Tag Archives: Paul Ryan

Hunting Accident Season is Upon Us

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The days are getting shorter, leaves are starting to change colors and hunters are beginning to shoot one another—it would appear that hunting accident season is already upon us. With almost two weeks to go before fall officially begins, the guns of autumn are gearing up for another season of fatal mishaps.

According to the International Hunter Education Association, roughly 1,000 people in the US and Canada are accidentally shot by hunters each year; around a hundred of those victims are fatalities. Though the majority of unintentional targets are hunters themselves, innocent bystanders are also routinely injured or killed.

Hunting is one of the few outdoor activities that endangers the entire community (not just the willing participants), yet the perpetrators are almost never charged with manslaughter or any lesser crimes. As long as they are “lawfully” pursuing a recognized blood sport, the shooting of their fellow human is acceptable.

A case in point of a shooter hitting the wrong target (sent to me by an alert reader) happened just today in West Columbia, Texas, when a grandfather was aiming at a stray cat and accidentally shot his 3-year-old granddaughter in the leg.

The grandfather, Gary Van Ness, said some cats have been known to come inside his ratty trailer home uninvited. “The cat is brave enough to come in there and got him a couple of loaves of bread,” said Van Ness, adding, he’s already decided he’ll start trapping cats now, rather than shooting them. Granted, this one wasn’t a legitimate hunting accident, but he clearly had the same mindset, and armed response towards, “nuisance” animals as the typical nimrod…or game manager.

If that doesn’t fit your idea of a bona fide hunting accident, this other one that made headlines today surely will, as it was a clear cut case of one New Zealand deer hunter, Henry Worsp, mistaking his partner for prey. A local police commander called it, “another tragic reminder of the absolute necessity for hunters to properly identify their target before they shoot.” That’s no shit. But far too often hunters blast away at the sound of rustling in the bushes with a casual, shoot first, ask questions later attitude. I was shocked the first time I heard a hunter brag about getting off a “nice sound shot,” but now I know it’s just business as usual for some of them.

Today’s incident was New Zealand’s third hunting death so far this year. Cam McDonald, 29, was shot dead by another hunter in Aorangi Forest Park, on April 7. A few weeks earlier, 26-year-old Southlander Mark Richard Vanderley was killed by another man in his hunting group while spotlighting for deer. Of the 12 hunting-related deaths in NZ between 2002 and last year, 10 were caused by someone in the same hunting party.

And who can forget Dick Cheney’s world famous allegedly inadvertent peppering-in-the-face with birdshot pellets of Texas campaign contributor, Harry Whittington while at a Corpus Christi ranch, hunting quail? (No, not that other former Republican Vice President whose last name is Quayle; Cheney was out stalking small inoffensive birds this time.)

Whittington had just shot a quail and had dropped back to retrieve it and, upon rejoining the group, Mr. Cheney let him have it (apparently mistaking the tall, lanky fellow Republican for a small, inoffensive ground-dwelling bird, witnesses said). Though hit with pellets in the face and chest, to the 78 year old Whittington’s credit, he never lost consciousness. As though expecting trouble, an ambulance had been posted at the ranch while Cheney was hunting, and after debriefing, Whittington was taken to the hospital.

The owner of the ranch called the former Vice President “a very conscientious hunter,” adding “I would shoot with Dick Cheney everywhere, anywhere, and not think twice about it,” while at the same time cautioning, “The nature of quail shooting ensures that this will happen. It goes with the turf.”

Instead of perceiving the whole fiasco as a black eye for the Republican Party, it appears they see all the negative media attention Cheney received as a good thing (why else would they have chosen avid hunters Sarah Palin and Paul Ryan as Vice Presidential candidates?). In that way, the Republican camp is a lot like PETA.

Text and Wildlife Photography Copyright Jim Robertson

 

No Offense, but You’re an Animal

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I’m an animal, and if you don’t know it yet, it’s my duty to inform you, you’re one too. All we animals, the big-brained two-leggers, the furry four-leggers, the feathered and the finned are carbon-based creatures made up of the same ingredients. Every last earthling oozed from the same original, primordial stew pot.

