The top 10 toilets in Jerusalem By Abigail Klein Leichman h/t @JacobRichman

Hundreds of thousands of visitors tour Jerusalem every year, but where should they go when they get caught short? ISRAEL21c gives you a guide to the top 10 toilets in the city.

If nature calls while you're touring Jerusalem, there's no need to pretend you're a patron of the nearest hotel or restaurant -- though that tactic usually works. Israel's capital city has between 40 and 50 well-marked public restrooms, from as far north as Ammunition Hill to as far south as the Sherover Promenade. The Old City alone has 13 public johns spread across the Jewish and Muslim quarters, though only eight appear on the confusing Hebrew map given out at the Tourist Information Center.

A list of 40 public restrooms is available at the municipal website in Hebrew only, indicating location and hours. Only seven operate 24 hours a day; most open at 7 or 8 in the morning and get locked between 5 and 10 at night. Ten of the bathrooms on the list are marked as accessible to people in wheelchairs, but there are a few more that aren't on this list. (Mapsjerusalem.com reportedly sells a map with all public restrooms clearly marked, but we can't vouch for that.)

ISRAEL21c's random sampling revealed that public bathrooms inside buildings generally are nicer than freestanding units, which often lack toilet paper, soap and -- ahem -- ambience. But hey, if you gotta go, you gotta go.

The 10 we recommend are:

1 Shaarei HaIr commercial building

Photo by Abigail Klein Leichman

You'll think you're in a hotel restroom.

Situated conveniently at the junction of Jaffa Road and Sarei Yisrael, down the block from the Central Bus Station (where public restrooms cost a shekel), Shaarei HaIr offers two sets of bathrooms clearly marked with signs at the main entrance. These spotless, pleasant facilities rival those in hotels. There are three stalls in the second-floor ladies room and four on the fifth floor.

2. Safra Square

Photo by Abigail Klein Leichman

Sign for the restrooms at Safra Square.

Located one floor down from the main plaza of the municipal complex, these restrooms are squeaky clean with adequate toilet paper and soap. The ladies' room is in two sections, each with five lavender-painted stalls and three sinks.

3. Horse Park (Gan Hasus)

Photo by Abigail Klein Leichman

Tiling accents the stalls at the Horse Park bathroom.

Down a few steps in the park straddling the major downtown intersection of King George and Bezalel, you'll find a clean, pleasant restroom with a real live attendant. There's even decorative tiling on the stall walls. This was the only public park restroom to merit a mention on our list.

4. Machane Yehuda marketplace

Photo by Abigail Klein Leichman

At the Machaneh Yehuda ladies room: "Dear ladies: Please keep it clean! Thank you and have a nice day."

Oddly, the "shuk" has three men's rooms and only one ladies' room listed on the municipal site. It's mostly for that reason that the women's loo appears on this list. There's toilet paper and soap and it's relatively clean, but its location next to a fish vendor does not help the odor factor, despite the humorous signs posted on each of the three stalls.

5. In front of the Museum of Italian Jewish Art

Walking around downtown? Right in front of this museum at 27 Hillel Street, there's a freestanding public restroom that's clean and roomy. The toilet flushes automatically each time the door is opened (there's a button you push to release the latch), and a space-saving three-in-one unit offers soap, water faucet and air dryer.

6. 8 Rav Kook Street

Another downtown option, this large (11 stalls and eight sinks) bathroom is located on the bottom floor of an office building near central Zion Square, across from the Rav Kook House and Psalms Museum. It is relatively clean and has a wheelchair-accessible stall. When we visited, however, all but three stalls were locked even though nobody was in them. We assume that was a temporary situation.

7. Chutzot Hayotzer

This artist's colony just west of the Old City walls and north of Sultan's Pool is filled with individual workshops and stores in a series of lanes. Down the steps from Hebron Road leading to Lane 5 is a public restroom to the left. There's no sign at street level. Nothing fancy, but it offers six stalls and two sinks, supplied with plenty of paper goods and soap.

8. Jaffa Gate

Photo by Abigail Klein Leichman

You could easily miss the sign for this restroom.

