Ilan Goldenberg observes that it’s a bit odd that anyone would think Frank Gaffney, a comically ignorant hack, is a credible surrogate with which to go after Barack Obama:

Observe that there’s absolutely nothing in Obama’s record to back up the claim that Obama would be “unmistakably” unwilling to use military force in the defense of the United States. He was at pains to say during his 2002 anti-war speech, “I’m not opposed to all wars, I’m opposed to dumb wars.” Nor is there anything in his record to suggest that he would somehow pursue budgetary policies that leave the country defenseless — in fact, he seems to be aiming for a higher level of military spending then I’d regard as prudent.

The entire “weakness invites aggression” worldview is something that’d really be worth looking into at some length. Presumably the truth of these dictum explains why Canada has been subject to so many more terrorist attacks than has the United States. Or it explains why France took advantage of the ongoing political crisis in Belgium to invade and conquer the Walloon portions of that country. And, conversely, it explains why Bush’s belligerence and militarism have managed to convince North Korea and Iran to give in to our non-proliferation demands. I dunno.

Nice of someone outside the green community to observe that John McCain’s hatred of subsidies doesn’t seem to extend to nuclear energy:

A senior Republican lawmaker has questioned John McCain’s energy proposals, including a plan to build 45 nuclear plants by 2030, given the Republican presidential nominee’s resistance to government subsidies.

Chuck Grassley, the Iowa senator, who has been a staunch supporter of federal subsidies for ethanol production and supports expansion of nuclear power, suggested in an interview with the Financial Times that the Arizona lawmaker’s views on federal subsidies on energy production were inconsistent.

Of course Grassley’s position, though consistent, is consistently wrong. The mere fact that subsidies for nuclear power are a bad idea doesn’t make ethanol subsidies a good idea. What we ought to be doing with energy is putting a price on carbon, which would serve as a de facto subsidy to low-carbon energy sources. That would include nuclear, along with renewables. And if ethanol boosters’ claims about ethanol are true, ethanol would also benefit, though more realistic assessments of the net carbon impact of ethanol make US-produced corn ethanol look very bad. There’s an okay case to be made for additional subsidies, over and above carbon pricing, for truly clean electricity like solar and wind. I think there’s also an decent case to be made that we should be taxing the negative externalities of dirty energy and beyond that mostly letting the chips fall where they may.

At the moment, of course, we’re actually plowing subsidies at dirty energy, which is just crazy.

I think at this point everyone would agree that there’s more uncertainty about the outcomes of Senate races in Alaska, Oregon, Minnesota, Georgia, Kentucky, and Mississippi than there is about the outcome of the Presidential election. Obviously, the Presidential is much more significant than any one of those six races. But still, the six of them are, collectively, quite important with substantial national implications. And yet, national media sources (led, as ever in bad trends, by 24-hour cable) are giving about 50 times the coverage to the ins-and-outs of the presidential races as what they’re doing for the Senate races.

The Page lists the following candidates:

Treasury secretary: president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York Timothy F. Geithner, former Federal Reserve chief Paul A. Volcker, former Treasury Secretaries Robert E. Rubin and Lawrence H. Summers.

As the ninth most important person in America, I don’t think this makes much sense. The Fed Chairman is more important than the Treausury Secretary. Volcker’s already been Fed chair and wouldn’t take a less important job. Rubin and Summers have already been Treasury Secretary and wouldn’t want to do the same job again. Geithner would be the logical candidate to succeed Ben Bernanke as Fed Chair (the more important job) in 2010. It’s not going to be any of these people.

Bob Kuttner (the 27th most important person in the country) thinks the job ought to go to current FDIC Chair Sheila Barr (currently the 13th most important person) so it’ll either go to her, or else to Laura D’Andrea Tyson Wonk Room economics blogger Pat Garofalo who’s only the 1,245th most important person in the country but has been rocketing up the charts since graduating from college back in May.

Ever since I took formal logic, I’ve been fascinated by the way in which logically irrelevant changes in phrasing totally alter the understood meaning of a phrase. Cato’s Chris Edwards, for example, writes:

Many highways are congested, but at least on the East Coast where I travel, states seem to be continually adding capacity.

I learned in QR-22 that “A but B” is logically equivalent to “A and B” and also that it’s transitive to “A and B” is the same as “B and A.” In terms of Edwards’ observation, someone familiar with induced demand would say something like:

East Coast states have been adding highway capacity, but the roads are more congested than ever.

Edwards’ formulation emphasized the (mistaken) idea that continuing to add capacity will alleviate the problem, whereas my formulation is designed to highlight the fact that the problem has consistently worsened despite past capacity additions. The difference being, of course, that I’m right and Edwards is wrong. Space on East Coast highways is a precious commodity and pricing it at $0.00 at peak-demand time guarantees congestion. Additional capacity will ameliorate the problem only very temporarily as the newly uncrowded highways will encourage people to drive longer distances (re-equalizing the amount of time they’re willing to drive) and spur additional development until things get locked up again. The way to alleviate congestion in crowded areas is through congestion pricing — putting a price on access to the roads at peak times.

Barack Obama has a stated Middle East policy. He also has a set of foreign policy advisers. And beyond the relatively narrow group of people who’ve been Obama’s national security team from the beginning he, as the Democratic nominee, now draws on the advice of the wider circle of Democrat-aligned foreign policy hands. This is a group of more-or-less known quantities whose views are by no means uniform, but which fall in a fairly predictable range. One might think the best way to ascertain Obama’s likely approach to national security policy would be to think about these people and their views. The institutions where Obama’s advisers will be coming from — CAP, CNAS, NSN, CSIS — have all kinds of written documents about foreign policy issues that could be perused.

Or you could follow Stanley Kurtz and focus on the views of Rashid Khalidi a scholar and left-wing Arab nationalist who, according to Kurtz, was a supporter of Obama’s when Obama was a local politician in Khalidi’s neighborhood.

It seems tedious to even point this out, but the standard of proof being applied here couldn’t possibly be applied consistently. Consider, by contrast, Obama’s ties to Joe Biden. They’re both Senators and, indeed, if Obama becomes President then Joe Biden will become Vice President. Or Obama’s ties to General Colin Powell — Obama specifically sought and received his support for a presidential bid and has repeatedly suggested that he would be interested in getting input from General Powell on national security issues. Or Obama’s ties to New Republic editor Marty Peretz who has written positive things about Obama. But then again, so has Jeffrey Goldberg. And so has Spencer Ackerman. But those guys think different things about American policy to the Middle East.

Or consider John McCain. He’s been in politics a long time. And his views have changed over the years. And he’s had a lot of different kinds of political allies. Back when he was leading the charge for the McCain-Feingold bill, he worked closely with the heads of a lot of liberal good-government groups. Should we take that to mean that he agrees with the heads of those groups about abortion rights or foreign policy? His “ties” to them are much more substantial than anything between Obama and Khalidi.

The procedure just doesn’t make sense. Meanwhile, National Review doesn’t agree with the foreign policy views of the sort of mainstream Democrats who, unlike Khalidi, will actually wind up staffing an Obama administration and making policy in it. Wouldn’t it make more sense to expend time and energy attacking those people and their views? Conservatives aren’t going to like the real Obama, so they’d do well to focus a little bit on him instead of obsessively hounding this mythical figure they’ve created.