Dana Blankenhorn

There Will Be Blood

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Think of this as Volume 12, Number 9 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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At ZDNet Healthcare I get this kind of crap all the time:

obama is a liar and traitor to his oath of office.
dems are traitors to the US Constitution, helped by RINOs.
the world will pay the price for the election of this communist TRAITOR.
it will be a price paid in the blood of the millions that are going to die in the wars fools like obama start, just as was done before WW2.
God help us all....

This was in response to a piece of journalism where I looked at the Obama health plan, using a study OMB head Peter Orszag later cited repeatedly on the TV.

Rejectionist, even hateful rhetoric has become the common currency of the right even as their power wanes. The reason I began this piece as I did was to show that it's not a top-down phenomenon. It is coming from the bottom up.

My critics will note how leftist rejectionism was a hallmark of post-1968 rhetoric from the Left. "We're all Nixon's niggers now," said George Carlin. "Nixon's had an asshole transplant. Have you seen the stop-press? The asshole's rejected him," from Monty Python.

And, of course, the Weathermen, along with a host of red terrorists running to the Symbionese Liberation Army. Leftist violence, at least in this country, gradually devolved into self-parody, with those who might have supported it dropping out into the world of drugs, sex, and rock that culminated in disco.

Right wing violence is not like that. Even in the 1990s, when the Clinton AntiThesis was merely leaning against the Nixon Thesis, we had Ruby Ridge, Waco, and the Oklahoma City bombing.

What can we expect now, with a President truly dedicated to building a new Thesis, something akin to the Roosevelt Thesis of Unity, what I have named the Obama Thesis of Consensus?

A lot worse.

I'm Not (That) Blankenhorn

There is someone who writes using part of my name and causes me deep shame whenever I see his byline.

His name is David Blankenhorn (right). He runs something called the Institute for American Values, and its Center for Marriage and Families. We are the same age.

He's a nut. A right-wing loon. A horse's ass.

His latest bit of nonsense is to deign and accept civil unions for gay people, albeit with the stipulation that no one with any religious conviction (which he claims to have) should be made to recognize it as conferring anything like the rights of marriage on gay people. This has cost him some street cred in wingnuttia. Poor baby.

Let me state this clearly.

Marriage is commitment. It should be for life, but when one partner to this sacred contract loses that commitment there is nothing the other party can do. Forcing misery "in the name of the children" is stupid. Yes, it's fair to test that the commitment is well and truly broken before entering a divorce, but that's a personal decision. If he or she is that much of a schmuck you never should have married him (or her) in the first place and you're well rid of them.

I have not written 8 books on marriage, like the other Blankenhorn. All I can say is that, one-third of a century ago (as of Barack Obama's inauguration) I fell in love. I fell hard. I fell for good. I'm still in love and, for some strange reason I cannot fathom, she feels the same way about me. We have two children, both on the brink of adulthood, and I hope they can find the same joy and commitment in their own lives that we have in ours.

Not because it's better for society. Not because it's better for children. But because it's the greatest thing any human being can have in their life. It's a feeling like no other, a transcendent joy. It makes life worth living.

It has nothing to do with sex.

What is in a Word in the War Against Oil

Last night the President gave all those who agree we need a War Against Oil nearly everything we could have asked for.

To truly transform our economy, protect our security, and save our planet from the ravages of climate change, we need to ultimately make clean, renewable energy the profitable kind of energy.

So I ask this Congress to send me legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in America.

And to support that innovation, we will invest fifteen billion dollars a year to develop technologies like wind power and solar power; advanced biofuels, clean coal, and more fuel-efficient cars and trucks built right here in America.

He has a plan. It's tied to reducing hydrocarbon emissions. He did mention "clean coal" but he also (for the first time) advocated a cap-and-trade system to cap emissions, which could easily kill current coal plants in short order.

He even gave it the right priority. First. He said in his speech he would concentrate on three key challenges -- energy, health and education. Energy first. That's not an accident, it's a priority.

The only thing he did not do was use the word "war."

This was a mistake.

Open Source Process

The video above is more than a good song. It says a lot about the times we live in.

First, it's a collaboration among musicians in Africa, Europe, America and Asia who did not meet to record. They are singing the song of a Jamaican.

Many of these people come from poor backgrounds, yet they are able to use the same basic technology to make their contributions. See the headphones? Tracks are layered on tracks. The music is built using the Internet, the files passed around, additions made much as you would build a software program.

Which is the point. This collaboration was possible because people were using compatible technologies, because they had free interconnection, and because they shared a universal vocabulary.

In this case music. Other universal languages include mathematics, where equations look the same to a Chinese scholar or a Russian, and Java, which (like any computer language) uses the same structure whether you're Indian or Peruvian.

