October 28, 2008 • 5:53 pm
It was on one of the local public radio stations here. It was an open mic to voters to tell listeners who they were voting for and why.
I thought this gentleman’s answer has a lot to do with what America is all about; although his understanding of Mr. Obama’s economic policy is quite bad.
He said, “I don’t like Obama, because he is a socialist. Socialism is a shade of gray; boring and uninteresting.”. He continued, “I would like to see rich people because I hope to join them one day.” He then mentioned his age and said, “I probably may not join them, but still is fun to see them.”
Again, He is clearly wrong about Senator Obama. But that is not the point. The point is, he is for success; he is not interested pulling others down to his level; rather getting to be at their level.
That, I think, captures part of the essence of America.
Filed under: News and Politics
October 26, 2008 • 3:05 pm
New York Times: “Potatoes are a good source of protein, starch, vitamins and nutrients like zinc and iron. As a crop, they require less energy and water to grow than wheat, taking just three months from planting to harvest. Since they are heavy and do not transport well, they are not generally traded on world financial markets, making their price less vulnerable to speculation. They are not generally used to produce biofuels, a new use for food crops that has helped drive up grain prices. When grain prices skyrocketed, potato prices remained stable.”
Filed under: News and Politics
Mr. Bashir, Sudanese premiere, is in some trouble. He has been indicted/issued an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court.
It is about time.
What did Al Bashir do?
A group of rebels, based in the Darfur region of Sudan began an armed insurgency against his government. According to the warrant, apparently he considers himself an ‘Arab’ as suppose to an African, and started “polarizing” the population into two camps, an ‘Arab’ and ‘Zurgas’ or ‘African’. He then proceeded to attack the general population of Darfur, basically the ethnic groups the rebels comprised of. In short, a strategy of killing the ‘host’ that carry the “disease”.
And that is, of course, genocide, in line with what Germany under Hitler did. Thus Mr. Bashir’s trouble with the rest of the world.
Filed under: News and Politics
October 20, 2008 • 5:12 pm
I was up early this morning and happen to watch MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’ show. Dr. Brezinski, former National Security Advisor was on. In the interview, one thing that kind of stuck in my head was the part he said about American being in a very deep trouble. He said it more than once.
So I went out and checked what his track record has been. I was impressed to find out that on this 1989 interview he gave to ‘Time’ essentially predicted the fall of Soviet Union two years prior to the actual event.
This morning, he has said that he is for Mr. Obama, which he said he endorsed a while back [I didn't know that]. He further commented that General Powell’s endorsement is a big thing that could be quite helpful to Mr. Obama.
Dr. B has a new book out, America and The World.
Filed under: News and Politics
October 19, 2008 • 10:27 pm
General Colin Powell came out this morning endorsing Obama.
He basically didn’t like Mr. McCain’s tactics of ’smear politics’, and didn’t much appreciate his selection of Governor Palin for VP. He thought that her performance in the last few weeks showed that she wasn’t ready to take up the presidency something were to happen to Mr, McCain.
He also didn’t like Mr. McCain’s inconsistency during the outset of the financial crisis. General Powell said, Mr. McCain seems to come up with various approaches overtime as the situtation progresses, which showed that Mr. McCain didn’t have full grasp of the problem. On the other hand, Mr. Obama showed the coolness, steadiness, and measured and cautious reaction to the problem. He also admired Mr. Obama’s judgement of selecting a running mate, who Mr. Powell said, is ready to be president on day one.
Mr. Powell wasn’t also fond of having another conservative administration to select one or more superem court justices severily imbalancing the court.
Filed under: News and Politics
Commenting on the ongoing financial crisis Ms. Anna Schwartz , who is 93 and co-author of ‘Monitary History’ says “This is not due to a lack of money available to lend, but to a lack of faith in the ability of borrowers to repay their debts. ”
In this Wall Street Journal interview, she argues that the administration and the Fed has been inconsistent, and unaccomodative of the root cause of the problem; rather resorted to adhoc, reactionary responses to the current ‘credit disturbances’, as she refers to it.
