Lasting Rose

Despite the gloss over Ann Romney tried to give the historic improvisation of Clint Eastwood, who tried to address and insult an invisible Barack Obama who had no way of fefending himself, the Democrats will be eager to pull off something in return at the DNC.
Letting the GOP get away with a piece of stage drama to score a political point against them will be a political sin the democrats can't afford. They can't let the insult go away unpunished like the way the convention managed an important debilitating debate on abortion, which preceded it, to totally disappear from the agenda.
Though it may not be entirely in style for a sitting president, who has already declared that he is no way offended by the episode, to stoop to such silly political theatre, it actually gives Barack Obama a precious chance to defend his records by "Eastwooding" George Bush. After all, Bush, from whom he inherited the economic mess, was conspicuously absent from the RNC to evade having to defend his poor record which would definitely have hurt the claims of the GOP.
George Bush must have evaded the convention under pressure from the GOP, precisely not to remind anyone of his legacy or what the Republicans really did to the US economy in the eight years they were in power. In any case, George Bush couldn't have defended his record convincingly and might have ended up with embarrassing remarks, for which he has a solid record, which might have turned in to the high lights of the convention.
Though George Bush himself was on record about his decision to stay away from the convention, For the GOP itself, who is trying to win back the power in Washington, not being able to hold their ex president in front of the nation, as a guarantee of the rosy state of affairs they promise, is an indefensible weakness.
Whether the political managers of the Democratic Party can see this massive hole in the defence of the GOP and capitalise on it can make a real difference to the message they will transmit from Charlotte in the next few days.
Under normal circumstances any attempt by President Obama and his party to go back several years in history to defend their records would have been torn apart by the GOP as weak defence for incompetence. However, the GOP can no more complain about being unduly attacked if some one will do an "Eastwooding" on any of their leaders as they have publicly praised and justified what the Octogenarian Hollywood icon has enacted during the RNC.
But what will be the best way to delicately tap in to the enormous opportunity must be the thought which has kept the DNC managers sleepless for last week. Obviously a copy cat performance by another celebrity or any of the leaders will be deemed ridiculous and can easily backfire.
Their best bet is President himself, who has time and again proved his entertainer appeal, especially during the White House Correspondents Dinner Speech. Obama has proved not only that he can pull off effective jabs at his political opponents, but that he can do such things convincingly while unbelievably difficult situations like the operation Geronimo was being carried out under his command. President Obama no doubt is as much a theatrical performer as Clint Eastwood is.
It is hard to see that Barack Obama and his political managers will let such an opportunity go untapped. A rebuttal in some form or the other must be expected. It will certainly be one of the high points of the DNC.
In what form and way the president will deliver that will determine the political maturing of Barack Obama.

Monumental ignorance of its politicians like Akin, Palin, Ryan and Romney, exposed through their statements, shape public opinion and the course of the presidential election in the US.

In India, the ignorance of the electorate and their inability to grasp complex issues, which the political opposition try to capitalise to portray Prime Minister Dr Man Mohan Singh as India's most corrupt leader, are likely to get him elected for a third term, despite his reticence to fend off unethical and motivated charges of corruption.

In all fairness, the eighty years old Singh, who boosted India's growth rate by bold fiscal action and little ado, must be looking forward to a quiet life at the end of his term ending in 2014. However, the bizarre Indian "politics of allegations of corruption" is shaping and fostering a third term of incumbency on this reluctant economist, who the rest of the world look towards as a Guru and an honest man.

Do people blog about disgusting and macabre dreams? I don't know. Here is something to cheer you up! My next book titled "Merchant of Macabre Dreams" is ready for writing. All I need is someone with the heart of little Alice, ready to be awed and terrified, someone who can't get up alone in the night for a wee. Curious? Dial M for Macabre Dreams.

