OK, just finished watching the Frontline special on Hamas. While I can't claim anti-Israel bias because there was no intention to get the Israeli point of view, I do think the reporting was incredibly shoddy and failed to provide any historical perspective at all. If one didn't know anything about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict you would have learned the following:

Hamas were the original Palestinian terrorists but a year or so ago they declared a cease fire and no longer attack Israel. They are the party of peace - all they ask is for the Israelis to pull back to the 1967 borders.

Hamas can't be held responsible for any of it's actions. Fighting would end tomorrow if it didn't have to fend off agressors like Fatah, Islamic Jihad and the Israelis. Palestinian economic problems would end tomorrow if it weren't for the Israelis and Americans.

Qassam rockets are inaccurate and therefore cause no real threat to anyone in Israel.

I think the most uncomfortable thing to watch was when a friendly looking Hamas supporter led the reporter (Kate Seelye) through the streets of Gaza where Fatah political slogans were written on all the walls. The Hamas supporter laughed at the "Elect Fatah" slogans commenting that there is no reason given to actually vote for them. All Seelye could do was laugh along with him like a little girl with some kind of commentary along the line of "Youre right, how silly of them!"

I don't want to give the impression that Hamas was portrayed as liberal democrats that just want everyone to get along, but I'm sure the piece is not what many expected, myself included.

UPDATE: I just delved into the more detailed Frontline website on their Hamas report. There seems to be some better reporting from others and it's worth taking a look at the site in it's entirety. However, someone's going to have to explain to me how this obviously contradictory reporting came to be placed in pieces that are adjacent to each other on the "Dispatches from Gaza" page.

Idiotarian Kate Seelye: "Realizing I wasn’t entirely prepared, I did a quick Google search on Qassam rockets. Named after the Hamas militia, the homemade projectiles are among the Palestinian militants’ favorite weapon. With a range of about 12 miles, Qassams frequently were launched at Israeli settlements and into Israel proper during the second intifada...Hundreds of Qassam rockets have rained down on Israel over the last few years, and although they succeeded in sowing terror, they have done relatively little damage. Qassams lack a missile guidance system and are famously inaccurate."

Reporter Marcela Gaviria: "Every so often, a Qassam makes its way across the security perimeter, killing or wounding Israeli civilians. According to B’Tselm, an Israeli human rights organization, since the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in September 2005, 34 Israelis have been killed by Palestinian rockets."

Just so that I understand....and please correct me if I'm wrong....

Jewish leftist groups support a boycott of Caterpillar because it's equipment is often used by the Israeli government to illegally destroy Palestinian homes and farmland. Yet...

Those same groups support providing Hamas with millions of dollars which they often use to provide arms to it's members that actually kill, injure,  kidnap, etc. other Palestinians. (Not to mention their use of weapons to kill Israeli Jews or the force the slow reversal of women's rights).

I urge everyone who can to watch or record Frontline tonight - Looking Inside Hamas: Search for Martyrdom, Hatred of Israel.  It should be noted that Frontline is no right wing mouthpiece as can be seen by their show on the danger of the radical Israeli settlers.

On a separate note, and I'd like to find a more independent source for this, one may not be safe speaking Hebrew on the streets of Berlin.  And it ain't neo-Nazis that are the problem.

Bush approval rating hits new low

31% ?!?

My gut reaction to this article was a combination of disgust at the babyish threat, and then pride that (perhaps) it could actually be carried out should they actually be attacked.

Iran can also be wiped off the map (says Israel)

Not only that, but the liberal leader Shimon Peres was the one making the threat!

"In every generation they rise up again to destroy us.,.".   Too bad we probably have to wait for the messiah before it stops happening.

How awesome is this! They are now coming out with standard looking radios that actually capture radio stations that broadcast over the internet.

Pick up online stations without the computer

The AE Wi-Fi Internet radio is a standalone receiver, preprogrammed with more than 2,500 online stations. Designed to operate more like a radio than a computer, it's made by Acoustic Energy in Britain and is scheduled to hit the U.S. marketplace later this month.



At $300-400, I won't be buying one anytime soon, but when they get down to the inevitable $100-150 range I might.

Ripped from the pages of Google Video of the Day (GVOD), here's the video of Bush alongside his impersonator at the recent White House Correspondent's Dinner. Hilarious. I really have to remember to TIVO this next year off of C-Span.

Did anyone notice that the deficit may actually shrink for a second year in a row?  I found this one buried on the U.S. page of the NY Times website.  Isn't this truly a "man bites dog" story that goes against conventional wisdom that should appear near the top? 

Decline In Deficit is Seen

Tax revenues in April, when most people file their annual tax returns, were 14 percent higher than the year before. Despite continued spending on the war in Iraq and hurricane recovery efforts, the budget deficit for the first seven months of the 2006 fiscal year was $53 billion lower than the same period last year.

Why use that, when you can put U.S Job Growth Slows on the home page.  And incase you think that news is more significant in some way, the sub-header reads,  "Analysts said the change in the employment picture does not appear to be the beginning of a broader retrenchment."

I may be biased, but I think think this stands up to scrutiny as a poor choice of placement.

I really need to read Andy Borowitz' website every day. I think he's one of the funniest satirists out there. Unfortunately, you can only link to the home page which changes daily, so catch it while you can.

SATAN’S TESTIMONY ROCKS ENRON TRIAL
Lord of Darkness Becomes Surprise Witness For Prosecution

The trial of former Enron CEO Ken Lay took a stunning turn today as the prosecution introduced Satan as a surprise witness, attempting to establish a long-running business relationship between Mr. Lay and the Lord of Darkness.

I think this article pretty much sounds about the same as if I would have written it myself.

A rabbi's struggle: To allow gay clergy or not?

As I have become acquainted with more pious and knowledgeable gay and lesbian Jews, I have asked myself why God would design some people with a trait — for which there is paltry evidence that it can be reversed — and then designate individuals with that characteristic as "sinners?" Even if triggered by a gene mutation, as some argue, what is sinful about that?...

The biblical demand of "an eye for an eye" was interpreted in the Talmud as the monetary value of a wounded eye, and not an actual gouging. The Bible also orders the stoning of an unruly son, but the Talmud already qualified that as theoretical, saying, "It was never done nor will it be done.".....

I need to get comfortable, for example, witnessing a rabbi and his male partner dancing at my synagogue's spring social, or seeing two lesbians hand-in-hand at the Torah while celebrating their daughter's bat mitzvah. I am confident that, eventually, religious commitment will trump sexual orientation.

Has Bob Herbert managed to write a regular column for three years without ever saying anything new? Just go to Automatic Bob Herbert and see for yourself.  The site uses a database of quotes from Herbert's columns since 2003 and mixes them around and creates a randomly ordered anti-Bush column whenever you hit the refresh button.   As the site suggests, why pay the author when you can just mix around his old work and present it as new?

According to the Jefferson Library: "There are a number of quotes that we do not find in Thomas Jefferson's correspondence or other writings; in such cases, Jefferson should not be cited as the source. Among the most common of these spurious Jefferson quotes are: 'Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.' "

In case you don't believe the source of the above quote, here's a link to the Jefferson Library directly.

Sorry liberals. As Mark Steyn says in the link above, "F--- OFF!" and "WE WON'T FIGHT YOUR WARS!" (not to mention "Bush is a chimp") are not constructive forms of dissent.

