This is a hoot.  A website called aljazeera.com which wants you to know that "Aljazeera.com (is) not associated with the controversial Arabic Satellite Channel known as Jazeera Space Channel TV (also known as Al-Jazeera Satellite Channel) station whose website is Aljazeera.net. Aljazeera Publishing disassociates itself from the views, opinions and broadcasts of Jazeera Space Channel TV station."

That must be because it wouldn't want to associate itself with radical elements in Islam or anti-Western broadcasting.  Or maybe not.  Check out the latest letter to the website's "Let's Talk" section.

Almost five years to the infamous day, September the 11th, approaches, people around the world ask what the United States has accomplished. Being trapped inside Iraq, in a midst of supposedly, a civil war, almost 2600 soldiers dead, billions of dollars lost.
 
Yet there was so much gained, the U.S. increased its military spending budget by billions, if not trillions. They were falling behind, however with the country in the fear of an attack, all money was invested into defense. Now the U.S. jumped back to the top with the latest equipment enough to make them superior for 50 to 60 years. Also millions of barrels of oil from Iraq are shipped to the U.S. unaccounted for, not checked, and absolutely free. Another boost to the country.
 
There are many people who believed that the government officials themselves are responsible for 9-11. They were hushed and categorized as non-patriotic. And yet, there are many educated people, analysts, and families of victims who think otherwise. There were no debris of the Boeings found in either tower. It would take temperatures much higher than observed on 9-11 to completely burn a Boeing.

Also thousands of onlookers reported seeing the building have explosions on every level before they fell. Exactly like old building are brought down. Also in the weeks before 9-11, a strange group of people from an unknown company entered the buildings and all the employees were emptied out, they worked to fix some problem. They could very well have put in dynamite or some other explosives.
 
Many of the top Jewish businessmen and women did not come on that specific day. Perhaps they were warned!  
 
Sincerely,
A. from the United States

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Have I mentioned the huge upswing in anti-Semitism reported in the UK?

Then there's this from a few days ago - A former head of the Armed Forces struck a Labour Party peer during a furious row over the Lebanon conflict.  Lord Bramall, 82, hit Lord Janner, a senior member of Britain's Jewish community, after making what witnesses claim were a series of 'anti-Israel' comments.  Peers watched in astonishment as their argument over the Middle East escalated.  Lord Janner, 78, a veteran campaigner for Holocaust victims, was said to feel 'wronged and seriously offended' after the attack at the House of Lords.

Between this and the things I've written lately about Argentina, it seems like there are fewer places left in the world where you can speak out openly in favor of Israel without being physically threatened or attacked.  I don't see Hezbollah supporters having the same problems.

I just finished reading Roya Hakakian's editorial in the NY Times, "Reading the Holocaust Cartoons in Tehran", for the third time.  I kept trying to come away with a better understanding what she was trying to say, but each time I read it I became more and more disgusted.

First of all, she goes beyond the point that Jews should be treated equally and proclaims that the greatest accomplishment is for the Iranian Jew to make sure that nobody knows that they're Jewish at all.  I'm as proud as anyone to be American (just ask my Argentine in-laws) but I'll be damned if I have to hide my Jewishness to be considered American.

Secondly, she seems to take pride in her own community's differences with others in the global Jewish community when one of the things that makes me most proud of my Judaism is our ability to be comfortable in a synagogue or Jewish home anywhere in the World.

Thirdly, just change all references to Iran or Persia with "Germany" or "The Fatherland" and you'll have a pretty good sense of the German Jew's mentality during the rise of Nazism.  I'm sure the Jews of Germany thought they were well assimilated and that their "wit and wisdom" had alwasy served them well through centuries of anti-Semitism.  Until the final solution came. 

Finally, to claim some sort of pride that the Iranian Jewish community is the second largest in the Middle East as some sort of proof of Iranian leniency is just absurd.  There are only 25,000 Jews in Iran.  Since 1948, 76,244 Iranian Jews have emigrated to Israel.  There are three synagogues in Teheran, but since 1994, there has been no rabbi in Iran, and the bet din does not function.  What a vibrant community!

Needless to say, I guess Ms. Hakakian has no problem with Iran's support for Hizbollah and their attacks on Israel, and their involvement in their bombings of Jewish targets in Argentina in the 1990s.

Perhaps she should return to Iran where she can practice her cat and mouse games with the rest of Iranian society.

