Republican Nominees for 2012 Presidential Election

I was watching NBC/WSJ poll and kind of surprised to see that top leader from their side is Mitt Romney as of now with around 30 percent or so republicans favoring him. Though it is still too early to say anything, but whosoever, comes from republican side needs to be really strong candidate given the fact that President Obama's ratings are going fairly strong after his sudden burst of performance in managing to get Americans lot more tax break. I guess, tax breaks are great electoral carrot whether it is US or India.. It's magic works. Then on top of that tragedy like Tucson is even better icing for top leader's rating. Unfortunate and sad but true.. Given all this, I think intelligent Republicans should just sit tight and probably wait for 2016 or just to some practice run or dry runs in 2012.

Even more surprising was that Ms. Palin is way below in the stack and close so far just Seven percent republicans favoring her. Apparently, she is hated by more Americans than she is loved.. I don't know if she is artificially keeping low to save her energy for 2016 or she is really so... If later part is true then, In my view she totally messed it up.. I think it is too late, but she should try to change her advisers. These kind of useless and meaningless statements she gave only prove that she is good enough for Governorship of state like Alaska and she should stay there and help create US entertainment industry some nice content which probably can get some more dollars even from aboard.

I will be really surprised to see President Obama not hitting home run in 2012. I hope he can address this American Competitiveness issue more seriously and make some inroads in this area. There is no other way out but to be more competitive and we need all kinds of programs Long term, Medium Term and Short Term with one focus to improve Competitiveness.  It will be interesting to watch tomorrow's State of the Union Address.

Cheers!!!!

China's Currency Peg and Human rights issues

I am really surprised to see how developed world is after China on currency issue.
Which country in developed world has gained all the prosperity and wealth without sacrificing on human rights and suppressing labor force. Whatever has happened during industrial revolution era in current so called developed nations was probably ten times worse than how China is treating it's labor force. Ultimately, currency peg and human rights issues are ways which China is containing wages and benefits to it's labor force. China understands this fact very well "No pain, No gain". In a way they are trying to contain their labour force as easily as possible.

Same is true with many other issues with many other developing countries. another day I was listening to one podcast on economist about road being built in one of the african country right in the middle of Forrest. What the heck. These same environmentalist didn't care about web of roads going thru National forests in USA. now when some poor country is trying to build some road to carry minerals they are all up against it. Development has to happen. Whatever happened in USA fifty or hundred years ago is happening in developing countries now. Unless these developed countries did it without ever sacrificing on these issues they don't have any right to tell otherwise to these developing countries now.

America's Political Climate

With Saturday's shootings in Arizona, lot of things are being said about political climate in US. First of all I am very clear on one thing. Violence of any kind is bad.. bad..  Secondly, it is too early to comment on real motives of the shooter/killer. We can't say that he was politically motivated or lunatic or some other reason for his actions. I guess, press will have field day for next couple of weeks/months covering all about this. I hope rest of the wounded survive and get well soon..

Now, my view on this.. there are at least couple of factors responsible for this thing.. First is very obvious, easy access to firearms in USA to anyone.. Second is current state of economy and due to policies for last couple of decades, loss of middle class jobs..

I will start with second reason first.. which is resulting in bigger social divide in nation. There are jobs but they are either very high paying jobs in knowledge based industry or very low paying service jobs. For these high paying jobs you need great professional knowledge and education. For these low paying service jobs you will have to compete from immigrants. Due to bad policy decisions in past couple of decades, America lost lot of its middle class jobs which needed average education. These jobs at time were replaced by very high paying high tech or hight end knowledge based jobs. However, policy makers forgot to prepare workforce for these high end jobs. Right approach should have been to spend more money on education and improve quality of K-12 education. At the same time make college education entrance barrier low so average middle class family don't have to shiver while filling college applications due to high fees. This resulted in further divide between rich and poor.

Similar situation is there in India as well. There is big segment of population which is making good money due to their education. However, 400 million people who are still below poverty line (Indian Poverty line!!!) largely remains un-affected by this massive growth. There should be big social unrest in India too.. But there is hardly any..