Thomas Jefferson himself said: "Dissent is the greatest form of patriotism." - John F. Kerry April 22, 2006

Dissent is the foundation on which all our other rights rest. If you listen to conservative radio blabs Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity, challenging Bush is un-American. It is, in fact, the greatest form of patriotism. - "Liberal strategist" Bob Becker in USA Today July 4 (when else) 2005.

DemocratRepublican Thomas Jefferson said: "Dissent is the greatest form of patriotism." - Walter Brasch, syndicated columnist, professor of journalism at Bloomsburg University October 26 2004

And finally, from the Crawford Peace House, home of The Left near Bush's vacation home:

There have been a lot of angry right wingers trolling this message board. I hope you'll pause for a moment, calm your angry minds, and read the words of the great Patriots from U.S. history:

"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism" - Thomas Jefferson

Boy, they couldn't even get the right mis-quote.

Editor's note - it sure is hard to keep the font right when you copy this stuff in from LJ.

Either the situation in Iraq is much worse than what has been reported so far, or Dexter Filkins of the New York Times has managed to define down a euphemism for genocide.

In northern Baghdad, Shiite families arrive regularly at the Muamal Sadr refugee camp, fleeing the ethnic cleansing that is transforming the mixed cities around Baghdad.

There's no doubt that there is a new problem of people leaving their homes to live in refugee camps in other neighborhoods or towns, but ethnic cleansing?

Much farther down in the article he says, "Full-fledged civil war, with widespread ethnic bloodletting and mass migrations, has not yet come to Iraq."

Is it possible to have ethnic cleansing without both widespread bloodletting or mass migrations?  Paint me confused.

Post number 2000! And to think of all the truly worthwhile things I could have been doing with all that time!

--------------------------------

I know the brother-in-law will love this one - The NY Times decides to make fun of the Presdient's English-speaking skills.

When President George W. Bush referred to himself as "the decider" last week, there was the ensuing list of dinner party queries: Is "decider" an actual word? (It is.) Is it applicable in the world of presidential politics? (Sure, whatever.)

I wonder if this is listed under news, opinion or culture in the print edition tomorrow.

This talk of dinner parties reminds me of the famous quote of the Upper West Side liberal who said of President Nixon's election - "He couldn't have won, I don't know anyone who voted for him".

Also of note, Tony Snow of Fox News Radio has been picked to be the President's Press Secretary as was widely rumored.  It ain't going to be easy, but what a great opportunity for a man who had to be treated for colon cancer just last year.

Being an avid listener of conservative talk shows, for years people have complained that the White House needed someone who could articulate their policies better than the President could hmself.  Hiring Snow is a big step in the right direction.  Now let's see if Fox News always gets the most questions answered at the press conferences.  "I'm glad you asked that Brit...." :-)

The Jerusalem Post now has a Christian Edition - after all there may very well be more English speaking Christians that care about daily events in Israel than there are English speaking Jews in the entire world.  Also, they have come to recognize that Christians may have different perspectives and interests than their current readers.

Maybe the New York Times could follow their lead. :-)

Tonight and tomorrow we remember not only the victims of the Holocaust, but the heroes that fought against all odds in their desperate attempts to survive.  Many people don't know that Yom Hashoah is officially known as Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day.

As a Jew, to be a martyr means that you die at the hands of another who would force you to renounce your beliefs (or at least be forced to commit suicide in the face of certain death, see Masada).  None of this killing yourself while you kill whoever happens to be in the way crap.

Anyway - I can't explain why, but The New England Holocaust Memorial in Boston right near Fanueil Hall always gets to me.  Its six glass columns are etched with quotes from those who experienced the evil first hand.  I hesitate to call this quote my "favorite" becuase that makes it seem as if reading it brings me some kind of joy instead of a tremendous sadness that brings tears to my eyes.  It was written by Gerda Weissman Klein.

Ilse, a childhood friend of mine
Once found a raspberry in the camp
And carried it in her pocket all day
To present to me that evening on a leaf

Imagine a world in which
Your entire possession is
One raspberry

And you give it to your friend.

If Ben & Jerry's aren't worldly enough to be politically correct all the time, what chance do the rest of us have of avoiding offending someone, somewhere every time we open our mouths? Black & Tan ice cream, anyone? And no, it's not offensive for the reasons you probably think.

Ben & Jerry's apologizes over flavor flap

Are thirty year long baseball careers far behind?

Franco, at 47, becomes oldest player to hit home run as Mets win

OK, let's get this straight. The Republicans could "use" 9/11 for political purposes because a) they could blame he attacks on Democratic weakness in dealing with terrorism in the past and b) they effected a forceful response (regardless of it's appropriateness). The Democrats cannot use Katrina to the same effect because a) local Democrat politicians were at least equally to blame as Republican administration officials for the lack of preparedness and b) as wth other issues no one can prove that their response would have been significantly different.

I think the whole argument of not "using" tragic events in politics is asinine. The federal government exists solely to protect us from and prevent these kind of issues that go beyond the local ability to handle. If there were no large scale tragedies or threats, there would be no need for a federal governement. Maybe that's somwhat facetious, but it's the first thing that came to mind.

Democrats Try to Use Katrina as G.O.P. Used 9/11

We don't go to many concerts, but now that I've stumbled across the Tim McGraw and Faith Hill Soul2Soul tour, I will probably pay a ridiculous amount of money to a ticket agent to go see them. When I was living with my fiancee in Argentina in 1998, they're duet "It's Your Love" was popular - it was their first recording together after they were married. At the time my wife didn't speak English nearly as well as she does now, but she didn't need to for both of us to love this song.

Better than I was
More than I am
And all of this happened
By takin' your hand...

It's your love
It just does something to me
It sends a shock right through me
I can't get enough...

The President has declared the month of May 2006, "Jewish American Heritage Month". Who knew? Declared on "this twentieth day of April, in the year of our Lord two thousand six...". Honestly, this stuff doesn't bother me, but I do consider it ironic.

Via zarq - Things You'd Like To See on a Postage Stamp.

From the daily Opinion Journal e-mail:

"A fake Easter bunny and three of his friends terrorized a group of teenagers Sunday night," the Daily Item of Sunbury, Pa., reports from nearby Danville.....

Well, thank goodness it wasn't the real one.

-----------------------------------------------------

And if you haven't seen the "Easter Bunny Hates You" video yet - you haven't laughed your hardest today.

There's not too many days where it's easy to list out that news stories to which we can answer in the affirmative, "But is it good for the Jews"?

Germany Will Open Records on Holocaust Victims
WASHINGTON, April 18 — Germany agreed today to allow access to a vast trove of information on what happened to more than 17 million people who were executed, forced to labor for the Nazi war machine or otherwise brutalized during the Holocaust.

The German government announced at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum here that it is dropping its decades-long resistance to opening the archives in the town of Bad Arolsen. The files stretch for more than 15 miles, hold up to 50 million documents and make up one of the largest Holocaust archives in the world.

Al-Arian Admits His Role In Jihad (and will be deported...)
TAMPA - When Sami Al-Arian denied raising funds for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, he now says he was lying.The former University of South Florida professor has portrayed himself as a martyr to free speech, a victim of anti-Muslim sentiment and the nation's war on terrorism. He maintained he supported only peaceful solutions to the problems in the Middle East.

