1) From the New York Times, “Iran Reports Missile Test, Drawing Rebuke” by Alan Cowell.

This piece is actually datelined July 10 – it’s like peering into the future!

Naturally, the presidential candidates responded to Iran’s claim of testing missiles that can reach Israel. John McCain offered sober bluntness, appreciating the threat and calling for missile defense systems.

As for Barack Obama, he ignored my freely (and I daresay) charitably given advice that he refrain from public pronouncements when a teleprompter isn’t available to guide him. On the Today Show, Obama first highlighted the need “to gather up all the necessary intelligence.” As others have noted, this is one instance where intelligence is hardly necessary since Iran’s tests and its subsequent claims were executed in a highly public fashion. Perhaps he’s just getting in the habit of making sure he has “all the necessary intelligence” before ordering the Joint Chiefs into action.

Later in the interview, Obama observed, “It's in nobody's interest, including Iran's, I believe, to have a nuclear weapon that could trigger a nuclear arms race in the region.” Note that Obama wants to view Iranian desires through the prism of his own thought process. This comment makes as much sense as saying in the late 1920’s , “It’s in nobody’s interest, including Stalin’s, to launch a massive collectivization plan that will kill millions of his own citizens.”

I’ve written before that Obama is an astonishingly inside-the-box thinker. Combine that characteristic with his oft-noted historical illiteracy, and the result is a remarkable inability to appreciate the fact that other global actors have entirely different values and interests than his own. It’s swell that Obama doesn’t believe that it’s in Iran’s interest to have a nuclear weapon. Too bad the mullahs won't give him a vote.

(Video of Obama stumbling on the Today Show without a teleprompter from HotAir.com)

2) From Gallup.com, “July Leader Lost in 6 of Last 9 Competitive U.S. Elections” by Lydia Saad

Take a gander at the graph:

So good news for McCain? Not exactly. As any stats-freak could tell you, a sample size of nine isn’t very big. Indeed, speaking purely statistically, it’s pretty much worthless. But it’s not bad news for McCain, and that in itself is something of a cause for celebration.

Presidential elections are volatile things, and news cycles spin faster now than ever. Think about six months ago and the issues that bestrode the campaign like ugly colossuses – immigration and the purported quagmire in Iraq. The former is almost completely off the grid, and the other is on its way to political witness protection. With the voting still four months away, it’s impossible to know what issues will dominate the public’s mind come Election Day and what factors will be shaping the campaign’s dynamic.

That said…

3) From the Wall Street Journal, “Democrats Open Door to a Deal On Expanded Offshore Drilling” by Ian Talley and Stephen Power
One of the Democrats in question is Dick Durbin, who is fearfully dipping his big toe into the sordid ocean of despoiling the environment. “I'm open to drilling and responsible production,” Durbin declared. And then, according to the Journal, he offered several sops to the environmentalists he’s preparing to cruelly betray:

Sen. Durbin said any compromise on drilling, however, would be contingent at a minimum on a requirement that oil and gas companies sitting on existing acreage either produce oil on those areas within a specified period or return the leases to the government.

Okay, he had to say all that stuff, but everyone can tell what’s going on here. Durbin is one of the shrewder Democrats on Capitol Hill and he knows that the no-drill Democrats face an enormous vulnerability in the fall. McCain can change his mind on such matters – his supporters will welcome such a convenient evolution. Obama has no such leeway.

Crass political calculation though it may be, I welcome Durbin’s step in the right direction. I have a feeling that if we play this right, we can have Durbin and a bunch of other Democrats in one of my recently trademarked “Death to the Caribou” t-shirts by November.

4) From the Belmont Club, “When in Doubt, Don’t” by Richard Fernandez

This cogent essay takes a look at the way deterrence doctrine, as outlined in a 1995 U.S. Strategic Command manifesto titled “Essentials of Post-Cold War Deterrence,” has served us the since the end of the Cold War:

The key concept embodied in the Essentials of Post-Cold War Deterrence is the idea that it rests on an American commitment to inflict an unspecified but devastating response upon any nation or group that attacks it. In order to prevent any adversary from legalistically parsing a pre-announced set of conditions under which the United States would retaliate, all the terms were left intentionally vague so that only American national command authority could say with certainty what would happen next…

This has the effect of threatening a vastly disproportionate response towards any attempts at aggression by strategic inferiors. While a proportionate response is not ruled out, neither — and this is the essential point — is a wholly disproportionate one. Under such a doctrine a missile defense capability would play a very important role: it would greatly increase the potential lopsidedness of the exchange. Time and again the Essentials of Post-Cold War Deterrence emphasizes the idea that one of key goals of modern defense is to instill uncertainty in the minds of an adversary — whether that opponent is rational or not.

Often when I’m dining in the fashionable salons of Boston, I will say to a liberal companion, “One of the things that has kept us relatively safe the past few years is the fact that our president scares the rest of the world to death.” My companion will then usually rejoinder, “He scares me, too.” We’ll then share some good–natured bipartisan bonhomie and order a bottle of Sancerre.

Still, the left completely ignores the constructive role played by deterrence. This is nothing new – the left did the same thing in the 1980’s when Helen Caldecott was running around the world whining about Mutually Assured Destruction. (“It’s MAD!!!!”)

When Barack Obama mutters some clichés about giving Iran carrots and sticks, no one in the world takes the latter part seriously. And that’s a problem for a guy who might be president. Or rather, it’s a problem for all of us. Then again, if Obama wins, maybe the specter of Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid will keep our malefactors in line.

5) From the Wall Street Journal, “My Plan to Escape the Grip of Foreign Oil” by T. Boone Pickens.

An octogenarian who made billions in oil ought to know something about energy production. Sure enough, Pickens does. The Pickens plan puts a great deal of emphasis on harvesting wind. “Did you know that the midsection of this country, that stretch of land that starts in West Texas and reaches all the way up to the border with Canada, is called the ‘Saudi Arabia of the Wind’? Pickens asks. I didn’t, but I sure hope that doesn’t mean Sharia is coming to West Texas.

Pickens’ arguments sound persuasive to me, but I don’t know nearly enough about the subject matters he covers to render an informed opinion. And since I don’t work for the Atlantic or The American Prospect, I’m not forced to offer conclusions about things I don’t understand.

Still, there is an undeniably salubrious effect of efforts like Pickens’. Finally, we’re beginning a national conversation that should have started in earnest decades ago. And Washington is listening. Even Dick Durbin seems to understand that while blaming speculators and other nefarious factors may be fun, the American people are going to demand answers rather than just scapegoating.

Meanwhile, I'm actively making my plans to become the Daniel Plainview of wind. Here’s Pickens’ presentation of his plan: