Thanks, msbelle!

I gotta get the kids to the gym today or someone's going to get strangled.

Worst birthday ever. I'm glad it's over. 2009 already on notice.

That's too bad, shrift. Hey, maybe it's like rain on your wedding day: seems bad but is actually good luck.

Friend of mine sent me this story - which could be no more than rumor. Apparently, Obama is friends with the producers of the local PBS Show Check, Please. So about 7 years ago he went on the show but he was "too good" and they didn't air it. (I don't really understand what "too good" means in this context.) The restaurant he picked was Dixie Kitchen in Hyde Park.

I do wonder why I can get more done during a productive two-day weekend than I have been able to with 12 days off.

It's a corollary of Parkinson's Law: Work expands to the amount of time you have to do it.

Nooooo!

My RSS reader is down for upgrading! How am I supposed to function in the interwebs without my carefully selected RSSes? It's all so... big and scary and mostly meaningless and will make my head explode and my palms hairy!...

Or at least so I've been told.

(That's just gotta be a sign to read the gorram article I have to read for tomorrow's morning class, right?)

I just got back from filling up the gas tank and a TJ's run .

This concludes the outside pants portion of our day.

Health-ma to your mom, Theodosia.

I think I have ix-nayed the outside portion of the day. Although I have friends stopping by, so I have my outside pants on.

Hi Shir. I hope things work out well. And I really hope you are not called up, because I think any good you could do would be balance by the chance of ending up actively complicit in some very evil acts. Some things can't be fixed from the inside, at least not at the ground level.

Also, in terms of third parties getting involved. Do you include the billions in military aid the U.S gives Israel, the U.S. vetoing of U.N. security council resolutions criticizing Israel, and the all the various U.S./Israel weapons trading and intelligence sharing as some of the third party involvement you are unsure about?

Some things can't be fixed from the inside, at least not at the ground level.

I know. And yet, that's the only real change I can believe in - change that's coming within the system. Other changes, to me, are mostly the same thing in a different guise.

Do you include the billions in military aid the U.S gives Israel

Not sure. Let's see. Maybe I'll draw the line in the military aid U.S gave Israel after the 60's, maybe the 70's. And that's mostly because it had a lot to do with the Cold War and Russia giving military aid to the countries around mine. I know Israel probably would have not survived in that time without the aid.

the U.S. vetoing of U.N. security council resolutions criticizing Israel

So wrong I can't even being commenting about it. Just for our entertainment, Israel was really amused to discover Russia's firm reaction, "stop the massacre", after what happened in the summer with Georgia.

But also, it's important to say that the U.N. never criticized Sudan, for Darfur. Or other post-colonial players. Belgium, who has a lot to do with what happens in Congo these day - nothing. So I think the U.N. is more than kind of biased.

and the all the various U.S./Israel weapons trading and intelligence sharing

That's more legit, in my eyes. That's business.

I know a lot of these is underground support and involvement, grounded with contracts in billions of dollars worth. But I'm mostly talking about third side dictating Israel what to say, where to sign and the rest of us (population with opinions) can be damned.