But in court papers unsealed Monday, Al-Arian admitted he raised money for the Islamic Jihad and conspired to hide the identities of other members of the terrorist organization, including his brother-in-law, Mazen Al-Najjar. He also admitted knowing "that the PIJ achieved its objectives by, among other means, acts of violence."

U.S. District Judge James Moody on Monday approved a deal in which Al-Arian pleaded guilty to conspiring to help a terrorist organization. The plea was entered in a secret hearing Friday as part of an agreement that calls for Al-Arian to be deported after serving a prison sentence that amounts to a little more than time served.

I'm particularly happy about this - it's hard to believe that it was 10 years ago that I was living in Tampa only about a mile from where this jerk-off abused his position and the goodwill of politically correct Americans to raise money for, and incote people to kill the Jewish people. No need to wait 60 years for proof.

Just wanted to point out an interesting turn of phrase that I noticed in today's NY Times article regarding the Defense Department's rebuttal of criticism against Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. In several places in the article, critics of the Pentagon are spoken of as having been "granted anonymity".

"I think it's part of the charm offensive," said the general, who was granted anonymity because he said he was afraid he would not be invited to future Pentagon sessions....

On Saturday morning, two Republicans with close ties to the White House said that they were deeply concerned about the situation and that Mr. Rumsfeld's resignation could help improve the party's prospects for the November elections.

Both men were granted anonymity because they feared that speaking publicly would damage their relations with the White House.

Doesn't this sound as if the Times is acting like God in deciding who gets anonymity and who doesn't?  What ever happened to, "so-and-so requested to remain anonymous" or "so-and-so didn't want to say on the record".  The current article almost makes it sound as if the Times could decide to uncover these people's identities at any times should it decide to remove it's "grant".

Another brief topic of conversation at dinner last night was Darfur and the rhetorical question was asked as to whether we shouldn't be there instead of Iraq? I of course suggested that even of the Democrats were in charge we wouldn't be stopping the killing, although I didn't make the suggestion that the Bush administration or Congress was doing all they could.

So, I asked myself, what are the Republicans doing, and are the Democrats in line, opposed or helpless to respond? Do they not bother bringing it up because of our situtation in Iraq and know that nothing more can be done as long as we're "stretched thin" or have lost our "moral authority"?

First, about the situtation - Wikipedia has a long background entry. As with many political items, perhaps some of the information needs to be taken with a grain of salt. That being said, it's seems too frickin' complicated.  Sunnis and Shia and Kurds speaking Arabic in a population of 27 million I can understand.  Many more tribes speaking

• Arabic, particularly south of Nyala and in the east, but also touching the Chad border in a narrow strip north of Jebel Si, between Fur and Zaghawa;


• Beigo, or Baygo, in a small area south of Nyala (this language, closely related to Daju, is also extinct).


• Daju, in a small pocket near Nyala (of the Western branch of the Eastern Sudanic group of Nilo-Saharan);


• Erenga, north of Geneina and across the border in Chad (considered a dialect of Tama);


• Fongoro, south of Sinyar (also a Bongo-Bagirmi language, nearly extinct; its speakers have shifted to Fur);


• Fulbe, or Fulfulde, in a small area south of Nyala;


• Fur, in the center, from Wadi Azum in the west to Al Fasher in the east (belonging to the Fur language group of Nilo-Saharan);


• Kujarge, south of Sinyar (unclassified);


• Masalit, west of Wadi Azum and around Geneina; also spoken across the border, and in a small isolated area south of Nyala (belonging to the Maban language group of Nilo-Saharan);


• Sinyar, along the border south of Masalit (a Bongo-Bagirmi language of the Central Sudanic group of Nilo-Saharan);


• Tama, in a small pocket between Jebel Si and Jebel Marra (also of the Western branch of the Eastern Sudanic group of Nilo-Saharan);


• Zaghawa, in the north (an Eastern Saharan language);

in a population of 8 million, is too much for my brain.
I know that there has been some additional focus in the Jewish community recently with petitions to sign etc., but I'm not so sure that anyone really understands the issue completely.  Just because one group of peoples is killing another group of peoples doesn't necessarily mean that it's easy to take sides. 

As tragic as the situation is, and I don't want to seem callous, I think comparisons to the Holocuast or even Rwanda are overblown.  We all know the Holocaust stats and in Rwanda, 800,000 died in a matter of months.  So far, it seems that about 200,000(?) people have died after three years of fighting in Darfur.  Maybe it's the "slow genocide" that makes it seem so relatively non-urgent. 

After that little bit of research, I don't feel like getting into the politics.  It seems that working through the UN probably is the only reasonable course of action, as poor of an option as that is.  I fully support the legislation going through Congress now to provide additional sanctions against the Sudanese government and support for the African Union troops. 

Yesterday, President Bush and Vice Presdient Cheney released their tax information.  Cheney wound up getting a $2mm refund, mostly due to the fact that 80% of his family's income went to charity.  My dad and I argued a bit, first because he said that people like Cheney were just taking advantage of the charitable contributions loophole passed by Congress and I argued back that it couldn't be because the loophole was meant to benefit lower income people that couldn't normally take charitable deductions.  He then told me that the new law removed limits on contribution deductions which I didn't believe.

Turns out I was wrong.  The Katrina Emergency Tax Relief Act of 2005 did in fact allow people (basically the wealthy) to deduct contributions against 100% of their adjusted gross income as opposed to 50%.  It does seem that this saved the vice president hundreds of thousands of dollars in 2005.  That being said, excess charitable deductions could always be carried forward for 5 years, so even if Cheney didn't get the tzx break thgis year, he would have gotten it this year, or the next.

That being said, Cheney's contribution deductions were mostly due to the sale of three of his wife's books which were published and dedicated to charity well before Katrina happened.

I was also getting my thoughts confused by the push to allow non-itemizers to be able to deduct their chariable contributions which has been pushed for by many over the years, but hasn't bee passed into law (although there was a period of time during the Reagan administration when it was allowed.  Two-thirds of Americans can't deduct their charitable contributions becuase they don't itemize.

Just wanted to wish people a Happy Passover, Happy Easter and just a Happy Long Weekend if you've got one coming.

Below is a list of links about Passover.

For those who are into a purely secular celebration of the holiday, ABC will be showing The Ten Commandments (ed. - the real one) on Saturday night.  Go Moses, you "stubborn, splendid, adorable fool!"

For some details on the history of the holiday and what it's all about, you always have Chabad, Judaism 101, OU.org, Wikipesach (I mean Wikipedia) and aish.com.  I have to remember to go back to Chabad and Aish to print out things for my kids to do.

If Kosher L'Pesach is important to you, check out Kashrut.com or kosher4passover.com.

Here's the official annual Passover greeting from POTUS.  How dare he quote from the bible!

A seder in Iraq.

I just stumbled upon the most fascinating lego project I've ever seen. It's an online, frame by frame account of the Old and New Testaments. I have included a few sample pics below, but really it's impossible to gauge the full scope of the work without going to the website, The Brick Testament, yourself.

It's not just the details that went into the work, but the way they used the camera to create a sense of depth and perspective to the scenes is incredible.