AP Military Reporter Robert Burns has issued a fine propoganda piece called Pentagon Gives Gloomy Iraq Report. I'm sure I don't have to mention

Now I wouldn't criticize the article for ignoring any good things that might be happening in Iraq - after all the news report is focused solely on the Pentagon report and if it says things suck, then the article should say so. Except there are some things right up front that are quite positive.

Average peak electrical generating output increased 15.8% this quarter to 4,573 megawatts (MW) and continued to increase over the quarter. Iraq averaged 14 hours of power
per day this quarter, an improvement of 3 hours per day over the previous quarter.

Crude oil production for the second quarter improved 18% to 2.2 million barrels per day (mbpd), and exports improved by 20%, to 1.6 mbpd. Also during this quarter, Iraq resumed exports from northern fields for the first time since the autumn of 2005.

Iraq achieved a historic milestone on July 13, 2006, with the transfer of security responsibility in Muthanna Province from MNF-I to the Provincial Governor and the civilian-controlled Iraqi Police Service (IPS). Moreover, since the May report, MNF-I has transferred an additional 10 Forward Operating Bases (FOBs) to the Government of Iraq. Forty-eight of 110 FOBs are now under Iraqi control.

New projects have “added capacity to provide an estimated 4.2 million people with access to potable water—an increase of 1.2 million people since the May 2006 report—but direct
measurement of water actually delivered to Iraqis is not available.”1 Additional projects currently under way should increase infrastructure capacity to provide access to clean water to as many as 5 million more people.

My point is not to negate the problems and the violence that one can also easily find in the Pentagon report, but to not even mention anything positive in their findings relegates the journalist's work to anti-war propoganda.

Now I will mention the seemingly good news that has nothing to do with the contents of the report.

BAGHDAD (AP) — Preliminary figures show that violent deaths in Iraq dropped substantially in August from record levels the previous month, a Health Ministry official said Thursday.

At least 973 violent deaths were recorded throughout Iraq as of Wednesday, Riad Abdul Amir of the ministry's statistics bureau told the Associated Press...the new figure represents a significant drop from a tally of 3,500 deaths in July reported by Deputy Health Minister Adel Muhsin. Muhsin said that was the highest monthly figure recorded since the war began in March 2003.

Violent deaths in the capital fell to 550 in August, from about 1,500 in Baghdad in July. That was the city's lowest monthly tally this year.

Of course in the AP report mentioned above, the reporter writes, "The bloodshed capped a week in which hundreds of Iraqis were killed despite a security crackdown that targeted some of Baghdad's most violent neighborhoods." That would lead you to believe that things are the same if not worse wouldn't it?

Also from the same article...Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Iraqi forces will take responsibility for Thi-Qar province in the south this month. Thi-Qar would be the second of Iraq's 18 provinces that local forces would control.

It seems to me that much of this success is attributable to our increase and repositioning of troops in Baghdad (as opposed to Okinawa, Japan where John Murtha thinks they should be sent to improve the situation).

The Washington Post finally comes out and says what the right wing blogosphere's been saying all along - Joe Wilson is a liar and they're sorry to have taken him seriously.

Too bad they put it on page A20. End of an Affair.

It now appears that the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame's CIA career is Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson chose to go public with an explosive charge, claiming -- falsely, as it turned out -- that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger and that his report had circulated to senior administration officials. He ought to have expected that both those officials and journalists such as Mr. Novak would ask why a retired ambassador would have been sent on such a mission and that the answer would point to his wife. He diverted responsibility from himself and his false charges by claiming that President Bush's closest aides had engaged in an illegal conspiracy. It's unfortunate that so many people took him seriously.

Gee, it all seems like common sense now, doesn't it? Will someone please calculate the cost of the independent prosecutor's work which was initiated by liberals due to Bush Derangement Syndrome and bring that up in the election cycle?

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So, only 1 in 4 people think we are less safe today than five years ago. This despite the Democrats' best efforts to convince people otherwise:

Fearmongering (Pelosi version)
Fearmongering (Dean version)
Fearmongering (Murtha version)

and then there's just good old

Fearmongering (Gore version)

Did you see how that hurrican formed right out of those smokestacks! And that music.... We're all gonna die!

The best is from the second link.

GIBSON: But, on the issue of national security, 64% of the country says we're a stronger country than before 9/11. Given the mood of this country and the concerns are country and the personal fears, isn't that game, set and match for the Republicans?

