Want some Crib Notes with your Tea?

Was it just me who got caught during school exams with my cribnotes? Guess not. We have a bigger winner here. Ms. Palin. I am sure everyone who gives a public speech that is televised or in a meeting would use teleprompters or notes that one refers to during the speech. No one would be able to memorize the speech that lasts for an hour or more. So there is nothing wrong in using notes to refer to or teleprompters to get your speech across and to be effective. But Palin had a problem with that. She was accusing Mr. Obama using a teleprompter during his speeches. She accused him as 'a charismatic guy with a Teleprompter' in her speech in the tea party convention held last week.


But take a look at the picture that is posted along with this blog. Oh ya, its Palin's hand alright! I see words "Energy", "Tax," and "Lift Americans Spirits" scribbled in ink on the palm of her hand. Gotcha! Of course, she knew the speech for the tea party convention like the back of her hand. It is during the Q&A session that she needed the answer from the front of her hand. When she was asked the question as to what should be the top three things that a Republican majority in Congree would focus on and she forgets the answer and refers to her cribnotes on her palm during the meeting. How does one forget the main belief of what she is representing? To top it off, she accuses Obama for using a teleprompter in his speeches. He uses it for speeches and she uses it even for answering a core question? There is a saying that people living in glass houses should not throw stones at others. Does this not apply to her - You betcha!


I was a little relieved when McCain-Palin team did not win the elections in 2008. But my pulse is going a little higher when I heard that she would stand in elections in 2012 and that that is the right thing to do for the nation and the Palin family. Right for the nation - No. Right for the Palins - Maybe. She can start filling up her wardrobe again. The race in 2012 is not for the fashion industry nor for who can fill in their wardrobe. So Palin, you stay out of it. You can fill up the spot for soap in Fox, right a few books, give a few speeches with your talent of seeing your notes from the palm of your hand or attend a few tea party but running a nation is not your cup of tea. (pardon my pun)

Stuck between the rock and a hard place

Time and again one has to be reminded that politics exists in any nation because two or more groups have difference of opinions. Our President’s first State of the Union address last night proved just that. His portion of the speech where he mentioned about cutting taxes for 95% of working families did not enthrall the Republicans seated there. Many of the points he covered were the same as what he had said while addressing the Congress a year ago when he became the President. Many of the items that he mentioned during the first year were still not complete after his first year in office. To name a few: overhauling the health care system, enacted a market-based cap on carbon emissions blamed for climate change, imposed a new regulatory system on financial institutions, closed the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and signed a new arms control treaty with Russia. None of these were completed and still the topic of discussion for last night was health care reforms, energy and education.


To improve the economy of the country was the reason he came out with the stimulus plan. He sanctioned bailout dollars to keep the companies that were economically suffering from bankruptcy and keep the jobs open for the Americans. What were the results? The stimulus money that we got (even though a little to be even noticed in our paychecks) was used towards keeping our homes or paying the bills. Some were hoarding on to that money to be used later on in case people lost their jobs. That money was never spent to go back into the pool of growing economy of the country and keeping the businesses going. So the stimulus plan backfired.


Bailout money for banks is another story. 65% of the Americans believe that when banks got their share from the government, banks started to hold on to that money and stopped giving out loans to customers or small businesses because they knew that they will never see that money come back to them again. The idea was that the banks would give out loans to small businesses which in turn would create jobs and to keep the cycle of life flowing. To solve this problem, Obama is putting fees on banks now. He also talked about helping college students with their tuitions. Many students are waiting it out to finish their degree programs because what are they going to do after finishing their studies? Where are the jobs? Obama did not mention about how the job market is going to improve with the unemployment rate being at the highest ever – at 10% but he did mention about Recovery act to improve businesses.


Obama’s plan seemed to be fluid and we have to wait it out to see what will materialize successfully despite the fact that he mentioned about how long we have to wait to think about our future. There was also an issue about his numbers for lending to small businesses being different from when the aides previewed his speech to when the speech was actually delivered. With so many uncertainties and resistance he faces to complete anything that he had promised us to make our future better, to how we have to adjust our perception on the person we elected an year ago, one has to wonder who is stuck between the rock and a hard place – President or us?

