The Worst Cause in the WorldRakes in $34 Million a Year

Stylistically, the protesters favored the familiar "alternative" look: white guys in dredlocks, Army fatigues and grimy t-shirts, chicks in tanktops and ripped, saggy jeans. Piercing seemed to be universal and unisex. One girl I talked to had both nostrils, one eyebrow and her tongue pierced.
And then there was the smell. . . . I don’t know if this neglect of personal hygiene was a political statement on the part of the animal-rights activists, or if maybe they had spent the previous few nights camping somewhere without access to showers, but they genuinely reeked. You could smell them from 50 feet away.
-- Robert Stacy McCain, March 2000

When spotted owls sign a petition, or the Orangutang Caucus organizes a protest march, I'll be willing to consider the possibility that animals have "rights." Meanwhile, I refuse to recognize the moral supremacy of smelly protesters with nose rings and neck tattoos. However, neither their body odor nor the illogic of their rhetoric can keep these crackpots from raking in the capitalist moohlah:

To some Americans, PETA may seem like a caring organization. Sure, you may say, they are a bit extreme -- but it's in defense of animals, after all. . . .
But have you stopped to consider just why PETA picks certain targets to go after? Maybe it makes sense that they've gone after McDonalds and KFC -- until you wonder: Why McDonald's and not Wendy's, and why KFC and not Popeye's? . . .
And why go after MasterCard instead of Visa or American Express -- or the Gap instead of ... whoever else sells Gap-ish stuff?The answer, of course, is money. PETA took in more than $34 million in 2008. Much of the money comes through legal kickbacks and grants, via their "partners" . . . (Emphasis added.)

There's more where that came from, plus here's something interesting from Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood:

While PETA has increasingly become adept at generating mainstream media attention, according to PetaKillsAnimals.com, PETA found homes for less than one out of every three hundred animals in 2008, and they killed 95 percent of the dogs and cats in their care last year . . .

More of that, too. What PETA does, you see, is exploit human sympathy for animals, and then turn that sympathy into cash -- cash that actually kills Fluffy the Cat and Bowser the Dog.

Kind of like ObamaCare, in some ways.