1. It’s Thursday, August 13, 2015.

2. Thanks to the wonders of modern DNA testing, you can now associate the song “Love Child” with Warren G. Harding.

3. A lot of what’s being written today about Jimmy Carter has an obituary feel, and probably for good reason. The former president, at age 90, says he has cancer that has spread to other parts of his body.

I’ve been wrestling with my own thoughts about a man I really respect. But I’ll save the postmortem for post mortem. I hope he lives a good long time and continues to do the amazing humanitarian work he’s been doing around the world since leaving office 34 years ago. 

4. President Obama’s detractors continue to throw everything they can at him as he tries to keep the Iranian nuclear limitation deal together. Now he’s being accused of anti-Semitism in the wake of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s full-court press against the deal.

Again, what Netanyahu and any other critic of this deal have failed to answer is how they would stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon short of this deal. The idea that the Iranians are going to renegotiate is a pipe dream, and the U.S. would lose leverage as Russia, China and others whose support made this deal possible bail out.

So the only other option is military action, and everyone – except President Obama – is afraid to say that out loud.

Strangely, the only ones who would benefit from military action would be the people in Iran pressing for a nuclear weapon. I’m pretty sure that is not in Israel’s best interest.