The sooner we accept that we’re all animals, the sooner we can make peace with the others of this planet, rather than doing battle with them. Ultimately, it’s to our detriment that we deny evolution any longer. Humankind can’t live in a vacuum. We need all our best science to figure how to live with the many diverse, interconnected life forms that help keep this planet hospitable.

Bill Nye, ‘the Science Guy,’ recently stated in his Big Think video (which has been viewed nearly 3 million times so far), “I say to the grownups, if you want to deny evolution and live in your world, that’s completely inconsistent with the world we observe, that’s fine. But don’t make your kids do it.”

In rebuttal, the spokesman of a group of ‘Young Earth Creationists’ proclaimed, “No, we are not just evolved animals as Nye believes; we are all made in the image of God.” Young Earth Creationists, or ‘Biblical Creationists,’ as they prefer to be called, believe in a literal interpretation of the creation story in the book of Genesis. They say the weeklong account of God creating the earth and everything in it represents six 24-hour periods (plus one day of rest) and date the age of the earth between 6,000 and 10,000 years.

Nye’s view falls in line with the vast majority of scientists, who date the age of the earth and the universe as 4.5 billion years old. “The idea of deep time of billions of years explains so much of the world around us. If you try to ignore that, your worldview becomes crazy, untenable, itself inconsistent,” Nye said in his video. Still, polling from Gallup has shown for the past 30 years that between 40-46% of the survey respondents believe in creationism: that God created humans and the world within the past 10,000 years.

Granted, there are folks whose belief in creationism compels them to treat “God’s creatures” with compassion. As far as I’m concerned, people can believe whatever they want—as long as it promotes kindness to all sentient beings. Although I’ve never read it, I understand the Bible contains a number of passages that promote benevolence toward the vulnerable. (Before someone says something like, ‘If you haven’t read the bible, you’re ignorant of what you speak,’ I will argue that a person could end up even more ignorant and confused after reading it.)

Unfortunately, for the majority of believers, creationism leads to a sense of human superiority and the self-serving notion that we humans are in a higher realm of importance than the rest of the animal kingdom. This convenient fallacy has been used to justify the exploitation of animals over the centuries and continues to have widespread acceptance to this day.

For example, my uncle, a hunter who boasted of killing the largest black bear in the state, held to a word for word interpretation of the Bible which led to his belief that, “Humans were meant to subdue the earth” drawing his own conclusion, “There’s no earthly purpose for cougars.” His reasoning, shared by so many people the country over, was: to make life better for humans we should rid the world of species like cougars, bears, coyotes and wolves. Another example of this kind of stinkin’ thinkin,’ Republican vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan is a “pro-life” creationist bow-hunter who doesn’t see the hypocrisy in committing the sin of killing non-human animals for sport.

The idea of creationism was abandoned by the mainstream scientific community shortly after Darwin introduced The Origin of Species in 1859. By 1880 nearly every major university in America was teaching evolution. Bill Nye summed up his video with, “In another couple centuries I’m sure that worldview [creationism] won’t even exist. There’s no evidence for it.” While it seems only logical that any continued cultural advancement would include the acceptance of sciences such as geology, paleontology and evolution, I’m not so sure I share his optimism for the further progress of humanity.

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson

Give Paul Ryan the Grand Slam

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Are you tired of hearing about Paul Ryan yet? I know I am. After learning that he is a ‘diehard’ bowhunter, I didn’t think anything else about him would surprise me. But during a recent interview in Deer and Deer Hunting magazine he let slip just how much of a trophy hunter he really is.

Though he seems to actually enjoy getting his hands all bloody butchering his victims himself, the killing is clearly not about procuring cost-effective food for him—in Ryan’s own words, his fantasy dream hunt would be costly: “…one of my goals is to get a ‘grand slam’ of sheep with a bow,” Ryan told the deer-snuff magazine. “It would be very tough and very expensive.” For those lucky readers who don’t know what a ‘grand slam’ of sheep is, it’s the brutal murder of one each of the four different North American wild sheep, which include Alaska’s Dall sheep, Stone sheep (found only in northern Canada), Rocky Mountain bighorn and the Mexican desert bighorn. It’s like a golf tour for psychopathic animal killers.

