gdp's Comments

Commentary Magazine : Can ObamaCare Fiasco Save the GOP?

Sat, 2 Nov 2013 00:58:06 +0000

ENOUGH about how ObamaCare reveals the president to be "a liar". This is the fellow, when his friend and mentor of 20 years, Jeremiah Wright was shown to regularly preach hatred of white America and Jews, from the altar, and bestow medals on Louis Farrakhan, who proclaimed himself shocked, shocked. When, during the 2008 campaign, the Iraq war, which he had declared unwinnable was being won, this congenital dove wiped the egg off his face by accusing the Republicans of neglecting Afghanistan and promising to make it the central front in the war on terror. After having opposed gay marriage during the 2004 election, in obedience to his Christan teaching, he became a supporter of gay marriage for the 2012 election, in loyalty to the Sermon on the Mount. With a halting voice he spoke on TV after the Newtown shooting, repeatedly dabbing his tears from the outer end of the eye. This man has so often revealed himself as a liar, an actor, a performer. That it took these ObamaCare contradictions to expose that fact is preposterous and an irony. For once he was not being selfish, he was not lying on his own behalf. It was not to advance his career, it was to push a program he sincerely believes beneficial. Sure, his ego is involved in his signature program, but it also and truly an attempt to tackle a genuine health care crisis that threatens to hemorrhage the nation. It does more harm than good, but it meant to be good. It is well intentioned and he clearly thought, supporting it with untruths was not lying but justifiable fibbing. Leaders are sometimes pressed to that expedient, for the sake of the nation. FDR, for example, after solemnly promising not to involve America in foreign wars, bent every effort to do the reverse. He diverted billions to Manhattan project, without telling Congress, a clear violation for the sake of the nation. One can imagine Obama telling himself he was lying for the sake of a program the nation needed. And the irony is that this is the lie this throughly selfish and deceitful man got caught on.

Commentary Magazine : Overestimating Putin

Fri, 1 Nov 2013 09:57:35 +0000

Very interesting observations.

Commentary Magazine : The Mendacious Mr. Obama

Thu, 31 Oct 2013 20:35:19 +0000

Jack_nSlvrSprng No, " it is [NOT]a general characteristic of all Leftists." "Making things up" is a characteristic of all ideologues, whether of the left or the right, secular or religious. They feel entitled to correct disagreeable facts and think up more convenient ones, because they are so sure they have the truth and are right. That certainty requires them to support their great cause, with lies and distortions if necessary. When such an ideologue is also a born actor, a nimble talker, and a shameless opportunist, we have the Obama described by Peter Wehner.

Commentary Magazine : Loving Us to Death: How America's Embrace is Imperiling American Jewry

Sat, 26 Oct 2013 02:48:27 +0000

Right on A66. Not only does Israel remain a haven for endangered Jews, it is a window into the world's continued obsession and hatred of Jew. Europe piously despising and railing at the wicked Zionists for prevailing over their genocidal foes is sheer anti-Semitism. Jews, safe and comfortable in America, must be made to see that, to identify with their co-religionists under siege in Israel. American Jews must come to understand that their country is an anomaly. In the real world a Jewish claim to Jerusalem is denied and fending off genocidal Arabs is called an immoral occupation. There is no forcing a religious commitment on Jews in America, but it is possible to identify them with Jews who are besieged by genocidal Arabs, supported by much of the traditionally anti Semitic world.

Commentary Magazine : The Morality of Drone Warfare

Tue, 22 Oct 2013 16:44:29 +0000

Drone strikes can be justified with various arguments, but that the WWII fire bombing of Tokyo, which killed 90,000 people, was many times worse, is not one of them.

Commentary Magazine : Rising Tide of Hate for European Jews

Sat, 19 Oct 2013 06:55:55 +0000

Why have my two attempts to reply to coltakashi "been deleted by the administrator" ? My reply merely contradicted coltakashi's assertion that the number of Jews and of homosexuals in the total US population are similar. (Jews are under two percent while homosexuals are over six percent). But I agreed that Hollywood and TV are pulling their punch in promoting " tolerance toward Jews and Israel." What was objectionable about any of that?

Commentary Magazine : Turkey Shops Israeli Agents to Iran

Fri, 18 Oct 2013 11:00:54 +0000

No professional intelligence organization will confide the identities of its covert agents to another country, even if that country is a close ally. It won't even reveal it to anyone without a need to know, within its own precincts. In the US that was brought home by Hanssen and Ames, Russian moles in the FBI and CIA. Even when Turkey and Israel were getting along, there was no reason to closely identify the sources of information they may have been sharing. If the Israelis identified some Iranian scientists to the Turks as Mossad assets, it conceivably was in anticipation of the Turks ratting them to Tehran and undermiing those men and their contribution to the mullah's nuclear effort.

