Dear Friends, THIS WEEK’S PODCAST features Kathy Byrnes, Charles Goldman, and Ed Fallon: (01:32) Is the movie Civil War more fact than fiction?; (22:44) A deep dive into Bobby Kennedy’s presidential Continue Reading →
Farm and ranch families comprise less than 2% of the US population, so most Americans might not be familiar with the rural expression “take the dog for a ride.” That’s a euphemism for “we got a bad dog and we gotta put it down.”
Common law dating back to the 1800s supports a farmer’s right to kill a dog to protect livestock. Additional state statutes allow farmers and ranchers to shoot dogs that are chasing, harassing, or attacking their livestock. That’s as it should be.
Yet the national media have pounced on Noem, some even calling her a monster. The truth is, if you’ve got a dangerous dog, especially one that has killed livestock, the responsible thing to do is to get rid of it.
Now, perhaps Noem should have taken Cricket to a shelter. It might have been adopted by someone with the skills and patience to train it. More likely, it would have been euthanized.
Bottom line: If a dog kills livestock, shooting it is an appropriate and legally defensible response. Continue Reading →
In my view, the campus protests are historic and will profoundly impact both policy and politics. Already, officials at three universities — Brown, Northwestern, and Minnesota — have agreed to address students’ demands to divest funds from businesses enabling Israel’s annihilation of Gaza.
This enlightened response represents a stark contrast to what’s transpired at Columbia, UCLA, and many other universities — where heavy-handed intervention by law enforcement has resulted in over 2,000 arrests.
Politically, though Democrats want me and other honest commentators to shut-up, the protests are hurting President Biden’s reelection prospects. Badly. If the administration insists on staying its course of lip-service criticism while funding the war, Biden will lose in November.
Democrats need to learn from 1968, when in response to the Party’s support for the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon was elected president in a landslide and Republicans picked up seats in both the US House and Senate.
It’s not too late for Biden to do the right thing… Continue Reading →
Last week, I cleaned our chicken coop. It was a dirty, dry, dusty deal. An intelligent person would have worn a mask. Me, I chose to land a sinus infection.
Why am I telling you this? I barely had enough voice to manage two segments of this week’s program. Thus, the other two segments are reruns: conversations about walking across the Mojave Desert, and why America needs another coast-to-coast march to address the twin perils of climate change and nuclear war.
I was glad to have architect Mark Clipsham as my guest during the first segment of this week’s program. One reason: It’s easy to get Mark to do most of the talking. That gave my voice a bit of a break. Continue Reading →
Did you know that growing food in cities is more damaging to the climate than industrial farming? Six times worse, in fact!
That’s the absurd conclusion advanced in a recent study — and promoted by the mainstream media. So, city folk, quit trying to feed yourselves. You’re destroying the planet. If you gave an actual dang, you’d drive to Walmart for your trucked-in fruits, veggies, eggs, and meat.
THE STUDY. “Comparing the carbon footprints of urban and conventional agriculture” was funded by Springer Nature (more on them in a bit). It purports to compare the carbon footprints of urban agriculture and conventional agriculture.
WHAT’S “URBAN AGRICULTURE?” The study defines three types of urban agriculture: “urban farms (professionally managed, focused on food production), individual gardens (small plots managed by single gardeners) and collective gardens (communal spaces managed by groups of gardeners).”
The study examined 73 operations in the US and Europe. Apparently, only the first type is considered food production. I guess we home gardeners are just in it for entertainment.
WHAT’S A “CONVENTIONAL FARM?” Who knows! Incredibly, the authors never provide a definition. If by “conventional” they mean big and industrial, then we’re talking about all kinds of heavy machinery, tiling, confinement buildings, lots of energy to heat and cool buildings, massive lagoons for manure storage, society’s cost to clean up any messes, etc. No carbon footprint there, folks. Continue Reading →
Given the Israeli military’s atrocities against a civilian population and the mounting presence of widespread starvation, why won’t President Biden freeze military aid to Gaza? Great question. Let’s dig into it.
