i’ve stopped counting

I’d like to write about ponies and rainbows, but I’ll have to push that topic back a little.

I was just perusing WRH during my lunch break, and I found this article. Alia Ansari, an Afghan-American mother of six, was fatally shot in Fremont, CA last Thursday when picking up three of her children from Glenmoor Elementary School. She was a block or two from the school “on Glenmoor Drive near Central Avenue” (source / map). According to the police, she was shot for no apparent reason. The only guess why she was killed so far was that this was a hate crime, since she was wearing a traditional muslim head scarf. That it was probably a hate crime is in my opinion the reason why this hasn’t seen much media attention. (Go ahead and try to find mainstream national coverage.) If the shooter was a muslim and he killed a white (or black or Latino) American mother in the same circumstances, you better believe it’d be the front page story on every newspaper and headline on every tv news show with the title ‘Terror Strikes in America’.

But as a hate crime, events like this might offer some insight that the endless war drums and ethnocentrism might possibly be misguided. They also might cause people to stop believing the official spin and give some thought to articles such as this one that suggest the anti-Arab sentiment isn’t only magnified by the mainstream media and government, it’s wholly manufactured.

While the media avoids coverage of the shooting in Fremont, the mainstream networks NBC and CW are also avoiding the new documentary “Shut up and Sing“, the story of the Dixie Chicks after they were officially/unofficially blacklisted for the comment from lead singer Natalie Maines that she was “ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas”. NBC’s reason for not airing commercials for the film doesn’t mince words: it “cannot accept these spots as they are disparaging to President Bush” (source). In an entirely predictable yet disappointing way, the mainstream press is blacklisting the documentary about people being blacklisted. You can’t see, but I’m making my ’sarcastic surprise’ face. I think it’s funny the Dominican Today article got the title of the movie wrong - I find in that a little bit of cynical irony.

Speaking of segues, Aaron Russo’s film “America: Freedom to Fascism” is up on google video. In it is information about those green pieces of paper in your pocket and what they represent.

I know this story broke over a year ago, but I never heard much of it before today, so here it is in case you’re in the same boat.

In June of last year, Robert F. Kennedy Jr published an article in Rolling Stone, titled Deadly Immunity, describing the widespread use of thimerosal in vaccines and its possible link to recent increases in autism and other neurological problems. It mentions that the autism rate in children has increased from 1 in 2,500 to 1 in 166, or in other words, we are making over fifteen times as many austistic children as we were in 1991.

Thimerosal contains significant amounts of ethylmercury, while different from methylmercury neurotoxin, is argued (via reference to a National Institutes of Health study) to be more dangerous and more lasting in developing brains. (Remember the Mad Hatter?) And it was a significant amount - the three inoculations routinely given to two-month-olds contained an amount of ethylmercury equal to 99 times the EPA’s daily limit of methylmercury. Even if ethyl- isn’t 100% as bad as methylmercury, I doubt it’s less than 1% as risky. Thimerosal is currently banned from children’s vaccines in Russia, Denmark, Austria, Japan, Great Britain, and Scandinavia.

How the hell is this not a concern of our government? Short answer - our lawmakers care about money and not your children (see war in Iraq, Congressional Page Scandal, Abramoff bribery scandal, destruction of healthcare system, destruction of education system, etc). Long answer - it is a concern of our lawmakers. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and friends were concerned enough to put into law the “Eli Lilly Protection Act” which basically gave the vaccine makers immunity from any penalty related to brain disorders they caused. In what I am sure was an unrelated show of patriotism, the pharmaceutical industry bought 5,000 copies of Billy’s bioterrorism book and gave him over $800,000. The ELPA was part of a Homeland Security bill, using the excuse that if the pharmaceutical companies could be sued, it’d prevent them from being as capable to defend America from bioterrorism.

“You couldn’t even construct a study that shows thimerosal is safe.” “It’s just too darn toxic. If you inject thimerosal into an animal, its brain will sicken. If you apply it to living tissue, the cells die. If you put it in a petri dish, the culture dies. Knowing these things, it would be shocking if one could inject it into an infant without causing damage.”
- Dr. Boyd Haley, Chemistry department head at the University of Kentucky

So it seems fairly obvious to me at least that thimerosal isn’t a good thing and really doesn’t need to be in vaccines. Food can be distributed and safely consumed without preservatives, so it seems thimerasol is similarly unnecessary except as a method cost reduction. But if it comes with the risk of destroying the livelihood of the patient, why bother?

