Okay. I live about 45 minutes from Busch Gardens, and have been there a number of times. Didn’t go last year for various reasons, but I generally go every year.

There’s a new ride that they’ve been building for a while, and it’s just about ready. The reason I know this is because every day for the last week, I’ve seen commercials for the new ride. In just about every single show, on every station, in the Richmond area. The new ride is called the Griffon, and it takes you up 205 feet, then drops you at a 90 degree angle at 70 mph, and, um, floorless. I don’t think I’ve been on any of those, unless you count the Alpengeist, which isn’t listed as a floorless coaster.

Here’s the thing. I like Busch Gardens, and I like some roller coasters. But I am afraid of heights, and it gets worse the older I get, and I can just about take the current fear of Apollo’s Chariot, which has a 210-ft. drop, and which I quite often pass up in favor of Loch Ness Monster. I have an adrenaline limit. Unlike your adrenaline junkie, I can only take so many heart-stopping moments before I have to just say “Sure, I’ll carry your stuff!” and wait for you to get on and off the ride.

Of course, I want to try to go on this one. Whether I succeed is anybody’s guess.

I defy you to watch this video and not laugh. Well, unless you don’t like kids. In which case, don’t click on the link, and, well, go get stuffed or something. How can you not like kids?

Over and over again, the meme is repeated: The palestinians are starving. They are living on nothing. They have no food, no medicines, no jobs, no money. The boycott is causing untold misery.

Every single one of those claims is a lie.

Despite the boycott against the government, foreign aid keeps coming. Last year, it even went up, from $1 billion in 2005 to more than $1.2 billion in 2006. But the funds are no longer being sent to a single address, the Finance Ministry.

Instead, the money now goes either to Abbas’ office or directly to civil servants and welfare recipients, bypassing the government. The Hamas-run Finance Ministry handles local revenues, and Cabinet minister have carried $68 million in cash across the Egypt-Gaza border because banks refuse to handle the government’s money transfers.

Look at the bolded words. The palestinians received $200 million more in 2006 than they did in 2005–under the aegis of a terrorist group that openly states its desire to destroy Israel.

What is happening is not that there is no money. What is happening is that again (or still), the money is being channeled into the hands of the terrorists and the kleptocrats that run the Palestinian Authority.

Fayyad said he is determined to restore the single account and end some of the more dubious practices, such as Hamas’ cross-border cash runs. “I will not allow having different channels of revenues and expenditures,” he said. “I will not allow anyone to sabotage the modern system we built.”

What a lie. He has no power to stop the flow of bribery and extortion. He didn’t even truly stop Arafat from stealing billions.

However, some critics say Fayyad did too little to go after those who stole public funds in the Arafat era.

“Salam Fayyad consolidated all Palestinian governmental investments, but he did not tell us about the history of these investments,” said Nasser Abdelkarimm, an economist at Bir Zeit University.

Fayyad says he was focused on making improvements at the Palestinian Treasury at the time, and hoped the guilty would eventually be put on trial.

So what’s this article about? The AP is spinning it as good for the palestinians to have formed the “unity” government so that the boycott can end—because then the palestinians will stop stealing from international aid donations. The writer seemingly has no opinion about ending the boycott only when Hamas meets the requirements of not trying to murder Jews and destroy Israel. No, what’s important is ending the boycott so that the corruption of the palestinians should end.

And so the moral decline of the West continues, led by its anti-Israel media.

Sorry, but this story calls for a pun:

Chicken fat spill closes part of interstate
MONROE, La. — Chicken fat clogged a major traffic artery Tuesday, a day after a leaky truck left a stinky, slippery trail along a one-mile stretch of Interstate Hwy. 20.

The vacuum truck crossed the Ouachita River before it was pulled over about 3:30 p.m. Monday.

The truck’s owner, Dixie Hydro-vac Specialist Co., an industrial cleaning company from West Monroe, tried to clean up the mess with a chemical, but then it started to rain, said John Kelly, district administrator for the state Department of Transportation and Development.

I’ve got another one or two in me, but I’ll give you all a chance in the comments first.

Gee. You couldn’t see this one coming.

A Hamas source said Tuesday that part of the $100 million in tax revenues transferred by Israel to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas went to pay security services, including members of a Hamas-led force.

“The [Hamas] Executive Force was a part of the security services which received part of their salaries, just like the other forces,” the source said.

During his meeting with Abbas on Sunday, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert asked him to account for how the revenues had been spent.

Israel opposed using the money to pay salaries, particularly to members of Hamas, whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel, government officials said.

Top aides to Abbas had no immediate comment.

“This flies in the face on what was agreed upon,” said an Israeli government official.

Under U.S. pressure, Israel transferred the $100 million to Abbas’s office in January.

Israeli officials said at the time that the money would be earmarked for humanitarian needs and programs to strengthen Abbas’s guard, and not to pay salaries.

Well, you could if you were, well, anyone with a brain. And a sense of honesty.

Today’s assignment: Go over to Omri’s and see if he’s posted about this, and if our snarks match like they usually do.

