Dana Blankenhorn

Al Gore as a King in New York

One of the most important, least understood stories of this year has been Al Gore's reluctance to endorse anyone. (Picture from The Atlantic, originally taken by the World Resources Institute under a Creative Commons license.)

There are all sorts of theories, but only one theory makes sense.

He has better things to do.

As I wrote in November, Al Gore is focused on market solutions to the War Against Oil. He has learned, through his work on An Inconvenient Truth and all the opportunities which flowed from it that the power of money can actually be greater than the power of government. He has also learned that money follows credibility.

During 2007 Al Gore signed some very, very interesting deals. He signed deals with venture capitalists, and hedge funds. The core of those deals was that Gore, and people working with him, would go through all sorts of alternative energy proposals, not just those in the market, but those seeking market funding and those still in the labs. He would offer his considered opinion on the validity of each idea, helping to make sure that capital flowed efficiently toward ideas which made the most sense. And he would profit from that.

The Obama Charisma

While some people want to liken Barack Obama to John F. Kennedy, that's damning with faint praise.

As an historical figure JFK had more in common with the incumbent than with the current challenger. He was the wealthy son of a long-running Thesis, created under Roosevelt and validated by Truman. Other than his inaugural address there are few Kennedy speeches anyone could remember five minutes after they were made.

He's used as he is because Democrats don't have anything else to compare Obama with, because his brother and children and grandchildren are at the heart of the party today. They can't use Bill Clinton since he's in the other corner. They can't use Jimmy Carter because he was a failure. And they certainly can't use Lyndon Johnson. Truman's daughter Margaret died recently at 83 -- there is almost no memory of him. And he wasn't really a scintillating speaker anyway.

So where does Obama's speaking style come from? What is the heart of his message? What is the charisma all about? There are three main ingredients:

Morning in America

Americans are by nature an optimistic people.

We like to be told, when things are tough, that they're not that tough, that we can tackle our problems, forge ahead, even reach the Moon.

Americans loved Ronald Reagan for that reason. It wasn't so much the direction he took us in as the sunny way he took us there. We had already decided we agreed with him. He validated that, and validated us.

It drove Democrats crazy to think that this lazy man, this actor, could with a sunny disposition turn the whole country inside-out on behalf of policies which, to them, seemed hopelessly moronic.

Bottom rail on top now.

Rice Science Thursday: See a Single Molecule

Measuring molecules is difficult, because they're small.

Problem solved, by the Natelson Group in Rice's old Space Science building.

The trick was to fabricate gold electrodes with a one-molecule gap. This was done by grad student Dan Ward (right). Run current across the electrodes and single molecules are detected. Moreover, the same system gives you optical measurements. And the device can be made dirt cheap.

"We can mass-produce these in known locations, and they have single-molecule sensitivity at room temperature in open air"

said Prof. Natelson, who is listed as co-author of the study, along with Ward. Natelson is a physics professor.

 

The Right War Against the Right Enemy

Think of this as Volume 11, Number 7 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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The most frustrating aspect of this whole decade is how we've gone to war against the wrong enemy, using the wrong means. (Cartoon from the Toronto Globe & Mail.)

Advocates of our present course go on-and-on about radical Islam, about evil-doers, about how we must confront them militarily, over there, so we won't have to do so over here.

There is so much wrong with that sentence it's hard to see where to begin. But let's try.

First, the enemy. It's not Islam, radical or otherwise. Islam is a means to an end. If we did not need oil we would care a lot less about the Middle East, and it's very likely Islam could start caring less about us.

It's a lot more like the South in the Civil War. Why are you fighting us, the Union man asked. Because you're over here, the Confederate replied. Slavery was the economic model behind the talk of state's rights. In the same way, oil is the economic model behind all this talk of Jihad, and a clash of  civilizations.

Oil should be our enemy. Reduce our need for oil and everything else gets easy.

Second, the means. We have been using military means exclusively. And our military rides on a sea of oil.

Whether we're "winning" or not, we're losing because of the means we're employing.

Does Politics Trump Everything?

I didn't intend on getting into this, but I had the Congressional hearing on, with Roger Clemens, and there's an important point which needs to be made. (Picture from 108 Red Stitches.)

Does politics really trump everything? Does the truth of something mean nothing? Or is everything just a function of which political party you belong to?

Let's be clear. Roger Clemens is a Republican, a staunch one, a charter member of the "jockocracy" who got rich off sports and thus identifies with the rich.

That fact should mean nothing regarding whether Roger Clemens used performance-enhancing drugs. The Congressional committee should be testing the evidence, and acting in an impartial manner as much as possible.

I don't know the truth, but I have suspicions. I know what Clemens looked like a decade ago. I know what he looks like now. His head is two sizes larger. That is one side-effect of steroid use. And his record over the last 10 years, his success in continuing to pitch well into his 40s, also has to be seen suspiciously. Especially in light of the specific allegations contained in the Mitchell Report, and the further evidence offered by former trainer Brian McNamee.