The article continues: “In 1977, ten babies at a Toronto hospital died when an antiseptic preserved with thimerosal was dabbed onto their umbilical cords.” And it mentions that the vaccines we send to developing countries are the autism-inducing variety, noting that there has been a recent spike of autistic disorders in India, Nicaragua, and Argentina.

After a quick Google search, I found an article (part 1 here and part 2 here) that argues against the Kennedy article. It’s very nit-picky, but the discussion in the comments is worth looking over to better understand the talking points.

A few weeks after Kennedy’s article, Rolling Stone’s editors published this article defending the original.

From the ‘put my money where your mouth is’ department, I found this related challenge. Jock Doubleday, directory of a non-profit health group, will pay $75,000 to any of the pediatricians or corresponding pharm CEOs if they consume a mess containing a weight-proportioned amount of the thimerosal, antifreeze, disinfectant, formaldehyde, and aluminum that can be found in what we routinely inject into six-year olds. Nobody has accepted, probably because consuming that garbage is a bad idea.

In a successful attempt to further become a left-wing stereotype, I decided today that the most horrifying Halloween costume possible this year is one of a Republican congressman. And now I’m going to blog about it! Pretty soon I’ll have no choice but to crank-call Bill O’Reilly from NAMBLA headquarters and buy Janeane Garofalo a hemp-burning Segway in celebration of my war on Christmas.

So here it is - my simple twenty-six point strategery on how to become the most convincing Republican congressman ever.

First, you’re gonna want to put on about two hundred pounds. Think of your waistline as a direct representation of your love for America. And if you’re seventy-five feet eleven inches around, that’s a good excuse to put “911″ on your underpants. The extra weight also helps disturb left-wingers in the event you get busted for pedophilia and they have to think about you being in a ‘tight squeeze’.

Next, get in the habit of blaming Bill Clinton. Terrorism? That’s an easy one - Bill Clinton didn’t do enough. Child sex scandals? Easy - Clinton’s sexcapades with Monica set a bad example for the congressional pages, and their Satan-driven advances were irresitable by simple-minded people like Mark Foley. With sufficient training, you’ll be able to blame Clinton for things like cancer and the extinction of dinosaurs.

Third, you should verbally crush your opponents with the blinding wit of a thousand suns. Did your opponent lose her legs in Iraq? Tell everybody she wants to cut and run. Did your opponent break his back in a car accident? Mock his poor job attendance. See a brown person? Call him “Macaca” and welcome him to America.

The next step is optional, but makes your disguise that much more convincing. Become a fiercely closeted homosexual. It’s tricky, but you have to be extremely obviously gay while seriously hating any and all homosexuals. Live with your chief of staff while demanding an end to gay rights. Host a gay prostitute in the White House while commanding, “do who I say, not who I do.” Basically you want to be as overtly fabulous as possible while decrying fabulosity as unnatural. You can still say ‘You go girl,’ but only to Bay Buchanan. If you ever get revealed as a totally insane person, just blame it all on alcohol. Or Bill Clinton (see above).

Fifthly, speak only in talking point catch-phrases. Stay the course there so you don’t have to fear the axis of evil from God-fearing sea to shining sea. Beware that the talking points can change significantly every day - for example, ‘abortion is wrong’ can change to ‘abortion is wrong except when it’s forced in Saipan’.

Next, spend your free time planning what to do when your problems go away. For instance, earmark 20 million bucks for a humongous party in Baghdad when the violence spontaneously ends. Don’t worry about finding ways to make your problems go away - science shows that everything in history that isn’t still happening has ended, so the war in Iraq must end as well.

Finally, remember the only important date in the history of time - 9/11. Say it early, say it often. 9-11 say it twice in one sentence 9-11. Never say the year, since that doesn’t really matter and detracts from the important message that we were attacked four seconds ago. If you want to sound sophisticated, say “September” instead of “Nine” - practical knowledge of our calendar is a surefire way to secure the MENSA vote.

Yes, I know fifthly isn’t a word. I interspersed that vocabularium on porpoise.

I snuck out of work a few hours early today to attend the Austin World Can’t Wait protest and to try out my new digital camera. I took around 400 photos, but narrowed the list down to 158 of them before uploading my favorites to Flickr.

