Usha Vance: Second Lady

I felt compelled to write about Usha Vance, the second lady of USA. She exuberates grace backed by her knowledge as opposed to first lady. The saying ‘There is a woman behind every successful man‘, she is a testimony.

Her smile and grace has captivated the entire inauguration while the First Lady hid her face behind that Don’t Kiss Me hat. Usha is a daughter of immigrants – the one who Donald Trump wants to deny the birthright citizenship; Usha is Yale graduate lawyer, mother of three: you need to stand against bullies, just a beautiful smile doesn’t cut it.

On a lighter note what caught my attention the whole time with Usha’s attire, which the western world has compared it to Audrey Hepburn, for us Indians it was the look of old age movie era of Dil Chahta Hai song Wo Ladki Hai Kahan.

Rupee is falling…

I am no financial pundit that I can comment on falling Rupee against Dollar, it has fallen in the PM Manmohan Singh era and has fallen in PM Narendra Modi’s era, so it is not a political issue.

I asked Chat GPT and Grok, Why Rupee is falling against Dollar

Chat GPT Grok
1. Global Economic Factors
2. India’s Trade Deficit
3. Capital Outflows
4. Inflation and Interest Rate Differential
5. Weak Economic Data
6. Central Bank Policies
7. Geopolitical and Market Sentiment
8. Speculation and Hedging
1. Strong U.S. Dollar
2. Foreign Investment Outflows
3. High Crude Oil Prices
4. Inflation and Interest Rate Differentials
5. Geopolitical Tensions and Global Economic Uncertainty
6. Current Account Deficit
7. RBI Interventions
8. Market Sentiment and Speculation

Rupee falling is consistent, but what has fallen during Modi’s era is First Amendment

Here are the comments made by celebrities before 2014

Falling rupee matters least to these celebrities as they all stay and are invested in Western Countries. What is sad is that they have lost their voice – Freedom of Speech.

Prime Minister: Dr ManMohan Singh, Dec 26th 2024

The man who opened up the economy in 1991, I stand indebted to him. The degrees he acquired during his lifetime stand as a record with the highest educated politician in the World. My head would drop in shame when the Late night TV hosts in America used to call Indian PMs as Robots (PM Atal Bihari Vaypayee) and their monotonous speech (MMS) – then karma hit; America got Biden and India got Modi. The opposition politicians cried calling him Maun (Mute) PM, he was very fragile in his speech, but it was President Barack Obama the greatest orator who applauded the economic knowledge of MMS in Davos meet. Compare that to the current leadership where one day they held hands like sweethearts and frolicked in India and America but now a delegation is sent to get invited for ones inauguration, sigh!

Did any of you notice that most of India’s celebrities from Cricket and Movies have not acknowledged the passing of this great man? Whats up with that? How disturbing is that these celebrities that our Indian youth spend 100 Crores a weekend lead by such example. How polarized a nation have we become.

Now to his humbleness: MMS was extremely humble and simple (Congress leadership is accused of taking advantage of this) akin to PM Lal Bahadur Shastri, I heard that MMS stepped out of UN building to eat his breakfast buying street bagels (my favorite breakfast in NYC) instead of spending government money on expensive breakfast; needs citation. Another story is, Mrs MMS (Gursharan Kaur) has a sister who is settled in Hubli (my town) who visited to see her ailing sister but never used the VVIP security and stayed at IB Bungalow and paid out her pocket. More importantly MMS never spread hate, lived with decency, humility and compassion. I consider MMS as the last decent politician.

Kar chale humm fida jaan-o-tan saathiyon
Ab tumhare hawale watan saathiyon

Modi feeds Trump, Narcissism!

modi-trump-hug
Modi Trump bear hug, while Melania looks on!

President Trump declares to media here in USA, week ahead of is visit to India that Prime Minister Modi has promised to greet him with 7 million people; that is 70 Lakhs for those Indians reading my blog – narcissism much!

Modi is a self proclaimed businessman; every Gujarati is, but Trump is a businessman; a failed one at it, but claims he is a deal-maker. Modi knows grass is best fed to cows to milk and Trump, narcissism. Can Modi milk Trump or will it be just a spectacle verses substance.

Modi is building a 22 kilometer wall to hide the slums from Trump motorcade passing through Ahmedabad to welcome him at a biggest Cricket stadium in India. So much for those poor Indians who had offered Poojas (pun intended) for Trump to win the election in 2016. I love to here this quote from Trump,

My best friend Modi has built such a beautiful wall, very beautiful and HUGE!, those Do Nothing Democrats will never let me build a wall like this.

