Michael Vick: Barking Mad

ESPN reports tonight that Michael Vick might take a plea deal which would land him in jail for around a year.

A YEAR?!!

For dogs fighting? What the hell? There are murderers who get less time. Give me a friggin' break. They are dogs. No, it's not nice, but lots of things in this world are not nice, and in the Not Nice hierarchy why is the government busying itself over fighting dogs? As a taxpayer, I find the whole thing ridiculous.

Queen Elizabeth enjoyed bear and bull baiting for heaven's sake:

Bull baiting was a contest in which the bear was chained to a stake by one hind leg or by the neck and worried by dogs. The whipping of a blinded bear was another variation of bear-baiting. Queen Elizabeth attended a famous baiting which was described by an Elizabethan chronicler called Robert Laneham as follows:

"... it was a sport very pleasant to see, to see the bear, with his pink eyes, tearing after his enemies approach; the nimbleness and wait of the dog to take his advantage and the force and experience of the bear again to avoid his assaults: if he were bitten in one place how he would pinch in another to get free; that if he were taken once, then by what shift with biting, with clawing, with roaring, with tossing and tumbling he would work and wind himself from them; and when he was loose to shake his ears twice or thrice with the blood and the slaver hanging about his physiognomy."

Oh, and cock fighting was fun, too:

Cock fighting was another popular Elizabethan blood sport. Roosters were fitted with sharp blades on each foot and put into a cock pit to fight to the death. Fighting cocks were expensive, so it took a wealthy man to own these birds, but Elizabethans from both the Upper and Lower Classes came to see and bet on these cock fights.

But here we are in the ever-so-civilized United States marshaling all the force of the Patriot Act to jail these modern barbarians.

You know what I find barbaric? The government misusing it's excessive and considerable power to persecute frivolous misdeeds when rape, murder, and heinous crimes get ignored.

And for all the animal lovers (and I am one) who say this:

Perhaps these two football people would like to justify the means to make these dogs exceedingly aggressive and attack another dog. Being social animals, this is not usual behaviour for dogs. This aggressiveness is induced. It is taught - if you wish to call it ‘teaching.’ By all standards of decency, the aggressiveness is taught by cruel, inhumane means. In simple terms, the dogs are tortured to be aggressive and pack / social instincts to fellow canines are extinguished. - Perhaps some consider this ‘good fun.’ I contend that a majority of people see this as cruelty.

I would recommend they watch some National Geographic shows. The natural world is vicious. And then there was my friend Darryl's dog who'd sooner kill another dog that "socialize" with it. He was anything but social. He didn't like most people either. And when he fought dogs, he went for the throat. To kill. Au natural. No breeding. No training.

I'm tired of our wussified culture. I'm tired of the intrusive government and its power. Dog fighting is what the federal government thinks is a priority these days. That says it all.