Rumi Nations

I put in a rather long comment on this article in Livemint. So, obviously I have to paste that comment on my blog and make a blog post out of it! 1) Who's that Duncan Fletcher guy pictured with Dhoni? Anyway, neither do I know nor do  I wish to know. I just wish people of India would stop making Gods out of silly young men that cricketers are. Even compared to the cricket that I grew up with, the days of Srikanth, Amarnath, Vengsarkar, Azhar, Sachin, Ganguly, Laxman, and Dravid, now the game is all too commercialized. Too much cricket, too much money, too many crores (and girls) dangling in front of talent-less young men. 2) What a fall when you consider that we started with "Yug-purush" such as Nehru to today's "half-purush" such as Rahul Gandhi and Manmohan Singh. Why did the people of India elect these jokers in 2004? And re-elect in 2009? But then again, what is the alternative before the billion poor of this country? No, Modi is certainly not who...

This is the early take from the media pundits on this debate. The verdict being that Obama lost the 1st debate. I think that's a bit over-the-top because: Remember Obama's "long-game"? This is the 1st one. Two more to go. Are voters going to vote based on Romney's enthusiastic lying or Obama's soberly pointing out the fact that Romney doesn't really have an alternative, that Romney talks about repealing Obamacare without saying much about how. Here are the takes from a few pundits. Well, I’m with all the other talking heads: Mitt Romney won this debate. Barack Obama lost it. I mean, he got his butt kicked. It was, in fact, one of the most inept performances I’ve ever seen by a sitting President. Romney–credit where it’s due–was calm, clear, convincing (even when he was totally full of it) and nearly human. The real mystery was Obama. Where on earth was he? Why was his debate strategy unilateral disarmament? W...

People halfway around the world were rooting for Mr. Obama in 2008. Including me. What did Mr. Obama accomplish? No closing of Guantanamo Bay. Perhaps incumbent presidents become privy to intelligence documents detailing the crazy lengths that terrorists go or can go to try and harm America. And that changes the mind of the President. But what about Wall St? He kid gloved the hedge fund industry, and the billionaires and the tend-headed monster that is the banking industry. On healthcare, he has tried to carry the baton forward from the Great Society platform created in the '60s. Not much in terms of campaign finance reform or the lobbying industry. Perhaps courageous attempts to curb the spiraling costs of healthcare for retirees and also curb the military industrial complex by cutting the defense budget.

In any modern nation that has a taxation system, the poor don't pay taxes. In India, more than 90 percent do not pay taxes. But that makes sense. The poor in India do not use as much of the infrastructure. The poor in India do not use airports. The poor in America do not use private planes. One should be taxed at a rate commensurate with one's level of income. This is obvious and does not need debating. When the super rich have to pay taxes at a lower rate as Warren Buffett has reiterated so often, it's clearly unfair. Millionaires need to be taxed at a higher but fair rate. A 90 percent rate of income tax is clearly unfair. But a 30 percent or 35 percent rate of tax seems fair enough. Those in the 10 million to 50 million bracket can correspondingly be charged at a higher rate than the mere single-digit millionaires. Those in the 50 million to 100 million bracket need to pay even higher taxes. The tax rate can increase by 5 percentage points for every tax bracket. The ot...

Someone wrote that Obama will turn out in the long run to be like a Truman rather than like Carter. I certainly hope that it turns out to be that way. Although it's also quite 'unfair' that Carter is considered to be a 'failure' for whatever reasons. It just shows how little leverage presidents really have on the larger sweep of events. It's clearly weird that Reagan has turned almost into a demi-god in Republican circles and even Democrats find it hard to criticize him. It's no wonder therefore that Mark Twain's memoirs are at no. 4 on bestseller lists whereas George W. Bush's memoirs are almost 'guaranteed' to reach the no. 1 position.