Dana Blankenhorn

Home Ec for Everyone!

I know. Title sucks. But the idea is right. If you like, let's call the course "Survival Skills" instead.

I actually got this idea from Anthony Bourdain's last book (right). Since getting the standard rich and famous contract with Kitchen Confidential, he has gone through a series of changes. Most recently he quit smoking and became a father. He even lives in the suburbs.

But one thing he wrote in his latest book, Medium Raw, really struck home. Everyone needs basic kitchen skills. Everyone needs to know how to use a knife, a skillet, and throw together an edible, even (dare I say it) nutritional meal. Black or white, male or female, it doesn't matter.

It also occurred to me there are a few other things everyone ought to know before they leave high school. Some basic financial skills, for one thing. What to do when your car craps out. How to hang a picture. Yet for the last few decades a whole generation of people has left high schools without these skills.

And the results are predictable. We were all ready fodder for the Wall Street sharpies. We willingly went to the slaughter pens of McDonald's, WalMart and TGI McFunsters. And now that jobs are hard to come by, now that we really need survival skills, we don't have any.

Optimism for Sale

Think of this as Volume 14, Number 20 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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The best time to sell optimism is when everyone is pessimistic.

That's when it gets the best return. The absolute best opportunity to buy stocks in this country's history was probably in October, 2008, when everyone was going around like chickens with their heads cut off.

This is an important political message. It was the secret to Ronald Reagan's success, to that of FDR, and it is going to make Barack Obama a great President.

Optimism. It's the secret ingredient to any success in politics.

Now it's true that your optimism needs to be borne out by events in order to have the right effect. George Bush's optimism about Iraq just became a collection of Friedman Units, and LBJ's about Vietnam spawned his credibility gap.

Facing the Fear of Otherness

Think of this as Volume 14, Number 14 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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If you've never been to China it can be the most fearsome place imaginable. You think of communist drones, chained to machines by their slave masters, and you think of a government plotting our economic destruction.

That's not China. (I know it's horribly blurry, but these people are ballroom dancing in a park in Chengdu. We Tai Chi, they do the foxtrot.)

China is a far more complex place than you imagine. But this I know. Most of its 1.3 billion people are just like you and I. They want the same things for their children we do. They're mainly just trying to get ahead.

What they fear most, on the whole, is chaos. Chaos destroyed China throughout the last century, it took 100 years away. The chaos of the late 19th century, when China was carved up by Europe. The chaos of the warlord era, the chaos of Japanese occupation, the chaos of civil war, and the chaos Mao Zedong unleashed repeatedly, trying to beat the China-ness out of his people.

Chinese people, I learn, date the history of modern China to only 1978. In these 32 years they have built a great Industrial society, the dominant producer of goods on our planet. This has given hundreds of millions things they never dreamt of before. Cars. Refrigerators. Apartments in the sky and, for a lucky few, fabulous wealth.  (This is Zhang Yaqin in 1978. He is now global vice president for Microsoft, and heads its Chinese research group.)

What built China? Capitalism, we say. Order, they say. In fact is was both. Capitalism needs order just as liberty needs order. Our Constitution gives us Ordered Liberty, not "freedom." It is a system under which we set the limits, and where we have the power to both enforce them and change them. But there are limits. Without law and order capitalism as a system can't exist.

China's government is many things. It is complex, it is opaque, it is bureaucratic, it is powerful. The one thing it's not is communist. Chinese people have fewer guarantees of health care than we do. Everything is a competition. Getting more than a rudimentary education requires passing an ever-harder series of exams. The price of failure in anything is incredibly high. Everyone is a slave to the market, not the party, and the "oppression" we complain of there is the last thing from most minds.

But there's another absolutely vital point you must know about China. They have many more problems than we do, much bigger problems, and most people there know it. There are tensions between the fast-developing coast and the interior. There are ethnic problems. There is pollution. There is the problem of an economy that must slow and a currency whose price must rise, and wherever its leaders turn lies the possibility of chaos large and small.

There is no doubt who has the better hand to play between Hu Jintao and Barack Obama. It's Obama. It's us. (To the left, Hu's expected successor, Xi Jingping.)

It is this knowledge that needs to guide our hand.

We have an opportunity to turn today's great competition into something both sides can win. We remain the stronger side. We can make concessions.

