OneMind

My friend Tobi Lytle sent this along. I gain a greater appreciation for Robin Williams every time I see him do another standup. This one is over the top.

A moderate Republican is like a Volvo with a gun rack. Hysterical!

Apple Computer’s shares took a small hit this afternoon when Gizmodo reported a rumor about CEO Steve Jobs’ allegedly declining health. More than any other company I can think of, Apple is identified with its leader, so the link between concerns over his health and the health of the company are understandable.

They are not, however, either inevitable or accurate. I’m certain that Apple is more than Jobs. I’m certain that their product mix is brilliant and solid. I’m confident that if I were still in the market, I’d be buying Apple right now. But Apple Computer, Inc., needs to get out from behind the “Steve Jobs’ health is a private issue” bullshit line they spout when the issue comes up. That means:

1. Steve Jobs’ health is decidedly not a private matter. You can’t be the very image of the company as Jobs has always chosen and pressed to be and at the same time be entitled to privacy on any matter that affects your tenure in the leadership role. No way, Jose.
2. The company needs to articulate its succession plan and start giving the heir apparent some face time.
3. Investors need to chill. Jobs is a survivor of pancreatic cancer. That’s good news but it’s not a 100% healthy outcome. Pancreatic cancer is one of the most invidious forms of the disease and beating it takes a lot out of the patient. Even if he is in very good health considering that, the phrase “considering that” carries a certain amount of baggage. Deal with it.

It’s hard to imagine a personal computer industry without a strong Apple in it. I don’t think that’s because I have deep feelings for the company; I think it’s part of the reality of the scene.

Lorelei Kelly of HuffingtonPost today has one of the most cogent analyses of the Mideast situation — and, by extrapolation, to most other 21st Century conflicts — that I’ve read. It acknowledges the basic truth underlying the reason these problems are so incredibly difficult to resolve. We are approaching them with outmoded thinking. As Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich has repeatedly said, war is never the answer. Never. We must either find new ways to approach and resolve disagreement and conflict or be the final witnesses to the destruction of the human race. This is absolutely the biggest problem facing mankind today. Well, OK, maybe it’s the second biggest but only because global warming, if unchecked, will end humanity’s existence perhaps more quickly.

Yes, Hamas is acting despicably and violently in hurling rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip. Yes, Israel, under the outmoded rules of self-defense in an era when “self” is all but meaningless and borders are simply invisible lines on a globe, is “justified” in retaliating. Yesterday the news here reported there were 29 Israelis killed by rocket fire from Gaza this year. By contrast, Israeli airstrikes have killed nearly 400 Palestinians. I’m sorry, but that is out of proportion.

This has been a pattern over the years. Israel reacts to what at least seem to us outsiders to be relatively lightweight provocation — to the extent that any loss of life can be so evaluated — by pouring enormous firepower into the source of the problem. I remember when I was a combat correspondent for the military in Vietnam and at a press briefing one day, the press officer read, absolutely deadpan, a report of an incident. This was very early in the war, when such incidents actually made the news. “Elements of the 47th RVN Ranger Brigade accompanied by U.S. military advisers from Cu Chi were fired on by a sniper at 0650 this morning. They returned fire with an artillery strike from a nearby 105mm howitzer battery.” The major looked up from his notes. “Direct fire from a howitzer would be pretty effective against a sniper, wouldn’t it?” (Note that I made up the details here. The gist of the statement is correct.)

For whatever reason, Israel has never felt it was successful with measured response. And now we find ourselves in a time in history when violent and massive retaliation is a non-starter. Israel must learn new ways of dealing with its non-organizational enemies, just as the United States must do. They would do well to start by reading Ms. Kelly’s article today at HuffingtonPost.

My buddy Asher sent me this link to a really funny spoof ad about the auto bailout. At least I think it’s a spoof. It is, right?

There are not very many people in the world who are as smart and observant as New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman. He also happens to be among the most articulate people writing about society today. I don’t always agree with everything he says, but I seldom if ever find a thought he offers to be poorly thought out or obviously wrong.

In a Dec. 23 column, Friedman takes a fresh look at the U.S. in its current painful throes and declares flatly, almost glibly, “Look in the mirror: G.M. is us.” He argues that we as a nation need more than a bailout, we need a reboot, a build-out, a national make-over. He argues that the stimulus package President-Elect Obama presides over needs to be spent wisely, by which he means “training teachers, educating scientists and engineers, paying for research and building the most productivity-enhancing infrastructure.”