Now to understand Trump’s ego being hurt, we have to visit the inauguration picture that he posted in his #Whitehouse; a fake one. The real comparison with Barack Obama’s inaugural is pictured below.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/06/donald-trump-inauguration-crowd-size-photos-edited#img-1
Trump Inaugural crowd on left verses Obamas on right – courtesy The Guardian

It is just that till date Barack Obama is more popular in America and respected around the world. Here’s a recent tweet from Obama which has garnered close to a million likes. Trumps most likes have reached 200K #SAD (dragging the hands away).

https://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/1229432034650722304

The above tweet has hurt him so much that he had to issue a statement from his four walls of  West Wing, reporters tweeted in response to hold some press conference if he had some real marbles.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1231302822785953792

Here is another retweet he has done, don’t know who is this Sol but claims herself Master Memetician and this man feeds on these things.

https://twitter.com/Solmemes1/status/1231326273894526976

Well narcissism much!

I will just leave this picture here, just in case Kellyanne Conway feels this was too juvenile and plans to delete it.

TrumpRetweet

George Conway is no psychiatrist but long back has declared that our President needs help!; Kellyanne I think you should meet your husband once in a while.

How can I end my blog without mentioning our beautiful FLOTUS Melanie err… Melania Trump. She has planned to visit Delhi government school, which has aced the education system beating National School and esteemed private schools. She is there to preach India #BeBest, if only she turned around and looked at her husband and step sons, the world would BeBest.

 

 

 

 

 

Wars have REAL consequences

India-PakStat

In the wake of current Indo-Pak stand off Al Jazeera posted a picture of World Bank on the both nation statistics comparing side by side. The picture above caught my attention.

It all started when Pakistan sponsored JeM terrorists struck the CRPF bus killing more than forty personnel, one of the deadliest terrorist attack since a decade on Feb 14th at Pulwama. The entire nation mourned the loss of brave forces, rightly so they wanted answers from the nation that harbors these terrorists. This time it was no different that Pakistan said it did not harbor JeM.

It took ten days for India to plan and strike the cells of JeM well within the boundary of Pakistan and destroyed there camps, successfully returning back while Pakistan media mocked it’s Military as “Don’t honk, Pakistan Military is sleeping“. This covert operation was no less than what America had carried out to eliminate Osama Bin Laden in Abbottabad. But India is yet to eliminate Massod Azhar.

This escalated tensions on both Nuclear armed neighbors, Pakistan launched air strikes against Indian military targets and India responded aptly.  Indian pilot Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman was found in Pak occupied Kashmir as POW. India established that Pakistan had used a missile that was sold by America with a condition that it cannot be used against India. This was a clear violation of the agreement.

Understandably talks began behind closed doors to the release of the Indian POW with international community. President Trump who was busy with his failing Vietnam Summit and barrage of accusations by his long time lawyer(fixer) Michael Cohen at home, he found only one good news to deliver the Hanoi press, stealing the thunder of PM Imran Khan.

https://twitter.com/StateDept/status/1101028965546749954

 

https://twitter.com/omar_quraishi/status/1101079219252150272

With the release of Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, it is a clear victory for India and time to rejoice, but Retd: Air Chief Marshal AY Tipnis cautioned (more so scolded) the media, it is wrong to use high decibels on air and hyperbolic vocabulary, one man stands out for me is Arnab Goswami who has such thin skin being a journalist and a public figure does not have a Twitter account for the fear of public retribution, but barks non stop night after night on TV screens without a rebuttal, another is Rahul Shivshankar at least this man has a twitter account. You are welcome to list more in comments. Mr Tipnis said that media is talking such nonsense that even though India has been wronged by Pakistan, it appears that India is a aggressor in the international community.

With the international pressure or the good will gesture of PM Imran Khan (that’s what he claimed in his Parliament), a brave soldier has returned home.

In the end I wish to change that picture posted above by Al Jazeera to the one below, one day it will happen.

IndiaPakNew

 

 

Modi Strikes Jaish; JeM

PM_Modi

India has struck 80 KMs inside Pakistan with a precision air strikes in response to the Pulwama attack. It is inappropriate for me to title this opine as Modi strikes; it is more of the Indian Armed Forces that has carried out with vigor. A little credit is due to Prime Minister Modi for taking a call on this strike for being the first Air Strike of India into Pakistan since 1971. Googled the number of terrorist attacks since 1971… I fainted looking at the chart, once I recovered, composed myself to eliminate the ones that were home grown. There are scores that were conducted during Congress rule; more deadlier than Pulwama and couple in one term BJP; PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee administration. But this is the first time a sitting Prime Minister has taken a decisive action against the terrorist in their home ground. So that’s there; Modi Strikes!

