What Irked You Today?

[Ace-Garageguy]

A fitting end for the great white hunter...   (who collects trophies for "sport" as opposed to hunting game for food)           

   

Edited August 3, 2015 by Ace-Garageguy

[Harry P.]

I don't have any facts. My opinion on the lion deal is this. I don't think it was right. What he did, I would consider poaching. It is not hunting when you have guide, that lures the animal into the open, where ever it may be. There is no challenge in that. IF this dentist did it just for the pelt and head mount, that is utterly wrong. I grew in a family that hunted, still have close family and family friends that do hunt. We ate what was shot. One family member hasn't bought meat from the grocery store for almost 30 years. Doing what this guy "supposedly" did is wrong on many levels. This is a guy, I feel shouldn't be allowed to own a gun, use a gun or be able to do this act. Now, no facts, only my opinion.

Ok, here's one way to look at it: The guy is a jerk. "Trophy hunting" is wrong, he knew what he did was wrong but did it anyway. He's a lowlife scum.

Here's another way to look at it: The guy bought the license and hired local guides in an effort to keep his hunt legal, he had no idea who "Cecil" was, and he was under the impression that the hunt was entirely legal.

So... without knowing which of these two scenarios is the real story, how can anyone pass judgement?

Sure, we all have our own personal opinions on the concept of "trophy hunting"... and for me, I think it's inexcusable. But none of us know enough facts to condemn the dentist. At least not at this point.

[Ace-Garageguy]

Another one of those fine situations where what's legal has nothing whatsoever to do with what's morally right and ethical.

Kill it if you're going to eat it, and NEED to eat it. Otherwise, get up close and take a photo. 

[detailstymied]

here's another opinion: i think people who use that type of language to express themselves should get the boot.

[Harry P.]

Another one of those fine situations where what's legal has nothing whatsoever to do with what's morally right and ethical.

Kill it if you're going to eat it, and NEED to eat it. Otherwise, get up close and take a photo. 

I agree with the concept of trophy hunting being cruel and inhumane and just plain inexcusable. I agree with that concept. I don't defend or endorse trophy hunting.

What I don't agree with is jumping on this guy without having all of the facts at hand. It may turn out that he was fully aware of what he was doing. But at this point, it's equally possible that he was counting on the expertise of the two locals he hired, and it was they who misled him.

A little early to condemn the man, IMO. That's all I'm saying.

[Petetrucker07]

I'm not jumping to any kind of conclusions. I'm not marching with lynch mobs lookin for this guy. I'm just saying if what is being said in the media is true, then yes the guy should stand up, be man and accept his punishment from the country he allegedly committed such a terrible act. I know it's all hear say and there are 2 people who truly know what happened that day.

[Harry P.]

I'm just saying if what is being said in the media is true, then yes the guy should stand up, be man and accept his punishment...

But that's exactly the point. How do you know what the media is saying is true?

The media lies all the time. The media has a political agenda, and their reporting reflects that agenda. The stories they tell you, and more importantly the stories they don't tell you, depend on what they want you to know and what they want you to believe.

Remember the whole "hands up, don't shoot" story? Well, it turned out that eyewitnesses to the incident testified to the grand jury that it never happened. The media made it up because the media wanted you to believe that's what happened. It was pure fabrication.

Be very careful when assuming what the media reports is the gospel truth. Get your news from multiple sources, don't rely on only one source.

[Petetrucker07]

Yes, I agree Harry. Don't take it that I'm trying to argue with you. I'm just stating what is publicly known, right or wrong, and giving my opinion on that. Which I guess I should just keep my thoughts to myself. Which I'm going to do right now. The drag races are on and I have actually have time to watch some of them.

[Harry P.]

[Tom Geiger]

My rant of the weekend...   I went up to our house in NJ on Friday and needed to do some yard work.  My two daughters live in the house full time and are responsible for maintaining it. They have the lawn mowed, but the gardens had gotten overgrown. So I ask eldest daughter when the town is due to pick up branches and leaf bags next... she tells me that she thinks it's this coming week. She can't check right now because she has the schedule in her phone, and dropped her phone in the ocean, as in no phone.  I check the town website, and they still have the 2013 schedule posted. So I spend all day Saturday clearing out gardens and cutting back trees etc. I make a pile out front bigger than my mini van.  I'm pretty pleased with the results. A good day's work.

Daughter goes and gets a new phone... first thing she notices...  town isn't going to pick up until late September!  So now I have to go back up there (2 hr ride) next Friday or Saturday and see how many van loads of debris I have.  I will have to tote it all to the town yard.   And if I knew September, I would've left all the branches up in the trees until then!  Argh!   Twice the work I signed up for!

[Harry P.]

