vote to ban cockfighting in New Mexico

[Keykeypie]

Please vote to ban cockfighting in New Mexico...we are losing so far...
thank you

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17041984/

[thevegantwins]

It's close, 48% to ban and 51% evil, nasty, vile, stupid humans said it should stay

[Charmagne]

Damn!! I thought dogfighting and cockfighting was illegal in 50 states. Evidently not! For the life of me I can't see how anyone can be "entertained" by watching two animals fight until death. People are terrible - cruel and heartless among other things.

A little off topic but there is a black lady that lives 4 houses down from us. My father has owned this house for 34 years and she was there before then. She has hens and roosters. A couple of days ago I saw a mama hen and her three chicks in her front yard. They are so cute! Sometimes they fly over our fence and scratch around in our yard. Prissy will go right up to them - they won't run either - they are bigger than she is!!

Anyway before the hurricane we received a letter in the mail from Jackson County saying we were in violation of a code that did not allow "fowl". I wrote back to him saying we did not have chickens. HE CAME OUT HERE TO SEE FOR HIMSELF!! He also had pictures that were taken after somebody complained about the crowing. They were in my yard the day he came out.
He asked if I knew where they came from and of course I said I had no idea.
This old lady loves her chickens - they are her companions - she doesn't have dogs or cats. They have a henhouse and you can see the roosters every night roosting in the trees in her yard. She doesn't eat them but she does collect the eggs - gives them to everyone she knows. I wasn't about to tell him so they could be collected and probably killed.

They way I look at it (correct me if I am wrong) she is exploiting them by using their eggs - but she is also keeping a lot of people from buying eggs from factory farmed chickens that have miserable lives.

Sorry for the long post - I seem to be long winded today.

(KeyKeyPie - there was also a video of Kucinich being interviewed about his stand on the war - did you see it?)

[Gliondrach]

I'm astounded that it is legal. Do they still have slaves there, too?


--------------
Yes. It's a cruel sport that should have been made illegal years ago.
48%

No. Government should quit interfering in rural life.
50%

I don't know or don't care.
1.5%

[Gliondrach]

I hope that woman can keep her chickens. She should put up higher fences -wood or chain link.

[Fauxmage]

It looks like it might be on the way out, in spite of this particular poll. Indeed, considering the kinds of people who think this is fun, I am amazed that they have the mental skills to locate the online poll, and make the right selection.





• The Situation: New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson is pushing to ban organized cockfighting. If the measure passes, Louisiana will be the only state that allows the practice.

• Behind the Scenes: Mr. Richardson has said the issue wasn't important enough to warrant his attention but admits he doesn't want it hanging over his campaign for president.

• What's Next: The measure has passed the state Senate and looks likely to be approved in the House. Mr. Richardson said he will sign the bill if it passes legislative muster.

How a Tradition Ends in New Mexico

With Larger Prize in Mind,
Gov. Richardson Nears
Ban on Cockfighting

By CHRISTOPHER COOPER
February 13, 2007; Page A8

In 2003, about a year before he proposed building a $100 million spaceport in his relatively poor desert state, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson was buttonholed by a reporter: How did the Democrat and former U.N. ambassador feel about cockfighting? The widely banned sport is popular and legal in the Land of Enchantment. "Below my radar," the governor replied.

Little incites more passionate political debate in New Mexico than the question of whether to join much of the rest of the country in outlawing cockfights. Indeed, Mr. Richardson now admits he avoided the issue during his first term precisely because "the legislature wouldn't be able to do anything else" during the session were he to seriously press a ban on cockfighting.

But that was his first term. Re-elected in the fall with nearly 70% of the vote, Mr. Richardson proceeded to take two of the biggest steps of his public career. In December, he came out in favor of a cockfighting ban. Then in January, he began campaigning for president. It was a natural progression, the governor said in an interview: "I didn't want an issue like cockfighting hanging over my presidential campaign."

A measure to ban the sport passed the state Senate last week and looks likely to clear the House. With a few sentences, Mr. Richardson breathed life into a longstanding proposal to ban cockfighting in New Mexico, one that has been offered -- and summarily killed -- in 18 consecutive legislative sessions.

With the governor's blessing, a ban is on the verge of becoming law, having passed the state Senate, which traditionally served as the wrecking yard for similar proposals. Though the ban still needs House approval, Senate passage marks a turnaround on the issue. Legislation banning cockfighting had been such a lost cause, says state Sen. Joseph Carraro, that it was routinely employed to haze incoming lawmakers.

When he took office in 1984, Mr. Carraro, a former Wall Street stockbroker, was approached by a group of legislators. "They told me how bright I was and how well-spoken I was and how they really needed me to carry this bill they couldn't pass," he recalls. Shortly thereafter, he was confronted in his office by an unhappy rooster breeder. "He had [something] like a Bowie knife and he was talking and getting rather angry and he pulled it out of this belt scabbard and stabbed it into my desk," Mr. Carraro said. "Cockfighting is an emotional issue."

