Thanks to Jay the genius, who troubleshot my attempts at changing the Loop (it’s the be-all and end-all of any WordPress blog) you can see a next/previous/main link at the bottom of every post, after the comments.

It must be a day for learning new things. I talked Heidi through learning how to record files on her computer so she can make an audition CD for Sorena. And she did it without Sorena’s help. Now that’s huge.

I am still feeling better, but no way am I taking that pseudophedrine mix tonight. I want to sleep, thankyouverymuch. And maybe tomorrow, Miss Gracie won’t be sounding her Imperious Mew at seven a.m., demanding that I get up and feed her.

I did not.

She’s waiting for food now. Quietly.

It looks like the UN General Assembly resolution condemning Holocaust denial may pass.

The United Nations General Assembly is expected to condemn Holocaust denial on Friday. Eighty-two countries have signed as co-sponsors. Additional countries are expected to sign in the next 24 hours, including Arab countries who have announced that they would vote in favor of the resolution.

[...] The Israeli mission is hoping that a majority of at least 104 countries will support the resolution, as in the historical vote of November 1, 2005, designating January 27 as the International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust. The second International Holocaust Day will be commemorated next Monday.

The vote was initiated in reaction to remarks made by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, calling the Holocaust a “myth” and expressing skepticism regarding its historic facts, and to the “scientific conference” about the Holocaust that took place in Tehran several weeks ago.

More to follow tomorrow, after the vote.

Well, that’s what the headline says.

Hamas members wounded in Palestinian jeep attack
Masked Palestinian militants fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a vehicle from the Hamas armed force in northern Gaza, wounding five Hamas men inside, Hamas officials said.

It was not immediately known who the attackers were, but Palestinians said this was probably part of the months-long conflict between Hamas and the rival Fatah of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. At least 62 people have been killed in the clashes.

Hospital officials said two of the wounded were in critical condition.

The attack took place in the Jebaliya refugee camp next to Gaza City, Hamas said.

I am going to read this story aloud to my Jeep, in the hopes of teaching it to identify and destroy Hamas terrorists.

RPG optional.

Update: It was an IED. Reaping what they sow, apparently.

Nine Palestinians, including members of a Hamas-led security force, were wounded by a roadside bomb in the Gaza Strip on Thursday and three of them were in a critical condition, hospital officials said.

Earlier, Hamas police spokesman Islam Shahwan said one Palestinian had been killed in the blast, but hospital officials later said the man remained in a critical condition. A further two were critically wounded.

Bystanders were among the wounded and included two children, hospital officials added.

Shahwan said the blast was detonated while a jeep carrying six members of a Hamas-led security force passed by.

And may I say (except for the bystanders): I hope you get many more terrorists this way.

Palestinian Christians are finally coming out and admitting what we’ve known for a very long time: They’re being harassed and driven out by the Muslim population of the terrortories[sic].

A number of Christian families have finally decided to break their silence and talk openly about what they describe as Muslim persecution of the Christian minority in this city.

The move comes as a result of increased attacks on Christians by Muslims over the past few months. The families said they wrote letters to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, the Vatican, Church leaders and European governments complaining about the attacks, but their appeals have fallen on deaf ears.

According to the families, many Christians have long been afraid to complain in public about the campaign of “intimidation” for fear of retaliation by their Muslim neighbors and being branded “collaborators” with Israel.

But following an increase in attacks on Christian-owned property in the city over the past few months, some Christians are no longer afraid to talk about the ultra-sensitive issue. And they are talking openly about leaving the city.

“The situation is very dangerous,” said Samir Qumsiyeh, owner of the Beit Sahur-based private Al-Mahd (Nativity) TV station. “I believe that 15 years from now there will be no Christians left in Bethlehem. Then you will need a torch to find a Christian here. This is a very sad situation.”

Where is the PC-USA support for their fellow Christians? Are they too involved with slamming Israel to notice their own coreligionists being oppressed by Muslims? Where is the World Council of Churches, another group so busy admonishing Israel that it hasn’t seemed to care that the Christian population of Bethlehem has disappeared since the palestinians took over under Oslo.

Palestinians are being attacked, and their land is being stolen, but since it’s not being taken by Israeli “settlers” (or being lied about being taken by Israelis), the world takes no notice:

Qumsiyeh, one of the few Christians willing to speak about the harsh conditions of their community, has been the subject of numerous death threats. His house was recently attacked with fire-bombs, but no one was hurt.

Qumsiyeh said he has documented more than 160 incidents of attacks on Christians in the area in recent years.

He said a monk was recently roughed up for trying to prevent a group of Muslim men from seizing lands owned by Christians in Beit Sahur. Thieves have targeted the homes of many Christian families and a “land mafia” has succeeded in laying its hands on vast areas of land belonging to Christians, he added.

Fuad and Georgette Lama woke up one morning last September to discover that Muslims from a nearby village had fenced off their family’s six-dunam plot in the Karkafa suburb south of Bethlehem. “A lawyer and an official with the Palestinian Authority just came and took our land,” said 69-year-old Georgette Lama.