A blogger who is forced to remain anonymous has compiled a roundup of ex-Muslim blogs, a sort of Carnival of the Apostates, and the excerpts are powerful enough to make you want to read them all.

A sample:

Now that I am no longer a Muslim and don’t live in a Muslim country, my connection with Islam does not suddenly disappear, nor do my grievances against what it has done to my life evaporate. I have built a new and better life in the U.S., but I’ve paid a heavy price: I’ve lost my family, I’ve given up all right to public security or the government’s support in my native country, I’m committed to lying about my religious status in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia (where my family lives, whom I have not seen in 4 1/2 years) or foreswear visiting these countries that I called home for most of my life, I’m condemned to never have full acceptance in my own culture, by my own people.

These are not random events which are nobody’s fault, that nothing is responsible for. All this is Islam and Muslims’ fault.

Another sample:

I cannot resist relaying a personal episode when I was about 7 years old, which took place here in good ol’ England. I used to regularly attend a class after school to learn to recite the Koran, and we all sat cross-legged on the floor. One day, one of my friends mispronounced one of the Arabic words as he went through a verse. The large, bearded, and rather strict teacher, who had been listening intently, told him to stop. He quietly stood up and then slowly but surely placed each foot on both of the student’s knees until my friend was carrying the teacher’s entire body weight. The rest of us stared in abject fascination, appalled. As the teacher balanced on my friend’s knees, he then bounced up and down slightly. My friend was in tears.

I always took extra care not to mispronounce any Arabic word after that.

And one more:

Today, while in the elevator with a man, I noticed the fact of being in an elevator with a man. And not feeling nervous in the slightest. Or even noticing it, even vaguely registering it in the back of my mind. This is significant because I used to be terrified of getting into elevators in case men got on, and I wouldn’t enter elevators if there was a man already in there. And if ever, perchance, I happened to be alone with a man, trapped for another 30 seconds, I would near-panic.

The fear was sexual assault. And it wasn’t ungrounded. I wasn’t the only woman I knew who felt or acted this way about men and secluded spaces.

Read the blog. Read the posts collected there. And then link it, and the bloggers, as widely as you can. And take the time to think that of all the religions in the world, only one carries—and carries out—the death penalty for apostasy.

When a palestinian terrorist is killed by Israel, the headline generally reads “IDF Kills Palestinian Militant” or “Militant Killed by IDF.” When they kill each other, the AP writes that the “militant” simply “dies.”

Hamas Commander Dies in Gaza Shootout
A Hamas military commander was killed Tuesday in a shootout with Fatah gunmen shortly before the leaders of the two groups met to try to bridge their differences over a power-sharing deal.

At least seven people were wounded in the gun battle in Gaza City.

Imagine, if you will, that the IDF killed one and wounded seven. The headline would be: “IDF Kills Militant, Wounds Seven.” And yet, look again at that headline.

Now let’s go over to Reuters, which uses the active voice in the headline.

Hamas gunman killed as unity talks snag

Interesting how the gunfight and murder of a Hamas terrorists by Fatah terrorists is considered a “snag.” I would hate to see what they’d consider a “difficulty.”

Hamas vowed to avenge the killing of a leader in its armed wing on Tuesday in Gaza in renewed violence that erupted as talks over a Palestinian unity government bogged down in disagreement over a cabinet post.

A Fatah official denied any responsibility for the killing of Ala al-Haddad, Gaza City commander of Hamas’s armed wing, the Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades, and called it the result of a clan feud.

Two other people were wounded in the incident, both of them members of a Hamas-led police force.

And you have to love the irony in the following quote:

A Qassam spokesman said gunmen from the Fatah-dominated Preventive Security Service had opened fire at their commander’s car, killing him.

“This is a dangerous and criminal action,” spokesman Abu Ubaida said. “We will not stand silent while Palestinian blood is being shed. The Qassam Brigades will punish those killers.”

In order to stop palestinian blood from flowing, they’re going to kill more palestinians. They never truly know how stupid they sound.

But here, watch how Reuters downplays the warfare that has killed nearly 100 palestinians, many of them civilians:

A Fatah official denied any security men affiliated to it were responsible. “The Preventive Security Services and its men were not involved at all in the tragic incident in Gaza,” the official said.

More than 90 Palestinians were killed in factional violence which was largely calmed by a deal reached in Saudi Arabia last month in which Fatah and Hamas agreed to a power-sharing deal.

Notice how the number of civilians is not included in these statistics, yet the number of civilians, and the phrase “including XX children” is always used when describing palestinians killed by Israelis. And of course, it’s “factional violence”—not, say, warfare.

The AP story carries a higher death count total, but still no word on all the civilian deaths.

Deadly violence between the two factions has flared occasionally since they reached a power-sharing deal last month. The accord brokered in Saudi Arabia was meant to halt months of fighting in which more than 130 people were killed. But tensions have remained high.

Gee, at least they used the adjective “deadly” before “violence” to describe all those deaths.

This concludes our latest lesson in media bias, where palestinians simply cannot do wrong, and Israelis cannot do right (but is always mentioned in every story regarding palestinians, no matter what).