Well I don't know what to think of Mike Griffin, the current NASA administrator. Clearly he is no candidate for change at NASA, since Griffin was involved with a shouting match with the original change candidate's lead transition member for the beleaguered space administration, Lori Garver.
The point in contention was Garver herself. Griffin, being an engineer, naturally looks down upon her, at one point saying she wasn't qualified to make engineering decisions. Fair enough. But the problem with Griffin and NASA isn't about who's making those decision. The problem is the inefficiency of NASA itself.
Already the ARES 1 rocket which would send men to orbit was delayed by a year from its original 2014 launch date. Such delays are the norm for NASA, but at what cost to the economy? No doubt astronomers and other scientists would frown upon any Obama administration's plan to slash their bloated pet projects. But unless they produce a viable technology that would be beneficial to the economy and the environment (two major issues facing a divided nation) we should at least delay these expensive projects, such as the Mars Science Laboratory.
I really hope that President Obama would instead force NASA to work on a cleaner jet engine technology, i.e., put back the Aeronautics in NASA. God knows we need a cleaner jet to travel across the globe. This would mean a significant cut in space based programs and a boost to aviation technology research and development projects like the X-43a hypersonic jet program.
For economic reason, I think we a manager, or at least, an engineer who thinks like a manager - someone who would for NASA to buck up.
Northern Lights
AURORA BOREALIS
Friday, December 12, 2008
Greed, not regulation!
Newsweek ran an interesting article today, in which Barrett Sheridan interviewed Yaron Brook head of Ayn Rand Institute. Being a staunch capitalists, Mr. Brook claims that the fundamental cause of the current financial meltdown was due to excess regulation of the financial market. One wonders if he was living on planet Earth for the past, oh I don't know, ten years or so?
If anything that the current collapse of gargantuan banks tells us is that the lack of regulation propelled these greedy bankers flaunt conventional wisdom and promoted sub-prime mortgage in the first place. Like the typical capitalist that he is, Mr. Brook claims regulation such as the Community Reinvestment Act was the hotbed for such financial derivatives mortgage securitization.
True, the CRA was enacted to ensure banks do not discriminate when lending to people with low incomes. But that does not give banks the authority to dole out mortgages with questionable practices to these low income borrowers at all.
What Mr. Brook doesn't understand is that the current financial collapse was, is due to the deregulation that capitalists like him lobbied the government - with the tacit support of another Rand follower, Alan Greenspan - to reduce the CRA to a meaningless piece of paper that's more worthy of a role as a toilet paper. Greenspan started deregulating the economy in the late 1990s, which Bush pushed to an overdrive in the last eight years. This gave bankers, well at least the greedy ones, the incentive to give out highly dubious mortgage loans to people who could not afford it, then securitizing these mortgages for profits god knows they can make if people start repaying their mortgage.
As it is, they couldn't, which meant that greedy bankers couldn't get their dirty hands on the interest on the securitized mortgages, which means they had to line up at Congress to get money. Funny how these capitalists cry out for government intervention when things go bad.
Point I'm trying to make here, is that the Mr. Brook's premise that regulation was the cause was illogical. If anything it is the greed of these bankers that rode down these financial institution in the first place.
If anything that the current collapse of gargantuan banks tells us is that the lack of regulation propelled these greedy bankers flaunt conventional wisdom and promoted sub-prime mortgage in the first place. Like the typical capitalist that he is, Mr. Brook claims regulation such as the Community Reinvestment Act was the hotbed for such financial derivatives mortgage securitization.
True, the CRA was enacted to ensure banks do not discriminate when lending to people with low incomes. But that does not give banks the authority to dole out mortgages with questionable practices to these low income borrowers at all.
What Mr. Brook doesn't understand is that the current financial collapse was, is due to the deregulation that capitalists like him lobbied the government - with the tacit support of another Rand follower, Alan Greenspan - to reduce the CRA to a meaningless piece of paper that's more worthy of a role as a toilet paper. Greenspan started deregulating the economy in the late 1990s, which Bush pushed to an overdrive in the last eight years. This gave bankers, well at least the greedy ones, the incentive to give out highly dubious mortgage loans to people who could not afford it, then securitizing these mortgages for profits god knows they can make if people start repaying their mortgage.
