NOT-SO-STRANGE BEDFELLOWS

Our "cowboy" president, whose "shooting from the hip" got our nation into a deadly quagmire overseas, is seen in this right-winger T-shirt branding his initial onto a donkey (Get it? Huh-hyuk) with a painful branding iron. It's nice when they spell it out like that - Bush is the exemplar of the animal "owner" who uses an unfair social advantage as well as lies and intimidation to subdue his opponents, both human and nonhuman. How congruent with real-life rodeo cowboys, who spend their lives showing off how powerful they are compared to defenseless, confused animals. Some of them, at least, also spend time lying about their animal-abuse practices: Yet another video shows "men striking or kicking bulls in the face or pulling their tails to agitate them before they were released into the arena. The video also showed repeated use of electric prods while the animals were confined inside chutes ["No, we never do that!"], calves being roped to the ground and some close-up footage of open sores on animals."