Because of his innately conservative bent, he says, “I’d like to see fewer government dollars shoveled out and more creative tax incentives….” but I don’t agree with him there. The problems we face must achieve solutions that transcend individual corporate and corporate leader profit goals. There are things that need to be done in a free capitalist society that only the government can or will undertake precisely because they are not attractive profit-making activities. The failure to recognize this and to rely instead on a nearly completely unregulated financial services industry has brought us to where we are now. It is well past time we admit that free market capitalism, no less than socialism, is dead. If in fact it was ever really alive.

Government intervention and management of large-scale undertakings may be less efficient than could be demonstrated by a profit-making corporation but at least we can vote the government out of office rather than being forced to reward by bailouts the stupidity, inefficiency, greed and immorality that oozes out of every pore of the Fat Cats of at least America’s capitalist economy run amok.

So I agree at least in large part with Friedman’s priorities. But I think direct application of taxpayer funds with appropriate constraints and accountability mechanisms built in stands a far better chance in the long term of rebooting America than trusting that vital task to the robber barons who have already demonstrated what they will do when faced with a choice between what is good for anyone else and themselves.

Well, I see you survived the hubub and the mishmash of yet another Christmas / Kwanzaa / Chanuka / Winter solstice / holiday period. Or at least most of it (depending on how many days of it you celebrate, of course). So did I.

It was laid-back if not quiet. Having a one-year-old in charge will do that to a celebration. But it truly was a celebration. Much joy and love abounded. I am so grateful to have been alive to experience this holiday; I hope I never lose that sense of joy at waking up each day. Having a close handshake relationship with death has made me more appreciative, if not easier to get along with.

I am hopeful. I am joyful. And I am blessed. I hope you feel at least some of that as well.

A few days ago, I went on a bit of a tirade against President-Elect Obama for his selection of gay-bashing conservative Pastor Rick Warren. I called the decision a huge mistake.

Yesterday, Huffington Post published a piece by Oscar and Grammy Award-Winning singer/songwriter Melissa Etheridge — herself a lesbian mom — that made me sit up, take notice, and re-think my position.

Ms. Etheridge had the same initial reaction to the news of Warren’s Inauguration assignment as I did. Soon after I posted my blog entry, my pastor and good friend Vicky Elder of Unity of Monterey Bay and I were talking about this with a group of fellow truth students. Vicky pointed out that this was a tough position to take. “We invite other spiritual path followers and religious believers into dialog with us to come to a better understanding for the sake of peace, but then we can’t make room at the table for the likes of Rick Warren?” That got me to thinking.

Then yesterday’s article by Ms. Etheridge — a gay rights activist for whom I have utmost respect — brought me up short. Perhaps I’d been too hasty in this particular judgment. Perhaps I need to re-think my position. Even though it appears Warren hasn’t changed his fundamental position on gays, he does seem to be more moderate when he’s taken out of SoundBiteVille and given room to expand his thought. And when all is said and done, is any one cause sufficient to justify a broad condemnation of Obama — or, for that matter, of anyone else — or is that no different from those who voted against Obama solely or principally because of his stance on, e.g., women’s reproductive rights?

So I admit to overreacting to the news about Warren. I will listen with a more open mind in the future. I will try to be less swift to judgment. Six decades of contrary training notwithstanding, I will strive to be a more thoughtful person and critic than I have been.

So far, at least, it seems likely that President-Elect Obama will resist pressure from the Left and others to investigate and, if appropriate, bring criminal charges against outgoing President Bush and key members of his team for war crimes and other illegal acts. During the general election campaign, Vice President Elect Joe Biden said, “If there has been a basis upon which you can pursue someone for a criminal violation, they will be pursued.” It appears from post-election media reports that the Obama Administration will opt out of that process “for the good of the country.”

Bush and his team may have violated domestic and international law in a number of ways. What is certain — at least in my opinion — is that this administration has done more to harm this nation than any other in history, perhaps more than all of its predecessors combined. The illegal, ill-advised war on Iraq, the complete breakdown of government support for New Orleans after Katrina, the destruction of Constitutional rights, the usurpation of power by the Executive, the massive financial crisis now facing the entire world, can at least in large part be laid at the feet of this incompetent and criminally minded crew.

