Lair links to a Rachel Lucas post where she gives advice to would-be online dating service success stories. The part that bothers Lair, of course, is where Rachel says not to put up photos of your cats.

Well. These are for you, Rachel.

First, we have the cutest picture ever taken of Gracie, who is all curled up and happy in her tissue-paper nest. You can see that her belly fur is finally growing back.

Next we have Gracie in the window, posing for me as I return home and letting me know she missed me.

Then we have the Tig greetings. This is what I come home to about ninety percent of the time now. I open the door, and the kitty condo is right there.

And here is the view from my kitchen window on a hot, sunny day. While I am cooking, or washing the dishes, or doing any manner of kitchen task, I can look out and see this:

Why on earth would I be ashamed to publicize the fact that I own cats? It’s obvious that my cats are happy, healthy, and loved. A person who knows how to take care of an animal quite often also knows how to take care of another person.

Love me, love my cats. It’s that simple.

Would I put a cat picture in an online dating service profile? Beats me. I’ve never tried it.

Besides, if I decided to post a picture of, say, me holding Tig while not wearing a top, I’m guessing that would generate a hell of a lot of positive buzz. (He’s big enough to cover my entire torso, but still—you know people would link. I’m still getting hits every single day from the Blog Chicks Pix on whatshisface’s Beltway blog.)

Really. If a guy doesn’t want to pick me because he doesn’t like a picture of my cat, I’m thinking I don’t want to have anything to do with him in the first place.

Here’s a shock: Iran is supplying weapons to Syria, which in turn supplies them to Hezbullah. And Iraq, of course.

Turkey appears to have foiled an attempt to smuggle weapons from Iran into Syria, the Lebanese newspaper A-Nahar reported Wednesday.

The report said that security forces in Turkey’s southern Diyarbakir province busted open one of the cars of a train traveling from Iran to Syria, and found rockets and American-made rifles.

Say, isn’t there a UN resolution forbidding weapon transfers to Syria or something like that?

America trains Palestinian terrorists: We’ve been pointing this out for years, and yet, the U.S. continues to pour money and training down the terrorist toilet that is Fatah, even after Israel gives proof after proof that the training, and the American weapons, are being used to murder Israelis. And, in some cases, Americans.

According to Israeli and Palestinian security sources, Shawish, as a member of Force 17, received US training in 1997 at an American managed military base in the West Bank city of Jericho. The base continues to train Force 17 members. Multiple other Brigades members who also double as Force 17 officers previously received US training.

[...] Shawish doubled as the Ramallah chief of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group. He previously boasted of involvement in a West Bank shooting attack in December 2000 that killed Israeli ultranationalist leader Benjamin Kahane and Kahane’s wife, Talya.

Way to go, CIA! Another notch on your belt for the murderers of the world.

Well, that’s a no-brainer: A Palestinian collaborator says the only way to stop the kassams is the use of overwhelming force.

Qadia said that the short breaks are not a real solution for the anxiety brought on by the Qassams. “It’s only getting worse and with no end in sight, unfortunately I see no real leadership here, it’s every man for himself. Nothing else will work, we just need to go into Gaza, full force, and pound them, erase them completely, until it’s over. That’s the only language they understand and believe me – I know what I’m talking about. After all, I lived with them.”

Speaking of kassams: Yeah, they’re still falling. Another apartment hit, but luckily no serious damage to the residents.

Yeah, we knew that, too: Hezbullah has been completely re-armed, thanks to Syria and Iran.

Transportation Minister and former defense minister Shaul Mofaz said Wednesday that the Hizbullah has returned to its combat strength prior to the Second Lebanon War, Israel Radio reported.

Speaking at the local government summit at Tel Aviv University, Mofaz warned not to be fooled by the lack of Hizbullah outposts in southern Lebanon since he claims the group has bunkers underground near the the border with Israel.

Wonderful. Coupled with the news that Iran is revving up its activities in Europe, this is going to be a very, very hot summer.

Ha’aretz, the Israeli paper that is the darling of the left, trashes Great Brtain’s policy of constantly trying to delegitimize Israel as a nation.

Britain has become in recent years the battlefield in Israel’s fight for its existence as a Jewish state.

The number of British organizations calling for the boycott of Israel, their public campaigns, and their constant comparisons between Israel and the apartheid regime of South Africa have made the battle for British public opinion particularly significant.