She opposes direct capital injection to banks as being a step that is not dealing with the root cause of the problem, which is bad assets held by banks that are hard to value thus hard to sell, as a result clogging credit activities.
She points out that the first ‘asset buyout’ approach was the right one, but the recent aboutface by the government to directly invest in large banks and other institutions as being a bad prescription to the problem.
I get what she is saying, but I wonder if the US government had a choice on the matter given steps taken by Europeans, especially Britain to guarantee bank deposits. If we didn’t do anything here, the cash would have migrated overseas.
Filed under: News and Politics
October 8, 2008 • 2:32 pm
Obama, in his cool and thoughtful manners, came out swinging – answering the first question from an audience member about the what his approach would be to bailout older folks who are affected by home values loses, and current economic downturn in general. He jabbed by linking McCain to Bush in their ‘deregulation’, market is king approach being the cause of all this, and then listing out what the recent bailout legislation would mean to the regular folk.
Throughout, McCain tried to link Obama to the failed companies, and remind voters of his inexperience, and about taxes. None of them resonated, I don’t think.
He had what I thought to be a new approach but come to find out this morning that it is one of the pieces in the recently passed bailout package, i.e. resetting people’s mortgages to current market value to help them stay in their homes. So there is not point there either.
He hasn’t been as blatant in last night’s debate but in the last couple of days he and his running mate, Ms. Palin seemed to suggest that Mr. Obama is a terrorist sympathizer pointing out the time that he served with some dude who was a 1960’s and 70’s violent protester of the Vietnam war. Reportedly, there were Republicans in that charity board, and there are no evidence at all that Obama was sympathetic to this gentleman’s views. It is clearly a desperate move.
My impression of Mr. McCain wasn’t this at all. I thought that he was an honorable person, who wouldn’t stoop down to these kitchen sync, all goes political tactics to win a political contest. The presidency is too enticing, I suppose.
That really is a shame.
Filed under: News and Politics
October 6, 2008 • 10:17 pm
NewYork Time: “Another document showed that executives were warned in a January 2008 meeting that the company was facing liquidity problems. Yet the firm moved forward with capital outlays, including $5 billion in bonuses, $4 billion in shares and $750,000 in dividend payments between 2007 and the firm’s bankruptcy filing on Sept. 15.”
It is just crazy. The boards awards boat load of options to its CEOs and other executives; they then turn around and approve buyback of its own stocks under misleading headlines of ‘confidence in the stock value’, but the real reason being indirect cash payments to the executives while misleading investor throughout.
What a joke !!!
Filed under: News and Politics
Can you imagin what would have happened if Gwen Ifill, moderator of the last vice presidential debate, followed up on her questions and pressed harder for an answer?
That would have been the last couple of nails on Mr. Mccain’s presidential bid.
Had Gwen pressed Ms. Palin to answer what she meant by ‘flexibilities’ vice presidents have in the Constitution? Had Gwen pressed harder on what her threshold was to use a nuke? Ms. Palin would have melted and done for.
Fortunately for the Mccain team, that didn’t happen, and they are around to fight another day.
Gwen was successfully intimidated by her upcoming book on, I suppose it is, Obama as a factor in the presidential politics or politics in general.
Filed under: News and Politics
October 3, 2008 • 8:32 pm
Last night, I was so nervous for Palin. I thought she was going to embarrass herself so much to the point of making the whole contest a cakewalk for Obama.
She didn’t crush and burn. She didn’t answer the questions but most politician dodge questions all the time too.
Now, we’re going to have to look at her in a different light. If she was a little curious; had she read some books and kept up on the goings-on – may be reading a couple of journals, she does seem to have been quite capable. It would have been more than just spitting out rehearsed speeches on a debate.
Biden did great, I thought. As expected, not only he knew the right answers, but also he didn’t look condescending. He could have trashed her if he wanted to, alienating a whole bunch of people as a result.
You know what the sad thing though; a few people I’ve talked to today actually thought that Palin did say something important worthy of their vote. There was no beef in any of the stuff she said. It was just a packaged all fluff rhetoric.
She did good because she didn’t just collapse on stage. That was an improvement.
Filed under: News and Politics
