I like Obama

I've never pretended to be an island of steadfast opinion in the sea of zeitgeist. My mind changes on all sorts of matters on a daily basis. But changing my mind when the facts change never seemed like a bad thing to me.

I've changed my mind about the presidential nomination race. My order of choice is Obama, Edwards, Clinton-- a stunning reversal from my prior thinking of Clinton, Edwards, Obama. My feelings are nothing new, but here they are in my words:

1. People really, really don't like Hillary. I even struggle to like her. She comes off as shrill and condescending in almost every public appearance I've seen of her lately. More and more, I get the feeling that neither myself, nor the general public's ever going to warm up to her. It's one thing to vote on popularity alone, it's quite another to ignore the polarizing nature of a candidate in a very polarized time.

2. People really do like Obama. Say what you will, if this is the only factor to judge someone, Obama comes off as passionate, sincere, intelligent and interested in building consensus. You may not agree with him politically, but I see no one else in the running on either side with that kind of visionary energy and optimism. This is the first time in my life that there is a candidate running for president who actually makes me feel good. It's not an intellectual response for a change. Combining the party of earnest eggheads with someone that has human affect could really be dynamite.

3. Experience is good but... it brings a lot of baggage, a lot of old blood, and a lot of old ideas. Hillary Clinton's health reform package is better than Obama's, but I just can't imagine the press and the public getting over the soundbite surge of Hillarycare II. I can't imagine her administration doing anything other than safe, incremental approaches to problems that demand clear and rapid deployment of will and resources. I don't know exactly what Obama wants to do about the economy, social problems and the ominous portents of grave danger from abroad, but I think it would really be a different approach. Besides, how much foreign policy experience does Hillary really have anyway?

It's really just a feeling, like someone has finally vocalized a universal malaise about Hillary winning the nomination. It's the feeling that someone is hitting on the moral messages that many of us share in this country. There seems to have been a tipping point of support that the Clinton campaign will have a tough time reversing. We'll see where the trend lines are in January, but I think people sense that there's an alternative worth considering.

This love of a political figure, and trust in that figure's wisdom and instinct is a form of satisfaction that Republicans have long derived from their candidates and leaders. It's something I've been envious of-- both for its demonstrable successes in motivating people, and for the raw, limbic appeal of it. I want to feel good about a candidate, not just an idea.

It's someone getting to the moral meat that I care about, not evangelical Christians or nervous mom's in the exurbs.

In some ways, supporting Obama is more about following irrational impulses than policy matters or perceived electability, but who cares? Can't I vote for someone because I like them?

The answer is yes, especially if he has a chance of winning. And he does.

I Don't Like Giuliani

With all the faculties of imagination, I try to picture Inauguration Day 2009 with all the variety of personalities at the podium.

First I think about the long-shot contenders. Ron Paul swearing on the bible that he'll abolish the IRS and put us back on the gold standard, Dennis Kucinich raising his right hand and declaring a 35 hour work week and free lunch at noon for all. Then I get to the nearer-fringe players. There's Bill Richardson grinning, out the cameras, and Fred Thompson looking presidential as he sleepily utters the gentle platitudes that have gotten him this far. Mike Huckabee looks good sounds good, and thinks Baptist thoughts about what needs to get buttoned down about this country.

Then I get to the top-tier candidates. John Edwards looks shiny as he tries his best to make a serious face as he takes the oath of office. Mitt Romney also looks shiny, but a little more serious, safe, pliable and reliable. Obama looks like a Dave Chappelle imitation of himself, so serious that he's his own straight man. McCain looks the most serious; grizzled and sincere about the job ahead. And Hillary Clinton looks the part more than anyone else to me, ready to take her rightful place in history, the queen incarnate.

Then I remember it's January. The skies are gray overhead. The bare trees over the grandstand sway in the breeze, crows gripping the branches, braced against the icy wind. A frigid, damp draft makes its way between the zippers of my jacket. I shiver as Rudy Giuliani takes the stage. He bares his teeth as he swears the Almighty that he will discharge his duties with the utmost respect for the office. His long overcoat and bare head make him look like a king cobra ready to strike on all who threaten him. Cobra Commander in Chief is all I can think.

Of all the potential candidates jockeying for first place in this election, Giuliani is the only one who really gives me the willies. He is riding the current (understandable) Republican instinct to go for the most "electable" candidate, similar to the the process that brought John Kerry into the '04 democratic slot. Pro-gun, but not, pro-choice but not, informed on the issues, but not. Many otherwise conservative voters are able to rationalize their beliefs in someone who is pro-choice but declares that the Lifers will "like his replacement" for the 88 year-old Supreme Court Justice on the bench. Many think that a hard-nosed mayor of a big city will make a good leader of the nation. They ignore that most New Yorkers, especially fire fighters, can't stand the man. The GOP, the media, and the voting public seems all too ready to ignore a growing mountain of personal follies, moral misgivings, and factual inconsistencies to nominate the most electable candidate.

All I can see is a cold-hearted, nasty, ambitious man who wants nothing more than to push a moralistic, almost papist agenda on all Americans. I imagine 4 years of Catholic school for this country. Maybe we'll learn a lesson or two, but we won't like it.

I imagine looking ahead to no progress on economic inequality, the continuing sucking sound following good paying jobs as they head South, jobs that with a little forethought, might get people out of section 8 housing. I see no substance that can address the mounting crisis of our health system. If you get sick, if all you have to do is flip burgers or sell dope, it's your problem, your failing in life.

I see a viper's instinct towards the security threats that we confront today, a cabinet full of angry white men ready to bomb Iran at a moment's notice, people with no sense of what our occupation of countries, unending detainment and torture of civilians looks like to a world that is supposed to look to us a a beacon of moral superiority.

The former New York mayor Ed Koch wrote a whole book about Giuliani titled Nasty Man. When I listen to Giuliani talk, all I can see is a thin veneer over raw venom, a truly nasty person who aspires to the most important office in the world.

When I move from the theoretical and consider the odds as they stand, it looks like an election between Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani. On one hand, I can't imagine him providing competent answers in a debate, or playing the personality shell game that Bush did so successfully against Gore and Kerry. I just don't see Giuliani standing up to the kind of scrutiny follows post-primary presidential candidates. Once they really get to know the man, I don't see the voting public falling in love with his policy proposals or his personality. I see Hillary Clinton making him look like a nasty bully, a troll that belongs under a Port Authority bridge and not the Oval Office. I can't see him portraying Hillary as weak, incompetent, or radical. At best, Giuliani will be a vote against Hillary, not for the man himself.

