Andy's Angle

Why Don't I Care About Soccer? Believe it or not, that's not a rhetorical question. I'm genuinely confused as to why I don't care much about soccer in general, MLS at all, or the World Cup in specific. I'm somewhat surprised by this given that I work in a city with a great professional soccer team that won the MLS in fairly recent memory, that team has a great venue that is terribly convenient for me to attend, and the single game (or is it match?) I attended was extremely enjoyable.

Apparently, however, I'm not alone. As Matthew Philbin points out at NewsBusters, Americans by and large don't care one way or another about soccer. It isn't necessarily that we dislike the sport, but that it simply isn't part of our collective culture the way baseball, football, and basketball are.

While even extremely successful sports like golf and tennis don't enjoy the general American enthusiasm of the "big three," soccer is clearly the low man on the totem pole when it comes to major organized sports in this country.

World Cup fever, however, has the media in "missionary" mode once again, as Philbin notes, "every four years they strive to bring the good news of "the beautiful game" to the ignorant American masses."

It drives me nuts that literally everything in our society has a political connotation, but I do find Philbin's analysis intriguing. I welcome your thoughts.

I am, by the way, working to organize a Crew game with my friends... It's a good time.

Sarah Palin's Boobs Are in the News... While contemplating the physical attributes of the hottest Governor ever elected in Alaska (or most other states, for that matter) isn't something that disturbs me in itself, I do find it next to infuriating that manufactured gossip alleging she acquired breast augmentation passes as political discourse today.

Let's compare and contrast. From RedState's Tabitha Hale: Palin is significant because she represents a large portion of the [Tea Party/Conservative] movement. In many cases, she still has enough pull with the base to make them rethink their candidate selection. She’s also proven that she knows how to pick a winner. It’s just a matter of whether or not her devotion lies to paying back political favors or standing up for the grassroots - there’s no denying that she’s got power.

On the other hand, here's Lauren Beckham Falcone at the Boston Herald: "Alaska’s former governor sported more Northern Exposure than usual at the Belmont Stakes race this weekend, sending the blogosphere into a tizzy, wondering whether Palin is exercising a woman’s right to (bigger) boobs.

I'm not sure I even need to comment further...

Despite $10 Million, Lincoln Hangs On... Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark), Chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, scratched out a victory in a close primary run-off. This is significant for two reasons: first, because the powerful Labor Unions who control the Democratic party dumped $10 million in a failed bid to unseat her for standing up to them during her tenure.

From NewsMax: "To use $10 million during a recession on beating up their own rather than trying to save the endangered makes no earthly sense," said Doug Schoen, a Democratic political consultant.

But union leaders insisted Wednesday that forcing Lincoln into a runoff and coming within a few thousand votes of unseating her had achieved their goal — getting other wayward Democrats to think twice before crossing labor.

"If working families were able to accomplish this in Arkansas, imagine what they can achieve in other states," said AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka.

Schoen is right. Americans should note that workers represented by groups like the AFL-CIO spend a significant portion of their wage to belong to a Union ostensibly so their rights as workers are protected. Instead, those dollars are being, to quote one senior White House aide "flushed down the toilet on a pointless exercise." The aide told Politico that "If even half that total had been well-targeted and applied in key House races across this country, that could have made a real difference in November." In a story at the American Spectator, an AFL spokesman shot back, "labor isn't an arm of the Democratic Party."

Clearly Union leaders presumed the Democratic Party was an arm of Big Labor.

The second reason this is important is even more important. Blanche Lincoln should be in the United States Senate. While I may not agree with all of her policies, she represents the people who elected her well, respecting their will and wishes at the displeasure of the party apparatus and special interests like Big Labor. She represents the class of Statesmen sorely lacking in modern politics.

FTC Warning About Gulf Oil Scams... And I'm not talking about the Katrina-esqe incompetence of the Federal Government in dealing with the situation. The Federal Trade Commission warns that "scammers will likely use e-mails, websites, door-to-door collections, flyers, mailings and telephone calls to solicit money by claiming they’re raising money for environmental causes or offering fraudulent services related to the oil spill."

Keep that in mind when HSUS claims to need your money to "save the animals in the gulf..." After all, they've done it before...

Okay, so that should get your engine running this morning. Looking forward to your thoughts.

Secretary Vilsack Still Doesn't Get It... This week the Secretary of Agriculture hosted his highly touted "National Summit on Rural America," what I've been describing as a USDA "field trip" to Missouri. Vilsack loaded up his top brass and hosted their own echo chamber on what's wrong with Rural America, and how this USDA Administration is going to fix it. The Secretary offered this commentary at The Huffington Post, continuing his focus on rural economic development.

"More rural Americans are over the age of 65 and few have graduated college," Vilsack writes. "More than half of America's rural counties are losing population and with it, political representation." So perhaps for the first time we really hear why this USDA is so unconcerned with the traditional "farm" programs at USDA, and so obsessed with programs geared toward the niches of American agriculture: political power. Farmers, as we all know, are fewer and farther between, representing by some measures as few as one percent of the total populace.

