Senator Hillary Clinton hits the airwaves with a fear-mongering ad.
Senator Barack Obama hits back, with a message that he has been stressing all along – that Sen. Clinton just doesn’t get it!
I think Sen. Clinton must sue her campaign for ruining her run. My guess is she would probably have won the nomination by now had it not been for her campaign.
Bus driver, as the shuttle reaches campus:
“All cellphones, iPods, umbrellas and gloves found on this bus belong to me. I have a yard sale at the end of the semester.”
A feature addition that has been pending for long is now finally underway. Gmail Chat now has added the Invisible mode, so users can now be logged into chat, but remain stealthy.
As a GTalk-aficionado, I was expecting to find the feature on my Google Talk client, but not yet. The announcement on the Google Blog says that subsequent roll-outs of the GTalk client will have this feature.
One other thing the folks at Google seem to have missed is rolling out this new feature for those using Google Apps for Domains. For those who aren’t aware, this service lets Google handle all the mail for your own domain, instead of the mail server(s) provided by your web hosting company. The apps also include some other Google services like chat, calendar and Google Docs.
Essential wisdom for bloggers:
“Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn’t mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar.” – Edward R. Murrow, US broadcast journalist & newscaster (1908 – 1965)
(I have been intending to write about this for quite some time now, but yesterday’s episode proved the catalyst.)
Over the past few weeks, I have become a huge fan of Vijay TV’s Neeya Naana. The talk show pits two groups of people against each other to discuss and argue about inane, inconclusive topics like “Are people happy before marriage or after?” or “Is romance in public places correct?” or “Should people believe in astrology?” Whereas, no conclusion is reached during the hour-long debate, it is fun to see people having a go at each other.
The strongest point of the show is the moderator, Gopinath. Seemingly well aware of the various shortcomings of the talk show, he treads the golden mean very well, ever alert to simmering tensions and quick to shifting perspectives when he senses trouble or repetition. Vijay TV, which has a long history of producing winners, has once again pulled it off, making this show, which airs on Sundays at 9 PM, one to wait a whole week for. Indeed one is led to think when was it last that one eagerly awaited a programme on television. Probably as far back to the days of “OLiyum Oliyum” on Doordarshan, decades ago. OLiyum Oliyum was a defining programme on Tamil television. It aired on Friday evenings, and the whole family looked forward to it, as if it were an event instead of a TV programme.
So despite the evident stupidity of the arguments expressed (of course, if you hand the microphone to an excitable Tamilian, and seat a couple of good-looking (?) girls in front of him, he will forget that he is on camera, and become a rare poet-philosopher-social scientist mixture), the show is worth watching at least for the fun portion. What a way to round off otherwise boring weekends!
(Disclaimer: I am not a terrorist. I am not plotting anything.)
Now that Senator John McCain has virtually locked up the Republican nomination, it is surprising that Mike Huckabee is still staying in the race. Even more surprising is the fact that even in a dead race (like in Wisconsin), Sen. McCain is receiving only 55% of the votes.
When asked a couple of weeks ago that it was mathematically impossible for him to become the nominee, Huckabee remarked that he majored in miracles and not in math. Now, what exactly is the “miracle” the former Governor of Arkansas is hoping for? That McCain is 72, and that he might not live until the Convention? And if Huckabee beats Romney’s delegate tally, he could stake his claim for the nomination?
If they continue at this rate, you can expect the Clinton campaign to announce tomorrow “Barack Obama is guilty of plagiarism! Yes, he has used the word CHANGE in his campaign speeches. This word appears in the Oxford Dictionary. And it was used in the 13th century. What a shame!”
Wake up. Stop being childish! Is this a campaign issue?
Senator Barack Obama is projected to win the Wisconsin primary. And he is expected to take Hawaii later tonight. This will give him 10 straight victories over Senator Clinton – an unmistakeable momentum that will be hard to beat.
In the primaries season, we have already seen one clear case of momentum beating strategy – John McCain’s triumph in Florida, that ended Rudy Giuliani’s bid even before it began. Of course, the split nature of the Republican race back then did help Senator McCain a lot. But he carried a momentum into Florida, and that kind of dynamism defeated the static nature of a planned this-state-only strategy of the former New York Mayor.
And this is the kind of momentum, the dynamic aspect of which is delivering results for Obama. Senator Clinton had given up on Wisconsin, but then realizing the almost insurmountable quest of overturning a 10-state run, she decided to go back to the Badger State and resume her negative campaign there. Alas, it hasn’t worked for her yet again.
