We All Need More RAM

My lovely and talented wife will confirm that I'm constantly lamenting the limits of my memory, and obsessing about whether it is getting worse these days. I've often complained to her that my brain just needs more RAM.

Now my worst fears are confirmed. It turns out that the human brain's volatile memory capacity is on the order of that Commodore 64 that I bought in 1983.

Mind's Limit Found: 4 Things at Once

I'm not sure exactly what happened to that computer and its accessories, but I'm sure I still have all my programming manuals for Commodore BASIC 2.0. I just can't remember where they are.

Blog Neglect and MySpace

Sure, I have reasons. I have explanations. I have excuses. None of them matter a great deal, though, to anyone who still checks in on this blog from time to time.

What matters is whether I'm going to continue trying to be a producer of political thought and commentary. I decided in August of last year that I was tired of simply being a irate consumer of such, and was going to have my say -- even if there was no one there to listen. Of late I have dropped the ball in that game.

In recent weeks I have done something I never really thought I would do. I've spent a good deal of time in MySpace. I set up a profile with a rudimentary blog [nothing like this fine, splendid machine here] and began collecting a few friends [649 at last count]. I've discovered that there's a lot political going on there... lots of activism and advocacy, apparently not all of it confined just to the online world.

MySpace continues to be what drove me away from it in the beginning -- a stylistically gawdawful ugly place, populated mostly by adolescents, self-absorbed young adults and ever struggling band in the world. But I have found that there is a very large community of people who care honestly and deeply about their chosen causes... whether it's animal rights, saving Darfur, freeing Tibet and/or Burma, combating global warming or feeding the hungry.

Though a lot of the pages offer redundant resources, there is a tremendous amount of information to be had there. And some of it, I can honestly say, can be life-changing. Example: for the first time in my nearly 54 years I am giving serious thought to converting to a vegan lifestyle. More on that in days to come.

There is one useful thing of which my self-imposed exile to MySpace has reminded me. There is much more "political" to be thought about and written about than the race for the 2008 Democratic Party's presidential nomination.

It felt very good to finally write something here again [see below]. It feels like it's time to drag myself out of the gutter of apathy and despair... time to lift up my eyes and see that there's a big wide world out there, with lots of things going on in it. Most of them bad, but certainly worth writing about.

Otherwise, I might as well get one of these:

The Forgotten Primaries

Yes, it has been a very, very long time since I've written here. The biggest single reason for that is that I have simply been so sicked, so irritated, so frustrated, so put-off by what has been going on in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. In fact, I won't even go into the particulars lest I begin to taste the bad stuff in the back of my throat. Suffice it to say that I don't think I have felt this turned-off regarding politics in general since the waning days of the Carter administration.

Tonight's [oops, it's morning] Yesterday's results for and last night's speeches by Obama and Clinton have, however, felt to me very much like a breath [not a full breeze, just a breath] of fresh air. Keith Olbermann spoke well in citing Winston Churchill's remark following the victory at El Alameinin North Africa in November 1942:

[T]his is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

It is beginning to appear that the Democrats just might have a nominee by the end of the month of May. Then will come the effort, the campaign that could prove as challenging as the contest for the General Election in November -- the campaign to heal the Democratic Party, to bridge the chasm that has come to separate its two warring factions.

There was much chatter among the punditry as the hours ticked by waiting for the time when Indiana could finally reliably be called for Clinton, and much of the talk was about the upcoming campaign for reunification -- whether Hillary would eventually demand a place on the ticket, whether Barack could refuse if she did, and about the potential role of evangelist that Bill Clinton might play in this revival. Frequent reference was made about how John McCain, the Republican nominee, had been largely immune from media scrutiny during the recent weeks of Democratic partisan firefights. The consensus was that he's been successfully using this time to reunite the Republican party around his candidacy.

I'll admit, I too had not been thinking about John McCain very much. What brings me to the subject of McCain? In checking CNN.com for the latest numbers from Tuesday's primaries [51-49 Clinton in Indiana, Obama by 14 points in North Carolina], I was reminded that there were Republican primaries in both states yesterday as well. I had not heard a peep about them from any TV news outlet. Surely that meant a virtual unanimous vote for McCain in Indiana and North Carolina, right?