On the other hand, there are too many variables in play to predict how the election will go a year from yesterday. Of all the possible choices, Giuliani is the only one that I really don't want to be our next president. Can you imagine him cooperating with an almost certainly Democratic congress, or managing the Israel-Palestine process? Could this guy really negotiate trade relations with China? What would his hardliner stances look like to all the people of the world who we wish didn't hate us?

C'mon now. Giuliani is a hack. I'd take almost anyone over that guy. McCain, sure. Romney, why not. Come next year, I hope most voters feel the same.

Bush and Ahmadinejad: Mirror Images

In the spirit of putting myself in the shoes of others, I've often imagined that President Bush must sound to Iranians exactly as Ahmadinejad sounds to us. As Ahmadinejad speaks of a final solution to the Jewish question and makes thinly veiled statements about Iran's plans for Nuclear domination of South Asia, Bush makes it clear that we are headed to World War III, while Cheney states that non-military interventions for Iranian deterrence are nearing an end.

But the similarities don't end with simple rhetoric. Ahmadinejad and Bush are in very similar political positions-- free to say as they please, but heavily constrained from acting in any meaningful way.

Take the Iranian leader's position. However he sees the world, Ahamdinejad is answerable to the clerics who dominate Iran's legislative assembly; powerful people who at best see him as a useful idiot. He has raised the ire university students who take to the streets on a regular basis against him and his policy. As a nation of Shiites, Iran holds little religious clout for the 90% of Muslims who view that interpretation of early Islam (and hence their religious authority) as apostate. Beyond insurgencies in Iraq, and Hizbullah operations in Syria and Lebanon, Iran has no regional support or traction. A-jad's aggression towards to outside world, not to mention the cultural repression that is ubiquitous inside the country may be at the root of a growing backlash to the entire Iranian political structure.

Compare this to Bush's (and our) position. Bush and colleagues can view Iranian nuclear buildup and overtures towards dominance and destruction as an imminent threat, but their ability to act is at least as constrained as Ahmadinejad's, and for strikingly similar reasons. For better or worse, congress, state governments, and general political opinion challenges the administration at every turn. The Republican party's once unstoppable electoral momentum has been stopped cold by 7 years of Bush's leadership. Far beyond the intelligencia, Bush is a lame skunk. No power to act, but everybody wants him to go. In terms of foreign policy, the administration has little hope of building a useful diplomatic coalition for affecting change in Iran neither out of Nato allies, nor China or Russia. Militarily, the US is in no position for a unilateral invasion of a far more formidable adversary than Saddam Hussein ever was. The US is nearly as politically isolated as Iran.

None of this says whether Iran is indeed the threat that many claim. Neoconservatives use any statement proffered by Ahmadinejad as "proof" that Iran is an immediate threat to the US and our allies. They assume the man should be taken at face value, and that his words preceed action with certainty. The fact is that the Iranian threat grows even as either side has little room to maneuver. The US will not be able to wield any diplomatic or military leverage on Iran until Bush leaves office. Likewise, Iranian power is in no way consolidated under its president. Calling for the destruction of Israel and the eventual occupation of Iraq may sound good, but for now, Iran is in no position to do either.

For the time being and like it or not, the US is in a position of cautious waiting. It would be wise for intelligence to gather its strength, take the time to grow a group of cultural experts fluent in Farsi, Arabic, and the customs of the land. Our position in Iraq has many downsides, but it is a deterrent to Iran, placing the bulk of our massive combat readiness at their borders. The leaders Sarkozy, Merkel and Brown are all reliable allies who will be present and accountable if and when a true threat arises. Even Vladimir Putin has little stake in a large-scale (potentially nuclear) conflict to his immediate south.

We must not allow neoconservative hotheads to overplay our hand. This is a time for patience and quiet strategy, not one for open warfare. Ominous as it may be, there is nothing about the current situation with Iran that demands dire, immediate action. As necessary as history may one day prove, we have few rational moves to make in this game.

An SCHIP Veto... A Dumb Line in the Sand

Congress has passed a $36 billion dollar expansion of the federal portion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) that would cover millions more children, most of whom would otherwise go without insurance, something that is relatively cheap to provide for a demographic more likely to come down with a tummy ache over prostate cancer. President Bush has declared his intention to veto the bill, which may or may not withstand an override in the House, though it looks good for the senate. This move is considered by many to be the opening salvo in the coming ideological war on health care reform.

The argument of like-minded persons in certain conservative think tanks, congressional offices and militia compounds in the plains states is that this is the beginning of a government take-over of the health care system, one where we will all be marched to Siberia to endure the bone-crushing gulag know as... Socialized Medicine.

Making a stand on this point is a dumb move for them and a dumb thing for those of us who believe it:

Why it's dumb for the president and his party:

• A veto on health care for kids?! Talk about instant soundbite. For the sake of ideological abstraction, these guys are willing to alienate women (read, moms) along with the black and hispanic vote that disappeared with Katrina and the Minutemen. Who's left? My guess: whoever was listening to talk radio in 2000 and still does today. They'd better hope Diebold and the Florida secretary of state owe them some more favors come November '08... and that they aren't a minority, gay, urban, or particular fans of our nation's future.


• Health reform is the issue in 2008. It's not just the poor who can't afford to go to the doctor anymore. It's most people. Even I, with a cushy health plan, have to pay $300 per calendar year before the insurance even kicks in a dime, and that's with my employer paying well over $300 and myself forking over $90 of my own paycheck every month.


• This is a major shift for the GOP... from defining the issue to being reactionary: Agree or disagree on principle, but for the first time in many years, the GOP is forced to react to the initiatives of their political opponents. They have moved out of the comfort zone of defining what will be talked about, to reacting to what the other guy's talking about. Gone are the days of flag-burning, "tough on crime", "with us or against us," and gay marriage as issues that only Democrats seemed answerable to. You have to go back to before Clinton, who neutralized this by coopting their ideas (welfare reform, etc.). Wedge politics are splintering the GOP on Iraq, immigration, and now health care. The religious right are thinking of a third party candidate if they don't get what they want out of the nomination. I think this is serious bad news for the GOP and the American Conservative movement as a whole.


