Dana Blankenhorn

Hawaii's Small Ambitions

The state of Hawaii has an ambition, to get 70% of its energy from renewable sources by 2030.

Pfaw! (This, and other moving images of Hawaii from back in the day, are to be found at JaneResture.com.)

When it comes to renewable energy potential, Hawaii is Kuwait. As our most-southerly state Hawaii has the most intense sunshine in America. Its volcanos and trade winds mean the west side of islands like Hawaii itself are literally desert, perfect for solar energy collection.

Then there are the volcanoes themselves. Geothermal energy so close to the ground you can taste it. And those trade winds, both reliable and often fierce. And those ocean currents.

Hawaii is a laboratory we can use to create energy exports, not just sustain a tourist economy.

Over the Rainbow

My guy's out. The above is for John and his lovely wife Elizabeth. Thank you, God bless you.

But that's OK. Because I have another contribution to make, to the candidate I prefer now. (Regular readers can guess who that is.)

Above is the classic version, with Judy Garland. It was written for her, by Harold Arlen. It also became, along with White Christmas, one of the signature tunes Americans sang during World War II. So there's that connection.

But there's more. A lot more.

The Wizard of Oz was written as an answer to European stories like Alice in Wonderland. Frank Baum wanted a purely American fairy story, and it was so popular at the turn of the century that it begat a whole series of Oz adventures, and product tie-ins. So the song is deeply rooted in American myth, business and history.

But there's more.

There's E.Y. Harburg's lyric, which sounds like it's about heaven but can easily be seen as being about America, or our dream of it, the dream stolen by the Bush Junta.

Somewhere over the rainbow way up high
There's a land that I've heard of once in a lullaby
Somewhere over the rainbow skies are blue
And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come true

If that isn't the immigrant dream of America I don't know what is. Pushing a song whose lyric is an immigrant's dream makes a wonderful contrast to the Republican bashing of immigrants. A song about idealism is a great contrast to the Republican drumbeat for constant war. That, right there, is your difference between hope and fear. Jesse Jackson will like it, too, with its literary allusion to his Rainbow Coalition, and its call to rise even higher than that.

But there's more.

Transform, Transact, Transcend

One thing I've learned from my studies of American political history is that, while all elections matter, some matter more than others.

• Most elections are transactive. They are a choice between two worldviews, followed by a negotiation of those views.
• Transformative elections happen once in a generation. They realign the political planets. They deliver a new Thesis, a new set of myths and values accepted by the majority, to power.

Transformative elections also deliver a new dominant medium to power. And after such an election people will go on, for the rest of their lives, thinking the world created by the  transformation is the world, that nothing else but its Thesis and its medium can exist or ever has existed.

This is particularly true after a Validation election. New leadership is offered, but the people ultimately go with the Thesis, validating its assumptions. That validation can't last, of course, and you later get an AntiThesis election, in which a new set of ideas, leaning against the Thesis and moderating it, take power. Once this AntiThesis runs its course comes the most curious type of election, the Excess election, in which the Thesis is reaffirmed even if everything the AntiThesis did worked.

We can see this pattern play out throughout the 20th century. The 1896, 1932 and 1968 elections were transformative, bringing a new Thesis to power. The 1908, 1948 and 1980 elections validated the Thesis, bringing it to its height of power. The 1912, 1952 and 1992 elections were AntiThesis elections, in which a set of assumptions leaning against the Thesis came to power. The last such winner, Bill Clinton, was quite explicit about this, calling his the Third Way.

Then you have these Excess elections, these curious selections where the best man loses, where evil seems to triumph because the Thesis has become obsolete. The 2000 selection was one such campaign. So was the 1960 campaign that brought John F. Kennedy to power. As was the 1920 election in which James Cox lost to Warren G. Harding.

So if you've done your math you know the 2008 election is a Transformation election, and perhaps the 2004 election should have been.

Most Americans already intuit the need for a new Thesis, a new set of myths and values which will inform power, and a new medium to carry it forward. Most see this Thesis coming from the Democratic Party -- the new Thesis usually emerges from the old AntiThesis, as Eisenhower begat Nixon and Wilson begat Roosevelt.

Most of us also understand that this medium, the Internet, will dominate the future, with TV becoming a mere application upon it.

And so we face our choice.

Why the Smart Guys are Panicky

The mood at the end of the annual Davos retreat of big moneybags was, in a word, scared. (Picture from Freakingnews.com.)
 

They're looking at the world economy the way New Orleanians looked at the TV weather shows a day before Katrina hit. They see the thing blossom before them, they're told it's headed right for them, but there are no freeways out of the money business. You gotta own something.

Why panic? The cataclysm has two components:

1. Big Shitpile, the corruption and greed which created the housing bubble; and
2. Stagflation, our dependence on oil and its suppliers' ability to manipulate the price.

History shows that whenever excess, a bubble, is found within the market, you can't turn things around until that excess is wrung completely out. Think about the dot-bomb. Some of the best companies lost half their value. Some lost 90%. Many went under completely. Now that the housing bubble is obvious that is what has to happen.

And the impact of making that happen is catastrophic. Think about it. You've got a $250,000 house. Before this is over it might be worth $125,000, it might be worth far less. Your buyer has to qualify for a fixed-rate mortgage, and put down a substantial down payment. Now how much do you owe on that house? I'd venture to say very few mortgages are half-paid off. And what happens to a loan when the value of the collateral falls below what you've borrowed? Well, on Wall Street they call that a margin call.

