Here you go, Lair. Now get those bandwidth hogs off my site.

Actually, don’t bother. I’ll go fix ‘em in Photoshop Elements. I downloaded a trial version. I’m thinking it’s a keeper. Photoshop is better, of course, but it also costs another $550.

The rarest of kitty pics in my house: A twofer.

Since Meryl’s being mean and not sharing any Tig and Gracie photos with you, I guess Nardo will just have to step in and…

He’s stealing the robin! No!

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Lair Simon’s entry in the current version of “Blogging Will Be Light Today” is one of the funniest things he’s ever done. Stark Trek mode, even. And this is a little bit mean, but yeah, I laughed. And yeah, I’d do it to Tig in a heartbeat. But not to Gracie.

Today’s topics in Blog Against the Strawfeminist Week: The Castrating Strawfeminist (with pictures!) and one where we wonder, say, what is the definition of feminism, anyway?

And this sign over on Snoopy’s site is definitely worth a laugh.

That’s it for me for a while.

Jeff Jacoby has just put himself on my marry-me list. He said a lot of what I said about the “men’s rights” case for a “financial abortion,” only he said it without nearly as much emotion.

Not fair, Dubay complains. His ex-girlfriend chose to become a mother. It was her choice not to have an abortion, her choice to carry the baby to term, her choice not to have the child adopted. She even had the option, under the “baby safe haven” laws most states have enacted, to simply leave her newborn at a hospital or police station. Roe v. Wade gives her and all women the right - the constitutional right! - to avoid parenthood and its responsibilities. Dubay argues that he should have the same right, and has filed a federal lawsuit that his supporters are calling “Roe v. Wade for men.” Drafted by the National Center for Men, it contends that as a matter of equal rights, men who don’t want a child should be permitted, early in pregnancy, to get “a financial abortion” releasing them from any future responsibility to the baby.

Does Dubay have a point? Of course. Contemporary American society does send very mixed messages about sex and the sexes. For women, the decision to have sex is the first of a series of choices, including the choice to abort a pregnancy - or, if she prefers, to give birth and collect child support from the father. For men, legal choices end with the decision to have sex. If conception takes place, he can be forced to accept the abortion of a baby he wants - or to spend at least the next 18 years turning over a chunk of his income to support a child he didn’t want.

All true. But it is also true that predatory males have done enormous damage to American society, and the last thing our culture needs is one more way for men to escape accountability for the children they father. Dubay wants more than the freedom to be sexually reckless - he wants that freedom to be constitutionally guaranteed. Truly he is a child of his time, passionate on the subject of rights and eager to duck responsibility.

The culture used to send a clear message to men in Dubay’s position: Marry the mother and be a father to your child. Today it tells him: Just write a monthly check. Soon — if this lawsuit succeeds — it won’t say even that. The result will not be a fairer, more equal society. It will be a society with even more abortion, even more exploitation of women, even more of the destructiveness and instability caused by fatherlessness.

And, in some ways saddest of all, even more people like Matt Dubay: a boy who never learned how to be a real man.

I await the cascade of outraged comments.

Hamas and Fatah are fighting. Everybody cheer!

Following a spate of violent incidents, including assassination attempts, Hamas leaders in this city warned Thursday of a conspiracy designed to oust them from the municipality, which they have been controlling for nearly eight months.

Earlier this week, unidentified gunmen opened fire at the car of Acting Mayor Hashem al-Masri as it was parked outside his home. No one was hurt in the attack, which was believed to be part of a severe power struggle that has been raging between Hamas and Fatah for months. A few days earlier, Masri was beaten on the head with a club as he left a mosque.

Hamas officials have accused Fatah supporters of being behind the attacks. “Ever since we won the municipal election, we have been subjected to a campaign of intimidation and incitement by Fatah activists,” one official told The Jerusalem Post. “These people just can’t accept the fact that they lost.”

For some residents, the events here are an indication of what awaits Hamas after it forms the cabinet and takes control of the Palestinian Authority. Many are convinced that Fatah members would do their utmost to undermine Hamas’s control, pointing out that the tensions here are a microcosm of the power struggle between the two parties.

I read an article recently that said the next couple of months are going to see some major struggles between Fatah and Hamas. As far as I’m concerned, they can take each other out.

Not only is the deadly strain of bird flu in Gaza, but the Gazans are refusing to cull the infected birds:

Gaza chicken farmers planned a protest later Friday, after government officials told them they would not be compensated for culled birds. The two affected farms have a total of 80,000 chickens.

“They (the farmers) are preventing the culling because they want compensation before they let us do this,” Tubaili said. “This is causing confusion. Any second of delay will really make a difference.”

Meanwhile, Suha Arafat continues to reside in a luxury apartment suite in a hotel in Paris with her lover Pierre Rizk and their daughter Zarwa, all courtesy of the Palestinian Authority and their financial backers.

The UN, which doesn’t mind black Sudanese dying by the tens of thousands every year from the Janjaweed Virus, is rushing into action to save their favorite pet maniacs as always:

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni appealed to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Friday for international assistance to help the Palestinians fight the recent outbreak of the deadly bird flu, the Foreign Ministry said.