Modi was elected in part due his strong hand and 56 inch chest that was needed to address the cross border terrorism from the past which Congress had failed miserably time and again. It would have been apt to strike the terrorist cells upon his swearing in, in 2014. But he chose to give a hug to the then PM of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif to mend a better relationship with our neighbors. The opposition cried that the 56 inch had deflated. Then the URI response happened, the first surgical strike in Indian history on Pakistan soil, opposition called it foul. And here we are after a Pulwama attack, within 10 days the Modi administration has stuck with military might within Pakistan eliminating the terrorist cells successfully. This time around there is no confusion among opposition that the administration has failed.

Now playing the devil’s advocate, what took Modi government to give such a decisive outcome around this time? it’s been almost five years that India elected him with absolute majority for this outcome. Is it that in 2018 the people said that they are turning back to Congress with the election results in Hindi heartland? In conclusion it is the good opposition (Mahagathbandhan) that has compelled Modi to display his 56. It is not mission accomplished yet until JeM‘s Massod Azhar is eliminated. So I urge the opposition to get even stronger and the citizens of India make an educated decision to elect Modi for second term, which he rightly deserves. You have given ten terms to Congress to expect the same failed outcomes hoping for the next one to be better.

Sarah Sanders Speaks…

sarahsanders
Sarah Huckabee Sanders

It was refreshing to see Sarah after 40 days, she out ran government shutdown which in itself made a history as the longest shutdown. But I wonder why Sarah went 40 days without a press briefing. Trump had already tweeted in support of her saying, media never respects her, why address them anyways.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1087733867614781446

Sarah being a true christian had intentionally stayed in hiding for 40 days and 40 nights (Genesis 7:12)(Acts 1:3) from the evil press.

It is extremely cramped for reporters to sit in that small briefing room and wait for Sarah to arrive. She has mastered this art to call the reporters at 2PM and shows up on the podium at 3PM. Today was no different, Brian Karem went in to check on her, who came back with two fingers wagging, a lady reporter in the crowd was surprised that Sarah would show up in two minutes.  Then when adorned the podium, she immediately went to work, “Under President Trump’s leadership, economy is growing…” though she uttered President Trump, her mannerisms sounded like Emperor Trump. The gloating monologue went for another few minutes, I wonder if Trump would like to sit on a throne nearby when Sarah addresses the press, he would have if only press was not allowed to ask questions. Soon she handed over the mic to John Bolton and Steve Mnuchin, her idea was to tire the press by asking them questions. As though these two were not enough she sent out Larry Kudlow for taking the questions on this infamous shutdown, which when asked Larry dismissed it saying it’s not his place to comment on it, walked of smiling, leaving it to Sarah.

Finally she came back to podium to take questions, saying, “There should not be much left to ask me?” The media pounced her anyway with blizzard of questions. The first question she took was from her comfort zone journalist John Roberts; a Fox News white house correspondent. She had thought it would be an easy one, well karma is a bitch!

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1089691564283183105

But the question wasn’t easy to which she replied her usual answer, “Look I don’t want to get in…” basically it’s either get in, get ahead or get into. Since Sarah is trump’s spokesperson, she is his mouthpiece, when she says “I don’t want to get in”  does she mean she does not want to get into the guts of  Mr. Trump? Then she took a few questions from her nemesis like April Ryan, when asked “Will Trump shutdown the government again in three weeks?”, Sarah responded, “I don’t know you need to axe err ask Democrats for that”, I don’t if the use of word axe was in error or intentional, she has learnt few tricks from her boss. Finally ended with sly joke on Jim Acosta, he asked “All Trump’s aides are indicted like Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, Mike Flynn including the most recent Roger Stone, is White house in trouble?” To which she replied, “Look, President Trump did nothing wrong.” I wonder even if she is indicted, would she say, “Look Trump’s mouth did wrong not Trump!

Finally she stormed of the podium when the reporter shouted, “Good to see you Sarah” and another said, “Come back soon”.

Trump imitates Modi, Modi imitates Trump

Narendra Modi campaigned heavily on India being a Hindu nation and that India needs to defend itself against Pakistan sternly. He accused the previous govt Congress of being too soft against the aggression of Pakistan on the Kashmir issue. He even campaigned that the top leaders of Congress as the Western establishment ruling India associating the Gandhi family as Italians, although Sonia vehemently opposed that saying she had left Italy to be with her now deceased Indian husband Rajiv Gandhi. It did not sit well with the Gandhi family as their budding heir Rahul Gandhi expressed no such Indian values other than wearing an Indian kurta for campaigning, while most of the time he was found in Bangkok detoxing himself to gear up against Modi attacks – the strongest one being the Shahazadha; the son of royal family. This was 2014 and Modi won with thumping majority as the next Prime minister. The Congress was decimated, Rahul who had half heatedly canvassed on the persuasion of his mother went back to Bangkok for further detoxing. Since then Modi has been the first Indian PM to visit Pakistan with surprise visit found hugging the then PM of Pakistan, Nawaz Sheriff. Since then Kashmir issue has escalated and India claims it has now given the befitting reply to Pakistan cross border terrorism, understandably now detoxed and formally appointed as President of the Congress party Rahul claims otherwise.