• 66% of Americans are in favor of this bill. I thought we counted, at least sometimes. What's the point in an ideology if no one likes it?

Why this dumb for us:

• This isn't socialized medicine. This is taking some money from people who can afford it and giving it to those who can't; something that some may consider "socialist", but not most. Socialized medicine is when doctors, hospitals and experimental monkeys are all employees of the state. Even Canada isn't socialized medicine. Only place that does have something close to "socialized" is the UK, and even there the rich can always buy their way out... so what's the problem. SCHIP is federally-funded, but administered by private insurance companies. The term "socialized" was focus-group coined by insurance companies to scare people back when they tried to fix our system in '93. Don't be fooled into a scientifically-tested knee jerk reaction.


• President Bush uses Socialized Medicine. The VA and the US military's health system are owned, operated, staffed, and paid for by the Federal government. Ask Mr. Bush about his care. Then ask the VA about the improvements in efficiency and outcomes for our nation's returning soldiers. They beat the pants off the private sector, and for a lot cheaper.


• Even if this does mean the beginning of universal health coverage, that's not bad. We hear about how hip replacements take 3 months in Canada, where insurance is all state-run and out of the tax dollar. Well, in America, who does most of the hip replacements? Medicare... insurance for old people. How is it organized? State-run, out of the tax dollar. Canada's got a wait because they spend less money on hip replacements, not because they've got a public system. Americans love their Medicare.


• Even if it means tax increases, that's not bad. Right now, most people with private insurance have their health premiums taken out of their pay by their employers, or they share some of the costs. If there were a tax, all the money from that way of doing business would be redirected elsewhere to cover more people along with yourself. You may even see an increase in wages since part of what you cost to your employer were from those benefits they were paying for.


• Private insurance isn't there to get you care. It's there to make a profit. They make a profit not by paying claims, but by taking in premiums and not paying claims. They spend a fortune on actuaries whose jobs are to figure out your risks of getting sick, and how much money in premiums it'll take to ensure a fat pay check for their bosses. They spend an even larger fortune on advertising to get you to buy it. Their administrative costs are 5-10 times greater (by percentage) than Medicare. The government actually does a good job when it's organized correctly. Here is a case where the private sector isn't more efficient-- it's a lot like subscribing to a private police department and a private fire department for your house. Theoretically possible, but it'll be expensive, probably inefficient, and some people will always opt out or be left out, costing us all money when the fire spreads to your house or when the crime happens away from home.


• Our industries are going off-shore in part because of the cost of health care. Automakers are moving to Canada, software is going to Canada, Mexicans are coming here. Seems like everyone's going north, perhaps some unintended consequence of global warming. It's going to take some public investment to scrub off the rust belt and bring the jobs home. Public investment in our country's social and physical infrastructure is what will make or break us in the coming century-- not whether those policies are called socialist by a clamoring minority.

Rebuilding our country's backbone is the new American patriotism, John Wayne be damned.

We Don't Make Anything

The rest of the world is growing. There was a time, after the Second World War, that when a nation was looking for industrial goods there were few options outside of the North American market. John Deere made the world's tractors, GM its automobiles. We all know the fable. Through the seventies and eighties, manufacturing jobs began to dry up as America became a pricier place to build stuff and other parts of the world had cultivated the infrastructure and knowledge base to do many of the things we were known for better and cheaper, but the American economy still grew almost uninterrupted during those decades, fighting off energy crises, financial disruptions and macroeconomic earthquakes. Into the nineties, America discovered something else it was good at: computers. Fortunes were made on this new product that no one did as well as we did. Of course there is still an automobile industry here, and of course most of the world's software applications originate on our shores, but our strength in these enterprises has undergone a pernicious implosion and nothings seems to be in the offings to take their places.

Blame it on globalization if you like. You may be right. Free trade lets others undercut anything we've ever been good at, but the fact is that without it, we wouldn't have had anywhere to sell the massive amounts of stuff we've produced over the years. There is another dimension to this problem. There is the capital investment that our nation made to become a world power, the counstruction not only of roads and powerlines, but also of some of the finest educational systems in the world. For a time, no one did it better. It was these investments, made in the context of zeal for entrepreneurship, that placed us at the center of the world economy. We could not have gotten where we are today without either of those two inputs.

The cold war created a false dichotomy in American thinking. In this thinking, economic development can be either capitalist or socialist. Many people believe that government and the private sector are mortal enemies of one another; either it is the government that strangles business from solving all our problems, or it is business that conspires to kick the little guy to the curb if he doesn't work without complaint. But we couldn't have one without the other. Free enterprise will fall apart without the investments in roads and rails, in cultivating and maintaining a healthy, educated workforce. Likewise, government as we know it was created first and foremost by business and for business; kings represented dukes who needed to agree on how to defend an area and share resources so their peasants could grow their barley and they could go on the crusades. Only later did government ever become by the people and for the people, but when it did we began not only to invest in the most rudimentary libertarian state, but in one that supported the endeavors of many, and, as it says on the nickel in my pocket, out of many we became one. We have governments in order to provide an environment habitable to enterprise and we have enterprise in order to live and to live well.

So today we find ourselves where the two humors of government and enterprise are out of sorts. Our state has ceased to invest in its people and places with the vigor that made us competitive, and our enterprise is at the beginnings of producing either inferior or non-existent products. Over the past month the world's stock market has plunged across the world as we are coming to the startling realization that the past decade's growth has been leveraged almost entirely on credit, with all production stemming from what looks increasingly like bad debt. This is really bad. We're good at spending money but we just don't make anything anymore.

The time has come for a renewed investment in our public institutions. There is nothing socialist about this. No one is calling for nationalizing industries and no one should. But government spending when done wisely can be a directed shot in the arm for industry. Sponsoring foreign engineers to come here for school, paying for schools, making sure our airports, interstate system and local roads keep goods and people moving where they need to go is a good step. Developing a large-scale initiative for the development of innovative sources of energy is something that seems like an all-American kind of project. Finding an affordable way to cover people's health needs without placing all the onus unrealistically on the individual, the small business man or for that matter, the government is another good idea. GM spends more on health care per car than it does on steel. We can fix this. We can, but we need to be realistic that these investments will take increased taxes, increased cuts in superflous or inefficient federal programs, or more borrowing. Personally, I think we can probably do a lot to make the government work better and we should, after all it's our's. I also think that given our current credit problems it's unwise to borrow another cool trillion in T-bills from the Chinese. That leaves us with one option.

