Reader's Favorites
Media Casualties Mount

Administration Split On Europe Invasion

Administration In Crisis Over Burgeoning Quagmire

Congress Concerned About Diversion From War On Japan

Pot, Kettle On Line Two...

Allies Seize Paris

The Natural

Gore Book Sales Tank, Supporters Claim Unfair Tactics

Satan Files Lack Of Defamation Suit

Why This Blog Bores People With Space Stuff

A New Beginning

My Hit Parade
Instapundit (Glenn Reynolds)
Tim Blair
James Lileks Bleats
Virginia Postrel
Kausfiles
Winds Of Change (Joe Katzman)
Little Green Footballs (Charles Johnson)
Samizdata
Eject Eject Eject (Bill Whittle)

Space
Alan Boyle (MSNBC)
Space Politics (Jeff Foust)
Space Transport News (Clark Lindsey)
NASA Watch
NASA Space Flight
Hobby Space
A Voyage To Arcturus (Jay Manifold)
Dispatches From The Final Frontier (Michael Belfiore)
Personal Spaceflight (Jeff Foust)
Mars Blog
The Flame Trench (Florida Today)
Space Cynic
Rocket Forge (Michael Mealing)
COTS Watch (Michael Mealing)
Curmudgeon's Corner (Mark Whittington)
Selenian Boondocks
Tales of the Heliosphere
Out Of The Cradle
Space For Commerce (Brian Dunbar)
True Anomaly
Kevin Parkin
The Speculist (Phil Bowermaster)
Spacecraft (Chris Hall)
Space Pragmatism (Dan Schrimpsher)
Eternal Golden Braid (Fred Kiesche)
Carried Away (Dan Schmelzer)
Laughing Wolf (C. Blake Powers)
Chair Force Engineer (Air Force Procurement)
Spacearium
Saturn Follies
JesusPhreaks (Scott Bell)

Biting Commentary about Infinity, and Beyond!

« Do I Smell A Class-Action Lawsuit? | Main | Calling It In »

No Jews Allowed

Mark Steyn, on the "Illustrious Seniors Group":

Oh, but lest you think there are no minimum admission criteria to James Baker's "Support Group," relax, it's a very restricted membership: Arabs, Persians, Chinese commies, French obstructionists, Russian assassination squads. But no Jews. Even though Israel is the only country to be required to make specific concessions -- return the Golan Heights, etc. Indeed, insofar as this document has any novelty value, it's in the Frankenstein-meets-the-Wolfman sense of a boffo convergence of hit franchises: a Vietnam bug-out, but with the Jews as the designated fall guys. Wow. That's what Hollywood would call "high concept."

Why would anyone -- even a short-sighted incompetent political fixer whose brilliant advice includes telling the first Bush that no one would care if he abandoned the "Read my lips" pledge -- why would even he think it a smart move to mortgage Iraq's future to anything as intractable as the Palestinian "right of return"? And, incidentally, how did that phrase -- "the right of return" -- get so carelessly inserted into a document signed by two former secretaries of state, two former senators, a former attorney general, Supreme Court judge, defense secretary, congressman, etc. These are by far the most prominent Americans ever to legitimize a concept whose very purpose is to render any Zionist entity impossible. I'm not one of those who assumes that just because much of James Baker's post-government career has been so lavishly endowed by the Saudis that he must necessarily be a wholly owned subsidiary of King Abdullah, but it's striking how this document frames all the issues within the pathologies of the enemy.

I've never been a big fan of most of the people on the ISG (though Alan Simpson had his moments), but my esteem for Baker and Lee Hamilton has hit a new low.

Posted by Rand Simberg at December 10, 2006 12:10 PM

Comments

F*ck James Baker. This Jew didn't vote for him.

Posted by Eric j at December 10, 2006 04:25 PM

James (the spice must flow) Baker represents Big Oil. He is the consigliore for Big Oil. If you truly want to screw James Baker, get America off petroleum.