Nothing that a cold beer can’t solve

By now you must have heard about the incident where Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. (an African American) was arrested by a white police officer, Sgt. James Crowley. Gates is a professor at Cambridge University, Mass. and stays in a house that belongs to the University. He went on a trip to China for making his documentary for PBS – “Faces of America” and returned home from his trip with his luggage, only to find out that his lock is jammed. So he asked the help of his driver of the cab, who is also a black man to push it open. Gates called the University at the same time to get his lock fixed and while he was in the process of making that call, a police officer was outside his door asking him to step outside of the house. The police had arrived there as a result of a 911 call from Gates neighbor, Whalen, who had mentioned that two black men were breaking in into the Professor’s house. With enough misunderstandings, the police officer arrested Gates and Gates passed on a remark about how a black man is treated in America. That is the gist of what had happened but you can Google it for more detailed information.


When this racially charged controversy was developing further, Our President had passed on a remark in a conference as to how Cambridge Police acted stupidly and if they acted smartly, this whole incident could have been avoided. Now the black racism event is compounded with President being anti-police. I don’t see what is wrong in what Obama said. Whether he is black or white, the incident calls for a statement from anyone who hears it and that statement would be ‘How stupid can a police act in that situation?’. When a police officer reaches a scene, does he not make enquiries to find out what is going on? In this case, Crowley did ask Gates of his identification which proved that he is a Professor in Cambridge University and his drivers license showed that the address is same as the address that he is in. If Crowley needed more information, he could have called Gates’ neighbors and have them testify that that man was Gates and he does reside in that house.


Crowley did not do any of that and he just arrested the man and put him in jail for four hours? Based on what? The 911 call? Whalen, who made the call, did what she did with good intentions, but did she not know that Gates was a black man and that he might have come back from the trip? All this happened in the middle of the day and not at night, where she would have poor lighting and a bad call. This reminds me of the old lady who said that she witnessed the robbery and attack in the movie, ‘My cousin Vinny’. Does Whalen in this event, need a visit to the eye Doctor?


Anyhow, Obama’s statement of ‘stupidity’ had caused some furor in the police community and in order to quell the situation and to address the racial differences, Obama had invited Gates and Crowley to discuss the matter over a beer. Now there is nothing that a drink can’t do. These guys will have beer and all of a sudden racism would disappear from the face of this earth. This beer drinking is more for photo ops and for Obama to cool the situation in the police community as a result of his remark. If things were to be solved by a beer, I would have cases of it stacked up in my garage. Oh, by the way, I do have it stacked up not for this reason though.

She did it, yet again

No one can talk about Alaska without talking about its Governor Sarah Palin. Can we? Time and again, she steps on the mine in the minefield of politics. It is either her or her kids in the limelight, being the talk of the nation. Starting in 2008, primetime to Vice-presidential debates, she was scorned upon for the knowledge she possessed on American history. I was hoping she would not win the election because if McCain had won and if god-forbid, something happened to McCain and Palin had to take over, America’s little hope of surviving the recession would cease with her saying ‘You betcha’


Case in point was her appearance with McCain in a meeting with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko. When simple questions like ‘What have you learned from your meeting’ was directed at her, she simply smiled and leaned over to McCain for assistance and the aids intervened to get the reporters outside the room. Also, when she was answering questions that elementary school kids asked, she proved her lack of knowledge in the American history. This sure resulted in reams and reams of bad press and to even answer the most elementary questions in an uncontrolled environment was so dangerous that the McCain group was spending money to prevent such situations.


These events were compounded by her altercation when she was found spending $150,000 on designer wardrobe just for campaign. One would question the need of her wanting such expensive dresses when she was trying to portray a down-to-earth image in the campaign. She became a lame-duck and mocking figure (or figurine) in some talk shows and Democratic criticisms. She was even imitated by talented comedian Tina Fey of her folksy was of saying “You betcha”. Recently, her daughter Bristol’s name was brought in David Letterman’s show. But she brought it upon herself. Palin had her daughter’s presence in the campaign and wanted media’s attention but then when she was found pregnant, she wanted to be left alone and she accused media for focusing the lights on her. There is a saying in Hindi, that goes like ‘People in glass houses, should not be throwing stones at others’.


When things were quiet on her for a month or so, she threw the stone yet again. This past Friday, she announced that she was resigning as Governor by the end of this month for a ‘higher calling’. Does this mean that she would not be considered for Presidential post in 2012? Some politicians say that by her resigning from post, she would fade away from politics for ever, while others say that is was the best thing for her and the State. Many say that it was because of pending lawsuits and investigation that she has on her while Palin says that she does not want to be on the limelight anymore. She is done playing the lame duck. Whatever the reasons are, we have to wait and see if we can take the name of Alaska without bringing her name in the same sentence.