DEAN: Absolutely not because the truth is we're not safer than we were when George Bush came into office.

GIBSON: but the country thinks we are.

DEAN: That's an interesting poll but I've seen many others with folks who don't agree with that. Polls are polls.

I always said that we Americans were very selfish in that we think that what happens to us is more important than what goes on in the rest of the world.  We think because we are under attack and we are fighting in several countries that the whole world must be aflame.  One person notes however that no country has actually gone to war against another country for over three years now - "This is the longest episode of interstate peace in more than half a century."

Maybe we're not fighting WWIII after all.

Welcome To World Peace

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By the way - Quit using mercury in your Voodoo rituals

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Kos tells us how proud he is of a Democrat senatorial candidate and the fact that he has a son going off to Iraq, something that "not a single Republican in the Senate has to worry about.".

Not a single one, except Jon McCain (next President of these United States).  "The youngest son of U.S. Senator John McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam and a vocal proponent of more American troops in Iraq, will soon report for duty in the Marine Corps, Time Magazine reported on Saturday." - July 29, 2006 Reuters

And Kit Bond, the senior senator from Missouri, whose son Sam served with Marines in Fallujah.

It's a lot easier to argue with the king of liberal blogs when he can't even get his facts straight.  If it's just his style to be flip or use "fake, but accurate" information, it's not funny when the stakes are so high and hos followers believe him.

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The Dog Pacifist - Pack of Lies by Cesar Millan hater Mark Derr.  Cesar Millan is the Dog Whisperer.  If you haven't seen the send-up of him on South Park, it's a must see if you've seen his show.

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This is just frickin' embarassing - it's things like this that make me ashamed to vote Republican and not want to attach myself too strongly to any political party.   Dems: Don't make me link to Joe Biden and his 7-11 comments.

Republican Sen. Conrad Burns, whose recent comments have stirred controversy, says the United States is up against a faceless enemy of terrorists who "drive taxi cabs in the daytime and kill at night."

Following up on his criticism of Human Rights Watch, Alan Dershowitz takes on Amnesty International.  There's too much good stuff here to pull out a single quote.  In the past, i may have vented and suggested that any Jew who contributes to these organizations should be ashmaed of themsleves.  Now I'll just say that any Jew who is a member and doesn't point out their inconsistencies to the leaders of these groups should be ashamed of themselves.

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After threatening Jews who wanted to protest in front of the Iranian embassy in Buenos Aires a few days ago, leftist thugs bring their physical threats to the Israeli embassy along with 4,000 others including many Arab-Argentine and Muslim-Argentine support groups.



In other news, the DAIA (Delegación de Asociaciones Israelitas Argentinas) had to denounce anti-Semitic graffiti at the University of Buenos Aires' Departent of Philosphy and Letters. (This is the largest public university in Argentina).  The Dean responded in part by saying "remmeber when you criticize our department that there are other departments that have even worse stuff in their halls".  Aside from Swastiksa, some of the painted comments were akin to "Be a patriot, kill Jews".

I'm starting to fear for the Jewish Community in Argentina.

I'm as Jewish as they come, but there's one particular part of  religion in general that I love more than any other - the music.  There's only one problem.  There's a serious dearth of really good, well-produced modern American music coming from secular, yet  believing Jews.   That's not to say that it's non-existent, but when I turn on the local Christian pop stations I am blown away by the amout of really good rock/pop that comes out.  The fact is that if you take out the occassional mention of Jesus and the Trinity, the themes of love, forgiveness and just wanting life to be better are universal.

I'm working from home today and flipping through the satellite channels and I stumbled across The Gospel Music Channel which had a program with music videos from the newest crop of  young Christian stars.  The first video I saw could have been on MTV - a great teen pop sound from Stacie Orrico.  The song was "More To Life (There's Gotta Be)" - video here.  The track was  The second video was "You Decide" by a group called Fireflight.  The song will play automatically if you visit their homepage.  The video is mostly of the group playing and singing in an abandoned building setting and really shows off the passions of the group (no pun intended).  It reminds me a lot of "Bring Me to Life" by Evanescence.  "Save me from the nothing I've become..." - man I love those lyrics. Being a semi-old fart, I'm also impressed with the bands links to their own icons and flickr photos for fans to connect with their own websites.  I'm sure this kind of thing is common, but I hadn't seen it before.  Much of "You Decide" remind me a lot of

"Jesus Take The Wheel" by Carrie Underwood still makes me cry every time I hear it. (Although in this case, I would say listen without watching the video - let your own imagination create the characters in the song).

