So, we are clear that PETA is just a gang of vultures, right?

I disagree.
Vultures are more attractive and provide a useful service.

PeTA have sunk lower than this before, what makes this one particularly ironic is that the rhetoric of PeTA itself, and even more so the rhetoric and tactics of many of their friends in the AR movement (SHAC,ALF etc.), is very, very similar to that of the anti-abortion extremists.

You even have AR nutjobs like Jerry Vlasak advocating the murder of scientists, though thankfully they haven't succeeded yet.

My suggested response, make a donation to Planned Parenthood at https://secure.ga0.org/02/pp2009_inhonor and sign the Pro-Test petition against AR extremism at http://www.raisingvoices.net

Please, stop holding back, tell us how you really feel.

PETA is what happens when you get misplaced religiosity, a clear desire to do something good but an even clearer lack of rational thought. They are living in an alternate universe the rest of us know enough to avoid.

Wow. That's impressive. Even Dembski isn't that deaf towards social niceties.

If there was a god Ingrid Newkirk would marry Fred Phelps and have a baby that runs a string of successful lesbian fried chicken restaurants.

I will be baptized the day this happens.

Abbie, with all the gagging you've been doing lately, you need to stock up on Pepto-Bismol.

I say we need a reality show featuring a bunch of PETA board members on a desert island and watch how fast it takes them to de-convert from vegetarianism.

PETA and the wackos at "Army of God" and "Prayer and Action News" share a common belief that a mass murder is happening right here in the U.S. and almost any means may be adopted to stop it, even those which make the rest of us look on in disgust and horror.

Abortions are fine, just don't take away my seafood.

The level of emotion that goes into these blog entries is fantastic

Preschoolers Entreating Televised Attention.

Interesting indeed.

the suffering of billions of living beings horrifically abused on factory farms and in slaughterhouses

That's one of my favorite things (and by "favorite", I mean "most revolting") about the Left and pro-choicers. In general, they support pro-choice AND the general prevention of cruelty to animals. But they have no problem sticking blades into, dismembering with suction devices, and using chemical weapons on very young babies. There's no way they'd do that with animals! But with really young babies, you know, what the hell, why not? I mean, we're not sure what they are, but we DO know their mother is inconvenienced by their presence, so let's go for the gusto (and the jugular [literally])! They're DEFINITELY of less value than rabbits!

Okay who moved the rock?

I guess I'm more sympathetic to PETA than most. Even though their methods leave a lot to be desired, their hearts are in the right place. Isn't the painful killing of animals, who have nervous systems and conscious experience, a lot worse than the painless killing of a fetus whose brain and nervous system are totally undeveloped?

Regardless of their lack of tact or their methods or their timing, aren't they pretty much right? How much sense does it make to worry about the conscious experience of a fetus more than that of a living animal?

13-Chris,

I doubt you've observed whether animals do indeed suffer, whether the brain waves that change when you stick them with a knife definitely means pain, that their vocal expressions actually mean they're experiencing pain, or that pain to an animal means the same as it does to a human. Or their consciousness.
Same for young babies.

Anyway, the point I was making is that it's amazing to me that most leftists think that very young children are that much less valuable and worthy of protection than animals.

To change the subject slightly: forget cruelty as justification for vegetarianism. Just consider sustainability. The amount of water and energy required to make a cow is insane. (For example, see http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/aug97/livestock.hrs.html)

I'm not even vegetarian, but I do practice serious moderation when it comes to meat and animal products. Jebus, people are so concerned with animal cruelty, completely oblivious to the facts that A) we are naturally predisposed to eat meat and B) eating meat is a sustainability nightmare.

And really, you get the same kind of catch-22 with abortion. You're damned if you do and damned if you don't, as they say. That's what moderation is for. You can't just say it's okay for everyone to run around aborting their babies, but you have to respect the fact that some circumstances are terrible for child-rearing and/or a mother's health.

And to get back to the point: yes, PETA are bastards for riding on the back of a cold-blooded murder to gain publicity.

Asshole boy dribbled: "it's amazing to me that most leftists think that ..."