Posted by Bill White at December 10, 2006 06:12 PM

I thought I would share this tidbit

Daily Kos has a tidbit that asserts that Robert Novak is reporting that as a replacement for John Bolton at the U.N. George W. Bush will nominate Zalmay Khalilzad. A Muslim.

No Jews on the ISG and a Muslim as UN ambassador.

As for the first, yeah I agree its a problem. As for the second item? Khalilzad actually did a pretty good job in Baghdad, IMHO.

Reaction?

Posted by Bill White at December 10, 2006 06:23 PM

...as a replacement for John Bolton at the U.N. George W. Bush will nominate Zalmay Khalilzad. A Muslim.

What, did we run out of Mexicans?

Posted by lmg at December 10, 2006 06:34 PM

Bill White:

Isn't it funny how people always say that about Big Oil, but then all they manage to do is limit oil drilling in the United States and import even more from overseas?

Posted by Phil Fraering at December 10, 2006 06:42 PM

Isn't it funny how people always say that about Big Oil, but then all they manage to do is limit oil drilling in the United States and import even more from overseas?

James Baker understands his job and where his true loyalties lie.

Posted by Bill White at December 10, 2006 06:48 PM

I guess it is valid to complain about the lack of Jews on the ISG. The polar opposite of the excess of Jews among the neo-cons and die hard Iraq war proponents. Maybe James Baker is an anti-semite, he's such good friends with the Saudi's.

Khalilzad would be an interesting choice. Let's see it happen. He seems like a hard working reasonable chap.

Posted by Toast_n_Tea at December 10, 2006 06:51 PM

I guess it is valid to complain about the lack of Jews on the ISG.

Ummmm...

That's not exactly the complaint...

Posted by Rand Simberg at December 10, 2006 06:53 PM

Why are you complaining so much, Simberg?

I thought you weren't jewish?

Posted by anonymous at December 10, 2006 07:00 PM

I'm not Jewish, Anonymous Moron.

But one has to wonder why an Anonymous Moron would ask whether someone who doesn't think that the Jews should be pushed into the Mediterranean by the Arabs is Jewish.

I can guess, of course.

It's an Ad Hominem attack, just like the "Chickenhawk argument," your favorite...

When will you realize just what the deepest level of scum that readers of this website, and every decent person, view you as? Just how upset are you, like Ahmadinehad, that Hitler didn't finish the job?

Posted by Rand Simberg at December 10, 2006 07:07 PM

Bill White, at what point do you think "Big Oil" will let a new energy source compete with it? I work in the energy industry and I guarantee ANY new energy source that is viable and profitable will be embraced by every energy company that can make money from it. James Baker may be a part of "Saudi oil" which is an entirely different thing.

Posted by Bill Maron at December 10, 2006 07:54 PM

Bill, I very strongly doubt there is any actual "conspiracy" to suppress alteratives. IMHO, its more a matter of tax code incentives and the like being calcified in place that impede the faster development of alternatives.

Petroleum and Detroit just has a whole lot of "paid for" infrastructure and tax code provisions already in place making changes more expensive.

Solar power isn't quite here yet, as an economical alternative (unless you start counting all the so-called externalities petroleum avoids paying)

Ethanol is a total boondoggle. But I did see Jim Cramer on "Mad Money" last Friday touting fertilizer companies because he says politicians will be throwing ethanol money at Iowa in expectation of the 2008 election and that means Iowans will grow more corn and that means more fertilizer sales. (But I am intrigued by gene-mod hemp to eliminate the THC gene. Grow hemp everywhere -- its like kudzu -- and make methanol.)

Nuclear is its own story. If the nuclear advocates were to link national security with global warming, more nuclear plants would be a done deal. Use nuclear to reduce the natural gas used for power generation and then use the natural gas for cars.

British Petroleum appears to fully understand that it needs to diversify.

So, I see no silver bullet. A gasoline tax is one idea IF the money is spent wisely but I have reservations about that.

= = =

My real pet program? Harvest lunar platinum to drive down the cost of fuel cells. Space exploration and alternate energy? A win-win!

