Bon Voyage!

I'm off to Paris for a week. So the blog will go quiet (yes, more than it has already). But feel free to take this time to look back and bask in almost 8 years of Adam's Life (several of which have been erased for security purposes). Like my rants. Or Guest Blogger Robbie Republican. You can recall the time I met a weird girl at Macy's. Or you can just marvel that its been more than a year since the virgin shark was killed, and the apocalypse hasn't yet happened.

PETA Kills Pets????

This was very disturbing: PETA kills 95% of its pets.

Of course, I don't really take a figure like that at face value. And neither should you. Any intelligent person would immediately wonder... what's the source??

Well, five minutes of digging revealed that the information comes from the Center for Consumer Freedom:

The CCF has drawn harsh criticism for having taken its startup funding from the Philip Morris tobacco company and for lobbying on behalf of the fast food, meat, and tobacco industries while representing consumers.

Some groups the CCF has targeted have questioned its ethics and legitimacy. The president of the American Federation of Teachers referred to the CCF's leader as "a shameless lobbyist who has shilled for pesticide, alcohol and tobacco companies." A USA Today journalist said that they should change the name of their website to FatForProfit.com. It has also been criticized for its efforts to portray groups such as the Humane Society of the United States as "violent" and "extreme," and for its opposition to banning the use of trans fats. The group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has also campaigned against the CCF's validity as a non-profit tax exempt charitable organization, filing an IRS complaint in 2004 attacking the CCF's claims that its advocacy campaigns were "educational" in nature.

That's from Wikipedia. Yeah, I know. But this was five minutes of digging. And the Wikipedia entry rings of truth, while the PETA claim continues to sound ridiculous.

The CCF claims to have received their information from the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. They post documents they claim are from 2007, revealing the deaths.

However, when I checked the records from the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (you can do it too, just visit their website-- no "freedom of information act request" needed), it tells a different story.

The CCF claims PETA received 1997 pets, and killed 1815 of them. However, according to the VDACS, PETA actually received 8362 animals... and euthanized 1815 of them. That's a pretty big discrepancy.

I wonder why that is...

Hmm...

Maybe it's because an organization that's sole mission is to discredit "liberal" organizations is lying? Nah, can't be.

Look, some PETA people are certifiable. But then make that argument. Say that they value animals over humans. Okay. But don't make up lies that they sport-kill Fidos. That's just not gonna help your cause.

30 Awesome Inventions



Life Magazine gets it totally wrong. They have a list of the 30 "Dumb Inventions," but to my mind, these are all awesome.

I mean, how pimp are these illuminated tires??

And a Clive Sinclair's Mini-TV idea? How is that dumb? Isn't it an ahead-of-its time iPod nano?

Life, you're dumb. All these ideas are the coolest things ever. Including the Yodel analyzer.

Wait A Minute, What Did He Just Say???

Ernie Anastos of Fox 5 New York may have... er... misspoke...



Yes, you heard correctly. Look at his co-anchor's eyes pop.

Courtesy of NYMAG.

Horrified? Click here for the other video of the week. A bit more heartwarming.

Human Rights Watch Is Just A Bunch Of Nazis

I've complained before about the organization, "Human Rights Watch." I never signed up to receive their literature in my mail, but somehow, after donating to John Kerry (Boy, was that a mistake), I got put on their mailing list. The majority of the stuff they send me compares Israel to apartheid-era South Africa, accuses the Jewish state of slaughtering Palestinians, and then asks me for money.

There are legitimate reasons to criticize Israel, and a definite imbalance between the power held by Jews and the considerably less power held by Israeli Arabs. However, the extreme tactics of divestment and anti-Israel boycotts ignore the complex problems of the region and seem to place the blame squarely on the Israeli government and its people. Anyone with a high-school level understanding of the Middle East knows its not that simple. Let me put it this way: Israel doesn't strap bombs to its citizens' chests and send them into packed Palestinian discos. They also don't randomly launch rockets into civilian city centers.

Instead of urging both sides to reach a compromise solution, Human Rights Watch seems determined to demonize and bring down Israel, or at the very least, dissolve it as a Jewish state. Now I finally know why.

They're Nazis:

A leading human rights group has suspended its senior military analyst following revelations that he is an avid collector of Nazi memorabilia.

The group, Human Rights Watch, had initially thrown its full support behind the analyst, Marc Garlasco, when the news of his hobby came out last week. On Monday night, the group shifted course and suspended him with pay, “pending an investigation,” said Carroll Bogert, the group’s associate director.

What is there to investigate??

Let's pretend for a moment that Marc Garlasco isn't a Nazi fan, that he is simply a fashionista who admires the stitching on the Swastika patches. Somewhere along the line, that Nazi uniform Garlasco lovingly caresses at night was worn by a man who killed Jews. And somewhere along the line, it was sold. Where did that money go? Very likely, at some point it went to a Nazi or Nazi sympathizer. Marc Garlasco, representative of a group that claims to be against genocide, SUPPORTED PROPONENTS OF THE WORST GENOCIDE MANKIND HAS EVER KNOWN.

Does that really need an investigation?

How could Human Rights Watch even have "initially thrown its full support" behind Garlasco? When you hear somebody's harboring Nazi memorabilia, is your first instinct, He's a good guy? I would hope not. The idea that somebody gets his rocks off purchasing Nazi merchandise and displaying it proudly sickens normal human beings. Apparently, not those at Human Rights Watch.

The blog-led investigation can be read here. He's actually a lot kinder to Garlasco than I would be. There's no excuse to be a part of a community that celebrates Nazis. He was "fascinated?" The kid in "Apt Pupil" was "fascinated" with Nazis too.