At this entrance to the Old City, just before the Tourist Information Center, take a hard left and go up the arch-covered stairs toward the Ramparts Walk. Here is a brightly lit bathroom with three stalls and three sinks. Like most Old City public restrooms, this one has friendly Arab attendants at hand.

9. Western Wall

The northern side of the Western Wall plaza has heavily used facilities for men and women, and they're spacious, clean and feature large mirrors. But if you're female, skip the main ladies room and continue a few steps to your left to find another option, this one with a diaper-changing table (something we did not see in any other public bathroom), nine stalls and four sinks. As you exit, you'll see posted the Jewish blessing traditionally recited after elimination.

10. Davidson Center

Photo by Abigail Klein Leichman

Note the bathroom sign at the upper left.

Just inside the Dung Gate is the Jerusalem Archeological Park, aka the Davidson Center. Tucked away near the ticket booth and entrance is a marked public restroom that's got three stalls, three sinks and a wheelchair-accessible stall. This is one of the nicest facilities in the Old City, and a good place to stop before or after a tour of the Western or Southern Wall excavations.

via israel21c.org

Experts stumped by ancient Jerusalem markings h/t @JacobRichman

(news.yahoo.com) JERUSALEM (AP) — Mysterious stone carvings made thousands of years ago and recently uncovered in an excavation underneath Jerusalem have archaeologists stumped.
Israeli diggers who uncovered a complex of rooms carved into the bedrock in the oldest section of the city recently found the markings: Three "V'' shapes cut next to each other into the limestone floor of one of the rooms, about 2 inches (5 centimeters) deep and 20 inches (50 centimeters) long. There were no finds to offer any clues pointing to the identity of who made them or what purpose they served.
The archaeologists in charge of the dig know so little that they have been unable even to posit a theory about their nature, said Eli Shukron, one of the two directors of the dig.
"The markings are very strange, and very intriguing. I've never seen anything like them," Shukron said.
The shapes were found in a dig known as the City of David, a politically sensitive excavation conducted by Israeli government archaeologists and funded by a nationalist Jewish group under the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan in east Jerusalem. The rooms were unearthed as part of the excavation of fortifications around the ancient city's only natural water source, the Gihon spring.
It is possible, the dig's archaeologists say, that when the markings were made at least 2,800 years ago the shapes might have accommodated some kind of wooden structure that stood inside them, or they might have served some other purpose on their own. They might have had a ritual function or one that was entirely mundane. Archaeologists faced by a curious artifact can usually at least venture a guess about its nature, but in this case no one, including outside experts consulted by Shukron and the dig's co-director, archaeologists with decades of experience between them, has any idea.
There appears to be at least one other ancient marking of the same type at the site. A century-old map of an expedition led by the British explorer Montague Parker, who searched for the lost treasures of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem between 1909 and 1911, includes the shape of a "V'' drawn in an underground channel not far away. Modern archaeologists haven't excavated that area yet.
Ceramic shards found in the rooms indicate they were last used around 800 B.C., with Jerusalem under the rule of Judean kings, the dig's archaeologists say. At around that time, the rooms appear to have been filled with rubble to support the construction of a defensive wall.
It is unclear, however, whether they were built in the time of those kings or centuries earlier by the Canaanite residents who predated them.
The purpose of the complex is part of the riddle. The straight lines of its walls and level floors are evidence of careful engineering, and it was located close to the most important site in the city, the spring, suggesting it might have had an important function.
A unique find in a room beside the one with the markings — a stone like a modern grave marker, which was left upright when the room was filled in — might offer a clue. Such stones were used in the ancient Middle East as a focal point for ritual or a memorial for dead ancestors, the archaeologists say, and it is likely a remnant of the pagan religions which the city's Israelite prophets tried to eradicate. It is the first such stone to be found intact in Jerusalem excavations.
But the ritual stone does not necessarily mean the whole complex was a temple. It might simply have marked a corner devoted to religious practice in a building whose purpose was commonplace.
With the experts unable to come up with a theory about the markings, the City of David dig posted a photo on its Facebook page and solicited suggestions. The results ranged from the thought-provoking — "a system for wood panels that held some other item," or molds into which molten metal would could have been poured — to the fanciful: ancient Hebrew or Egyptian characters, or a "symbol for water, particularly as it was near a spring."
The City of David dig, where the carvings were found, is the most high-profile and politically contentious excavation in the Holy Land. Named for the biblical monarch thought to have ruled from the spot 3,000 years ago, the dig is located in what today is east Jerusalem, which was captured by Israel in 1967. Palestinians claim that part of the city as the capital of a future state.
The dig is funded by Elad, an organization affiliated with the Israeli settlement movement. The group also moves Jewish families into the neighborhood and elsewhere in east Jerusalem in an attempt to render impossible any division of the city in a future peace deal.
Palestinians and some Israeli archaeologists have criticized the dig for what they say is an excessive focus on Jewish remains. The dig's archaeologists, who work under the auspices of the government's Israel Antiquities Authority, deny that charge.
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Coulter: If Romney wins the nomination, we lose to Obama