And yet, we've seen a great deal of interest in folks returning to their rural roots for the wide open spaces and good clean living. The tens of millions of Americans living in flyover country, however, are still an important piece of the political pie. They helped win states like Ohio for President Bush not once, but twice. Just take a look at some of the red state/blue state maps that are colored by county. The number of rural counties painted red are staggering. Realizing this, USDA is doing everything it can to turn these traditional strongholds of Conservatism into nanny state outposts in a year when the majority party is expected to lose at least some Congressional ground.

The most telling thing about this whole "Rural Summit" exercise, however, came in a dispatch from fellow Farm Broadcaster Stewart Doan of AgriPulse. "Small farm and sustainable ag advocates dominated the question and answer session," Doan reported on our broadcast this morning. "Leaders of major farm and commodity groups were largely absent from the day long session."

Most likely missing the gravity of that key fact, Vilsack instead continued his offensive against the mainstream farm community: "I think we have to speak with a single voice here," Vilsack said. "There are too few of us...to have this consistent and constant battle between production agriculture and sustainable agriculture." WHOA, major red flag moment here. My problems with that little statement are many, but let's start with the most obvious. In one sentence, Vilsack has tacitly suggested that the vast majority of farmers encompassing "production agriculture" are somehow not sustainable!

If, in his words, there is a "battle" between production and sustainable agriculture, from where does he think it originates? The farmers I know and work with on a daily basis certainly want sustainable operations and business models; most of them are multigenerational to begin with, and most have children or business partners looking to continue producing food well into the future. Perhaps if there is some dissension among farm folks it stems not from sustainable vs. unsustainable, but from the continued realization in farm country that Secretary Vilsack doesn't put a whole lot of emphasis on the traditional responsibilities of the United States Department of Agriculture.

This is the most combative USDA I've worked with in a decade covering this community and industry, and it is beyond frustrating to hear the titular leader of American agriculture continue to beating the war drums in the face of the overwhelming majority of his constituents. As I've said many, many times, it will take ALL of us in food production to continue delivering an abundant and nutritious food supply to an ever-growing population, including organic and conventional, specialty and commodity, traditional and niche farmers and producers.

Vilsack both ignores this fact, and berates those of us who continue to question his either willful ignorance or intentional aggression. The Secretary serves at the pleasure of the President, and it gives me pause to wonder just how long a President from Illinois can tolerate a Secretary who really doesn't seem to like farmers all that much.

Earlier this week on this blog, I shared a traditional toast offered annually at the Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels' Derby Eve Banquet.

The toast, written in honor of the Colonels in 1937, says in part: I give you a man dedicated to the good things of life, to the gentle, the heartfelt things, to good living, and to the kindly rites with which it is surrounded. In all the clash of a plangent world he holds firm to his ideal - a gracious existence in that country of content "where slower clocks strike happier hours."

I'll admit, I had to look up the word "plangent," and learned that basically it means a loud reverberating sound. In other words, even in 1937, the author was concerned about the hubbub and chaos of an increasingly busy society, or as he later described it, a trying world darkened by hate and misunderstanding. Somehow sounds strangely similar to the modern world in which we live today.

In toasting the Kentucky Colonels, a society known for its philanthropic and social virtues, the 1930s era author seemed to hearken back to a calmer, gentler time. Modern technology and the 24-hour news cycle seem to facilitate near-rabid and vocal disagreement over the daily issues in our world.

From animal rights in Ohio, to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, to the bitter acrimony between R's and D's in Congress, polite discourse feels like a dying art. In the context of the acrimony and plangent argument over these issues, picturing oneself sipping Kentucky Bourbon and admiring a stout thoroughbred stallion in the pasture of yesteryear seems fairly preferable.

In sharing some insight from our reporting on these stories on the popular website The Huffington Post last week, I was struck not so much by the near-violence of some web-commenters, but by the fact that one commenter in particular took time to commend me for a reasoned and civil debate on the issue. While the two of us disagreed on the substance of our positions, this person and I shared a sense of uniqueness in the fact that we could calmly share our views and advance our arguments without the virtual vitriol so commonplace online and in the popular press today.

Steven Covey in his hallmark book "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" speaks of seeking first to understand, then to be understood. His theory is that if I try to understand my fellow man before attempting to convince them of my idea or position, I can better achieve my intended goal because we'll have common understanding from which to communicate. In my experience, that holds mostly true. It's also been my experience that there exists a subset of society, tending to actively participate in online discussions of controversial issues, who will never venture to understand the perspective of anyone other than themselves. With those folks, I'll most likely never find that common ground. With the broad majority of intelligent and reasoned beings, however, finding the content of common understanding is a useful first step.

When remembering the "good 'ole days," it's easy to overplay the frustrations and vagaries of today and to oversell the virtue and harmony of yesteryear. I'm a modern man, without a doubt, firmly ensconced in the iPhone era.

Even so, like my fellow Kentucky Colonel of over 70 years ago, I celebrate what remains of those virtues in which men find gallant faith and of the good men might distill from life, and hope more of us can find common ground in the civil discourse over today's most challenging issues.

