What can you do for your country?

[depakid]

Portlanders consider how they will – or won’t – aid the president-elect
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Quinn Reilly says working as a field organizer for the Obama campaign was the most inspiring five months of his life. The 24-year-old likely will be moving to Portland to work for Democratic legislators.
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Steve Novick is even willing to give up eating meat if his new president were to ask. Mind you, Novick, the Portland attorney who ran an unsuccessful campaign against Jeff Merkley for the Democratic nomination for U.S. senator, is just making a point.

Sort of. The point is, he’s inspired by President-elect Barack Obama’s victory. He wants to help. And he’s willing to sacrifice.

“I don’t consume all that much meat,” Novick says. “Let’s say Barack Obama said, ‘We’re using up a lot of natural resources to feed cows, and I ask you, just as an experiment, to get along without eating beef for the next month.’ I’d be willing to do that.

“If he asked me, for six months, don’t eat farm-raised tuna, and instead eat sardines and anchovies when I feel like fish, I’d be willing to do that.”

In short, Novick, like a lot of others in a county that delivered Obama a 77 percent to 20 percent margin over Sen. John McCain, is waiting to hear what it is he can do. And Novick, like many others in Portland – young and old, black and white – is willing to do just about anything.

It is, many say, the first time in their lives they have felt as if a major cultural transformation could take place in this country. The first days after the Sept 11, 2001, terrorist attacks felt like this, some say, ripe with the possibility of change. But the only sacrifice asked of Americans then was that they do a little shopping.

Some are too burdened, and others suggest liberals are just too caught up in finally having won big in a presidential election.

Yet a great many here say they want to be part of the change. But, like first-time parents confronted with a newborn, they don’t know what to do because they’ve never been asked before.

More: http://www.portlandtribune.com/news/story.php?story_id=122773527155400000

[BlooInBloo]

1. I can bitch and moan about every last thing Obama does no matter how small...

Because dissent is patriotic, dontchaknow.

More seriously: I'll do a lot of things, but giving up bacon isn't even close to being on the table.

I stand ready to accept the blame for bringing about the Apocalypse.

[NYC_SKP]

2. I like a little bacon now and again, too.

And right now I'm snacking on a couple of those baby sausages called "little smokies".

But if someone made the argument to me that my eating choices impact their children's future world because raising meat for food is an unsustainable practice, I'd have to concede.

And maybe I'd cut down on the smokies. :hi:

[BlooInBloo]

3. Ooh - lil smokies are good!

Don't get me wrong - I'm happy to pay (and even vote for) a sin tax on bacon - assuming that the problem was real, and not just more of the bourgeois vegetarian bullshit with their newest shiny toy that they use to bitch about meat-eaters with.

[NYC_SKP]

4. Nom nom nom....

Yeah, yummie!

I'm quite certain about the bearing capacity of the land to feed people eating a balanced mixed protein diet with or without meat, the difference is extraordinary.

But the effects of population growth are greater, so there is no single sin that has to be banished, I'm just happy if more people have the information.

And, like you, I'd gladly pay a little sin tax for the bacon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_effects_of_meat_production

:hi:

[BlooInBloo]

5. Thanks for the article link...

Presumably penned by a bourgeois vegetarian looking to bitch and moan about meat-eaters.

Time to go eats me some chicken!

[NYC_SKP]

7. Oh you tease, you...

Free range chicken, of course....

We used to raise chickens, my nonnie (grandma) raised me and sister while mom worked and we had a few dozen on the old ranch.

One day a feral cat or fox slaughtered a hen and most of the chicks and we adopted one chick. Named it "pee pee" because of it's chirps.

It reached chicken adolescence and we stopped keeping it on the porch and sent it out with the others (it was the only time we treated a chick like a pet).

Months later we're eating chicken, nonnie asked if it tasted good. She then let us know that we were eating pee pee.

I think we all probably laughed, but as the youngest I was a little choked up, I think.

[BlooInBloo]

9. hahaha! A friend of mine related a more traumatic version of that story... with a crab...

He was like 6, and his mom was going to boil crabs for dinner. She had to go answer the phone or something, and yelled for my friend to toss the crabs in the boiling water. Being 6, he was a little bit skittish about handling the bug-like things (still alive). So he goes to gingerly place the first one in the water - too slowly apparently. Because when the crab felt the heat, it grasped the rim of the pot, and wouldn't let itself be pushed into the water. So this kid is freaking out, trying to push this unwilling crab into boiling water to kill it, and it starts making some screaming sound. So my friend has lost his cookies by this point sobbing and screaming for his mom, who finally comes down to rescue the situation.


And that's why, he explained to me, he could never join me on my crab-leg romps. I respected that.

[NYC_SKP]

14. Eeew, actually BEING the murderer of your meal.

That's rough!

Crabs scream? That's creepy!

[Bitter_Clinger]

6. I did for my country when I enlisted. n/t

[BlooInBloo]

8. Fascinating name you've chosen for yourself.

[Bitter_Clinger]

10. It Made More Sense During the Elections.

It was a slap at the Red Staters who kept pointing out that the "Bitter Clingers" were all Christian gun owners who voted Republican. Well I am a pious Christian and I a gun owner (a couple of dozen times over) and supported Obama. I chose the name more out of sarcasm than anything else.

[BlooInBloo]

11. Indeed. For those 4 days before the election, it must have been a scream.

[Bitter_Clinger]

12. Had to Call Myself Something. Do You not Approve?

Should I care?

[BlooInBloo]

13. Don't care, and up to you, respectively.