Wrong. Landslides, perhaps, but really not what I would expect for the man who has been The Nominee for so long now, and who has been so successfully knitting the Republican Party into a cohesive whole around his nexus.

McCain has had no opposition for over two months. Romney suspended his campaign on February 7, Ron Paul did basically the same thing a day or two later to focus on his Congressional re-election campaign, and Huckabee bowed out on March 4.

In his first primary without opposition -- Mississippi on March 11 -- McCain had a big win, with a little Huckabee/Paul support still showing up. McCain 79%, Huckabee 13% and Paul 4%.

Surely in the next primary, in Pennsylvania well over a month later, McCain would demonstrate that he was gathering support, uniting the party around him. No such luck. McCain 73%, Paul 16% and Huckabee 11%. Less unity than in Mississippi six weeks earlier.

Yesterday he did little better. In Indiana's Republican primary the results were McCain 77%, Huckabee 10%, Paul 8% and Romney 5%. In North Carolina: McCain 73%, Huckabee 12%, Paul 8% with 4% for "No Preference."

Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but it seems that Senator McSame should be farther along with the fence-mending in the Republican Party. His next opportunity to show his handiwork will be in the non-binding primary in Nebraska on May 13.

There is also a Republican primary in West Virginia on that day that will select the remaining third of that state's delegates. The other two-thirds were picked in a February convention where the voting was: Huckabee 52%, Romney 47% and McCain 1%. Surely he'll do a bit better.

It will be interesting to see how this measure of Republican unity continues to show in the remaining scheduled primaries. The Democrats surely do face a formidable undertaking in trying to patch up that bitterly battered party, but possibly they may not face in the fall as much of a solid Republican monolith as some might think.

Earth Day

Being older than the formalized observation of an annual Earth Day, I have seen a good deal of carrying-on by various folks in honor of this "holiday" over the years... as well as doing a variety of celebrating and ignoring of it for my own part. This year I put together this:

In all honesty, though, I have enjoyed a few chuckles on the occasion in the past... such as this

Cheney Celebrates Earth Day By Breathing Oxygen

and this

450,000 Unsold Earth Day Issues Of Time Trucked To Landfill

and this

Happy Earth Day.

Farfalle-gate Goes Too Far

As a self-declared "foodie" (witness the periodic food porn postings on this blog, for example) and devoted fan of the Food Network, I was shocked... shocked by this revelation on HuffPost:

It seems that Cindy McCain, John McCain's perfect, blonde beer-baroness wife is about to find herself painted as the latest example of plagiarism on the campaign trail.

This past Sunday, Lauren Handel, an eagle-eyed attorney from New York, was searching for a specific recipe from Giada DeLaurentis, a chef on the Food Network. Yet whenever she Googled the different ingredients in the recipe, the oddest thing happened: not only did the Food Network's site come up, as expected, but so did John McCain's campaign site.

On a section of McCain's site called "Cindy's Recipes," you can find seven recipes attributed to Cindy McCain, each with the heading "McCain Family Recipe." Ms. Handel quickly realized that some of the "McCain Family Recipes," were in fact, word-for-word copies of recipes on the Food Network site.

See side-by-side comparisons here, here and here.

The plagiarism aspect of this story may not prove to be the most damaging part for the McCains, though. Once Middle-America gets a good look at the recipes Mrs. McCain decided to tag as family favorites, they may well decide that these are dangerously elitist dishes... they may well decide that people who opt for this kind of fancy-schmancy fare are just too out of touch with the tastes of blue-collar voters!

Look for Hillary to respond quickly by dusting off the cookbooks she collected during her years in the Arkansas Governor's mansion, for a refresher crash-course in what common folks eat.

More "Bush Justice" in Afghanistan

The US government contributes to violations of fair trial standards in Afghanistan by failing to provide sufficient evidence in the prosecution of former Bagram and Guantánamo detainees now being tried in Afghan courts, despite its substantial investment in an international effort directing the reform of Afghanistan’s justice sector according to a report released late last week by Human Rights First.