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson

Paul Ryan told Deer Hunting his idol is the first archer who shot and killed all 27 species of North American ‘big game’ during a despicable form of legal serial murder known as the ‘super slam.’ “I’m just pretty typical for a Wisconsin guy,” Ryan added, confessing: “I love hunting and fishing. Bowhunting is my passion…preparing food plots, the strategy of where a dominant buck is living or will be moving and then being in position to get a shot, that’s really exciting.” (Hmm, he and I have an altogether different idea on the definition of passion and excitement, although I suppose another one of his fellow serial killers could relate.)

There’s malevolence in the act of bowhunting and Ryan is admittedly obsessed with doing it. (The same issue of Deer and Deer Hunting that features his interview includes an article titled, “How to Recover a Bow-Shot Deer.” Obviously it’s pretty much impossible to make a ‘clean,’ instantaneous kill with an arrow.) He may never be inducted into the ‘Bowhunters Hall of Fame,’ but there’s a very real, very frightening possibility of him eventually becoming President of the United States.

The thought of a trophy bowhunter, among the most sadistic of ‘sportsmen,’ being just a heartbeat away from the presidency of the country with the most nuclear weaponry at its disposal is cause for concern, to say the least. Who’s to say he won’t get a wild hair and decide to take out a small country or two just for the sport of it? So much for compassionate leaders—half our registered voters are considering making a conscious-less animal killer our next commander-in-chief-in-waiting.

And we thought having Ronald Reagan in control of the red button was scary.

Earth to Ryan: ALL Life is Life

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I was going to lay off Paul Ryan for a while, until I read his statement in an interview with a Pennsylvania news station: “I stand by my pro-life record in Congress. It’s something I’m proud of.” I just find it anomalous that a diehard bowhunter claims to be “pro-life.” Either he’s lying about championing life, or he doesn’t understand that humans aren’t the only animals imbued with it.

Since his congressional record leaves no doubt about his militantly “pro-life,” right-wing, anti-abortion stance (he opposes the procedure even in cases of rape or incest), it must be that he considers only human life worthy of the L-word. Apparently all others don’t measure up to the status of having life, in his opinion. It may come as a shock to someone so used to depersonalizing and objectifying certain beings while pursuing their favorite lethal hobby, but whether human or non-human, all life is life.

When I think of the term “pro-life,” I think of pro-wildlife (and therefore, anti-hunting); pro-animal life (humans being animals, they’re included here); pro-animate life; pro-the-living. But I fail to see how a human ovum fertilized through an act of incest or violence rates higher than a fully aware, fully functioning adult deer, elk or turkey.

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson

Ryan Choses Vegan as Speechwriter

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Fair warning to voters: If you start hearing Paul Ryan waxing poetic about mercy and compassion, those aren’t his words but rather the words written for him by animal welfare author, vegan and former George W. Bush speechwriter, Mathew Scully.

According to an article in the Daily Caller, “Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan has tapped renowned speechwriter Matthew Scully to assist with campaign communications in the lead up to the GOP convention in Tampa, Florida. …

“He’s a Catholic vegan: Scully, who investigated meat-processing plants and factory farms during his stint in journalism, wrote a book arguing for the better treatment of animals called Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and The Call to Mercy. A Catholic like Ryan, Scully believes that the Bible’s injunction for man to “have dominion” over other species requires us to treat all living things with respect — and extends that philosophy to personally abstain from eating meat.”

Of course, diehard bowhunter, Paul Ryan is light years from abstaining from meat and must think men, including rapists, have “dominion” over women too (but not the respectful, merciful kind of dominion Scully suggests for animals). Ryan was also in the news today for having co-sponsored a legislation with the now infamous Todd Aiken aimed at redefining rape and forcing women to turn an unwanted pregnancy into an unwanted and possibly unloved child.