And not just for New Mexicans. Over the years, Rue McClanahan, Pamela Anderson and other Hollywood types have appealed publicly to Mr. Richardson to get behind a cockfighting ban. Jay Leno joked about the practice in the state once in a monologue. Outsiders mostly focus on the cruelty of the sport, in which two specially bred roosters equipped with metal spurs battle to the death, often to the cheers of a raucous, free-betting crowd.

But cockfighting fans in New Mexico focus on the history of the practice, saying most adherents are Latinos, who brought the sport from Mexico, where it is legal. Cockfighting, they say, is as embedded in the state's culture as bull-roping.

State Sen. Mary Jane Garcia, a Democrat who is leading the charge in the legislature to ban the sport, has been proposing and supporting cockfighting bans since taking office in 1988. An anthropologist, she rejects the idea that cockfights are culturally redeeming. As a child, she said she was traumatized when her parents took her to a movie that showed bloody scenes of a match. Now 70, she has been agitating for a ban for nearly 20 years.

It was as a freshman legislator that Ms. Garcia managed to get a hearing in the Senate; she is convinced it was a humiliating trick employed by sniggering rural senators so they could ask her to define the word and then watch her stutter. "I just couldn't go through with it because I was so embarrassed," says Ms. Garcia, now the majority whip of the Senate. "I just sat down and killed my own bill."

Her luck changed this year. After Mr. Richardson and the state's Catholic churches -- which say cockfighting promotes violence -- came out in favor of her ban, the Senate Conservation Committee approved her bill on a 5-3 vote. Last week, following five hours of debate and parliamentary maneuvering, the full Senate also approved the bill, which would make organizing or watching a cockfight a petty misdemeanor.
The measure is now pending in the state House, which approved similar legislation in the past.

Ms. Garcia gives the bulk of the credit to Mr. Richardson for turning the political tide. So do the sport's boosters. "I believe it's Richardson," said Ronnie Barron, a game fowl breeder from Artesia, N.M., near the Texas border. "It's all politics. He had political pressure put on him."

Just as a generation ago Republicans developed a "Southern Strategy" to break the Democrats' hold on the old Confederacy, Democrats are now targeting the West.

Democratic governors and U.S. senators in once-monolithic red states such as Colorado, Arizona, Montana and Nevada are aiming to deliver electoral votes in coming elections, in part by redefining their party through the progressive policies and individualistic roots that have marked its leaders in recent years.

This political image is one Mr. Richardson labored to build during his first term in office, when he concentrated on progressive initiatives such as building a commuter train and improving schools, attracting high-tech businesses and imposing a greenhouse gas regime that's stricter than the Kyoto accord.

Does cockfighting fly in the face of the image of a progressive Western Democrat?

Mr. Richardson shrugs.
He does say, though, that when he found out only one other state -- Louisiana -- allows organized cockfighting, "I knew it was time to end it."


Write to Christopher Cooper at christopher.cooper@wsj.com

Ah, the old "its part of our cultural heritage" sob story. They also used to rip out people's still-beating hearts in Mexico, and the most popular test of one's manhood was to go around dressed in the freshly flayed skin of your human enemy until it rotted off. The priests didn't just rip out people's hearts, either; they bathed in human blood and never washed it out of their hair. I wonder why we don't see anyone trying to revive those cultural traditions, too.

[Oracl]

I voted, but the results are:

Yes. It's a cruel sport that should have been made illegal years ago. 47%

No. Government should quit interfering in rural life. 52%

I don't know or don't care. 1.4%

:confused: :mad:

[Oracl]

I hope that woman can keep her chickens.
So do I. :agree:

[Oracl]

Ah, the old "its part of our cultural heritage" sob story. They also used to rip out people's still-beating hearts in Mexico, and the most popular test of one's manhood was to go around dressed in the freshly flayed skin of your human enemy until it rotted off. The priests didn't just rip out people's hearts, either; they bathed in human blood and never washed it out of their hair. I wonder why we don't see anyone trying to revive those cultural traditions, too.
Yes, interesting isn't it. :rolleyes:

[Gliondrach]

I've just voted again. Don't forget to clear cookies before voting again. It is still the same as when Oracle voted. Our side is losing - down one percentage point since yesterday. It's not an official poll but it could make the legislators think.

If it is outlawed anyone caught watching or promoting it will only be guilty of a petty misdemeanour. What's that? Something like a parking offence?

On the same page, at the top right under 'politics' there's a link called
'Kucinich wants to stop funding war'. It is a video interview. The first few seconds show an advertisement. It was filmed yesterday.

I've just learnt how to pronounce his name. I thought it was pronounced as 'Koosinick'.