At the end of the day, we may have to pay more taxes to get this right, so it's time to stop taking the toddler's mentality of "this is my money, leave me alone." Raising taxes should not be a radioactive political issue, especially in a nation that has the lowest tax take in the western world. It is selfish and realistic to think that the market will somehow magically keep our good fortune going here and that we don't have to make any sacrifices for the greater good to maintain this dream for our children. It takes hard work, yes, but it also takes cooperation to make something as vast as the American engine of productivity. As voters we need to take control of the government and enterprise that have shut us out of the discussion like children after dinner. It's time to recognize that sharing some money to do some wise things can pay off for everyone, not just the few kings and dukes who will always be able to buy their way out of our failing institutitions. This is our country, let's keep it great.

...but I won't like it

The Golan Heights is one of the most beautiful and interesting places I've ever been. Looking down and to the west, the view is of rolling green orchards and small settlements. Looking up and to the east, the view is of mile-high mountains, bare in the summer, snow capped in the winter, straddling Israel, Lebanon and Syria. Everywhere you look, Lebanon and Syria loom in the dusty distance. On the Heights themselves are endless rocky cattle pastures, vineyards renouned for their Cabernets, minefields marked with discrete bright yellow signs and barbed wire, and the crumbled concrete of long-ago pummeled Syrian military installations.

As a plateau looking down over nations, the Golan feels separate. It is separate but of paramount strategic importance to whoever posesses it. From its 2000 foot height advantage, the Golan is the most logical place from which to lob shells on one's neighbors, as was the case during the famous 6-day war that led to Israel's control of the territory. The quiet and calm of sparse settlement and altitude makes the Golan feel like a tranquil monument, something that any nation would want to call their own.

The Golan is populated by Israeli settlers and Druze. The Druze are a small offshoot of Islam, with secret beliefs and their own holy books. In today's world, part of Druze belief is to pledge loyalty to whatever nation in which they reside. Druze settlements pepper much of Northern Israel. Israeli Druze commonly serve in the army, taking on some of the most dangerous missions. Many Druze are policemen and firefighters, fierce defenders of the nation. On a personal level, they are tough, but warm hosts, offering hospitality along with some of the best hummus and shish taouk on the planet, switching between Hebrew, English and Druze-Arabic without a hassle.

But for the Golani Druze, this loyalty presents a dilemma. Like the Golan itself, they remain separate. The Golan was taken from Syria by Israel during the 6-day war of 1967, where Israel's posessions were substantially increased, from the Sinai, to Jersualem, to the Golan. In 6 days of fighting around their towns and fields, the Golan Druze went from being Syrian to Israeli with no say in the matter. To this day, they shout from hilltops with megaphones to their neighbors across the border to give news of births and marriages to friends and relatives on the other side. While the Druze follow the rules of the nations they call home, many Golan Druze have refused Israeli citizenship. At first thought, it's easy to assume that they do this because they more closely identify with majority-Muslim Syria, but the answer is more complicated.

When we were in the Golan, my wife puzzled over the Druze renunciation of Israeli citizenship. returning to Tel Aviv, she drilled my American ex-pat friend about the Druze. His answer to why they'd renounce citizenship but be peaceable and loyal was simple, but not obvious. Consider the Druze perspective. 40 years ago, your town was in Syria until one day it wasn't. Syria has never been happy about losing the Golan (and your town) to Israel, and demands this piece of land in exchange for peace. It is possible that one day your town might be in Syria again. If you are a Golani Druze, would you want to be known as a loyal subject of the Zionist Enemy? Of course not, you'd be killed. So many of the Druze of the Golan choose to live in limbo. As my friend put it, they have to say "I'll be Israeli, but I won't like it... I'll take free health care and good education, but I won't like it." This is the only safe move for the long term good of them and their families. Really a fascinating predicament.

There is a major lesson for Iraq here. It's only wise to say, "I'll pledge loyalty to the Shi'ite-led government, but I won't like it." Or, "I'll go with to this or that tribal leader's plan for control of the province, but I won't like it." No one in Iraq would be wise to put all their eggs in one basket. What happens when the Americans leave and the power struggle ensues? No one doubts that many groups lay in wait for this moment. Knowing this, no one wants to be labeled a Shi'ite loyalist when the Sunni army generals get their acts together and overthrow the government. No one wants to be loyal to anyone else when anything can happen. Everyone knows that eventually the Americans will leave, and no matter how they leave, even if we magically get the current situation under control, there will be moment where every group who has laid low will emerge to make their moves.

People in Iraq cannot be Iraqi when they have no personal loyalty to the concept, conscieved of by the British in the twenties. People won't work for something that's liable to change or disappear altogether. With the idea of a bloody balkanization in the near-future, no one is going to settle down. This will end, but it will not end well. I just don't see another way.

Burning Dirt

I have a friend who makes his living doing complicated stuff to proteins in a lab in California. As a native Texan he has a way of summing things up in one complete sentence that leaves no room for doubt or dissent. In some cases, as many observers of Texans have noted, this talent could be maddening. In his case, it's usually just what you want to hear.

In college, he was the guy with holes in his socks, drinking cold coffee, still studying molecules at 2 am. Without any moment of consideration, he'd get up and go to a diner 20 miles away, saying, "well, you have to eat, don't you?", or at an earlier hour, maybe on a weekend, he'd put down the books and say, "this will still be here when I'm done partying." During long conversations, when a fact was in dispute, he was the first guy I knew who would say, "let's look it up online." Somehow this guy is always right about things.

During one of those long conversations the subject came around to fossil fuels and their alternatives. This friend put it bluntly, "if you really look at it, everything we do is based on burning dirt." What a great way to put it.

We dig up this variety of dirt that makes big fires and big explosions in order to push pistons and turn turbines. The dirt is made of millions of years of ferns, trees and dinosaurs that layed down their lives to become coal seams and oilfields.

