Just in time for me to catch up before Season Four begins, I treated myself and bought a big-screen TV and got HDTV and the Sci-Fi Channel.

Y’know, I didn’t care much for the remake when I saw the miniseries all those years ago. But I borrowed Season One from a friend, and it sort of grows on you. So I bought Season Two, and was utterly hooked. Been waiting for Three to get here for a while—it’s months later than it should have been, but at least they stopped doing that stupid “2.0″ and “2.5″ crap. Season Three is all in one package. I have that, and Razor (extended edition, of course, though I’m going to take a wild guess that some of the “SCENES WE COULDN’T SHOW ON TV!” are between Kain and Six. Yawn.), which I’ll get to after I get through all of Three.

I should also like to point out that the guys from Circuit City did a great job hooking up the new set. Delivered it first thing in the morning, hours earlier than I thought they would, and put all the wires and cables right, and got me started. Comcast totally screwed everything up, so I was on the phone for an hour last night unattaching and re-attaching cables, and we won’t talk about the two trips to the Comcast center to get a box that worked with my HDMI cable. Or the fact that the box I did get finally still had hours of the previous customer’s recordings on it, puzzling me to no end as to how Comcast knew I watched ABC soaps, and why they were pre-set to record for me. Especially as I’ve given them up again to regain a little more time in my life.

The thing I can’t figure out is how to program only the channels I want to run through. But that’s because I haven’t really sat down with the manual yet. I want to set all the HD stations that I will actually watch (forget about HD Travel Channel, who the hell cares?), and, oh, yeah—I have to get a new DVD player. Mine’s too old to show anything above 480i. I know this because the TV tells me so when I try to complain to it that my DVD output sucks. (The upgraded cables didn’t do it, Chris, it’s at least eight years old, and maybe ten, so it’s pre-HD.)

I think I’ll buy a DVD/VCR recorder if I can find a decent one that’s not too expensive.

I have to say, I am really happy with my new TV. When the Circuit City guys came to set it up, they were trying to figure out how to center it in the living room. “Oh, no,” I said. “See that chair?” [Points to The Chair That Swallows You Whole, the overstuffed leather chair on the other side of the room] “That’s where I watch TV. Center it on that.” They laughed, and did.

As for the rest of you, well, tough. It’s my living room, and my TV. Guests are just going to have to suffer on the sofa. Okay, maybe I’ll share the chair sometimes. If I really like you.

Next on my wishlist: My own living room, in my own condo or townhouse, to put it in. There’s another development going up about halfway between my and Sarah’s house, not too far away from where I am now, that I might be moving to by next year. It’s right near 288, so it doesn’t really extend my commute to northern VA on Mondays.

I’m still in shock. There’s no buyer’s remorse at all. Probably because this is the first big-ticket item I’ve bought since I bought my car, and that was back in 2000. I think I’m due.

It’s good to have a good job. And to have money again.

Hamas is slowly but surely dropping the last of the mask of pretending that they want peace with Israel.

Gaza’s Hamas rulers on Friday called on the leaders of Arab nations to drop their proposal for a comprehensive peace deal with Israel, and support the militant group’s battle against the Jewish state instead.

[...] Hamas leader Khalil al-Haya said Israel would only respond to violence, and encouraged others to join it.

“Cut all ties with Israel, withdraw the Arab initiative,” he shouted. “The Zionist enemy doesn’t have a vision of peace. Only force… fighting and holy war works with (Israel.)”

And oh yeah—they told Arab leaders to STFU about kassam rockets murdering Israeli civilians.

Hamas politburo chief Khaled Mashaal has called on the leaders of Arab states not to criticize the Qassam rocket fire on Israel during the Arab Summit scheduled to begin in Damascus on Saturday.

In the letter published Friday morning by the London-based Arabic-language al-Hayat newspaper, the Hamas leader defended the Palestinian organizations’ use of the rockets, claiming that this was “a limited weapon”.

[...] “We have no other choice but to note that the Gaza missiles and the limited weapons the Palestinian resistance possesses are aimed at defending our people and our land.

“This weapon is a response to the occupation and aggressiveness. Nevertheless, all the Palestinian resistance factions have expressed their willingness to take the truce issue seriously.”

Say, about Hamas taking that truce seriously? Not so much. Because every time Hamas says they’ll consider a truce, they insist on it being a complete and total surrender of Israel’s ability to stop terror attacks.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad have informed Egypt that they are only prepared to accept a truce with Israel on condition that it include the West Bank, as well as the Gaza Strip, sources close to the Palestinian groups said Thursday.

And gee—the other terrorists don’t want peace, either.

Thursday’s meeting apparently ended without an agreement after the Egyptians told Hamas and Islamic Jihad representatives that Israel had rejected their demand to include the West Bank in the truce.

While all this is going on, Hamas is busy smuggling longer-range rockets into Gaza, as well as blueprints for longer-range rockets and terrorists trained in Iran. The next war is going to be ugly, ugly, ugly. There are going to be many Israeli civilian casualties. And the really sad thing about it is that so many people out there are going to be happy that Israel finally “got theirs.”

I am not feeling very good about this summer. I think Iran is about ready to make its move.