Posted by Bill White at December 10, 2006 09:15 PM

Bill, funny you mention Iowa. Tom Harkin(a pox on him) wants to remove tariffs on Brazilian ethanol which would kill ethanol development in Iowa overnight and have us dependent on another foreign government. If the sole goal was to reduce foreign imports, we could do that in 2 years by producing more ethanol and make everybody run a blend. The fuel cost would go up and public transportation might become more viable but most of the nation(including me) isn't willing to pay the cost yet. The future is bio-diesel!!! lol

Posted by Bill Maron at December 10, 2006 10:43 PM

Simberg

You never talk about the genocide in Darfur,

You never talked about the slaughter in Bosnia.

You seem to have no trouble with the daily slaughter in
Iraq.

But, Simberg the humanitarian carps about the
lack of jews on the ISG.

Kind of funny, for someone who claims to not be a jew.

Posted by anonymous at December 10, 2006 11:01 PM

anonymous:

Sure, daily slaughter in Iraq. Of muslims by muslims. Or, put it another way, the enemy are killing each other. Don't expect me to cry about it.

Posted by Fletcher Christian at December 11, 2006 01:01 AM

I'm on record as opposing the genocidal activities in Darfur, Anonymous Moron, though it wouldn't surprise me if you favored them, given that they're being committed by Arabs.

And your statement is kind of funny, for someone who pretends not to be anti-semitic.

Posted by Rand Simberg at December 11, 2006 05:03 AM

You never talk about the genocide in Darfur,

Are you from Darfur?

You never talked about the slaughter in Bosnia.

Are you from Bosnia?

You seem to have no trouble with the daily slaughter in Iraq.

Are you from Iraq?

Kind of funny, for someone who claims to not be a jew.

If you said "No" to all three questions, then what the hell is your point with this last statement?

To be frank about this, you seem rather annoyed that Rand would criticize the ISG about the demands on Israel. It's pretty obvious you are socialist, but you seem more like the national socialist type with your comments on this thread.

Posted by Leland at December 11, 2006 05:15 AM

My real pet program? Harvest lunar platinum to drive down the cost of fuel cells. Space exploration and alternate energy? A win-win!

Methane collection on Titan!

Posted by lmg at December 11, 2006 08:01 AM

At the moment building new nuclear plants and using them to power ethanol conversion or synfuels is probably the only "alternate energy" scheme that doesn't have "and here a miracle occurs" bit in there somewhere.

Doing that, and drilling more, and encouraging greater use of diesel would actually give us _time_ to develop all the magic stuff like cheap enough launch to actually develop the moon, etc....

And you'll still need a defense budget of some sort while you're waiting for the miracle; given the current work distribution, how badly would NASA's work schedules be affected if someone set a "shipping container" nuke off _in_ the Houston Ship Channel (which strikes me as being one of the more obvious places to detonate one if one is going to try to cripple the economy of the US; remember, we've gotten out of the habit of building refineries).

Posted by Phil Fraering at December 11, 2006 08:38 AM

Phil, I pretty much agree about the nuclear power angle. And yes we will still need a healthy defenes budget.

Diesel is good stop-gap but diesels need hefty catalytic converters and those need PGMs! Back to the Moon!

Posted by Bill White at December 11, 2006 08:54 AM

Anonymous Moron, what genocide in Darfur? The UN assures us there isn't one, because if there were, it'd have to do something about it. Send in more "aid" workers who like to have sex with children in exchange for food, no doubt.

Posted by Rick C at December 11, 2006 03:56 PM

Simberg

So are you a zionist?

Posted by anonymous at December 11, 2006 07:57 PM

Simberg

So are you a zionist?

Anonymous Moron [sic]

So, you're an anti-semite?

Thanks for confirming my beliefs.

Not to mention the belief that you're a moron, and unfamiliar with English grammar, which usually requires the use of periods...

Posted by Rand Simberg at December 11, 2006 08:02 PM

Simberg

One be be opposed to Zionism without having any opinion
on the jewish people.

So you still didn't answer the question? Are you a zionist?

Posted by anonymous at December 11, 2006 11:35 PM


Post a comment

Name:


Email Address:


URL:


Comments:


Remember info?