More commentary from the "blame-the-Jews-fest" at the CAIR-Walt/Mearsheimer presentation yesterday at the National Press Club, broadcast on C-SPAN.

Pronouncing Blame on the Israel Lobby by Dana Milbank in the Washignton Post.  (And Dana is no fan of Bush's Middle East policy, that's for sure).

Walt singled out two Jews who worked at the Pentagon for their pro-Israel views. "People like Paul Wolfowitz or Doug Feith . . . advocate policies they think are good for Israel and the United States alike," he said. "We don't think there's anything wrong with that, but we also don't think there's anything wrong for others to point out that these individuals do have attachments that shape how they think about the Middle East."

"Attachments" sounds much better than "dual loyalties." But why single out Wolfowitz and Feith and not their non-Jewish boss, Donald Rumsfeld?

"I could have mentioned non-Jewish people like John Bolton," Walt allowed when the question was put to him.

Israel Critics: Israel Planned Lebanon War

Stephen Walt of Harvard University’s Kennedy Center and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago spoke Monday at a Washington forum hosted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, expanding on their paper “The Israel Lobby” in the wake of the Lebanon war.

“They came up with a plan and they briefed it to the United States in the weeks and months before July 12,” when Hezbollah rocket attacks and a cross-border raid precipitated the 34-day war, Mearsheimer said.

Asked to produce evidence, Mearsheimer said “everybody understood” that Israel was waiting for a pretext for war.

I'm still a little confused as to why a supposed civil rights organization is involved in sponsoring a press conference that is trying to limit the free speech influence of people who don't support their political view.

Twenty years ago (maybe twenty-five or thirty?), I used to love listening to Larry King on the radio because he really was just a guy who loved asking questions of influential people.  Today on the internet, we have people like Michael Totten who just go to interesting places like Lebanon and Israel, on their own, and take pictures of interesting things and ask people the kind of questions that you or I would ask.

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Be sure to watch C-SPAN this afternoon for what is sure to be an Israel love-fest.  Not.

A panel discusses the influence lobbyists for Israel have in the United States and how this may have affected attitudes toward the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The panel features Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, who wrote an article in the March London Review of Books that raised questions about the power the Israel lobby wields over U.S. foreign policy, saying that the lobbyists try to prevent criticism by claiming anti-semitism. Their article was also the cover story in the July-August issue of Foreign Policy Magazine.

The panel also includes two members of CAIR.  No doubt these four will be complaining about how their views are silenced by the Jews supporters of Israel.  I imagine they'll have a replay.

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Today it's been raining all morning - thank G-d!  We've had around 40 100 degree days this summer, almost all in a row.  It's actually in the upper 70's now and isn't supposed to move past the 80s for the next few days.  What a relief!

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Two items of note via Israellycool.

Conan O'Brien at the Emmys - "Alec Baldwin has a new show on NBC, James Woods has a new show on CBS and Mel Gibson has a new show on Al-Jazeera."

Saddam forced to watch himself in old episode of South Park.

Spent most of the afternoon reading Everyman, the latest Philip Roth novel. I have to admit to never having read any of his books even though many call him America's best living novelist and all that. Also, most of his material would be of interest to me because a lot fo it has to deal with being Jewish in America.  This story doesn't, but I found it at times revelatory and frustrating at the same time.  Revelatory because for me it confirms my belief that a strong belief in G-d and a "reason" for living will help you deal better with the unavoidable tragedies of life.  Frustrating because it makes me wonder if my fellow human beings, the "everymen", really are as seemingly shallow and selfish as the main character in the book.

Sure, I enjoy reading about another man's sexual escapades as a voyeur as much as the next guy, but they make me distinctly uncomfortable as well.  The way the story (and others like it) is written make me wonder - am I the one who's not normal for wanting a stable family life and rejecting my basest desires to protect that life?  If these works are so celebrated, is it becuase they are based on "real life", and if so, is my version of life better or worse?  Or is it simply because it's enetertaining? There is of course, no definitive truth available to us, but if my wife and kids think I'm special because I'm not the "everyman" in Roth's book, I'll take that as a positive.

I do recommend this book highly.