Paul Ryan is shown here indicating just how much compassion and mercy bowhunters like him really have for animals…

Obama: “Ryan is a Decent Man”

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In his first remarks on Paul Ryan, President Barack Obama said, “I know him. I welcome him to the race. Congressman Ryan is a decent man,” but has “wrong vision for America” (especially for our wildlife, I would add).

When I read that Obama gave Ryan the dubious distinction of being “a decent man,” I had to wonder if our Commander in Chief has been reading my blog—in particular, a post I made back in early June, entitled…

He Was a “Decent” Man

Posted on June 9, 2012

Nobody is all good or all bad all of the time. Like the universe, people are multi-dimensional. Some of the most “decent” people I know are hunters. [well, not including bowhunters].These folks, who are inarguably unkind to animals during hunting season, are often as friendly and neighborly as you please to their fellow people. I have to assume there was some major peer pressure involved in their decision to start hunting as kids. And they must be doing some heavy compartmentalizing to keep it up as adults.

One of the most memorable and symbolic scenes in the movie, The Silence of the Lambs, is when Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster’s character) tells Hannibal Lecter of a traumatic experience she had while staying at a relative’s sheep ranch in Montana. She was awakened before dawn by the screaming of the lambs her uncle was slaughtering. When Lecter questioned the rancher’s morality, she quickly replied, “He was a very decent man.” No doubt the sheep would not agree. Somehow people who are capable of extreme cruelty can also have a convincingly “decent” side.

Ordinarily well-thought-of people can turn ugly and unkind when taking part in unnaturally cruel activities, where cruelty is the norm rather than the exception. One of the known coping mechanisms for workers in slaughterhouses is to objectify and demean animals as unworthy of consideration. Not only can people in these situations become indifferent towards “lowly” animals, they frequently turn sadistic. They can come to be obsessed with cruelty, taking pleasure in causing animals increased suffering.

Ten years before Jack the Ripper, nineteenth century French serial killer, Eusebius Pieydagnelle, developed such an obsession while growing up across the street from a butcher shop. He told police, “The smell of fresh blood, and appetizing meat, the bloody lumps–all this fascinated me and I began to envy the butcher’s assistant, because he could work at the block, with his sleeves rolled-up and bloody hands.” [Interestingly, Paul Ryan boasted, “I butcher my own deer, grind the meat, stuff it in casings and then smoke it”—not to get high of course, that rush must come from the killing.]

In spite of his respectable parents’ opposition, young Eusebius became an apprentice at the butcher shop where he wounded cattle and drank their blood. But the greatest excitement for him came when he was allowed to kill an animal himself: “…the sweetest sensation is when you feel the animal trembling under your knife. The animal’s departing life creeps along the blade right up to your hand. The mighty blow that felled the bullocks sounded like sweet music to my ears.” Shocking words from someone who was always thought of as a “decent man.” …

The media depicts Paul Ryan’s chosen hobby, bowhunting, as “quaint,” “folksey” or “outdoorsy,” but if the animals—whose bodies his arrows tear in to—had anything to say about it, they’d ask him: “Where’s your sense of decency?”

Wildlife Photograhy Copyright Jim Robertson

Save the Wolves, Go Vegan!

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If you really want to save the wolves, go vegan! And urge your friends and family and neighbors and co-workers to do the same. Tell it to the world: Eating meat is killing the planet, one wolf at a time; one species at a time; one ecosystem after another. Every time you order a steak or grill a hamburger, you legitimize wolf-culling for the sake of livestock growers. And every time you purchase a hunting license, you validate wolf trapping for the sake of elk hunters. To game managers, every action, right down to your purchase of ammo and cammo at Outdoor World is a show of support for their policies.

