Le Tour de Syringe

I've been a Tour De France fan since '86 when Greg LeMond came from 59 seconds back on the last competative stage of the race to become the 1st ever American to win what is arguably the worlds toughest sporting event. I was then in France at Alp de Huez to see Lance win his 2nd of seven tours. But this year's absolute farce or a drug scarred scandal fest has pretty much made me swear off the sport. I mean, they told these guys they were testing for everything.

And yet still, every day another guy gets the boot for drugs.

It's so bad that they rode off for todays stage of the tour with no leader at all. I can't say in watching the tour the last 20 years I can recall that ever happened.

I like sports, but I like fair play more. It makes me sick. I'm gonna turn to a good, clean, honest, drug free sport. Like professional wrestling.

Pope Benedict XVI? Delicious

The only thing better than Kosher Ossa Bucco or Pizza Quattro Formaggio? German-born pontiff on a stick. Mmm, mmm pope-alicious.

9th of Av Revengitute

Tisha B'Av: 5767. I'm in Rome, and I get to visit the Arch of Titus, the Roman triumphal arch commemorating
the destruction of the Temple during the Jewish Revolt (Jewish sources call it the Great Revolt, which is odd, since we got our asses kicked, but I digress).

And where, I say where are the Romans? They're extinct. Or trying to sell me gelatto, depending on your definition of 'Roman'.

The Daily Oy

One of the most frustrating parts of being a Jew and a Zionist is watching the state of Israel try to navigate those two values, which are admittedly sometimes tough to reconcile, and completely muck it up.

I’m talking about Israel’s recent decision to expel approximately 1,000 Sudanese refugees back to Egypt, and in the meantime, to house them in a prison in the Negev Desert. (Pics from protest at right.)

What’s even worse, Israel stated this was only a temporary solution until Israel creates ‘camps’ to house them until they can properly process the refugees for deportation.

"Avi Dichter, the minister of public security, and his director general last week announced their intention to create a 'campsite' to hold the refugees until their deportation. One of the main purposes of the new site was to allow families to remain together. It will take several days before water, electricity and plumbing can be arranged for the site."- Haaretz English, July 15

I mean, are you kidding me? Camps, prisons and forced deportations? I’m not trying to allude to the Jewish experience of the Sho’ah, but there’s just no way to avoid the obvious comparison. Israel has claimed they are only protecting themselves; that infiltrators from Muslim states are potential terrorists. Be that as it may, any idiot can see that people don’t walk, unarmed, across three countries, with family in tow, to commit terrorist attacks when there are perfectly good (and by ‘good’, I mean reprehensibly, unequivocably evil) terrorists in immediately adjacent territories.

I will point out that Israel intends to exclude 200 refugees from Darfur who fled the genocide currently going on there. Of course, they are also being held in jails until Israel can figure out what to do with them. The other non-Darfuri refugees are mostly fleeing the horribly wretched poverty and famine than engulfs Sudan, which has one of the lowest per capita incomes in the world despite have huge oil reserves.

Once upon a time, in the 70’s and 80’s, Israel took in tens of thousands of Southeast Asian boat people. Granted, Israel did a lot of that to deprive Palestinians of low-level jobs in the Israeli economy, but it was still an act of kindness to a people on the brink of catastrophe.

The Torah teaches us no less than 36 times ‘Do not oppress the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.’ I always hoped that the state of Israel, while not necessarily becoming a theocracy, could live up to the morals and ethics that pervade the Torah and give Israel its core morality.

Someday, I hope and pray, the words ‘Never again’, will be a rallying cry for us to defend all oppressed peoples, and not just the self-absorbed right-wing rallying cry of Benny Begin or the JDL.

Tall Women: Israeli Bookies Love You

Raise your hand if you’ve been to a WNBA game. No? Nobody? Yeah, that’s because us Americans don’t care about Women’s rights, or Title IX, or the great advances of feminism in the 20th century. We are an inferior people, a lesser species, a bunch of bassackwards hillbillies waiting to reach a higher stage of enlightenment. A stage that heretofore only Israelis have achieved.

Israelis are so enlightened, so forward-thinking, that they care about Women’s roundball, and they don’t even live within 5000 miles of a live WNBA team. What is my proof, you ask? Take a look at this betting stub I got from one of Israel's lotto companies, טוטו (Toto), which has a stand on virtually every street corner. In addition to enabling you to bet on European rugby, Spanish bullfights and even American Major League Soccer, you can bet on the WNBA! How enlightened! Even the lowliest flim-flam man, the back-alley scamster, the shady bookies and Russian mobsters can be a part of the women’s revolution that is the WNBA.

What’s that you say? But they don’t bet on Major League Baseball? Yeah, well then that just makes them eligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Me, I'll take Detroit over Chicago with the spread. I hear they've got a bunch of nappy headed hos.

Because then, the Airline passengers win

Terrorism sucks. And clearly, death, torture and incarceration are not deterrents to terrorists. But after having battled my way through the bureaucratic maze that is flying in the post-9/11 world, I have a new suggested tactic for the Department of Homeland Security and its non-American fellow terror-fighters.

Inconvenience the terrorists. I supply the following tactics as a possible yet incomplete list of ways to eradicate terrorism in the 21st century:

• Make the terrorists wait in a line
  
• deny them the ability to bring water through the airport
  
• overcharge them for any water they do purchase
• make them remove their laptops, keys, cellphones, jackets, nose rings and Pokemon cards, placing them each in a separate plastic bin that you must carry
• make them individually bag every semi-fluid item they own
• search their luggage and make them repack everything
  
• make them walk 20m barefoot while holding 26 different items
• have a 300 lb. guy with ass-breath frisk them
  
• make them wait in a check-in line
• make them wait in a security line
• make them wait in passport line
• make them wait in a passport line in Italy
• fly them somewhere random and have them miss their connection
• have them stand waiting in a helpline, then after an hour, tell them they're in the wrong line, then give them bad directions to the new line; repeat
  
• overcharge them for a calling card
  
• give them the wrong number for customer service to rebook their flight
• give them another wrong number
• give them a phone recording in a foreign language
• give them a broken pay phone in noisy, sweaty balls airport
  
• overcharge; for everything. Repeat as necessary.
• All the while, hide a glimmer of hope just around the corner
  

Yes, this is the cure for terrorism. I don't meant to make light of torture or imply that the real victims of terror are inconvenienced airline passengers: they're not. People who get killed or wounded are victims.

I'm just saying that if you imprison or torture or kill a terrorist, they become heroes and martyrs, and get exactly what they wanted in the first place. But turn Guantanamo bay into an foreign airport and make people wander around, waiting in long lines and being misdirected and make everyone rude and incompetent and give them all heavy baggage and make some ridiculous rules and deny them air conditioning and showers and reasonably priced newspapers, and I guarantee terrorism will disappear.

Occasionally, though, we should let them go. Let them get through all the hassle, get them onto a plane, and let them go... to another airport and repeat the process.

The Bush Administration calls it 'Extraordinary Rendition'. I call it 'a connecting flight.'