Commentary and analysis on American politics, culture, and national identity, U.S. foreign policy and international relations, and the state of education
- from a neoconservative perspective! - Keeping an eye on the communist-left so you don't have to!
Most of the comments I've seen on this, especially yesterday on Twitter, wanted the parents shot dead. I mean seriously, there were strong opinions.
There's video at Channel 4 News UK, showing the gorilla becoming riled up, and dragging the boy quite aggressively, if not violently. No doubt this would have been a terrifying experience to watch, not least of all for the parents. Zoo officials must have been horrified not just at the scene, but at the prospect of killing that prized gorilla, a huge silver-back. See, "A gorilla has been shot dead after a boy fell into its zoo enclosure. The 4-year-old is set to make a full recovery."
As soon as I started reading this piece I was reminded that my dad used to take me and my sisters to see the bull fights in Mexico. My younger sister and I used to mimic the Mexicans yelling their Spanish shout outs, Olé!!
Fifteen minutes into a heated session on whether bullfighting should be banned in Baja California, legislator David Ruvalcaba proposed that the fate of the controversial but financially attractive sport needed further study.
Immediately the boos rang out, and half the crowded walked out.
For the third time this year, the Congress of the Mexican state of Baja California blinked in the face of banning a sport that has deep cultural roots in Mexico but is increasingly viewed as animal cruelty.
On Thursday, 12 legislators voted for the delay, eight opposed it and two abstained. And like that, bullfighting season will indeed begin Sunday in Tijuana.
Though they have repeatedly chosen not to vote on the issue, legislators here bristled at the notion, put forward by the bullfighting lobby, that the state does not have the power to regulate the sport.
“Of course we have the power to regulate the sport,” said legislator Juan Manuel Molina, though he allowed that that power carried the responsibility of exploring the ban further.
“It's a matter of culture and a matter of belief, but it's also a matter of humanity,” Molina said. “The spectacle is cruel.”
But Molina questioned how it was possibly fair to ban bullfighting while allowing other sports that claim Mexican heritage, such as cockfighting and the rodeo.
Animal rights groups have presented signature campaigns, celebrity endorsements and polls that purport to indicate overwhelming opposition to bullfighting as part of a public campaign against the sport, which has its roots in Spain and has been banned in some Latin American countries.
Bullfighting is increasingly unpopular in Mexico, according to the polling firm Parametria. In a 2015 poll, 73% of Mexican citizens supported a nationwide ban.
The Mexican states of Sonora and Coahuila, which border the U.S., have banned bullfighting, as has the southern state of Guerrero. But the sport remains popular in the capital, Mexico City, where the Plaza de Toros Mexico seats 48,000 spectators, the largest bull ring in the world.
On Sunday in Tijuana, the largest city in Baja California, the event will feature a rejoneador, a bullfighter on horseback, for the first bullfight of the season.
Built next to the sea and nearly adjacent to the border wall that separates it from California, the Tijuana bullfight ring is designed to appeal to Americans, even extending special offers to San Diego tourists: For a minimum of $200, guests will be whisked to the grounds of a winery on Saturday for a “Toros and Vino Event” that will feature two hours of private bullfights and a return trip across the border before the main event on Sunday.
If the ban is successful, the nearest bull ring near the Southwest border would be Chihuahua's La Esperanza...
ALCALÁ DE CHIVERT, Spain—For daredevils the world over, Pamplona’s running of the bulls is a once-in-a-lifetime thrill, a chance to charge alongside 1,200-pound beasts hurtling down narrow streets.
For Saul Boix, the annual dash is a cakewalk.
“In Pamplona, you run with the bulls for about two minutes,” the 26-year-old Spaniard said. What really beefs up his adrenaline, he said, is spending an entire day at a town festival, provoking one bull after another to charge him, or if that fails, charging directly at the bull.
“In the small towns,” Mr. Boix said, “you have hours with the animals.”
Every year across Spain, bull-obsessed adrenaline addicts seek their fix by traveling from town to town to participate in local iterations of Pamplona. They’re a haphazard group, so it is hard to hit the bull’s-eye on their numbers—at least several hundred, according to fans and some of the men themselves.
The Mediterranean coastal region of Valencia, Mr. Boix’s home turf, holds around 7,000 festivals each year that feature bulls and cows with horns, mainly in the summer and autumn.