What is the difference.. I think it is First factor listed in my note. Easy access of firearms in USA. There is no restriction as long as you don't have any criminal record. So barrier to commit first time crime is very low. Problem here in US, is that any one can be mad at anything and go buy guns or something like that and vent out. This can create very easy social unrest here which is not the case in India. These type of things will increase in here as more and more social divide increases.. I hope our policy makers will be able to take some lessons and try to contain this growth in divide.

Can religion bring peace to earth?

Very interesting conversation happened yesterday when two elderly ladies from local church showed up at my house. After our usual hi-hello, they asked me a very simple but powerful question... Do I believe that religion can bring peace to earth?

Well, my answer was equally easy and powerful. I told them that in my view "Religious is root cause of all the wars and evil in this planet. You take out all the religions of world and you might have perfect peace loving planet earth and earthlings"

I guess in modern times, root cause of all the wars and fighting and hatred is religion. Off course I don't blame any single religion. All of them share responsiblity. We can argue about the share of responsiblity but it can't be denied.

Well, then comes the question of origin of these religions. All of them were founded by great great leaders or what we call Gods today. I strongly believe that all the religions and their holy books teach to love everyone else. However, it is the interpretation by the followers and the kaput human brain which makes these religions so dangerous and create so much of hatred instead of peace. Sooner or later everyone will start realizing and try to do something to get rid of all these..

Another thing which drives and feeds religious fanatism is fear and greed.. We go to God in hope that God will return or bless us with all the worldly benefits if we are nice to him. I guess, we just need to be nice to our fellow human beings and rest will be taken care of. Unfortunately this message is often subsided by current religious leaders and instead of that only hatred to other religious groups comes out which ultimately causes all the grief and war and evil in this world.  

2010 - Year of Apps

2010 has been dubbed as Year of Apps!! Tons of articles on best apps of year reviewed by different news papers and critics from different angle. Here is one from WSJ:
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/12/31/the-top-ten-iphone-and-android-apps-of-2010/

I think we have seen some really good apps this year. Moreover with hardware platform getting even more powerful than ever, it is letting creative people great opportunity for real good ideas and work. Lot of new apps are still coming up and this shows that app market is yet to over. There are still plenty of room for great idea and innovation is going to continue for many more years to come.

I was finally happy to see some of my favorite apps like Google Voice show up in the end. Then Skype with built in video conferencing was great relieve to have. Convenience of video conferencing with any of your friends on Skype on iPhone is amazing and literally eliminates need of facetime for most of the time. However, I have to agree that facetime quality is much better than skype video quality.

This article was in draft stage for some time and today only Apple launched MAC App store. I just checked out of curiosity and there are some couple of cool apps over there. I am sure there will be more interesting apps or actually programs

Telangana Report and Statehood and Nationalism

We had long discussions today with my friends from RECW on the issue of Telangana Report. I started with basic question. What is purpose of nationalism and statehood? Ultimate objective of all this statism and nationalism is Ultimate happiness of population or mass. If they are not happy then there is no meaning or purpose of nationalism. Moreover, in general smaller the size of government better the chances of better governance. Even if it bad government it is their own government. Mass/ Population needs to be happy or contend with it. At least they don't have any more excuse or some one else to blame with. Even if they get more corrupt government it is their government and they have better control on it. I really don't see dividing states and making them smaller and smaller.

However, each new state needs to remember that they are still part of same nation. They simply can't even use word like guest for other state residents. Each and every Indian has right to settle and live there permanently without any fear or any kind of bias. Unless that state is able to add some stupid article in constitution like Kashmir did it. We are still paying price for it today and the way our politicians are, we will keep paying for that piece of crap land where we only loose our soldiers and precious cash which otherwise could be used to feed forty crore (crore ==> ten million) or more of population below poverty.

So, honestly, I havent read that report but whatever the results may be, we definitely need to make smaller governments with hope that better and smaller accountability will result in better governments. There are problems and there will be problems.. whatever the solutions or division or unisions may be..