Thinking about this race brought back memories from a talk show hosted by Dindigul I. Leoni some years ago, where he talks about what issues are important to voters in Tamil Nadu politics. Issues? He says, it is all about momentum. When people in one district or city talk to their friends elsewhere, and they ask who looks like the winner, the response generally is “avinga dhaan” (“It’s them!”) No one really know who the “them” is, but everyone assumes that they are talking about the same “them”.
Trends emerge in opinion polls, and whatever little gap there is between the parties, this gap widens as the idea of “them” gains some kind of a backing. And that is why elections in Tamil Nadu produce results that are clear in their outcome – whatever the vote is, it is for “them” and the “them” change every five years.
Momentum, and not issues, make this possible. Potent as they are, issues are mere static forces. They can be withered by momentum, if it is dynamic enough.
Avram Grant is one of the stories of the season in English football.
Most people expected Chelsea to implode after Jose Mourinho’s acrimonious departure from the club. On the contrary, Grant has been some kind of a calming influence at Stamford Bridge, with only two losses and five draws in the League since taking over from the Portuguese. The club is in the final of the Carling Cup, and favorites to win against Tottenham (whose manager Juande Ramos is probably an even bigger story). In the FA Cup, they are in the quarterfinals. Three points behind second-placed United in the League. And well placed in Europe as well.
It is worth pondering whether Chelsea have acquired any attacking flair that was lacking under Mourinho. My take is that their style still hasn’t changed much. But Grant for Mourinho is the equivalent of trading a troublesome manager and getting a quieter, less intrusive one instead.
Manchester United’s ripping apart of Arsenal in the fifth round of the FA Cup today is the kind of clinical performance that has been lacking from the Reds over the past fortnight. With Ronaldo and Giggs not even featuring on the teamsheet, and Scholes, Tevez and Saha on the bench, United’s task seemed tougher than it turned out to be.
Wayne Rooney turned in an inspirational performance, heading home the first goal, and generally terrorising the Arsenal defence, while Ronaldo’s understudy, Nani stepped up to the plate with a stellar performance that saw his hand in all of United’s goals. Uncharacteristically, Arsenal went down without a fight – it is not everyday that Arsenal are beaten by four goals, with one still feeling they were lucky not to concede more.
P.S.: It is a tribute though to Arsenal that, even though the gulf between the two sides is evident, they lead United by 5 points at the top of the Premier League.
P.P.S.: Liverpool’s loss at home to Barnsley makes it for an excellent Saturday!
(via Politico.com)
When Hillary Clinton said, way back in New Hampshire, that Vladimir Putin “doesn’t have a soul,” I figured that would be the sort of thing the Russian wouldn’t be pleased about. But when I called the foreign ministry the next day for comment, it was Orthodox Christmas, and I let it slide.
He was asked about the remark at his press conference yesterday, however, and indeed wasn’t pleased.
The former KGB lieutenant colonel appeared to lash out at U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton — a leading Democratic candidate for president — when one reporter quoted her as saying that former KGB officers have no soul:
“At a minimum, a head of state should have a head,” Putin said.
A day after declaring that she was in the “solutions business” while her opponent was in the “promises business”, Senator Hillary Clinton paraded yet another of her gimmicks that make her seem stupid.
Oh, those are boxing gloves! So the next time you intend to tell someone you are ready to contest against them in an election, act like a goon, and show them your signature boxing gloves. And call it the “solutions business”.
P.S.: IBM should be worried about new competition. Last I checked they were the folks in the “solutions business”, weren’t they?
(Image courtesy: The New York Times)
Ever since I came to know that Kamal Hassan’s next project is titled Marmayogi, and that it is the title of a 1951 MGR movie, I have been trying to get the old movie. Any amount of search on the Internet has proved abortive. I cannot even find a single song from the movie, let alone the movie’s soundtrack.
My travails have produced only very limited information – that it was the first Tamil movie to bear an A-certificate; that it was not MGR who essayed the title role, but that it was Serukalathun Sama (whom I have hitherto not heard of – it seems he played Kambar in the 1937 version of Ambigapathy, in which MKT played the lead – I haven’t seen this movie either); that Marmayogi was a king; that MGR played Karikalan; and that Pandharibai and Anjali Devi were also in the cast.
I invite readers to share more details about the 1951 movie – storyline, plot details, links etc. Thanks in advance.
The republication this week by some European newspapers of the controversial cartoons depicting Prophet Mohammed as a terrorist (that caused considerable trouble a couple of years ago) reeks of intolerance, disrespect and sheer contempt for the feelings of other people. And for these newspapers to hide behind the comfortable veil of “freedom of speech” is a unique mixture of timidity and audacity.
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