President Stevenson

Every President has their own leadership style. But there are a limited number of styles and so historians quickly detect patterns as a new President takes office.

The pattern of this President is becoming clear.

It's that of Adlai Stevenson.

This is no surprise. Stevenson (who despite the headline was never President) was the political hero of Stanley Ann Dunham, Obama's mother, during her Seattle girlhood.

It's not just that Stevenson and Obama both call Illinois home. It is their technocratic approach, based on the idea that people who know stuff can come to a consensus which may not lead to a perfect policy but the best possible answer in the moment.

There are differences. Obama came from another world, from Hawaii, while Stevenson seemed born to rule. Stevenson's grandfather was a Vice President, and his son was later a Senator. Obama's father was a Kenyan technocrat from the Stevenson era, his grandfather a salesman.

Unfortunately Stevenson came to prominence as voters were souring on Harry Truman (and by extension the Democratic Party). He lost because General Eisenhower was popular but also because Eisenhower accepted the Roosevelt era assumptions, promising only to moderate the New Deal, not repeal it. Eisenhower, in other words, was an acceptable Anti-Thesis to the Roosevelt Thesis of Unity.

The Obama process is Stevensonism personified:

1. Act, don't react. Define the debate by constantly moving.
2. Provide a policy framework. This is his thesis, based on his having been elected.
3. Bring together the best experts and let them offer alternatives. Those that moderate his thesis may be accepted, as an acceptable anti-thesis.
4. Seek validation for the resulting compromise through Congress, emphasizing the urgency of action.
5. Find honest and able people to administer the policy that results.
6. Use the Internet both to deliver details and communicate directly with voters.

Notice how this replicates much of what I've been talking about as the pattern of American political history. There's a Thesis, an Anti-Thesis, and validation of the Thesis. The medium of the Internet is used to avoid excess, to keep everyone grounded, and to give individuals greater control of the process. It builds consensus, just as the standards bodies of the Internet build an elite consensus.

What U.S. Soccer Needs

A voice.

David Beckham can come back or go. Players change. Managers change.

Announcers are the key to building a TV audience for sport.

What's football without John Madden? What made Chicago baseball so memorable, other than Harry Carey?  Hockey has Don Cherry. Basketball has Dick Vitale.

The beautiful game has Ray Hudson. And the American game needs him.

Hudson is a Brit, specifically a Geordie, from England's northeast. He played a while at home. then came here in 1977, and finished his career as an MLS coach, at Miami and with D.C. United.

But it's his announcing that makes him special. It's his voice that the game needs.

Fear Mongers

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Think of this as Volume 12, Number 8 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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As bad as financial reporters, analysts and experts were when the market was going up they are worse when it's going down.

Let's start with what we know.

Money is a store of value but trillions of dollars have disappeared. The stuff it was valuing is still there. Your house is still there, your stocks, it's all there. Most of it. But with prices having collapsed there is less money available to buy it.

For proof look at the value of the dollar and the price of money. The dollar is high, having gained a lot against the Euro and Pound since this mess started. Interest rates are near zero. There's just no liquidity. There's no money out there with which to buy.

Governments decide how much money there is. That's their job. They can buy loans to take money out of the system. They can sell loans to put money in. They can create money by government fiat, just as corporations create money in good times by declaring  stock. There are institutions like the Federal Reserve in place so our government can take a long view.

We need more money. The government controls where it goes, because it creates it, on our behalf, and we're all shareholders in our national interest.

The $700 billion TARP fund was new money invented by the government to restore health to the banking system. The Bush people gave it to bankers who used it to try and save themselves. The Obama people have gotten nearly $800 billion in spending out for the next few years, demand we know will be there, they're trying to direct the $350 billion remaining in the TARP fund to where it will do some good, and they are committed to creating as much money as necessary to unstick the markets.

CNBC's response to all this? Panic. Pure, unadulterated panic. They were fine with the Bush people creating money and handing it to their sources last year. Now that some might be going to (gasp) homeowners, Rick Santelli goes all Howard Beale on us (above). Now that the Treasury Secretary has decided to treat big banks like small banks, and be willing to wipe out their equity if they're insolvent, all bank values are being hammered down to zero.

No one is helped by "experts" like Suze Orman telling us that we all have to become church mice, make certain we get 8 months' salary into cash, and horde the rest. No one is helped by Jim Cramer, the Pied Piper of the boom, now telling everyone to get out of the market for 5 years.

There are buying opportunities in this market. While the next move may be down, over a few years you will look like a genius if you buy good companies now that make stuff and hold on to them. (If I told you what the good ones are and I were on TV my advice in the last sentence would instantly become wrong.)

A Good Start in The War Against Oil But Just a Start

The President's Stimulus bill, just signed , makes a very good start toward fighting the War Against Oil. (Picture from Whitehouse.gov.)

