Archive for the 'Israel' Category

It’s been obvious for some time that Obama simply cannot stand Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It’s also increasingly obvious that the President feels a real sense of liking for and fellow-spiritedness with Turkish leader Recep Erdogan, who has moved his country away from secular democracy and disturbingly far in the direction of Islamic fundamentalism and hostility to Israel.


Which says plenty about the kind of leadership we are getting from Obama himself.


More here.

Today is Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Memorial Day. Screenwriter Robert Avrech has posted the first part of his Emmy-award-winning film The Devil’s Arithmetic, which is based on Jane Yolen’s book of the same name, for on-line viewing.

The DVD is available from the usual sources, including Amazon and Netflix. Highly recommended.

Martin Kramer on Facebook:

Some pro-Palestinian ‘activists’ may make it onto flights to Ben-Gurion Airport for tomorrow’s ‘flytilla.’ (Many of them won’t, since Israel provided foreign airlines with lists of persons who will be denied entry, and the airlines have been canceling their reservations in compliance.) Those who do get through will be sent right back, but not before being handed this letter. Have a nice flight.

The letter is well worth a click. Read it here.

UPDATE: One of the initial commenters in response to Kramer’s FB post takes the Israelis to task for producing this “childish” letter. I disagree. The letter isn’t for the benefit of a few anti-Israel activists who are never going to change their minds. It’s a clever PR move that costs nothing and will get a lot of exposure. The Israelis should do more of this kind of thing and we should too.

Via Martin Kramer, who asks: “What happens to aging ’60s American Jewish radicals after the kids move out, the dog dies, and their parents (may they rest in peace), who so valued and cherished Israel, have passed on to their heavenly reward?”

If the trailer is representative, this is a slick piece of agitprop packaged as folksy interviews with thoughtful Jewish intellectuals who just happen to have doubts about Israel, no doubt because their integrity and independent-mindedness let them see clearly the evils of Israel that other Jews (and most non-Jewish Americans) are brainwashed into overlooking. In fact this is a bunch of leftist hacks repeating buzzwords (apartheid etc.) and citing events pruned of context to single out Israel for demonization. The woman in the last interview gives the game away by blaming Israel for the “stateless” condition of Palestinian refugees, even though Palestinian Arab statelessness, to the extent it still exists, is a racket maintained by Arab governments and the Palestinians themselves, and even though the post-WW2 world has had many refugee populations that dwarfed the Palestinian Arab refugee population and that, unlike the Palestinians, were mostly resettled within a few years. The difference is that people like those in this movie couldn’t use those other refugee populations as a weapon against the Jews. You would have to be profoundly ignorant to find this movie convincing, but ignorant people seem to be the target audience. Watch it for yourself.

I was fortunate to have had in high school a leftist, anti-Semitic history teacher, a man who was an enthusiast of Third World “liberation” movements run by kleptocrats and gangsters but who put Israel under a moral microscope. The Israeli Jews, as he saw it, had treated the Palestinian Arabs unjustly by (he would quote a particular historian whose book he always had at the ready) expelling them and this unjust treatment colored everything that Israel did subsequently. Two wrongs — an allusion to the Holocaust — don’t make a right. We should all be citizens of the world and should drop our parochialisms and be happy. Of course he mainly applied this argument to the Jews, and I was not clever enough to point out that the Jews’ enemies had often persecuted them for supposedly being too worldly. I argued, and learned a great deal in that class, and watching this movie trailer transports me right back to it. Shabbat shalom.

Via Martin Kramer. This is a very well done sermon by a Reform rabbi, a political liberal, against Peter Beinart’s argument that we should penalize Israel by boycott because of Israel’s continued control over the area between the Jordan River and the 1949 armistice line.

Beinart’s Times op-ed is a monument to sloppy reasoning. He ignores the key facts underlying Israel’s reluctant continuing control over Judea and Samaria: that Israel captured the territory in a defensive war to prevent its own destruction and therefore holds it legitimately absent a peace deal, that most Israelis would be happy to return control over the territory to an Arab government in exchange for a reasonable peace deal, and that none of the Arab governments that have controlled the territory has been willing to make such a deal (which is why Israeli public opinion has shifted away from its 1990s accommodationism). The settler issue per se is a red herring, since there is no obvious rationale other than anti-Jewish ethnic cleansing for preventing Jewish settlers from remaining in their homes under Arab rule (as more than one million Arabs live in Israel), and most of the “settlers” are residents of close-in suburbs of Jerusalem that would be incorporated into Israel under any reasonable final deal. (Why is the term apartheid only used to color the perceptions of ignorant people about democratic Israel but never used in connection with the proposed de-Judeization of the West Bank?)

