Glenn definitely had a metaphor in mind. But for the ultimate terrorism-as-pest-control-problem analogy, see Mark Steyn.

You're preachin' to the choir, Ace. Amen and hallelujah!

Ok Ace, I'll buy the premise, but with one caveat. Those idiots that run the shark dives, where they wave bloody fish around and feed the sharks by hand? As between them and the sharks, I'll take the shark. Some people are just asking to be eaten.

If you want zombie survival reading, check out the Zombie Survival Guide by Mel Brooks' son Max.

"An old piece which I still like quite a bit hits some of the same themes. Reynolds' piece is superior, but the amateur leftist webzine Slate took on the "Shark Apologists" a few years back, the sort of people who would, when a little boy's arm had been eaten off by a shark, piously instruct us that the boy was, after all, swimming in the shark's territory."

The problem is not the apologists but the fisherman that were throwing fish parts and fish blood in the water 100 yards offshore where Jessie was swimming. Coupled with the poor visibility in the water and Jessie never had a chance. I don't blame the shark, I blame the fisherman.

"Ok Ace, I'll buy the premise, but with one caveat. Those idiots that run the shark dives, where they wave bloody fish around and feed the sharks by hand? As between them and the sharks, I'll take the shark. Some people are just asking to be eaten."

Steve, having been on several shark dives, you are playing into the fearmonger's hands. We don't wave bloody fish around to attract the sharks. The food is kept in containers or mounted on poles and the sharks are not interested in biting people that are fairly still and don't startle them. There is nothing like running your hand down the flank of a shark to teach you what some facts about the environment of the ocean.

So, why don't you come see what we do before you pronounce it bad? Or do you call skydivers crazy as well, or mountain climbers?

If you want zombie survival reading, check out the Zombie Survival Guide by Mel Brooks' son Max.

sorry, double post cause of preview.

Nathan,

You know him or somethin'?

I don't want us to wipe predators out from the wild as we did in America in the 19th Century or as our ancestors did with a number of carnivores and herbivores in the great MegaFauna Extinctions of the Paleozoic Era.

Not much you can do about a few bathers or surfers getting chomped by sharks other than do mass killings of the sharks to reduce or destroy populations. I don't like that approach, nor do many others, so risks will remain.

Same with reintroductions of Golden eagles, wolverines, moose, wolfs, expansion of the coyote & cougar ranges. People are bound to be killed in the process - whether a tyke snatched up by a Golden eagle or a car hitting a moose. A small price to pay in restoring wildlife populations to healthy levels and balancing various public benefits.

"quick-witted uncle wrestled the predator back to shore, killed him, and retrieved the chewed-up limb from his jaws."



DAMN



Whoever this kid is, remind me never to piss off his uncle.



That headline should have read "Local man teaches shark a fucking lesson"

Cedarford, "a tyke snatched up by a Golden eagle"

Have you seen any stories of this?

I know they can take a lamb, but I've never heard of such with a kiddie.

Down in South America, giant mosquitoes snatch up children and spirit them off.

It's a pathetic sight... these poor peasants waving their crudely-fashioned brooms as enormous mosquitoes carry off their children in their gigantic beaks.

Kind of like the badass chimps that ripped the nuts and face off the California dude. Wife sobs, saying "The whole time he was trying to reason with them..."
Call in the SWAT monkeys...

Indeed. Or is it 'heh' or some such?

Can't remember.

Great post, Ace.

What's becoming of the human race? Are we devolving? If we don't give them a smoke they bite our balls off. Yet for some reason we want to give them a gun and a badge.

They are clever devils, aren't they?

Of course it was. That's what I do here. Just one brilliant post after a-fuckin'-nother.

Yes, we leftist sure do LOVE terrorists. Why just look at all the specific instances where the left praised and forgave the 9-11 hijackers. Uh, good luck finding those instances however.. THis is just more self dillusional crap that the right makes up and keeps repeating as if that is going to make it true.

Fuck the terrorist, but give the rockies back to the lynx, cougars, bears and wolves.

Crikey, Mate!

All these stories about bloomin' cougars and sharks and the like and ya can't find one decent post about a Croc mauling some poor bugger?

It's enough to make me question my existence. Luckily, the Fosters keeps me grounded. Well that, and my little dog Suey.

Every time I read about how some dimwit got himself mauled by a bear, or a moose, or a badger, or raging bands of chimpanzees, I think to myself: That's nature showing you who's really running the show here, pal.

