Odds and Ends

++ President Obama avoided the Washington madness and was in Boise, Idaho where he spoke about his economic ideas to a 3,000 person crowd who roared with approval. He reminded them that he had won the Idaho caucus in 2008 in the same arena where he was speaking and that pivoting off his SOTU remarks commented that he lost the state twice. 

++Willard Romney met Jeb Bush in Utah to hash out the rules of engagement for 2016. Michael Levitt, former Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, was the intermediary. Both sides said the talks had been cordial and both men courteous. 

++A must read was the Washington Post interview with Laurence Tribe about how he views Justice Roberts' take on the Burweil versus Helbig case of subsidies over Obamacare. He said that unlike four of the judges, Roberts would not rule on a type-o to penalize millions of people. Tribe liked the Obama administration brief arguing that an adverse ruling would be a devastating penalty to states' that never anticipated not creating their own exchanges. Tribe said that both Roberts and Kennedy would be keenly aware of the disruption of the insurance market and the negative consequences to millions. It was clear who at least three of the judges are who could care less.  Tribe feels that if Roberts rules for the subsidies Kennedy will too. But that was the calculus for the first decision. Tribe believes that Roberts is the key here. Let's hope Tribe is right but I have begun to distrust his judgment recently.

++I usually think Juan Cole may be over the top but today he writes with incandescent fierceness about the invitation to Bibi to speak to Congress and the implications for the Iranian nuclear talks. I think he is right that the Republican Party is committed to waging a war against Iran. Remember John McCain refrain put to a Beach Boys' tune, which was "Bomb, Bomb Iran." Cole games such a war out and finds that its scale will be more Vietnam than Iraq, especially in terms of casualties, and the costs will not be in the 5-7 trillion dollar range but more in the Twenty trillion dollar range and up. And that it will not likely lead to victory. The problem with such Doomsday predictions is that in light of the real costs of Iraq they seem reasonable. 

++Leslie Gelb, who must be ancient by now,gets on Obama's case and urges some cooperation with Assad because he didn't and will not pose a threat to the United States. He notes that Obama leans this way except he is pulled away by Samantha Powers and Susan Rice who are the crusaders against Assad. Gelb says it is clear that President Obama wants to avoid another war in the Middle East at all costs and that he knows there will be no "moderate" Syrians to fight anytime soon and that the Arab states just won't really commit serious troops to fight ISIS on the ground. He fears that the area ISIS controls can be a staging area for attacks on the West and that they could even get a nuclear bomb. Here we go again.

++What is interesting is how Obama can square silent cooperation with Hezbollah,the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and the Shi'ite militias trained by Iran with his regime change in Iraq promising a more open,inclusive and pluralistic government.

++Gelb is not totally off here. That is why Putin trip to the region gets interesting and why Israel's attack in Syria to kill the son of the founder of Hezbollah and a general of the Iranian revolutionary guard makes the situation too complex for the simplicity of Washington.

++The problem is that the GOP has made it clear that they want to drive this policy for the next two years and as Romney said today, will make national security the dominant issue in the 2016 Presidential elections.