Less than a week after HSUS' Factory Farm Campaign Director Paul Shapiro told me personally that the mutli-million dollar animal rights juggernaut would NOT use footage from the Mercy for Animals "undercover video" at Conklin Dairy in its campaign for a ballot measure on animal housing this fall, the organization has clearly reneged on that assurance. In my wide-ranging interview with Shapiro last Wednesday in the wake of the Mercy for Animals PR circus in Plain City, I asked Shapiro about comments made by Ohio Director of Agriculture Robert Boggs that the HSUS driven and funded ballot issue would not have prevented the types of cruelty depicted in the Mercy for Animals video.

“I agree with Director Boggs that this is a separate matter," Shapiro told me. "This is a matter where you’ve got current law that needs to be enforced and strengthened, quite frankly, but this ballot measure is about creating new laws.”

Shapiro elaborated further on his belief that the Conklin case and the HSUS ballot effort were unrelated: “The [Conklin] issue is one of enforcing laws that are currently on the books…The issue with the Conklin Dairy Farm abuse case is one of enforcing current law. Apparently, laws were probably broken, and that will have to be addressed by the authorities in Union County.”

That position, however, is apparently being abandoned as quickly as it was adopted. In an email circulated to HSUS' supporters today, the organization's campaign manager in Ohio Karen Minton said "This common sense ballot measure will prevent animal cruelty, improve health and food safety, and support family farms throughout the state of Ohio. Ohio has some of the most anemic animal protection laws on the books, and the fact that extreme, malicious violence warrants only misdemeanor penalties is a reflection of the political obstructionism of the agribusiness lobby in Ohio."

Playing on the shared emotion felt by all of us who saw the Conklin video, Minton suggested that the HSUS' ballot effort would address the types of abuse inflicted by suspect Bill Joe Gregg in the Mercy for Animals video: "Despite these egregious acts of cruelty, Gregg only faces misdemeanor charges. Ohio's anti-cruelty law does not allow for felony-level charges for farm animal abuse, no matter how malicious the act."

In the HSUS' ballot language, which focuses primarily on prohibiting modern housing methods for veal, pork, and egg producers, the organization proposes to outlaw strangulation of livestock. While many would consider such a practice to be covered by current anti-cruelty laws, HSUS contends it is not. Shapiro and HSUS say that Ohio's animal cruelty laws are not strong enough, and that punishment for the types of abuses depicted in the Mercy for Animals tape should be felonies, not misdemeanors as prescribed currently by Ohio Revised Code.

I asked Shapiro then if Ohio's animal cruelty laws aren't strong enough, and if those types of abuses should be felony offenses, why then HSUS' own ballot effort would only consider strangulation of livestock a misdemeanor.

His answer? Political expediency.

"First and foremost, of course, beating animals is not addressed by the ballot measure because it’s already addressed there [in current law]," Shapiro said. "Second, the ballot measure is written in a way to be extraordinarily modest. It’s written in a way that is so common-sensical that it’s difficult to be against it...I think that’s one of the strengths of this ballot measure is its modesty.”

HSUS has simultaneously contradicted itself on this issue in two ways: first, by almost immediately reversing itself on Paul Shapiro's assurance to me that HSUS would not be campaigning on the Conklin case. "That would seem unlikely to me," he said when I asked him if HSUS would be using the Mercy for Animals footage in campaign ads this fall. And secondly, on the issue of Ohio's animal cruelty laws, by on one hand condemning them for being too lax in considering abuses like the Bill Joe Gregg incident as misdemeanors while proposing changes to Ohio's Constitution that would make strangulation of livestock a mere misdemeanor.

In 2008, Governor Steven L. Beshear commissioned me a Kentucky Colonel, an honorary title of which I'm most fond. Like many Colonels of every gender, creed, race, and socioeconomic status, I am proud of my affiliation with the Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels, a group known for its philanthropic and social virtues. In their regular email to the Order, Colonels' HQ shared the following "Toast" that I found particularly applicable to those of us engaged in rural and agricultural pursuits.

This Toast was written by Col. Arthur Kudner of New York as a tribute to Kentucky Colonels. Beginning in 1938 and continuing through 2000, the toast was recited annually at the Derby Eve Colonels' Banquet:

I give you a man dedicated to the good things of life, to the gentle, the heartfelt things, to good living, and to the kindly rites with which it is surrounded. In all the clash of a plangent world he holds firm to his ideal - a gracious existence in that country of content "where slower clocks strike happier hours".

He stands in spirit on a tall-columned veranda, a hospitable glass in his hand, and he looks over the good and fertile earth, over ripening fields, over meadows of rippling blue grass. The rounded note of a horn floats through the fragrant stillness. Afar, the sleek and shining flanks of a thoroughbred catch the bright sun. The broad door, open wide with welcome... the slow, soft-spoken word... the familiar step of friendship... all this is his life and it is good. He brings fair judgment to sterner things. He is proud in the traditions of his country, in ways that are settled and true.

In a trying world darkened by hate and misunderstanding, he is a symbol of those virtues in which men find gallant faith and of the good men might distill from life. Here he stands then. In the finest sense, an epicure... a patriot... a man. Gentlemen, I give you the Kentucky Colonel.