I totally missed the fact that the Mets formally anounced their plans to construct a new "Mets Ballpark" which will open in 2009. More here. I'm super excited about this even if I only go to one game a year being an expatriate New Yorker and all. NY fans deserved this ballpark 20 years ago. Of the few new ballparks I've been to, it's seems like a blend between those of the Colorado Rockies and Texas Rangers (my semi-adopted team).

I didn't like it then when Robin Givham of the Washington Post criticized the dress of John Roberts' family and I don't like it now that she criticizes the hair of Rep. Cynthia McKinney, as much as a loath McKinney.  I don't care that it's in section C of the printed paper instead of with the hard news.  It's just not right, especially for a newspaper of stature.

They're just one step behind the New York Post which should shut down Page Six TODAY regardless of the circulation consequences.  What Jared Paul Stern allegedly did is disgusting - does anyone doubt that the lying (if not the blackmail, verbal orotherwise) is standard operating procedure?

And another. Matzo Man.

Go to the jibjab home page for their entry in the silly Passover video craze. Matzah.

Of which leading American political figure was the following written in a recent biography?

"X" argued that  "although he had challenged the instigation of the war, he had never voted against supplies for the soldier".

John Kerry?  Nope....

U.S. Representative Abraham Lincoln.  According to historian Doris Kearns Goodwin in her current bestseller Team of Rivals, he was "clarifying" his position on the Mexican-American war led by Democrat president James Polk.  Lincoln also voted for a resolution "which stated that the war had been unnecessarily and unconstitutionally initiated by the President". In a speech shortly thereafter he claimed that the "entire matter was from beginning to end, the sheerest deception" by President Polk.

The more things change.....

More on the Mexican-American War here.  Lincoln only served one term as a representative from Illinois.  Maybe Kerry still has a chance if he learns his lessons well.  As Goodwin continues, "This maiden effort (by Lincoln) was not the tone of reasoned debate that later characterized Lincoln's public statements."

Last night I was listening to Alan Colmes' radio show. He's the "liberal" counterweight to Sean Hannity on Fox News' Hannity and Colmes show. I like him becuase he's actually a pretty sensible guy, even if I disagree with him.

Anyway, he kept going on about how yesterday's story about the "Libby Papers" clearly stated that President Bush ordered the outing of Valerie Plame. Several callers tried to convince him that it wasn't the case, that Bush allowed the release of previously calssified intelligence on Iraq, but not Plame's name specifically. He just kept telling the callers that they were blind to the truth.

This Reuter's atricle which came out today seems pretty clear on the matter.

The court documents did not say that Bush or Cheney authorized Libby to disclose Plame's identity.

When John Kerry announced his candidacy for Presdient in September 2003, he made the following declaration:

"So my economic plan sets this goal: To get back George Bush's (lost) 3 million jobs in my first 500 days as president and we can do it."

Let's not quibble over the fact that it was really 2.6 million lost jobs at the time - "three" does sound a lot bigger than "two and a half".  Today marks what would have been the 443rd day of the Kerry presidency.  Since the day Kerry made his speech, 5.1 million jobs have been created under President Bush, 2.1 million in the last 12 months alone.  At the current rate, you can add 300-400k new jobs by the time the 500 days are up.

To those who say that other expansions have created many more jobs - that is true.  But none of them were starting from such a low unemployment rate to begin with or had to deal with the loss of a major American city.

So under Kerry he would have given us half the jobs and taken away my tax break at the same time.  No wonder I'm Republican.  I like my money and my job.

As a side note, I signed a petition to have Kinky Friedman added to the Texas governor's ballot at the Kosher Chili Cook-Off last week.  You can actually sign the petition online at his site which I didn't  relaize.  I was bummed that they didn't have any stickers or buttons to give out, but that's OK.

For the brother-in-law. Darwin is no problem for Jews.

I understand what the writer is trying to say a lot better than I might have before I took my Kabbalah of Time class with Chabad. There's two ways to be religiously faithful with regards to science. One is to reject science as being anti-God and taking the Bible literally. The other is to believe that every scientific discovery is merely additional proof that only a God could create such a complex universe of wonders. I much prefer number two.

The Democrats' dream has finally come true. They want have Tom Delay to kick around anymore. Can't say I'm not a little tired of the whole thing m'self. So now who do they go after? Hastert and Frist have so little personality, they'll make poor substitutes as the source of all Republican evil.

The Cynthia McKinney sideshow continues - you' d think it's summer. Is there nothing else going on in the world?

The Mets won their home opener today 3-2. I can't even name their starting lineup, but somehow, this day, every year, is extremely important to me.

I didn't think "Matzoh Man" was as bad as my brother-in-law seems to think it was.

Oh, And about that anti-Israel lobby paper from Harvard - ouch. Via PowerLine.

One of the nuttiest passages in "The Israel Lobby," the co-production of professors Stephen Walt (Harvard) and John Mearsheimer (University of Chicago), occurs in the very first footnote. (It's in the full version, on the website of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.)

Indeed, the mere existence of the [pro-Israel] Lobby suggests that unconditional support for Israel is not in the American national interest. If it was, one would not need an organized special interest group to bring it about. But because Israel is a strategic and moral liability, it takes relentless political pressure to keep U.S. support intact.

Other commentators have pointed to the absurdity of this statement, since every conceivable special interest has a lobby in Washington, and they can't all be working against the national interest. "By that standard," writes Max Boot, "Social Security, the 2nd Amendment and Roe vs. Wade must not be 'in the American national interest' either, because they are all defended by even more powerful lobbies." Caroline Glick hits even harder:

Every semi-sentient person with even an incidental knowledge of American politics knows that there is no area of human endeavor that is not represented by a lobby in the US. Walt and Mearsheimer's asinine assertion means is that every American interest group--from the elderly to the insurance industry, from the Muslims to gun owners to organic food lovers--stands opposed to the American national interest simply by existing. Any professor who made a similar assertion about any other interest group would be imperiling his career.

Not much posting lately - I was at a business conference in Miami for a few days. Don't be jealous though, I spent most of my time in a windowless, freezing ballroom. Then this morning I took the NASD Series 24 exam which I passed, thank G-d. Now I am formally licensed to spy on other people's e-mails. As, I've told zarq, blame it on Eliot Spitzer.

Does the accidental rise of a Jewish deputy mayor to the mayoralty of Buenos Aires make Argentina a paradise for Jews? The Jewish Journal of Los Angeles seems to think so.

Situation Improves for Argentine Jews


Cynthia McKinney has a boulder, not a chip, on her shoulder.

McKinney Faces Arrest for Scuffle

A lawyer for Rep. Cynthia McKinney, the Georgia congresswoman who had an altercation with a Capitol Police officer, says she was "just a victim of being in Congress while black."

"Unfortunately, the Police Officer did not recognize me as a Member of Congress and a confrontation ensued," the statement read.

I understand that as an African-American, Ms. McKinney gets unfairly "profiled" and that has to be a terrible exeperience when you're out and about. But when you are in your workplace, and that workplace is supposed to be one of the most guarded places in the world, there's no reason to beat on a policeman if he stops you for not having proper identification.


Don't forget to "spring ahead" this Sun AM.


It used to be that the Left used the number of U.S. military deaths to show that the we were losing the war in Iraq and that the war is unwinnable. Now that March 2006 had the second lowest death rate of the 37 months of the war (slightly fewer than 1 per day), and the last quarter was the least deadly in two years, are we winning? Have we made a turnaround? Nope. Does anyone have any idea of how many insurgents/soldiers/terrorists we have killed? I thought not. Condaleeza Rice admitted to "thousands" of tactical mistakes having been made during the course of the war. I'm sure some people will take this to mean that this war is much different than any other extended war, but I'm not really sure that's the case.

