I am all out of things to write today. Instead, I give you the zen of Tig on Afghan. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out.

We took a Caturday afternoon nap. Tig was just napping. I was trying to escape the monster headache that 100-degree weather and incredibly high mold spores was giving me. Stupid Virginia. Stupid allergies.

Check out that tail of his. It’s going to be something else when he gets his full growth. It’s already about as long as he is.

Funny how Hamas hasn’t managed to fulfill its promises to Jimmy Carter, the mediator extraordinaire who went to Gaza and declared Israel to be the criminals, not Hamas.

Captured IDF soldier Gilad Schalit has still not written the letter Hamas promised would be given to his family, Moussa Abu Marzouk, deputy head of Hamas’s political bureau, was quoted as saying Sunday by Qatari newspaper A-Sharq.

Some six weeks ago, former US president Jimmy Carter brokered a Hamas pledge to send a letter from Schalit to his parents in a meeting with Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal in Damascus.

Yeah, it’s hard to write if you’re dead. We have seen no proof of life from any of the captives of 2006. Until we do, I’m assuming the worst—which is one reason why I oppose an exchange of prisoners. Not without proof of life.

Chalk up another “victory” for the expert negotiator—the one who stopped North Korea from developing nuclear weapons—oh, wait. The one who oversaw “free and fair” elections in Venezuela—oh, wait. The one who helped Robert Mugabe come to power in Zimbabwe—oh, wait.

I guess the best news here is that Israel basically ignores Carter.

Soldiers caught yet another would-be bomber at one of those “humiliating” checkpoints—in an area the Palestinians are supposed to be policing.

IDF soldiers manning the Hawara checkpoint near the West Bank city of Nablus apprehended on Sunday an 18-year-old Palestinian who was carrying six pipe bombs, a bullet cartridge and a bag full of what appeared to be gunpowder.

[...] In recent years the army has foiled numerous attempts to smuggle explosives and weapons through Hawara, which is located south of Nablus. Three weeks ago a 20-year-old Palestinian carrying three explosive devices was shot dead by soldiers at the checkpoint.

Earlier on Sunday the IDF removed 10 roadblocks in the south Mount Hebron region in accordance with Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s order to ease restrictions on Palestinian residents of the West Bank.

Security sources told Ynet that the lifting of roadblocks would allow terrorists to travel more freely throughout the West Bank.

That would be because every time Israel lifts roadblocks, terrorists murder Israelis. And then the world tsk-tsks, and tells Israel it was a random act of violence, and not to crack down on the Palestinians because one lone, unaffiliated terrorist group murdered a few citizens. The cycle of violence must be halted; don’t “retaliate” by hunting down terrorists.

I could write their news articles for them, I’m so used to that crap.

Well, no, actually, the police arrested the people in question and nothing else happened. These are Jews, not Muslims, after all.

Shocked and repulsion seem the best words to describe the collective feelings of Haifa’s police reconnaissance unit upon entering an apartment in their city on Saturday night only to find pages torn from a prayer book being used as toilet paper.

Six suspects between the ages of 18-20 were brought before the Haifa Magistrate’s Court on Sunday morning as police requested their arrest be extended for questioning.

Over the past few months a number of graffiti-sprayed swastikas and hate slogans had appeared on the walls of buildings around Allenby St. and in the Kiryat Eliezer, Bat Galim and Hadar neighborhoods of the city. Police are presently investigating a possible connection to the suspects currently in their custody.

They’re recent Russian immigrants. There’s a controversy over Russian immigrants that Snoopy could probably elaborate on far better than I, but a significant number of Russians who immigrated to Israel have no background in Judaism, and picked up the disgusting habits of their fellow Russians—the ones responsible for the Settlement of the Pale and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Israel has a neo-Nazi problem, and it’s mostly Russian youths. Like the ones arrested for defacing prayer books and terrorizing their neighbors.

Fortunately, Israel has begun to recognize that is has this problem, and is working to resolve it.

In People vs. Dinosaurs Thomas Friedman shows some surprising optimism about Israel.

Question: What do America’s premier investor, Warren Buffett, and Iran’s toxic president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have in common? Answer: They’ve both made a bet about Israel’s future.

Ahmadinejad declared on Monday that Israel “has reached its final phase and will soon be wiped out from the geographic scene.”

By coincidence, I heard the Iranian leader’s statement on Israel Radio just as I was leaving the headquarters of Iscar, Israel’s famous precision tool company, headquartered in the Western Galilee, near the Lebanon border. Iscar is known for many things, most of all for being the first enterprise that Buffett bought overseas for his holding company, Berkshire Hathaway.

…So who would you put your money on? Buffett or Ahmadinejad? I’d short Ahmadinejad and go long Warren Buffett.

Whatever problems Israel has politically, economically it’s doing quite well. (Friedman actually argued this was a problem last week.)

Still, I’m not going to knock him. If Thomas Friedman wants to write something nice about Israel, I’m happy to read it (and promote it)!

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but this is a good Bob Herbert column. He gives a shout-out not just to the fact that a black man won the Democratic presidential nomination—a truly historic moment in our nation’s history—but he also acknowledged Hillary’s historic moments as well.

Good for him.

Kennedy had been accused of dreaming when he said in the early 1960s that a black person could get elected president in the next 40 years.

The fact that even a dreamer could imagine nothing shorter than a 40-year timeline gives us a glimpse of the nightmarish depths of racial oppression that people of goodwill have had to fight.

The United States in 1968 (the same year in which the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated) was a stunningly different place from the country we know now, so different that most of today’s young people would have trouble imagining it. The notion in ’68 that a black person — or a woman — might have a serious shot at the presidency would have been widely viewed as lunacy.

Don’t forget, until about 1967, miscegenation laws were on the books in 16 states, including the one I now call home.

I have no intention of voting for Obama, but that doesn’t mean I don’t recognize how great this nation is. Europe talks the talk, but we walk the walk. In forty years, we changed the way we think to the point where a black presidential candidate is not only no longer unthinkable, but the reality.