“Where there’s a bull, there’s a fiesta,” said Francisco Miró Simó, 62, president of the club that organizes a festival in nearby Alquerías de Santa Bárbara. “If there are no bulls, only a quarter of the people would show up” at festivals, he said.
“We are always with bulls,” Mr. Boix said of his fellow itinerants. They are often called recortadores, those who intercept the bull’s path, quickly sidestep its charging horns, then use their bodies like a bullfighter’s cape to steer the animal around. They are also called corredores, or runners, when sprinting alongside the animals.
“They see risk as a kind of entertainment,” said José Ramón Caballero de la Calle, a veterinary professor at Spain’s University of Castilla-La Mancha who treats festival bulls...
If there's a star at SeaWorld San Diego, it's the 11 mammoth killer whales that thrill children and parents with their magnificent grace and acrobatic tricks.
So does the animal park have a future without Shamu?
That's the existential threat the San Diego theme park is facing after this week's stunning decision by the California Coastal Commission to ban captive breeding of the park's killer whales — as a condition of building a much larger $100-million holding facility.
The vote, condemned by the park, comes as SeaWorld tries to fend off criticism highlighted in the 2013 documentary "Blackfish" accusing the marine park of neglecting and abusing its killer whales.
SeaWorld has rejected those accusations but faced plummeting attendance and a constant barrage of public criticism. It planned to win back public support by building a much larger living environment for its orcas — a 450,000-gallon pool and a 5.2-million-gallon tank in place of its 1.7-million-gallon pen.
The Coastal Commission approved the plan, but placed restrictions on the park that could mean an end to SeaWorld's orca program. Without breeding or bringing in new orcas, its animals would grow old and die in the park, ending the shows permanently.
"It means that the California Coastal Commission is asking them to manage these animals to extinction in the state of California," said Grey Stafford, director of conservation at the Wildlife World Zoo and Aquarium in Phoenix.
SeaWorld could abandon the project and allow the animals to live and continue performing in their current enclosure — in essence thumbing its nose at a growing chorus of critics.
But few see the company pursuing either option.
The twice-a-day shows by the animals, which weigh several tons, are by far the biggest attraction at the park, which also features other marine shows, animal exhibits, a roller coaster and water ride.
The commission's decision might complicate SeaWorld's future plans, but doesn't spell the company's demise, said James Hardiman, equity research analyst and managing director at Wedbush Securities.
"A lot would need to happen for SeaWorld's business to be over," he said. "This does not mark the end of SeaWorld." ...
Bill Hurly, past president of the Alliance of Marine Mammal Parks & Aquariums, an international accreditation body, said he expects that SeaWorld will follow through on its threat to challenge the legality of the decision, a move that would be supported by the industry.
"If I were SeaWorld, I'd use my legal resources," he said.
Indeed, aquarium and zoo officials have blasted the Coastal Commission's restrictions, saying breeding programs help biologists improve their understanding of the behavior and habits of killer whales. They blamed the panel's vote on "misinformation" disseminated on social media by animal rights activists.
"Most of what is known about marine mammal reproduction has been learned by studying animals in zoological facilities," said Rob Vernon, a spokesman for the Assn. of Zoos & Aquariums.
Even so, the vote will likely give animal rights groups new momentum to call on local agencies throughout the nation to change the way animals in captivity are treated after several unsuccessful reform efforts.
A bill introduced in the California Legislature to ban killer whale shows at SeaWorld San Diego was tabled last year for further study, and its author confirmed later that he won't reintroduce it this year. In Vancouver, British Columbia, a parks board voted last year to halt the breeding program at the Vancouver Aquarium, but the ban was never implemented.
"Blackfish" director Gabriela Cowperthwaite said the commission's decision shows that the public is now taking a greater interest in how animals are treated.
"It's a sign that everyone is exercising any authority they might have over this place to force them to do the right thing," Cowperthwaite said.
Fuck 'em. Fuck the totalitarian leftists who have not one fun bone in their bodies.
The authoritarian decision by the California Coastal Commission to ban breeding of killer whales at SeaWorld San Diego seemingly carries the unusual assertion that the commission has the authority to regulate mammalian procreation in the coastal zone. The legal foundation for that is clearly shaky.
