I caught part of a show on radical Islam on FoxNews last night and was struck by the comments made by a moderate Imam. To wit, according to him, the problem isn’t the religion, the problem is political which problem has gone back about sixty years. Hmmm, that would be about the time Israel was formed. He never outright said it but I think that was what he was alluding to. They just can’t get over that.

Looks like we’re going to sell state-of-the-art weapons to Saudi Arabia, nothing like arming Israel’s enemies. And Olmert is ok with it.

“We understand the need of the United States to support the Arab moderate states and there is a need for a united front between the U.S. and us regarding Iran,” Olmert told a weekly Cabinet meeting.

Dumb. Course Olmert may be kept rather busy if Hezbollah makes good on their word to start another war with Israel.

Hezbollah’s leader said Saturday that the militant Islamic group’s war last summer with Israel has left the U.S. vision of a “new Middle East” in shambles and claimed the guerrilla group was ready to strike Israel again at any time.

Syria is armed too and could act in concert with Hezbollah. Doesn’t look too promising. And with us beefing up Saudi arms, the whole area will become a powderkeg waiting to go off.

In Israel’s case, the enemy of it’s enemy is still it’s enemy. Speaking of which, wonder what Iran is up to these days.

It’s that kind of day, good for laying around doing nothing. Meowza agrees.

“Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.”

For those inclined to activity, there’s the Friday Ark, the Bad Kitty Cats Festival of Chaos and the Carnival of the Cats, exact links to posts up. There should be enough there to keep one busy and out of trouble.

Except for the kittycats, they always can get into trouble.

It was a bad day on Wall Street as reported by CNN.

— U.S. stocks plummeted on Thursday, with the Dow industrials tumbling more than 300 points, on signs of further weakness in the housing market and deteriorating conditions for corporate buyouts.

The S&P shed about $300 billion in market value in the worst single session since the February 27 global market sell-off, with surprisingly weak earnings reports also weighing on stocks. Even with the sharp decline, the Dow and S&P 500 are within 5 percent of their respective record highs.

A drop in quarterly profit at Exxon Mobil, helped wipe out more than $16 billion in market value of the world’s largest publicly traded company.

Although I don’t think anyone (not invested in Exxon Mobil) will be too upset that an oil company lost money. They have been making record profits for years, well at least as long as Bush has been in power.

When I let her out, one of the first things Ritzi did was eat some grass. Stuff still grows even after taking it all out. It’s Roundup time again. Gotta kill the stuff even thou the cats like it. I did manage to get a few tongue shots. Always the tongue.

At Fox News, look if the top story was about Lindsay Lohan’s latest DUI, it was slow or they were missing the good stuff.

Like the story about all the strange things people try to bring aboard airplanes like bricks of cheese, pipes, cell phone parts, wires and other oddities.

They didn’t mention that until today.

Preferring the sensationalism of watching someone self-destruct to the possibility of a whole bunch of people dying in a terrorist attack cause someone carried on the components for an improvised explosive device and spent their flight time assembling and then using it.

Dumb.

At least they confiscated the items. Real explosives wouldn’t stand a chance. Hopefully.

Only way to get a little tummy around here is to let Ritzi out so she can go for a roll.

Caught a little glimpse of tummy, she’s a fast one.

And it’s the anniversary of Tummy Tuesday, a whole year of tummies brought to you by Lisa Violet. Happy Anniversary!

There’s a new festival in the sphere that has my interest, the Bad Kitty Cats Chaos Festival which sounds like something these little monsters would like. They be very bad kittycats. Will submit and see.

Currently, it’s at Pets Garden Blog. So between that and the Carnival of the Cats, I haven’t been doing much else except look at cats.

Just loading 8000+ pics of kittycats onto my iPod is all. Mac takes forever to optimize them.

One must think I like the little beasts.

NeoWORX, which provides my not so little flag widget, has a new widget out called a NeoPod which looks suspiciously like an iPhone.

iPhone is the one that has more buttons.

I did try it last night, javascript didn’t work but flash did. It was too big and didn’t fit with the design of my site. I tend to a minimalist look. Not to mention the stats were so abysmal that it wasn’t worth displaying. Gotta think of that. But it was cute and did contain a lot of information, or would have if my stats had been better, in a fun format.

Seeing how easy it was to put out such a nifty widget, expect great things from iPhone developers. After all the iPhone’s features are widgets rather like the ones on Dashboard. And there are thousands of those.

