Weekend Tids and Bits

PRAISE THE LORD AND PASS THE AMMUNITION – seems to be a good opening number for a service at the New Bethel Church in Louisville, KY. The pastor, Ken Pagano, is inviting his parishioners to bring their guns to church, according to a New York Times story you can read at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/26/us/26guns.html?hp. If you bring your weapon openly to church, make sure it’s unloaded, because deputies will be checking, the story says. If it’s concealed, no problem.

In most states, it’s legal to openly carry a gun – you get in trouble when the weapon is concealed. The nuances vary by state and if you’re thinking of strapping on a holster, visit http://opencarry.org first.

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SOME GUYS GET ALL THE BREAKS – If an elected official has a chance to pick the day for going public with an adulterous affair, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford’s luck sets an example. Sanford’s love life had roughly 24 hours in the main media spotlight and was already being edged by Farah Fawcett’s death when Michael Jackson’s demise moved Sanford’s trouble to the “In other news…” sections.

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LAST WEEK WE DISCUSSED. . .

Elephants aren’t particularly afraid of mice, but the Republican Party has gone so conservative that someone yelling “Change!” at a GOP event will start the Pachyderm Party thundering and trumpeting towards the doors at http://larryblaskosaid.blogspot.com/2009/06/elephants-and-mice-republicans-and.html

Something is happening in Iran, but exactly what is information hard to come by. Harder still is information about why we should care much one way or the other at http://larryblaskosaid.blogspot.com/2009/06/iran-turmoil-yeah.html

We need to do something about the environment, if only to shut up the environmentalists whose concern is so all encompassing, they were worried about cow burps at http://larryblaskosaid.blogspot.com/2009/06/radical-reformers-target-cow-burps.html. No confirmation yet on the rumor that some environmentalists have developed such a concern about discharging bodily waste that they hold it as long as possible. Confirmation, of course, would confirm that they are indeed full of it.

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford gave in to temptation, but so did the media outfits who quoted extensively from e-mails between the lovers at http://larryblaskosaid.blogspot.com/2009/06/giving-in-to-temptation-south-carolina.html

Michael Jackson’s death sparked a media frenzy of major size and minor importance at http://larryblaskosaid.blogspot.com/2009/06/michael-jackson-and-things-of.html

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Radical Reformers

Target Cow Burps

Radical Reformers have gone from Never Trust Anyone Over 30 to Never Trust A Cow, which will strike ordinary folk as odd, but for Radical Reformers isn’t much of a plop.

It turns out that cows, in addition to providing dairy products, meat and hides – things already seriously suspect to Radical Reformers – cows, well. . .OK, no holds barred here, cows burp. They’re ruminants, which means they chew their cud and have specialized stomachs.

This will not come as a revelation to those acquainted with cows, but it was news to the Radical Reformers, and when they discovered that cow burps contain methane, their horror knew no bounds.

Methane is one of the gases that cause climate warming. Climate warming is bad. We have this on no less an authority than Al Gore, who has transferred his expertise on winning elections to the climate debate – the pay is better, the lifting is lighter, and by the time he’s proven right or wrong, all concerned will be long dead.

So cows burping methane into the atmosphere clearly had to be addressed along with natural gas production, landfills, coal mining and the like. The Environmental Protection Agency said ruminant livestock accounted for 28 percent of global methane emissions from human-related activities,

Burping cows are a special challenge. After all, they spend most of their time just being cows, not reminding themselves that they should burp into a special collection device, which in any case hasn’t been invented.

Not to worry. In the craziness of the current environmental discussion, paying a tax to cause environmental harm is somehow better than causing the same harm without paying the tax. Never mind that the harm goes to the environment in any case while the tax goes to the government. Government needs your tax dollars, and you trust your government, don’t you?

The American Farm Bureau Federation took a dim view of the possibility that the EPA might tax farm animal burps, noting in March that “it could cost farmers and ranchers $175 per dairy cow, $87.50 per beef cow and $21.87 per hog. The fees were arrived at using publicly available government data.”

That observation caused a stir in the farm states. Farm state politicians who know a threat of having to seek gainful employment when they spot one were pretty uniform in saying it was a lousy idea. Horse trading continues in Congress, and a bill without a cow-burp tax may not be approved until later.

What should be disapproved from the git-go is discussing cow burps at all. Cows are ruminants, ruminants burp. If that’s the issue, what about the 30 million or so deer that not only eat our tulips but burp brazenly after doing so? If we think ruminant burping from about 94 million head of cattle is a problem now, what about when an estimated 90 million American bison roamed the continent, burping at will? Not to mention all those deer, antelope, African and Asian buffalo, giraffes and camels?

That might require some thinking, but that’s not the strong suit of Radical Reformers. Having declared something a sin, they will oppose it in all its forms, even if it winds up with them tagged with a cow-burp tax.

If by some quirk Congress approves any nonsense of this sort, the first herd to be taxed should be the one corralled in the United States Capitol.

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