In response, Annan told Livni in their phone conversation that he would call on the World Health Organization to lend support to Palestinian agriculture and health officials in their fight against the flu, the Foreign Ministry statement said.

WHO did such a wonderjob in China when faced with a massive totalitarian bureaucracy. How soon before the same screaming fits by Saeb Erekat and Nasser Al-Kidwa about occupation and genocide start showing up in World Health Organization meeting transcripts, much like recent off-topic outbursts in waterm technology and IT discussions?

Of course, one man’s agricultural disaster is another man’s opportunity to start a biological weapons program. How soon before the Gazans start weaponizing H5N1 and sticking them on the ends of Qassam rockets and mortars? If the Soviets laughed chimps and dogs into space, why can’t the Palestinian Space Program launch diseased chickens, right?

I dread the day when Hamas gets a hold of mothballed Bob Evans’ Rooster Booster technology. It is a day we should all fear.

Many people these days express their preference of the implacable hate of Hamas to the double-tongued preaching of the previous crowd. Their reasoning is fairly straightforward: yes, Hamas is an outspoken enemy, but it may be possible to do business with them in some unspecified future. If they change their tune, recognize Israel, etc.

I tend to believe this approach, no matter whether it is a realistic one or not. After all, miracles happen, especially in our miracle-infested area, and who knows…

The same logic could be applied quite successfully to a different subject - that of the war of words that puts our small place here in the center of the known Universe, as far as the war of words is concerned, of course (I know pretty well the real importance of the area in general and the country in question in particular and don’t deceive myself). Shortly - that frightful stink that people raise about the whole I/P issue.

I, personally, vastly prefer a direct no nonsense approach of our outspoken enemies to a soft-treading “stealth” skulking about of our half-friends. In my opinion, they are much more dangerous in their self-righteous hypocrisy than any of our enemies. Give me Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech any time, instead of anything like this article by Geoffrey Wheatcroft. Which article is so full of half-truths and subtle (or not so subtle) twisting of the said truth that it makes me sick. Just a few examples:

“The whole world is against us,” says an endlessly popular Israeli song…

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In an interview with the Jerusalem Post, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz tells you why the Karni crossing remains closed. You will not see these reasons in any wire story. Instead, you will see the phrase “due to security concerns” used.

Why did you decide to open the Karni Crossing despite the terror alerts?

There are threats there, but they vary in category and degree. Due to the serious shortage in flour, we decided to partially open Karni for the transfer of flour and other basic goods like milk, but not to open it all the way. This was a risk we were able to take. But after we opened Karni [on Monday] someone started running to attack it, and the IDF commander there immediately closed it down. So every day now we are reassessing the security situation there.

Are you afraid the Palestinians will try to create an image of there being a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip?

We decided to open the Kerem Shalom Crossing [in the southern Gaza Strip] and told the Palestinians, “Whatever you want to send through Karni, send through Kerem Shalom.”

But there are people there who have an interest in not opening Kerem Shalom, since they get a cut of whatever goes through Karni. This is part of the Palestinian corruption.

Couldn’t you have told the Palestinians that Israel agreed to open Kerem Shalom but not Karni, due to security concerns, and that it is their problem that they are not getting supplies?

But the world doesn’t understand it that way. They [the Palestinians] say that the Israelis are trying to pressure them to use Kerem Shalom since in the future Israel wants to close Karni; and they say we want to create a humanitarian crisis and hurt the Palestinian people.

But if there are terror alerts, shouldn’t Israel’s priority be the safety of Israelis at the crossing?

We are looking after the safety of Israel, and if we feel that the alert demands a closure, we will close. Today [Tuesday] it is open, but if the threat cannot be removed, we will close it. In the past there have been attacks there and, we take the threat level there into consideration. Someone suggested that we keep helicopters in the air over Karni to deter attacks while Karni is open. I don’t think we need to transfer trucks under the cover of helicopters. We also won’t keep helicopters airborne all day long. We are therefore taking reasonable security measures that are logical, but we also don’t want to be blamed for creating a humanitarian or economic crisis in the Gaza Strip

Read it all, and see more of what the anti-Israel media won’t tell you.

See, I don’t get it. I’ve been told, time and again, since 2001, that Islam is a religion of tolerance. And yet, a man is about to die for the “crime” of being a Christian.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - International pressure grew Friday on Afghanistan to free a man on trial for converting from Islam to Christianity, as clerics in Kabul called for his execution.

Australia’s Prime Minister John Howard on Friday joined the chorus of Western leaders to express concern over the case of Abdul Rahman and said he would protest personally to Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

“This is appalling. When I saw the report about this I felt sick literally,” Howard told an Australian radio network. “The idea that a person could be punished because of their religious belief and the idea they might be executed is just beyond belief.”

Rahman, a 41-year-old former medical aid worker, faces the death penalty under Afghanistan’s Islamic laws for becoming a Christian.

Senior clerics in the Afghan capital have voiced strong support for the prosecution and have warned they would incite people to execute Rahman if he is freed and refuses to revert to Islam.

That doesn’t sound very tolerant to me.

At this point, people like to bring up the intolerance of “ultra-Orthodox” Jews. I should like to point out that the last time a Jewish woman was stoned, marijuana was involved.