After reading through some of the linked reviews I searched for on Nextbook, I really think I should read Portnoy's Complaint.

And one other thing.  Early in the book, the main character mentions a time in the past when prices in stores ended in .50 (not .99 as they are today).  I'm not that old, but that sounds right.  I wonder what the story is behind that change - inflation?

Fantastic article on the Israeli policy of targeted killings in the Washington Post.  They intersperse the story of a particular attack with backup commentary on how the decisions are made based on how many civilians may be killed and what other conditions need to be satisfied.

 In Israel, Leaders Struggle with Targeted Killings.

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Is the Plame leak case finally resolved? The Man Who Said Too Much

The disclosures about Armitage, gleaned from interviews with colleagues, friends and lawyers directly involved in the case, underscore one of the ironies of the Plame investigation: that the initial leak, seized on by administration critics as evidence of how far the White House was willing to go to smear an opponent, came from a man who had no apparent intention of harming anyone.

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I watched the Italian made movie Private yesterday, a story of a Palestinain family whose home is commandeered by a group of Israeli soldiers.  Even though the film comes across as coming from the Palestinian point of view and provides no real context as to why the Israelis show up in the first place, it is not so heavy-handed that one can't appreciate the real terror that must be experienced by families that do have to go through this trauma.  It does happen.  The Roger Waters song with some female singer screeching about "The Germans kill the Jews and the Jews kill the Arabs" doesn't help.

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The Emmy Awards will be given out tonight.  I don't really care so much as I don't watch much TV, but's it's always fun to see who shows up half-naked.

Red-State Jews

Monday, August 21, 2006 By: Thane Rosenbaum
This is a soul-searching moment for the Jewish left. Actually, for many Jewish liberals, navigating the gloomy politics of the Middle East is like walking with two left feet.

I would know. For six years I was the literary editor of Tikkun magazine, a leading voice for progressive Jewish politics that never avoided subjecting Israel to moral scrutiny. I also teach human rights at a Jesuit university, imparting the lessons of reciprocal grievances and the moral necessity to regard all people with dignity and mutual respect. And I am deeply sensitive to Palestinian pain, and mortified when innocent civilians are used as human shields and then cynically martyred as casualties of war.

Yet, since 9/11 and the second intifada, in which suicide bombings and beheadings have become the calling cards of Arab diplomacy, and with Hamas and Hezbollah emerging as elected entities that, paradoxically, reject the first principles of liberal democracy, I feel a great deal of moral anguish. Perhaps I have been naive all along.

And I am not alone. Many Jews are in my position--the children and grandchildren of labor leaders, socialists, pacifists, humanitarians, antiwar protesters--instinctively leaning left, rejecting war, unwilling to demonize, and insisting that violence only breeds more violence. Most of all we share the profound belief that killing, humiliation and the infliction of unnecessary pain are not Jewish attributes.

However, the world as we know it today--post-Holocaust, post-9/11, post-sanity--is not cooperating. Given the realities of the new Middle East, perhaps it is time for a reality check. For this reason, many Jewish liberals are surrendering to the mindset that there are no solutions other than to allow Israel to defend itself--with whatever means necessary. Unfortunately, the inevitability of Israel coincides with the inevitability of anti-Semitism.

This is what more politically conservative Jews and hardcore Zionists maintained from the outset. And it was this nightmare that the Jewish left always refused to imagine. So we lay awake at night, afraid to sleep. Surely the Arabs were tired, too. Surely they would want to improve their societies and educate their children rather than strap bombs on to them.

If the Palestinians didn't want that for themselves, if building a nation was not their priority, then peace in exchange for territories was nothing but a pipe dream. It was all wish-fulfillment, morally and practically necessary, yet ultimately motivated by a weary Israeli society--the harsh reality of Arab animus, the spiritual toll that the occupation had taken on a Jewish state battered by negative world opinion.

Despite the deep cynicism, however, Israel knew that it must try. It would have to set aside nearly 60 years of hard-won experience, starting from the very first days of its independence, and believe that the Arab world had softened, would become more welcoming neighbors, and would stop chanting: "Not in our backyard--the Middle East is for Arabs only."