Commentary Magazine : Partisan Media is a Bipartisan Problem

Fri, 18 Oct 2013 07:48:07 +0000

I appreciate your sensible and sympathetic answer. And I am aware that Commentary has reason to be hyper cautious. But I have had the past experience, under the handle, Hugo Pirovano, of being told in an email from a Commentary host, that my posts were not going through because I spouted Nazi arguments. Moreover, why has my day old comment on media bias, still not appeared? At this point they should have a handle on the various habitual posters and know whom to screen and whom not to screen.

Commentary Magazine : Partisan Media is a Bipartisan Problem

Thu, 17 Oct 2013 21:25:29 +0000

Where is my comment? Why does the administrator use the excuse of reviewing my opinions, to suppress them? Why is Commentary so dishonest and spiteful and fiddling?

Commentary Magazine : Stop Intelligence Sharing with Turkey

Thu, 17 Oct 2013 19:05:11 +0000

I don't understand why my comments on this issue, and on others, are again being made subject to approval from the administrator and are effectively, suppressed. It is ridiculous to take any "bombshell" by Ignatius, at face value. The man is not to be trusted, not his facts, not his motivation and purpose. Nor is it conceivable that Israel would have shared the identities of its operatives with Turkey (or anyone), even in times of deep friendship. And becoming aware that Turkey does have such information now when it is blatantly hostile,, it is inconceivable that Israel would not have immediately extracted its people.

Commentary Magazine : Partisan Media is a Bipartisan Problem

Thu, 17 Oct 2013 18:56:12 +0000

The media has changed significantly since the fall of the Wall. Previously the hard Left was openly socialist and a supporter of the USSR. That disqualified it, that kept it from being a serious player in American politics. That kept it out of the MSM. Back then the establishment media was "liberal" in the way JFK was a liberal. Liberal Democrats were not confused as to whose side they were on in the Cold War. Even with the Vietnam War raging they turned their backs of McGovern and voted for Nixon. Our foreign policy was bipartisan. It was inconceivable that millions would protest against replacing a mass murdering fascist regime with an elected govt and go on to put the champion of withdrawing and leaving 26 million Iraqis at the mercy of Islamist fanatics who called democracy and freedom of speech hateful to God, into the White House. And domestically, Medicare had plenty of Republican support, while the Civil Rights Act had more Democrats in the Senate voting against it than Republicans. The only true political tension was between Conservatives like Goldwater and Buckley and the two mainstream parties. Everything changed when the Wall fell. At that point America's lefties stopped admitting that they were socialists. They dropped that name as the East Europeans came poring out of their barbed wire enclosures and the gulags and mike embedded walls were revealed. The hard American left became progressives and liberals and took over the mainstream Democratic party. And one of the most radical of lefties, a fellow deep out of Chicago's Hyde Park, a friend and collaborator of Weathermen and radicals like Jeremiah Wright and Farrakhan and militant Palestinians, became president. And the mainstream media rolled over without noticing, let along objecting. It is deeply corrupt. Its cowardice and fecklessness is no less today than the performance described by Karl Kraus in the 1920s. Jonathan Franzen has a book out on that. Wholesale stupidity has also infected the administrators at Commentary.

Commentary Magazine : Partisan Media is a Bipartisan Problem

Thu, 17 Oct 2013 18:55:00 +0000

"Your comment must be approved by the site admins before it will appear publicly." Why?

Commentary Magazine : Turkey Shops Israeli Agents to Iran

Thu, 17 Oct 2013 18:14:07 +0000

Evelyn Gordon is a very savvy lass, why does she bother with David Ignatius? No"bombshell" via him is to be trusted for accuracy or motivation and purpose. It is inconceivable that Israel shares the identities of its Iranian intelligence assets with the champion of the Gaza flotilla. Any suspicion that Erdogan has such information would have made for the extraction of those people.

Commentary Magazine : Rising Tide of Hate for European Jews

Thu, 17 Oct 2013 18:02:15 +0000

Anti-Semitism has ravaged and savaged individual Jews, but it has also made possible the continued existence of Jewry. But for anti-Semitism, there would be no significant population, in the West or East identifying itself as Jewish today. It is the one thing that prevents complete assimilation and that looms as an existential danger to Jews in America. Creating self awareness is the most important task facing American Jews. Supporting a threatened Israel is the best way to go about this. America's society is friendly and welcoming. The only way to prevent Jews from dissolving and melting away inside its cozy warmth is to make them identify with, where they don't have it easy, Israel.

Commentary Magazine : Rising Tide of Hate for European Jews

Thu, 17 Oct 2013 17:36:16 +0000

I see the Diaspora as Israel's hinterland, as a way of giving her strategic depth, as a guarantor of her survival in that she cannot be eradicated, since there will always be a reserve of Jews to repopulate the state, should the worst happen.

Commentary Magazine : Rising Tide of Hate for European Jews

Thu, 17 Oct 2013 08:53:32 +0000

With Iran building a nuclear arsenal is it really a good idea to have so many Jews, such a high percentage of the total, in one tiny spot, within easy reach of their worst enemies?

