Karl's Weekend Reading

Will Israel attack Iran's nuclear facilities? If they do, what risks do they, and others face? If they will attack, when? These and other considerations are discussed in a great 4-page interview with Kenneth Levin at Frontpage Magazine, When Israel Strikes by Jamie Glazov.

Israel confronts the likelihood of being able to inflict at most only limited damage on Iran’s nuclear program, having to do so in the face of strong opposition from its main ally, almost certainly incurring fierce military and terror reprisals, and likewise having to deal with intense negative diplomatic fallout. Yet, with all the challenges and dangers, Israel does have options for an attack on Iran’s nuclear program and, given the certainty of the existential threat presented by a nuclear Iran, it will almost certainly act to set back the Iranian program whatever the risks and dangers.

Krauthammer chimes in on the recent comments by Sarkozy, and Obama's modus operandi in his Townhall article, Obama's French Lesson.

When France chides you for appeasement, you know you're scraping bottom.
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Confusing ends and means, the Obama administration strives mightily for shows of allied unity, good feeling and pious concern about Iran's nuclear program -- whereas the real objective is stopping that program. This feel-good posturing is worse than useless, because all the time spent achieving gestures is precious time granted Iran to finish its race to acquire the bomb.

But hey, this isn't criticism. Obama is in a long line of US presidents that have been called naive by their French equal...

A pattern is developing in the main stream fringe media. Some rather important stories of late haven't been given their due attention. James Taranto comments on this phenomenon regarding the NEA, ACORN and Van Jones non-stories in two of his recent Best of the Web posts.

Sept. 25:

This is the first time the paper has mentioned the [NEA] scandal, first reported 29 days earlier on Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood and 22 days earlier by Fox News Channel's Glenn Beck.

This follows the same pattern as the Times's coverage of the Van Jones and Acorn scandals, both of which the paper did not mention at all until the Obama administration had taken some remedial action, and then reported only in brief stories on inside pages (though in fairness, a full-length front-page story about Jones's hypovehiculation appeared on the second day).

Trying to find information about the Obama scandals in the Times can be a fun challenge, just like the "Where's Waldo?" books. But if your taste in puzzles runs more to crosswords or sudoku and you want the news delivered straight, there are plenty of better sources.

Sept. 28:

The Obama administration, as we noted Wednesday, was supposed to usher in a new era of transparency in government. Instead we find ourselves in a new era of opacity, not only in government but in the media.

Take a guess who Thomas Sowell is talking about in his Townhall article, The Brainy Bunch:

There is usually only a limited amount of damage that can be done by dull or stupid people. For creating a truly monumental disaster, you need people with high IQs.

Such people have been told all their lives how brilliant they are, until finally they feel forced to admit it, with all due modesty. But they not only tend to over-estimate their own brilliance, more fundamentally they tend to over-estimate how important brilliance itself is when dealing with real world problems.