Dana Blankenhorn

Grinding It Out

While waiting for Barack Obama's e-mail on his Vice Presidential pick, I decided to take a break today and enjoy some footie.

It was the U.S. vs. Brazil with the Gold Medal on the line.  Unlike many past matches of this type, the better team did not win.

The U.S. did.

The game illustrated the two schools of soccer, or futbol, or football -- the beautiful game. Brazil played beautifully. They had better players. They passed us silly the first half, back-and-forth across the pitch. They looked deadly early in the second half, firing shot-after-shot at goalie Hope Solo (right). It was one-way traffic until they tired, and the Americans gave up their own short passing game for long breakaways up the middle.

The U.S. goal, by a girl named Carli Lloyd, came seemingly out of nothing, a quick flip to get space and a screamer past the goalie, across the face of goal. Then it was back to hang in there baby, Brazil coming in from all angles, attack after attack, corner after corner, the issue not decided until their last missed by inches less than a minute from time.

We call this grinding it out. When my daughter Robin played, through high school, she became a specialist at this sort of thing. It's not pretty. It's exhausting to watch. It's physical, tackling and getting in front of people, banging the ball downfield just to get a breath.

But it works. At all levels. The balance between the beauty of a Brazil and the grinding it out mentality is what makes the game so compelling. Because you can see the same balance in a U-10 rec game as in a game played by pros.

Speaking of the pros...

The Lesson of Bigfoot

The press will print anything.

Lie all you want.

No one bothered checking the story of hucksters Matt Whitton and Rick Dyer, who last week posed as "researchers" in order to scam Tom Biscardi, who was stupid enough to believe such a thing existed.

It was a rubber-and-plastic Halloween costume with various body parts (parts is parts) stuffed inside it.

What was most annoying about the whole story is that, until the scamsters skipped, the press ate it up.  No one bothered checking into the fact that Clayton County, Georgia, where one of these guys was supposedly a white cop, may be the most corrupt force in America, a joke. No one checked into the background of Dyer. Nope, they just trooped right in, acted like everything was on the up-and-up, and became complicit in the fraud.

Then they got all high-and-mighty. Ignoring their complicity. Ignoring their cupidity. Ignoring their own venality.

This is worse than that old Kirk Douglas chestnut Ace in the Hole. At least in Billy Wilder's story there was a real man, trapped in a real cave, for Douglas' newspaper character to exploit. Here there was nothing, meat in a rubber suit.

Google Steps Wisely in The War Against Oil

Google has announced its first announcements in its RE<C (renewables costing less than coal) initiative and they look pretty cagey.

Google is looking at long-term technologies in niches others don't consider obvious. It's also not splashing the cash around. There's just $10 million in this announcement for:

• Altarock Energy, which is getting $6.25 million, and
• Potter Drilling, which is getting $4 million.

There's also a research grant of just under $500,000 to SMU's Geothermal Lab.

All these investments have a theme, specifically Enhanced Geothermal Systems  (EGS). Current geothermal plants drill a hole in the Earth to find a source of heat, then pump in water to create steam, and generate electricity from the heat.

This is fine in parts of the West, where there are ample quantities of hot rocks relatively near the surface. Assuming there's water nearby. It doesn't work in the East, where rock formations are more stable, meaning you have to drill further to reach the heat source.

The idea of EGS is to solve these problems, pulling heat economically either from deep inside the Earth or from areas where there is no ready supply of water to produce steam.

Altarock, which is based in Seattle and was called "secretive" in a 2007 news story, when it was seeking $4 million, plans to pump water into hot rock formations, then pump the water back up separately. As it rises and its pressure decreases the hot water produces steam for turbines.

Altarock's "big name" is Susan Petty (above), a geothermal consultant with three decades' experience at Black Mountain Technologies. It's as important to get good people in these start-ups as it is good ideas, and Susan is said to be one of the best.

How Hard To Hit Them

One of the great ironies of a change in political assumptions accompanying a crisis is that it comes at a time when belief in the old assumptions has reached a peak.

This is extremely frustrating to those who have come to embrace and represent new assumptions. It fires their anger and drives them forward.

What is most interesting to me, as an amateur historian, is how the transformative figure thrown up by these changed assumptions leans against their own Thesis. Rather than directly challenging the failed assumptions, he stands as a moderate, apart from and above the fray, often seeking to be a consensus figure at a time of peak contention.

You probably learned in high school how Lincoln did this. You may be less aware of how FDR did this, but if you look closely at pictures of his 1932 Chicago convention you will see him identified as supporting "progressive" government -- progressivism was a set of assumptions best embodied in the career of Herbert Hoover.

And so we return, again, to Barack Obama and the Netroots.

How To Win Wars

Think of this as Volume 11, Number 33 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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Economies win wars.

War is not a romantic struggle between soldiers. It is not the strategy or tactics of generals. It is a life-and-death struggle between nations, between societies.

The stronger economy wins.

This is not news. This is taught to every American child, north and south, when history class turns to the Civil War. Generals and esprit held the Confederacy together for a while, but eventually it was ground down, methodically, by Grant and Sherman, whose most famous saying was "War is all hell."

It still is.

Thus, the Georgia War offers Americans an enormous opportunity, a once-in-a-lifetime teaching moment, a chance to crush the Republican Party of Joe McCarthy, of Richard Nixon, of Ronald Reagan, of George Bush and John McCain once and for all.

