Eric Hoffer Notes - "Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength."

James Taranto writes:

Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength," the longshoreman cum philosopher Eric Hoffer once observed. Hoffer died in 1983, so he probably wasn't referring specifically to Joe Biden's performance in last night's debate. Still, the observation is fitting.

In addition to the vice president's boorishness, a lot of observers noted that he frequently smiled and chuckled at inappropriate times--even during a discussion of Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons. The Republican National Committee quickly put out an ad consisting of nearly a minute of such clips followed by the caption: "Vice President Biden is laughing . . . Are you?" If Biden finds himself out of work in January, he may have a career ahead of him as a Fixodent pitchman.

And:

And so he overcompensated for his weakness by acting the bully in an attempt to dominate Ryan. His behavior was not only consistent with Hoffer's aphorism but in sharp contrast with that of Mitt Romney, who actually did dominate Obama in a coolly masterful way. If Biden's rudeness was an imitation of strength, Romney's poise was a display of the real thing.

Then there is this on Biden's obviously ridiculous statement that we don't have to worry about Iran getting "fissile material":

Mediaite.com reports that even Tom Brokaw said it was inappropriate for Biden to laugh during the discussion of Iran, whose president has vowed to exterminate Israel. Reader Taylor Dinerman, a journalist who specializes in aerospace (and who also knows National Review's Rich Lowry), argues that Biden's pooh-poohing of Iran's developing nuclear capability was dangerously fatuous:

The worst part of the debate and the part that I wish Ryan had been able to counter was when Biden started in on the "They don't have a bomb to put (the fissile material) into."

This is outrageous. The hard part of building a nuclear weapon is to get the fissile material, bomb designs are a dime a dozen and anyone who has access to a copy of the Progressive Magazine from the 1970s when they published a bomb design they had dug up from some documents that were found in the Los Alamos public library can build one. The A.Q. Khan design has long been available to them including any refinements the North Koreans have made.

Making a warhead that can fit on a missile may be harder, but building a basic nuclear weapon that could be put on an airliner or a ship is easy once you have the material.

Doesn't seem so funny now, does it?

Will the Obama administration defend Iran from Israel?

I floated this idea last week to my law partner. He thought I was nuts, and I said that it was unlikely, but, said I, given the Obama administration's anti-Israel, anti-colonialism reflexes, I'd bet that the idea had been considered.

It's looking like I was right.

Via James Taranto:

Here's Obama adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski in an interview yesterday with CNN's Fredricka Whitfield:

Whitfield: You have been quoted in the Daily Beast a while back as saying the U.S. should blow Israel right out of the sky if it would pre-emptively want to strike Iran, just as we've just heard Netanyahu kind of articulate in recent weeks that this is something that he would want to do, whether he has the U.S. blessings or not.

How do you advise the administration on moving forward or having to deal with what Netanyahu wants to do versus what you believe and what the administration believes ought to be done?

Brzezinski: Before I start advising the administration, let me advise you. If are you quoting someone, in this instance, me, make sure that you quote correctly. What you have cited me as saying is absolutely 100% wrong.

I wasn't advising the U.S. government to blow the Israelis out of the skies. I was warning that if the Israelis use American airspace without permission, there could be an incident. And I explicitly said that's nothing to be wished for, but there could be an incident involving the Israelis and us.

There was one back in 1967 involving the U.S.S. Liberty which was attacked by the Israelis and a lot of Americans were killed. I wouldn't want anything similar to happen to either party.

Here's what Brzezinski actually said in that Daily Beast interview, with Gerald Posner:

Posner: How aggressive can Obama be in insisting to the Israelis that a military strike might be in America's worst interest?

Brzezinski: We are not exactly impotent little babies. They have to fly over our airspace in Iraq. Are we just going to sit there and watch?

Posner: What if they fly over anyway?

Brzezinski: Well, we have to be serious about denying them that right. That means a denial where you aren't just saying it. If they fly over, you go up and confront them. They have the choice of turning back or not. No one wishes for this but it could be a Liberty in reverse.

That's certainly consistent with Brzezinski's statement now that "that's nothing to be wished for," but it is also consistent with Whitfield's description of what he said at the time.