Then came 2016 and America went for election and Donald J. Trump took the Modi playbook and accused all the politicians of big swamp and especially Barack Obama as too soft to the world, hence undermining the might of Mighty America. The reality was George W. Bush had projected America as a bully nation after 9/11 for going to war without the UN consensuses. It is then that obese Americans who love French Fries had renamed them as Freedom Fries in retaliation to France, it is these Americans that would eventually vote for the now Republican candidate DJT who had little knowledge that French fries had nothing to do with France. Trump crushed 11 political presidential hopefuls to nominate himself as next Republican candidate in Primaries.

Against Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, he pitched that under her administration it would be the same 8 eight years as her predecessor Obama. Frankly she was running on that agenda as Obama had brought the respect for America it deserved from the rest of the nations and had made an effort to diffuse the nuclear tension from Iran by holding a bilateral talks. He had also steered America from the worst recession created by out going GWB since Great Depression. But what Trump used against her was Modi’s strategy, America’s superpower status had diminished under Obama and he was too soft to speak with Iran and bent backwards to appease them. He vehemently opposed the stand immigration policy against the illegal immigrants, where in the past both Republicans and Democrats had avoided the issue. Trump came along and said he would deport all illegals back to Mexico, 11 millions of them and build a beautiful WALL across the Mexico border. Although majority of the illegals are from Mexico sizable illegals are from other nations too, including India, so will he send them to Mexico too? but this was a good catch phrase for election and he ran with that.

It worked and Trump was elected as the first non political failed businessman (not according to him, on the contrary Trump race is the most powerful gene, to which he feels that every women needs to be impregnated with his sperms, to further the dominance of America against the rest of the world) as the President of America.

Now it is Modi’s turn to run for a second term and he is using all the gimmickry that of Trump. Although it’s almost two years since Trump took office he has not gone any further with his biggest policy of building the wall on Mexico border. He had promised his supporters that Mexico would pay for the wall, the supporters had cheered him in every rallies “BUILD. THAT. WALL.”, now as  a elected president he went to Mexican president to pay for the wall, that did not go well but he got a big middle finger from former Mexican president Vicente Fox. So now he has retorted to build the wall using American tax payers, although the congress is not approving it, even though republicans are in majority. So trump has planned to shut down of the government, twice by now.

Here Modi has called for deporting some 4 million illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, apparently the illegals that have entered India since 1971 are at the risk of getting deported back to Bangladesh, only problem is they are all born in India. To make it more complicated he had declared in 2014 that all the Hindu, Sikh and Christians refugees from Bangladesh are welcome anytime, so who else is left, that’s the Muslims. Muslims mostly poor daily wage workers are claiming that they are born and lived in India, if they are deported they have no place to go, Bangladesh would not accept them. Indian constitution is built on secularism and cannot ban the immigrants based of religion. But Modi supporters are backing the move. The opposition is warning bloodshed if such a move was executed. Thus some 4 million people are stranded as to not knowing when they would be deported to Bangladesh.

Trump announces ‘SPACE FORCE’ and Modi pulled of Space Mission on Aug 15 2018.

 

BlacKkKlansman (2018)

Image credits imdb.com

The movie opens with a rant about racism, denigrating the existence of blacks as equals in the society among whites. It is none other than Donald J Trump! err sorry, I meant his SNL alter ego Alec Baldwin. This sets the mood of the film, so if you are a Trump-ster, you have wasted your money. But you sit and enjoy the intelligent comedy played by the characters.
Then enters our protagonist, Ron Stallworth(John David Washington) prepping his nostalgic Afro hairdo, he becomes the first black police officer to join the force of Colorado Springs. Based of the true story, Spike Lee weaves the story from the past to present racism in America.
Ron starts of his duty in records room, who gets bored very soon, requests his chief to assign him a detective work. Due to his persistence Chief assigns him to infiltrate a Black Panther Activist movement headed by Kwame Ture. Ron accepts it as to socialize with his own community, which in turn finds his love interest; the head of the student union Patrice Dumes(Laura Harrier).

