The virtual primary - Democrats Abroad

The results of the Democrats Abroad primary are in tonight and Obama has beaten Clinton to extend his winning streak to 11 primaries. I thought that I understood when I voted on line last week how the DA process worked but I just read their official press release and now I'm puzzled about the arithmetic. There are a total of 22 delegates that DA will send to the national convention in Denver this August. Obama picked up 2.5 and Clinton received 2. Another 2.5 delegates will be determined at the DA's own global convention in April. Plus they have 4 super delegates. That adds up to 11 and not 22. Here's the actual text from the press release that's supposed to make this clear, "Under the Democrats Abroad Delegate Selection Plan, the results of the worldwide primary are to be applied to the Regional Caucuses once the allocation of delegates to each Caucus is made. Rounding to determine the allocation among the Regions results in 2 delegates to be elected by each of the Americas and Asia-Pacific Regional Caucuses,
and 5 delegates to be elected by the Europe, Middle East and Africa Regional Caucus,
resulting in one delegate each for Obama and Clinton in the Americas and in Asia-
Pacific, and three delegates for Obama and 2 for Clinton in EMEA". To make this even curiouser the 22 delegates that are going to the national convention in Denver will actually have half a vote. I can't help but think of the line attributed to Will Rogers: "I don't belong to any organized political party, I'm a Democrat".

Birth of a Nation

Today, Wednesday February 6^th is Waitangi Day in New Zealand. This is the national holiday of New Zealand that Kiwis use to celebrate their nationhood. I’m thankful for the day off as that permits me the time to write this blog and enjoy another glorious sunny day in a summer that has been abundant in such days and which may turn out to be one for the record books because of an extended drought. This political junkie is also happy to be at home writing this with the TV on and listening to the news reports of the Super Tuesday primary election results. As of 3:45pm New Zealand time it sounds like McCain is as predicted picking up more delegates then his closest rival Mitt Romney and that Clinton is leading Obama. I’m personally taking advantage of an e-voting option via an SSL web session that is being offered to registered Democratic expats by a Democratic Party organization called Democrats Abroad. It’s sort of a state with out borders and 22 delegates are at stake. The voting is being done on the honour system with voters being asked to pledge that they will not also vote as absentee voters in their home states.

But I digress and back to Waitangi Day. This holiday is akin to the Fourth of July or Bastille Day but unlike similar holidays in many nations it is in keeping with the relative peaceful history of New Zealand. That means that it lacks the tumult of insolent colonials priming their muskets in anger with the redcoats or of the sans-culottes offing the heads of reactionary aristocrats. It commemorates the 1840 signing of a treaty by emissaries of the British crown and Maori chiefs. This treaty was not the settlement of a war or conflict between these two parties but rather an agreement where the British recognized the Maori rights to the ownership of their land as the Maori in turn accepted English suzerainty. That year was also the beginning of the serious migration of English and Scottish settlers to New Zealand. Within a few decades the Pakeha (Europeans) would surpass the Maori in number and become the predominant ethnic group. The treaty was not too specific on how disputes over land between the two groups would be adjudicated and it’s only recently that legal remedies became available for Maori litigants. The New Zealand government acknowledged that it was a nation with both a European and a South Pacific nature in 1987 when it declared Maori along with English to be official languages. So that’s today’s history lesson. My attention is now focused on the returns that are just coming in from California.

