Spock’s brain splits into 2 states

I’m a closet Trekkie without the elf ears or phaser.  I don’t attend those goofy conventions but I love Star Trek and have since I was a kid.  A few times a year when I can’t sleep, I have a ST marathon (I have all the DVDs. And for the original series I go to FirstOnMars.com or hulu.com and watch on my computer.)

I like the original series and the Next Generation – don’t watch the newer incarnations like DeepSpace 9. As far as I’m concerned, no one can be better Enterprise captains than William Shatner or Patrick Stewart.

Live long and prosper with a 2 state solution - Mr.Spock

Why am I telling you all this Star Trek stuff? Answer: Because Mr. Spock has come out for a 2 state solution in Israel. Leonard Nimoy is an 80 year old 2 stater Jew. I know he’s a Jew thanks to Adam Sandler:

Nimoy is advocating splitting Jerusalem. Making it the capitol of both Israel and the Palestinians, in addition to land swaps.  What land is going to be swapped? If the Palestinians have control of the holy sites that are now in the hands of the Jews, will they remain open to all? I doubt it and so does Andrew Klavan:

In his letter, Nimoy sites the episode of ST called Let this be your last battlefield (Season 3, episode 15.)  Two aliens are transported on board the Enterprise who have been in mortal combat for thousands of centuries. If you get a chance to watch the episode, it’s an obvious portrayal of the race issues in America in the ’60’s.

Star Trek - Let this be your last battlefield

Both men are half black and half white and the only difference is that white is on the left of one and on the right of the other.  The dialog is Oppressor vs Oppressed, bad guy/good guy and guess who’s the oppressive bad guy? The one (Frank Gorshin) who represents the white American male. He’s white on his right.  Get it?  (As a side note, this is the television Primetime Propaganda that Ben Shapiro writes about in his new book.)

So Nimoy thinks that a lesson can be learned from this episode of centuries old conflict and puts it in the context of the 2 state solution in Israel.  I’m not really seeing a connection here. Israel has taken a dry desert and turned it green. It’s created a nation that is the most productive and democratic in the entire region – a nation that is open to anyone and just to all, including women and gays, unlike it’s Muslim neighbors. It has never enslaved Palestinians (as the ST episode posits about Black Americans.) It has never religiously oppressed them, as their Muslim neighbors do to Christians and Jews.

The ST episode and the letter Nimoy has written suggests and encourages a form a reparation for the oppressed (Black Americans in the 60’s and now Palestinians.)  This is not only unrealistic (I mean, after all it was just tv!) but dangerous to the Jewish state.  How will Israel be more prosperous, more safe with the Palestinians owning half of Jerusalem and swaths of the country? These are people who have sworn their intent is to destroy Israel.

And why do the Israelis owe reparations to the Palestinians? They never enslaved or stole this land from anyone. It was a UN charter that granted this land to them. Why have the other Muslim nations not absorbed the Palestinians into their nations but instead expect the Israelis to do so?

A 2 state solution will not work. It will empower the Palestinians to attack the Jews and to take more and more if they can get away with it. It’s their stated goal to eradicate the Jewish state and giving them more of a toehold by donating half of the holiest of cities, Jerusalem to them, will only encourage them on their dastardly course.

My message to Mr.Spock is logical: In television, conflicts that have simmered for centuries are routinely solved in less than 50 minutes. Not so in real life.

~~ooOoo~~

By the way, if you’re not a trekkie you probably don’t get the reference in the title of this blog, to another ST episode: Spock’s Brain.  In that episode, Spocks brain is surgically removed by another alien invader, much prettier than Frank Gorshin, and he’s kept alive by the gifts of Dr. “Bones” McCoy.  (insert smiley face emoticon here, please.)

Come on, ask me anything Star Trek — I got an answer for it!

Klavan on the Culture take 2

Quote of the day

I was an atheist and an agnostic for a long time.  Finding God, or perhaps accepting the God I always knew was there, was transformative in too many ways to describe.  But one of the most important things God did was make a realist of me.  There’s a great joke for you.  The atheists preen themselves on their realism and accuse the faithful of wishful thinking, but for me, God freed me to develop a full, honorable and tragic sense of life, to perceive both the nobility and the sinfulness of every individual, and to understand why no system will make us good or fair but that there are systems that can keep us free so that we can choose whether or not to be good or fair.  That understanding – plus a sense of peace in the face of the left’s slavering insults and hatred – were gifts of God to me and it turns out they’re very helpful in maintaining my conservatism. Andrew Klavan

Andrew Klavan: Do Something!

Yesterday, fourteen Americans died in helicopter crashes in Afghanistan, the deadliest day for Americans there since June, 2005, in what has been the deadliest year for international and US forces there since the 2001 invasion. Meanwhile, in Baghdad, where Obama has ordered our troops into slow retreat, two massive suicide car bombs claimed hundreds of lives, including those of at least two dozen children, while destroying three major government buildings. And then, of course, came news that Obama had now played more golf while in office than our last president did in nearly three years.

All right, I don’t begrudge Obama the golf. It’s his dithering and cowardice I find shameful. During the campaign, he told us Afghanistan was the necessary war. In March, he told us he had completed a major review of the situation and come up with a new strategy. The commander he put in place has told him he needs 30- to 40-thousand more troops to finish the job. Civilians are dying in the war he wants to abandon. Our soldiers are dying in the war he swore he’d win. And Obama, caught between campaign rhetoric and reality, can’t figure out what to do.

Again, I’m not an expert, but I’m beginning to smell disaster, big time disaster. Is it possible the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize will not only lose the war Bush won but simultaneously tiptoe by cowardly half-measures into a wearying round of useless American deaths before he’s forced to retreat from Afghanistan as well, having accomplished absolutely nothing? God forbid.

Andrew Klavan

Unacceptable. TheOne finds time to golf, to jet off for date nights with the wife, to drop in to raise money for his party’s candidates, to make a public appearance every single, stinking day, but he can’t find time to make a damned decision about the lives of our soldiers? He only found 25 minutes to meet with his general – in the last how many months – because of public pressure to do so. He shelved his general’s request for over a month.

In the (similar) words of that idiot Garofalo, “this is politics, straight up.”

A decision, either way is going to piss off a large segment of this country. He knows it. He’s afraid of it. It means loss of votes, in the end. But what he’s not getting is that pissing off a large segment of this country should not be the issue. The lives of our soldiers, and those of our allies, is what matters. The security of this nation should be paramount to him.

Our soldiers can’t possibly feel like they are being backed up. This indecision from their commander-in-chief cannot be moral boasting for them.

Good Lord! He’s spending precious time blasting Fox and anyone who gets in his healthcare way. He’s doing whatever he can to distract us to get his public option and his crap-and-trade shit through. And all at the expense of the soldiers who are defending and dying for our freedom and our protection. I can’t believe that this is all going past the understanding of our soldiers and their families. They see it. They understand what he’s doing or more correctly, not doing for them. This is one president who does not have the military behind him because he has so far shown them no leadership. Being Mr. Smooth-and-Cool President is not going to make them feel safer.

It’s time to make a decision and one that puts our soldiers and our security first, no matter what it is, and in Klavan’s words DO SOMETHING!

PJTV’s humorous PSA response

The more stuff I see from these Hollywood types, whether it’s ads that patronize us into favoring government run health care or telling us it’s not “rape-rape,” the more righteous I’m feeling about NOT supporting them or their work.

You’re a racist, you’re a racist, nyah, nyah, nyah… nyah and another funny thing