Posted by playa2:

Funny how the ref sacandal wasn't headline news for numerous days as Vick situation.

Posted by Andrew:

Having never been to a rodeo, I've tried to read different accounts of animal treatment at rodeos. Its hard to get a good read on what is actually happening.

Has anyone here actually been to a rodeo and seen torturing and killing of animals?

Andrew, I've never been to a rodeo, nor will I ever, but I have seen bullfighting on TV, and it flat out made me queezy. They shove a whole number of ENORMOUS swords in these bulls until they are too exhausted and injured to fight for their lives anymore, and then the el matador kills them. Supposedly, the better ones kill the bulls on the first stab. It's putrid knowing what arouses people, and that people get off at stuff like this. Any kind of animal cruelty is bad to me.

Posted by misterearl:

rembee

What Marbury Said

"Mike, with me, on the field worked hard," (Wade) Phillips said. "And you just don't know what people are doing off the field, and he just made an awful, awful mistake and he's going to have to pay for it. But I don't think Mike Vick is a bad person. He made a bad life choice, certainly, but just being around him, guys that work hard and are honest with you at practice, I respect him that way. But certainly what he did nobody can [defend]."

"Meanwhile, back in the states..." (from the website)

Genarlow Wilson sits in prison despite being a good son, a good athlete and high school student with a 3.2 GPA. He never had any criminal trouble. On the day he was to sit for the SAT, at seventeen years old, his life changed forever. He was arrested. In Douglas County he was accused of inappropriate sexual acts at a News Year’s Eve party. A jury acquitted him of the allegation of Rape but convicted him of Aggravated Child Molestation for a voluntary act of oral sex with another teenager. He was 17, and she was 15.

Along with the label “child molester” which will require him throughout his life to be on a sexual offender registry, Genarlow received a sentence of eleven years — a mandatory 10 years in prison and 1 year on probation.

On July 1st, the new Romeo and Juliet law went into effect in Georgia for any other teen that engages in consensual sexual acts. That change in the law means that no teen prosecuted for consensual oral sex could receive more than a 12 months sentence or be required to register as a sex offender.

Had this law been in effect when Genarlow Wilson was arrested, or had been done after the Marcus Dixon case, Genarlow would not now be in jail.

Genarlow and his mother are overjoyed that no one else in Georgia will have to know their pain. In the meantime, however, the legal fight goes on for Genarlow Wilson.

Genarlow has been incarcerated since February 25, 2005.

Meanwhile, dog fighting is legal in Georgia

you do the math

Posted by RemBee76:

Posted by Andrew:

Having never been to a rodeo, I've tried to read different accounts of animal treatment at rodeos. Its hard to get a good read on what is actually happening.

Has anyone here actually been to a rodeo and seen torturing and killing of animals?

You can’t have a rodeo without torturing animals, why do you think those bulls kick like that? They use cattle prods in the holding chute, they have straps around their balls, and sometimes a burning ointment is applied in that area (kinda like Bengay, only worse). “Wranglers” dive off of their horses to wrestle down calves, whipping their heads round 180 degrees to get them to fall to the ground, often causing serious injury. In calf roping, baby calves are forced to run at speeds over 25 miles per hour while being roped down. The reason they run at such high speeds is that they are being tortured in the holding chute. Their tails are twisted, their tails are rubbed back and forth over the steel bars of the chute and they are shocked with electric prods until the gate opens. And imagine how many baby calves are injured and killed in just the practicing of these maneuvers. Bronc riding causes the deaths of many rodeo horses. It is common for horses in these events to crash into posts in the fencing around the track or into the holding chute.

I didn’t bring up the hypocrisy of decrying dog fights while celebrating rodeos to excuse either event, or to make excuses for Vick who clearly broke the law, but don’t many people consider the rodeo a sport? Doesn’t sound to me that the animals in those events are given much of a sporting chance.

What Vick did was disgusting, but in many ways just the product of this country we live in and its attitude toward animals. Its also disgusting how easy it is for people to see him as a heartless criminal (while wrapped in the carcasses of electrocuted animals) instead of taking this situation as an opportunity to examine the animal cruelty that happens in many sanctioned events around this country, not just in the hunting that Marbury spoke of. There is a serious amount of hypocrisy there, and I don’t think Marbury is stupid for trying in his clumsy way to point it out.

And I also don't think we can so easily dismiss the "color" issue. I have a hard time imagining that the nation-wide reaction wouldn’t be different if this had been Tom Brady. Doubtless then we would be rightly talking about similar ills in our society, but its so much easier to crucify the black man.

Best post in this thread.. I agree 100%

Posted by misterearl:

"I hate the human love of that stinkin' mutt

... tryin' to make it real compared to what!"

- Eddie Harris/ Les McCann (Swiss Movement)

djsu - it's probably MS on speed dial with a bunch of PETA fanatics who resent athletes in the first place.

"I'd rather dress my dog in a cute matching suit"

Marbury is just being Marbury. Not unlike Manny being Manny but Manny is lovable while Marbury is the debbil. For too many that can't stand his image, Coney Island roots, or awkward placement of words, that is simply too much to bear.