Hail the conquering hero - Sir Edmund Hillary

“Tall poppy syndrome” is an expression that is unique to Australia and New Zealand. In essence it refers to a successful person who is criticized because they are seen by others as being presumptuous, seeking undeserved attention or status. Both Aussies and Kiwis are culturally inclined to disdain the successful hero who basks too publicly in being in the spotlight. Sir Edmund Hillary, who along with his Sherpa guide Tonzing Norgay was the first human to reach the summit of Mt. Everest in 1953, died this past Friday at the age of 88 and could never have been called a tall poppy despite his amazing achievement. It’s difficult today, with ascents of Everest available to wealthy thrill seekers, as Jon Krakauer described in his book, Into the Wild, to really feel as the world did back then that Sir Ed’s accomplishment was a feat that was on par with Lindbergh’s flying the Atlantic solo. And the two were so similar in their temperament and in the way they accepted their adulation and fame afterwards. They both felt uncomfortable in the public spotlight. One of the many anecdotes about Hillary that were recounted this weekend in the New Zealand Dominion Post is one from an Air New Zealand employee who upon seeing Sir Ed waiting in an airport line offered him the use of a VIP lounge only to be told that he didn’t mind standing like everyone else. Lindbergh and Hillary were more at home in continuing their pursuits of adventure. Just as Lindbergh remained a life long flyer Hillary continued with explorations, such as in 1958 when he became the first man to fully traverse the continent of Antarctica while crossing over the South Pole, in 1960 when he returned to Nepal to search for the mythical yeti and in 1985 when along with Neil Armstrong he landed an airplane at both the South and North Poles.

Edmund Hillary was so acclaimed and idolized in his home country that he was the only living person, besides the Queen of England, to have his portrait on the currency (Five dollar bill). His “aw shucks I’m just a regular guy” attitude was genuine and in being the antithesis of the tall poppy, he was quintessentially Kiwi.

Barack Obama - A man for this season

The results of Thursday’s Iowa caucuses for the U.S. 2008 Presidential election was big news here in the New Zealand press and was well covered by the television media that people here watch, including CNN International, SKY News and the BBC. Huckabees’ victory over Romney despite being outspent 20 to 1 was of particular interest because of the controversy over a proposed campaign law here that would put strict limits on campaign spending and electioneering. But the news about America that has been getting consistent coverage here for the last few months is about the retrenchment of the American consumer in the face of decreased home equity, the aftershocks of a tighter credit market in the wake of billions of dollars of non-performing mortgage debt held by the big financial service firms and banks and the possibility of a serious recession. When I was living in the U.S. I remember hearing from time to time about how critical consumer spending was to the U.S. economy. Now that I’m living abroad I’m getting a better sense of the importance of that consumer to the world economy at large. A few weeks ago I watched a BBC news segment with some talking heads discussing the U.S. economy and trying to read the latest foreboding statistics about holiday spending to see if Americans would continue to hold up as the pillars of the global economy that they are. This was a full half hours worth of worry. It struck me at that point that there are many people outside of the U.S. who may be more troubled then we are that Americans can no longer continue to spend like sailors after having exhausted all of their available credit and that it will help to send the world into a serious economic slump. The U.S. is New Zealand’s number 2 trading customer after Australia so that the state of the U.S. market is a very valid concern here. I worry about the impact of bad economic news for my friends and family back in the States but also for myself and others here in New Zealand because Oceania will not be sheltered from the economic storm in the U.S. It’s really a case of the U.S. catching a cold and New Zealand coming down with a fever.

I’m not hearing enough from the Republican or Democratic candidates about the absurdity of Americans indefinitely spending more than they earn on imported products to sustain the U.S. and other world economies. Like any pyramid or shell game there is a day of reckoning that will have to be faced and I don’t think that that realization has escaped the minds of any American with even a modicum of intelligence. Despite a U.S. dollar that has dropped continuously for the last two years there is still a huge imbalance in U.S. trade with the Pacific Rim nations. Couple that with a national debt that since the start of the Bush administration in 2001 has reached nine trillion dollars (and that figure hasn’t fully factored in the cost of our Iraq folly), reduced if not negative economic growth this year and you would think that that would persuade any rationally minded candidate not to work on getting elected in 2008 and assume the responsibility of making those bad numbers disappear. None of the Democratic challengers if elected will stay the course with current fiscal policy but I don’t think that they or their opponents have the wherewithal to easily transform the country from a nation of spendthrifts to one of careful savers and not also cause serious economic disruption in the process. It’s as if all those goods from China are like some drug and we need to be careful about a withdrawal that is too abrupt. All of the Republican candidates such as McCain, Thompson and Romney will do pretty much the same as we’ve had for the past seven years. Huckabee is somewhat of an exception. His plan to replace our income tax with a national sales tax of 23% will certainly depress spending (and make predictions of a possible economic downturn into a certain reality) but it is absurdly regressive and will not do anything to reduce the current federal debt. Mike Huckabee and John Edwards have both been tagged as populists but the history of populism in the U.S. as a political movement and in electing populist candidates to the White House should not provide them with much in the way of optimism for their success.