By now, you regular readers of this blog are probably thinking to yourself, “Well, duh…tell me something I don’t know.” But you might be surprised just how many people who advocated for the reintroduction of wolves eat meat like there’s no tomorrow. Comfortable in their justification, they reason that cows are “domesticated” or “dumb” and therefore bred for slaughter. This post is for them. Their beef comes from a feedlot (as far as they know) and not out on the open range, where wolves are being killed. Others pride themselves on eating only “grass-fed” beef, yet somehow they don’t see how their food choice helps lead to a policy of “controlling” wolves.

And how many hunters can honestly say that they don’t mind sharing their elk or deer with the likes of wolves, cougars or coyotes. Meanwhile, mainstream environmental groups and their members cling to the notion of “sustainable” beef (surely some of the ranchers and hunters out there can afford to look the other way when desperate wolves come around hoping for a quick meal to stave off their hunger pangs).

Rather than continually trying to revise your rationale, wouldn’t it be easier just to remove yourself from the equation and leave the predating to the predators? Human beings can live much healthier on a plant-based diet, like their primate cousins always have. True carnivores, such as wolves, coyotes, cougars, marine mammals or members of the weasel family have to eat meat to survive. If you’re not willing to go vegan for the sake of the animals you eat, maybe you should think of the other animals affected by your bill of fare.

Now, if Mitt Romney had chosen a vegan, instead of a diehard bowhunter like Ryan for a running mate, he might have gotten my vote.

Text and Wildlife Photography Copyright Jim Robertson

Ryan: Boy Scout or Dangerous Psychopath?

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Today the Huffington Post covered Paul Ryan’s mixed record on the outdoors. Of course right-leaning bowhunters were thrilled about their candidate’s choice for a running mate (yes, the majority of hunters are red-state Republicans, but they do come in all political stripes.) It’s no surprise that the NRA gave him an ‘A’ rating. Hailed as “the last Boy Scout” by none other than Rush Limbaugh, Ryan must have earned his merit badges in cruelty to animals, pandering to weapons manufacturers and “virtuous” selfishness (one of the only two bills Ryan has ever ushered into law during his congressional career was a cap on excise tax on bowhunting equipment).

Sure, presidential candidates pandering to gun lobbies or seeking to secure the sportsmen’s vote is nothing new.  From the likes of Teddy Roosevelt with his head-hunting safaris here and in Africa, to John Kerry with his backfiring cammo-clad goose-hunt-media-stunt, to Dick Cheney blindly blasting at birds (spraying lead at anything or anyone that moves),  politicians have shamelessly courted the hunter vote while helping to promote the wise-use twaddle that “hunters are the best environmentalists.” For
his part, the great “varmint” hunter, George W. Bush, penned executive order 13443 on August 17, 2007, encouraging more hunting in parks and on national wildlife refuges.

Cleveland Amory, founder of The Fund for Animals, had this to say about President Roosevelt in his anti-hunting epic, Man Kind? Our Incredible War on Wildlife: “Theodore Roosevelt…could not be faulted for at least some efforts in the field of conservation. But here the praise must end. When it came to killing animals, he was close to psychopathic.” Dangerously close indeed (think: Ted Bundy). But don’t let on to a hunter what you think of their esteemed idol, because, as Mr. Amory put it, “…the least implication anywhere that hunters are not the worthiest souls since the apostles drives them into virtual paroxysms of self-pity.”

Amory goes on to write, “…the hunter, seeing there would soon be nothing left to kill, seized upon the new-fangled idea of ‘conservation’ with a vengeance. Soon they had such a stranglehold [think: Ted Nugent] on so much of the movement that the word itself was turned from the idea of protecting and saving the animals to the idea of raising and using them–for killing. The idea of wildlife ‘management’–for man, of course–was born.”

Though Roosevelt probably killed more trophy “game” animals than all our other presidents combined, in terms of a potential policy maker who could spell doom for wildlife and wilderness for generations to come, Ryan is even more dangerous. His budget plan calls for selling off public lands to private individuals, essentially turning the last of the wild places into high-end private game reserves for trophy hunting. Some of his ideas make the so-called “Sportsmen’s Heritage Act,” which would open our national parks and refuges to hunting (a bill Ryan enthusiastically supported) seem almost tame.