Yes. It is amazing that nobody at all thinks that. Wow.

Strawmen, lies, and assholery. That's all Rho-butt has.

Rho-babble: Fetus=Very Young Baby

Do you take your Very Young Chickens scrambled, poached, or fried?

Rhology still hasn't grasped the difference between "child" and "fetus". I can only assume that Stork Theory has clouded his brain.

17=Wolfhound,

Most of the eggs that YOU buy at the store are actually fertilised eggs? Wow, what messed-up Wal-Mart do you shop at?

If not, then isn't your comment kind of, well, irrelevant?

Actually, since you asked, I don't buy my egss at the store. I have a flock of chickens, complete with a rooster. Yes, they are fertile. His name is Bruno the Buff Brahma and he is quite randy.

This makes your comment kind of, well, irrelevent. Just like all of your others, come to think of it.

20-Wolfhound,

In your zeal to make sure you acted rudely and insulted me, you missed why your 1st comment was irrelevant.
An unfertilised egg isn't a very young chicken at all. It's an EGG. Much like an UNfertilised human egg. But a FERTILISED egg is a very young chicken/human.
So I don't take my very young chickens scrambled, no, since I don't eat those. Not that I'd mind eating them.
Your comment is the equivalent of the clueless pro-choice non-argument "I guess masturbation is reckless endangerment!!! HAHAHAHAH!!!!!!1111" as if that's relevant at all to the question at hand.

Wolfhound@20

âI have a flock of chickensâ

Brahmas? That makes no sense. Socks are cute, but if you swap them out for Ameraucana, then every day is Easter. Wheeeeee.

Rho~@ all comments all the friggen time,
You know ultimately my objection to you, has so much less to do with your being a compulsive Baptist apologist, as it does with you being a lazy unctuous shitty compulsive Baptist apologist.

If you want to draw out some sort of demonstration of left platform hypocrisy to justify your opposition to reproductive autonomy, it is pretty easy.

Demonstrating your opposition to be inconsistent is a quick way to convince dumb people you are right although one does not follow from the other.

Let me show you how this works......

Pain and suffering are a lousy complicated for-and-against arguments for anything.

If you think human life is a bowl of cherries, well bully for you, Miss Hilton! Iâm glad things are working out for you. Iâll check in with you a few decades from now in the nursing home when you are strapped to a potty chair and see if you have modified your position.
If you think animals who live out their lives naturally have it so much better than their domesticated cousins, forget comparing a pneumatic hammer to the horror of lions, hyenas and other stuff that bounces the ratings on Mutual of Omahaâs Wild Kingdom. I have one word for you.

Worms.

Inefficiency is a dumb argument too.

When the famine stricken people of {insert country here}grow the extra stomach and intestine length necessary to digest sorghum stubble then we can reroute yellow dent corn and bakery waste their way. In the meantime botan rice and alfalfa are not substisiable crops. Sorry. Total consumable sustainable preservable yield maximization in agriculture has been the goal of agribusiness since the first pharaoh drank his first glass of beer.

Environmental impact works. It works like a dream.

Factory hog and chicken farming are filthy filthy propositions. If we acknowledge we have an obligation to preserve the planet for âfuture generationsâ.......GOT EM!

You canât really argue that the freedom of extant humans is superior to that of potential humans for purposes of arguing the ethical merits of abortion AND make the opposite argument when it comes to people deprived by draconian restrictions created for the future rights of even more speculative distant offspring.

Correction, I guess you âcanâ make those arguments in the same breath but probably not with a straight face.

There now. You can whallop every fruitarian trust fund Berkeley social sciences undergraduate that raises your hackles.

Of course it is crap, actuality proceeds potentiality in the greater quest for the golden mean, but Sunshine Moonbeam Moskowitz hasn't read Aristotle. He's a dead white guy.

For myself, it may be early onset male menopause but propositions like pain, suffering, death, hunger, environmental posterity, political expedience, etc. seem more and more like youthful histrionics. I seem to care more about the intellectual tradition, the marketplace of ideas, individual autonomy and an opportunity at least, for every person not merely to live but live the life of the mind.