As it is, they couldn't, which meant that greedy bankers couldn't get their dirty hands on the interest on the securitized mortgages, which means they had to line up at Congress to get money. Funny how these capitalists cry out for government intervention when things go bad.
Point I'm trying to make here, is that the Mr. Brook's premise that regulation was the cause was illogical. If anything it is the greed of these bankers that rode down these financial institution in the first place.
Friday, December 5, 2008
Space exploration as a means to save the environment
Environmentalists, scientists, engineers and all those people with a PhDs, they've all point out that the reduction of green house effect is the numero uno on the list of things to do to save the Earth. I agree with them.
We need to change the way we produce the energy which drives our economy and to a lesser degree, our lives. We need to stop (or at least) consume less carbon producing fossil fuel. To that extent, yes we need to develop renewable resources to combat rising global temperatures.
But there is also another dimension to save the planet Earth, which is explosion of the human population.
The world would be inhabited by at least 9 billion human souls sometime in the next ten, twenty years or so. This exponential rise in the human population would put a strain on an increasingly burdened resources we have on this planet. By resources, I mean, water, oil, gas, coal and even the oxygen we breathe. The leaves only one way to solve this mess we're in: go up. Seriously!
Space is the next step in saving planet Earth. At the moment the giants of space exploration, i.e. NASA, ESA, JAXA and Burt Rutan's main goal in reaching the stars are either scientific (the search for E.T.) or commercial (satellites, the first orbital hotel, etc.). These agencies and corporations pour in vast amount of resources to explore the realms beyond our space just to produce the latest fashion trend, the fastest commercial aircraft and the lot.
Yet none of them thought of repopulating the human species to the heavens above as a solution to global warming, and to an extent, saving planet Earth.
Why would I consider this option, you might ask. The reason is, we simply do not have the resources to support life on dear old planet Earth. At the rate we are going right now, it would be a matter of decades before we ran out of oil that runs our cars. What then? Yes, we'll have a renewable energy by then, such as fusion technology, battery powered vehicles and so on.
But what about a place to live? We can just keep on building skyscrapers for a place to live. For one thing, where are we going to get all those iron we need to make steels? The answer lies, again, in space. The thousands of asteroids strewn across an orbit between Mars and Jupiter holds the key to mining these and other exotic resources.
The aspect would be the consumption of clean water, which would tend to spark wars between countries vying for them. Already, people in Zimbabwe are suffering due to a lack of clean water. India and Pakistan could go to war over their claims to a river which provides clean water for millions living near their borders. This burden could be elevated if we had a colony on Mars, where the ice caps could one day be melted to form vast oceans, which would then provide much needed supply of a vital ingredient for mankind.
But we don't have to go far in searching for water.
There are signs that our own moon could support life there, as evidenced by the discovery of polar ice caps. So a simple step to relieve the Earth from the burden of providing man with resources would be to build a permanent settlement on the lunar surface. Now, I'm thinking that such a settlement would be able to sustain millions of human beings on the lunar surface.
Hang on! Your asking, what about the technology to live in space? Well there's the rub. We can't just send a human being to space without finding a solution on how to live in space, can we? The answer of course, would be gleaned out of numerous experiments conducted on board space stations such as SkyLab, Mir and the International Space Station (ISS).
Problem is, there's a tendency that the space agencies across the globe to ignore the Noah's Ark nature of living in space and concentrate more on finding your friendly neighbourhood alien amoeba, bacterias and other such microscopic organisms. While such findings could provide valuable information on effects these microscopic organisms have on the human immune system, it should be used to produce vaccinations or cures to whatever disease the micro-organisms would inflict on us.
It would also be prudent to develop a completely new method to travel across the vast space to find a new home where man could live. Think of it as buying 13 cars to travel to the seven, different houses you own, Senator McCain. We need to stop relying on traditional hydrogen/oxygen based rocket engines and start researching a 'Warp Engine' technology as envisioned by Gene Roddenberry in Star Trek. Why not? I mean we are approaching a point in time where reality meets science fiction. So why not get a head start? We have the best brains and we can develop the resources to built such experimental devices. The largest particle collider in world at the Swiss-France border could be modified to carry out experiments which would reveal the possibility of such technology - so why not give it a go? What have we got to lose? Nothing, except the future of mankind.
Alright, I'll admit it. Such fictional concepts would take time to develop, centuries, if not decades. Yet it is imperative that we do not lose sight of the fact that the exponential rise in human population would deplete the resources available to us - probably by the end of the century. On that basis alone, we owe it to our future descendants the option of a permanent human settlement away from this green Earth.
