Ever have one of those days where you just can't think? And even if you are thinking properly, you don't have the confidence in yourself to recognize the fact? Yeah, I'm having one of those days right now. Seems like this is a weekly occurance nowadays. And band practice should be greeeaat today, I'll be all over the place on the drumset, tripping over the beat.. Hopefully I can clear my head and make a decent blog entry later today. Sorry...

Send these people hate mail.

Warblogging asks the question: "How many Iraqis celebrated?" It links to proof that a photo that ran on the front page of London's Evening Standard, the one of Iraqi's cheering the US Marines as they tore down the statue of Saddam, was doctored to make the crowd look larger than it was. He also links to other voices in the media, like Ted Rall, who say that the anti-Saddam protests were not that large; and links to proof that there have been large anti-American protests in Iraq.

You. Read. Now.

There is supposedly a report from a Kurdish paper Hawlati that a freezer containing anthrax was stolen from Mosul University. It's a short article. Quoting directly from it, "It is worth noting that this information is clear evidence that Saddam Husayn's regime possessed banned weapons of mass destruction, and used scientific centers for [developing] them."

I think this report is worth noting, but I can't mention it without questioning the credibility of it. First off, the latest issue on Hawlati is not yet available in english. I'm not fluent in arabic, so I am going by a translation of this from TIDES Middle East Report. I stumbled upon this site today doing a search for "Ahmad al-Jalabi", how Arabic News spells Ahmed Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress. I do not know how credible TIDES is, but so far it's proven to be some pretty interesting reading.

Another thing to keep in mind is that Kurdish media has an anti-Saddam bias. I won't condemn them for it, Saddam has slaughtered thousands of Kurds so they have a damn good reason to hate the man, but it's still something that you have to think about when reading their press.

I intend to keep an eye on this story. If it's true, it's also worht noting that if the only anthrax that has been found has been in a freezer small enough to be stolen, it must not be that great of an amount. It could be from the stockpiles of anthrax that the US shipped to Iraq from 1978-88.

Something cool for baseball fans: Baseball Reference has a program that gives you a "chain" of teammates between two players. I've been trying to stump it by finding players from the 1880's and telling it to find a chain between them and 2003 rookies, and not only does if find a chain but I haven't been able to get it to find a chain with less than 8 teammates inbetween. I'm issuing a challenge and setting the mark to break at 10 teammates. Post your results to the forum.

Looks like it's time to rat on my namesake: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is investigating the chemicals that the DuPont corporation uses to make Teflon. (Your fearless blogger Adam Dupont has no relation to the rich, corporate DuPont's; none that I know of, at least.) While the focus of the EPA will be on the chemical C-8 (perfluorooctanoic acid), they will also investigate claims by a group named Environmental Working Group, " that DuPont failed to report observations of birth defects in employees. The employees at a West Virginia plant handled the chemical, known as C-8, in the early 1980s."

To further quote the linked article, "Industry studies have linked C8 to a variety of health problems, including cancer and liver damage, in rats, but regulators don't know whether those findings are relevant to humans." The EPA says that judging C-8's health risk to humans is "premature", but they are wondering how they have been able to direct this chemical in humans from ages 2-96. They will explore the possibilities of this chemical being released from Teflon pans since they are constantly heated. Now, I'm just a layman, but I have to reply with a great big "DUH" to that last sentence.

These WorldNetDaily polls are so much fun to look at. Today they ask the question, "What do you think of dual citizenship for Mexicans?" Out of 5002 votes so far, the four "Yes" votes have received a combined total of 76 votes. Each individual "Yes" option is being outpaced by the venerable "Other", which has 65 votes. The remaining 4861 went to the "No" options, with the lead vote getter being, "It's very dangerous, will have huge negative ramifications for the U.S. in the future."

Nope, no racism here. Just move along, people, nothing to see here... Oh! Speaking of racism, WND published a column by Jerry Falwell, where he claims that the Democrats have waged a racist smear campaign against Bush judicial nominee Miugel Estrada. So, if the Democrats seek to block a nomination of a hispanic judge, it MUST be racism! But if Republicans want to keep an ethnic group of people like Mexicans out of the country, then they are patriots. Nope, no hypocrisy here, folks. None at all.