I am becoming very Athenian in my dotage.

I do love gyros.

Love them.

Denying the chickenhood of Very Young Chickens just because they happen to be Prefertilized, Rhology? I'm shocked and appalled.

An unfertilised egg isn't a very young chicken at all. It's an EGG.

Just because it's a prefertilized Very Young Chicken doesn't mean that it's not a Very Young Chicken, Rhology. Don't you know life begins at meiosis II?

As a matter of fact, parthenogenetic males occasionally occur in chickens and turkeys. So there are "unfertilized chickens" by any standard.

Rho, good to know that if you ate any eggs from my flock you would call them very young chickens. Gotcha'. That's what I was driving at in my original post so why you chose to be willfully obtuse is beyond me. No, wait, that's a common wingnut tactic.

In your zeal to equate fertilized eggs to very young [insert animal species] you are using the pro-forced maternity non-argument that abortion=murdering an actual child.

And I equate the rabid animal rights extremist whackaloons with the pro-forced-maternity whackaloons. They pretty much use the same idiotic arguments that your camp does. You're both "Pro-Life", eh? :)

I have been reading your content-free, smarmy, arrogant, godbotting dribblings here for quite a while. Thus far, you have proved to be worthy of nothing but insult. In real life you might very well be a nice person that I'd like but here you're a first-class buttmunch. You choose to stay here so it's fairly obvious that you enjoy the attention whoring and the Martyr-4-Jeezus label it brings you. :shrug:

Hey, Prometheus, Ameraucanas are the breed I specialize in, actually. The Brahmas were feed store bargains that I bought for $2 each (and all were supposed to be pullets, ha-ha) and are my "yard birds". I have show quality white, black, blue, and buff Ameraucanas. Some are currently Very Young Chickens, too, as they are not due to hatch until tomorrow or Sunday. :P

Cool!

I had Ameraucanas as a sprout.

I was older when somebody told me the skin around their ears matched egg color.

Is that true?

No, it's not true. What IS true most of the time is that birds with red earlobes lay brown eggs and those with white earlobes lay white eggs. Ameraucanas have white earlobes under the muffs so they are one of the exceptions to the rule.

White *I* was a sprout I had white Cochin bantams, black D'Anvers, silver duckwing Old English Game bantams, standard buff Cochins,standard white Sultans, and black Ameraucanas.

The Cochin bantams were certainly an education. I owned a really nice pullet I had bought as a chick and was approached at a show by a top breeder who wanted to buy her. I declined and asked if he'd sell me a rooster to breed her to so I could do some winning. He let me have a male that had produced well for him and I kept trying to hatch the eggs from the pair. No chicks. Months later I asked him what was going on. This proper old Southern gentleman blushed deeply and pulled aside one of my adult male mentors and explained to him that his show birds didn't breed naturally and had to be artificially insemenated. He showed my mentor how to do it and my mentor then showed me. It's all in the hand action. And the spoon. To my boyfriend's credit, he was more bemused than horrified when he drove me over to the property where my birds were kept twice a week for me to "rub my rooster". ;)

-Don't you know life begins at meiosis II?-

No doubt, say, that sperm are alive, a life form. But nobody's arguing that we shouldn't kill sperm.
So, when IS it OK to use chemical weapons on the product of human sexual contact and conception? What age, how do you know, and what are the determining factors?

Hmmmm interesting. How hard is it to breed Silkies? I bought one (butchered) from my local poultry guy and gave it to a Chinese family for new years (theirs) and they were hopping around like Oprah had arrived with a bunch of car keys.

The year after, I gave them two beautiful wild pheasants and they looked disappointed, like they were expecting Legos and got socks instead.

What's up with that??

30-Prometheus - Probably because there is no Year of the Pheasant. (2005 was the Year of the Chicken)

Thanks Jim.
Mystery solved.

Oh no. Where the hell am I going to get a tiger for 2010?

But nobody's arguing that we shouldn't kill sperm.

Yeah, you can microwave them. Boil them in water. Bang them with a hammer. Pour Clorox on them. The possibilities are limitless.