Every case of conspiracy is, as prosecutors say, a piece of shit. That is you depend on members of the conspiracy, criminals, to testify against others. You expect drug dealers to rat on their customers, customers on their dealers, and you don't judge guilt or innocence  based on party affiliations.

Do you?

The Next Shoe To Drop

Since the Big Shitpile appeared, almost a year ago now (real estate markets move slowly) we've seen the damage move from mortgage lenders to home builders to banks, to Wall Street.

The next shoe to drop is going to be the construction industry.

This becomes clear in reading the whining of Michael Hill, CEO of "luxury homebuilder" Emerge Homes, which was printed in my daily fishwrap today but apparently originated at The Washington Post. Please, get out the violins and hankies:

There may never be enough capacity to absorb all of these homes and other existing homes using 30-year mortgages, because there simply aren't enough people with the incomes to meet the requirements. Prices could not roll back far enough without damaging the economy irreparably.

Irreparably means beyond repair. It means a problem lies beyond any solution, ever. Kind of like the problems of the dinosaurs are irreparable, or those of the British Empire.

He's right in this respect. It's very likely that Michael Hill, and many people like him, will be unable to survive the adjusting of home prices to market, the 50% haircut of a balloon market. Somehow the dot-coms survived it and the biotechs survived it and even the Japanese survived, it, but such a haircut would do "irreparable"  damage to the U.S. economy.

Hill's suggestion? Create new kinds of financial instruments, like, say, 50-year mortgages, so that home prices can stay where they are, with maybe a tiny little adjustment.

Three words for Mr. Michael Hill. Suck on it.

The Natural

We have a tendency to see politicians as fixed.

Especially once they're running for President. They're mature, they're settled, they are what the are. No surprises.

Everybody knew Reagan was lazy. Everybody knew Clinton was horny. It's part of the vetting process that we don't assume they can get better.

This is dramatically not true in the case of Barack Obama.

It does remind me of Jordan. Not Michael, Barbara.  She was something. Ever hear her? Wow.

What was most amazing about Barbara Jordan, please remember, was not her genius, or her speaking style. It was the way she grew, constantly improving in insight, in wisdom, in her ability to draw disparate people to her. By the time she died, too young, of cancer, she was a giant and it was the loss of Jordan, as much as anything else, which drove a stake through the Texas Democratic Party's heart. That party has yet to recover.

I think all this talk of John F. Kennedy is based partly on the establishment's acknowledging Obama's personal growth through this campaign. Although Kennedy was never as great as he seemed in memory. He was a Bob Cousy among politicians. Obama is more like Jordan. Not Barbara this time. Michael.

And that's what we need. We need a Lincoln or a Roosevelt, not a Nixon, certainly not a William McKinley. People are looking at these candidates, for the first time in ages, and asking, "who has the potential to be that giant figure who can lead us out of the darkness, to inspire the better angels of our nature, to make us the country we must become to survive?

Esther Dyson is Selling Something

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, Esther Dyson was a journalist.

Now she's a venture capitalist, but most people still think she should be accorded a journalist's credibility.

That is wrong.

When she speaks now, she is usually selling something. She's a saleswoman. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but when a salesman talks to you a light flashes on-and-off for you, shouting "salesman"! Journalists are expected to tell you the truth, without fear or favor.

And right now she's selling the idea of behavior being more important than content in building value for Web ads

Salesmen should not be writing what purport to be journalism columns, but I haven't confused The Wall Street Journal with journalism for some time, so there you are.

Fact is we went through this dance about behavioral or contextual Web advertising models a decade ago. Among those trying to build contextual models was Engage, a unit of CMGI which was one of the most notorious flame-outs of the dot-bomb era.

Journalists Are Not Referees

A few points I consider unassailable about the last week:

1. Hillary Clinton is much better at working the refs, that is, the self-appointed referees of the media, than Barack Obama is. Everything manages to be about her, and her family. As opposed to me and my family.
   
2. The refs have a self-inflated importance which makes them ripe for ridicule. When Anne Kornblut claims her job is to tell people what is about to happen, she's out of line. Ridiculously so. Yet no one calls her on it because these gasbags uniformly think that is precisely their job.
3. Everyone wants to be the ref. Bloggers want to be the ref (in place of the TeeVee and newspaper talking heads) so bad they can taste it. But what Matt Yglesias thinks will happen doesn't count for any more than what Anne Kornblut thinks.  Same with Chris Bowers. Same, of course, with me. And you.

It's not just in politics that this happens. I find the political coverage most egregious because my life and future are involved, and because (often) my choice is being taken away by others assuming the right to say what everything means.  But it happens all the time, everywhere.

Reporters have been out-of-line about the nature of their jobs, on every beat, for ages. It's not for journalists to say whether Microsoft will take-out Yahoo. It's not for us to say whether Roger Clemens or his accuser are telling the truth. It's not for us to say whether Britney Spears is crazy.