Obama adds to Musharraf woes

Obama’s teaser to his bold speech tonight indicates an approach that neither the American President or any of the wannabe Presidents have spoken about. Don’t know if this move will get him any closer to Hillary Clinton or force Bush to tighten the screw on Pakistan, but it seems very likely that Musharraf way out of hell isn’t getting any shorter.

“If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will,”

Mr Kalam Leaves New Delhi

Dr. APJ Kalam’s exit seems to be a bigger disappointment than the (s)election of India’s new President. Such is the standard set by the departing President, that there are more printed words eulogizing Mr Kalam, than those that welcome Mrs Prathibha. Of the one’s I’ve read, there’s one that stood out.

…another revelation — so far kept under wraps at Rashtrapati Bhavan (under presidential orders): In May 2006, President Kalam’s relatives from the south decided to descend on him (as relatives tend to often do). On instructions of the president they were welcomed by his staff at the railway station, and were looked after right up to the time they departed. But the Controller of Household was under strict instructions to keep a meticulous account of all the expenses incurred on behalf of the relatives — all 53 of them. Not once was an office vehicle used for any of them.

It was made clear by the president that he would pay — not only for the transport of all his relatives to and from Delhi, and also within Delhi, he would also pay for the various rooms occupied by them at Rashtrapati Bhavan and the food that was consumed by them — the rooms at the prescribed rate, the food on the basis of expenses actually incurred.

When his relatives left after a week’s stay, the president was of course sad to see them all go, but he was also lighter in his pocket: the total expenses debited to his personal account was Rs 3,54,924!

Any polititian who stood in the way of Kalam’s second term is a traitor.

Musharraf the dramatist

Never dismiss Musharraf. Everytime he has to make an unpopular move, he neutralizes it with an ace from his sleeve. The laughable part is how he still makes the American media suck it up.

Obama’s apology

Presidential hopeful Barrak Obama has offered an apology for criticising Hillary Clinton’s “India connection”. That should have closed the door on any doubts about Obama camp’s India perspective, but something he said in the past doesn’t make this latest aberration go away. In an emotional address, earlier, he had equated the Virginia Tech massacre to outsourcing.

“There’s also another kind of violence that we’re going to have to think about. It’s not necessarily the physical violence, but the violence that we perpetrate on each other in other ways,” he said, and goes on to catalogue other forms of “violence.”

There’s the “verbal violence” of Imus.

There’s “the violence of men and women who have worked all their lives and suddenly have the rug pulled out from under them because their job is moved to another country.”