On Wednesday, representatives of the new British University and College Union (UCU) will be meeting in Bournemouth. On the agenda is another proposal to boycott Israel’s academic institutions. These proposals have become as regular and as predictable as Qassam attacks on Sderot. The fact that studies at the Sapir Academic College in Sderot are not taking place because of the constant rocket fire from Gaza, even though the college is not in occupied territory and Gaza is no longer occupied, apparently does not bother British academia. The fact that Hamas, which controls the Palestinian Authority, does not recognize even pre-1967 Israel, and commits acts of terror against civilians, does not matter either. These nuances did not stop one boycott initiator from saying last week that justice in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is entirely on one side.

That is some serious trash-talking from Ha-aretz, the paper most willing to blame Israel for her problems with the Palestinians. This is the newspaper that all serious lefty (and anti-Israel) bloggers quote, and link to in their sidebars.

Taking off the gloves in this debate involves knowingly foregoing the kudos that British academia lavishes on all who are willing to express anti-Israel stands. The UCU has even had the termerity to proclaim that Israeli lecturers who disown the policies of the Israeli government will not be boycotted. It is British academics who should lose sleep over this McCarthyistic demand. Academic freedom means first of all an open exchange of opinions, without coercion, and not shutting people’s mouths. Moreover, the British boycott is directed at Israel’s academic institutions that in any case are a bastion of opposition to the occupation.

That’s telling them, Ha’aretz!

On the 40th anniversary of the Six-Day War, British academia should look realistically at peace efforts in the Middle East: Over the past decade, Israel has elected governments that have expressed the desire of a majority of Israelis for a bilateral solution of two states for two peoples and a withdrawal from most of the settlements. The withdrawal from Gaza was to have been the first stage. The victory of Hamas, which refuses to recognize Israel, cut off the process.

The anti-Zionist winds blowing in Europe, mainly in academia and in Britain, strengthen the position that the very birth of the Jewish state was a mistake. The European hard left regards the Law of Return as the root of all evil; however, without acknowledging the Jewish character of the State of Israel, there is not even a basis for dialogue. British academia is in fact demanding that Israel democratically cease to exist as a Zionist entity, and that it be swallowed up in the non-democratic region in order to pander to the latest trend.

One would be tempted to call those “anti-Semitic winds,” if one weren’t Ha’aretz. The current meme, that Israel’s existence was a “mistake,” is yet another way to tell the Jews that they are less deserving than the rest of the world. Sure, we gave you a country, they say (and they do say “gave” us a country, never mind that Israel was ours, and that we are the indigenous people, not “colonists”) but now that it’s turned out to be such a pain in the ass, we’re taking it back. Oh, you can stay there, they tell us, but only at the whims of the Arabs we declared indigenous, even though many of them came from the surrounding countries once Jews started to make the desert bloom again. And never mind that continuous Jewish presence in Israel all these centuries. They were the minority, so they don’t count. You left. It isn’t yours any longer.

That, they say, is democracy in action: Removing the world’s only Jewish state from the world stage, to add yet another Islamic dictatorship ruled by thugs and murderers, with Jews as second-class citizens in the nation they envision. Funny how these same people didn’t give a damn about “Palestine” when the Palestinians were being ruled by Jordan in the West Bank, and the Egyptians commanded Gaza. Funny how the sacred sites of Jerusalem weren’t a problem when Jordan was destroying Jewish shrines and holy sites, but they’ve become a problem now that the Israelis want to maintain the Western Wall and its environs.

Funny.

In a “Gee, something smells funny” kind of way.

Go get ‘em, Ha’aretz. Not that it will make a difference. The Brits have hated the Jews for centuries. They need no excuse to continue.

I keep getting pop-up windows telling me I’ve got all kinds of system infections and I should click to download Errorsafe. Of course, I do not click to download, and in fact, am leery of closing the pop-up window until I’m sure it’s not scamming me into clicking “yes” somewhere.

The thing is, I can’t figure out where they’re coming from. I’m not sure I have Errorsafe or not, and Symantec insists that it’s preventing Errorsafe from infecting my system.

And yet, twice today, I have had an Errorsafe pop-up window asking me to d/l their annoying program. The first thing that happens when something like that occurs is my reaching for the cable modem and immediately disconnecting from the internet. Then I try to figure out what, exactly, I’m looking at.

Anyone have any ideas where this sucker is coming from? It hit me after I was surfing a Hot Air story, but that may be sheer coincidence. Then again, I went to some site called the Epoch Times, which may have been the source of the window.

If anyone else has had this problem, I’d love to hear about it.