gdp's Comments

Commentary Magazine : Livni Already Making Excuses for Failure

Tue, 20 Aug 2013 17:09:46 +0000

Of course if political support is important for peace talks to succeed, Livni should rather be focusing her criticisms on her counterparts across the table who never made an effort to build support for concessions of any kind.

Commentary Magazine : Settlements and the Preconditions Scam

Tue, 30 Jul 2013 18:34:17 +0000

Remember Israel froze settlements in 2010 and got no (serious) negotiations. Abbas refused to negotiate until the end of freeze and then, when the freeze was up, walked out again. Abbas wasn't blamed for this. (The New York Times actually reported somewhat sympathetically that Abbas blamed Obama for not forcing Netanyahu to extend the freeze. Abbas of course, defied Obama, but the New York Times, in this case, put the onus on Obama!) In other words, Obama already wouldn't stand behind Netanyahu in the case of a settlement freeze, why would Netanyahu make that choice again?

Commentary Magazine : Shutdown Would Be Crazy But Cruz Isn't

Tue, 30 Jul 2013 14:36:02 +0000

I don't think that Republicans should fear a government shutdown. Certainly not one of limited scope. In 1996 the dynamic was much different. Then depriving hard working middle class federal employees of their salaries was considered an anathema. Now, with so many public employees being seen as a problem I don't believe that the "laying off federal employees" tactic will be as effective. In 1996, also, Newt Gingrich made the fight about him and his ego. Boehner has been low key. In fact a shutdown initiated by someone other than Boehner (if possible) makes him look reasonable. Finally when the social payments take significant hits Obama will have to explain how he allowed those who are least able to fend for themselves (those very same people he claims to champion) to get penalized for his inability to govern.

Commentary Magazine : Choosing the Lesser of Two Evils

Wed, 8 May 2013 22:46:14 +0000

Your last sentence is exactly right: And Democrats who treat Bill Clinton like royalty and swear they would have given him a third term if they had been given the opportunity are in no position to blast Republicans for concluding that Sanford was the lesser of two evils. In 2006 and 2008 the Republicans had to fight the "culture of corruption" meme put forward by the Democrats and their cheerleaders. Since then we've seen numerous Democratic scandals but those never were defined as a "culture." So, yes, Sanford's hardly an ideal candidate or representative of the Republican party, but he's hardly the liability that Democrats want him to be.

Commentary Magazine : The 2012 Election Is Over; the Benghazi Scandal Is Not

Tue, 7 May 2013 23:25:48 +0000

Mazeld, Excellent analysis. One point I'd ask is this. If the media were forced to choose between President Obama and Secretary Clinton, who would they sacrifice? I'd have to assume that they'd sacrifice Hillary if it became necessary to protect the President.

Commentary Magazine : The Misleading Fayyad Blame Game

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 01:13:30 +0000

Lumiere, Thank you very much for the plug! :-)

Commentary Magazine : The Misleading Fayyad Blame Game

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 23:44:56 +0000

Forget the Friedman changes history, he changes his own history! First of all he first introduced the term "Fayyadism" in a column in 2009, after Fayyad had served two years and instituted some changes, not in 2007. And it's hard for Friedman to dismiss Hamas now, when in 2011 he argued that a Hamas-Fatah agreement would be good for Israel's security. If he believed that he's a fool. the fact that he touted a Hamas-Fatah agreement at a time that Hamas insisted that Fayyad be removed from government (while he was cheerleading Fayyadism) shows that he's a knave. Bottom line: Friedman doesn't know history as you point out; but he doesn't even seem to recall his own history!

Commentary Magazine : The Lethal Logic Behind the Abortion Rights Movement

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 15:57:50 +0000

You wrote: "Rather, I suspect they are avoiding the story because it demonstrates an undeniable fact: abortion is an act of violence against an unborn child." That's not the whole story. Gallup regularly polls on the topic of abortion. From memory: about 33% of the population opposes abortion in the first trimester. But once you get to the second trimester, 60% Americans oppose abortion generally and 80% in the third. This isn't talking about partial birth abortion. Americans may call themselves "pro-choice" but that just means that they don't want abortion outlawed. They are not pro-choice by the extremely permissive Planned Parenthood perspective. The media doesn't want to acknowledge this because they know that they are so far from the mainstream. The better known the Gosnell case is, the better chance of getting a partial birth abortion bill passed.

Commentary Magazine : Minority Voters and the GOP: Rand Paul's Third Way

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 19:48:22 +0000

Romney did go to the NAACP, didn't pander and he was booed for his efforts. Maybe that made him gun shy about future outreach efforts. (Sean Trende has argued that Romney lost because of missing white votes.) Maryland's gay marriage referendum lost in the African-American dominated Prince George's county. Would anyone say that this law was adopted in disregard to the religious sensitivities of the African American community there? Well the Washington Post and Baltimore Sun surely wouldn't. But perhaps an enterprising Republican candidate will use this to show that the Democrats take African-American support for granted.