I never knew just how big catblogging was until I checked out the mother of all cat blog sites, Bad Kitty Cats. Site is huge and the links - so many catbloggers it’s enough to make my head spin. And they list all the kitty carnivals. I could spend a long time there but…

it’s Carnival of the Cats time again, so checking out all these kitties first.

Then it’s back to Bad Kitty Cats. Or I could just go out in the kitchen, bad kitty cats there too. Bad, live and dangerous.

The Carnival of the Cats has not been discontinued, the idiots!

Geesh, what a fine way to start the day, bout gave me a heart attack when I read their site.

The address is submissions (at) carnivalofthecats.com for those who want to support Lair’s most fine carnival.

I sent in my posts. I usually can be found with a kitty post or two anyway. The cats demand.

Meowza here showing the proper way to do the licky lick.

“Open wide.”

He’s the model of decorum.

“Wider still, and stick out that tongue.”

Really.

“And with one smooth move, lick.”

So where’s the toes Meowza?

Probably over at the Friday Ark tomorrow or maybe Sunday at the Carnival of the Cats

Aside from screwed up javascript, and a few things not working quite like I wish they would, the upgrade is ok. But I still miss the old WP1.5.2. However, some good has come out of this.

Seeing I was searching for widgets, plugins, etc., I checked out Gallery and found they had sample sites to see how useful it can be. Therein, I found some beautiful beach pics which are now my screensaver. I can use any collection of pics as a screensaver, the Mac takes care of rotating them.

Why not cat pics, I have rotating cat pics on my desktop already. Come to think of it, I have cats I can look at, pet, feed any time I want.

While I was eating breakfast, Izzy decided to get up on the curtains where Jezi was. She took off and he had the spot until Bazel climbed up whereupon they got in a cat fight. You see, Izzy is very territorial and fights anyone who dares take his spot.

So, the chase was on to the buffet then the plant shelf and back down on the table where they knocked over my milk. Little monsters moved so fast I didn’t have time to grab the cup to protect it from them. Not the way I wanted my breakfast.

So it was only fair that they clean up the mess they made. Although not in on the cat fight, Meowza helped with cleanup duty. He’s a good kittycat.

Testing Image Manager which appears to work. Hmmm, maybe I won’t miss TinyMCE too much as I always choose code. But there is a cool plugin, TinyMCE Advanced, with added features. I’ll have to see if I can fix it later.

And this is Keefe being lazy as cats tend to do.

Might notice cause now you can translate. Spent the entire morning widgetizing the sidebar elements, first on the testblog then here. Still have a few quirks, lost the TinyMCE javascript. Will have to see what I did wrong there. The random quote doesn’t work either. I’m limited in how many text widgets I can add so there’s a couple things missing. And I am clueless about pages, never used them before. Give me time. But I got the default theme to work, only theme too as theme switcher doesn’t work.

iCame iSaw iPlayedwith iDidnotbuy the iPhone. Mind you, it’s really cool, I was impressed with Google maps, the web browsing, the general ease of use except for a couple details.

I found that I had difficulty typing, had to backspace a lot although if I get a few letters right, it gives me choices and it’s easy to pick the right one. Salesperson said it took practice.

Switching from portrait mode to landscape was maddeningly slow. They did have some pretty pics on the phone I tested thou. Yum, Hawaii.

I can wait, it still needs a few compelling features for me to buy it. Like being on T-mobile instead of sucky old AT&T. A bigger HD. Eight GB isn’t enough, I have way more than that on iTunes already. Matter of fact, I could use that 80GB iPod. Now!

I didn’t buy that either.

Not on my shopping list, what is is Photoshop and I can’t decide which version to get. Leaning to the Extended one.

Life is tough, decisions decisions.

I knew it would happen. And it didn’t take long.

U.S. stocks climbed Tuesday, propelling the Dow Jones Industrial Average past the 14,000 level for the first time, helped by upbeat earnings and an upgrade of American Express Co., one of its 30 components.

…The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI) climbed 38 points to 13,984, after earlier reaching a high of 1,4011.

Among the Dow’s 30 stocks, 19 advanced, led by the likes Dupont (DD) , Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and Intel Corp. (INTC).

Not too bad, Microsoft up even. Cause for celebration.

“Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.”

Or not.

Meowza’s not impressed.

Bush is at it again, displaying total ignorance of the reality of the situation. From Tom Raum, AP via Yahoo are the details.

Declaring a “moment of choice” in the Middle East, President Bush said Monday he would call Israel, the Palestinians and others in the region to a peace conference aimed at restarting stalled talks and moving faster toward a Palestinian state.