At the very least, a blue-ribbon legal panel needs to be assembled to look into charges against these people. Without that, how can the American people get closure? How can they begin to recover the joie de vivre, the sense of pride in being American, the belief in the middle class and the American dream that are at the core of our national values?

If a Third World nation’s leaders had engaged in the kind of behavior the Bush Regime has conducted from its inception, we’d have invaded with Marines, overthrown its power and occupied its streets. The least we can do to our own morally corrupt leaders is to bring them into accountability.

While I appreciate Obama’s desire not to linger in the past and to move on, and while I understand his concern that any attempt to investigate the behavior of the outgoing administration will rankle partisans and jeopardize his attempts to heal and unite the nation, I honestly believe that to let the Bushies and the NeoCons just get away with this carnage is not only irresponsible, it will merely allow the malaise to fester and worsen.

I urge President-Elect Obama to convene a panel to investigate these charges. I am confident that such a panel would find ample cause to bring criminal charges against a crew that richly deserves not to profit from its misdeeds.

Ars Technica points out that Apple has released a second major upgrade to its mobile Web platform, me.com, in as many weeks. Changes were distributed across all the services Apple offers in the online application.

For my money, Apple is still in the doghouse with this one. Its old .Mac platform just worked. And it worked well. And it included features that are completely missing from the “new and improved” me.com (such as eGreetings). But my big gripe is that there is a lot of stuff — some of it pretty simple and basic — that just doesn’t work in me.com that always worked in .mac. Case in point: shift-selecting multiple emails often selects all of the visible emails instead of the subset you intend. Another case in point: its functionality is often completely broken in Firefox. (Right now, e.g., I cannot compose a new email in me.com on Firefox though it works just fine on Safari).

I’ve mentioned before my problems with calendar syncing and Apple’s most-unhelpful response: “Don’t automate sync across multiple calendars. Only sync manually.”

In his article today, ArsTechnica’s Dave Chartier said, “Naturally, we still have a laundry list of major requests and tweaks that we would like to see applied across MobileMe, but these baby steps of reliability, small new features, and polish are probably best for now to help the service stay on its feet.” Very generous, Dave. It feels to me like MobileMe isn’t on its feet. It is at best on its knees begging for mercy.

During the primary and general election campaign period, President-Elect Barack Obama was very clear about his policy on war. He sees it as a viable option in some situations. And he thinks Afghanistan is one of those situations. He has promised to move significantly more troops into the region as they are pulled out of the Iraq mess. It appears that he intends to do just that. So now the peace movement faces an intriguing question.

Can we, as a movement dedicated to the promotion of peace and the dismissal of war as a valid option in any (or virtually any, depending on one’s degree of radicalism) case, now sit on the sidelines with our hands in our laps while a President Obama we helped elect and whom we support, launches an all-out war in Afghanistan (and inevitably Pakistan) in an effort to capture or kill our avowed enemy, Osama Bin Laden?

If, like my own personal preference for the Democratic nomination, Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich, you are truly opposed to war as a solution, period, you cannot take that position. You will have to challenge the new Administration as it attempts to ratchet up the war in Afghanistan. You will have to take the bold and admittedly extreme position that we as a nation must lead the way to peace and reconciliation and away from war and conflict as means of “resolving” our differences.

Has the time come for us to put away the weapons of war, to beat our swords into plowshares, to lead the world in the ultimate abolition of violence both within national borders and between countries? We do not yet appear as a nation to have come to that point. But the question is whether we have yet reached the point where we can at least begin the process.

Before our country’s ill-fated and illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, millions of people all over the world demonstrated in protest. Although the protests fell on the deaf ears of people who had taken office with the pre-conceived notion of waging war on a nation which, while not among the most civilized or peaceful of the world, had done us no overt harm, they were nonetheless remarkable. This was the first time in world history that a global movement opposed the plan of a superpower to launch a war before the invasion took place. A debate was triggered. And even though consensus was opposed to the war, the United States went ahead anyway.

I hope we will someday — perhaps not in my lifetime — reach the point where we consider war only as a last resort. Where we seek non-violent solutions first. That is my hope. The question before me now is what ought my actions to be during the upcoming Obama Administration.