This report, titled Arbitrary Justice: Trials of Guantánamo and Bagram Detainees in Afghanistan, looks into the process by which more than 250 Afghans formerly detained by the US at Guantánamo and Bagram have been transferred to the Afghan government for prosecution.

Based on exclusive trial observations and first-hand interviews with judges, prosecutors, defense lawyers, a former Block D defendant, and family members of detainees in Kabul, the report describes how the detainees are being charged and tried by the Afghan government "based on allegations, but little else, provided by the United States."

"The United States has turned over the prosecution of Afghan Bagram and Guantanamo detainees to the Afghan criminal courts, but has consistently failed to provide sufficient evidence to support the allegations of criminal activity necessary for fair trials," said Sahr MuhammedAlly, the report’s author and a senior associate in Human Rights First’s Law and Security program.

The so-called "evidence" being used to prosecute the repatriated detainees violates international fair trial standards and, in many cases, Afghan law, the report finds. The U.S. government provides the Afghans with "highly general" declassified versions of the Detainee Assessment Branch Reports of Investigation (ROIs), which form the basis of the Afghan charges. Typically, these ROIs state the date of capture, the capturing force and what the detainee was alleged to have done. Absent, however, is real evidence, such as the names of individual witnesses or statements in the court dossier—sworn or unsworn—of any U.S. soldiers or officials involved in the capture or interrogation of the detainee.

In the trials witnessed by Human Rights First, and in all of these trials, according to defense lawyers interviewed by Human Rights First, there are no prosecution witnesses called to testify or even sworn witness statements submitted by the prosecution, and there is little or no physical evidence. The trials are conducted based on the in-court reading of investigative summaries prepared by U.S. and Afghan officials which purportedly support the allegations. "These no-witness, little to no evidence, paper trials deny the defendant the fundamental fair trial right to challenge the evidence and mount a defense," said MuhammedAlly.

Not surprisingly, given the Bush regime's enthusiasm for the use of torture, Human Rights First also found the possibility that statements in these "trials" were the product of abuse of detainees while they were in U.S. custody. International law prohibits the use of evidence procured by torture, or by cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment, in all legal proceedings. Similarly, the Afghan Constitution explicitly prohibits the introduction into evidence of statements obtained "by means of compulsion" and "recognizes a confession as voluntary only if taken before a judge."

Of course the whole world is familiar with the high regard in which the US Decider-in-Chief holds the United States Constitution. One should expect that his respect for the Afghan Constitution would be no better.

The report in its entirety [740 Kb, .PDF format] is available here.

I continue to resist the urge to spit on the ground any time the words "Bush" and "justice" occur in the same sentence.

Clinton Foundation Linked to China's Crackdown

A very interesting story from Sunday's LATimes:

As Chinese authorities have clamped down on unrest in Tibet and jailed dissidents in advance of the 2008 Olympics, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has taken a strong public stance, calling for restraint in Tibet and urging President Bush to boycott the Olympics opening ceremonies in Beijing.

But her recent stern comments on China's internal crackdown collide with former President Bill Clinton's fundraising relationship with a Chinese Internet company accused of collaborating with the mainland government's censorship of the Web. Last month, the firm, Alibaba Inc., carried a government-issued "most wanted" posting on its Yahoo China homepage, urging viewers to provide information on Tibetan activists suspected of stirring recent riots.

Read the full text here.

Still Asking the Right Questions

Remember Ron Paul? Yes, he chose the prudent course several weeks ago and suspended his campaign for the GOP Presidential nomination in order to focus on re-election to the House. He has not, however, no matter how much the Bush regime and others might wish for it, gone away.

Who made better use of their time during the Petraeus-Crocker hearings last week? Who asked more pointed, more cogent, more valid questions than these?

If the above video does not play, go here.

Of course neither star witness would answer. Lies would have been too obvious for questions this direct, and the truth would have precipitated an absolute shitstorm.

