Excerpt from the end of the latest Joey:

Joey and the Valentine's Date:

[Scene: Joey & Michael’s Apartment – Joey, Gina & Michael]

Joey: (Reading People Magazine) Oh, here it is! Wow. “Joey Tribbiani isn’t just a bright new face in Hollywood, he’s also as nice a guy off-camera, as he is on.” Hey. “And a deeply religious man, with a great commitment to his Jewish faith. Joey is searching for that special someone, so single Jewish girls, if you’re looking for an eligible bachelor, Joey Tribbiani is looking for you.

Michael: That may explain this.

(Michael presses the ‘Play’ button on the Answering Machine)

Answering Machine: You have 268 new messages.

Joey: Oi vay!

[End]

Transcript of Lawrence Summer's

speech, and an analysis.

Undercover Police Agent Responsible for Right-Wing Incitement

Via Arutz Sheva:

A police informant initiated much right-wing incitement in recent weeks, according to Maariv newspaper. Similar police tactics were used in the mid-1990's against protestors of the Oslo Accords.

Much of the "right-wing incitement" of recent weeks, attributed by the media to the national camp, was initiated by none other than an undercover police informant. So reports Maariv today, in an article featured in a front-page headline.

The paper states that the police agent has initiated some of the more extreme protest acts of recent weeks - acts that were widely attributed to the entire national camp. The activities thus cast a cloud of illegitimacy on the entire anti-disengagement cause.

The agent provocateur was behind a recent bumper sticker which implied that Prime Minister Sharon's death was near. The sticker read: "Sharon, Lily [the PM's late wife] is waiting for you." He also recruited people to attend the road-blocking protests of last week, which brought much public wrath upon the anti-disengagement cause.

...

Read the whole thing.

Gwen Stafani's

If I Was A Rich Girl - taking off on Fiddler on the Roof, in a Pepsi commercial. See the video here.

South Park Episode 8:03

The Passion of the Jew

Attack on Netanyahu was staged by the media

From Arutz Sheva:

IMRA's Dr. Aaron Lerner reports that Channel Two's Amnon Abromovitz revealed last night that the incident in which Minister Netanyahu was "attacked" was staged for the media.
Abromovitz reported that the entire incident involved two youngsters who
yelled at Netanyahu, "You are a chicken, Jewish blood isn't valueless" at the
behest of a reporter. After the performance, the reporter sent them a text message, reading, "Good work."

Ian's Shoelace Site

which I'm using to illustrate a point over at parshablog about the difficulty of describing complex things in plain text without the use of diagrams. Eventually, I'll get around to posting that - right now the post it is in Draft mode.

Mattisyahu performs

on the Jimmy Kimmel show. See the video here.

Via LGF:

Ward Churchill Puffs Out His Chest

Colorado University professor Ward Churchill refuses to back down from his disgusting statements, and is enlisting the local America-haters to back him up: ‘I do not work for taxpayers,’ prof says.

CU officials said they decided to proceed with the event after student organizers admitted they had overstated the nature of security threats in conversations with officials on Monday. [Say it ain’t so! Whining, ranting lefties overstated the extent of the “death threats” they received? Shocka! —ed.]

Churchill, in a black leather jacket and jeans, was engulfed in a phalanx of supporters, fellow leaders of Colorado’s American Indian Movement members and security personnel. He arrived 20 minutes late for his appearance.

But when Churchill stepped to the podium following ceremonial American Indian drumming and singing, plus a fiery introduction by AIM activist Russell Means, it was clear the crowd wasn’t going to punish him for the delay.

“Bill Owens, do you get it now?” he asked, following the 40-second standing ovation with which he was greeted. That cued another strong wave of applause.

“I do not work for the taxpayers of the state of Colorado. I do not work for Bill Owens. I work for you. . . . The Board of Regents should do its job, and let me do mine.”

The battle lines were drawn and underscored repeatedly, in overtly political colors.

Churchill, his voice strained at times and keyed to a fighting pitch for most of his talk, said “there is not an inch of give” in his stance, and that “This institution needs to be protected from the ravages of the rabid right wing” elements that he perceives to be behind the attacks on his credibility and his scholarship.

A primary reason for Tuesday’s speech was so Churchill could explain the reasoning behind his essay. He insisted he never advocated or endorsed the nearly 3,000 deaths occurring Sept. 11, but only meant to explain that America’s foreign policies - such as the support for U.N. sanctions against Iraq, which many have blamed for deaths through starvation and disease of 500,000 Iraqi children after the first Gulf War - can yield disastrous payback.

“What you are putting out will blow back on you, and that’s what happened,” he said [...with no sense of irony whatsoever. —ed.]