Why not just leave the pile sit until they pick it up? It's not as if someone's going to steal it.

[Tom Geiger]

Why not just leave the pile sit until they pick it up? It's not as if someone's going to steal it.

Town gets ippity about that.  Their rule is that you cannot put the pile out more than 24 hrs prior to pickup.  And it would be my luck that they're watching us because I'm in a bit of a dispute with them right now.  The town enacted a law that they bill all rental units a $500 annual license. No doubt passed when no one was looking.  So because the tax bill comes to my primary residence in PA, they've assumed that my house in that NJ town is rented out.  And they want me to send them $500 because they have to "police" rental units.  It's all bull because it's a town of single family homes, not an absentee landlord area of multi-family slum or anything. 

I've told them twice in writing that the home is my second home and occupied by my family.  I collect no rents and all the utilities are in my name.  In fact I was there all weekend. They're wrong, but not going away easy. And they are childish enough to strike back at me with a branch pile violation.  

[Harry P.]

Sounds like yet another way the local politicians have figured out to separate you from your money.

"I feel your pain." After all, I live in "Crook" County.

The county president ran on a platform of eliminating the 1% county sales tax surcharge the previous county board president had rammed through. Add she did eliminate it. For a while.

Guess who just voted to raise our county sales tax by 1%? We now have the highest local sales tax in the country.

And for what? To build schools? Hospitals? Pave roads?

Nope. To fund county workers pensions.

Yep. The county workers voted to raise our sales tax to pay themselves their pensions.

[detailstymied]

shows they ain't stoopit

[Ace-Garageguy]

 

Yep The county workers voted to raise our sales tax to pay themselves their pensions.

Some days I really wish that 40 years ago, I'd got myself a gubmint job where I did basically nuthin', and then voted myself a way to continue getting paid for doing absolutely nuthin' when I retired.

Sour grapes? Damm right.

[Roadrunner]

The realization that several items I had thought were here, were actually in a storage locker that I lost a couple weeks ago. Now, as cash allows and needs arise, I'll have to purchase those items again. Loss, in its various forms, is something I'm getting mighty tired of.

[Pete J.]

Ok, I'm a little miffed!  My drivers license has been suspended.  No, I didn't do anything illegal. On Tuesday my heart went into V-fib, I passed out and hit my head and had a very small(very very small) bleed in my head.  Because I had to go to the ER to get stiches, they had to file a report with the DMV and I am suspended for 6 months.  Good thing is that I have a bright shinny Defibrillator/pace maker combination sharing space with my left lung.  Doc says I am good to go and should have no problems and is willing to sign a statement to that effect(his idea not mine) but I still have to go through the California bureaucracy to get it reinstated.  Why don't they just leave it up to the docs as to who is fit to drive and who isn't?  Why do the clerks at the DMV have to get involved?

 

[1930fordpickup]

Why not just leave the pile sit until they pick it up? It's not as if someone's going to steal it.

Town gets ippity about that.  Their rule is that you cannot put the pile out more than 24 hrs prior to pickup.  And it would be my luck that they're watching us because I'm in a bit of a dispute with them right now.  The town enacted a law that they bill all rental units a $500 annual license. No doubt passed when no one was looking.  So because the tax bill comes to my primary residence in PA, they've assumed that my house in that NJ town is rented out.  And they want me to send them $500 because they have to "police" rental units.  It's all bull because it's a town of single family homes, not an absentee landlord area of multi-family slum or anything. 

I've told them twice in writing that the home is my second home and occupied by my family.  I collect no rents and all the utilities are in my name.  In fact I was there all weekend. They're wrong, but not going away easy. And they are childish enough to strike back at me with a branch pile violation.  

Why not just pay someone to haul it for you. After driving 4 hours not counting the dump it might be cheaper. 

[detailstymied]

or have the resident daughters deal?

[Mark]

Sounds like yet another way the local politicians have figured out to separate you from your money.

"I feel your pain." After all, I live in "Crook" County.

The county president ran on a platform of eliminating the 1% county sales tax surcharge the previous county board president had rammed through. Add she did eliminate it. For a while.

Guess who just voted to raise our county sales tax by 1%? We now have the highest local sales tax in the country.

And for what? To build schools? Hospitals? Pave roads?

Nope. To fund county workers pensions.

Yep. The county workers voted to raise our sales tax to pay themselves their pensions.

When government employees are a large enough group to constitute a voting bloc, it's probably too late to do much about it.

Around here, we had a "temporary" 1% sales tax that lasted over 20 years.  Several other counties also had a "temporary" 1% also.  Everyone was just waiting for someone/anyone to push it through as a permanent measure, then the rest followed.
 

