I was in northern VA all day, and I am tired. However, my computer is much, much better now due to Chris’ genius in discovering something that I didn’t: That Replay AV never uninstalled on my system, and had been running for two days, causing my CPU to nearly up and die. No wonder the fan was going nonstop. Also, I have more nifty-keen work-related software loaded, so I can blog less and work more! Hooray!

My freezer is full of yummy kosher meats, and my closet has several bags of kosher-for-Passover food ready for Mom and me when the need hits, which is, uh, about two weeks away.

I went to the kosher Chinese restaurant near the kosher supermarket. Turned out I had the place all to myself. I felt so special. The manager sat down and chatted with me for a while during dinner. Just as I was finishing up, a party of five walked in and ruined my ability to pretend that I’d rented out the entire restaurant for myself. My waiter was very sweet, and very attentive. It pays to be the only customer. I tipped him extra. I thought he might not have much of a crowd after me. Plus, when I asked him for a leak-proof container for the chicken and broccoli, he put it in a soup container, which is just perfect for storage.

The kosher store had Goodman’s soup nuts. My brothers and I munch on those things during Passover as one of the few edible snacks. (Soup nuts are the equivalent of oyster crackers.) I love Goodman’s. Theirs are the best kosher products on the market, and for some reason, they’ve lost nearly all of their market share. You can’t find Goodman’s egg matzo anywhere around here. We were going to ask my mother’s sister to bring some home from NJ, but she’s a rather grumpy woman, and we decided we didn’t want to live with her “you owe me” attitude over two lousy boxes of matzo.

Oh. Soup nuts. It turns out that Gracie loves them. This is a shocker at about 9.0 on the Richter scale. Gracie likes three things: Dry cat food, tuna-flavored wet cat food, and canned tuna (in water, not oil). If I change brands of tuna, she won’t eat it. If the tuna is in oil, she won’t eat it. If the wet food is too old (as in several hours out of the can), she won’t eat it. If it’s cold (I refrigerate it to keep it fresher), she won’t eat it. (I nuke it for five seconds and she’ll eat it.) This cat eats NOTHING else. Not ice cream, not milk, not cheese, not any other kind of meat. It’s possible she likes other kinds of fish, but as I am allergic, she gets no chance to try them. (I only buy canned tuna because the cats like it. I can’t eat the stuff, alas.) So she eats three things. Three.

And she ate soup nuts. Not only ate them, but demanded them, wolfed them down, then tried to sneak into the box while I wasn’t looking. Who knew Graice was a Yiddishke cat? She likes mandlen!

In any case. It’s been a long, tiring day, and there will be no more blogging tonight. I’m going to bed. I got lost several times due to not quite understanding the concept of the Beltway yet (I think I finally got it down by day’s end) and thinking I was heading for Richmond when I was actually doing no such thing. However, I can usually figure out when things don’t look like they’re supposed to. But I wasted at least half an hour getting lost today, and probably more.

Yep. Tired. Blogging will resume tomorrow.

It is up, and it is good.

The feature interview is with Adil Zeshan, a former Muslim and the creator of The House of Apostasy, a blog roundup of ex-Muslim bloggers.

Lair Simon takes apart Donald Trump, which is so easy, even Rosie O’Donnell can do it.

Haven’t heard Damian’s piece, so I don’t know what he’s doing, but of course, it will be good.

And my piece is yet another interview score: I’ve got most of the major candidates for president talking to me about themselves and each other.

Give it a listen, and email the link to a friend. We are getting better all the time.

Next week, I’m thinking I’m going back to a simple editorial, though. All these celebrity interviews are taking their toll on me.

These are the means of “resistance” that Hamas reserves for itself:

DF soldiers on Sunday uncovered an explosive device weighing 7 kilograms (about 15.5 pounds) and a gas canister in a Palestinian’s bag at the Beit Iba checkpoint, west of Nablus.

Explosives were also found in a bag carried by another Palestinian man.

[...] Since the beginning of 2007, IDF forces have uncovered 16 explosive devices and two explosive belts in the Nablus area.