“We’re worried about weapons of mass destruction, in a country that has the largest inventory (of nuclear arms) in the world, the only country that has used them on civilian targets, and intentionally used them on civilian targets.”

Presumably he is referring to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as possibly what was debunked in the essay two posts ago. However, since then, the US has worked to ensure that nuclear weapons were not actually used, something which terrorist sponsoring states do not. (In fact, Iran has said that if it acquires nuclear weapons it will wipe Israel off the map.)

I also would note that he claims the US is the only country that has used (nuclear) weapons of mass destruction deliberately on civilians, as opposed to Iraq, while in fact Saddam used chemical (not nuclear) weapons against his own civilian population. See the State Dept.'s web site.

Update on toy soldier hoax.

What I'm Reading:

Learning about Cryptography by Terry Ritter

Check out

The Genocide That Wasn’t

Then, a call from a telemarketer

First, there was a pause while I said "hello a few times." I figures then that it was a telemarketer. Most likely using a predictive dialer. I work on software for telemarketers, so I know a bit about how this works. A predictive dialer dials numbers hoping to get a response, and dials based on a formula based on the number of available agents and how many will be likely available when the call gets through. When it gets a live caller it transfers the call to a live agent. This can take some time, to detect the call, to find an available agent, etc., and thus the pause.

In this instance the woman was speaking Spanish. That's a new one! She asked if I spoke Spanish and when I said no, she said someone who speaks English may try to contact me.

Working from home today

as I do every Monday. Baby sleeping in the other room. The buzzer - two women who said they were making their rounds visiting their neighbors to spread the good word. I said I was busy right now. :)
Back to work!

On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog

From Yahoo Oddly Enough News:

AMMAN (AFP) - A budding romance between a Jordanian man and woman turned into an ugly public divorce when the couple found out that they were in fact man and wife, state media reported.

Separated for several months, boredom and chance briefly re-united Bakr Melhem and his wife Sanaa in an Internet chat room, the official Petra news agency said.

Bakr, who passed himself off as Adnan, fell head over heels for Sanaa, who signed off as Jamila (beautiful) and described herself as a cultured, unmarried woman -- a devout Muslim whose hobby was reading, Petra said.

Cyber love blossomed between the pair for three months and soon they were making wedding plans. To pledge their troth in person, they agreed to meet in the flesh near a bus depot in the town of Zarqa, northeast of Amman.

The shock of finding out their true identities was too much for the pair.

Upon seeing Sanaa-alias-Jamila, Bakr-alias-Adnan turned white and screamed at the top of his lungs: "You are divorced, divorced, divorced" -- the traditional manner of officially ending a marriage in Islam.

"You are a liar," Sanaa retorted before fainting, the agency said.

It is interesting that he was so upset his wife planned to cheat on him, when he was doing the same. On the other hand, polygamy is acceptable in Islam, so it is not clear that he had said that he was unmarried (the article only mentioned that she said she was), or that he considered what he was doing was wrong. Still, she clearly felt he was doing wrong.

OpinionJournal mentioned this song -

hilarious! I Hate Republicans.
Check it out

American Hostage Hoax

taken from Backcountry Conservative:

AP and Reuters carry the following story:

A little-known Iraqi insurgent group said on Tuesday it was holding a U.S. soldier and threatened to kill him within 72 hours if Iraqi prisoners were not released, according to an Internet statement.

"Our mujahideen ... have managed to capture the American soldier John Adam after killing a number of his colleagues," said the Mujahideen Squadrons in the undated statement.

It carried a picture appearing to show a U.S. soldier sitting in front of a black banner with a rifle pointed at his head. The authenticity of the claim, which did not say where the man was seized, could not be verified.

"We will cut his throat in 72 hours if our male and female prisoners in the occupation jails are not released," it said.

A group using the same name, Mujahideen Squadrons, last month claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of a Brazilian engineer in Iraq.

Insurgents in Iraq, including al Qaeda's wing in Iraq, have been waging attacks on U.S.-led forces since they invaded the country in 2003.

14:10: Kevin Aylward and Drudge have this picture:

14:35: Both Kevin and Rusty have questioned the authenticity of the photograph based on two factors: 1. the size of the person's head; 2. the fact that the weapon used is an American rifle rather than an AK-47

14:42: James Joyner weighs in and agrees with Evan Kohlmann and others that the picture looks fishy. A comment by Michele on Kevin's post points to this G.I. Joe action figure that looks alot like the "soldier" in the picture.

Vietnam Vote:

Via snopes, the following is true:

A 1967 [New York Times] news article reported terrorist efforts to disrupt elections in South Vietnam.

Follow the link to read more.