Punch and I have been in serious discussion over dinner about this Barack Obama fellow. And the verdict, let me tell you, is not good. I am now under considerable pressure to be advocating a Republican vote in 2012.

DSC01850

Everything was going well enough when I brought up the subject of US politics. Punch appears to have got a bit bored with all the dinner table gossip about Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott. And at least this talk about Barack Obama had to do with football.

Punch approved of the President of the United States ringing the the owner of the Philadelphia Eagles,Jeffrey Lurie, and expressing gratitude for the team’s willingness to give Michael Vick, the once-disgraced football player who went to jail,  a second chance. It’s like when you’ve done your time outside after barking at a stranger walking by you are allowed back in. Let bygones be bygones appears to be the dog attitude. He liked this description of President Obama’s phone call that Mr Lurie gave to Sports Illustrated:

“He said, ‘So many people who serve time never get a fair second chance,’” Mr. Lurie told Sports Illustrated’s Peter King. “He said, ‘It’s never a level playing field for prisoners when they get out of jail.’ And he was happy that we did something on such a national stage that showed our faith in giving someone a second chance after such a major downfall.”

It was the reference to Michael Vick having done his time because he headed an illegal dog fighting ring that caused the first frown on the black brow.

You see, Punch is no fighter himself even if we were made to stand on the end of the line a few paces away from everyone else at obedience classes. But that there is a little bit of aggression in his family background is shown every morning when the tennis racket man walks by with his cattle dog. Personally, I don’t think it is the brown dog that causes the hackles to rise and the growling to start but that potentially dangerous weapon the tennis racket the man is swinging on the way back from hitting balls to his dog in the park.

Be that as it may, it just proves Punch is no wimpish pacifist disgrace to his pit bull antecedents. He just wisely thinks he should not have to fight for his nightly dinner but forgiveness for quarter-back Vick still seemed appropriate.

It was only when we got to the bit of the Washington Post story about how the Vick dog fighting group had “killed pit bulls by electrocution, hanging and drowning” that the President lost Punch’s support. He thinks Presidents shouldn’t go around forgiving dog torturers any more than reformed child molesters.

They are funny like that, these animals that bark at tennis racket men.