The worst-case scenario—the deaths of dozens of children—just missed becoming a reality today.

Three Qassam rockets were launched from northern Gaza towards Israel on Friday by noon, with one of the rockets narrowly missing a nursery in Kibbutz Nir Am. The rockets were fired several short hours after IDF soldiers killed a Hmas gunmen in an exchange of fire in southern Gaza.

The nursery in question is intended for toddlers aged one and half to two. The nurse for the children’s homes, Orna Schwartz, told Ynet of the ordeal: “The children were in the yard when the rocket alarm sirens sounded. We rushed to bring them into the bomb shelter and then we heard a loud explosion.”

A near-miss is almost as good as a hit, though. Guaranteed the pals are recalibrating their missile launchers for this one.

“All the windows shattered, pictures fell from the walls and there was a great panic. We have a fortified roof but not full reinforcement,” said Schwartz, adding that it was a miracle no one was wounded.

“We were very fortunate that none of the children were injured but they were very frightened. This is the reality they have to deal with,” she said.

So how does the AP cover this story?

In a related development, a Palestinian militant was killed and two were injured in a clash with Israeli forces on a raid in the southern Gaza Strip Friday, the military said. Palestinian medics confirmed one man was killed. Hamas claimed the dead man as a member, but local residents said he was not a fighter.

Right. Ignore it. Kassams have been flying every day during the s-called “lull,” and yet, the AP picks up only on the deaths of “militants.” These “militants” are the men responsible for creating, importing, and smuggling the rockets that nearly killed Israeli babies in a nursery today. But that angle isn’t important to the world media.

James D Besser reports:

Almost a year after reports of an “alternative AIPAC” emerged in the middle of the Jewish political world, many of the same players are on the verge of announcing a revised initiative intended to get the message to politicians that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee is not the only pro-Israel voice in town, The Jewish Week has learned.

The invitation reads:

“For too long, the loudest American voices in political and policy debates have been those on the far right — often Republican neoconservatives or extreme Christian Zionists,” according to the invitation. “J Street aims to change that. We are the first and only lobby and PAC (political action committee) dedicated to ensuring Israel’s security, changing the direction of American policy in the Middle East and opening up American political debate about Israel and the Middle East.”

Those involved include:

The J-Street board of advisers includes a number of lay and professional leaders of Americans for Peace Now (APN), including CEO Debra DeLee, as well as Marcia Freedman, founder and former president of Brit Tzedek v’Shalom. Several activists with ties to Democratic presidential contender Sen. Barack Obama are on the panel, as well. They include Robert Malley, whose involvement in Obama’s broad foreign policy advisory team has generated criticism from Republicans and some pro-Israel groups, and Alan Solomont, a top Obama fundraiser and major player in Democratic politics. Also on board: David Kimche, a former deputy chief of the Mossad and a member of the advisory council of the Israel Policy Forum (IPF) — another pro-peace process group that was connected with last year’s efforts but which, several source say, is not directly involved in the current project.

Besser cites an incident from 1988 where several Jewish groups disagreed with AIPAC’s decision to fight giving Yasser Arafat a visa to speak to the UN. (AIPAC[’s position prevailed and Arafat gave his speech in Geneva.) What’s hard to see is why AIPAC was wrong then. Arafat gave a phony speech in which he supposedly renounced terrorism and accepted Israel’s right to exist. The speech, in fact, did neither. And Arafat went to his grave never actually renouncing terrorism in anything other than words. If this is the example the new group wishes to use to show that AIPAC is somehow shortsighted, it’s a bad example. And of course the new group pre-emptively attacks its critics.

It also faces a political challenge because “AIPAC has been recognized by non-Jewish politicians as the voice of the Jewish community,” he said. An alternative voice “may be hard to sell to non-Jewish politicians who don’t want to be tarred as anti-Israel.” Jews on the left, he said, are less likely to put Israel-related politics at the top of their list of giving priorities – something AIPAC supporters and supports of pro-Israel political action committees have traditionally done.

Actually, being pro-Israel isn’t a Jewish issue, it’s an American issue. Polls have consistently shown that most Americans are pro-Israel as opposed to pro-Arab or pro-Palestinian. The groups involved the new lobbying group are similar to the Israel Policy Forum which ran a poll in 1997 alleging that most American Jews supported the United States putting “moderate” political pressure on Israel to compromise with the PA. (Daniel Pipes analyzes that poll along with one from his own organization here.) The results of that poll played a role in undermining American political support for the Netanyahu government by the Clinton administration. It had the effect o strengthening Arafat and the PA. Again, I suspect the organizers of this new lobbying group see nothing wrong with that. However bolstering Arafat at the expense of the Israeli government cannot be viewed as supporting Israel. Those involved in the group include someone who supported the Geneva initiative. The Geneva initiative was a foreign effort - with scant support from the Israeli public - to pressure the Israeli government to make wide ranging concessions to the PA. This new group may call themselves pro-peace. Maybe they are. I doubt it, because they absolve the PA for nearly all of its bad faith and support of terror. However, one thing it is not is pro-Israel. It is anti-Iserael.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.