they're probably vegetarians like all communists. We crack us up.)

For years, extreme animal rights organizations have used “undercover videos” to hype animal cruelty allegations against targeted animal enterprises, including greyhound racing. Often, these groups shoot video over a period of days, weeks or even months before reporting the abuse to authorities, if they report it at all.

 OK, as trained rhetorical language user people we'd like to unleash a little of our exegesical semantical mojo on this here passage. We are professionals. Do not try this at home.

First of all, what does it say about the existential emptiness of the writer's soul that he or she would believe that animal cruelty has to be "hyped," as if by itself it is a subject no more worthy of our attention than reporting the Cubs have lost. Again.  And of course the accusations of cruelty are only "alleged" against "targeted animal enterprises," all of which is meant to inject a sizable element of doubt into the whole issue without having to actually deny the allegations because, you know, "alleged" means maybe, maybe not, and "targeted" moves the issue from the act to the organization because there's some sort of personal vendetta type thing going on here and it's not really about animals dying all over the place. And isn't "animal enterprise" an interesting way to phrase what a CAFO, or a greyhound kennel is? Makes the whole thing sound harmless. Like calling a slaughter house an abattoir, oui?

Which brings us to the last sentence, perhaps the most interesting of the lot. It's almost like the author wrote the main clause, then realized what it implied and tried to pull it out of the fire with the closing if conditional. Dear Mr. or Ms. Writer: It didn't work. If groups can find enough abuse going on to shoot it over "a period of days, weeks or even months" then you got some abuse going on there, honey and that's the name of that tune. To imply that they may not report it--how to say this politely--makes Glenn Beck look like a Rhodes Scholar.

Greyhound racing organizations have encouraged anyone who has witnessed abuse or neglect of greyhounds to report it to the National Greyhound Association (NGA), the American Greyhound Council (AGC), or the American Greyhound Track Operators Association (AGTOA). Responsible animal welfare advocates know that these organizations respond quickly and efficiently when action is needed to ensure the welfare of racing greyhounds.

Well, that's all nice sounding and stuff, but it's awful hard for anyone to witness greyhound abuse or neglect WHEN YOU WON"T LET THEM IN THE KENNEL! And another thing, who are these "Responsible animal welfare advocates" of which you speak? You never identify them. They only exist in your head, right? Come on, you can tell us.

HumaneWatch the online animal rights watchdog explains that “sitting around and splicing footage over a few months” can make isolated incidents look like constant practice.

Dude, if you have enough "incidents" that you can splice them together over months, then you got yourself a "constant practice." See, "isolated means like, isolated, you know, as in not many happening. Hope we cleared that up for you.

OK, now we're coming to the big finish:

New Hampshire’s HB110 wouldn’t prevent anyone from shooting undercover video or using it for media and fundraising purposes.

Wait for it...

It’s very telling that HSUS, ASPCA and so many other animal rights groups are lining up against this legislation. They don’t want to stop animal abuse at all; they simply want to exploit it to grab headlines and raise money.

Now, what we have here is what's called your basic internal inconsistency,  or, as the overlords call it, We Were Dropped On Our Heads Too Often As Children. Explains a lot, huh PG?

PG is very relaxed and independent. He gets along well with children and adults. He enjoys the cats and dogs that are in the foster home and loves to be petted. PG needs to work on his leash habits because he pulls a little bit. He can go up and down the stairs. PG is a typical Greyhound that likes to curl up on the bed and takes nice long naps. 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.