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) wants to repeal the sunset provisions of the PATRIOT Act, the act that pretty much made our civil liberties moot. It has to be reviewed by Congress in 2005, where it could then be voted out, but Hatch doesn't like that idea. I can't tell you why he doesn't like it, but I think it has something to do with him being a fucking asshole his whole political career. Just a hunch.

Salon has a great story on their front page today about the Bush administrations and Justice Department's abuse of the the PATRIOT Act, who it allows them to make secret decisions and throw people they don't happen to like in jail without a trial. It goes into who has supported this and who some of the victims are. It's a must read if you care about freedom.

Scientists in Britain say that depleted uranium shells used by US/UK forces should be cleaned up. The Pentagon, which cares SOOOOOOO much about the innocent civilians in Iraq, probably won't. The refuse to believe that DU can cause cancer, and they didn't clean it up after the first Gulf War. Meanwhile, 10,000 US troops since Gulf War I ended have died from Gulf War Syndrome and the Pentagon still refuses to investigate the matter, possibly because DU could be the culprit. (I'd quote the figures for Iraqi deaths but I don't think they exist. If they did, they would be just as shocking.)

If we let priests watch Fox, there wouldn't be any problems with them and little boys..
It would seem like CNN is trying to outfox Fox with a fox: Paula Zahn becomes CNN's primetime anchor. Her previous experience includes 10 years at CBS and a brief period with the Great Satan of news networks, Fox. Among my ramblings on Sunday, I voiced my opinions about why Fox is the top news channel: babes. Other people have the opinion that Fox has better ratings because it is biased towards republicans, but quite honestly, I don't think that's true. I do not get to watch CNN, Fox, or MSNBC too often, but when I do I have noticed that Fox is annoyingly republican, and MSNBC is now trying to emulate it by being more annoying republican. They gave Michael Savage his own show because of the success of his radio show and new book, claiming that Michael is, "An independent-minded individualist, Michael Savage fits no stereotype. He attacks big government and liberal media bias, but champions the environment and animal rights." (link) This little quote is a steaming load of shit. If you have heard Mr. Savage, you know that he makes Rush Limbaugh look like Ted Kennedy. The other night when I was in the exercise roo and I flipped channels, I stopped on MSNBC because they were doing a segment on how people in Hollywood are wrong, and they had someone from freerepublic.com on there air, talking about Freeper protests in Hollywood. And MSNBC is supposed to be part of the "liberal" media.

I'm not saying that republicans shouldn't be in the media, all sides should be represented. But while the viewpoints from members of the extreme right are getting air time, viewpoints from the more extreme parts of the left are not being given to the public. Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Jim Hightower, etc., are not considered newsworthy. Ralph Nader gets airtime, but he has to, he's Nader. But if MSNBC wants to have a show that represents the views of more Americans as opposed to shows by members of the rabid right like Michael Savage, why not give Michael Moore a shot? He has television experience in prime time [with NBC and Fox], his book was number one before Michael Savage got "The Savage Nation" published, and since then Moore's book has reclaimed the number spot a couple times, proving that he's more popular then Savage. He also just won an emmy for the highest grossing documentary of all time, "Bowling for Columbine".

So how come MSNBC gave a show to Mchael Savage and not Michael Moore? It's because they are trying to be more republican than Fox and steal some of their viewers to get more ratings. To be fair, MSNBC had Donahue for a few months in primetime, but they didn't give Phil the freedom to do want he wanted or the time to let the show become something. He went head to head with O'Reily and lost, but Fox allowed O'Reilly's show to grow after a couple of years, something that MSNBC would not do with Donahue.

As far as I know, and no search I tried could deny this, MSNBC has not increased their ratings, and Fox ratings haven't dropped.

CNN feels the pressure from Fox, but they are doing something different to combat the network. Moving Paula Zahn to primetime proves it, because she's quite the looker. Fox employs a bunch of good looking anchor women, and MSNBC is proving that shifting your programming to the right side of the dial is not harming Fox, so I think CNN has noticed what I think is the real reason why Fox news has the best ratings: babes.