For American democracy to thrive, the Republican Party which emerges from its next exile must be very different from today's. And the difference should be this lesson, sweeping the neo-cons into the dustbin of history.

We can do this if we don't shrink from it. We can do this if we teach the lesson, and if we give our fellow countrymen credit for being able to learn it. Yes, we can. And yes, we must.

Start with a simple sentence. There are other ways to win wars.

The Edwards Obsession

I have made an important decision.

I hate The Huffington Post. And you should too.

It's this Edwards obsession that really did it to me.

OK. I get it. John Edwards had sex with a lady, not his wife, in 2006, before he relaunched his campaign. Maybe he fathered a kid.

Frankly, big whoop.

Who is John Edwards, right now? Is he a public official? Is he even a candidate for anything? No.

Yet the bloggers of the HuffPo go on-and-on, making stuff up out of ifs and whats. Tearing their hair, rending their garments. Doing all the Republicans' work for them. Even tearing down other liberal sites in the process, for the sin of not obsessing like they do. Then complaining that the Republicans are doing this to them, when in fact they're doing it to themselves.

Government's Role in The War Against Oil

Government should have a limited role in The War Against Oil:

1. Set rules and enforce the law. I've suggested a floor price for energy as the lightest-possible regulation. But there are many laws on the books concerning fraud, and patent rights, which deserve good enforcement, especially now.
2. Watch carefully and be alert for scams. We need honest advice on what's real, what's just someone looking for a hand-out, and what's an out-and-out scam. Oversight of the industry is absolutely vital, not just to stop scams but to point people into potentially-profitable directions.
3. Support basic research.  Corporations are great at applying basic research, but few have the wherewithal (or the talent) to do the basic stuff. They can support it, however. And so should the government. By supporting basic research government assures that the results go out to everyone.
4. Cheerlead and lead. Government at all levels offers a bully pulpit, which should be used. But government can also take the lead in increasing efficiency and providing a market for new energy ideas.

Georgia On My Mind

Little Vlad-e Putin, Age 9. Suck on this.

Honestly there is nothing the United States can do, in the short run, to save the Republic of Georgia.

Not with oil at $120/barrel.

The price matters because this is the source of Russia's economic power. Take away its energy exports and it's still Gorbachev's economy, with Yeltsin's management efficiency. Putin has done nothing but taken advantage of our own weakness.

It was our energy policy, our willingness to ignore alternatives so that the price would rise to $120/barrel, that has given Putin his leverage.

The whining from conservatives like Bill Kristol on this is little short of obscene. They created this problem. And now they hope to benefit from it by creating Russia as a Soviet-style enemy.

There is a better way to go.

Getting Past a Lifetime of Stupid

Think of this as Volume 11, Number 32 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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Like a bunch of kids realizing the onlookers finally believe them, that the Emperor is parading about naked, liberals are finally calling conservatives idiots.

This is the same exhilaration conservatives felt a generation ago as they saw the Great Society collapsing. It's the same feeling liberal academics had a generation before that, seeing the fall of the Boogoisie. 

As regular readers of this blog know, such stupidity comes from a generation's old insight which is being deployed past its sell-by date. Today's stupidity is based on the Cold War assumptions brought to power by Richard Nixon and (later) Ronald Reagan.

True believers in that stupidity use the ideas of Nixon and Reagan the way medicine men might use shrunken heads. The attacks of John McCain in this last month have repeated both the strategies and tactics of the last 40 years, yet its Rove's minions who are being laughed at. (When your attacks are upstaged by Paris Hilton you've become a caricature.)

So for many people this is a summer of celebration. Liberals have a right to run around like Munchkins after the house fell on the wicked witch. But wise people, and if you've found this blog you're truly a wise person who looks outside the beaten path, should be examining the oncoming assumptions to see how they might be abused, and eventually overthrown, in years to come.

Having been inside the movement which came up with these assumptions, having named them the Internet Thesis,  I'd like to offer my services as your guide. Especially since, like Krugman, most of the better candidates are too busy celebrating the collapse of the old order to look inside the new:

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

The Trouble with China

The trouble with China is there is no trouble with China -- not among the Chinese.

Despite all our rhetoric about China's human rights abuses and its horrible environment, the Chinese people are actually quite happy. A Pew poll this year found that, while Chinese people will complain about rising prices, the rising wealth gap or government corruption, 65% are satisfied with their government.

One can argue there is a severe disconnect between how Chinese see themselves and others see them. The Chinese see themselves in a positive light, while their neighbors distrust them.

Partly this is Olympics fever. I recall it from Atlanta's own experience with it, back in 1996, and it wasn't until Eric Rudolph's bomb went off and Munson Steed ran his shell game that anyone questioned anything of what was going on. The legacy of those games is still mainly positive. The economy boomed for years afterward, and Centennial Olympic Park has become a major tourist destination, where it was formerly a collection of warehouses, and would have remained such without the Games.

Mainly this is a wealth effect, which government policies get credit for creating. All the talk of America attracting "huddled masses yearning to breathe free" emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when wealth disparities were at their height, when our industrial revolution was new, and when the poor lived in utter wretchedness.

Before this boom some 90% of Chinese people had no concept of what money could bring. Now hundreds of millions enjoy TVs, refrigerators, fast food, and an ease their parents could only dream of. Sure, it comes with problems, but the trade-offs seem worthwhile.