Beinart strikes me as either a committed leftist or an opportunist who is trying to position himself to make hay from the BDS movement. Perhaps he is both. Regardless of his motives, his arguments are weak.

From a comment by “Eggplant” at Belmont Club:

Supposedly the US has war gamed this thing and the prospects look poor. A war game is only as good as the assumptions programmed into it. Can the war game be programmed to consider the possibility that a single Iranian leader has access to an ex-Soviet nuke and is crazed enough to use it?
 
Of course the answer is “No Way”.
 
A valid war game would be a Monte Carlo simulation that considered a range of possible scenarios. However the tails of that Gaussian distribution would offer extremely frightening scenarios. The Israelis are in the situation where truly catastrophic scenarios have tiny probability but the expectation value [consequence times probability] is still horrific. However “fortune favors the brave”. Also being the driver of events is almost always better than passively waiting and hoping for a miracle. That last argument means the Israelis will launch an attack and probably before the American election.

These are important points. The outcomes of simulations, including the results of focus groups used in business and political marketing, may be path-dependent. If they are the results of any one simulation may be misleading and it may be tempting to game the starting assumptions in order to nudge the output in the direction you want. It is much better if you can run many simulations using a wide range of inputs. Then you can say something like: We ran 100 simulations using the parameter ranges specified below and found that the results converged on X in 83 percent of the cases. Or: We ran 100 simulations and found no clear pattern in the results as long as Parameter Y was in the range 20-80. And by the way, here are the data. We don’t know the structure of the leaked US simulation of an Israeli attack on Iran and its aftermath.

It’s also true, as Eggplant points out, that the Israelis have to consider outlier possibilities that may be highly unlikely but would be catastrophic if they came to pass. These are possibilities that might show up only a few times or not at all in the output of a hypothetical 100-run Monte Carlo simulation. But such possibilities must still be taken into account because 1) they are theoretically possible and sufficiently bad that they cannot be allowed to happen under any circumstances and 2) the simulation-based probabilities may be inaccurate due to errors in assumptions.

As the election approaches, Obama is turning up the volume on his assertions that he’s been a great friend to Israel.

This video tells a different story, and I think clearly a much truer one.

The video is long…30 minutes…but it is well-done. If you value the safety and survival of Israel…if you are concerned about the threat of terrorism to Americans and others around the world…if you believe it would be a very bad thing for Iran to obtain nuclear weapons…and if you are even remotely considering voting for Barack Obama or sitting out the election, then you owe it to yourself to watch this video.

link via Robert Avrech

Tom Smith:

…Because our public political culture is mostly unwelcoming to anything but the softest left, leftish sympathies emerge like weird, buried psychopathlogies, in slips of the tongue and irrational outbursts. One of which is the simmering hatred for Israel and Jews unwilling to apologize for being such. It follows of course that nothing could be more ironic than various Israel haters accusing anyone of dual loyalty when they are, roughly speaking, the same people who could see our burning towers from our enemies’ point of view, even as our brothers and sisters jumped to avoid the flames.

CommodityOnline:

India’s crude oil imports from Iran is facing a risk of potential disruption as increasing US and EU sanctions make it impossible for Indian ships to obtain insurance.

Greg Scoblete, The Compass Blog (Real Clear World):

I imagine if I were an Indian official, I’d be a bit peeved to learn that acting “responsibly” means privileging the interests of the United States over my own country. Nevertheless, Burns has a point. After all, India may rely on Iran for 12 percent of its oil imports, but look at what the United States has been willing to do for India:
 

Presidents Obama and Bush have met India more than halfway in offering concrete and highly visible commitments on issues India cares about. On his state visit to India in November 2010, for example, President Obama committed the U.S. for the very first time to support India’s candidacy for permanent membership on the U.N. Security Council.

 
I don’t know about you, but if the U.S. was asked to forgo 12 percent of its oil imports in exchange for another country’s endorsement for a seat on a multilateral forum, I’d make the trade. I mean, c’mon, 12 percent? The U.S. gets about that much from the Persian Gulf – and we barely pay that area any attention at all…

Europa:

“The EU-India free trade agreement will be the single biggest trade agreement in the world, benefiting 1.7 billion people,” said president Barroso. “It would mean new opportunities for both Indian and European companies. It would mean a key driver for sustainable growth, job creation and innovation in India and Europe.”
 
The EU is India’s largest trading partner, accounting for about €86bn of trade in goods and services in 2010. Bilateral trade in goods rose by 20% between 2010 and 2011.”

Asia Times Online:

Last year Israel supplied India with $1.6 billion worth of military equipment and is India’s second-largest defense supplier after Russia. Sales are only going to rise. Indian defense procurements from Israel in the period 2002-07 have touched the $5 billion mark.

And this doesn’t even get into the China-EU-US-Israel-Saudi Arabia wheels-within-wheels complications when it comes to arms deals, hoped for arms deals, trade deals, hoped for trade deals, energy politics, and the rest of it….

It’s not 1985, now is it? The past is a different country, a Russian (Soviet)-oriented Cold War country used to thinking in terms of “Kissengerian” alliances and blocs. An intellectual adjustment may be needed. It’s like 3-D chess out there….

Speaking of energy:

“Was Saudi Arabia involved?” (Asia Times Online.) If it makes you feel better, let me point out that Saudi petrodollars continue to fund all sorts of interesting educational activities on the subcontinent, in Africa, and elsewhere, along with Iranian monies. So that’s nice.

Does this story mean that the US govt is not only not collaborating with Israel but is trying to undermine Israeli covert efforts? If so that is very bad news. We need more information. If the story is valid and our govt has decided to leak it to the press now, that suggests that we are 1) shockingly inept or 2) may be trying to cut a deal with the mullahs by sacrificing our ally or 3) both. Either way it sounds bad. I hope there’s more to the story.

Is Israel preparing to attack Iran? asks David Ignatius.

I think the obvious answer is yes. So why is the US govt trying to stop it?

-Answer 1: Obama doesn’t want any trouble (e.g., high fuel prices, possible US involvement) going into the November elections.

-Answer 2: Obama doesn’t want anyone to attack Iran under any circumstances.

-Answer 3: Obama is confident that his overt/covert appeasement/negotiation campaign will eventually work and doesn’t want anyone else to front run him.

-Answer 4: We really do want Israel to attack Iran, but as in 1981 with Iraq we will publicly condemn while privately applauding.

-Answer 5: Obama is planning to attack Iran and doesn’t want to share credit with anyone else.

???

UPDATE: Via Robert Schwartz, Barry Rubin’s well reasoned argument that there will be no attack on Iran.

(with a tip o’ the hat to David Foster – Thanks for the title)

While the Irish government, in typical fashion, is working overtime to ingratiate itself with the Palestinian cause, Harper’s government in Canada continues to impress. From announcing “Canada will take that stand [to defend Israel in the public sphere] whatever the cost” to opposing a bid for statehood by the PA, Harper has shown unusual cojones .

And now the next chapter – yesterday, FM John Baird reiterated Canada’s support for Israel in the now-typical unbridled fashion:

On a visit to Israel, Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird told an audience of 350 at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum that “Israel has no greater friend in the world than Canada.” He then surprised them by saying “Canada does not stand behind Israel… .” After a slight pause he continued: “Canada stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel” in any threats and challenges it may face. He was met with warm applause.

Just in case you think Baird talks only to the cheering section, behold this:

Over lunch with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, then later with Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and Foreign Minister Riad Maliki, the Ottawa tag-team [of Baird and Minister of Finance Jim Flaherty] went out of its way to impress upon the Palestinian leadership that it should abandon its efforts to obtain United Nations recognition and return to the negotiating table with Israel “without preconditions.”

Two foreign ministers touring Israel in this past week. Two very different policies.

Caroline Glick:

Today’s principal form of Jew-hatred is anti- Zionism. Anti-Zionism is similar to previous dominant forms of Jew hatred such as Christian anti-Judaism, xenophobic and racist anti- Semitism, and Communist anti-Jewish cosmopolitanism in the sense that it takes dominant, popular social trends and turns them against the Jews. Anti-Zionism’s current predominance owes to the convergence of several popular social trends which include Western post-nationalism, and anti-colonialism.