Commentary Magazine : Evict Obama's Mother-in-Law from White House

Mon, 7 Oct 2013 21:02:43 +0000

This is a petty and unworthy Rubin post.

Commentary Magazine : RE: Will the Warming Debate Cool Off?

Mon, 7 Oct 2013 09:52:13 +0000

Validation for John Steele Gordon's big govt/big project argument is far older and bigger than Keynesian economics. Organized human society was conceived in valleys made fecund by torrential water, the Euphrates, the Yangtze, the Indus, the Nile. Each was the source of life but often also a challenge and a danger. The taming of those rivers required large labor forces directed by bureaucracies with the power to reward and punish; in short, they necessitated and justified govt. In this sense, controlling the climate is at the heart of politics and civilization. Karl Wittfogel attributed the oppressive nature of Asian empires to this tradition and physical necessity of controlling "hydraulic" societies. He argued in his book, Oriental despotism that those rivers required strong govts able to harness those mighty rivers. In a sense societies ever began under the headship of an alpha male, a provider of potlach, a strong man, a baron. Where life was hard and required organized effort civilization was born. Politics has ever since been about the masses seeking and accepting the protection of the strong, but then also struggling for its rights against the tyranny at the center, while the center ever seeks to justify its power and advance its rights. John Steele Gordon is shrewd in recognizing govt's self interest in promoting Climate Change. But it is merely a new variation on an old theme.

Commentary Magazine : Putting the ‘Mad’ in Maduro

Sun, 29 Sep 2013 07:57:40 +0000

HillelA "GOPers will always sell out their own convictions for political gain." You are full of righteous indignation because, after Obama commandeered the Mass. healthcare program, Romney criticized projecting it onto the entire nation. Does that political tap dance justify a sweeping indictment of all Republicans? Obama, in his 2004 senatorial campaign, announced that his Christian beliefs required him to oppose gay marriage. In 2012 the Sermon on the Mount compelled him to support gay marriage. Before Nov 2008 he opposed Guantanamo, military tribunals, electronic eavesdropping, etc. As president he continued all of that and more. Until the summer of 2008 he called the replacement of Iraq's fascist tyranny with an elected govt, in the most strategic spot on earth, a dumb war. Then , as the surge, which he had called counterproductive, was defeating the insurgency, to wipe the egg off his face Obama accused the Republicans of neglecting the Taliban. To win over the hawks that congenital dove then promised to make Afghanistan the central front in the war on terror and give it all the combat battalions required. He then blew the embers of Bush's punitive expedition into a blazing 100,000 man war, not to serve America's national interests, which did not exist in Afghanistan, but to serve his personal political interests. He spectacularly sent SEAL 6 helicopters deep into Pakistan to kill OBL, instead of using a mundane smart bomb from a stealth plane. The latter option would have been cheap, risk free, far less objectionable top the Pakistanis. But it would not have gotten Obama the enormous publicity and personal credit he craved. Two weeks ago Obama was ready to launch a pinprick, two day bombardment of Syria, not to oust Assad but to stiffen his wet noodle image. Yet you, a supporter of this most egotistical and partisan politician ever to inhabit the White House, tar the entire GOP as unprincipled. Incidentally, last year a Suffolk University and Boston’s WHDH-TV poll found that 49 percent of respondents considered Romneycare a failure, 38 percent approved. Two years earlier 69 percent had approved and 22 percent had not. Nixon, whom others here mention, is an example of Republican pragmatism and an excellent contradiction of Hillel's charge. Since WWII Democrats have been far more ready to subordinate foreign and domestic policy to partisan ends. Domestic politics underlay Truman's 1948 support of Israel. It determined Johnson's Vietnam policy, coming and going. It caused Obama and the Democrats to demand we abandon the millions of Iraqis who had voted for a govt at the risk of their lives, to a few thousand Islamist insurgents who denounced democracy and freedom of speech and crashed exploding cars into civilian crowds. Incidentally, Edward Brooke, a Republican and first black senator since Reconstruction, served in the Senate when the Democrat Jimmy Carter was running for governor of Georgia on a George Wallace ticket with Lester Maddox as his lieutenant governor. More Democrat Senators voted against the Civil Rights Act than Republicans.

Commentary Magazine : Putting the ‘Mad’ in Maduro

Sun, 29 Sep 2013 07:52:20 +0000

RAPHAELENNIS If you want to be "more to the point "consider 1) how this "notorious dictatorship" in China has changed since and because of Nixon's visit. 2) Floating the dollar was necessary and inevitable. The subsequent inflation was a function of the under-financing of the wars on poverty and Vietnam. We have now had decades of low inflation as a direct result of Chinese competition. 3) Nixon's wage and price controls were a mistake, and caused by the opposite of "temerity." 4) The EPA was a positive and healthy creation.