From here, you have to ask, well, what's so great about burning all that dirt? The answer is that it's cheap and it's full of energy... energy that we need to live how we live.

From there, you have to ask, well, why does it have so much energy? The answer is that all those plants and animals relied on energy captured from the sun by the biological genius of photosynthesis. In fact, every source of energy we consume, from the food we eat to the cars we drive to the computers we blog on, is from the sun (except nuclear power, which is based on the decay of heavy metals created exclusively in supernovae).

Even if we used wind power and cow poop to power everything, we'd still be reliant on the sun. This dirt we burn is so appealing because it takes eons of that photosynthesis and packs it into a sludges and rocks that are just packed full of energy.

Of course we know that this convenient source comes problems. All the carbon that it trapped as plants and animals way back when gets released when we burn it, with the undesireable effect of making the sun a little better at adding energy to our planet, thus flooding beachfront property with ice cap and glacier melt. All the smoke from all that burning is no good to breathe, and anyone who lives on top of one of those dirt piles seems to create repressive societies or end up embroiled in increasingly dangerous conflicts. But the stuff is just so damn useful. And that makes it so damn valuable.

So what can we do instead of burning dirt? We can grow stuff, convert its energy to things like ethanol, and burn that. All the carbon that gets released is taken up by other plants that are grown today, making this process "carbon neutral". But we're trying to take a reserve of today's plants and put them against millions of years of plants, just waiting in the ground to be burned.

How many corn fields would it take to get the same amount of energy as a nice big coal field that had millennia of plants turn into dense layers of energy? We're trying to capture plant energy to power our economies within a generation-- something that nature took a long, long time to accomplish. Simply put, this is a hell of a problem. Dirt is everywhere, it's cheap, and some of it's flammable. This is what we've got to compete with when seeking out alternatives.

Pointing out the problems with dirt is as easy as burning the stuff. It's also only half the equation for changing energy policy.

The New Mid-East Policy: Let 'em Have It

Over the past 2 or 3 years, Israeli and Palestinian leaders have changed their fundamental approach to dealing with their long list of conflicts. The move has been from one of micromanaging their adversaries through invasions, continued low-grade warfare, and underhanded support of whoever, in military parlance,is the "good guy" of the moment.

What looks like defeat for Fatah and the Palestinian authority may in fact be a shrewd isolation and marginalization of Hamas. A week ago, Hamas soldiers stormed Fatah security installations across the Gaza strip, stomping on pictures of Mahmoud Abbas and Yassir Arafat in a bloody victory over the sell-outs and compromise artists. In no time at all, Hamas gained total control over the security apparatus of one of the region's hottest pieces of beachfront property. Yet Abbas, sitting impotently in Ramallah, watched not in horror, but in a state of cautious calculation. Gaza would be a sacrifice pawn in a game that last week looked all but hopeless for the Fatah reformers.

A week later, everything looks different. Egypt and Israel have closed their border crossings with the Strip, the Fatah-Hamas coalition government is dissolved, and the US and Israel are working on freeing up hundreds of millions of dollars in frozen assets for Fatah to get back in control over the West Bank and become a broker on a deal. From Damascus, Gaza City and other sources away from the Arab leadership mainstream, cries of an undemocratic coup d'etat are made; they say Hamas was stripped of its power outside the normal channels, that the other side cheated. But the rules were broken first by Hamas when they staged their own highly-organized overthrow of the power arrangements they'd previously negotiated with Fatah. They broke the rules and now they cry foul.

Hamas' meteoric rise to power may have burned itself out. It will be demonstrated to Palestine and the world that Hamas cannot rule effectively, and it will be done without any provocation or intervention by their sworn enemies, Israel and the US.

I think Abbas took this play straight from Ariel Sharon. In fact, this could be viewed as a seamless continuation of Sharon's disengagement strategy. This process got started when Gaza's 8000 settlers were no longer worth the tens of thousands of Israeli troops patroling their barbed wire perimeters day and night. Rather than keeping a hand in a place without much historical or ideological gravity for Israel, they made the correct cost-benefit analysis. Holding on to Gaza was stupid.

Sharon made the call that the only thing holding Gaza and the Hamas-Fatah coalition together was the basic security that came with Israeli occupation, and all the negative press that came of it. Without Israel in the scenario, they would be left staring at each other, wondering who would make the first move, and ultimately tearing each other apart. Today, this leaves Israel and America with a clear choice on who to support, and a strong postition to dictate terms in any negotiation.

The Qazzam rockets launched out of the Southern Strip have peppered the immigrant town of Sderot for months now. Qazzams are not a good thing, but they beat the heck out of the occupation of the Strip, or an invasion that would not only cost lives, but the priceless capital of worldwide (and Arab) public opinion on Israel. By choosing to do nothing, in any long-run calculation, Israel comes out on top and relatively unscathed, while Hamas gets to prove it can't handle the job.

The tit-for-tat assassinations between Hamas and Fatah, or the tedious attack-counterattack pattern between Israeli forces and the various militant groups in Palestine got nothing for no one. The lesson here is that conflict often thrives on conflict. Disengagement isn't necessarily the cowardly way out. It can be a prudent and effective way for nations and movements to get what they want, provided that it is managed correctly. There are clear lessons here for the West Bank, not to mention Iraq.

Returing to Israel and Egypt

After a decade I'm back traveling in this strange part of the world I once called home. I feel almost as much a stranger as when I first arrived just out of high school. Both the places I'm revisiting and myself have changed. Like everywhere else, there is more money; more people buying and selling land, cars, camels, carpets than ever before. Israel looks like a modern, bustling place with fancy cars and stretches of real estate indistinguishable from a suburban subdivision back home. The once dusty, remote beach town I'm seeing again here in the Sinai now has a paved promenade and wireless internet emanating out of scores of dive shops. Though I never thought it possible at age 18, I'm older. I eat things other than pizza and burgers. I even have a lovely wife to see all this change with me. It's been tough to come up with one theme to try and wrap up such a hodgepodge of feelings and experiences so I'm left with the old standby of change, the one true constant. It's a trip getting older.

Requirements to Run For President

According to the constitution, as I understand it, there are only two requirements for who can be president: you must be 35 and you must be Born in the USA. As a matter of human nature, we tend to front-load our decisionmaking on who should be president with precidents, or knee-jerk instinct.