In WWII, on D-Day, the Allies landed around 156,000 troops in Normandy. That's about the number of soldiers that are in Iraq now. On that same day, 2,500 allied soldiers were estimated to have been killed. That's more losses in one day than in the entire Iraq campaign of over three years. And our population was half of what it is now. Oh, and our soliders are still in Europe 60 years later. A little perspective people before we start declaring military disaster.

A proposed condominium and hotel tower that would be the tallest building in North America won approval from the Chicago City Council today, clearing the way for construction to start later this year.

The council approved a measure that raises the height limit on structures at the site to accommodate the 2,000-foot tower. The building, named the Fordham Spire, would top Chicago's Sears Tower and the planned Freedom Tower in New York as the tallest in North America....

The $550 million, 124-story building to be developed by the Fordham Co. will have about 300 condominiums, 250,000 square feet of hotel space, retail stores and restaurants. It will overlook the Chicago River where it meets Lake Michigan.

Fordham has said construction will begin around the end of the year, and the building should be completed by 2010.

U.S. report details what Iraq was doing as war neared

In 2001 the Iraq General Security Directorate told Saddam that the Pokemon cartoon character in Hebrew meant "I am Jewish" and "represented a subterfuge by international Zionism to undermine Iraq's security," according to the report.



Bwahaha! The whole world shall soon know the truth!

The dealer where I bring my car for service has several PCs with high-speed internet access in the customer waiting area - how cool is that?

NEW HAVEN, March 23 — An Israeli athlete who survived the attacks at the Munich Olympics in 1972 spoke about his ordeal for the first time in the United States on Thursday night at Yale, warning that reprisal killings of terrorists only lead to "bloodshed and more bloodshed."

For me, this is the most fascinating thing about the article:

Mr. Alon was staying with members of the shooting team, who had guns. After a short discussion, however, the athletes decided not to shoot their attackers because they did not know how many had entered the complex or whether they would retaliate by killing the hostages.

I certainly can't blame them - even today they'd probably be put on trial for murder of the terrorists.

Which makes me wonder...let's say that the people on Flight 93 were able to land the plane after attacking the hijackers, killing them in the process. The passengers who killed the hijackers would have to be tried for murder, wouldn't they? I mean, it is pre-meditated and you can't REALLY know they're going to crash the plane until it actually happens, right? Things that make you go hmmmm....

10:31AM ET today.....

MONTEGO BAY, Jamaica (AP) — Fire broke out on a cruise ship in the Caribbean early Thursday, killing one person and injuring 11 others before the crew extinguished the flames, company officials said.

The Star Princess was en route from Grand Cayman to Jamaica when the blaze started in a cabin and spread to others nearby, according to a statement from Princess Cruises, which is owned by Miami-based Carnival Corp.

12:44PM ET today

MIAMI (AP) -- Carnival Corp., the world's largest cruise operator, reported Thursday its first-quarter profit fell 19 percent.

(Yes, I know the two are not related.)

Tomorrow, March 24, is the 30th Anniversary of the beginning of the military dictatorship that ruled Argentina for seven terrible years from 1976-1983. Much has changed in Argentina since then, and the current President, Nestor Kirchner actually fought against the dictatorship when it was in place.

When I ask my wife and my in-laws how life was different for them, they just kind of shrug and say the streets were never so safe. They tell me about how someone once told them about the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo who were protesting the disappearances of their children in the center of town. They say they knew nothing about it - if the government controlled press didn´t mention something, it didn´t exist.

As I mentioned, the government is at least paying lip service to wanting to bring the old ¨militares¨to justice. A formal holiday was passed to remember the anniversary of the coup and to reflect on past injustices. The other night, there was a government ad on TV that made me cry - I´m sorry I don´t have a link to it. Keep in mind that not only were young radicals thrown out of airplanes into the Rio de la Plata, but babies were taken from young women and given to military families. It is known that many of these people, now in their 20´s, still do not know who their real parents are.

The ad starts with a young boy on a crowded beach looking lost. A concerned woman stands next to the boy and begins clapping her hands. (I was told that this is what people do here when they find a lost child in order for the parents to locate them more easily.) Soon a man also stands next to the woman and begins clapping...soon the whole beach is clapping as everyone despearately tries to locate the boy´s parents. The scene then fades out and fades back in to a single middle-aged woman clapping her hands in a darkened space. As the camera pulls back, an entire riser full of middle aged people are clapping there hands and they tell the viewers without saying a word - we are all looking for our children, The Disappeared.

There´s plenty more horror to go around, but just wanted to let my readers know that this is a really big deal down here.

This story actually hit the top of The Drudge Report this morning.

Wal-Mart Targeting Upscale Shoppers

PLANO, Texas (AP) -- Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has overcome its rural roots and downscale image to attract affluent shoppers, but executives admit that many of those well-heeled consumers come only for cheap groceries and steer clear of the other merchandise.

In its boldest effort yet to target upscale shoppers, the nation's largest retailer is opening a new store this week with an expanded selection of high-end electronics, more fine jewelry, hundreds of types of wine ranging up to $500 a bottle, and even a sushi bar.

Wal-Mart says it won't duplicate this format anywhere else. But if plasma TVs, microbrewery beer and fancy balsamic vinegar sell in Plano, those items could be added to stores in other affluent communities.
I´ll probably check out the store this weekend - it´s just a few minutes from my house. We´ll have a lot to stock up after coming back from vacation, although I doubt that sushi or a high-def TV will be in our shopping cart.

More local reporting here and here.

Talk about poor planning - 352,000 crackers and no Cheese Whiz.

Inside the Brooklyn Bridge, a Whiff of the Cold War

For decades it waited in secret inside the masonry foundations of the Brooklyn Bridge, in a damp, dirty and darkened vault near the East River shoreline of Lower Manhattan: a stockpile of provisions that would allow for basic survival if New York City were devastated by a nuclear attack.

City workers were conducting a regular structural inspection of the bridge last Wednesday when they came across the cold-war-era hoard of water drums, medical supplies, paper blankets, drugs and calorie-packed crackers — an estimated 352,000 of them, sealed in dozens of watertight metal canisters and, it seems, still edible.

I am now convinced that the Mayor of London isn´t really anti-semitic, it´s just his mouth works a little bit faster than his brain.

Mayor in fresh Jewish controversy

Ken Livingstone attacked David and Simon Reuben for their role in an ongoing dispute about the Stratford City development in east London.

He suggested the brothers "go back (to their own country) and see if they can do better under the ayatollahs"....

Conservative members of the London Assembly said the brothers were not Iranian, but had been born in India of Iraqi Jewish parents.

If Israelis Arabs are disheartened, Americans must be manically depressed.

Though they make up one-fifth of Israel's population, Israeli Arabs head into next week's elections feeling their votes count for little and disappointed that Arab parties haven't banded together to get them a better deal.

As a result, turnout among Israel's 600,000 eligible Arab voters could be thin. In the 2003 elections, 62 percent cast ballots.

The U.S. hasn´t seen that kind of electoral turnout since about 1908.