Animal-lover Lefties crack me up. I'm an animal lover myself, but I have equal respect for all the representatives of the animal kingdom (including our humble selves). But it's funny how Lefties are all for saving the poor baby harp seals or the tigers, but you never hear them bemoaning the murder of millions of cockroaches every year, or of rats, or of wasps, or of any number of other non-cuddly animals who still have just as much right to live as the rest of us.

But respect for animals doesn't mean you take shit from them. I get a wasp in the house, and I declare war on that bastard. I get him or he gets me; there is no quarter asked or given.

The dingos got my baby.

Monty = Modern Day Davy Crockett

Well Frank,

How about Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.,?
or Michael Moore calling them "minutemen"?
or Ohio Rep. Marcy Kaptur’s comments equating Osama bin Laden’s mass murderers to patriots of the American Revolution?
Brendan O’Leary a political science professor and Clark McCauley an adjunct professor of psychology at UPenn explaining that terrorists were really 'militants' prone to 'political violence'
or Ward Churchill
or ......f*ck, I could go on forever

The most famous example of this, as I recall, is the fact that a fund set up for some orphaned cougar cubs(?) in California raised more money than for the family of the woman the mama cougar killed.

Could have killed two birds with one stone by auctioning off the mother cougar's remains & the cubs to some Asian apothecary for soup or aphrodesiacs and donate the money to the family.

And just who killed off all the Mega-fuana you ask?
That's right boys and girls, those guardians of the ecosystem, Native American Indians.
Because according to them, no white guy set foot on North America before 1492.
So the lesson is that its OK to kill off the cool animals like the saber tooth tiger, as long as you "protect" the dork animals like the spotted owl.

Mmm.... cougar steak. And my kitty would appreciate a nice present of a cougar-skin rug. "Heh, I may be declawed and de-sexed, and I may be subject to humiliating maneuvers from my human like being picked up, held on my back, and having my stomach rubbed, but at least I'm alive and Mr. He-Man Wild Predator is my hairball barfing pad!"

Speaking of the punishments of love... I think that being loved by Alice Walker would be punshment, for sure.

It seems to me that this sort of attitude owes something to Christianity's "love your enemies" and Gandhi. From Orwell's Reflections on Gandhi:

"What about the Jews? Are you prepared to see them exterminated? If not, how do you propose to save them without resorting to war?" I must say that I have never heard, from any Western pacifist, an honest answer to this question, though I have heard plenty of evasions, usually of the "you're another" type. But it so happens that Gandhi was asked a somewhat similar question in 1938 and that his answer is on record in Mr. Louis Fischer's Gandhi and Stalin. According to Mr. Fischer, Gandhi's view was that the German Jews ought to commit collective suicide, which "would have aroused the world and the people of Germany to Hitler's violence." After the war he justified himself: the Jews had been killed anyway, and might as well have died significantly.

I four-wheel and hike in bear and lion country all the time. With my dog Sally.
I don't expect any attack from predators.
I do carry a gun, though.
I am am the "standard" mentally highly evolved and physically degraded "Safeway supermarket" predator specimen who needs "help" against REAL predator aggression.

Hobgoblin -

No killing of a tyke by a golden eagle yet, but they have nabbed lambs, little pooches, so if their numbers return to healthy levels, it's just a matter of time.

But a reasonable price to pay. A very rare event for one of America's 280 million people to be killed by a predator. People WANT wild animals to exist in nature, not just in zoos, and that includes apex predators.

Addendum on Jessie Arbogast

He is alive and off a feeding tube, so he has some cortical activity, but is severely brain damaged. When the shark took off his arm, he bled out and had no working blood pressure, hence to oxygen going to the brain for several minutes. So much of his brain died. His family swears he speaks "words" - but not sentences.

Shame the rescue and his survival didn't pan out as well as many had hoped.

http://www.pensacolanewsjournal.com/jessie.shtml

mtnbiker,
I would be curious to see your examples. What you sited was bullshit. I stated prove the left loves terrorists and you give me a quote by MM saying the Iraqi's trying to remove the US from iraq are minutemen. Your statement is the equivalent of saying the Vietcong were terrorists. By your definition, and granted by the bush administration's definition, anyone who opposes US hegemony is a terrorist. Fuck, why do I bother with you fucking morons?