What we're seeing right now might be just the tip of the iceberg. Because all the excess has to be wrung out -- in home prices, in the mortgages underlying them, in the derivatives and other crap made with those mortgages.

Yet that's just half the problem.

The Transcendent Presence of 2008

There is a transcendent presence that ties Barack Obama directly to the Kennedys, to the High Thesis era of Camelot when any dream seemed possible.

Her name was Stanley.

Stanley Ann Dunham was born in Kansas in 1942. She died in Hawaii in 1995, of ovarian cancer, aged 53. The same age I am now.

Hers was a great American life. What John F. Kennedy talked about, she did. What he wanted us to believe she lived. She saw through color to character. And when her dreams took her away she had her parents live those values, and show her son the devotion she'd shown him, to teach him to dream as she did.

Her son described her as "a lonely witness for secular humanism, a soldier for New Deal, Peace Corps, position-paper liberalism." His greatest regret was he did not make it to her death bed. He did not see her transcend life and death, after teaching him to transcend so much, and to believe in transcendence, which is the American dream.   

So what if they tell you you're black. You are descended from princes, Stanley told him. So what if we're poor? You can be whatever you want to be.

You can be President of the United States.

Drives Me Crazy

Putting ADHD people together can be like trying to lie magnets together. They resist.

In the case of my son and I it means we bark at one another with the slightest provocation. We're ready to see intent where none exists. We misunderstand. We speak in incomplete sentences. Our expectations for one another are very high, and when they're not met it hurts.

John has had a lot more therapy than I did at 16. He's gotten a lot more help. He's given himself more help, too, joining a church of questioning believers. Yet he has a lot more trouble than I did dealing with people his own age.

I think it's because in John's life he's lacked peers. I mean real peers, people like him. Not just the same age, but similar in temperament, in attitude, in intelligence and love of learning.

That's the lesson of my own life, anyway.

Hoover Mystery Solved

One of the great American historical mysteries was solved last night.

How was Herbert Hoover re-nominated in 1932, when it was obvious he would get pounded?

The answer came during the Republican debate in Florida.

Hoover was just following orders.

When a generation of assumptions comes up against cold hard reality, it seems, there's nothing believers can do but pretend reality does not exist, and proceed according to their assumptions. Thus despite trillions added to the debt, John McCain called the Republicans the party of "fiscal responsibility." Despite an enormous majority saying Iraq isn't worth it, Mitt Romney insisted Hillary Clinton would be mad to run against the war.

It was like watching a debate in Bizarro World and the more it went on the crazier it got. Everyone was friendly toward one another, everyone was spouting the same jargon. It was like they were huddling around a common campfire with only ideology to keep them warm.

Every once in a (great) while Ron Paul would be invited by the moderators to toss some cold water on the party. Get rid of the Federal Reserve. Get out of Iraq. Stop spending on anything. But the fight had gone out of the rest of them. They didn't have the stomach to answer the crazy any more. They had their own crazy to deal with. So they just ignored ol' Ron Paul and went right back to their Fantasy Island.

It's not just the candidates.

Hershey Bars for Rich Kids in Harbour Green

Think of this as Volume 11, Number 4 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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This is my Alex Baldwin story.

Not Alec. Alex. The father.

When I knew him, I was a toffee-nosed rat-faced git of 15, and he was running the summer camp program for the Massapequa Schools. The rest of the year he was a gym teacher at McKenna Jr. High.

We were coming back from some camp trip on a yellow school bus. (I think we'd harassed the gays on Fire Island or something.) We were full of brio (or our own youthful bullshit) and talking up doing a fundraiser. We had lots of ideas to raise money -- car washes, product sales, babysitting.

Mr. Baldwin brought up the question of what we were raising the money for. "Are you going to give Hershey Bars to all the rich kids in Harbour Green?" he asked. He wanted us to think of those less fortunate, rather than other privileged people, who he assumed could get their own Hershey Bars.

I thought this hysterical at the time, and I still get a chuckle out of it. But these days the joke's on us.

Getting an Economy Back

The financial collapse which began with the Big Shitpile continues apace. (Get Super Bubble Pop here.)

Today the Google Bubble may have finally popped. We predicted that two months ago, giving you plenty of time to get out of the way. At its present price, Google still sells at 25 times next year's expected earnings. A reasonable level might be 20-25 times expected earnings, a nice premium over the 15x current earnings stocks are worth historically. Apple and other "momentum stocks" joined in the downturn, and that's good -- speculation needs to be driven out before we can go up again.

But instead of praying to the tape, or attacking those who got us here, how about a brief focus on some potential solutions to this mess? Everyone with a functioning brain cell (even Lou Dobbs) knows the present "rebate" proposal is nonsense. This means both parties, and all major politicians, are Clueless at this point.

So how about some ideas:

Obama's Point About Reagan

The atrocious coverage of our political discourse continues.

This was not an episode of Real World: Myrtle Beach. This was not even personal.

There was a single, important point being made by Barack Obama, which Hillary Clinton spent the night trying to muddy.

It was, what kind of leadership do we want in 2009? Do we want a transactive leader, someone who approaches each issue as a separate battle? Or do we want a transformative leader, one who changes how we think and constantly reminds us of the underlying cause?

Bill Clinton was a transactive leader. He had to be. He was a product of his time, and his time was the high point of the Nixon Thesis of Conflict, of High Reaganism. Building on the earlier work of Gary Hart and Michael Dukakis, working through the Democratic Leadership Council, he created an AntiThesis to the Nixon Thesis, and negotiated compromises which pushed things along in what he thought was the right direction.