I haven´t yet seen Capote, however it did inspire me to read Capote´s book, In Cold Blood.

I never really picked it up because murder stories never held my interest and in any case one can easily figure out how this story ends.  That being said, the book was fantastic - of the I couldn´t put it down variety.  It is beautifully written and you absolutely get inside each person´s head, from those that were murdered to those that were simply passing acquaintances of the killers. 

I am usually someone who gets terribly confused if there´s more than half a dozen main characters in a story.  Here, Capote presents several dozen people and I feel like I could pick each one out of a crowd without ever having seen a photo of any one of them.

I was also lucky enough to get a hardcover copy of the original book from my local library.  There´s something about the smell of the old book, the thicker paper that was used and the font that really made me feel like I was sitting in my grandmother´s old parlor, living and breathing middle America circa 1960. (I wonder when we stopped using the word parlor?)

Now, I am dying to see Capote.  I´m sorry I didn´t appreciate his work while he was alive.

I just wanted to post the last few paragrpahs of the LA Times editorial from the other day regarding the third anniversary of the War in Iraq.

Most opponents of the war are hardly in a position to gloat about American difficulties in Iraq. Russia, France and Germany all cynically manipulated the run-up to the war for their own purposes, and they comforted Hussein by allowing him to believe that the international community would never take concerted action against him. And much of the mocking by Bush critics about the supposed absurdity of the administration's claims about weapons of mass destruction is revisionist nonsense. As the New York Times reported last Sunday, Hussein's own top military commanders were stunned to learn three months before the start of the war that they had no WMD at their disposal. There is a Shakespearean quality to the tale of the dictator bluffing his way to his own demise, and it's hard for those of us who opposed the war to bemoan his removal.

As it enters its fourth year, the war in Iraq defies simplistic characterizations from both ends of the political spectrum. The heroism of U.S. forces and of ordinary Iraqis going about their daily lives is inspiring. But the future of Iraq remains shrouded in gray uncertainty.

True, the piece also contains much valid criticism of the war and of the President, but I thought this section was unusually candid for this particular newspaper. The last paragraph also sums up the current situation in as concise and complete a form as I have seen to date.

There may come a day when I become ambivalent about the war in Iraq, but I will never become anti-war. the reason? The only group that could convince me to turn against the war are the media, but I know that they are willing to put falsehoods on the front page if a negative story ¨feels¨ right and we consistently hear feedback from soldiers that the media is totally failing to give us details on the victories and advances, both on a military and personal level.

The following is from the Washington Post, which conducted in depth interviews with 100 veterans of the war.

But it was not bad in the ways they see covered in the media -- the majority also agreed on this. What they experienced was more complex than the war they saw on television and in print. It was dangerous and confused, yes, but most of the vets also recalled enemies routed, buildings built and children befriended, against long odds in a poor and demoralized country. "We feel like we're doing something, and then we look at the news and you feel like you're getting bashed." "It seems to me the media had a predetermined script." The vibe of the coverage is just "so, so, so negative."

It may very well be that the thousands of little positives do not compensate at all for the one or two big daily negatives that the media reports on daily.  Since I´ll never believe that I really understand what´s going on, I will therefore choose to believe that the average U.S. soldier is a good person, that the average U.S. politican wants to do the right thing and is not just looking to kill people for profit, and the majority of Iraqis prefer freedom, democracy and Islam over tyranny and Islam.

There´s a Harvard (Kennedy School of Government) working paper which was just issued which is causing a lot of hand-wringing, anger and I-told-you-so´s on the internet.  The basic poremise is that supporting Israel goes against U.S. interests and that it´s the Israel Lobby´s snake-in-Eden like way of sweet-talking Americans into making policy that is ultimately harmful.

As a strong supporter of Israel and a financial supporter of AIPAC - the Israel lobby - I look forward to the responses from both that group and other similar organizations.

You can download the report, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" here.  I hope to read it during the course of the week. I´m no Harvard professor, so I´ll be interested in seeing if there´s really any valuable insights.  I´ll try to keep an open mind. 

OK, this sounds like kind of a stretch, but you gotta have faith - right?

Local Soldier In Iraq Saved By Metal Cross

"It was devastating to hear your son has been shot and was in an explosion," said Chris Green, Kyle's mother. She was first to hear about his ordeal when he stumbled upon what he thought was a cell phone on patrol in Baghdad last week.

"He said when he tossed it, it exploded and threw him back 20 feet and 10 feet in the air. When he was airborne that is when he was shot in the left leg," Chris said.

But when the bullet ripped through his fatigues, it suddenly stopped: deflected away by a metal cross Kyle had with him. "He tied it to his dog tags, which were tied to the belt loop in his pocket," Chris said.

Had that location been any different, the member of the 101st Airborne's Screaming Eagles likely would be dead.

"Where it was in his pocket, it was right around the main artery."

What's the matter with liberals?

By Russell Cobb
SPECIAL TO THE AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Sunday, March 19, 2006

Michael Lerner is the editor and founder of Tikkun, a magazine dedicated to a progressive Jewish critique of culture and politics. He is also a rabbi at Beyt Tikkun synagogue in San Francisco, a congregation that blends "spiritual and social justice concerns." In the mid-'90s, Lerner achieved brief notoriety as "Hillary's brain" when the Clintons invited him to the White House as a spiritual adviser. Hillary Rodham Clinton in particular latched on to Lerner's idea that the Democrats needed a "politics of meaning," as opposed to a series of policies. She might have dropped the phrase, but Lerner is resuscitating it in his new book, "The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right."

We spoke to him by phone a couple of weeks ago.

Austin American-Statesman: One of the most striking claims you make in your book is that there's "a real spiritual crisis in America." This isn't the kind of thing we're used to hearing from liberals. What exactly is this spiritual crisis?

Michael Lerner: I interviewed 10,000 middle-income working-class people who are moving to the right politically. What I learned is that there's a deep spiritual crisis in their lives. One of the things that was astounding was to find out that so many of these people want to have a life of higher meaning and purpose — not just money and power. They want a purpose-driven life.

We found that the spiritual crisis consisted of two elements: On the one hand, working people are surrounded by selfishness and materialism that encourages them to only look out for the bottom line. On the other hand, they live in a world where there is little opportunity to actualize their desire for higher meaning and purpose. And it's the right that has articulated this crisis in politics; they've gained a tremendous amount of credibility for doing so.

You talk about a purpose-driven life. That brings to mind some of the voices in the evangelical community like Rick Warren who speak directly to the idea that there's something lacking in secular society.

This crisis wasn't created by the right. This is what the Democrats have failed to understand: Most Americans aren't hurting from material deprivation. That's not the only thing they care about. They're deprived of a life of meaning.

That sounds like a direct critique of Thomas Frank's argument in "What's the Matter with Kansas." Frank argues that people are deluded into voting for Republicans because they aren't looking out for their economic self-interest. Am I sensing that correctly?

Yes. I'm critical of all those in the liberal, intellectual and academic worlds who think that the only needs that people have are material needs, and that people who express spiritual needs are totally crazy. The only people who are articulating spiritual needs are politicians on the right because the left — the Democratic Party — only has categories that talk about economic entitlements and political rights.

At the beginning of the 20th century, there was a populist progressive movement in the heartland. Somehow this has disappeared. Why is it so hard for the left to articulate its values to rural America?