If you think I am being sexist, then I have a question for you: if all the female anchors at Fox gained 200 lbs., but still continued to put in the same quality of work they did before, often doing their jobs in a short-length skirt with a desk in front of them, don't you think that the ratings for Fox would tank? Fox, not just their news channel but as a network in general, thrives off sticking good looking women in front of a camera and letting desperate men oogle them. If you think this is sexist, then you are probably right. Please don't threaten to do bad things to me just because I have pointed it out.

The RAVE act has passed Congress. This bill was proposed last year but was quickly shot down, now Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) renamed it "The Illicit Drug Anti-Proliferation Act" and attached it to the AMBER Alert bill, which has NOTHING to do with drugs. The RAVE act also has not received a public hearing or debate this year. In short, this measure has been rammed down the throats of Americans who do not agree with it. I'm so glad that we live in a "democracy".

Just like the old RAVE act, the new one makes it illegal to sponser an event that someone might possibly bring drugs to. If you sponser an event that 20,000 people show up to and one of those people has a joint and gets busted for it, now YOU could be thrown in the slammer. I can't wait until this law is applied to anti-government protests and pro-legalization rallies. Thanks a lot Sen. Biden, you stupid fucking asshole. You're just another boil on the ass of the Democratic Party.

Source: rall.com

WorldNetDaily, a news services that leans a little too far to the right, has a poll today to accompany a story about a town in Califonia repealing their law that made adultery illegal (WND headline: "Town repeals ban on immorality", if that isn't too biased for ya). The poll asked this: "Should adultery and fornication be legal?"

Ranking number one with 1640 votes was, "No, 10 Commandments remain supreme law of universe." Coming in second with 783 votes was, "No, they harm society and destroy families." The "Yes" answers combined received a total of 1212 votes.

Ahhh yes, Republicans. They are for small government unless the actions you choose to take part in goes against their fundamentalist religious ideology, then they feel that their religion should be rammed down your throat, by law. How patriotic.

I'll throw an idea out there to keep zealous baseball fans in Chicago from running out onto the field and attacking people: stop selling beer at games.

Not like this will ever happen... And now for a little bit of violent baseball history in Chicago that I found on espn.com:

"July 13, 1979, Comiskey Park: Bill Veeck's infamous Disco Demolition Night, Fans who brought disco records were allowed into the stadium for 98 cents. The records were to go into a bonfire between games of a doubleheader with the Tigers. About 50,000 fans attended the game and more than 5,000 ended up on the field where a riot ensured. Veeck made futile pleas for the mob to leave. Umpire Dave Phillips called a forfeit, giving Detroit a sweep."

Heh.

CNET has an interview with Andrew "Bunnie" Huang, a man who I have never heard of until seeing this article. He's an MIT grad who wrote a book about hacking the Xbox, but he is having trouble getting this book published because publishers are afraid of the legal action that could result due to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Anyone who is concerned about censorship should read this interview.

Open discussion into how you think our lives will be changed now that scientists have mapped the Human Genome. Click there and participate.

It's almost noon and I have not made an entry to the blog today. Honestly, I have not found anything of interest that I think is worthy of being posted, and I'm not going to fill up the blog with crap. When I think a link is interesting and something that you should know about, I'll post it.

Salon has a story about the Arabic media thinking that Saudi Arabia brokered a deal between Saddam's Baath Party and the US to hand over Baghdad. There's no smoking gun and only circumstantial evidence to plead the case, but the article is an interesting read and it should give you a few things to think about, like how come US troops met little resistance when they rolled into Baghdad, but the fight in Basra lasted 3 weeks? Where did thousands of Baath operatives go? How come Iraq didn't treat American POWs badly, or just kill them? If a deal like this did happen, it would explain a lot.

Ha ha: David Duke begins 15 - month prison term

Where's the outrage?
I am quoting at length from the headline feature on NYC Indymedia:

"Bush & Co. Seek to Destroy Basic Standards in USA

The Enron-style hypocrisy and elitism of the Bush power-structure has convienently been obscured from public view in the recent scenes of military might. Video clips of Hussein statues pulled to the ground have been shock-&-awed across television screens in endless loops of ad-friendly bytes, while the city of Baghdad descends into complete lawlessness with practically no lights and little water.