Terror organizations have also been trying to carry out attacks from the Gaza Strip. On Thursday, an Egyptian security official said that a potential Palestinian suicide bomber and 10 Egyptians were arrested in the northern Sinai Peninsula.

The Palestinian, identified as Hamid al-Nador, was detained Tuesday while wearing an explosive belt inside a beach resort in the border city of el-Arish.

And this:

An Israeli man was moderately injured Monday by a gunshot near Kibbutz Nahal Oz, north of the Gaza Strip.

According to reports, a Palestinian sniper shot the 40-year-old Israeli while he was conducting repair work at a gas terminal near the kibbutz. The injured man has been hospitalized.

The incident took place close to the Karni terminal, a cargo crossing station which has often been closed due to terror alerts.

And this:

A day after the new Palestinian unity government was sworn in, terror organizations in Gaza signaled that they plan to continue firing rockets at Israel. Five Qassam rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip on Sunday in three different barrages after a relative period of calm.

And this:

Three Hamas members were apprehended near Ramallah last month for allegedly attempting to kidnap an Israeli citizen from a hitchhiking post located at a West Bank intersection, it was approved for publication Monday.

The suspects were identified as Anas Barghouti, 20, from the village of Qubar, Omar Barghouti, 21, also of Qubar and Duad Mantzur, 23, from Bilin.

Omar Barghouti was recently released from an Israeli prison, while Mantzur was released last June.

The incident occurred on February 4, 2007, when the suspects arrived at the Eli intersection with their vehicle and attempted to kidnap the Israeli, but fled the scene after failing in their attempt.

And most of all, this:

Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin on Tuesday warned of the dangers of an unprecedented arms build-up in the Gaza Strip, estimating that terror groups there smuggled huge quantities of explosives from Egypt last year.

Speaking to members of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Diskin said terror groups in Gaza had been cashing in on a lull with Israel to improve the firing range of the makeshift rockets they fire at Israel and to prepare for a possible confrontation with the Israeli army.

He added that 31 tons of explosives were smuggled into the coastal territory last year, six times more than the average amount smuggled in previous years.

In addition, hundreds of Hamas gunmen were being sent to Iran to undergo military training, the Shin Bet head said.

A group intent on a peace agreement has no need to arm itself and train its troops. The world turns a blind eye to the murderous tactics of Hamas, and morons like George Soros tell Israel and the U.S. that they must deal with Hamas.

Soros is an utter fool. Hamas does not want peace. Hamas wants nothing less than the destruction of Israel and her replacement with an Islamic caliphate. That’s what it says in the Hamas charter. Not a single person has ever said that Hamas is willing to change its charter and renounce its genocidal aims.

That being the case, why on earth should Israel and American treat Hamas as anything other than the murdering terrorist organization that it is?

Ynet reports on a gathering in Ramallah called ‘Jerusalem First’ conference. The proceedings of the conference are, most probably, as good a proof of a deity pulling some strings as any other natural or supernatural phenomena. After all, it is a rare day when our fairly useless PR machinery gets what is called in modern advertisement lingo “a free gift”.

It started with the following call of despair:

Hadash Party Chairman MK Mohammed Barakeh … sharply attacked Israeli policy in the capital, claiming that it sought to empty the city of its Palestinian inhabitants.

“With all due respect to Al-Aqsa Mosque and its holiness,” Barakeh declared, “if Israel succeeds in emptying Jerusalem of its residents, what will be the city’s importance? The city, if it has no inhabitants, will be no more than stones.”

Unfortunately, the honorable participants in this conference failed to compare notes, and this is what happened:

The Palestinian Authority’s “governor of Jerusalem,” another conference participant, said that “despite all our fears, we are managing to survive in Jerusalem. In 1967 there were 70,000 Palestinians in Jerusalem and now we are 300,000.”

Some stones… Truly a meeting of minds. And this is not all. The above mentioned “governor of Jerusalem” decided to go even farther with the following pearl:

“No historian or archaeologist - even Israeli ones - have ever succeeded in proving that there is a historically based religious or political link between the Jews and Jerusalem.”

No comments…

Cross-posted on SimplyJews