But concessions don't matter unless they're offered in a spirit of equal humanity. We need to learn more about each other -- our governments, our elites, our media, our people. On both sides.

We need more honest translations of what Chinese are writing, and they need more honest dialogue from us. Both sides need to understand the needs of the long term, the need of our grandchildren to have a breathable atmosphere and drinkable water, and the need of China to evolve into a post-industrial society, not just an industrial one. 

The Internet is our secret weapon in that, and while we can protest China's "great firewall," is must be from an understanding that the effort is self-defeating on their part. The great challenges facing both sides require free inquiry, free minds and open hearts if they're to be solved. And solutions can come from anywhere, from anyone. Building walls against possible solutions is building a wall against yourself.

We can be more open, and from that example so can they.

My point is the enemy in this case is not China. It's not China's government, not its people, not its businesses. The enemy is fear, our fear of them, their fear of us. It's the same enemy I faced 35 years ago, the same fear my friend faces every day of his life.

Engagement is the victory. Isolation is the enemy.

Using the Past to Control the Future

Think of this as Volume 14, Number 10 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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One of the most difficult aspects of imposing a new political thesis is that, when you start, there's no vocabulary to describe it.

Every political era develops  its own vocabulary as well as its own belief system. Once these are imposed, a generation has a common set of touchstones with which to discuss policy.

• Lincoln's concept of Union meant southerners were subservient to the north's political will, and could only take command of the government through a loose coalition that included northern political machines and political reformers. Republicans could “wave the bloody shirt” if Democrats became too overt, and did.
• Theodore Roosevelt's concept of Progressivism offered a common vocabulary based on progress, on the public good, on the need to balance the interests of the rich and the poor slowly and carefully. In practice this is very close to the Obama Thesis of Consensus.
• Franklin Roosevelt's concept of Unity meant that “politics stops at the water's edge,” and that all groups had a stake in what the nation was doing through the growth of the middle class, that everyone in fact was part of the middle class.
• Richard Nixon's concept of Conflict held that majorities had to protect themselves from various minorities. Only those who were inside the Thesis deserved protection. Outsiders (and this concept eventually extended to all Democrats) were suspect. Their motives were not those of “us,” they were “them” and they had to be defeated for “us” to be safe.

In practice the Nixon Thesis worked by constantly narrowing the definition of “us” when the coalition grew too large. This was necessary to maintain the sense of being surrounded necessary for the assumptions to be maintained.

The Key to Health Reform

Think of this as Volume 14, Number 9 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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The key to any health reform is giving someone the authority to say no.

That's the difference between the American system (or any proposal from any party to change it) and the systems in place everywhere else in the world.

There are many ways to say “no,” and in America we do it with dollars. We say “no” when the money runs out.

If you're in the middle class, if you can't afford the health care premiums you're offered, the system says “no” to you in every respect. If you're poor, however, or old, or you work for the government, or you have a generous employer, or you're rich, or you're a kid, or you once served your country, however, we say “yes” to you on just about everything.

This is the system Republicans are defending. The middle class is squeezed and screwed, more people fall into this widening crack every year. We know the ultimate Republican goal, because they state it plainly. They want those other groups (save the rich) falling into the same hole. Health care is not a right, they say, but a privilege, something that you have to earn. No one should give it to you.

That's a consistent message but it's one that even Republican constituencies don't swallow in practice. The party's greatest gains in the last year, according to all opinion polls, are among those 65 and older. Medicare recipients. “Keep the government's hands off my Medicare,” these people shout.

It's sort of funny.

But the system Democrats are offering right now is little better. Everyone gets a pony. Savings will appear by magic. If everyone gets into the pool, we can afford to cover everyone. We'll just do some adjustments around the edges.

It's a lie.

Back during the 1990s we thought there was a way to say “no.” It was called managed care. HMO companies like Humana grabbed big hunks of market share by promising to control costs. They lost. Hospitals shifted costs onto other people, fought them at every turn, beat them in court, made it more worthwhile to give in than fight. Humana is now laying off tons of people and calling itself a “health insurer.”

Where will the authority to say no come from?

The best place for it to come from is science, from data. The health IT revolution now underway is designed to collect that data. Get everyone's health records online and we can do a database sort to see what treatments are most cost-effective. Not just which are effective, but which deliver the best bang for the buck -- in every case.