There is an almost conscious aversion to looking at the substance of a candidate; the people he/she associates with, how the causes they spend energy jibe with our own beliefs, or whether they'll be able to handle the horsetrading and compromise that the office demands.

Questions are asked like:

• Is he enough like Reagan?
• Is she too much like Clinton?
• Does he have a pre-911 mindset?
• How much did that haircut cost?
• Is he black or white?
• Does his divorce history matter?

Do any of these questions matter? More specific, do any of these questions get to the meat of any matters? No. I know it's early in the running, but shouldn't there be some arguments of substance taking place?

I know that human nature gravitates first to questions that confirm our instincts over of the more cerebral issues like how we feel about the environment, guns, abortion or poverty. I know that a lot of my decisions are based on how I feel about a person, and not what they say, but the decisions a president might actually make are severely understated by the moderators of our discussions.

As the so-called "4th Estate" of power, AKA the media, are responsible for guiding discussion on important matters of the day. We watch the news to find out what's going on beyond our immediate perceptions, or the rumors that pass between people. The news should save us from instinct instead of feeding on it. It should tell us truth, not inuendo.

If the news does not provide us with a relevant, accurate assessment of what our presidential candidates actually belive, then they are doing us a disservice by diverting our attention to those important matters in place of what sounds good.

Business demands that everything be driven by what is immediately appealing to an audience, as when Colgate sells the smile in place of a tube of toothpaste. But, much as the Rasputins and Tallyrands in the shadow world of politics would like, a smile is not good enough when electing a president.

The basic model of business, which appeals to desire, could be ruinous to our democracy if applied without moderation.

Competition can just as easily be a race to the bottom as a race to the top.

Cable news networks and news organizations of all stripes must remind themselves of their responsibilities. They should be journalists first, businessmen second. They must demand that a candidate tell us what they actually think, not just how they look or how they feel. I don't know how this is done beyond some smart reporters and some morally and politically conscious editors.

Media power, while not written into law, must be used wisely.

Don Imus: Art Imitating Life

When I first heard about the comments made by Don Imus on his syndicated broadcasts about the Rutgers womens basketball team, my first reaction was, so what? The language he used was language you might overhear in the bar at a TGI Fridays somewhere in the suburbs where ESPN is on the plasma screen. It wasn't the high-test racism and sexism you'd expect from extemists; it was something casual, something commonplace.

But that's looking at the realities of daily life, where cultural standards are just plain lower. Public figures are treated differently. Imus' comments raised a number of debates about what is acceptable speech, even acceptable thinking. As with many talk radio personalities who've grown rich on their empires, he channels the collective unconscious of the angry, non-urban white man, and the unwritten superiority with which this class of individual views the world. This jocular sort of chiding is a tool for looking down one's nose at others.

But this behavior is not the exclusive province of the white male radio host; it can be witnessed in any number of settings, and is committed by all sorts of people. Consider not only when radio hosts don't describe a group of women as college kids who play ball, making it to the Final Four, but rather as nappy-headed ho's, but also when people refer to poor whites with funny accents and habits as "white trash", or when we all make acceptions to the hip hop artist who makes millions off of far more vulgar riffs on Imus' language just because he's a young black guy.

This is an issue of standards and judgments that we all place on one another. It only becomes a matter of public concern when someone representing the traditional powerholders in America, also known as the white male, hits the right note. But let's be honest--we all do it. For Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to call for this man's head without even a moment of self-reflection is as damaging in its impacts on their cultural constituents as the now-infamous words themselves.

We must all admit to our casual and implicit judgments on one another. Young black men are somehow exempt from shameful language and behavior since it seems a given. Old white men will always be thrown to the mob over almost any moral indiscretion, since we're all waiting to get a piece of them. But speech that is damaging to black women (or anyone else) should never be considered acceptable, legal, yes, but not acceptable.

Speech out of one mouth or another is morally equivalent in its impacts on others, making this a moral question for us all. Neither Imus nor some unnamed hop hop artist should be treated any differently for speaking in those terms. Fire Don Imus or not, but disparities in race, class and gender won't change until our standards become universal and we truly judge equally. We must make no acceptions.

Congress and Iraq: Dumb dumb dumb.

The new congress wants more say in matters of war than it is entitled to. When it comes to combat, it is a stark truth that the president is constitutionally in charge. It is a bare-bones reality that congress will never end this war through non-binding resolutions, budgetary chicanery, or revising the original resolution to go to war.

At best, their actions against the war are crafty but unproductive political maneuvering, at worst they will lead a political dead-end, even a rhetorical trap for a new congress to fall into. It is just too easy to say that a congress that removes funding, changes the president's mandate, or takes an impotent posture against the war is against our troops, is weakening our resolve and giving comfort to our enemies. The democratic congress must contain its reactionary impulse, and work towards positive policy goals, rather than pretentious posturing on matters over which they have no sway.

Like most people now, I think our venture into Iraq was stupid. Even from a neocon perspective, we could have at least attempted to achieve all that domino-effect-nation-building mumbo jumbo in Afghanistan, while actually spending our military energy going after Al Qaeda. It wouldn't have worked, but hey, what empire doesn't get bogged down in Afghanistan? Going into Iraq was about oil, just as it was in '91. But we're there now, and it's the president's right to run the show.

So what should congress be doing? Well, for starters:

• How about passing legislation implementing the 9/11 Commission's recommendations. Let's get our ports secured, our air travel smoothed out, our visas and IDs in order.
• Let's ensure that any terrorism investigation happens with a warrant, as the constitution demands. There's already a system of judges with security clearance who are available 24/7.
• Let's put pressure on the Pentagon to process all the mysterious detainees in Guantanamo Bay and who knows where else. Let's investigate what's going on in the shadows, and what went on in the planning of this whole venture.
• Let us not forget domestic policy... Bush's budget is calling for cuts to such no-brainers as children's health insurance-- something that Georgia's Republican governor, and many others, are fighting tooth and nail. Where's congress on this?

The whole point is taking the moral high ground-- finding ways of backing them into a corner for a change. After all, who would vote against implementing the 9/11 commission's recommendations? Who's against our basic constitutional rights to review by a judge? Who thinks it sends the right message to the world that we've held people for almost 6 years without any trial or judicial process? If America's so hot, so freedom-loving, how about demonstrating it to the world. Who can stand upright and declare that getting health coverage for poor kids is a bad idea?