Worth reading in full.

UPDATE: David Foster provides a link to a well written blog post about a BDS conference at U. Penn.

Richard Fernandez:

There will always be those who’d like to abstract the candy from the candy store. But it is the shopkeeper’s responsibility to keep that from happening. Conservatives cannot simply hope that progressives will behave themselves. Boys will be boys and progressives will be progressives.
 
The supine acquiescence and collaboration in centralizing government over the last 3 decades has led to the point where a candidacy like Obama’s was not only possible but inevitable. His election is a symptom, not the primary cause of it of what ails the body politic.
 
The man himself can’t be blamed for taking his ambitions and ideology as far as they will go. It is those who let him pass that shows how low the rot within what passes for conservatism has fallen. Conservatism has basically been reduced to behaving well. To politely choose between the milquetoast offerings the press serves up and do nothing to make waves.
 
Anyone who so much as threatens to cause the slightest amount of controversy is branded a wacko — ironically not just by the Democrats but all too often by conservatives who are obsessed with the cult of respectability. Thus Palin, Bachman, Cain, Gingrich and Paul are faulted not so much for their personal failings — which any politician has — but for being disreputable. And being disrepute in today’s conservative world often consists in daring to think a single original thought.
 
By contrast, ‘progressives’ are psychologically conditioned to challenge and even subvert the system. They see that as their job. Others may criticize them, but their Base at least, will cheer them on. Implicit in the ‘progressive’ brand name is the idea of loyalty to the future, not so some transient present or disposable past. So when City Journal’s Siegel and Kotkin write that Obama is perfectly capable of trying to remake the US into a version of China they mean it. After all, politicians of 1940s dreamed of making America like the Soviet Union.
 

A victorious Obama administration could embrace a soft version of the Chinese model. The mechanisms of control already exist. The bureaucratic apparatus, the array of policy czars and regulatory enforcers commissioned by the executive branch, has grown dramatically under Obama. Their ability to control and prosecute people for violations relating to issues like labor and the environment—once largely the province of states and localities—can be further enhanced.

 
But it’s dollars to donuts that any ‘reputable’ conservative asked to comment on Siegel and Klotkin’s article would vehemently deny that such a thing is possible, not because it isn’t — which would be a good reason if it were true — but because it’s impossible for a conservative to admit a progressive can be a progressive.
 
CS Lewis wrote that the biggest trick the devil ever pulled was to make people believe he didn’t exist. Similarly the greatest conjury progressivism has ever peformed was to make their political opponents believe it was shameful to accept that progressives could ever be anything but slightly racier versions of themselves.

Read the rest of this entry »

In a previous post, I asked a question about leverages in terms of foreign policy:

A key–an essential–question on leverages at Abu Muqawama (Dr. Andrew Exum):

Where things get tricky is when one tries to decide what to do about that. The principle problem is one that has been in my head watching more violent crackdowns in Bahrain and Egypt: the very source of U.S. leverage against the regimes in Bahrain and Egypt is that which links the United States to the abuses of the regime in the first place. So if you want to take a “moral” stand against the abuses of the regime in Bahrain and remove the Fifth Fleet, congratulations! You can feel good about yourself for about 24 hours — or until the time you realize that you have just lost the ability to schedule a same-day meeting with the Crown Prince to press him on the behavior of Bahrain’s security forces. Your leverage, such as it was, has just evaporated. The same is true in Egypt. It would feel good, amidst these violent clashes between the Army and protesters, to cut aid to the Egyptian Army. But in doing so, you also reduce your own leverage over the behavior of the Army itself.

Okay, so we have leverage with an Army cracking down on its own people, an Army fattened on US military aid and training. I thought bilateral military training was supposed to mitigate the worst instincts of some armies? Isn’t that the theory? What does it mean to have leverage? To what end? To what purpose? I don’t know the answer and I don’t think anyone does, so Dr. Exum has a point. We have no strategy (link goes to Zen) within which to place “trade offs”. Well, if we do, I can’t see it.

