I see these sights nearly every day, and nearly every day I tell myself, “Meryl, bring the camera upstairs next time you go!” And nearly every day, I forget. But not today.

Tig likes to sit at the top of the stairs looking at me. It’s always amusing.

Gracie likes to snuggle into warm nests in the wintertime.

And I like to see them doing these things day after day. They’re happy kitties.

You’d never be able to tell, looking at that picture, that Gracie is back to licking herself bare underneath. The fur growth from the operation is all gone, except for right along the scar. Sarah says my cat is the only cat she’s ever heard of that’s back to normal when it’s neurotic. I have to admit, she’s right. Next time I go to the vet, I’ll see if we can’t do something about licking herself bare. Her coat is too beautiful to lose.

I don’t know how true this is, but if it is, Iran is crapping bricks, sweating bullets, and otherwise extremely unhappy about the general who defected. Because he may have brought with him the smoking gun.

Former Iranian General and assistant defense minister Ali Rez Asghari left Iran using a new passport and pseudonym and managed to smuggle important intelligence documents, according to a report published Friday morning by London based newspaper Asharaq Alawsat.

According to the report, the missing Iranian general was carrying documents and maps of Iran’s military and intelligence infrastructure as well as information regarding the relations between the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Hizbullah and the Islamic Jihad.

In addition, the general was reported to possess information regarding the Iranian nuclear program as well as information about Iran’s strategic military plans.

Again—don’t get your hopes up too high. I have no way of knowing how true this is. But I’m passing it on just in case.

It’s called Contentions, and I love the typeface they used for the name of the blog. In fact, I really like the overall look-and-feel, and the reason I’m noticing this now is that I am currently working from my home doing web work for a northern VA company, and the second you get back into the biz, your mindset changes while reading websites.

In any case, I’ve quoted Commentary more than once or twice here (especially Norman Podhoretz), so check out the blog. They dissed the French recently, too. The first comment almost caused me to spray Coke on my monitor.

Go. Look around. They’re fairly new, and it’s Commentary, so if you like the magazine, you’ll like the blog.

I like the magazine.

Just when you think Carter can’t become any more of an asshole, he lowers your expectations and proves you wrong. Now he’s telling Jews how to be Jews. He said that yesterday while insisting that his redefinition of “apartheid” to fit, well, whatever definition he so pleases, is right. Even though “apartheid” was a word that meant strictly the government discrimination of nonwhites in South Africa, but hey, why let the facts get in the way of a little healthy Jew-bashing?

By apartheid, Carter said he meant the forced segregation of one people by another. He said Israel’s policies in the territories are contrary to the tenets of the Jewish faith.

I would like to hear, exactly, what tenets that wanna-be Talmudic scholar James Earl Carter, Jr., who is a born-again Christian, is proclaiming these policies to be against.

Come on, Jimmy. Do tell. Inquiring minds want to know.

And here he goes again:

“There will be no peace until Israel agrees to withdraw from all occupied Palestinian territory,” he said, while leaving room for some land swaps that would permit Jews to remain on part of the West Bank in exchange for other Israeli-held land to be taken over by Palestinians.

“Withdrawal would dramatically reduce any threat to Israel,” he said.

Yes, because it’s working so well in Gaza, where Hamas is building up weapons stocks and sending its terrorists out to Iran for training for the next war against Israel—which will be a three-front war (Lebanon, Gaza, and Syria, with attacks attempted through the West Bank).

But it is Israel that is the barrier to peace. Right. Bagelblogger keeps track of the kassam missiles raining down on Israel during the sham “cease-fire.” The number is up to 141, but I think he missed the one fired Wednesday. This is from the Gaza Strip, which Israel no longer controls, and which has no Israelis within its territory.

Perhaps our former president might want to take his head out of his ass and take a look around the next time he visits the terrortories[sic]. He might learn something.