IntenseDebate - Scrumptlous

10 years ago @ Commentary Magazine - Who Lost the Shutdown ... · 2 replies · +1 points

I'm interested to read dissents from Tobin's on the money analysis.

10 years ago @ Commentary Magazine - Is Racial Equality Unc... · 0 replies · +2 points

I predict the vote wii be 5 to 3 for overturning the lower court decision: the 5 will be Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy, Roberts and Alito. If Kagan hadn't recused herself, the result would have been the same but the vote would have been 5-4.

10 years ago @ Commentary Magazine - A Bad Deal is the Only... · 0 replies · 0 points

It's not premature speculation. It's a realistic, hence pessimistic, perspective at work measuring what's going on by the bs corroding criterion emerging from that very realistic point of view.

10 years ago @ Commentary Magazine - Obama and Iran’s Nuc... · 0 replies · +1 points

...It should be understood that any nuclear deal that leaves Iran’s nuclear program in place is an invitation to a repeat of what happened when the West tried to use diplomacy to prevent North Korea from obtaining nuclear weapons. Anything short of a complete dismantling of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure including its plutonium project as well as the well-documented enrichment of uranium will simply delay the Islamist regime’s push toward a weapon...

Even to entertain the reasonable possibility of such a deal is wishful thinking in the extreme. The world, of course including Israel, had better get prepared to live with a nuclear armed Iran. Iran's progress to that state is as inexorable as it is inevitable.

10 years ago @ Commentary Magazine - Teacher Unions and Sex... · 0 replies · +1 points

I'd be interested in clear cases of arbitrators brooking teachers' sexual abuse of students. Where are the cases I can read about, with the facts and legal reasoning on full display?

10 years ago @ Commentary Magazine - Presidential Delusion · 2 replies · -10 points

Mr. Gordon, how do you deal with the fact that, relative to Obamacare,after all the litany of baleful, divisive wrongs you lay at his shrill, partisan feet, mixing a metaphor, he got, whatchacall it, oh yeah, re-elected?

10 years ago @ Commentary Magazine - Rouhani Declares Enric... · 1 reply · +4 points

Who in the world not strait jacketed by naive optimism or operating out of sheer instrumental cynicism can think that Iran will give up its nuclear program? In the Classic Latin saying: "It's straight up b.s."

10 years ago @ Commentary Magazine - The Obama Mythology Ha... · 0 replies · +1 points

P.S. My sense, I meant before to add, is that Obama is pretty well done politically and will ride out his second term as a lame duck whose overall presidency will be judged as mediocre at best.

The whole Syrian thing, even with the immediate horse shoes ostensible, pending, temporary solution, is a nail in the coffin of that assessment. It all started, his rhetoric creating problems for him, when he campaigned on Iraq being a dumb war of choice and Afghanistan being a smart war of necessity. In Afghanistan too he was condemned to make policy to preserve his credibility, as you note.

And who ordered the stand down in Ben Ghazi remains a huge, disturbing mystery. As per Dana Millbank:

...At least one participant at the Heritage gathering seemed to have the right perspective. Retired Gen. Paul Vallely wasn’t concerned about after-the-fact talking points or al-Qaeda conspiracies or whether Clinton signed diplomatic cables about security requests. He wanted to know why the U.S. military didn’t at least try to get reinforcements to the besieged Americans in Benghazi....

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10 years ago @ Commentary Magazine - The Obama Mythology Ha... · 0 replies · +1 points

Ok Mike. Let's leave Wehner and the chronology be.

O's involvement with Syria from pronouncing on Assad's necessary departure, to his red line, to his dithering zig zagging, to his passivity belying his statements has been terrible. I think he finally got to a defensible policy position, and given his political position, it was probably pragmatically right for him to go to Congress. But he sure did get politically lucky with the Syrian-Russian rhetorical accommodation of U.S. concerns. We need to eat some pudding here for proof. And he back ended himself into actually fulfilling his ultimate stated goal: deterring Assad's use of CWs. That just is not going to happen while Obama is in power, it seems.
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10 years ago @ Commentary Magazine - The Obama Mythology Ha... · 3 replies · +1 points

Mike,I don't find your comment telling. The issue isn't being consistent for it's own sake. Cameron took a vote and lost. That shifted things. Obama seeing he was in effect alone, without intra American backing--at the level of Congress or in plain popular support, and without credible allied backing, adapted to the changed landscape. He reckoned, correctly I believe in this one instance, at that point that any strike would be most unwise. To have stuck to, and unloaded, his guns just because Cameron took a vote would have been to act on an improper because irrelevant ground.

Obama can be criticized up and down in countless ways throughout this matter, but letting Cameron down is simply not one of them, is my only point. You're too smart a guy reflexively to fault Obama anytime he does something. And I'm not saying you're doing that here. But again, on this one, the criticism is misplaced, I argue, for the reasons I give.Sent from my iPad

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