Meanwhile in the US, the Bush Administration quietly works to dismantle bare-minimum healthcare for the very same people they claim great and humble thanks: US soldiers. This quiet, 'behind the scenes' effort, is one among a number of targets on the Bush & Co. agenda which seek to dismantle basic standards of life and liberty, in the US and abroad.

US Soldiers told to expect radical healthcare slashes from the Bush group.

GOP party leaders seeking to make Patriot Act I never-ending

Bush group seeks to sweep away environmental standards"

This pretty much sums it up, doesn't it? Right here is all the evidence you need to conclude that our pResident doesn't give a crap about our liberties, the (underpaid) US troops who are supposed to be fighting for such liberties, and the environment. Not to stifle free speech or debate, but how can you argue the contrary? The only way you would be able to is by ignoring the evidence. Because of this ignorance by the media and many citizens, Bush gets off easy. He's portrayed as a true American patriot, sending our troops into battle to defend our country and to liberate the citizens of Iraq.

Could you imagine the outrage from the Republicans if Clinton were still president, sent our troops into war, and then tried to cut their health benefits through slashing the Veterans Affairs (VA) budget? (The link provided by NYCIMC says that Clinton raised the VA budget when he was in office.) But if Bush does it, that's just fine. He wants to slash our liberties just like he slashes VA benefits, and that's fine with the rabid right, too.

How sickeningly hypocritical.

Just how staged was pulling down the statue of Saddam? Click here to check out the photo and the commentary on it.

Buzzflash has a great set of stories from the past week proving that the Baseball Hall of Fame has no problem with playing in the political game. The president of the Hall, Dale Petroskey, formerly had a position in the Reagan administration, and in the past he has invited members from the Reagan and Bush (the dumb one) administrations to speak (including everyone's favorite asshole Ari Fleischer). No one has found an invitation from Petroskey to have a Democrat speak at the Hall. I wonder if new inductees to the Hall will have their political affiliations inscribed on their plaques. And I was thinking about taking a little roadtrip to the Hall this summer, too, but I don't want a pro-censorship scumbag getting his hands on my money. I'll wait until the Hall is run by somebody who's a little less of an asshole.

The US has made sure that all the oil fields in Iraq are secure, which seems like the only thing that they had any urgency in securing. The Age reports that to make sure the coming war didn't lead to the destruction of priceless pieces of art and records that are thousands of years old, US archaeologists, museum directors, and scholars were granted a meeting with the Pentagon to voice their concerns. To show how much the US respects keeping records of human history intact, the article states "...even with US forces firmly in control of Baghdad last week, looters breached the museum, trashed its galleries, burnt its records, invaded its vaults and smashed or carried off thousands of artefacts dating from the founding of ancient Sumer around 3500 BC to the end of Islam's Abbasid Caliphate in 1258AD."

So, who thinks this war isn't about oil?

New York Times reports that the Kurds are evicting iraqi Arab families from their homes. The Kurds were evicted from these same homes 35 years ago and Saddam forced other families to move into thesee neighborhoods, in Kirkuk and surrounding areas.

Ted Rall details how little US troops are paid to dodge bullets a couple thousand miles away from home. The Bush administration does not seem concerned that someone who is flipping beef patties at Burger King makes more money than a someone who was just recruited into the Army.

Foxnews: We report, you whack off
One of the only times I get a chance to watch television is when I an in the exercise room of my apartment complex. I flip on the tube and go through the news channels to see which one I would most like to spit propaganda at me. MSNBC, boring. CNN, yawn. Fox.. Yowwuhs! One look at this channel and you realize why they are the number one news channel in ratings: babes! If you thought that it was the quality of the news coverage, then I am afraid you are mistaken. It's the babes. When I flipped the channel to Fox, the anchor I saw was in a camera frame similar to this one:



Boing!

With all the news channels covering the same story and me needing something to look at while I did my time on the elliptical runner, Fox definitely fit my needs with their coverage. Whether or not it was coverage of the news or her legs, I'm still not sure.