This is called “comparative effectiveness.” And it was the first thing tossed aside when the debate over health reform began. “You're gonna kill grandma,” cried the right, and liberals caved.

Here's the truth. Grandma is going to die some day. Get over it. So are you. So am I. Health care is not about immortality, it's about living as long as you can, as well as you can. It's about managing wellness, trying to cure sickness, giving you all the good days God may permit to you.

Short Attention Span Theater

One of the biggest lies told by modern journalism is this.

Viewers have short attention spans but journalists provide perspective

In fact the exact opposite is the case. Journalists -- both print and TV -- now work in an instant news cycle. We're not even talking of a 24 hour cycle any more -- we're talking about instant, right-now back-and-forth, in which what happened just moments ago and what might happen moments from now don't matter.

Most people, on the other hand, are busy living their lives. There are a few -- blog habitues and cable TV shut-ins -- who live like reporter-rodents, but these are a very small minority. Yet, because this small minority is the audience for which print and TV journalists feel they must compete, the focus is entirely upon them. 

It's like watching a dog chasing its tail.

The right's Achilles Heel

Science.

Science is not a belief system. It is a process, a method. Just like democracy is a process, and markets are a process. (To the right, vaccine scientist Paul Offit.)

No one believes in what scientists say. Even scientists don't. They accept what scientists say, when it is experimentally valid, because it answers good questions, because it can be engineered into things of use.

Over the last decades the political right in this country has forged a dangerous alliance with idiots who reject science, who call it a "belief" system and thus subject to political process.

It's not. Science has nothing to do with politics. Sure, scientists engage in little political games with one another. Good science is held down by authority figures all the time. Good scientists have their work questioned constantly. But in the end, science goes with what works.

Journalists have gone in for this game, because it's an easy "he said, she said" story. This is an incredibly dangerous stance to take.

A Long Walk

I turned 55 today.

The old double nickel. (Thanks.)

Aging is a bitch but it does beat the alternative, we assume. Even if it doesn't I can wait to find out.

So like a lot of people over many years I'm taking better care of myself. My cholesterol is down, my hypertension is under control, I get regular checkups and exercise. It's not so much about life extension so much as it is enjoying every day I have, seeing that the number is limited.

But there's a problem. It's cold. Real cold. Mitten cold.

How cold is it? So cold my YMCA was closed on Saturday, and opened late on Sunday. So cold I bought nine big old fire logs when my mom came to visit for a week and nearly used all of them. So cold the heater is on nearly all the time, and I live in Atlanta for chrissakes!

Fortunately my son, the teenager who drives me crazy, has a cure.

Walking.

Jane Hamsher is a Big Fat Idiot

Think of this as Volume 14, Number 2 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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Let me make one thing clear at the outset.

This is not a right wing hit piece. I am not arguing with Jane Hamsher's politics. I'm a fan.

So why the headline?

Because since the President's inauguration, Firedoglake and progressive blogs in general have been acting foolishly. They have not been doing the job a rising political movement vanguard is supposed to do. 

That is the same job they had before the election. Growing the movement. Targeting political enemies. Recruiting replacement candidates. Pushing an Administration they support in a supportive direction.

Instead they've been carping, treating the President like they do Republicans. They have been assuming ill will on the part of his appointees. They have not taken their real political enemies seriously enough.  They have behaved like something they are not, political insiders. They have acted shocked (shocked) that sausage is produced in the Sausage Factory. They have let the perfect become the enemy of the good.

Piece Work

Think of this as Volume 12, Number 46 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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Here is the difference between a political campaign and running an American government.

In a campaign you have a platform. That platform includes many different parts. They are an integrated whole.

But once you start governing you have to separate the pieces. Anything requiring Congressional action must be passed separately. Thus Presidents are told to concentrate on doing just one big thing.

A great economic plan, jammed through Congress by a narrow majority, has been the instrument of choice for a generation now. Reagan used it, Clinton used it, Bush used it. This set the table for everything else they did, or tried to do.

This was not possible with President Obama. There were just too many things that have to be done. His stimulus plan, while massive, only turned the nose of the airplane up and kept it from crashing to the ground. It was not what he was about, not what we voted him in for.

The actual Obama program consists of two other pieces of legislation. Call them the labor bill and the jobs bill.