So how about it? A game of golf on the sand dunes of Mars?
We need to change the way we produce the energy which drives our economy and to a lesser degree, our lives. We need to stop (or at least) consume less carbon producing fossil fuel. To that extent, yes we need to develop renewable resources to combat rising global temperatures.
But there is also another dimension to save the planet Earth, which is explosion of the human population.
The world would be inhabited by at least 9 billion human souls sometime in the next ten, twenty years or so. This exponential rise in the human population would put a strain on an increasingly burdened resources we have on this planet. By resources, I mean, water, oil, gas, coal and even the oxygen we breathe. The leaves only one way to solve this mess we're in: go up. Seriously!
Space is the next step in saving planet Earth. At the moment the giants of space exploration, i.e. NASA, ESA, JAXA and Burt Rutan's main goal in reaching the stars are either scientific (the search for E.T.) or commercial (satellites, the first orbital hotel, etc.). These agencies and corporations pour in vast amount of resources to explore the realms beyond our space just to produce the latest fashion trend, the fastest commercial aircraft and the lot.
Yet none of them thought of repopulating the human species to the heavens above as a solution to global warming, and to an extent, saving planet Earth.
Why would I consider this option, you might ask. The reason is, we simply do not have the resources to support life on dear old planet Earth. At the rate we are going right now, it would be a matter of decades before we ran out of oil that runs our cars. What then? Yes, we'll have a renewable energy by then, such as fusion technology, battery powered vehicles and so on.
But what about a place to live? We can just keep on building skyscrapers for a place to live. For one thing, where are we going to get all those iron we need to make steels? The answer lies, again, in space. The thousands of asteroids strewn across an orbit between Mars and Jupiter holds the key to mining these and other exotic resources.
The aspect would be the consumption of clean water, which would tend to spark wars between countries vying for them. Already, people in Zimbabwe are suffering due to a lack of clean water. India and Pakistan could go to war over their claims to a river which provides clean water for millions living near their borders. This burden could be elevated if we had a colony on Mars, where the ice caps could one day be melted to form vast oceans, which would then provide much needed supply of a vital ingredient for mankind.
But we don't have to go far in searching for water.
There are signs that our own moon could support life there, as evidenced by the discovery of polar ice caps. So a simple step to relieve the Earth from the burden of providing man with resources would be to build a permanent settlement on the lunar surface. Now, I'm thinking that such a settlement would be able to sustain millions of human beings on the lunar surface.
Hang on! Your asking, what about the technology to live in space? Well there's the rub. We can't just send a human being to space without finding a solution on how to live in space, can we? The answer of course, would be gleaned out of numerous experiments conducted on board space stations such as SkyLab, Mir and the International Space Station (ISS).
Problem is, there's a tendency that the space agencies across the globe to ignore the Noah's Ark nature of living in space and concentrate more on finding your friendly neighbourhood alien amoeba, bacterias and other such microscopic organisms. While such findings could provide valuable information on effects these microscopic organisms have on the human immune system, it should be used to produce vaccinations or cures to whatever disease the micro-organisms would inflict on us.
It would also be prudent to develop a completely new method to travel across the vast space to find a new home where man could live. Think of it as buying 13 cars to travel to the seven, different houses you own, Senator McCain. We need to stop relying on traditional hydrogen/oxygen based rocket engines and start researching a 'Warp Engine' technology as envisioned by Gene Roddenberry in Star Trek. Why not? I mean we are approaching a point in time where reality meets science fiction. So why not get a head start? We have the best brains and we can develop the resources to built such experimental devices. The largest particle collider in world at the Swiss-France border could be modified to carry out experiments which would reveal the possibility of such technology - so why not give it a go? What have we got to lose? Nothing, except the future of mankind.
Alright, I'll admit it. Such fictional concepts would take time to develop, centuries, if not decades. Yet it is imperative that we do not lose sight of the fact that the exponential rise in human population would deplete the resources available to us - probably by the end of the century. On that basis alone, we owe it to our future descendants the option of a permanent human settlement away from this green Earth.
So how about it? A game of golf on the sand dunes of Mars?