Greg Scoblete at The Compass (RealClearWorld) asks the question in a much better fashion (I enjoy reading that blog, whether I agree or disagree with specific points):

But all of this begs an important question – leverage for what? The idea is that the U.S. invests in places like Bahrain and Egypt because it needs or wants something in return. During the Cold War, it was keeping these states out of the Soviet orbit. In the 1990s and beyond, it was ensuring these states remained friendly with Israel and accommodative to U.S. military power in the region. Today, what? What is it that U.S. policy requires from Egypt and Bahrain that necessitates supporting these regimes during these brutal crack downs?

How should we view American policy toward the Middle East? What is the larger strategic framework within which we ought to view the various relationships? What is the optimal posture for the United States? Folks, I don’t know. I’d love to know your opinions on the subject.

Barack Obama, a couple of days ago:

I try not to pat myself too much on the back, but this administration has done more in terms of the security of the state of Israel than any previous administration.

Barack Obama, quoted in a 2008 article:

I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.

Tries not to pat himself on the back too much? The man is in serious danger of breaking his arm from patting himself on the back so much.

The second comment is absolutely bizarre, even taken by itself–anyone who thinks that way is seriously dangerous in any management or leadership position, and should probably not even be allowed to operate power machinery. Put the two comments together and you have an individual whose mind functions in very strange ways indeed.

The assertion about Obama’s support of the security of Israel is of course so at variance to reality that it’s hard to imagine anyone taking it seriously except members of the hard core of Obamian true believers. Of whom there are unfortunately still quite a few.

Caroline Glick:

Do you believe a stronger leader than Netanyahu is needed for such a change to occur?
 
A big problem throughout the Western world, not only in Israel, is that due in large part to the intellectual terror of the left there is a huge leadership crisis. People who actually have the strength of their convictions, the character and moral fiber to stand up for their country, are being marginalized. As a result, the people who end up getting through the vetting process of the elite tend to be without strong convictions. This is the real problem. And the answer I found is that the way to have strong leaders is to have strong people. We have to do the hard work the public demands of leadership and then I believe the leaders we need will emerge or the leaders we have will be strengthened.

[ corss-posted from Zenpundit -- archaeology, Biblical scholarship, eschatology, digital literacy ]

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Both the Dead Sea scrolls from Qumran and the Gnostic and associated codices from Nag Hammadi are now available for study online:

The Nag Hammadi Archive can be explored via the Claremont Colleges Digital Library, and the Digital Dead Sea Scrolls via the Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

Here’s a description of the War Scroll from Qumran, which “is dated to the late first century BCE or early first century CE”:

Against the backdrop of a long biblical tradition concerning a final war at the End of Days (Ezekiel 38-39; Daniel 7-12), this scroll describes a seven stage, dualistic confrontation between the “Sons of Light” (the term used by Community members to refer to themselves), under the leadership of the “Prince of Light” (also called Michael, the Archangel) – and the “Sons of Darkness” (a nickname for the enemies of the Community, Jews and non-Jews alike), aided by a nation called the Kittim (Romans?), headed by Belial. The confrontation would last 49 years, terminating in the victory of the “Sons of Light” and the restoration of the Temple service and sacrifices. The War Scroll describes battle arrays, weaponry, the ages of the participants, and military maneuvers, recalling Hellenistic and Roman military manuals.

You can see why I’m interested.

The Nag Hammadi texts are a little less well known but include — along with a variety of other texts, some of them self-described as “apocalypses” — the now celebrated Gospel of Thomas, which Bart Erhman reads as continuing a “de-apocalypticizing” of Jesus’ message which he finds beginning in Luke and continuing in John:

In the Gospel of Thomas, for example, written somewhat later than John, there is a clear attack on anyone who believes in a future Kingdom here on earth. In some sayings, for example, Jesus denies that the Kingdom involves an actual place but “is within you and outside you” (saying 3); he castigates the disciples for being concerned about the end (saying 18); and he spurns their question about when the Kingdom will come, since “the Kingdom of the Father is spread out on the earth and people do not see it” (saying 113).

Again, you can see why I am delighted that these texts are becoming available to a wider scholarly audience…

In both the Nag Hammadi codices and Qumran scrolls, we have texts that were lost for almost two thousand years and discovered, somewhat haphazardly, in 1945 and 1947 respectively, providing us with rich insights into the religious ferment around a time and place that have been pivotal for western civilization.