You have to admit that with gimmicks like this, it's no wonder Foxnews is doing good in the ratings war. Not to demean the careers of the female anchors and journalists that they employ (I'll let the fact that they are employed by Foxnews demean them and everyone else that works for the channel), but I think Fox knows that their core audience is just waiting for images like this one:



If you grab your cheek and knock it against your jaw a few times, you'll get the sound that is coming from the homes of many Foxnews viewers at any point in time.

Perhaps MSNBC has the wrong strategy. They hire jackasses like Michael Savage to try and get Fox's Republican base to watch their channel, but Fox could report the same news as Al Jazeera and get the same ratings, as long as they have some hot women to deliver it their core audience of mostly desperate, overweight, middle aged men. Let's face it, Foxnews is the Baywatch of 24 hour news networks, and they know it.

By the way, the anchor pictured, the same one I saw on TV today, is Kiran Chetry. She has a Yahoo Group where they talk about, you guessed it, how hot she is.

I never thought I would complain about this, but whatever happened to all those "family values" Republicans? You would think that they would be speaking out against this before a pervert like me got to the story. Yeesh.

Liberate this
Where are those weapons of mass destruction, anyways? I thought that's why we invaded Iraq. Or did we invade the country to liberate the Iraq people? Or didn't we invade it because it had connections to al-Qa'ida which also, ahem, has not been proved? But don't you DARE suggest that we invaded the country to make sure that we control it and its oil supply! That could NEVER be the reason!

You know what I hate? I hate these idiots hosting the talk shows saying that people like me have now been proven wrong and that we should eat crow. I wish I was as clueless as those fuckjobs, because it seems like that's the only requirement one has to fulfill to get a hate radio talk show. These people never once address the points of the anti-war crowd, and then after the US forces roll into Baghdad and talk down a statue, they all act like it's the end of the war. And let's not pay any attention to the looting that has wrecked Iraq cities while US troops STOOD BY AND WATCHED, which is in DIRECT VIOLATION OF THE GENEVA CONVENTION. One shouldn't blame the troops, though, because they are only doing what they have been ordered to do. Appearently to their commanding officers, as well as the rest of the lapdog American media, defines liberation as letting a lot of maniacs run around and destory a city, leaving the rest of the residents to cower in fear, locking their doors. Killing people who come onto their property. Doctors are afraid to venture outside and goto work because their are no US troops to watch over the hospitals that treat the innocent Iraqis who need care because WE BOMBED THEM.

If you think this is liberation, fine. If it's such a fucking liberation, then maybe you want to live in Baghdad right now! Go ahead, hop on a plane to Jordan and get a driver to take you the rest of the way. I'll start a betting pool on how long you have to fucking live.

Iraqbodycount.net, which takes their count from when the reporters of western media sources say in an article that they so however many Iraqi citzens dead, lists the count at a minimum of 1367 causalities. Maximum is 1620. And this war isn't over yet. Remember how the media and US military were talking all about this smart, super accurate bombs a month ago? To paraphrase: "All those anti-war protesters just don't know what they were talking about when they say that our missiles will harm innocent Iraqis, we have SMART bombs now!" Well, your smart bombs have killed a minimum of 1367, and none of those people had the first name of Saddam and the last name of Hussein. Was it worth it? Was destorying the lives of 1367 innocent people and their families worth it? Would you be able to look an Iraqi in the eye and tell them that it was worth it after they lost a loved one? Would you be able to look an Iraqi in the eye and say that you librated them when the body count is growing and their city is destroyed because that liberating force stood by and did nothing while anarchy erupted around them?

Please don't talk to me about how this is liberation. It's just more bullshit from the Bush administration, and once again the idiots are gobbling it down without question. Just more bullshit propaganda, the American media turns the other cheek and let's their president literally get away with murder. When the looting broke out, the media didn't treat it like it was a big deal. They just went to the military to get their comments on the looting and why they aren't doing anything about it, and the military gave them some bullshit reply. That's it. Don't want to waste any show leather to ask any actual Iraqis about how they feel. Would somebody please explain to me how that's not propaganda?

Maybe we should have added Palestine Hotel to the list of places to bomb. Get rid off all those useless clods and start over.

Anybody who supports this war should be ashamed of themselves.