Those talks will lead them absolutely nowhere as Hamas is in control and desires the destruction of Israel. How can you have talks without including them?

Such a session could result in Israelis sitting at the same conference table as countries such as Saudi Arabia that do not recognize Israel diplomatically.

Would they even sit down at the same table with Israel? Jews, Israelis aren’t even allowed in their countries. Where would they get together? Enquiring minds want to know.

Bush said the conference, open to countries in the region that support a two-state solution to the long Israeli-Palestinian standoff, would be headed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

That would be Israel, the U.S. and who else? Countries in the region support the destruction of Israel. Surprised Bush hasn’t figured that out.

He also pledged more U.S. financial support for the moderate Palestinian government of Mahmoud Abbas and called for the convening of a group of “donor” countries to increase international financial aid, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan.

Oh yes, let’s give more money to Abbas so that when Hamas takes over the West Bank, they’ll just have that much more. It’ll all end up in Hamas’ hands anyway. Why that escapes Bush’s brain is another unknown. When will we face up to the hard truth. The Arabs have always wanted Israel’s destruction and any attempt at talks will only underscore that.

Right of return will be a given, a mandatory requirement of the Arabs meant solely to destroy Israel from within as they plot to destroy Israel from without. Peace talks when they are modestly successful succeed in carving up Israel into smaller and smaller bits to…

wait for it…

destroy Israel.

Is it any wonder I blog the news less lately as nothing ever changes.

I’ve upgraded the test blog to WP 2.2.1 and am in the process of snagging themes both widgetized and not and testing them out. Whatever I choose will be customized, at least change the stock photo to something appropriately catty, before I will use it as I hesitate to go with a stock theme. Css to fix for the photos to be nicely framed. All kinds of tweaks.

Sides which, I need to learn how to make widgets. Got too much in the sidebar which will need widgetizing. Whole purpose of that is to add the translate function which I’m not sure is worth it as I only get about 44 visitors a day, most English speaking, when I last checked. I know there’s more English speaking people out there but I doubt this blog would appeal to a mass audience. Doubt too many foreigners would find it to their liking.

Might be a wasted effort.

I’m also testing plugins for compatibility. Need to do that and delete any used for 1.5.2. Clean up the files, lots of work.

And then there is the obligatory database backup before I do anything lest I have to revert back due to some huge error I may make.

I wonder why I do this.

Lair’s doing the kitty carnival over at 100 Word Stories complete with a 100 Word Kittycat story.

And here’s my 100 Word Kittycat story.

Once upon a time there was a little kittycat named Jezebel who lived with her four brothers.

Like clockwork, that time of month arrived and the little monster never shut up.

Sometimes the brothers, well Bazel and Meowza, would try to appease her lust. Izzy could care less. If it didn’t have wings, he wasn’t interested in chasing it. And Keefe was just too old. He was more of a father figure anyway.

Well, Bazel and Meowza were neutered so they never could quite get it right which left Jezi in quite a pickle.

She can’t go away fast enough.

Which reminds me, I saw Oliver other night. Guessing he’s intact. Luckily, Jezi doesn’t go outside.

Discovered one thing when I went over 10,000 pics, mostly of kittycats. I’m pathetic I know, all those kittycat pics. That’s not what I discovered. It’s that the Nikon doesn’t number it 10012, it numbers it 0012 thus the numbers start all over again. So, unless I want to overwrite images, I need to change the directory or do the inevitable WordPress upgrade I had been dreading lest it bork the site.

Or this theme. Oh well, been meaning to try another one. Maybe with Bazel here, poor boy hardly ever gets featured. Ha!

I didn’t want to chance the upgrade when I was hosting the Carnival of the Cats either. Wonder who’s doing it tomorrow.

Well her ashes have, in an unmarked white plastic container which was wrapped in a paper towel. Kindof sterile looking. Guess I’ll have to buy a proper urn for the dearly departed kittycat and find a proper display spot or Jill will.

Krissie August 1992 - July 2007

Correction: Name and cremation date was on the bottom, hadn’t looked there. Jill did thou.

Today is Friday Ark and Sunday is Carnival of the Cats where the living kittycats can be found.

Living up to his nick of Mr. Chew, Bazel is caught chewing, er would have had been caught curtain in teeth if the flashy had worked faster. I’m going to have to replace a lot, all the curtains as well as the sofa slipcovers. Bad kittycat.

“These curtains are mine. And don’t you forget it.”

Good kittycats can be found at the Friday Ark and Sunday at the Carnival of the Cats.