Getting the economy back on track
In my previous article on the bailout of US banks, I mentioned that the government should have bailed out the middle class instead. There was a slight problem in which I have overlooked in my article, namely the job loss and how it would force Americans onto the streets if Barack Obama carried out my plan. Well that's alright, since the answer to the loss of these American jobs would be to create more jobs.
Where to begin? Well for one thing the American infrastructure needs a complete overhaul. Years of neglect have worn out the roads, bridges, railroad tracks and buildings across the US. All these would require thousands of jobs, if not millions and governors of all 50 states have indicated that they would like the President-elect to inject billions into these projects. That's good, since the governors from both side of the aisle note that some states have run out of money in their treasuries to carry out such projects. Those engineers and technicians would be put to better use in addressing the neglected infrastructure in the US.
Then, there is the urgent need to centralize the health care database across the country. Hospitals and clinics across the country could benefit from a centralized database of patient records, thus eliminating the time taken in requesting patients' medical records should he or she cross state lines, thus cutting significantly health care costs in the US. This would require thousands computer scientists, software engineers, electronic engineers and etc. to synchronize the database. Again this requires some significant amount of federal funding, and the President-elect should have no problem in eliciting bipartisan support for such a program.
President-elect Obama could also create a tax-free zones across the US to promote existing and new green companies who could create, again, thousands, if not millions of jobs. These companies should be able to produce green technology products not only for America, but also for European nations who face a more assertive Russia in obtaining they current energy needs.
The President-elect should support a nationalization of the big three automakers in return for a federal bailout package. This would then ensure that the Americans could then concentrate on greening the American cars, which some of these automakers have already a head start.
Well these are just a few examples in which President-elect Obama could create jobs in America to promote a bailout plan for middle class Americans. The most important thing for the new administration is to stay open minded and be creative in its quest to improve the American economy.
Of course all these measures would be for nothing if the new President could not resolve the cause of the current depression through sweeping legislative reforms. In essence, President-elect Obama needs to prevent banks from getting greedy - again!
Where to begin? Well for one thing the American infrastructure needs a complete overhaul. Years of neglect have worn out the roads, bridges, railroad tracks and buildings across the US. All these would require thousands of jobs, if not millions and governors of all 50 states have indicated that they would like the President-elect to inject billions into these projects. That's good, since the governors from both side of the aisle note that some states have run out of money in their treasuries to carry out such projects. Those engineers and technicians would be put to better use in addressing the neglected infrastructure in the US.
Then, there is the urgent need to centralize the health care database across the country. Hospitals and clinics across the country could benefit from a centralized database of patient records, thus eliminating the time taken in requesting patients' medical records should he or she cross state lines, thus cutting significantly health care costs in the US. This would require thousands computer scientists, software engineers, electronic engineers and etc. to synchronize the database. Again this requires some significant amount of federal funding, and the President-elect should have no problem in eliciting bipartisan support for such a program.
President-elect Obama could also create a tax-free zones across the US to promote existing and new green companies who could create, again, thousands, if not millions of jobs. These companies should be able to produce green technology products not only for America, but also for European nations who face a more assertive Russia in obtaining they current energy needs.
The President-elect should support a nationalization of the big three automakers in return for a federal bailout package. This would then ensure that the Americans could then concentrate on greening the American cars, which some of these automakers have already a head start.
Well these are just a few examples in which President-elect Obama could create jobs in America to promote a bailout plan for middle class Americans. The most important thing for the new administration is to stay open minded and be creative in its quest to improve the American economy.
Of course all these measures would be for nothing if the new President could not resolve the cause of the current depression through sweeping legislative reforms. In essence, President-elect Obama needs to prevent banks from getting greedy - again!
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton? I don't think so!
When President-elect Barack Obama announced Hillary Clinton as his choice for the Secretary of State, I had no qualms with his choice, that is, until I watched CNN Presents Scream Bloody Murder by Christiane Amanpour.
The program was thorough investigation into genocides across the world, namely the killing fields of Cambodia, to the Balkan conflict in which Bosnian Muslims were slaughtered by Serbian forces, the Saddam Hussein's use of American made chemical weapons on Kurdish civilians in northern Iraq, the massacre of Tutsi minorities by Hutu extremists in Rwanda and finally the Sudan genocide in which the impotence of the United Nations was made clear - yet again.