But oil is a pernicious foe. Even now its advocates are taking advantage of some parts of the stim, and condemning the necessary next steps, in order to keep Americans enslaved to the oil power.

Let's start with the good news. Nearly 10% of this money is going into the low-hanging fruit of conservation and research:

1. Almost $11 billion will go into making government buildings more efficient.
2. Almost $10.5 billion will go into improving the efficiency of housing used by poor people, who are least likely to make the investment on their own.
3. About $16.4 billion is going into "supertrains" of one sort or another, either local transit or inter-city links. Trains are 10-20 times more efficient at moving people than cars.
4. There is $11 billion here for "smart grid" technology, which could allow utilities to buy as well as sell power.
5. There's $7.5 billion for building renewable power sources and transmission lines to get them to market.

There's some potential waste here, and a lot will depend on how well Dr. Stephen Chu and the Department of Energy do their work doling out the money.

• Some think of the "smart grid" only in terms of time-shifting power demand and getting more money from each kilowatt they sell, not enabling the purchase of power from urban solar farms or suburban windmill owners.
• Boone Pickens could easily grab that $7.5 billion to force construction of low-efficiency power lines from his West Texas windfarms to Dallas-Ft. Worth.

There's a big bet being placed here, namely that government can do things right. Republicans love condemning government and praising the free market, but it was the privatization of government and rejection of regulation that got us into this mess.

Now, for a warning and what comes next.

A Dangerous Unity

Many analysts seem shocked at the unity of Republicans in Congress. They should not be.

It goes all the way down to the grassroots. (To the left, Virginia GOP chair Jeff Frederick and his family. By all means do follow him on Twitter.)

There is a tremendous depth of feeling on behalf of what are called Republican Principles, among the rank-and-file. They may be a minority, even a small-and-shrinking one, but in that unity there is strength.

And danger. Just ask the people of California.

Documentary film director Alexandra Pelosi calls what is happening to the GOP a grieving process, but it may be something far more insidious, as you will understand with a little history.

The modern Republican Party has its genesis in World War II, in the all-out struggle against Hitler and Japan. This was a galling time, because until December 7 a substantial part of the party had been isolationist. In the effort to root-out people like Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford, the party became hyper-patriotic, and sought from then on to out-do the Democrats in that area.

McCarthyism was the result. (Republicans still prefer to call it anti-communism.) While there were some Democratic McCarthyites (like Pat McCarran, after whom Las Vegas' Airport is named) it was primarily a Republican phenomenon. It was, in many ways, a natural reaction to the unity of purpose shown (or seem to have been shown) by our enemies. McCarthyites like Richard Nixon sought to create that same unity of purpose here.

Once you understand that modern Republicanism goes back almost 70 years, you start to see what is happening now in a new light. What was in our time called neo-conservatism, the conservatism of the Iraq War, is at its heart. Goldwater turned that rage into an ideology, billionaires like Richard Scaife turned that movement into institutions, and the addition of Fundamentalist Christianity only added to the brew.

What was built, over time, was a political movement of internal consistency and intense loyalty. Anyone who questioned was quickly isolated and banished. You can see this in what happened to David Brock after his well-publicized conversion, in how conservatives now feel about former Nixon official John W. Dean, or the complete political U-turn blogger John Cole had to go through after questioning Bush policies. (Dennis Miller and Ron Silver drew critics, and Joe Lieberman drew a primary challenge, but none endured death threats.)

Those who question Republican principles, in other words, are shunned as thoroughly as ex-Mormons or ex-Scientologists.

Why Republicans Appear Stupid

Previously I have noted that each political generation represents a change in political assumptions, and a change in the dominant medium.

One thing I had not realized before was it also represents a change in how decisions are made.

The Nixon Thesis was based on TV, and decisions were made based on PR-spinning think tanks. Ideas came out of these ideologically-driven institutions, were pushed into the mainstream media, became conventional wisdom and were then acted upon.

Notice the contrast with how things worked under the New Deal Thesis which preceded it. There decisions were made based on academic research. Ideas came out of universities, were then pushed through Presidential appointees, and newspaper columnists then validated them.

Republicans are continuing to do things the Nixon way. That's why they seem stupid. The mistake made by otherwise-smart people like Digby is to assume this is how things always are. It has always been that way in her memory, how could it ever change?

We're seeing right now how it changes, and what is changing . Village journalists are frankly amazed that not only did the President get his stimulus bill through, but that he remains as popular as ever. He appears to be defying political gravity and thus, they assume, he must be brought back to Earth.

This assumption is especially virulent over at The Politico, the Pajamas Media of the Chattering Classes. Despite the fact that this site exists on the Internet, it is created in the same way, and by the same people, we see on TV. It is thus the penny paper of The Village.

What changed?