I haven’t blogged much about Iraq. I’m waiting for General Petraeus to give his report in Setember when they’ve had time to let the surge actually work. Indications so far are positive. Benchmarks, that’s only something politicians care about. Although it would be nice to see the Iraqi government work. I think a stabilized country from a military standpoint would give them the needed impetus to work together.

I rarely watch the news anymore as it’s all so negative. They have no clue what pulling out too soon will do, no clue at all. Destabilize the whole Middle East, it would.

In the meantime, Sissy has a great post up which sums it up rather well complete with Tiny and Babe. Awesome photos as usual.

Seems Al-Qaida is in the news again. From Katherine Shrader AP via MyWay is this.

Al-Qaida is stepping up its efforts to sneak terror operatives into the United States and has acquired most of the capabilities it needs to strike here, according to a new U.S. intelligence assessment, The Associated Press has learned.

The draft National Intelligence Estimate is expected to paint an ever-more-worrisome portrait of al-Qaida’s ability to use its base along the Pakistan-Afghan border to launch and inspire attacks against the United States over the next several years.

Well won’t be hard to sneak them in especially if they come thru Mexico, porous southern border and all. There’s a few other worrisome bits, radical Islam in the U.S.. Bout time somebody noticed.

The estimate echoes the findings of another analysis prepared by the National Counterterrorism Center earlier this year and disclosed publicly on Wednesday. That report - titled “Al-Qaida better positioned to strike the West” - found the terrorist group is “considerably operationally stronger than a year ago” and has “regrouped to an extent not seen since 2001,” a counterterrorism official familiar with the reports findings told the AP.

Very troubling indeed but the worst possibility may be this.

National security officials are frustrated by an agreement last year between Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and tribal leaders in western Pakistan, which gave tribes near the Afghan border greater autonomy and has led to increased al-Qaida activity in the region.

Nevertheless, Bush administration officials still view Musharraf as a partner.

Perhaps Musharraf is trying to appease them in an attempt to preserve his hold on power. Cause if Musharraf falls and Pakistan is turned over to the radical Islamists aka Al-Qaida, guess who gets Pakistans’ nukes. That’s the biggest danger I can think of as Ahmadinejad doesn’t yet, we hope, have nukes. The Middle-East could very well implode if these two factions, Sunni and Shia, nuke it out. Unless they join together against a common enemy and there are only two, the U.S., the great Satan, and Israel, the little Satan. That possibility exists too.

The Dow hit another high today which is good news for my paltry investment portfolio. I don’t keep up on all it’s ups and downs but will probably take note when it passes 14,000, expect soon.

Biggest gain Abercrombie & Fitch Co. the one with the cute guys in the ads. Target also fared quite well. Reminds me I need to make a run to Super Target tomorrow. They have stuff WalMart doesn’t. Mouthwatering pesto pizza for one. Enough to make me hungry again.

Past few weeks haven’t been kind to my MS. Thought it was the heat and was off long enough that I thought I need a doctors appointment to get a return to work auth. Seems I didn’t thus I worked the holiday, whole week.

But I failed to cancel the appointment which was a good thing cause last Friday I could barely focus on the computer screen and keyboard was double. And very weak and that doesn’t count the food poisoning I had either. Which things I mentioned to the doc. An exam showed lateral nystagmus, diplopia which I knew, and I was unable to walk heel to toe or even stand feet together. Weaker overall. So the doc ordered more Solu-Medrol and, big surprise, me to be off work a week. Guessing she didn’t want me to drive while I was seeing double. Not the safest thing to do.

So, this is my arm all hooked up to this new-fangled infusion ball. Thankfully, the stockinette mutes the neon pink coban wrapped around the IV site. Gotta protect it from the kittycats.

Here’s open mouth Bazel surrounded by the pillows he’s chewed in support of Meowza’s meme.

“Correction. It’s Tongue, Toes ‘n Teeth.”

Closeup of the teeth…. and tongue.

“They’re sharp so don’t try anything funny.”

Remember tomorrow is Friday Ark and Sunday is Carnival of the Cats.

A lovely tribute to Lady Bird and some words for thought. Think deep about who you elect and who they bring with them. Quoting.

The family is often the best indication of the person we are electing to serve. Those family members while not elected will serve as well and you will be seeing a lot of them. So take a close look at the family and ask if you want to spend a lot of time in their company when you make your choice.

Hillary brings Bill.

Think about it, he won’t be planting flowers excepting Jennifer. Already did that actually.