What does these conflicts have to do with Hillary Clinton you might ask? Well I'm not going into all of them except for the Balkan war and the Rwandan genocide, two tragic conflicts that happened while Hillary's significant other, Bill was the President
First the Balkan wars. At the time of Clinton's accession, the Balkan wars were already underway, with Slobodan Milosevic, began to, shall we say, cleanse Yugoslavia of the Muslims and Croats who defile the Serbian motherland with their existence. Richard Holbrooke, a top US diplomat, pleaded for the newly elected President Clinton to employ US forces to halt the escalating situation in the Balkans. Clinton refused, leading the Serbians with a free hand to perpetuate the massacre in Srebenica. Only when the graveness of the situation in Bosnia became clear to the his administration that President Clinton sent in US forces to attack Serbian military assets. It too little, too late. The Dayton Peace Accord did not bring Milosevic to justice as should be done. Instead Milosevic was free to prepare for another war, this time in Kosovo four years later.
The Rwandan genocide presents another dark spot in Hillary's resume. The situation in Rwanda could have been resolved or at the very least, prevented the genocide of Tutsis with much less resources than the Balkan conflict required. According to Lieutenant General Romeo Dallaire, commander of the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) all that was required from the international community was 5,000 additional troops. But again, President Clinton failed to rally the international community, which instead called for UNAMIR to leave the country. The price for this failure: 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu lives.
These are just two of President Bill Clinton's failure. There was also the incident in Somalia, in which US special forces were engaged with local rebel militias, chronicled in the book Black Hawk Down. What about the CIA's plan to capture Osama bin Laden from Kabul prior to the US Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
These issues alone should have given President-elect Obama the justification in rejecting Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, for it questions her ability to handle a crisis in foreign hotspot. Yet, Mr. Obama wants to build a team of rivals. Whether this team would gel together is another question left for historians to decide.
As for me, do I think Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State would be good for President-elect Obama's administration? Based on the above evidences - I don't think so!
The program was thorough investigation into genocides across the world, namely the killing fields of Cambodia, to the Balkan conflict in which Bosnian Muslims were slaughtered by Serbian forces, the Saddam Hussein's use of American made chemical weapons on Kurdish civilians in northern Iraq, the massacre of Tutsi minorities by Hutu extremists in Rwanda and finally the Sudan genocide in which the impotence of the United Nations was made clear - yet again.
What does these conflicts have to do with Hillary Clinton you might ask? Well I'm not going into all of them except for the Balkan war and the Rwandan genocide, two tragic conflicts that happened while Hillary's significant other, Bill was the President
First the Balkan wars. At the time of Clinton's accession, the Balkan wars were already underway, with Slobodan Milosevic, began to, shall we say, cleanse Yugoslavia of the Muslims and Croats who defile the Serbian motherland with their existence. Richard Holbrooke, a top US diplomat, pleaded for the newly elected President Clinton to employ US forces to halt the escalating situation in the Balkans. Clinton refused, leading the Serbians with a free hand to perpetuate the massacre in Srebenica. Only when the graveness of the situation in Bosnia became clear to the his administration that President Clinton sent in US forces to attack Serbian military assets. It too little, too late. The Dayton Peace Accord did not bring Milosevic to justice as should be done. Instead Milosevic was free to prepare for another war, this time in Kosovo four years later.
The Rwandan genocide presents another dark spot in Hillary's resume. The situation in Rwanda could have been resolved or at the very least, prevented the genocide of Tutsis with much less resources than the Balkan conflict required. According to Lieutenant General Romeo Dallaire, commander of the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) all that was required from the international community was 5,000 additional troops. But again, President Clinton failed to rally the international community, which instead called for UNAMIR to leave the country. The price for this failure: 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu lives.
These are just two of President Bill Clinton's failure. There was also the incident in Somalia, in which US special forces were engaged with local rebel militias, chronicled in the book Black Hawk Down. What about the CIA's plan to capture Osama bin Laden from Kabul prior to the US Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
These issues alone should have given President-elect Obama the justification in rejecting Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, for it questions her ability to handle a crisis in foreign hotspot. Yet, Mr. Obama wants to build a team of rivals. Whether this team would gel together is another question left for historians to decide.
As for me, do I think Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State would be good for President-elect Obama's administration? Based on the above evidences - I don't think so!
Of Religion and Politics
The recent rise of the religious right in American politics should be of great concern for all rational, peace loving people across the globe. Though its not the first time religious issue was exploited to ensure a Repucblican victory in Presidential elections, it certainly woould not stop the GOP from the tried and successful tactic.