I don't like what's happening in Iraq, but we elected our congress to pass legislation, write a responsible budget, and form committees for proper oversight of the actions of government. They should be crawling all over the Pentagon, being vocal about subpoenas for the minutes from Cheney's shady meetings with defense contractors and energy moguls. They should perform their constitutional duties. Congress will get nowhere obsessing uselessly on Iraq; they'll just prove to be as ineffective as the guys before them.

If they want real power they need to focus on where they already have it.

Atlanta Needs Public Transit

Most cities I've been to are located near a body of water. Chicago has its lake and river. New York has two rivers, Pittsburgh has three. Here in Atlanta, where you'd expect to find a river, you'll stumble across the confluence of three major interstates; a tangle of six-to-eight lane highways that literally crucify the city of Atlanta right at its heart. The city is then surrounded by the ominously-named "perimeter", another ribbon of six lanes that allows suburban drivers to move from one major road to another without going into town.

The effect of all this highway is that for residents of the city itself, representing only about 1/10th of the Atlanta area's inhabitants, getting from one side of town to the other involves finding the two or three routes that go over the interstate-- something that is bound to be difficult on a rainy rush hour. Today, an eight mile drive through town took 45 minutes, mostly against the direction of traffic.

People here spend more time in their cars than almost any metropolitan area. We're fifth in the country for bad driving times. The only places that are worse are DC, San Francisco, Chicago, and L.A. But somethow people are willing to traverse distances upwards of 50 miles each way in order to balance a suburban lifestyle with the economic necessity of coming into the city for work. There appears to be no limit to the amount of driving that Atlantans are willing to undertake. We can't do much about the lack of natural barriers that allow suburbs to stretch on forever. We're not likely to change the appetites of rural county developers for more plastic housing. We shouldn't do anything about the area's population boom, which brings more opportunity for all. But we need to find other ways of moving people around than roads.

OK, the list of places with worse driving times are: DC, San Francisco, Chicago, and L.A. With the exception of the latter, all of these places have real, viable alternatives to driving, and L.A. is heavlily invested in changing that.

Free market conservatives have somehow conflated building more roads with more freedom, both economic and personal. Economically, they see a future of pay-as-you-go toll lanes, making the already 8-lane "downtown connector" a (16 lane?!) double-decker, and endorsing their own multi-billion dollar "big dig" to create a tunnel system for more highway traffic to move through and around Atlanta. Personally, the idea of anything but spending time in a car as an individual "rational actor" as a loss of choice, a reduction of individual freedoms, and the tyranny of the state. Personally, for me, there is nothing freeing about stop-and-go traffic, summertime asthma attacks, and spending my morning in aggrivation at my fellow man instead of reading the paper on a train or bus. Aesthetically there is nothing worse than an area choked by blacktop and cars. Economically, losing time in traffic is losing money, losing the chance for powering our movement on electricity generated from American coal and gas to Arab crude is unpatriotic, losing trains to roads is losing the opportunity for creating city centers around suburbs-- something that has been a large part of the economic growth of the DC area over the 31 years since the Metro system began its service.

MARTA, the Metro Altanta Rapid Transit Authority is also commonly referred to as, Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta. If "N" was somehow a vowel, I'm sure it'd be slipped into that acronym in place of the "A". As an observation, riding MARTA is a terrifying experience for many suburbanites, accustomed to seeing the same faces every day. The city is viewed by many as a sprawling ghetto, supported only be welfare checks, even though in fact, the tax dollars flow against traffic. It is no surprise, then, that MARTA is the only major transit system in the country that receives not a dollar of state subsidies. The outlying areas have refused to allow an extension of its service into their jurisdictions, instead starting their own independent bus lines into the city while calling for more state money to build more roads in their back yards.

MARTA started at around the same time as DC's Metro. This is truly a tale of two cities-- one that chose to take the opportunity of an extensive train system, and one that saw the whole enterprise as some sort of socialist joke. Getting around either city by car is difficult, but people have a choice in DC and little or none here. In DC, millions choose Metro every day, while underfunded MARTA trains ride by half-empty on their tracks over stalled traffic.

To say that roads are somehow the free market alternative to trains is ludicrous. The idea that trains should be profitable while roads are never expected to be is wrong-headed, and the idea that privatizing roads will somehow change the math is just plain wrong. There are some things in life where money isn't made, it's spent. When done right, they're worth it. Tax dollars will be spent one way or another. Spending tax dollars on trains instead of roads creates more desireable city centers over the long strips of boring suburban desert we see around roads. For the dollar, it can move more people with less hassle and pollution than any roadway could ever offer. Transit systems, in one form or another, have become a necessary component of any large city. It's a fact of life, and not a bad thing.

Atlanta, and Georgia need to invest in trains. That they have not is a testament to the continued shortsightedness and racism that pervades the south. As other sprawling cities such as Charlotte, Denver and Phoenix all attempt to tackle these problems sensibly, it really makes me worry about this region's long term outlook. What employer wants to sit in traffic when they have a choice?

Universal Health Care

Judging by how long it's been since the health reform meltdown of '94, we can estimate the half life of this issue's radioactivity at a little over a decade. Politicians no longer shrivel in its presence. Interest groups like hospitals, doctors, insurers, and retirees no longer find it useful to toss around health reform to one another like a hot potato. Health reform is now mostly inert, though heavy, seemingly unmovable. No one doubts that it has to be put to rest. One sixth of this country is chronically without health insurance, and many more have intermittent, or near-useless coverage. The system is no good for anyone, if you can call it a system.

Before moving forward we need to have a national dialogue on what our system should look like. There are so many options, even the options have options. a First, why universal coverage?

The moral argument: Universal health care is a human right. It's a matter of basic human decency.

...Yes, but not like the right to breathe. It's one that you have to claim. It doesn't come to you, and only go away when things go wrong. Nations (and states) determine when and how this right will be extended to their citizens.

The practical argument: Universal health care saves lives and money (but not necessarily in that order).