I predicted a few weeks ago that Senator Kay Hutchison of Texas will get the number 2 slot on the Republican ticket and I’m still sticking to that prediction. As a woman she will help the Republicans defend against any Obama-Clinton, Clinton-Obama combination that is sure to result and the charges that the GOP slate is just another bunch of wealthy white men. Reading the tea leaves on who will get the Presidential nomination is more difficult even after Iowa and especially for the Republicans. I’m still not inclined to count Romney and his well funded campaign down for the count. The Iowa caucus has not proved to be a must win in recent elections for successful candidates. I think that many Republicans will start to rally for Romney because he’s really all they’ve got. Thompson is running a campaign as if sleepwalking, Giulani will never get the nomination because he really is a pro-choice liberal under all of the tough post 9/11 swagger and I don’t see any momentum for Huckabee for the reasons mentioned earlier. That leaves John McCain. I’ve always been amazed at the animosity of the Republican Right with McCain, a genuine war hero and a Senator who has solid conservative credentials with a ACU rating of 82%. That’s one of a number of reasons that I have for my belief that the Republican party has been taken over by extremists and why I continue to be a lifelong Democrat.

Although I am pessimistic about the ability of the Democrats to make the changes in governing that Americans are clamouring for, according to public opinion polls (the ones that show that the majority of Americans believe that their country is on the wrong track), I will vote for whoever gets the nomination. Ideally that will not be Hillary Clinton. I’ve only supported Clinton in the past because of the way she has put the Right in an absolute tizzy since she emerged on the public scene. I shudder to think of the number of trees that have been felled to produce the paper for all of the Hillary hating and ranting books that have been published since 1992. My thoughts have always been that anyone who is the recipient of such absurd ire from the Rush-Sean-Bill and Ann crowd must be doing something right. Sort of the enemy of my enemies must be my friend logic. But since she became Senator in 2000 I join many in dismay over her blatant political expediency and her attempts to assuage the right by voting for an unfair to debtors and big bank friendly bankruptcy bill in 2003 and most importantly of all, the Iraqi war authorization of 2002. The latter measure is one of the best reasons I can think of for supporting Barrack Obama, the only major candidate who opposed our going to war from the outset. The speech that he gave to an anti-war rally in Chicago on October 26, 2002 that this would be a “dumb war” is magnificent in its elegant simplicity in naming the reasons why this would be a mistake and chilling to read for his dead on accuracy in the predication that we would find ourselves involved in a quagmire. His candidacy would throw off the Republican attack machine whose offence has probably been predicated on the belief that a Clinton candidacy would be a sure thing. I’m less troubled by the criticism that his proposed policies are uncertain and vague. Look at FDR’s 1932 campaign and there’s little to find in his campaign that gives any hint of the New Deal. Also the criticism that he is short on experience is laughable. George Bush had six years as Governor of Texas before he became president. Obama will soon have four years as U.S. Senator. Best to keep this in mind: Abraham Lincoln’s only national experience before the White House was a largely unsuccessful single term as Illinois Congressman and he was never governor. Andrew Sullivan has written an excellent article in the December 2007 issue of Atlantic monthly of why he thinks Obama will be ultimately successful at becoming our first African-American president. As a Generation-Xer he won’t be dragged into the cultural wars that we have fought for almost 20 years over Vietnam. His frank admission that he smoked pot in college will not be the point of derision it was for the non-inhaling Bill Clinton.

There were really two statistics about the Iowa caucus that are astounding. One of those was that more Democrats than Republicans turned out in a red state to vote and the other is the impressive number of young voters who chose Obama over Clinton. If Clinton loses New Hampshire on Tuesday it will certainly be the coup de grace for her candidacy. I hope so.