Religion was first exploited by the Republican nominee for President, Richard Nixon in the 1968 elections. The popular sentiments among the Southerners back then was their traditional party, the Democratic Party, sold them out on the issue of civil rights. By approving legislative agendas in repealing segregationist laws, the then President Lyndon B. Johnson created a perfect storm between white America and people of colored. For awhile, the Republicans did not have the proper response to the perceived threat to the white America - that is until Nixon ran for the office of the President of the United States for the second time in eight years.
Since Nixon won his first election in 1968, the Republicans won the race for White House three out of nine elections, prior to the 2008 elections.
President Jimmy Carter won the 1976 elections riding the wave of resentment voters felt towards the Republicans over the Watergate scandal. President Nixon was forced to resign when two investigative journalists ran a story that revealed the involvement of the White House in a burglary at the Democratic Party's headquarters, located at the Watergate Hotel.
Carter went on to lose the White House to Ronald Reagan in the 1980 elections, who exploited the siege of the American Embassy at Tehran, the gay and women's rights movement (both perceived as a threat to the religious right in the wake of the civil rights victory for minorities) and Carter's unpopular remedy for the tanking US economy, which was increasing the interest rate by the Federal Reserve, later proved as the single most important factor in stabilizing the economy.
Reagan, basking in the religious right's fervent rhetoric over the issue of homosexuality and women's rights in the 1970s, went on to cut taxes, reduce government spending and challenge the Soviet Union to tear down the Wall at Berlin. His optimistic leadership style did not waver even under mounting criticism for the handling the Iran Contra issue and the shooting down of a Korean airliner over Soviet airspace, among other things. Yet he was remembered as the man responsible for bringing down the 'Evil Empire' as he would call the Soviet Union, in quantifying the fight against the communist regime as evil versus the forces of good.
The election of the first Bush, George Herbert Walker Bush to the office was seen as a continuation of Reagan's agenda. Bush Sr. led an international force to repel Saddam Hussein's army from Kuwait. Yet, the in the election of 1992, the economy would take a backseat to religious fervor.
Bill Clinton, who won the election on the agenda to reform our economy went on the raise taxes to the top earners in the country, gave women the rights to carry out abortion legally, promoted gun control legislation and concentrate on reducing emissions in the fight against global warming.
Then came the infamous 2000 Presidential elections. The might of the religious right, waned during the 1990s prosperous Clinton years, came back in full force to elect George Walker Bush, the son of Bush Sr., to the office. Bush Junior instituted the disastrous tax cuts, gave preference, gun lobbyists, oil corporations and defense contractors preference in his legislative agenda for two consecutive terms. The rest as they say, is history.
The 2008 Presidential Elections campaign set some historic precedents, namely a woman, a Latino, and another African American running for the nomination of the Democratic Party. The unusually long race culminated in an African American gaining a major party's nomination for the Presidency in for the first time in American history. The Republicans created history too, by appointing its first female nominee for the vice-presidency.
The 2008 campaign saw some of the worst in American politics, with the religious right's rhetoric would escalate, soliciting violent tendencies among the public divided over the role of religion and race in American politics.
The challenge now for the new President, is to reassert the constitutional requirements that the church should be separated from the machinations of the state.
Religion was first exploited by the Republican nominee for President, Richard Nixon in the 1968 elections. The popular sentiments among the Southerners back then was their traditional party, the Democratic Party, sold them out on the issue of civil rights. By approving legislative agendas in repealing segregationist laws, the then President Lyndon B. Johnson created a perfect storm between white America and people of colored. For awhile, the Republicans did not have the proper response to the perceived threat to the white America - that is until Nixon ran for the office of the President of the United States for the second time in eight years.
Since Nixon won his first election in 1968, the Republicans won the race for White House three out of nine elections, prior to the 2008 elections.
President Jimmy Carter won the 1976 elections riding the wave of resentment voters felt towards the Republicans over the Watergate scandal. President Nixon was forced to resign when two investigative journalists ran a story that revealed the involvement of the White House in a burglary at the Democratic Party's headquarters, located at the Watergate Hotel.
