Dharma Passes the Hat

On December 7 of last year, “Dharma and Greg” co-star Jenna Elfman “tweeted” a photo taken after she taped a new "give $19 a month" TV ad for the Humane Society of the United States. Elfman made a radio PSA for HSUS in 2001 and lent an image of her lips to an HSUS-branded postage stamp in 2008, but this was her first on-camera work for the animal rights organization. It reportedly began airing late last week.

Last night the video production company that shot this fundraising ad posted a press release about it, but the release was removed early this morning. (Here’s Google’s cache, and our screen-grab for posterity.) In addition to the Jenna Elfman ad, the release also linked to videos of two more spots that may or may not be running nationally: one narrated by Wayne Pacelle, and another showcasing three children. (Note: We can’t control how long these movie files will be available for viewing.)

The Jenna Elfman fundraising ad is the most interesting of three to us. Not because it’s fronted by an actress, but because we counted 44 live animals in this ad, and all but two are dogs and cats:

More after the jump.

“Change Agenda” Report Card: HSUS’s Ambitions Flounder

Our national mood was quite different after the 2008 elections—different enough, in fact, that HSUS confidently issued a 100-point “Change Agenda for Animals” to challenge the incoming White House and Congress to do its bidding.

One year later, HSUS issued the Obama Administration a "B-minus" grade; (which is far better than the "D" grade HSUS itself was recently awarded by a respected charity watchdog). The B-minus was widely seen as a practical nod to the difficulties of getting anything approved by the proverbial sausage factory (sorry, Wayne) that is the U.S. Congress. 

Two years in, the sun is setting on the 111th Congress, and on the first half of President Obama's first term. HSUS has spent millions of dollars lobbying for its agenda. How did it do?

The Most Meaningless Scorecard of the Year

This week the Humane Society of the United States issued its 2010 “Humane State Ranking” report. This is an update of HSUS’s first such report (its 2009 rankings), released in February of this year. California came out on top. But don't get cocky, you west-coasters. This whole HSUS ranking system smells like last week's tofu.

When HSUS's first report came out, HumaneWatch was still 10 days away from launching, so we didn't address it. And besides, HSUS’s arbitrary 65-point ranking system seemed, well … arbitrary.  It read more like an HSUS lobbyist’s wish-list than an animal protection index, since it didn’t take into account laws that HSUS found inconvenient to its command-and-control mission.

Now that a second set of rankings is out, it appears even more foolish to allow this animal rights group to determine which states are (and are not) serious about animal welfare. It’s especially instructive to look at what happened in the intervening months with an eye toward how the rankings have—or haven't—changed.

Let’s take a look.