Dana Blankenhorn

Have You Heard The Good News About Pakistan?

Pakistan has recently taken on the role Americans once reserved for Iraq, Afghanistan, Serbia, Iran, and (before that) the Soviet Union.

It's the unknowable, foreign, other, dangerous in the extreme. It frightens the children. It's meant to.

We're told, for instance, that Pakistan harbors Al Qaeda, its government is unstable and autocratic. It's the world's most dangerous place.

Maybe. But when you see Pakistan through Pakistani eyes, as it is my privilege to do, it's not so black-and-white.

My friend Tariq Mustafa IM'ed me from Karachi this morning with some of the good news:

• Every corporation in the Karachi area filed their tax returns electronically for 2007. I'll bet you money that's not true in Georgia. Many companies here haven't even started in on their returns.
• A job board launched by two Pakistani emigrants to Stanford now powers some of the biggest blogs in the valley. Silicon Valley, that is.
• oDesk is illustrating their outsourcing capabilities by showing off opportunities in Pakistan.

Revenge, Reform and Justice

Think of this as Volume 11, Number 6 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

---

The countdown to the end of the Bush era has begun.

We think.

But as we gaze over the immense crimes of this time, and seek justice for the damage to our world, our people, and our finances, the demand for revenge and justice is getting in the way of reform.

I share the thirst for revenge.

If no one pays for all this, if no one is held legally responsible for Iraq and Katrina and torture and the massive thefts which may add up to trillions of dollars we don't even have, then the whole country becomes like the Reagan labor secretary Raymond Donovan (right), plaintively wailing (after being found innocent of corruption) "where do I go to get my good name back?"

Fact is, with countries, it's not so easy. The guilt for this era will never wash off our hands. Not entirely. No matter our politics, the crimes of George W. Bush, his henchmen, and his followers, done in our name, are our crimes as well.

The Big Lies of Super Tuesday

The media is telling sweet little lies about what happened in the Tuesday primaries and where we go from here.

The lies, briefly, are:

1. The continuation of a nomination battle among Democrats is a big advantage for Republicans.
2. Republicans are uniting behind John McCain.
3. SuperDelegates have already been committed.

Why tell these lies? Mainly for dramatic effect. If people think November's results are essentially baked-into the system, they might change the channel. And you can't have them changing the channel.  (Note: Change the Channel. Anything is better than Chris Matthews.)

So let's fisk these lies quickly and easily:

Super Tuesday's Biggest Loser

It was the TeeVee.

Again.

After warning us, briefly, that a state's winner meant much less than the delegate count, and that a candidate could win the popular vote but not win a lot of delegates, the Idiots on the Box  proceeded to ignore this all night and "call" states or describe them as "too close to call."

Why? Because it was fun. Because it was dramatic. But it was irrelevant.

Not once did I hear someone say that if a state was close the delegates would be split narrowly so the actual result was of only minor interest. Instead a three point win in Connecticut was a major triumph, no different than a 20 point loss. That's pure nonsense, a lie.

What I was loking for was the margin in each state, and where that margin lay, because that would determine the delegate count.

In the end the Democratic race was a draw. Clinton won 20 more delegates than Obama. The "superdelegates" should not be apportioned at all, because they are free to change their mind. Most likely they'll make the final choice. Hopefully it will be based on whom they think has the best chance of winning. But, again, you didn't hear any of that on the TeeVee.

The most important numbers related to turnout. Republicans out-voted Democrats in only a very few states, most notably Arizona and Alabama. In many states the total Republican vote was less than that of the Democratic loser. CNN was kind enough to show state results side-by-side on their crawl so you could learn this. MSNBC, to its shame, didn't.

First Real Recession of the Internet Age

The proof is in. We're entering the first true recession of the Internet Age.

It's true there was a technical recession early in 2001, six months of negative growth caused by the dot-bomb. But this was mainly a product of the Internet itself, a relatively small excess that was quickly squeezed out.

The current recession is something very, very different.

First understand what recessions are. They're excess. They're a process by which the economy squeezes some form of excess out of the system, the way you would wring a mop, before continuing on with the job.

Second, the Internet allows markets to re-adjust very quickly. Back in the day we had recessions every few years, due to an imbalance between inventory and sales. When you have bar codes in the cash registers which can interface with demand to the factories, that can't happen.

The same sort of thing happens in other types of market speculation. The 24-hour market day means a panic in one place is seen as opportunity somewhere else, and the vacuum is filled as fast as a thunderclap.

Generally this is a good thing, just like airbags in a car are good things. But just as airbags cause gasbags to just drive faster, the recession prevention of the Internet causes bad policymakers to make things worse. And they have.

It took an enormous conspiracy to create this recession. The causation chain starts with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which first collateralized groups of mortgages into salable instruments. But Wall Street sharpies took this one step further, creating other instruments based on that collateral, creating insurance of that collateral, and essentially creating the Big Shitpile we see today.

Google Does to Microsoft what Microsoft did to IBM

Google has become the essential utility of our time.

Its influence is ubiquitous and constant. In writing any post to any of the blogs I serve, I will usually go to Google 20 or more times, to check stories, to collect thoughts, to add links and find illustrations.

I go to Google because Google works.

It works better than Yahoo, better than Microsoft, better than Ask.Com. Often it works better than the search offered by the site I'm on at the time. I've often used Google, for instance, to find recent articles on a topic I'm writing about, posted on the same site I'm posting to.

Of course Google is not perfect. To find this story, about a bid for my current employer, C|Net, I had to use the article's title, and I had to use the Web search rather than news.

Even Google's failures have real world consequences. Innocent bystanders can get drilled.