The commission was already on dubious legal ground when its staff demanded that, as a condition of approval for SeaWorld’s proposal to double the size of its orca habitat, it agree to take no more whales from the wild. That is a federal issue; the park is licensed and authorized to operate as a public display facility for orcas under two federal animal-welfare laws. But SeaWorld hasn’t taken any whales from the wild for 35 years anyway, so it agreed to that condition before Thursday’s hearing.
The new conditions prohibiting captive breeding and whale transfers, apparently meaning SeaWorld also cannot bring orcas here from its other parks, were another matter. They will over time mean the end of the park’s whale programs. And that could mean the end of SeaWorld, at least in San Diego.
The commission decision was based on emotion and shallow animal-rights politics. It fails to recognize that breeding is a fundamental part of orca life...
It doesn't matter what the issue is, hideous far-left ghouls will claim their ideology of "compassion" trumps all, and thus they're the ones to decide if a homeless panhandler gets to have a puppy or not.
Again, this is not some fringe outlier incident. This is the ideological left in action.
And check the "#GoVegan" hashtag on Twitter. It's a very short step from these "activists" to animal liberation terrorists (who show no hesitation to taking human life in the name of "animal rights").
BILLINGS – Evidence shows that a hiker found dead in Yellowstone National Park was attacked and partially consumed by a grizzly bear, according to a release from park officials.
Investigators found what appeared to be defensive wounds on the man's forearms, but haven't determined an exact cause of death. Tracks from a female grizzly and at least one cub were found at the scene.
Park officials did not release the hiker's name, but said he's a Montana resident who has worked and lived at Yellowstone for five years and was an experienced hiker.
A park ranger found the man's body on a popular off-trail area about half a mile from the Elephant Back Loop Trail. His body was cached, partially covered in dirt.
The trail and immediate area remain closed.
Officials set bear traps in the area Friday evening. If bears involved in the attack are captured, they will be euthanized...
Not sure if I support putting the bears down. They didn't do anything wrong.
The bird was believed to have been shot with the arrow about two weeks ago.
It remains unclear who shot the arrow, but authorities say if a shooter is identified, that person may face multiple charges.
“They should be caught and incarcerated for it,” Chino Hills resident Heather Grant said. “Animal abuse is disgusting.”
California has a way of living up to the worst regulatory expectations, as grocery shoppers across the country are discovering. The state’s latest animal-rights march is levying a punishing new food tax on the nation’s poor.
Egg prices are soaring in California, where the USDA says the average price for a dozen jumbo eggs is $3.16, up from $1.18 a dozen a year ago, and in some parts of the state it’s more than $5. The Iowa State University Egg Industry Center says retail egg prices in California are 66% higher than in other parts of the West. National wholesale egg prices also climbed nearly 35% over the 2014 holiday period, before retreating.
The cause of these price gyrations is an initiative passed by California voters in 2008 that required the state’s poultry farmers to house their hens in significantly larger cages. The state legislature realized this would put home-state farmers at a disadvantage, so in 2010 it compounded the problem by requiring that eggs imported from other states come from farms meeting the same cage standards, effective Jan. 1, 2015.
The new standards require cages almost twice the size of the industry norm, with estimated costs to comply of up to $40 a hen. That’s about $2 million for a farm with 50,000 chickens. Some farmers are passing the costs on to consumers, while others are culling their flocks by half for each cage.
Government statistics show that the number of egg-laying chickens in California has fallen 23% in two years. Many farmers outside the state are choosing not to sell eggs to California, leaving egg brokers scouring the country for cage-compliant eggs and paying top dollar to meet demand in a state that has imported more than four billion eggs a year.
This comes when egg demand is growing, in part because soaring meat prices have caused Americans to turn to other foods. Per capita consumption is expected to reach more than 260 eggs this year, the highest since 1983, according to the USDA. The poorest consumers have been hit hardest by the price spike because eggs have traditionally been a cheap source of protein.
California’s cage law is part of the nationwide animal-rights effort to raise the costs of animal food production in the name of more, well, humane treatment. Groups like the Humane Society of the United States failed to get Congress to pass national chicken-cage standards, so they turned to California to set what they hoped would be a de facto national standard because of the size of its market.
There’s a strong argument that this violates the Constitution’s Commerce Clause, which bars states from discriminating against interstate trade...