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Portions of this post were excerpted from the book, Exposing the Big Game: Living Targets of a Dying Sport

Text and Wildlife Photography Copyright Jim Robertson

Pining for Palin

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I never thought I’d be pining for the day when Sarah Palin was tapped as John McCain’s running mate Paul Ryan makes Sarah Palin look almost presidential. Both are extremist Tea Partyers, but Palin is more of a Tea Party-lite, compared to Ryan who must chug Morning Thunder by the gallon, straight from the keg.

Although Sarah Palin may have fit the nickname, “Caribou Barbie,” Paul Ryan is certainly no “Caribou Ken.” With his prominent widow’s peak he looks more like an evil, forty-two year-old version of Eddie Munster. While Sarah Palin appeared a bit vacant at times (both on the podium and posing with a dead animal’s head in her lap), Paul Ryan looks totally vacuous—vampire-ish even—squatting beside a freshly-killed deer or turkey. But a vampire only drinks a little blood and moves on, whereas Ryan revels in morbidity, personally dismembering the bodies of his victims. In Ryan’s own words, “I butcher my own deer, grind the meat, stuff it in casings and then smoke it.”

Sarah Palin probably hunts mainly for attention and photo ops, yet Paul Ryan actually enjoys hanging around in a tree stand (upside down like a bat, rumor has it) until an unsuspecting deer walks by. When the peace-loving animal gets within range, it’s time for Ryan to play his most coveted role—that of Vlad the Impaler—and run the innocent being through with an arrow.

Paul Ryan’s idol, Ayn Rand, espoused the “Virtue of Selfishness” and called altruism “evil” (talk about spin doctors). Well, you don’t get any more selfish and malevolent than bow-hunting. Over half of all animals shot with arrows are crippled rather than killed outright and escape with an arrow shaft painfully imbedded in them. As far as “hobbies” go, you’d be hard-pressed to find a crueler one—except maybe trapping.

If selfishness is really a virtue, then a bow-hunter deserves to be Vice President, and this must seem the most virtuous of nations.

Romney Taps Diehard Bow Hunter for Running Mate!

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A bowhunter could soon be the U.S. Vice President!!!  Spread the word–Mitt Romney’s choice for running mate is an avid, diehard trophy deer hunter!!

“Diehard” is more than a euphemism, in this case it has a double meaning. Unfortunately it’s the deer who literally die hard, thanks to Ryan’s chosen hobby.

According to the blaze.com, ‘He’s an avid bow hunter who emails from the brush as he waits for deer.’ Number 10 of the US News list of “10 Things You Didn’t Know about Paul Ryan (and, I would add, never hoped to find out) is: #10. Ryan’s hobbies include hunting and fishing. He is a bowhunter and belongs to his hometown’s archery association, the Janesville Bowmen.

“I butcher my own deer, grind the meat, stuff it in casings and then smoke it,” Ryan told Politico.

Here’s Paul Ryan’s Voting Record on the Environment:

  • Voted NO on protecting free-roaming horses and burros. (Jul 2009)
  • Voted NO on environmental education grants for outdoor experiences. (Sep 2008)
  • Voted NO on $9.7B for Amtrak improvements and operation thru 2013. (Jun 2008)
  • Voted NO on increasing AMTRAK funding by adding $214M to $900M. (Jun 2006)
  • Voted NO on barring website promoting Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump. (May 2006)
  • Voted YES on deauthorizing “critical habitat” for endangered species. (Sep 2005)
  • Voted YES on speeding up approval of forest thinning projects. (Nov 2003)
  • Rated 10% by the LCV, indicating anti-environment votes. (Dec 2003)
  • Inter-state compact for Great Lakes water resources. (Jul 2008)
  • Make tax deduction permanent for conservation easements. (Mar 2009)
  • Rated 13% by HSLF, indicating an anti-animal welfare voting record. (Jan 2012)

And here’s Paul Ryan’s “hobby:”