It is true that Israel has entered into peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan that have brought some measure of historic stability to the region. But with Israel having withdrawn from Lebanon and Gaza, and with Israeli public opinion virtually united in favor of near-total withdrawal from the West Bank, why are rockets being launched at Israel now, why are their soldiers being kidnapped if the aspirations of the Palestinian people, and the intentions of Hamas and Hezbollah, stand for something other than the total destruction of Israel? And if Palestinians and the Lebanese are electing terrorists and giving them the portfolio of statesmen, then what message is being sent to moderate voices, what incentives are there to negotiate, and how can any of this sobering news be recast in a more favorable light?

The Jewish left is now in shambles. Peace Now advocates have lost their momentum, and, in some sense, their moral clarity. Opinion polls in Israel are showing near unanimous support for stronger incursions into Lebanon. And until kidnapped soldiers are returned and acts of terror curtailed, any further conversations about the future of the West Bank have been set aside.

Not unlike the deep divisions between the values of red- and blue-state America, world Jewry is being forced to reconsider all of its underlying assumptions about peace in the Middle East. The recent disastrous events in Lebanon and Gaza have inadvertently created a newly united Jewish consciousness--bringing right and left together into one deeply cynical red state.

You know, after the black kids to the back of the bus incident I posted the other day, and this report of a small church not wanting to pray with any black people, I'm beginning to think we have a problem.  A good start in fixing it would be to have Spike Lee do a film blaming these people for racism instead of President Bush.

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I went out last night to the local "upscale" Wal-Mart to see what kind of kosher meat I could pick up for dinner.  I wasn't in the mood for the ground beef or turkey they had on display and I was about to walk away when I noticed a package of organic skinless chicken breasts from Aaron's Best.  I almost passed it by becuase the packaging was different than for their other products and I had never seen it before.  I'm sure I paid through the nose for it, but it was quite tasty.  I'm hoping the chicken I ate had a happier life than his neighbors in the refrigerator unit without the fancy new packaging.  There was an article on kosher organic meat in the Jewish Chrionicle of Pittsburgh recently.  I have to check and see if Whole Foods has the Wise brand here in Texas, but I doubt it.

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Gee, President Bush, you seem much taller nicer in real life!  The camera/media really does put 10 pounds an evil aura on you!

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Following up on my story on how a violent group stopped the Jewish community from protesting in front of the Iranian embassy in Buenos Aires, representatives of the Jewish community met with the Minister of the Interior to voice their concern and denounce the Quebracho organization.  More here.  The first English account of the event that I've seen can be found here.

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Tell me if I'm wrong here.  Now that Plan B will be made available to any woman who just likes to use men to satisfy their sexual needs and up their ho factor, will any woman ever be able to claim paternity rights?  If I was a still in the fly-by-night sex game (OK, so I never was), I would give every woman I slept with $10 for Plan B and tell them to get the hell out of my life.  Or slip it into their coffee the next morning.  Next!

Also, since any woman who is raped can take it (and I imagine any decent rape crisis center would have this stuff available for free), the whole "in the case of rape or incest" argument against a wholesale ban on abortions could fall apart.  You would still have "health of the mother" exception to deal with, but I'd like to think that's common sense even to rabid pro-lifers.

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The local mega-church is branching out - they've only got about 50 times more congregants than my synagogue which is probably the biggest in town.

The Red Cross Ambulance Incident - How the Media Legitimized an Anti-Israel Hoax

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In Argentina this evening, a group of leftist militants from "Quebracho" prevented members of the Jewish community from protesting in front of the Iranian embassy to denounce their support of Hezbollah. Several dozen young people were waiting for the Jewish community with their faces covered by keffiyehs and holding thick pieces of wood to use as weapons against anyone who dared approach. Articles and video in Spanish can be found here at Clarin and La Nacion. I do not see any references to this yet in the English press and I'm not sure the incident will be covered internationally. Quebracho has a long anti-Semitic statement proclaiming the "Zionist defeat in Buenos Aires". Of course of you look at their photo section, they're proud to show themselves protesting in front of the Israeli embassy several weeks ago unimpeded

I am disgusted and sickened. I hope that I never see such a thing in the US and I doubly hope that someone in the Argentine government has something to say about a group of thugs taking away other people's right to free expression. It's especially ironic considering that the Iranians are accused of being behind the bombing of the old Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires pretty much right down the road in 1992.

My fellow Jews, people on the Left are not your friends. Hell, we have very few friends period between those that want ed us dead 60 years ago, those that want us dead now and those who want us dead tomorrow. Wake the f*ck up!