The most memorable part for me relates to this photo, which corresponded with a new speaker taking the mic. He started his speech by passing out that and other photos from Iraq, telling people not to be shy to take one because ‘there are plenty more where those came from.’

When he said that, the reality hit me. We’ve lost over a dozen soldiers since Monday while Iraq has probably lost another couple hundred people. And for what? Everybody (minus George and Dick) knows that our presence in Iraq is consistently making everything worse. More dead soldiers, more dead Iraqis, more hatred of American occupation, more excuses. Even the “stay the course” people have revised their position to “stay the course, just not in Iraq, at least not near any populated areas.”

Of course the administration isn’t getting the troops out today or tomorrow. It’s election season! Well I won’t hold that against them - clearly struggling to keep their own stranglehold on power is more important that overseeing and possibly preventing the continued death of the people they so often claim to care about protecting. They’ve got contributions to farm, commercials to approve, pages to blacklist.

That reality hurt for a moment, but I managed to repress it enough to continue with the picture-taking.

Lessons learned today re: photgrapherizationing:

• Camera shape means everything when getting someone to stand still and hold up a sign. I’m convinced not getting the ultra-compact camera was a good idea.
• You can’t fix a decapitation - zoom out a little or pan up instead of ruining the shot.
• ‘Oh my camera case couldn’t possibly flip over and dump out’ is not a smart thing to believe.
• Read the manual. I really had to just hope that I was actually recording the pictures today. I got lucky, but there was a very real chance that I was just killing batteries and fooling a lot of people.

According to this CNN report, during Bush’s closed-door meeting with Republican senators, the war in Iraq wasn’t discussed. Yawn, no surprise there. Who wants to talk about that? But that’s not the interesting part - after being asked whether Iraq was discussed, Trent Lott went on to say (referring to the media asking him)

“You’re the only ones who obsess on that. We don’t and the real people out in the real world don’t for the most part.”

A senator thinking the war in Iraq isn’t a big deal is a big deal, especially when sixteen American intelligence agencies identified the war in Iraq being the “cause celebre” for anti-American violence (source). Isn’t ending anti-American violence the primary concern of the average American lately?

But that’s not the really interesting part either — here’s what he said next:

“It’s hard for Americans, all of us, including me, to understand what’s wrong with these people. Why do they kill people of other religions because of religion? Why do they hate the Israelis and despise their right to exist? Why do they hate each other? Why do Sunnis kill Shiites? How do they tell the difference? They all look the same to me.“

No seriously, that’s what he said. They all look the same to me. That faint scratchy sound you hear is MLK trying to claw through the coffin lid.

In related news, Bill O’Reilly (or Orally as KO likes to call him) had this gem to offer:

I don’t care what Iraq was, I don’t care what it will be. I just don’t want them killing anybody or helping Al Qaeda. OK? Couldn’t care less about the country. That is the no-spin honesty that you all come to expect from me.

Sentiment like that might explain why the US has been fighting in Iraq longer than we fought in World War II, or as history may rename it, “The Skirmish Overseas from Which We Learned Nothing”.

Speaking of segues,

Rep. Mark Foley (R, duh) stepped down from the house Friday after his sexcapades with a minor were uncovered. Strange irony that he was the guy who wrote the sexual predator provisions on a child protection law this year. While leaving office seemed a totally obvious move, it turns out the G.O.P. knew last year that he was involved in the emails. But why kick the pedophile out when he’s helping hold on to your majority? Makes perfect sense to me. Bonus points if you put 2 and 2 together in this paragraph and noticed that he wrote the anti-pedophile stuff after his actions were quietly uncovered. To hopefully end my rant on this topic, I’ll give the first of many ‘Tied for Douchebag of the Century Awards’ to FOX News’ Brit Hume, who completely overlooked the whole pedophilia angle and described Foley’s actions as “inappropriate behaviors towards subordinates“, putting them on par with Clinton’s Lewinsky affair.

Only one more topic I promise…

This Friday, the House passed a bill titled the Public Expression of Religion Act. All it does is prevent the winning of attorney’s fees in cases brought against the government regarding the First Amendment’s clause regarding establishment of religion.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

(I actually had to look it up. I suck.)

This bill if enacted, would seriously deter lawyers from fighting for constitutionally-protected religious freedom. The ACLU explains it better than I can. This sucks. It widens the door for the government to blatantly violate the First Amendment, just so long as they don’t violate it significantly enough for people with large amounts of money who can afford to spend it.