I had dinner with the Indepundit tonight. I knew he’d get to post about it first. He had a shorter drive to his hotel than I had home. He’s in the Hampton/Norfolk area for a business trip, so we met at a restaurant in Williamsburg, which is about an hour away from me. Scott had a pretty crappy trip in, but we had a very nice dinner. Y’know, Red, Hot & Blue isn’t kidding when they say “Onion loaf” is fried onions in the shape of a loaf. It was loaf-shaped, all right. And very good.

We had a nice chat, and as we parted, I noticed one of those men/women things: We were chatting for a bit outside, and if it had been two women, we would probably have stood outside the restaurant chatting for another fifteen minutes, maybe half an hour. After about two minutes, Scott said, “It was great seeing you,” gave me a hug, and we said our goodbyes.

It made for a funny story to tell Sarah when I called her on the long drive home.

Off to bed now. It’s late.

Okay. So a British submarine commander apparently yelled at his subordinates so badly that some of them burst into tears.

I am unsuccessfully trying to wrap my mind around a submariner bursting into tears after being yelled at by his C.O.

They sure don’t make sailors like they used to. Mr. Christian never cried.

And then there’s this little bit of cognitive dissonance: The BBC’s Thought for the Day, which has been “a religious reflection on topical events” for 36 years, may be opened to secular contributors. A secular opinion on topical events. Gee, we don’t see that very often. Bold move, BBC!

Instructions on how to salt the hide of your sacrifice for the Eid.

Strangely, I couldn’t find a PETA announcement about the slaughter of all those sheep during Eid. Funny, they’re still going after kosher butchers. You don’t think it’s–prejudice–do you?

Aljazeera.com, which is not the TV station’s website, has this mystifying headline to an even more mystifying article:

Washington testing in the dark plans of Israel’s new man

I read the article. Several times. It appears to be some sort of analysis that says Washington is “testing” Olmert to see how if he will allow the U.S. to have “clout.” (Really, that paragraph is a hoot).

It quotes DEBKA.

It is practically unreadable.

So one simply has to wonder: What, exactly, is the point of having this website in English if no one can understand what the hell they’re trying to say?

Sometimes, the Arab press is hilarious. I mean, really. Look at that headline. Oooooooh. Scary.

Sometimes, one simply must roll one’s eyes, shrug, and move on.

Israel does not have the death penalty except for Nazi war criminals. She should. The mastermind of the Netanya massacre was given 35 consecutive life sentences and then some. He should be sentenced to be blown up by a nail bomb.

The Tel Aviv District Court on Tuesday sentenced Hamas terrorist Abbas al-Sayad to 35 consecutive life sentences and an additional 50-year prison term after he was convicted of initiating and planning the terror attack at Netanya’s Park Hotel.

The suicide bombing claimed the lives of 30 people and wounded scores who attended a Passover Eve dinner in March 2002.

The “scores” wounded amounts to 140 people wounded–many of them maimed for life.

What I hadn’t realized all those years ago is that there were about 250 guests at the Passover Seder. The bombing took out more than half of them.

If ever a man deserved to die, this one does.

And in the “Cry me a river” dept.:

Attorney Nir Mamon, who represented al-Sayad on behalf of the Public Defender’s Office, said that he believes the conviction and the punishment should be appealed to the Supreme Court and that a decision on the matter would be made in the next few weeks.

He claimed that al-Sayad suffered from serious physical violence for many hours during his interrogation and that his rights were violated during the interrogations and the trial.

His rights were violated. Seriously. Un-effing-believable.

Yesterday the Israeli newspapers were full of reports that Mahmoud Abbas was promised by the U.S. that Israel would allow palestinians to vote in East Jerusalem.

Today, we have the denial of any such promise.

The United States refuted Monday night Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ statement that the US had promised him that Palestinians in east Jerusalem would be able to vote in the upcoming PA parliamentary elections.

A spokesman for the State Department said that while Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had met with Abbas, she believed that the question of enfranchisement for Palestinian residents of Jerusalem was one that would have to be solved between Israel and the PA, Army Radio reported.

I think it’s wonderful that Secretary Rice gets to see for herself first-hand what a lying pack of murderers she has to deal with.

Unfortunately, Israel is letting the pals vote. In a few weeks, say hello to the new boss: Hamas.

And you have to love this paragraph in the Ynet article:

Officially, Palestinian officials are satisfied with the decision to comply with their demand, although it has pulled the rug under Palestinian Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ plan to blame Israel for the postponement of elections.

A sense of humor in a newspaper article: Always a good thing.

In which a British reporter mourns the loss of his faithful guide while experiencing the anarchy that is Gaza:

I have always been reluctant to accept the Israeli statesman Abba Eban’s observation that the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

Arriving in Gaza yesterday, it had to be admitted that the man had a point. Four months ago, when I was last here, the place sparkled with optimism. With the hated Israelis gone, Gaza was going to show the world what Palestinians could do when left to their own devices.

The Strip’s miles of golden sand were to become a sort of Islamic Miami Beach, minus the booze and bikinis. Maybe, a few diehard optimists dared to hope, Yasser Arafat’s vision of Gaza as a Middle Eastern Singapore might at last start to be realised.

Yesterday, it felt more like the Wild West.

(more…)

Some of the British press is making sense:

… Ehud Olmert, Mr Sharon’s protégé, deputy and today the acting Prime Minister, is a far better than average bet to be a permanent successor. Kadima might have needed Mr Sharon to start it; it does not, though, require him to maintain it. He may turn out to have been its Moses figure. If he had died or been removed earlier from political life, even in the first half of 2005, it may not have developed as it has.

The dilemma for Israel and the peace process is not that Mr Sharon cannot continue to serve as Prime Minister. It is that there is no equivalent to Mr Sharon in the Arab world. There is no one willing to acknowledge publicly that the Palestinians cannot have all that they might want, just as Israelis cannot have everything they might desire.

There is no one prepared to state what is absolutely obvious, namely that any return to the boundaries of 1967, let alone those of 1948, is a ludicrous notion. There is no one willing to declare openly that not only do those who surround Israel have to recognise its right to exist, but that their societies will thrive only when they begin to emulate the democratic values, economic ingenuity and cultural diversity that explain why Israel’s gross domestic product exceeds that of its vastly more populous neighbours combined.

I think he meant 1949, and granted, this is the Times, which is more conservative and tends to skew towards Israel–but it’s still good to see in a British newspaper. It’s a pleasure to see someone else writing about the Arab dictatorships’ refusal to do anything to move the situation forward:

The rest have been unable to muster the moral and political strength to entertain the possibility of their equivalents of leaving Lebanon, discarding the Gaza Strip or of a partial retreat from the West Bank. There is instead a political culture in which ruling elites officially blame the existence of Israel for their national woes and oppositions damn both Israel and the ruling elites for their own difficulties. This is, in effect, the division between Fatah and Hamas that the parliamentary elections in the Palestinian Authority is brutally exposing.

Well, yeah, except that both parties want to see an end of Israel, and that, the world refuses to admit.

And you all thought yesterday’s post was fiction.

In another bit of good news, Sharon also moved his right hand more vigorously Tuesday compared to the slight movements detected Monday. In addition, the prime minister is increasingly breathing on his own, but is still connected to a respirator.