When I was a little tyke, I was already a news junkie. I have vivid memories of being allowed to walk the several blocks by myself to get the newspaper at Cappy's in Co-op City in the Bronx. Just the smell of newsprint off a cold newspaper in winter brings back memories. My mother still brags that I was reading the New York Times when I was 5.

Well, my oldest girl just turned 6 and I don't want her to have anything to do with the news. Was the world so peaceful back then (can you say Vietnam?) that it wouldn't warp my mind to read about all the hate and craziness going on in the world? I still remember (I really do) asking my dad what a P.O.W. was when I saw it on a bumper sticker on the Lower East Side. Inflation, boycotts, Watergate, the Yom Kippur War - I absorbed it like a sponge, even if I didn't quite understand what was really going on.

Is it right to keep my child from world events? Sure they'll get to this stuff in school eventually, but since I get all my news from the internet, the TV evening news isn't on at all so she doesn't even get that stuff in passing. Also, in suburban America, even newspapers aren't really prominently displayed anywhere.

Reading in general isn't the issue, in fact she is assigned homework to read at least 10 minutes every night, which she does very well. Also, I could only wish to have had such well-stocked libraries and Barnes & Nobles when I was a kid.

Will she be less interested, less smart or less aware of everything around her in general without all the attention to world events that I got as a kid? I just don't know. but I hope not.

When will I tell her that daddy saw the worst tragedy in American history with his own eyes? Or that anything like that could even happen? We'll tackle the Holocaust in sixth or seventh grade according to her teachers, so I've got a ways to go there yet.

Alan Dershowitz on Human Rights Watch:

"Who will guard the guardians?" asked Roman satirist Juvenal. Now we must ask, who is watching Human Rights Watch, one of the world's best-financed and most influential human rights organizations? It turns out that they cook the books about facts, cheat on interviews, and put out pre-determined conclusions that are driven more by their ideology than by evidence.

These are serious accusations, and they are demonstrably true.

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Definitely not to be confused with are Jews supporting Kinky Friedman, I present KinkyJews.

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Browsing YouTube the other day I found a whole series of home videos of a huge, golf-ball-size-hailstorm that happened in Buenos Aires last month. So far, I've only had to drive through one hailstorm here in north Texas - the hail was not that large, but it was really scary stuff as I was stuck in traffic and couldn't pull over to find any cover.

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For those in North Texas having foundation problems with their homes - this is a good start to understanding the problem. A home inspector I trust has recommended me to Advanced Foundation Repair which is mentioned in the article.

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I want to welcome co-religionist Shawn Green to the New York Mets! I hope we get to shep lots of nachas from him. Luckily for Shawn, if the Mets make it to the playoffs he won't have problem. "Green made headlines two years ago when, while playing with the Dodgers, he chose to play in one of two games on the holy day of Yom Kippur. This season, Yom Kippur begins on the evening of Oct. 1, the regular-season finale in Washington, and will not intrude on the postseason."

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I don't know if I'd agree with this or not if I thought about it more, but when first read, it's a pretty need observation. From Ted Koppel:

The networks are experimenting with broadcasting their evening news on the Web. Your thoughts?
The single message that has survived throughout the millennia, and has as much impact today as it did at the time it was delivered, was allegedly carved into two stone tablets by the finger of God. Lousy medium, great message. I sometimes think we place so much value on the medium that we ignore the importance of the message. Media doesn’t survive. Messages do.

From Overheard in New York.  Admit it, you would just smirk and shake your head at their stupidity if you heard it.

Hipster girl: What's up with all the Jews for Jesus stuff everywhere?
Hipster guy: I don't know. I think Jews just try to adopt whatever's mainstream and will make them money.

--A/C/E underpass, Times Square station

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Hey - you never know.  Plano to hire homeland director.

"It's one of those things where you hope that you really never have to do your job."

I need something like that.

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Canadian Jews are beginning to come around to realize that the Liberal Party ain't what it used to be. 

Many in the Jewish community are reassessing their Liberal party loyalty and looking upon the Conservatives under Stephen Harper with fresh eyes, writes Leslie Scrivener

"Harper made his pro-Israel views known quickly, issuing a statement the day after Israel sent its forces into Lebanon. Meanwhile, the Liberals' perspective remained unclear. Five days passed before interim Liberal leader Bill Graham said the government's position was a "grave error," one that threatened Canada's reputation as a peace broker and mediator."