Well, there's a religio-phobia on the part of the left. The left won't acknowledge that the point when it was at its strongest — in the 1960s — it was being led by Martin Luther King and a lot of its rhetoric came straight out of the churches. The irony is that a lot of people on the left have a spiritual life but they're afraid to talk about it because they're afraid that they'll be treated like second-class citizens. There is a disdain for religion in the mainstream liberal culture — in political organizations, in academia, in the media.

So how do you communicate this message in red states like Texas?

You have to be sincere about what you believe. Another thing I respect about the conservative movement is that they were willing to lose elections around what they really believe in. Democrats aren't willing to lose elections. Instead, they pretend they believe in something they don't believe in.

But it seems like liberalism is an anathema to the rural white voter.

That's because liberals are liberal about their liberalism. They have no backbone. They're wimps. No one can figure out what they believe in. Why did liberals support Kerry when he supported the war? Because they hoped the Republicans were right — that he was a flip-flopper and if he got elected he would flip and turn against the war.

But that begs the question: If liberals were to stand up and say what they believe in, there's a chance that rural white voters would say, "Fine, I really do disagree with you."

Well, they're not winning anyway.

Democrats are starting to talk religion. Hillary Clinton called abortion "a tragic choice." Do you think this is a good idea?

It's a baby step, but it won't be solved by having candidates quoting the Bible. There has to be a recognition that there's a deep problem in people's lives. Someone who heard me talk about this came up to me and told me a story that relates to this. This guy had been invited to do something on a Sunday morning, and he declined because he said he had to go to church. The other person said, "Church? You can't go to church — you're a Democrat!" There has to be a change in that culture.

When the left starts to adopt this rhetoric, commentators on the right accuse them of pandering.

Of course, because the right wants to own this issue. They understand that a spiritual left would be disastrous for them. So they do everything they can to put down people on the left that have a spiritual vision. They either say its manipulation — which, up to this point, it is — or they say it's flakey new age baloney. In that way they capture the mentality of a lot of liberals who say, "You're right, it is flakey new age baloney, but we figured we'd get some votes this way."

Are there people out there reinvigorating liberalism and remaking the Democratic Party?

Well, The Washington Post once called me the "guru of the White House" and you know how that turned out. That experience taught me that whispering in the ears of powerful people is not the way to social change. If you want to change society, you've got to build a movement. Major change only happens when you build from below.

I don´t know if this will make the papers back home in the U.S., but down here in Argentina this is the top story. Terrible. :-(

Seven killed in Uruguay TV stunt

The accident happened in front of thousands of children

A runaway train killed seven people and injured at least 11, severing some of their limbs, during the filming of a TV show in Uruguay, police said.

The accident occurred during a "test of strength" challenge to raise money for a hospital in Young, 380km (235 miles) west of the capital, Montevideo.

Contestants were pushing and pulling a train and two carriages when the vehicle gained speed and ran them over.

Local authorities have declared three days of mourning.

From today´s Opinion Journal...

The Bend of History

President Bush sketched an expansive vision last night of what he expects to accomplish by a war in Iraq. Instead of focusing on eliminating weapons of mass destruction, or reducing the threat of terror to the United States, Mr. Bush talked about establishing a 'free and peaceful Iraq' that would serve as a 'dramatic and inspiring example' to the entire Arab and Muslim world, provide a stabilizing influence in the Middle East and even help end the Arab-Israeli conflict."--editorial, New York Times, Feb. 27, 2003

One prominent neoconservative, Francis Fukuyama, asserts in a new book that the administration embraced democracy as a cornerstone of its policy only after the failure to find unconventional weapons in Iraq. The issue was seized upon to justify the war in retrospect, and then expanded for other countries, he says."--New York Times, March 17, 2006

This story is a few days old, but I thought that National Geographic had a somewhat more in-depth analysis than the general media.

Underground Tunnels Found in Israel Used In Ancient Jewish Revolt


Oh, sure, now that it's impossible to get, we can have it. (via zarq)

Irish Jews can now wear chainmail and leather armor


Physically or intellectually?

"I've always been attracted to Jews" - Sharon Stone while in Israel this week


I am personally going to foil his plans, starting tomorrow at lunch. Hey, after an 11 hour flight I should be able to eat whatever I want.

Argentina's president says "Eat less beef"

Just a piece of informatrion that's useless to anybody else, but at least it will become part of Officially Recorded Human History.

Beware the Ides of March....

My father's mother, may she rest in peace, was born on March 15th sometime in the earlier part of the 20th century. She taught English (among other subjects) in a Brooklyn yeshiva for girls and always reminded me that she was born on the Ides of March in a reference to Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.

Miss you grandma.  And Happy Birthday.

It's this kind of thing that makes me proud to be an American. It may be hard for some people to reconcile the Abu Ghraib military from the humanitarian service military, but there it is. It's not all one or the other. And I like to believe it's more "other", we just never rarely read about it unless it's a major event like the Asian tsunami or Katrina. Surely this act of saving Iranian lives was worth a page A32 story in a major newspaper.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. Navy warship helped rescue the six crewmen of an Iranian commercial boat in the Gulf after the small craft had been adrift without power for 10 days, the Navy said on Wednesday.....

"Patrolling warships are sometimes called on for humanitarian interventions," said Cmdr. Robert Randall, the U.S. ship's commanding officer. "It felt good to assist."

A boarding party from the Gonzalez gave the Iranian crew food and water, the Navy said. The U.S. sailors also inspected the dhow's cargo and engineering plant and determined the engine was beyond repair, the Navy said.

The vessel contacted Iranian officials, who picked up the crew of the craft, the Navy said.

How come there's no "proud" face in my list of mood icons? I guess I'll settle for hopeful.

So, Hamas declares that they are planning to relaease Ahmed Saadat, a senior PFLP terrorist who is repsonsible for killing an Israeli cabinet minister several years ago.  (Granted the minister did not like Arabs very much, but he was a senior government official nonetheless.)

Israel pulled their "f*** you" move today, storming the jail and looking to take Saadat, dead or alive.

In the AP recounting of the history of this particular case, there's an awful lot of finger pointing going on.

On March 7, Abbas said he was willing to free him but would not take responsibility for any action Israel would take against him later.

Abbas accused the Americans and British of withdrawing the monitors without telling him, violating the 2002 agreement. He said he would hold them responsible if anything happens to the prisoners.

Saadat told Al-Jazeera, which broadcast the raid throughout the Arab world, that he held Abbas partly responsible, saying he should have gotten him out of prison sooner.

Angry at the Israeli move, Palestinians are randomly attacking any non-Israeli civilians they can find, most of whom are most likely available for the taking only because they sympathize somewhat with the Palestinians themselves.

US teacher abducted after West Bank raid (reports say he has been freed)

Red Cross delegate kidnapped in Gaza

Two Australians kidnapped in Gaza

As the Plot Thickens, No One Is Safe

This season of "24" began with Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) returning from the dead after he had to disappear in the finale last May. The actual death of Jack is where Mr. Gordon said he would like the series to end, whenever that may be. "He's a tragic character, and tragedy ends in death," he said.

I really, really, don't want this to happen. I mean, every day I try to live my life by asking myself, WWJD? (What would Jack do?)

So you're a Spanish performance artist and you're afraid that interest in the Holocaust is waning. What do you do about it?