(h/t the right scoop)Oh yeah that’s vintage Coulter. You know, back when she really wanted Chris Christie, back in February of this year?

NEWTer Coulter already.

'Smartest' president is just making stuff up now

(h/t/ Eye)(NYP) President Obama was supposed to be the smartest guy in the room. But he's sunk so low in the polls and his policies have done so much harm that now he's just making stuff up. Take his "Teddy Roosevelt" speech in Kansas the other day.
Obama said this: “Some billionaires have a tax rate as low as 1 percent -- 1 percent. That is the height of unfairness.”
Except that it isn't true and the Washington Post calls him on it.
"This is a striking statistic. But the only evidence that the White House could offer for it was a TV clip of a conversation on Bloomberg TV, in which correspondent Gigi Stone made this assertion during a discussion about the tax strategies that the very wealthy use to avoid paying taxes."
"Fact Checker" Glenn Kessler doesn't like it a bit: "To bolster his case about unfairness, the president is also relying on a suspect statistic about billionaires paying as little as one percent in taxes. Even if true, it is a clearly a rare event. Moreover, it is certainly surprising the White House would rely on such a dubious, unverified source for a major presidential address."
But Kessler is wrong when he claims it is "surprising" that the White House would rely on a dubious factoid to make a point. After all, the administration is relying on dubious economics to make investments (Solyndra), dubious law enforcement techniques to fight the drug war (fast and furious) and dubious science to make environmental policy (smog emissions, carbon emissions).
Nothing new here, really.

NLRB drops Boeing suit at behest of union | Campaign 2012 | Washington Examiner

(campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com @PhilipaKlein) If there was still any lingering doubt that the Obama administration was in the back pocket of unions, that should end today, as the National Labor Relations Board dropped its lawsuit against Boeing at the urging of a union.
In April, NLRB acting general counsel Lafe Solomon sued Boeing for building a non-union factory in South Carolina -- demanding that they move the work to unionized Washington state. Solomon stuck with his case even though it rested on a flawed legal theory -- and even as a Democratic former chairman of the NLRB criticized the action "unprecedented." But last week, Boeing and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers reached a deal that was subsequently approved by union members. The New York Times now reports:

The N.L.R.B.’s acting general counsel, Lafe Solomon, said the labor board had decided to end the case after the machinists’ union — which originally asked for the case to be brought — had urged the board on Thursday to withdraw it.

So there you have it. A lawsuit that was brought at the behest of the union is now ended at the behest of the union.
While some people will now like to forget this whole episode, it's important to remember what happened here. As I noted last week, this has all the characteristics of a shake down. The South Carolina factory that was at the center of this case -- that we were told represented an illegal retaliation against the union -- still remains open. But Boeing has agreed to build another airplane model at a unionized factory in Washington state and to offer the union a raft of salary and benefit increases. The union got paid, so now the Obama administration can withdraw its lawsuit. Talk about Gangster Government.

I wish I was in a union. Then I would have work, but unions are controlled by elitists... and a Zionist Jew like myself is not welcome