Carter went on to lose the White House to Ronald Reagan in the 1980 elections, who exploited the siege of the American Embassy at Tehran, the gay and women's rights movement (both perceived as a threat to the religious right in the wake of the civil rights victory for minorities) and Carter's unpopular remedy for the tanking US economy, which was increasing the interest rate by the Federal Reserve, later proved as the single most important factor in stabilizing the economy.
Reagan, basking in the religious right's fervent rhetoric over the issue of homosexuality and women's rights in the 1970s, went on to cut taxes, reduce government spending and challenge the Soviet Union to tear down the Wall at Berlin. His optimistic leadership style did not waver even under mounting criticism for the handling the Iran Contra issue and the shooting down of a Korean airliner over Soviet airspace, among other things. Yet he was remembered as the man responsible for bringing down the 'Evil Empire' as he would call the Soviet Union, in quantifying the fight against the communist regime as evil versus the forces of good.
The election of the first Bush, George Herbert Walker Bush to the office was seen as a continuation of Reagan's agenda. Bush Sr. led an international force to repel Saddam Hussein's army from Kuwait. Yet, the in the election of 1992, the economy would take a backseat to religious fervor.
Bill Clinton, who won the election on the agenda to reform our economy went on the raise taxes to the top earners in the country, gave women the rights to carry out abortion legally, promoted gun control legislation and concentrate on reducing emissions in the fight against global warming.
Then came the infamous 2000 Presidential elections. The might of the religious right, waned during the 1990s prosperous Clinton years, came back in full force to elect George Walker Bush, the son of Bush Sr., to the office. Bush Junior instituted the disastrous tax cuts, gave preference, gun lobbyists, oil corporations and defense contractors preference in his legislative agenda for two consecutive terms. The rest as they say, is history.
The 2008 Presidential Elections campaign set some historic precedents, namely a woman, a Latino, and another African American running for the nomination of the Democratic Party. The unusually long race culminated in an African American gaining a major party's nomination for the Presidency in for the first time in American history. The Republicans created history too, by appointing its first female nominee for the vice-presidency.
The 2008 campaign saw some of the worst in American politics, with the religious right's rhetoric would escalate, soliciting violent tendencies among the public divided over the role of religion and race in American politics.
The challenge now for the new President, is to reassert the constitutional requirements that the church should be separated from the machinations of the state.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Why a President Bobby Jindal would be dangerous to India
In the wake of Barack Obama's victory on November 4, the Republican party was in a soul searching mode, looking for ways to win back both the Congress and the White House they lost to Democrats. All that is needed was for a GOP's own Obama - someone young and fresh and not a Washington insider (Obama spent two years in the US Senate before running for the White House). It did not take the Republicans long to find one in Bobby Jindal, the Louisiana Governor.
The prospect of Jindal running for President in 2012 is stirring the battered Republican base, not to mention the Indian diaspora living and working in America, and across the globe. Many among the community believe that an American President of Indian origin would be beneficial to a country already battered by the brazen attacks on Mumbai last week.
With all due respect, I beg to differ. I believe that a President Jindal would be a disaster for India for several reasons.
First and foremost, it is his religion that would cause great concern for an Indian, not that I'm saying that there's something wrong with being a Christian. Rather the brand of Christianity that he practices could raise eyebrows among any sane minds. His unequivocal support for teaching creationism is one. Abortion is another issue in which he has shown a strain of infamous right wing Republicans. All this while still supporting a war on a nation inflicted with pain and suffering for the better part of two decades. This is what Friedrich Nietzsche would call a slave morality complex.
In his work Daybreak: Reflections on Moral Prejudices, Nietzsche proposed that Christianity presents itself as slaves, exhibiting and promoting values such as charity, piety, meekness, restrain and subservience to overrun their masters (i.e., the Romans of the biblical times), thus gaining power and promoting the above mentioned values to the broader society. The problem with Christianity, according to Nietzsche, is that it preaches the above values yet at the same time, condemning and punishing others for pursuing their free will.
In that respect, the Republicans in general and Bobby Jindal specifically with regards to this discussion, the latter worked hard to pass legislation that has consistently persecuted individuals for exercising their individual rights rather than the beliefs of certain groups (or rather, the Evangelicals, in particular). For give me for saying so, but did not the forefathers of the United States of America promoted the separation of Church and State as a concept for a new nation, where individuals are free from the rigorous persecution by the Church?
Yet, the Republicans since Richard Nixon has consistently persecuted individuals for the asserting their rights as enshrined in the constitution of the US.