Obama and the "Cling" Quote

"Here’s how it is: in a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long. They feel so betrayed by government that when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn’t buy it. And when it’s delivered by — it’s true that when it’s delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama, then that adds another layer of skepticism.

But — so the questions you’re most likely to get about me, ‘Well, what is this guy going to do for me? What is the concrete thing?’ What they wanna hear is so we’ll give you talking points about what we’re proposing — to close tax loopholes, uh you know uh roll back the tax cuts for the top 1%, Obama’s gonna give tax breaks to uh middle-class folks and we’re gonna provide healthcare for every American.

But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there’s not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Um, now these are in some communities, you know. I think what you’ll find is, is that people of every background — there are gonna be a mix of people, you can go in the toughest neighborhoods, you know working-class lunch-pail folks, you’ll find Obama enthusiasts. And you can go into places where you think I’d be very strong and people will just be skeptical. The important thing is that you show up and you’re doing what you’re doing."
-- Sen. Barack Obama, 6 Apr. 2008. [emphasis mine - SL]

I spent much of the weekend avoiding political "news." It seemed that every time my channel-surfing briefly landed me on a cable news channel or a broadcast network news program, I would cringe as I was treated to a random pundit delivering Obama's campaign obituary or to the visage of Hillary Clinton... mouth open, rows of razor-sharp teeth bared, every bit the predator who was sensing a whole lot of blood in the water.

All because of the remarks quoted above, made by Barack Obama several days ago at a fund-raiser in San Francisco.

When I first heard what had been said, I had two immediate reactions. My first thought was that he was essentially correct in what he was saying... followed at once by the realization that he really, really shouldn't have said it... there, then, in that way.

Nelson at The Liberal Journal astutely observed:

Taken in context, his comments weren't of a vitriolic nature. But they were politically stupid. He was basically psychoanalyzing a whole block of people. No one appreciates being psychoanalyzed, and while speaking to a San Francisco crowd it comes off as condescending and elitist.

Even assuming that every word, every nuance of his statement was/is true, these are hard truths. These are truths that, if they are to be spoken (and they represent issues a principled candidate should want to address) they should be spoken TO the folks referenced... not about them to people a continent away from them geographically, and separated from them by an even greater divide in other ways. Via HuffPost:

Obama made a problematic judgment call in trying to explain working class culture to a much wealthier audience. He described blue collar Pennsylvanians with a series of what in the eyes of Californians might be considered pure negatives: guns, clinging to religion, antipathy, xenophobia.

I'm not sure this is what at least this lot of Californians needed to hear about Pennsylvanians. Such phrases can reinforce negative stereotypes among Californians, who are a people in a state already surfeited with a smug sense of superiority and, as an ironic consequence, a parochialism and insularity at odds with the innovation, prosperity and openness for which California is rightly known. (Of course, this is a generalization, and as such does not fit everyone; but as a state characteristic I stand by it.) Californians might be better served by hearing that Pennsylvanians have a strong sense of their place in American history, for here California is wanting. California needs to hear that other Americans have gone through hard times and survived, humor intact. Since Barack Obama sees himself as the candidate best able to unify the country, these are the messages he needs to carry and his frank words about Pennsylvania may not have translated very clearly.

Mickey Kaus at Slate this morning itemizes what he sees as four big problems with Obama's "cling" comment. Two of them are the more substantial.

1) It lumps together things Obama wants us to think he thinks are good (religion) with things he undoubtedly thinks are bad (racism, anti-immigrant sentiment). I suppose it's logically possible to say 'these Pennsylvania voters are so bitter and frustrated that they cling to both good things and bad things,." but the implication is that these are all things he thinks are unfortunate and need explaining (because, his context suggests, they prevent voters from doing the right thing and voting for ... him). Yesterday at the CNN "Compassion Forum" Obama said he wasn't disparaging religion because he meant people "cling" to it in a good way! Would that be the same way they "cling" to "antipathy to people who aren't like them"--the very next phrase Obama uttered? Is racism one of those "traditions that are passed on from generation to generation" that "sustains us"? Obama's unfortunate parallelism makes it hard for him to extricate him from the charge that he was dissing rural Pennsylvanians' excess religiosity.