Now, more than half a century later, the web — as it becomes our global museum and our in-house library — brings us closer to both…

Carter Doctrine:”The Carter Doctrine was a policy proclaimed by President of the United States Jimmy Carter in his State of the Union Address on January 23, 1980, which stated that the United States would use military force if necessary to defend its national interests in the Persian Gulf region. The doctrine was a response to the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union, and was intended to deter the Soviet Union—the Cold War adversary of the United States—from seeking hegemony in the Gulf. After stating that Soviet troops in Afghanistan posed “a grave threat to the free movement of Middle East oil,” Carter proclaimed:….”

On the tenth anniversary of 9/11, as we remember the fallen and the many members of the armed services of the United States who have served for ten years of war, heroically, at great sacrifice and seldom with complaint, we also need to recall that we should not move through history as sleepwalkers. We owe it to our veterans and to ourselves not to continue to blindly walk the path of the trajectory of 9/11, but to pause and reflect on what changes in the last ten years have been for the good and which require reassessment. Or repeal. To reassert ourselves, as Americans, as masters of our own destiny rather than reacting blindly to events while carelessly ceding more and more control over our lives and our livelihoods to the whims of others and a theatric quest for perfect security. America needs to regain the initiative, remember our strengths and do a much better job of minding the store at home.

– Zenpundit, The Nine-Eleven Century

1. Canada and oil sands: “Bituminous sands, colloquially known as oil sands or tar sands, are a type of unconventional petroleum deposit. The sands contain naturally occurring mixtures of sand, clay, water, and a dense and extremely viscous form of petroleum technically referred to as bitumen (or colloquially “tar” due to its similar appearance, odour, and colour). Oil sands are found in large amounts in many countries throughout the world, but are found in extremely large quantities in Canada and Venezuela.[1]”

2. Israel and Natural Gas: “In recent years, Israel has found and begun developing massive natural gas deposits in the Mediterranean Sea. There is much more wealth underwater– the U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the Levant Basin contains as much as 122 trillion cubic meters of recoverable gas — and all countries around the basin want a piece of the action.”

3. Russian state oil and American oil companies: “America’s largest oil company last week reached an historic agreement with Russia’s state oil company, Rosneft. ExxonMobil now will take the place of BP (British Petroleum), whose dealings with Rosneft collapsed earlier this year.”

4. Dakotas and oil reserves: “America is sitting on top of a super massive 200 billion barrel Oil Field that could potentially make America Energy Independent and until now has largely gone unnoticed. Thanks to new technology the Bakken Formation in North Dakota could boost America’s Oil reserves by an incredible 10 times, giving western economies the trump card against OPEC’s short squeeze on oil supply and making Iranian and Venezuelan threats of disrupted supply irrelevant.”

5. Bloom boxes: “One example to illustrate why the future is proving elusive in the USA: There is a stand-alone electricity providing unit called the Bloom Energy Server or “Bloom Box” — small, simple to use — which can power any home or commercial building. The wondrous box has already been test-driven; Google, eBay and a number of other Fortune 500 companies have a few Bloom Boxes and they’re saving fortunes in electrical bills.

In other words, the Bloom Box can make America’s electricity grid obsolete. There are only two things holding the box back from being installed in every residential, commercial and government space in the USA:

a) Bloom Energy, the company that makes the box, doesn’t have large manufacturing capacity.

b) The U.S. energy industry doesn’t want to be shoved around by a box. (The same for much of the ‘Green Jobs’ sector that the federal government has been pushing hard. The Bloom Box technology makes windmill and solar panel technologies obsolete.”

The GOP debates have been intellectually vapid and the fault does not lie entirely with our lightweight media moderators. Ladies and gentlemen, you are “auditioning” for the toughest job in the world. Ladies and gentlemen, you are genuinely interesting and accomplished people. Be leaders. Hire some decent speech coaches, do a little background wonky reading and show us your vision for the future.

Update: I made a few edits for clarity. Thanks for the comments, everyone. I don’t know squat about this topic. Carl from Chicago is definitely the “go to” guy on energy topics around here but I’ve been bored with the debates and wanted to blog about that for some time now. Also, I don’t know what the whole “ladies and gentlemen” thing is about. It’s kinda affected. Incorrect, too. Only one lady has been involved in the formal debates….so far….