Indian-Americans, and their fellow Indians from across the globe should beware of such a man as Jindal, for, in his eagerness to attain political power, he would not hesitate to please the right-wing elements in the US by abolishing the basic human rights of those who does not share his Christian values.
As with Bush, a President Jindal would pursue with zeal, a faith based foreign policies, such as the misguided War on Terror against the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and their allies around the globe. Another example would be Bush's delusion in which he proclaims that God has spoken to him, instructing him to create a Palestinian state for the Palestine living under the brutal occupation of the Israeli regime, Bobby Jindal would no doubt will implement such policy in the name of God. He would not hesitate to preach Christianity to India's Hindu majority, through any means necessary. Such controversial move would inflame the right wing elements in the Hindu community to act against any perceived threat to their cultural and religious existence (what those responses would be, I do not dare to speculate).
At a time when the Hindus in India should remove the shackles of discrimination that binds minorities in the country to poverty - which promotes hatred towards the Hindu majority that is being exploited by Al-Qaeda and its Pakistani allies for their own means - the election of Bobby Jindal to the most powerful office in the world would prevent such reforms India desperately needs in an era where non-state terrorism presents the greatest threat to its existence.
In essence, such a man would bring the downfall of India, which I am sure the Indian Americans would not want to be responsible for.
The prospect of Jindal running for President in 2012 is stirring the battered Republican base, not to mention the Indian diaspora living and working in America, and across the globe. Many among the community believe that an American President of Indian origin would be beneficial to a country already battered by the brazen attacks on Mumbai last week.
With all due respect, I beg to differ. I believe that a President Jindal would be a disaster for India for several reasons.
First and foremost, it is his religion that would cause great concern for an Indian, not that I'm saying that there's something wrong with being a Christian. Rather the brand of Christianity that he practices could raise eyebrows among any sane minds. His unequivocal support for teaching creationism is one. Abortion is another issue in which he has shown a strain of infamous right wing Republicans. All this while still supporting a war on a nation inflicted with pain and suffering for the better part of two decades. This is what Friedrich Nietzsche would call a slave morality complex.
In his work Daybreak: Reflections on Moral Prejudices, Nietzsche proposed that Christianity presents itself as slaves, exhibiting and promoting values such as charity, piety, meekness, restrain and subservience to overrun their masters (i.e., the Romans of the biblical times), thus gaining power and promoting the above mentioned values to the broader society. The problem with Christianity, according to Nietzsche, is that it preaches the above values yet at the same time, condemning and punishing others for pursuing their free will.
In that respect, the Republicans in general and Bobby Jindal specifically with regards to this discussion, the latter worked hard to pass legislation that has consistently persecuted individuals for exercising their individual rights rather than the beliefs of certain groups (or rather, the Evangelicals, in particular). For give me for saying so, but did not the forefathers of the United States of America promoted the separation of Church and State as a concept for a new nation, where individuals are free from the rigorous persecution by the Church?
Yet, the Republicans since Richard Nixon has consistently persecuted individuals for the asserting their rights as enshrined in the constitution of the US.
Indian-Americans, and their fellow Indians from across the globe should beware of such a man as Jindal, for, in his eagerness to attain political power, he would not hesitate to please the right-wing elements in the US by abolishing the basic human rights of those who does not share his Christian values.
As with Bush, a President Jindal would pursue with zeal, a faith based foreign policies, such as the misguided War on Terror against the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and their allies around the globe. Another example would be Bush's delusion in which he proclaims that God has spoken to him, instructing him to create a Palestinian state for the Palestine living under the brutal occupation of the Israeli regime, Bobby Jindal would no doubt will implement such policy in the name of God. He would not hesitate to preach Christianity to India's Hindu majority, through any means necessary. Such controversial move would inflame the right wing elements in the Hindu community to act against any perceived threat to their cultural and religious existence (what those responses would be, I do not dare to speculate).
At a time when the Hindus in India should remove the shackles of discrimination that binds minorities in the country to poverty - which promotes hatred towards the Hindu majority that is being exploited by Al-Qaeda and its Pakistani allies for their own means - the election of Bobby Jindal to the most powerful office in the world would prevent such reforms India desperately needs in an era where non-state terrorism presents the greatest threat to its existence.
In essence, such a man would bring the downfall of India, which I am sure the Indian Americans would not want to be responsible for.
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