Pump an old German synagogue full of carbon monoxide and ask people walk through it with gas masks on, of course!

Artist Turns Synagogue Into Gas Chamber




I think I can honestly say the thought never would have occurred to me.

Argentina Pens In Sales of Iconic Food

In an extraordinary decision, the government this week announced a six-month ban on most beef exports from the world's third-largest purveyor of the meat.

The government hopes that meat targeted for overseas sale will now stay at home. Increased supplies will reduce domestic prices, which skyrocketed 20% last year, surpassing the worrisome inflation rate of more than 12%.

"It doesn't interest us to export at the cost of hunger for the people," Kirchner declared.

The president's edict took effect Friday. Delighted shoppers rushed to butcher shops to inquire whether prices had dropped yet from the $2 or so a pound for the prime cuts that can go for 10 times as much in the United States and Europe.

I'll be going down to Buenos Aires on Thursday night for a week and am looking forward to packing on some pleasantly priced protein poundage.  Or kilos of carne as they might say there.

I'll be spending most of my time here at La Tranquera restaurant.  You can see my in-law's apartment complex in the background of the "Playa de Estacionamiento" picture. Clasica Victoria on the same block (M. Sucre 664) is where I'll be having coffee and pastries most mornings.  Starbucks is a poor substitute for the cafe culture of Europe (and countries pretrending to be in Europe).

David Warren wonders aloud (in print) whether Islam and modernity are compatible - something he always assumed but now is unsure about.

Mr Bush was staking his bet on the assumption that the Islamists were not speaking for Islam; that the world’s Muslims long for modernity; that they are themselves repelled by the violence of the terrorists; that, most significantly, Islam is in its nature a religion that can be “internalized”, like the world’s other great religions, and that the traditional Islamic aspiration to conjoin worldly political with otherworldly spiritual authority had somehow gone away. It didn’t help that Mr Bush took for his advisers on the nature of Islam, the paid operatives of Washington’s Council on American-Islamic Relations, the happyface pseudo-scholar Karen Armstrong, or the profoundly learned but terminally vain Bernard Lewis. Each, in a different way, assured him that Islam and modernity were potentially compatible.

The question, “But what if they are not?” was never seriously raised, because it could not be raised behind the mud curtain of political correctness that has descended over the Western academy and intelligentsia. The idea that others see the world in a way that is not only incompatible with, but utterly opposed to, the way we see it, is the thorn ever-present in the rose bushes of multiculturalism. “Ideas have consequences”, and the idea that Islam imagines itself in a fundamental, physical conflict with everything outside of itself, is an idea with which people in the contemporary West are morally and intellectually incapable of coming to terms. Hence our continuing surprise at everything from bar-bombings in Bali, to riots in France, to the Danish cartoon apoplexy.

My own views on the issue have been aloof. More precisely, they have been infected with cowardice. I am so “post-modern” myself that I, too, find it almost impossible to think through the corollaries from our world’s hardest fact. And that fact is: the post-Christian West is out of its depth with Islam.

I believe in my heart that Muslims can be peaceful democrats (small "d").  However, my heart is not my brain and even if I persoannly knew every Muslim in America (which I like to believe are democrats if they chose to live here), they are most likely not reflective of the Islamic world at large.  And that is a world which we American infidels will never understand no matter how many scholarly articles we read.

So we go on hoping becuase to believe the opposite is too terrible to imagine.

The rabbi bangs his stick on the ice.

At 6-foot-2, 205 pounds, Glazer stands out as one of the largest players on the ice. He isn't modest about using his size or falling back on his hockey upbringing.

"It would be fair to say that rabbi thinks hockey is a contact sport," said one teammate, David Lever, 42, of Katonah.

This comment in no way reflects my position on gay marriage which I am generally for if only because I think denying it causes more pain than accepting it.  Proponents of gay marriage however, are going to have to take some interesting legal positions to show that marriage is important to them as a "buddy system" and not just a vehicle to publicly sanction their form of sexual congress .

But gay rights organizations have long refuted claims that acceptance of same-sex unions is a slippery slope toward marital anarchy.

“The right wing would love nothing more than for us to spend all of our airtime discussing distractions such as polygamy, bestiality and other — from their point of view — doomsday scenarios rather than engage the public about committed same-sex couples being discriminated against,” says Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry, which advocates marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples. - The Washington Blade 2/24/06

Polygamists, Unite!  They used to live quietly, but now they're making noise. - Newsweek 3/13/06

Most notably, Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania told the Associated Press in 2003 that legalizing gay sex would pave the way for legalized bigamy, polygamy and incest. This "slippery slope" argument angers some gay-rights activists who see the issues as being completely separate. "I frankly would not love to see an article [about polygamy advocacy] in NEWSWEEK because this is the connection that our opponents make, and we feel it's a specious one," says Carisa Cunningham, director of public affairs for Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders.

Someone at Newsweek must really hate Carisa Cunningham.

It seems like weeks since the last time I've posted - I've been spending my time recupertaing from a mild bout of the flu, studying for my Series 24 Exam, and preparing for the family trip to Buenos Aires to see my in-laws. In the meantime, I have been able to read some books - Aliya by Liel Leibovitz (very interesting and very pro-Israel) and Straight Into Darkness by Faye Kellerman (I love her stuff) and watch some movies - Trembling Before G-d (not great film, but very emotional), Les Choristes (standard teacher turns class around story, but I liked it). I also watched a DVD of a David Chapelle show which I honestly thought was not funny. And his voice is incredibly grating.

Now onto the news:

Donald Trump is planning to build a skyscraper in the town my uncle grew up in outside of Tel Aviv.

Jimmy Carter will not be happy until the Israelis give up everything for a promise of peace from people who've never been peaceful and demand Israel's destruction.

"For more than a quarter century, Israeli policy has been in conflict with that of the United States and the international community...." As opposed to the Palestinian policy which has been to delibarately target and murde civilians (including schollchildren) and teaching their people to hate Jews.

Strong job growth and low unemployment (despite having a major city and a region the size of England destroyed), tame inflation (despite huge increases in gas prices), rising wages, four years of consistent growth in the GDP. It's not to hard to find some people who think the nation's economy is in bad shape. I guess you can't please all of the people all of the time. Would someone please point me to another industrialized country that's doing so much better that we should be looking to them as an example?

As Jews around the world prepare for the celebration of Purim Monday night, the Toronto Star reminds us that history is repeating itself in Persia/Iran.

Haman: "If it please the king, let a law be written that they (the Jews) be destroyed" (Esther 3:9).
Ahmadnejad: "As the Imam (Ayat Allah Khomeini) said, Israel must be wiped off the map" (Oct. 26, 2005).

Coalition casualties in Iraq for the last three months have been slightly below average for the last three months, and so far March is shaping up to be a good month (fingers crossed).

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) calls Daniel Pipes names. Pipes responds with a distrubing report. Meanwhile, Americans have an increasingly negative view of Islam - worse than after 9/11. Could this be the result of the Media's inability to show us any Muslims excpet for those who burn, threaten and kill in their effort to show us how horrible the war in Iraq is? You have to go to right-wing blogs to find information about Muslims in general and Iraqis in particular who are defenders of freedom and "Western" values. It took the New York Times two weekslonger than the blogs to spread the word about Wafa Sultan, a brave woman if ever there was one.