But it gets worse. When they approached the PA for help, they had to bribe them to get their land back—and then the PA officials stole it for themselves.

The couple was later approached by senior PA security officers who offered to help them kick out the intruders from the land. “We paid them $1,000 so they could help us regain our land,” she said, almost in tears. “Instead of giving us back our land, they simply decided to keep it for themselves. They even destroyed all the olive trees and divided the land into small plots, apparently so that they could offer each for sale.” When her 72-year-old husband, Fuad, went to the land to ask the intruders to leave, he was severely beaten and threatened with guns.

“My husband is after heart surgery and they still beat him,” Georgette Lama said. “These people have no heart. We’re afraid to go to our land because they will shoot at us. Ever since the beating, my husband is in a state of trauma and has difficulties talking.”

Christians once made up 75% of the population of Bethlehem in 1947, and as recently as 1990 were still in the majority. But they’ve been fleeing by the thousands, and the world is too busy blaming Israel to see that it’s the Muslim persecution of Christians causing the exodus.

We keep hearing about the famous tolerance of other religions in Islam, but we keep seeing more and more examples of Islam’s utter intolerance for any other religion—starting with their inability to tolerate the State of Israel in their midst. But then, the Sunni-Shia divide is heating up enough to show that they’re not even tolerant of each other’s religion.

I cannot name the last time a Jew murdered another Jew because he followed a different form of Judaism. I don’t think anyone can, outside of Biblical times.

Once again, we see the true Religion of Peace™ is not Islam.

Add this story to the list of outraged groups who, well, need to get a clue.

A restaurant trade group says it is insulted by an insurance company’s planned Super Bowl ad that stars Kevin Federline as a fast-food worker.

Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co.’s 30-second spot shows Federline, who is estranged from pop princess Britney Spears, performing in a glitzy music video. However, the punch line is that he’s daydreaming while cooking french fries at a fast-food joint.

The ad amounts to a “strong and direct insult to the 12.8 million Americans who work in the restaurant industry,” wrote National Restaurant Association President and Chief Executive Steven Anderson in a letter to Nationwide CEO Jerry Jurgensen.

The commercial “would give the impression that working in a restaurant is demeaning and unpleasant,” Anderson wrote.

Yes, because working in a fast-food restaurant is one of the more highly prized careers among American high school graduates. Oh, come off it. The vast majority of people who work in those chains are teenagers. “You want fries with that?” has become a well-known phrase that mocks the industry.

A Nationwide executive shrugged off the criticism, saying that where humor is involved, there always will be somebody who doesn’t get it.

Ya think?

File under: Waste of money.

Scientists in the eastern German city of Jena said Wednesday they have finally given up after three years of failed attempts to entice a sloth into budging as part of an experiment in animal movement.

The sloth, named Mats, was remanded to a zoo after consistently refusing to climb up and then back down a pole, as part of an experiment conducted by scientists at the University of Jena’s Institute of Systematic Zoology and Evolutionary Biology.

Neither pounds of cucumbers nor plates of homemade spaghetti were appetizing enough to make Mats move.

“Mats obviously wanted absolutely nothing to do with furthering science,” said Axel Burchardt, a university spokesman.

Uh-huh. Sloth. S-L-O-T-H. Sloth.

The roaring in my right ear is down to an almost manageable level. I’m still very lethargic, so it will be another day resting. But I think my mind may actually be back in gear.

But damn, that pseudophedrine dries you out.

Blogging will probably dry up, too, as the day wears on.

David Irving, fresh out of prison for Holocaust denial, is doing it again. That’s funny, I thought he got out of jail early because he said he was wrong. Must have changed his mind or something.

British historian David Irving, who was jailed for questioning the Holocaust in a book published in Austria, said recently that the Auschwitz death camp was a tourist attraction, and added that there was no proof that it ever had gas chambers.

Irving, whose comments during an interview with Italy’s Sky TG24 News were immediately picked up by Italian news agencies, said there was no doubt the Nazis killed millions of Jews, but said the killings did not take place at Auschwitz.

“At Auschwitz they did not have gas chambers, or at least there is no proof that I am satisfied with,” Irving told the news channel’s
program, “controcorrente.” Irving spoke in English, but his comments were translated by a voiceover.

This is why we need the records released. So these liars can be confronted with the evidence they claim does not exist.

The Yourish.com mantra is in order here: Anti-Semites of the world, just die already.

A Jordanian man murdered his daughter even after she had a medical exam that proved she was a virgin.

A Jordanian man fatally shot his 17-year-old daughter whom he suspected of having sex despite a medical exam that proved her chastity, an official said Thursday. The man surrendered to police hours after the killing, saying he had done it for family honor.

A state forensic pathologist, who works at the National Institute of Forensic Medicine in Amman where an autopsy was performed, said in a phone interview that the girl had run away from home several times for unknown reasons.

Weeks ago, the girl had returned home from a family protection clinic after doctors had vouched for her virginity and the father had signed a pledge not to harm her, the pathologist said on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the case.

And yet another case for those who argue that Islam is a feminist religion. Whoops. My bad. I mean another case against those who argue that Islam is a feminist religion.