[....]

4.) Yes, he's condescending. It's not just that in explaining everyone to everyone Obama winds up patronizing everyone. He doesn't patronize everyone equally. Specifically, he regards the views of these Pennsylvanians as epiphenomena--byproducts of economic stagnation--in a way he doesn't regard, say, his own views as epiphenomena. [....] Once the Pennsylvanians get some jobs back, they'll change and become as enlightened as Obama the San Franciscans to whom he was talking. That's the clear logic of his argument. Superiority of this sort--not crediting the authenticity and standing of your subject's views--is a violation of social equality, which is a more important value for Americans than money equality. Liiberals tend to lose elections when they forget that.

The Clintons believe that this is the kind of thing they've been waiting for, the hopes and prayers for which have kept them in the race.

Obama has made decent attempts at explaining his controversial remarks

If the above video does not play, go here.

and most recently has tried to go on offense, accusing The Clintons of playing politics [as if that's not what they do every waking moment - SL]. (via WSJ)

Sunday night at a steelworkers local in Steelton, Sen. Obama said of Sen. Clinton: "I expected this out of John McCain, but...I'm a little disappointed when I start hearing the exact same talking points coming out of my Democratic colleague, Hillary Clinton. She knows better. Shame on her."

He also said he had chosen his words about Pennsylvanians badly. "They were subject to misinterpretation ... and I regret that deeply," he said.

I cannot help wondering whether rational explanations, sincere apologies and modest attempts to turn the issue back on The Clintons will be enough.

Nelson's piece on this situation, though done before the weekend, is still spot-on. Personally, I wish I could just take a nap until this plays out. I'm finding it excruciating to watch. I've never felt sufficiently comfortable with Senator Obama to wholeheartedly, unequivocally support him, but I would truly hate to see a campaign that has inspired to many go down in flames for speaking the truth to the wrong people in the wrong way.

Update 1.
I just had the misfortune of reading NeoCon ferret Bill Kristol's piling-on Op-Ed piece in today's NYT.

This sent me to Marx’s famous statement about religion in the introduction to his "Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right":

"Religious suffering is at the same time an expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of a soulless condition. It is the opium of the people."

Or, more succinctly, and in the original German in which Marx somehow always sounds better: "Die Religion ... ist das Opium des Volkes." [....]

[I]t’s one thing for a German thinker to assert that "religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature." It’s another thing for an American presidential candidate to claim that we "cling to ... religion" out of economic frustration.

And it’s a particularly odd claim for Barack Obama to make. After all, in his speech at the 2004 Democratic convention, he emphasized with pride that blue-state Americans, too, "worship an awesome God."

Steer clear of this bilge unless your stomach is much stronger than mine.

Update 2.
Gallup releases tracking poll data today which indicate that Obama's numbers continue to hold steady.

Barack Obama, who has come under attack by his presidential rivals for describing small-town voters as "bitter," seems to be weathering the storm to this point as far as voters are concerned. He maintains a 10 percentage point lead over Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, 50% to 40%, according to the latest Gallup Poll Daily tracking.

Granted, these are national numbers rather than ones from Pennsylvania (whose primary is 8 days away). Still as heavily flogged as this story has been since Friday, one would expect to see some negative impact by now if there's going to be much.

Update 3.
As if that fetid, feculent dropping by Bill Kristol was not enough, GOP bitch-boy Lonesome Joe Lieberman defecated this steaming heap of ordure: [via ThinkProgress]

On the Brian and the Judge radio show today, Fox News’ senior judicial analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano asked Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) if Obama is "a Marxist as Bill Kristol says might be the case?"

"I must say that’s a good question," replied Lieberman, before stepping back to say that he would "hesitate to say he’s a Marxist" [emphasis mine - SL]

Read the transcript of the exchange and listen to audio at ThinkProgress.

So... does Lieberman think that if he does enough of this crap that McCain will give him a reach-around next time??