While he is rationalizing with his own kind that police are not pigs, who have tortured the blacks at every juncture concealing his identity. He stumbles upon an advertisement in local newspaper seeking members for a new chapter of KKK in Colorado Springs. He picks the phone and dials the number, the man on the other side asks why would he want to join? Ron goes, “I am WHITE man and hate all those N-word who are sleeping with our white girls and raping them”. I dare not spell that n word, Omarosa might be taping. He pronounces the word WHITE with southern accent, VOIIGHT as it can be. The jaws drop in the office as the rant continues from Ron over the phone, hating blacks. Spike Lee shows that how the rest of the white crew in the office are supportive of Ron except to one bad apple. There is always one that spoils the entire basket. Needless to say the KKK clansman is impressed by Rons views and gets accepted and intends to meet face to face.


Ron’s partner, Filip Zimmerman(Adam Driver) reluctantly agrees to be the face of Ron Stallworth, with Ron as voice, Filip as face the duo infiltrate the KKK, they learn the plans to bomb the Black Panther to eliminate the uprising and end up meeting the master himself, David Duke!

Lee has juxtaposed the KKK and Black panther meeting both being intense in their own right although I would say that the presence of Henry Belafonte is real moving. Lee brings in a full circle and gets that one bad apple on the tape and has him removed from the police force, thus saving the basket from contamination.

In the end Spike Lee ends the movie as a documentary highlighting the events of Charlottesville and President Trump delivering the speech ‘There were fine people on both sides‘ at the cost of an innocent life
Heather Heyer.

It’s worth mentioning here that throughout the movie audience is laughing at the jokes played by Ron and his colleagues over the phone with KKK, but when the commentary from Henry Belafonte is delivered there is a pin drop silence and tears roll down as Heather Heyer is commemorated.

Girls: They got voting rights!

We were travelling in a public city bus in Bengaluru. My son then eleven years old, suddenly noticed that there were few seats in the front and yet I asked him to stand behind in the middle of the bus.

He went, “Can we sit there?”

I said, “No, they are reserved for women, see that LADIES ONLY“.

He was appalled, “They always get special treatment”. I hear the middle-schoolers frustration where girls rule the world. With a smile I said,”Stop watching Disney Channel”, and asked him to sit in one of those seats and I would stand beside him. He did not want to sit anyways for the joy of looking through the streets of Bengaluru, where the driver maneuvered through the busy traffic.

After a while the bus came to a dead halt in the middle of the road, he asked, “Why’s the bus not moving”, I looked around and told him that there is a strike ahead, people are blocking the road. Police guided the bus to pass thru the crowd, where a bunch of girls were protesting with placards.  He asked “what’s happening?”

Girls are protesting for something…

Actually girls were fighting for the case where Bengaluru was shocked by the heinous incident of a elementary school girl raped by her teacher. I just did not want the kid to know this terrible incident.

Then came a statement out of his mouth that has stuck in my head to this date.
“What more do they want, they got voting rights!”
He was studying about American History – womens civil rights  at that time in his school.

Here we are in a huge election season, electing our first female president of free world with a vitriolic campaign from both sides. My children are actively involved in the process. The eleven year old is now a teenager following the debate process; analyzing it. Yes, DJTs latest locker room rant is out in the open. My younger one, elementary grade son comes home from school and asks “Pops! who are you voting for?” I joked “Donald J Trump”
“Eeew, if he wins I am moving to Canada!”
Personally I don’t consider DJT as a man (This is my locker room rant, don’t quote me on this, baliki main tho yeh kahoon ki woh purush hii nahi hain, mahapurush haiAAA), if I say it out loud girls will hate me, hmm! what would Caitlyn Jenner think.

Hillary R Clinton should be winning with a landslide victory after DJTs comments. Let’s looks at the stats. She garners around 38% of women votes (source: CNN/ORC), discounting 10% of them as  unmarried, remaining 28% of their spouses are supposed to vote for HRC, 0% of men oppose to their wives (source: WhatsApp).

Sure most of us condemn the objectification of women especially by our presidential candidate DJT. But our focus should be on the women in the society who are doing marvelous things, most recently there are women like Elizabeth Warren; who single-handedly brought down the CEO of Wells Fargo, FLOTUS; who is out to raise women across the world from illiteracy. Talking of objectification, KimK is the epitome of women objectification, like my son said, Girls have right to vote her out of social media.

(It has been extremely difficult for me to put this post articulately, also I am biased, so in the end may the best woman win the Election 2016)


Note I have not hyperlinked KimK, those who don’t know her should be proud of themselves, those who know why check her out. Hint Cailtyn Jenner was her father 🙂