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Anyone catch today's "die-in" by Jews Against Israel outside of Penn Station in NY?  OK, so that's not their real name, but might as well be.  I much prefer the views of the Orthodox community that think Israel now needs to change it's moral code used in war - "Our traditional sensibilities tell us that it is not right to risk the lives of our soldiers to minimize civilian deaths on the other side," he said.

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I have slightly over two weeks of vacation left to take in 2006, yet my wife who has a new teaching job will only have one week off from school around Christmas/New Year's.  Do I go somewhere without them for a week (maybe a photography seminar, volunteering in Israel...), or do I just sit at home and veg?  The funny thing is that my company has asked me to stop travelling for business which means that the 8 or so 2-3 days trips that I might otherwise have taken this year, I will not be taking.  So why do I feel guilty about being away from them just once.  What was my therapist's number again?

Just wondering...if liberal Democrats are so up on the idea that we need to negotiate with our enemies (Iran, Syria) instead focusing on regime change, why are they so excited about regime change among their own party in Connecticut, instead of trying to get Lieberman to change the one or two positions he has which don't toe the party line?

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I hate people who come into an elevator, go into one of the front corners and stand sideways, so that the people in the back have no choice but to stare at them (or if you're on the other front corner, be stared at).  The fewer the number of others in the back elevator already, the more uncomfortable it is.  A minor thing, but a human behavior, I don't understand.

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I downloaded Sunday's Meet The Press onto my cellphone and listened to it as I went for a walk yesterday evening.  Right now, I'm all for McCain '08.  He sounds so absolutlely reasonable as he walks the fine line between criticizing Rumsfeld and our mistakes in Iraq and the fact that we can't afford to leave.

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I had to start using soaker hoses to water the foundation of my house last night.  Apparently, they're very popular around here.  We already have cracks in one of the bathroom floors and in a wall upstairs.  We're hoping that the soaking will prevent further damage - at least that's what one of the neighbors suggested.  I do feel kind of guily running the water for several hours each night during the drought restrictions, even though soaking is allowed for any reason during the evenings.  That being said, I'd feel worse if I had to pay 30 grand to repair my foundation, and it ain't covered by insurance.  I never heard of soaker hoses before this year....

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The NY Times rips into France.  I'm still not big on their saying that we're overstrectched in Iraq - that's a throwaway line from a paper who sided with generals who were willing to send a couple of hundred thousand additional troops into Iraq for the inevitable occupation.  That and we just augmented our force in Iraq by the entire amount of the proposed Lebanese peacekeeping force without anyone seeming to notice.

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Snopes has the scoop on the letter my rabbi read Friday night which claimed to be a rant by Steven Spielberg against Mel Gibson.

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The wife and I saw (at different times) The Thing About My Folks which is sort of a father-son road movie.  We both liked it a lot, although it's nowhere near being a great.  Seven stars out of ten.  That being said, I felt Peter Falk gave an Acadamy Award worthy monologue about what it meant to be a good father 40 years ago.  Real hurt and anger from someone known generally as a comic presence.

Does anyone else find this photo of Hizbollah fighters in baseball caps ironic?



Just give them hot dogs and apple pie and they'll be as American as you or I.

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Info on the Jewish Arts Fest on Sunday, August 27 in the Dallas area. Always a fun place to spend an afternoon. Sadly for us, the kids are too little to sit still for one of the music events - I'd love to see these acts.

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MIAMI, Florida (CNN) -- The National Hurricane Center's latest forecast for the 2006 season calls for more Atlantic hurricanes than usual, but not as many as seen over the past three years and fewer than predicted in the NHC's initial estimate in May.

NHC director Max Mayfield said he expects 12 to 15 named storms, with seven to nine gaining hurricane status. Of those, three or four will grow to Category 3 strength or greater, Mayfield said.

A Category 3 hurricane is classified as a major hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale, with sustained winds of 110 mph or more.

The 2005 season saw a record 28 named storms, including 15 hurricanes. Three named storms had been recorded by mid-August 2006. (Ed. - and they were weak storms at that.)

As I read it, that's about a 60% dropoff. What happened Hurricane Al? DId we reverse global warming last year? As you can tell from his movie poster, huricanes should be our biggest worry - unless of course you think he was using the tragedy of Katrina to spread his political message - but we all know that Democrats wouldn't use a tragedy in that way.