Ranchers who supported Tea Party shutdown stunned at lack of federal aid.

[magical thyme]

209. I don't think the OP is gloating over the misfortune of others

so much as their surprise that when they shut down the government that meant *they* would not be getting aid, along with the brown babies left to go hungry.

I have measured sympathy for their losses, myself. I'm saddened that they needed to experience such devastation to learn what it really was they have been demanding. I'm not real moved by their concern about thei cattle's suffering.

I'm not convinced that death by hypothermia is worse than death by slaughter. My understanding of hypothermia is that ultimately, cold is replaced by numbness and a desire to sleep, and then you fall asleep. Slaughter means fear, more fear, the possibility of not being stunned unconsious if the stun gun is not perfectly aimed, and then more fear and agony when you are strung upside down by one leg, which process snaps the cannon bone, and then killed. Or of being injured in transport and literally being bulldozed alive across a feedlot (video of which made the rounds a couple years back of a downed cow screaming in fear and agony as she desperately attempted to scramble to her feet and escape the bulldozer shoving her along). And other forms of torture between the range and the final death blow.