It is really huge and crowded. I am inside some sort of a rail terminal with huge rounded roof but all very dark inside, amidst milling crowd of being who resemblance humans. Don't know if I am coming or going. Where to? Where from? No idea. Well, perhaps not much to write home about a dream. After all Chinese rail stations must be really crowded like anywhere in the world.
This is intriguing. I must be in a star hotel, in a lobby with high ceiling, heavily ornate wooden panels all around, smartly dressed hotel staff busily busying around amidst huge plants, greenery and fountains. Nothing unusual except I have no idea about which one it was. I have never stayed in a Chinese hotel or been to China.
This is the disgusting part. I am searching for something frantically. Though I feel being in a room I can still see the hotel staff and greenery around me. I am pulling off empty draws one after the other for whatever I was searching. Now you won't believe this. Suddenly, I am reliving myself in one of the draws I just pulled out. I can't believe it either. My very own s*** in a clean white draw with some of the hotel staff around me looking at it. I can't think of or remember their expression. Some of the girls were definitely giggling.
This is where it gets really exciting! I am in a bath room, standing under a really lavish warm shower. I look up and realise that there is no shower head. In fact the shower is pouring across from bath room next to mine, over a frosted glass wall. Suddenly, I notice through the glass the outlines of what looked like a female human body, covered in lather. Wow! Am I not lucky for a bonus gift from the hotel?
Well, not exactly. Suddenly the shower recedes and the body reaches out for a towel and wipe to reveal, what was more likely a male figure. Not very exciting, at least for me!
This is the macabre bit. All I know is that I am running down a hill leaving the tall building of the hotel amidst a lot of others, from a silhouette which looked like a busy down town. I have jumped inside a waiting bus. Now I look for an empty seat. This is where it gets really horrible. All I can see are strange human bodies with huge disfigured faces with waves of massive yellow wrinkles. Quite frightening! I move from body to body trying to jump out of the bus, with no success. Frankly there was nothing Chinese about this nerve shacking experience.
Perhaps my dream has very scientific explanation. I don't know. May be some one can throw some light.

There are ways to test the worth of things. But the means of real tests are always harsh and bruising like the touchstone on which you rub your gold nugget to see if it is genuine. For Harvard, the proof of the pudding is when its alumni get roasted in the harshest ovens of real life business and come out shining.

Palaniyappan Chidambaram, an alumnus of Harvard, is about to prove his worth with another stint as India's Finance Minister. But in his case, his nemesis and his biggest distracter is also an ex professor of Harvard, Dr Subramanian Swamy.

The problem is that, to gain the confidence of foreign investors, Chidambaram has to find ways to arrest and reverse the powerful negative trend in India's growth which has ended up in a yawning gap in the nation's fiscal balance and high inflation, left behind by his predecessor and the new Indian President Pranab Mukherjee. Perhaps this was also the main reason behind the decision of the UPA leadership to project Pranab Mukherjee as the presidential candidate.

Moreover, since his last stint, despite the confidence of the political leadership he enjoys and repeatedly publicly proclaimed by the Prime Minister, Chidambaram is confronted with a variety of allegations from electoral tinkering to corruption.

While being the country's Finance Minister, Chidambaram has also to fight off extreme political attacks and damaging allegations of corruption, pending legal scrutiny in the courts, which Dr Swamy and the main opposition BJP are spearheading, making his task really daunting for any politician.

To be fair to Chidambaram, he has already been credited with some convincing reforms to India's archaic investment framework during his stint as the Finance Minister during the previous government of the United Progressive alliance of Sonia Gandhi.

Though Chidambaram had to leave the position in the Finance Ministry with an unfinished agenda in the wake of the 9/11 Mumbai Terror attack to take over the Home Ministry, at the behest of the party leadership, unfortunately, no one gives him the credit for stabilizing the country's governance and internal security with swift and decisive actions. Like everywhere good acts in politics have no rewards in India too.

However the impressive measures of modernisation and reforms he undertook as the finance minister is much recognised by the foreign and Indian business community.

In fact this is the main reason why the sentiment of foreign investors has been boosted raising the NIFTY a couple of hundred points since his elevation, from the beginning of the month, as the Finance Minister by the Prime Minister Dr Man Mohan Singh.

Though the political baggage he has to carry is making his task of putting the country's economy back on track extremely hard, his task is in fact not only important for India and its future but is vital for the survival of the UPA and its success in the elections to be held in 2014.

It is this imperative against which Chidambaram's mettle being tested which makes his actions and steps so vital to the world investors looking for successful business in India. It looks like the UPA leadership has realised that it is time for decisive action if the government has to expect another term after the next elections. This will certainly strengthen the hands of the new Finance Minister, giving hope to the investors in India and abroad.

However, a host of other issues from land reforms to mining and power generation which are outside of the Finance Minister's control also need to be sorted out on extremely high priority, which will decide Chidambaram's success in turning the economy around.

So far, it looks like Chidambaram has been successful in boosting the sentiments by quick and decisivemeasures and steps everyone has appreciated. Whether he will be able to carry through the political anarchy which modern India is turning in to through the so called civil society and anti corruption movement of Anna Hazare and others is a matter to see.

If what Harvard instilled in the Finance Minister by his education will stand him in his seemingly gargantuan tasks of being decisive and taking assertive actions in the face of furious opposition, the world famous university can really be proud.