PSST, BARRY. REMEMBER. HORSES DON'T VOTE BUT PEOPLE DO. Angry Horse and Obama (c) 2009 By Chuck Ingwersen captainscratchy.com
President Obama’s dream for America has turned into a nightmare for horses, and a deadly one.
We at the Int’l Fund for Horses all agree — which is extremely rare — that President Obama needs to go in 2012, and we will be campaigning against him to achieve just that.
This may seem extreme. However, any President who can sit idly by while the last of America’s federally protected and iconic wild horse and burro herds are destroyed is not a good sign for the country’s citizens, let alone its equines.
Why? Many reasons. But consider this.
Obama’s lack of action has taken place in the face of a vast array of obvious, substantiated and breathtakingly cruel and corrupt practices by his Interior Secretary and Bureau of Land Management (BLM). And this despite thousands of emails, phone calls and letters from the public, including highly visible rallies across the country over the past 18 months, protesting and bringing the President’s attention to it. What Obama’s agenda is in this, who can say for sure, though some guesses very close to the truth have been made. Whether it is windmills or water, what is clear is that the President does not care how it is achieved, or at what cost.
Not that the same sort of behavior towards America’s wild horses and burros has not gone on to some degree in past Administrations. However, the purpose of past wild horse and burro roundups was to exploit them to make a financial killing, not kill them off altogether. With the Obama Administration, it is clear that the ultimate goal, through the escalated size and scale of specifically targeted herd destroying roundups, is the total eradication of America’s wild horses and burros.
Additionally, Obama had a Congress who failed, yet again, to pass legislation banning horse slaughter and export for slaughter. This with the full knowledge that the EU was forced take action where the US government would not, implementing a quarantine system in an attempt to prevent adulterated horsemeat from American horses butchered across our borders from entering into their human food supply. One has to question the refusal of Obama and his Congress to address the slaughter issue, particularly when a number of America’s rounded up wild horses and burros are being sent to slaughter via BLM operatives and its contractors, conceivably with help from other federal agencies.
Whatever the underlying motivation, Obama may appear conciliatory in public, but he is as ruthless behind the scenes as any politician who has sat in that chair, and his decisions murderous to horses.
Recent elections have been more about voting bad politicians out than good politicians in.
Rest assured, we will fully utilize this trend, and begin working in the new year to make an example of Obama in 2012 that politicians in Washington will not soon forget.
We may have to go at this from a different angle. The FDA is supposed to be getting a larger budget starting in 2011. They will be the agency that will have the authority to shut down farms, slaughter houses and any other business where contaminated food is found and to instigate recalls because of contaminated food products. This agency may be the best way to stop horses from being sent to slaughter because of the Vet drugs. The FDA is the one who refers to US horses as pets and they are not raised as food animals.
The FDA needs to be informed about the Food and Chemical Toxicology report that was done by researchers Dodman, Blondeau and Marini that proved beyond a doubt that US horses are contaminated with a assortment of Vet drugs that are carcinogenic to humans. And we all know that the paperwork that the EU requires on all horses going to slaughter in Canada/Mexico listing all of the drugs the horse/horses have been given in the last 6 months is being falsified starting with the owner or person selling the animals. This is why so many horses are still in the pipeline. The owner figures that no one will ever bother to go after them about lying on the bill of sale at the auction or selling directly to a killer buyer. This is where the FDA comes in, because I believe that once the FDA was made fully aware of what was going on I think they would step in and put a stop to it.
I agree with Arlene – NO response is the absolute worst. Inexcusable. But, while I’m furious with Obama for his action – or lack thereof – I have a feeling the Republicans are going to nominate someone I can’t vote for either.
I would dearly love to vote in someone good, but it’s been a long time since I just voted for anything other than what I believed to be the lesser of two evils. Dismal, isn’t it?
Word is on the Hill, as of right now, there will be a Primary challenge, maybe even from Hillary it is whispered. She is a strong defender of horses, so all we can do is wait and see. I would actually prefer for Obama to take a stand for the wild horses & burros NOW and tell Salazar & Co it is unseemly for them to attend and give credence the Slaughter Festival in Las Vegas. But will Obama get off the proverbial fence? Time will tell.