[Tom Geiger]

"Around here, we had a "temporary" 1% sales tax that lasted over 20 years."

The Garden State Parkway!  When it was built in the early 1950s they said the toll would only last until the roadway was paid for!  They forgot all about that promise!

 

[Mark]

The tolls on the New York Thruway were supposed to end when it was paid for, in the mid-Nineties.  A couple of years before that, though, the state created a new entity that purchased the Thruway from the existing one.  Mortgaged for another twenty or thirty years, the sale price went into the till to help balance the budget one year.  The same thing was done again in another year, this time with the buildings that belonged to the prison system.

Locally, a few years ago a couple of guys campaigned to get one particular toll booth removed, claiming the state never had the authority to put that one in in the first place.  They fought it for several years, collecting tolls all the while, but were eventually forced to remove it.  Shortly afterward, one of those guys got a series of threatening letters, and he spotted someone watching his home...turned out to be a toll collector.  I'm not sure if he got jail time, but he did eventually get fired over that.  The morning the toll booth was shut down, one of the local radio stations set up nearby, handing out donuts and coffee.  Another toll collector showed up screaming at them about how he was going to be out of a job.  If I remember right, they actually had to call the police on the guy.  I guess that job was his birthright...

One local legislator got on the bandwagon to make the "temporary" 1% sales tax addition permanent.  His quote was, "it's only a lousy penny".  Someone did some digging and found out that this guy was collecting a pension as a county employee, and was close to nailing down a second pension as a legislator...the heat got turned up on him, and he dropped out just short of qualifying for the second pension. 

 

[Earl Marischal]

Another one of those fine situations where what's legal has nothing whatsoever to do with what's morally right and ethical.

Kill it if you're going to eat it, and NEED to eat it. Otherwise, get up close and take a photo. 

+1

 

steve

[Art Laski]

Ok, I'm a little miffed!  My drivers license has been suspended.  No, I didn't do anything illegal. On Tuesday my heart went into V-fib, I passed out and hit my head and had a very small(very very small) bleed in my head.  Because I had to go to the ER to get stiches, they had to file a report with the DMV and I am suspended for 6 months.  Good thing is that I have a bright shinny Defibrillator/pace maker combination sharing space with my left lung.  Doc says I am good to go and should have no problems and is willing to sign a statement to that effect(his idea not mine) but I still have to go through the California bureaucracy to get it reinstated.  Why don't they just leave it up to the docs as to who is fit to drive and who isn't?  Why do the clerks at the DMV have to get involved?

 

Sorry to hear, Pete. Hope you're doing OK now. Maybe we can carpool to some events until you get things sorted out.

[XJ6]

The tolls on the New York Thruway were supposed to end when it was paid for, in the mid-Nineties.  A couple of years before that, though, the state created a new entity that purchased the Thruway from the existing one.  Mortgaged for another twenty or thirty years, the sale price went into the till to help balance the budget one year.  The same thing was done again in another year, this time with the buildings that belonged to the prison system.

Locally, a few years ago a couple of guys campaigned to get one particular toll booth removed, claiming the state never had the authority to put that one in in the first place.  They fought it for several years, collecting tolls all the while, but were eventually forced to remove it.  Shortly afterward, one of those guys got a series of threatening letters, and he spotted someone watching his home...turned out to be a toll collector.  I'm not sure if he got jail time, but he did eventually get fired over that.  The morning the toll booth was shut down, one of the local radio stations set up nearby, handing out donuts and coffee.  Another toll collector showed up screaming at them about how he was going to be out of a job.  If I remember right, they actually had to call the police on the guy.  I guess that job was his birthright...

One local legislator got on the bandwagon to make the "temporary" 1% sales tax addition permanent.  His quote was, "it's only a lousy penny".  Someone did some digging and found out that this guy was collecting a pension as a county employee, and was close to nailing down a second pension as a legislator...the heat got turned up on him, and he dropped out just short of qualifying for the second pension. 

 

Ok, I'm a little miffed!  My drivers license has been suspended.  No, I didn't do anything illegal. On Tuesday my heart went into V-fib, I passed out and hit my head and had a very small(very very small) bleed in my head.  Because I had to go to the ER to get stiches, they had to file a report with the DMV and I am suspended for 6 months.  Good thing is that I have a bright shinny Defibrillator/pace maker combination sharing space with my left lung.  Doc says I am good to go and should have no problems and is willing to sign a statement to that effect(his idea not mine) but I still have to go through the California bureaucracy to get it reinstated.  Why don't they just leave it up to the docs as to who is fit to drive and who isn't?  Why do the clerks at the DMV have to get involved?

 

Why do we hang the petty thieves 

and Appoint the greater ones to office ?

Don aka XJ6 ?