...Yes, but you're a cold blooded reptile to try and stand on this argument alone. Nevertheless, this is the way ideas are sold. You can't just be a libertarian and ride in from the ranch to the ER whenever you feel like it. We all pay for that. Car insurance is mandatory because it avoids one party getting the raw end of the deal. The same could be said about health insurance. Insurance is about security in a place where we all share the road.

People in health policy like to say that the way you pay for health care is completely separate from how it's delivered. In other words, to describe any health care system, you have to think of both sides of the equation. Different systems think of it in different ways. What they have in common is that they cover everyone, and that they are heavily coordinated by the government. Here is a brief a la carte menu of health care systems we can debate.

The Canadian/Scandinavian/Limey Insurance Model:

This is what people are talking about when they say "socialized medicine". The state is the big, basic insurer. In some places, they are the only legal insurer, in others, they are legally allowed to insure some things and not others. In England, for example, everyone is part of the National Health Service scheme, but people can buy private insurance as a supplement, and see private providers too. They have the option to buy their way out. Canada is a bit more restrictive in this respect, and the Scandinavians are as well. As far as care delivery, English doctors are mostly contracted by the state, and subject to direct regulation, though reforms in the 90s developed all kinds of market incentives for performance, and ways they could make profits by doing the right thing. Same goes in Scandinavia. They aren't afraid of the market, they just want it to work for them-- all of them. These are the systems where people hear about long queues for non-urgent things like hip replacements, and the occasional horror story about someone dying in line for a heart bypass. These are real complaints, no doubt, but these systems have better health indicators in almost all respects from infant mortality to life expectancy, cover everyone fairly equitably, and cost half as much of their country's GDP's than ours (roughly 8% vs. 16%). They're also working on those queues.

The German/Dutch/Frog Insurance Model:

These systems evolved out of medieval guilds, where all the candlestick makers would pitch money in for a "sickness fund" where one candlestick maker could draw from if they got sick, their wife had a baby, or whatever. During the unification of Germany, Bismarck got involved in all of this, and started to find ways were the candlestick makers could subsidize the ironworkers, even the paupers. Gradually, different industries each got their own insurance companies, and the state redistributed money to and from each of them as necessary. People could take their coverage with them their whole lives, and they could buy into more posh coverage as they moved up the career ladder. The key here is government coordination. They make sure that all of the complicated arrangements work, and that the doctors get paid in ways that make them want to do good work. It's heavily bureaucratic, but the emphasis is on insurance tied to one's employment, however confusing the overall arrangement may be. It's a market, with the state as the referee. France's system has a more private bent to the whole arrangement, but like the others, guarantees comprehensive coverage for everyone. This sytem provides high-quality care to all, but sacrifices some of the power to manipulate public health that comes from the Leviathan paying for everything. These systems cost around 10-12% of their nation's GDP's, and do it better.

What should we do?

This is my opinion. The fact of the matter is that insurance companies do a lot of business in this country, and already have long-standing relationships within the health system, not to mention the political system. Single-payer people (wannabe Canadians) want to make their business illegal. Insurance companies could allow a great amount of consumer choice-- something that is basically an American value. The government needs to ensure that all Americans are consumers, and that all of us consumers are able to choose from essentially the same basket of insurance products. If the rich want more, fine. But we need to get good coverage for all.

We need to do better than "bare bones" coverage too. People need to be able to see the doctor. They need to have affordable medications. The state needs to get involved. Doctors, big pharma, insurance, and yes, we will pay for it, but in the long run it's cheaper to get people in seeing the doctor before they cost $50,000 in emergency surgery, or end up on dialysis. In any sense, it's only fair to have all sides pitch in to this. At the same time, we aren't Scandinavians here; we won't accept a wait in line for the sake of solidarity, but we must accept that covering people is both moral and sensible. There is an American solution to this problem out there, and we can learn much from an examination of our values, and the values that led to the systems that other countries have developed. We can do this our way, but we must do this.

There is a lot more to say about health care, and I imagine we'll hear a lot more from the politicians and talking heads on TV in the coming months and years. I'll probably lay out what I think should be the basic demands we should make on the designers, but I think that as a country it's time we sat down and figured out how to make it happen once and for all. Health coverage is a basic right that is just plain missing here in a place with so much money and creativity. Let's claim our rights.

Double or Something

We're seriously considering sending another 20-40,000 troops to Iraq as a stopgap measure to pacify the place. There's good reason to believe that the psychology at work behind such a proposal may lead towards real biases in decisionmaking. Take this example from Foreign Policy Magazine:

Option A: A sure loss of $890
Option B: A 90 percent chance to lose $1,000 and a 10 percent chance to lose nothing.

"In this situation, a large majority of decision makers will prefer the gamble in Option B, even though the other choice is statistically superior."

If you're going to apply this thinking to our current situation, I think something is missing in this calculus. It's that we're not talking about the difference between $1000 and $890.

First, the currency isn't dollars, it's kids. We're talking about the difference between 3000 soldiers and 4000, or more. Second, we don't know our odds of success. They could be 10%, 50% or whatever. All we have are the opinions of experts, most of whom say that it doesn't look good. Even the players say we'll have to bet more than we're willing to make a difference in this mess we're in.

To leave now (or soon, or something, anything) would mean a sure loss of a war and 3000 lives. As our situation looks ever grimmer, there is a temptation to up the ante, to call and raise, to shoot the moon, whatever cardplaying metaphor you choose, the odds are worse than roulette.

For the same psychological reasons that gambling is so universally popular-- the possiblilty of sweet victory, we are biased towards the unfavorable odds of warfare. Even when we win, it's at a great cost. Even when we have a winning hand, we lose lives in the process. Unlike dollars, lives can never be replaced by the bank.

It looks like this time our leader's poor estimation of risk got us into a sucker's game. Their basic assumptions of the situation, that there was a real threat over there, that we'd be received as heroes were wrong. They mistakened Vietnam for V-E Day... what looked like a slam dunk turned into a bloodbath.

History and psychology show that, right or wrong, in the end war is more often a fool's game than our instincts are likely to predict.

The decision to go to war may turn out to be wise or unwise. History provides examples of both. But for every Second World War, there is a Korea, a Vietnam, a Napoleonic Folly. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose. But we must make the most impartial calculations possible.

Leave the Texas Holdem poker yokels to TV. Too much is at stake.