July 4th Special fire

By now you must all have known about the plans of North Korea firing a missile towards Hawaii around July 4th Holiday, according to Japanese intelligence reports. The missile that North Korea is planning to test or fire is the Taepodong-2 which has the maximum reach of about 8000 KM, which means it could strike Hawaii, which is about 6000KM from North Korea. But the experts in missile launching say that the missile would fall short by about 500 miles before reaching Hawaii. Does that mean we take a gamble and have to wait and see if the missile misses Hawaii or not? The US has taken precautionary measures by deploying defensive measures around Hawaii. So even if the missile is launched for testing purposes and even if the test fails and the trajectory is towards Hawaii, our defensive mechanisms can intercept and destroy the missile in air, even before it reaches Hawaii. Why gamble with the millions of lives in the Hawaiian soil? That seems to be a logical step to take.


North Korea had issued a warning to mariners to avoid certain areas in the Sea of Japan on certain days while tests will be conducted. If it was their intention to attack, why bother to broadcast their testing plans to others? If North Korea wants to test and improve their nuclear power, there is so much resistance from other countries. But USA, UK, Russia and China have been the leaders of nuclear power and no one seems to raise a finger when they want to conduct tests. North Korea has China on the West and Japan and Hawaii on the East. If it has to test its long-range missile power, it cannot send the missile towards the vast China and it had to fire on the East towards the ocean. While I do agree that there is a danger of the test failing and hitting Japan or Hawaii (the test has to be overly successful to reach Hawaii), I am sure they are not going to fire directly towards the land but instead be directed towards the waters. If North Korea wants to wage a war against the US, which is the leader in the nuclear power, that would be a dumb move, since US could bring down North Korea in minutes and make it a footnote in history pages.


But whether North Korea does short, medium or long range tests, why is US interfering? If we have the treat of being attacked, strengthen the warfare and leave it at that. Why bother to interfere with supporting South Korea? All we have ever done is to interfere in other countries business. We could be having military bases in any country we feel like, we could be invading or destroying countries in the name of finding Bin Laden, but no one can ever express resentment. What was our business in Iraq when Bin Laden is hiding in the mountains of Afghanistan? Now that Iraq is destroyed, we need to have our people and money to run their country? Same thing holds good with Vietnam War. Now US is waiting to put its nose in Korean war? With the economy going down the drain, unemployment at the maximum rate that we have ever seen, poor health care systems and most of America handed over to China, all we need now is to coddle in Korean war. Be prepared to disengage the missiles if it accidentally fails and don’t over blow the situation on hand.

Johnny Johnny… Yes papa

Terror plans? No papa! (waterboarded) Tell me the truth. Yes papa, I will tell the plans!

Recent news showed that Nancy Pelosi knew about the waterboarding that was done on al-Qaeda prisoners by CIA to get the truth out. Washington Post had mentioned that they researched on the news and confirmed that she knew about the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation techniques - EIT”, harsh interrogation tactics against al-Qaeda prisoners. Whether she knew about it or not, whether she didn’t agree that she knew about it when she was asked is debatable. Nobody in power would just answer a question on internal security or techniques, just because they were asked. CIA is using EIT on al-Qaeda prisoners, for Pete sake, a group responsible for 9/11.

Isn’t that what CIA characters – Jack Ryan of Tom Clancy, John Carr of David Baldacci or Jason Bourne of Robert Ludlum or the most famous James Bond 007 of Ian Fleming (and the list goes on) do or undergo when a truth has to be brought to light? The spy or the intelligence finds a person who might know the truth (and in most cases they do, otherwise the Spy’s are not doing their job right), CIA captures them or gets their custody as POW, do their bit of drill on them to get the truth out that would serve their country. Even Sayid in ‘Lost’ does the same. The so-called torture is done to get the truth or plans they might have to attack on their country and by all means the CIA wants to get the truth out to take preventive actions.

If a person from al-Qaeda was caught before 9/11 or after the fact, do you think our people will just let it go. Wouldn’t they, not want treatments like waterboarding done to get the truth out? Tell it to the people who have lost families and friends of 9/11 and see what their reaction is. President Obama might not want to perform EIT on any prisoners to get the truth and might have other alternatives to get the truth out, but it is the person who is in charge who has to deal with the prisoners. If he is not able to get the information out from the prisoners to take preventive actions, then the public would say that the Government is not doing anything in terms of protecting their nation.

If you know that a prisoner has information on attacks or is a national security threat, then by all means do what you have to do, to get the information out. I come from the land of Gandhi, where he said that if someone slaps you on one cheek of the face, then show the other cheek but he didn’t say what to do if that someone slaps the other cheek as well. Smart man! You need to do what you need to, to protect yourself.