Commentary Magazine : The Media Can’t Bury McConnellgate

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 19:16:24 +0000

Just out of curiosity, why did I get so many negatives? I was simply pointing out that Obama's supporters tolerated much worse from their candidate. It wasn't simply a planning session in which he played the Mormon card, it was an actual commercial.

Commentary Magazine : The Media Can’t Bury McConnellgate

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 19:03:00 +0000

Part of the "scandal" is that McConnell was talking about using Judd's religion against her. Coming from folks who had no problem with the "Not one of us" ads makes the claim of scandal ring hollow.

Commentary Magazine : No Accountability for Zakaria’s Fiction

Tue, 9 Apr 2013 21:14:15 +0000

It needn't be the non-white ethnic guy. It could be someone like Thomas Friedman, who makes virtually the same arguments as Zakaria. (Or maybe Zakaria makes the same arguments as Friedman.) I'm not a fan of Hiatt. Clearly he's better than his opposite numbers at the New York Times, but that's a pretty low threshold. Grossman should have pointed out to Hiatt that his editorial board colleague, Jackson Diehl has been following Abbas since 2009 and reporting on Abbas's intransigence. There is nothing in Diehl's reporting that is "subject to interpretation."

Commentary Magazine : Axelrod's Disciples

Wed, 3 Apr 2013 22:05:10 +0000

Keep in mind Craig Timberg's recent Could Google tilt a close election? in the Washington Post. There's not a trace of irony or self knowledge in the article. The answer is that the mainstream has tilted a couple of close elections recently. Without what you call the "informational secret service" (or what I've called "the bodyguard of lies") the strategy would not have been successful.

Commentary Magazine : Global Warming Alarmism Cools Down

Wed, 3 Apr 2013 18:50:32 +0000

The phrase "the biggest puzzle in climate science right now" is part of the problem. If it's not science, it's not a puzzle.

Commentary Magazine : Baseball Springs Eternal

Wed, 3 Apr 2013 18:47:51 +0000

In the short lived TV series, Brooklyn Bridge, the main characters met Gil Hodges who I think stayed late to sign an autograph. They called him a "mentsch." (I hate to disagree on one point though. I think we're starting to see some really good football writing these days. Maybe not fiction though.)

Commentary Magazine : Ultra-Orthodox Big Losers in New Coalition

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 22:16:26 +0000

My wife has pointed out that this isn't just about the Chareidim and the draft. It's also about the religious Zionists. Apparently the Tal Law doesn't allow for the Hesder program either. This could be a concern for Bennett, or at least his constituency.

Commentary Magazine : Hillary Clinton's Vision for a More "Palatable" America

Thu, 7 Mar 2013 16:02:59 +0000

Ah. "A kinder more palatable America." Unfortunately the MSM will focus on Sec. Clinton's miles traveled as Secretary of State as a barometer of her success - not whether those miles succeeded in promoting American interests.

Commentary Magazine : Will Democrats Have Their Own Tea Party?

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 18:25:57 +0000

Isn't it the "Occupy" movement?

Commentary Magazine : The Day the War on America Began

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 18:50:32 +0000

Actually the war against the United States started even earlier, with the killing of Rabbi Meir Kahane: Throughout the Nosair investigation, Chief Borrelli has insisted that the assassination was the work of a gunman acting alone. While he said yesterday that he remains convinced that no one else was directly involved in the killing, he allowed for the first time that Mr. Nosair might have been involved in a terrorist organization that had ordered the rabbi executed for his hard-line approach toward Palestinians in Israel. and this And when Mr. Nosair was arrested on Nov. 5 in the Kahane shooting, a search of his home in Cliffside Park, N.J., turned up formulas for the construction of bombs, political tracts and documents, video and audio tapes advocating the destruction of symbolic statues, tall buildings and buildings of political significance, the indictment said. Investigators have said that the reams of materials, all in Arabic, sat in boxes untranslated until the bombing of the World Trade Center, and that the emergence of associates of Mr. Nosair as suspects led them to reopen the Kahane case. Had the authorities been a little more curious during the Kahane investigation, they may well have prevented the first WTC bombing. Rather they were content to assume that Nosair acted alone and closed their eyes to any signs of a conspiracy.

Commentary Magazine : McDonnell's Mistake

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 17:55:22 +0000

More damning than any conservative criticism of McDonnell's was the WaPo's *praise* of him: IN VIRGINIA, A REPUBLICAN governor and a GOP-dominated legislature have joined forces with Democrats to enact the first long-term increase in transportation funding since the Reagan administration — and the state’s biggest tax increase in nearly a decade. That is a signal achievement, and one that will stamp Robert F. McDonnell’s governorship as a long-term success. The Washington Post and most of our political elite equate taxing and spending with governing.