The Great Outdoors in the upper North Island

This past Saturday Bryan and I went up to the Tongariro National Park, about five hours driving time from Wellington and hiked the 17 kilometre Tongariro crossing track. This was some of the most rugged hiking that I have ever done anywhere and we trekked through a lunar-like landscape of volcanic craters that took us over 8 hours of steady climbing to complete. To reach our first point of interest, the South Crater we had to first ascend the aptly named Devils Staircase. Our highest point of elevation was when we reached the Red Crater at 1,900 metres. We had the option of climbing nearby Mt. Ngauruhoe, New Zealand’s newest and most active volcano, but took a pass when we realized that we wouldn’t have had enough time. I also didn’t relish climbing the very steep 600 metres of very loose volcanic rock to reach the summit. The last 6 or seven kilometres were mostly downhill switchbacks that I actually found more tiring to negotiate with my aching legs than I had anticipated. Still this part of the crossing afforded some fine views of Lake Taupo, New Zealand largest inland lake. At the trails end we were utterly exhausted but we agreed that experiencing this unique landscape up close was well worth all the aches and soreness. In 1990 the park was deemed a World Heritage Site.

Whole lotta shaking going on

A 6.8 magnitude earthquake struck Gisborne this evening about 8:55pm New Zealand time. We felt the earthquake here in Wellington which is about 530 kilometres south of Gisborne. There are reports of some damage to buildings in Gisborne and a loss of power there but no reports of any injuries or death. We felt a momentary shaking in the building that houses our flat in Oriental Bay but there was no damage. New Zealand is an area where two tectonic plates collide and there is a lot of seismic activity that is reported annually. This is the first time since we arrived in June of this year that we have felt any tremors.

Spam, spam and more spam

I’m trying to remember the title of a book that I believe was published about twenty years ago. It’s a collection of dumb thoughts, observations and predictions. One of my favourites was, “Groups with guitars are no longer popular”, which was the response that Brian Epstein heard at Decca Records in 1962 when he was rebuffed in his efforts to sign the Beatles to their first record contract. There’s also, “Can’t sing, isn’t very good looking, can dance a little”, and those were the first impressions from a Hollywood studio executive about a Fred Astaire audition at the start of his film career. My all time favourite has to be these words from British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in a 1938 letter to his sister, “I looked into the eyes of Hitler and knew that this was a man I could trust”. Not included because it was only said in 2004 is, “Two years from now Spam will be solved”. That was Bill Gates speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Gates saw the solution in a variety of tools that establish the identity of the email sender. None of the suggested tools included the idea of cryptographically signing email with the sending domain’s digital signature or authenticating the sender based on what path the mail took over the internet. Yet these are the two methods that are now being used by most anti-spam software.. In October I wrote about the Domain Keys technology that Yahoo and PayPal initially developed using digital signed mail and how that has became an IETF standard this year. Path based authentication is the other tack that Spam fighters are taking in preventing it from breaching through the firewalls, blacklists and the various types of filters that have been erected as battlements. Email users don’t see spam as a big problem anymore because these methods by and large have been working in reducing the amount of spam that reaches their inboxes. But spam is still being generated in ever increasing numbers, mostly from large botnets that are composed of thousands of malware infected computer nodes. We are talking about messages that worldwide number in the billions per year so that if filtering and blocking reduce the percentage of spam mail getting through by 90%, that remaining ten percent is still a huge number in absolute terms.

Sender Policy Framework or SPF is the implementation of path authentication that has been incorporated into software such as SpamAssassin. It works by having the owner of a domain designate which computers in the domain are allowed to send email to the internet. These machine names and addresses are specified in special records on that domain’s domain name server or DNS. In essence the email receiving domain verifies the legitimacy of a given message by querying the sender’s DNS to see if the message was sent from an authorized host. Email addresses can be easily spoofed but not the IP address of a domain designated email sender. SPF wouldn’t prevent a spammer who has legitimate mailboxes on a domain from sending spam from one of those mailboxes but this is easily traced and it’s not how spammers currently work. The deficiency with SPF is that email that is forwarded does not retain the original return path and may be dropped. Also by using a DNS that has been compromised an attacker could designate his own sender authenticated hosts. However DNS attacks are much harder as these servers are usually carefully hardened with security patches applied on a regular basis. Together both path based authentication and signed mail should be very effective but unlike Bill I won’t make any predictions.