First, just how bad are things? Dr. Fozia Alvi, a Canadian physician who’s treated Palestinian children in southern Gaza, said, “This is not a normal war. The war in Ukraine has killed 500 kids in two years and the war in Gaza has killed over 10,000 in less than five months. We have seen wars before but this is something that is a dark stain on our shared humanity.”
On March 18, an Oxfam official reported that “the catastrophic levels of hunger and starvation in Gaza are the highest ever recorded in terms of number of people and percentage of the population.”
These horrifying truths make the words of Congressman Tim Walberg (R-MI) even more appalling: “We shouldn’t be spending a dime on humanitarian aid. It should be like Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Get it over quick.” Continue Reading →
It’s heart-wrenching to see the governor and Republican lawmakers target the LGBTQ community with a barrage of hurtful legislative proposals — some blatantly biased, others more subtle. It’s encouraging to see most Democrats, some Republicans, and a lot of rank-and-file Iowans speak out against these proposals.
One such bill just signed by Governor Reynolds is the so-called “Religious Freedom Restoration Act.” Really? Show me where there’s been a loss of religious freedom in America. I’m waiting. Tap, tap, tap.
So, what’s this bill really about?
As Heather Matson (D-Ankeny) points out, the bill “weaponizes religious beliefs to justify discrimination.”
No doubt. My deeper concern is that this bill, and others of its ilk, are part of an effort to establish a theocracy in America. Nothing could be more antithetical to the founding principles of our country than a government of, by, and for “the church” — meaning the narrowest, most biased interpretation of what it means to be Christian.
Continue Reading →
One blatant lie that has persisted for decades is that Republicans support local control. Even a casual glance at the track record makes it clear Republicans only support local control when it aligns with their big-business/Christian-nationalist agenda.
That’s why, in the 1990s, when Iowa City required lawn care companies to inform neighboring properties in advance of a chemical application, Republicans rushed to defend the chemical industry by passing a bill taking away this right.
That’s why, also in the 1990s, when big national mobile home companies complained about cities requiring parks to build a storm shelter, Republicans passed a bill stopping them — immediately after a tornado killed eleven people in a mobile home park in Oklahoma City.
Maybe an Iowa county or city wants to ban plastic bags, as over 500 cities across the US have done? Too bad. In 2017, then-governor Branstad signed legislation outlawing it.
That same year, after four Iowa counties enacted living wage ordinances, Republican lawmakers came to the aid of big business and took away a city or county’s authority to do so.
Managing erosion from construction sites. Siting of hog confinements. Use of traffic cameras. Where fireworks can be sold. How libraries are funded. These are just a few of the many, many local government functions that Iowa Republican lawmakers have struck down or proposed to strike down. Continue Reading →
About being tossed out of a pub … It was 1979, and I was living with my uncle on our family’s farm in County Roscommon. I needed a break from haymaking and cutting turf, so I hitch-hiked to Roscrea in County Tipperary to spend some time at Mount Saint Joseph Abbey.
There, I met two lads from the North — Jerry Ward and Jerry McGurk. McGurk was a survivor of the horrific Ulster Volunteer Force’s bombing of his family’s pub, which killed his mother, sister, and thirteen others.
The other Jerry was, well, a bit unstable. Ward saw himself as one called to reunite the Protestant and Catholic communities in the war-torn North — a noble goal, but one accompanied by delusional tactics.
The three of us had many a great talk during our time at the Abbey. Toward the end of my stay, we decided a trip to one of Roscrea’s pubs was in order. There, we enjoyed a rollicking, boisterous time chatting it up with other lads in the back of the pub. Continue Reading →
Regarding our conversation at the 20:50 mark, Charles says: In light of the Alabama Supreme Court decision regarding frozen embryos as “extra-uterine children,” commentators at publications such as the Washington Examiner, Epoch Times, and National Review rushed to flatly state that “life begins at conception.”
In the recent Alabama Supreme Court endorsement of fetal personhood, we were treated to a treatise on the topic based on those well-known scientific tomes: the Old and New testaments. Even though Republicans are quickly abandoning efforts to ban in vitro fertilization (IVF) in an election year, undoubtedly they’ll be back at their misogynistic program once they’re past this November’s voting. Let’s take a look at what fetal personhood would look like when it’s revisited in the near future. Continue Reading →