This is possibly the best website ever to grace your computer screen - if your a parent. Trust me there are over 3,000 “hacks” as they call them. It’s called Parent Hacks Blog. This is what the internet was created for! Start yourself off with learning how to get a colicky crying baby to stop crying. Then maybe move on to “Best Tantrum Stopping Secrets.”

I’ve always loved the scenery of Crown Heights when it’s busy. Over the next couple weeks leading into Succos, I will try to photo blog as much as possible. I hope you enjoy it. In truth it’s more for me, to have stored somewhere so one day in the future if I want to look back in my archives. Personally I can’t wait for the succahs to go up. Then I’m going to go photo crazy.

This is great. It’s done very nicely, very professionally. I would just suggest turning down the sound. You don’t need the guys voice. the first time I saw it was on mute and the imagery and on screen text gives a more gentle message.

Click here for original file.

(HT Boker)

Colbert Clip 1

Colbert Clip 2
1-888-OOPS-JEW

“September 27, 2006 — Police yesterday were questioning a suspect believed to be one of two masked burglars who broke into the Brooklyn home of a wealthy couple, tied them up and cleaned them out of more than $200,000 in cash and jewels.

Cops were trying to determine if the burglars may have known that real-estate investor Wolf Sicherman, 55, and wife Sarah kept money in a safe in the third-floor bedroom of their Borough Park home.

On Monday night the safe was stuffed with cash because Sicherman was going to purchase a building the following day, police sources said.

The masked duo, clad in black jumpsuits and armed with boxcutters, entered through a rear window and cut the electricity.

“They were working with small flashlights,” said a neighbor and friend of the victims, Yossi Frideman.

Police sources said the burglars encountered Sicherman, owner of nearby Sicherman Management Corp., on the stairwell and ordered him to open the safe.

He was so nervous he couldn’t remember the combination, so his wife opened the safe. The couple were then tied with duct tape to a chair in the living room.

Before fleeing, the robbers “thanked the wife for being so nice,” said a police source.

A woman chatting with a neighbor on the sidewalk said, “I saw two hooded guys coming out of the house getting into a white car.”

Her friend became suspicious and wrote down the license plate of the getaway SUV and called the local neighborhood watch group.

A few minutes later, “He [Sicherman] got himself free. She [Sarah] was shaking like a fish,” said the witness.

* Thugs forced their way into the home of a Long Island mom alone with her disabled son, and tied her up while they tore through the house looking for cash, the victim said yesterday.

Rosa Diaz, 54, of Stratford Drive in Westbury, said two tall Hispanic men wearing khaki pants and white shirts knocked on her door and asked for her daughter’s husband, who wasn’t home. Then they demanded a glass of water and followed her inside.

“They took out a gun, then tied me with tape on my arms and legs,” she said. “I was afraid they were going to kill me because I could see them good.”

Communicating with each other by walkie-talkie, the men banged around upstairs and in the basement, Diaz said.

They made off with cash, jewelry and liquor, according to Nassau County police.” (link)

(Click the image for the article attached to it)

I’m probably buying a new Succah today. What do you have? Do you build one with wood? Do you have a canvas one? Do you have a large metal expandable? Should I make it myself or should I buy one that’s pre-made. So many questions, so little time. So I’m asking you, the readers, to tell me what you have, what you do, what you like the best.

They say they cannot set up checkpoints, search cars, homes or businesses or detain suspects. If they see a truck transporting missiles, for example, they say they can not stop it. They cannot do any of this, they say, because under their interpretation of the Security Council resolution that deployed them, they must first be authorized to take such action by the Lebanese Army. (link)

(HT Boker Tov)

Wow, while we were all in Shul on Sunday the political gossip world got turned upside down. Mike Wallace and Bill Clinton got into it in an exclusive Fox News Sunday interview. If you aren’t one of the 330,000 + plus people who saw this on YouTube. You must! If you want the 10 min version click here. If you want the main part where Clinton goes off on Wallace click here.

First of all I’d like to say, I’ve watched Mike Wallace. He often has that facial expression and yes it may have looked like a smirk to someone who thinks in such conspiratorial terms but I think Wallace’s own defense of his facial expression makes the most sense.

“The President said I had a smirk. Actually–it was sheer wonder at what I was witnessing.”

What I want to know is how people viewed this. Did Clinton really come off as losing it or as many are saying having a “Tom Cruise” moment? I personally don’t think it was as bad as a Tom Cruise moment but I don’t think he sounded calm or rational either. He sounded way too emotional. Way too defensive and way way too conspiratorial.

The Middle of the road people don’t like hearing the “Left wingers or Right wingers”, a former President of the united States, especially one like Clinton should be able to keep it together and not go into “those evil right wingers are out to get me, your out to get me, this channel is out to get me, you all are out go get me, it’s a setup” territory so easily.

Not to mention that a lot of what he said wasn’t even true. Specifically two things.

1) Wallace actually HAS asked Bush Admin people the same questions. Including Sec Rice as recent as a few weeks ago and Donald Rumsfeld. The same sort of questions.

2) He said back then the “Right Wingers” accused him of being too obsessed with UBL and weren’t behind him. Well, according to this WashPo article they actually were 100 percent those attacks and said some pretty impressive things about someone who they despised politically. I think you should read it (HT ABC’s Political Punch Blog )

Here are the money quotes:

“I think the president did exactly the right thing,” said House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said. “By doing this we’re sending the signal there are no sanctuaries for terrorists.” Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) called the attacks “appropriate and just,” and House Majority Leader Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.) said “the American people stand united in the face of terrorism.”

The AP says: “Gingrich dismissed any possibility that Clinton may have ordered the attacks to divert attention from the scandal. Instead, he said, there was an urgent need for a reprisal following the Aug. 7 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. ‘Anyone who watched the film of the bombings, anyone who saw the coffins come home knows better than to question this timing,’ Gingrich said. ‘It was done as early as possible to send a message to terrorists across the globe that killing Americans has a cost. It has no relationship with any other activity of any kind.”

I really think he (Clinton) wants to walk away from 9/11 with as little blame as possible. I think it’s wrong. He was in office for 8 years, there were plenty of more than serious attacks including the first World Trade Center, Cole and others in between.

He has to take more responsibility other than just saying I wish the FBI and CIA would have worked together more and that would have allowed me to do my job. It doesn’t work like that. In fact, that’s the same excuse Bush could use the 8 months he was in office before 9/11. One thing is for sure, both administrations are to blame and there is plenty of blame to go around.

I’m curious what other people thought of the exchange. But, please, if your going to just write the partisan BS from either side, don’t bother commenting. Seriously, I’ll delete it. If you want to be absolutely honest and speak politely, go ahead, but I don’t want to hear the party cries from either side.

REMINDER: Yes, I just deleted a comment. Please, I can spot a talking point a mile away. I’ve been following politics since I’m 8 years old. I’m sorry J.A., your otherwise always welcome to comment without fear of deletion, but I don’t want this to be dominated by talking points from either side.

Things I don’t want to hear:

Clinton is such a dunce, he has been lying for years, all he does is lie. Once again all he cares about his how he looks, everything he said was BS and looked like a wacko.

Seriously, I’m looking for strictly “middle of the roaders”, someone like … um, Jack.

Update: Check out this point by point rebuttal to Clinton’s assertions the other night. Each one, wrong, wrong and wrong again.

(Cross Posted at The Shtus Blog) - ht jspot

Not that I would! But come on … you have to laugh at this.

The video quality sucks, but the music rocks.