Do you still have ANY doubt as to how this Presidential race is going to end in a few weeks? I can point you to at least one person who is betting on an Obama victory [via Politico]:
The key word that should grab your attention in the flyer above is “Iowa,” the location of Jindal’s fundraiser. Piyush “Bobby” Jindal has just begun campaigning for the Republican nomination in 2012. The other thing to note are the endorsements in the bottom left. I had planned on writing this post all week (even before seeing this flyer) based on some circumstantial evidence I had turned up. This just ended any doubt.
After a weekend of discussing all the hate and intolerance surrounding the U.S. Presidential campaign, I just couldn’t go to bed without doing something to help cleanse our collective palate of the distasteful business. And so, let me point you to some cute pictures and a story in the Daily Mail that will help you feel all warm and fuzzy again…for a few moments.
When two white tiger cubs were born during a hurricane they had to be separated from their mother after their sanctuary flooded. However they have since found an unlikely surrogate mother in chimpanzee Anjana, who has taken on the role of caring for the cubs….
‘Mitra and Shiva, were born during Hurricane Hannah,’ said Dr Bhagavan, founder of TIGERS. “During that time everything flooded in the sanctuary and they had to be moved into the house as their mother became stressed.
‘It was important for their safety that they were separated.’
Placed into the care of infant animal care giver China and her chimpanzee companion, Anjna, the cubs have become almost inseparable from their new motherly figures. [Link]
There are a lot more cute pictures embedded in the article.
Things from the campaign trail keep getting uglier. Here is what went down at a rally in Davenport, Iowa TODAY:
At a McCain event, as the crowd waited for McCain himself to arrive, Pastor Arnold Conrad of the Grace Evangelical Free Church of Davenport, Iowa, gave an invocation that included the following: “I would also pray, Lord, that your reputation is involved in all that happens between now and November, because there are millions of people around this world praying to their god–whether it’s Hindu, Buddha, Allah–that his opponent wins, for a variety of reasons. And Lord, I pray that you will guard your own reputation, because they’re going to think that their God is bigger than you, if that happens. So I pray that you will step forward and honor your own name with all that happens between now and Election Day.” [Link]
First of all, even the hate speech itself demonstrates gross ignorance. For goodness sake, if you are going to be a bigot at least have the courtesy to be a bigot that makes sense. “Hindu” and “Buddha” aren’t gods. Millions of people don’t worship “Hindu.” Furthermore, all three of the Abrahamic religions worship the same God, Muslims just call him Allah. Geez, can anyone just sign up to be a pastor? This was the invocation that started off the rally before McCain even arrived. I guess they wanted to get the crowd in the mood.
Update: Video is now up (thanks to commenter “baplog”)
Here was the McCain campaign’s official response:
McCain Iowa spokeswoman Wendy Rieman: “While we understand the important role that faith plays in informing the votes of Iowans, questions about the religious background of the candidates serve to distract from the real questions in this race about Barack Obama’s judgment, policies and readiness to lead as commander in chief.” [link]
Yes, we wouldn’t want to distract from real issues. Right.
Where is there really to go from there?
ABC News’ Imtiyaz Delawala, traveling with Palin, reports that a Palin supporter in Johnstown, Pa., today was holding a Curious George monkey doll on which he’d put an Obama sticker. [Link]
If I was Delawala I’d ask for a bodyguard while reporting. All of this is increasingly troubling. After the attacks on September 11th there was a backlash that included violence against anyone perceived to be a Muslim. Should we be worrying about the same thing if Obama should win?
McCain isn’t the only trailing Republican candidate whose campaign tactics are getting increasingly nasty. Erik Paulsen of Minnesota is giving him a run for his money. Months back I observed how eerily similar Madia’s campaign against Paulsen is to Obama’s against McCain’s. A week ago Amardeep followed up with more nastiness. And now the s*it gets deeper:
While Republican Party representatives took heat this week for claiming in fliers that DFL candidate Ashwin Madia had the “wrong demographics” to serve the people of the 3rd Congressional District, they got off lightly with respect to the not-so-veiled undercurrent in their attack on Madia’s “lifestyle.” By larding in mentions of Madia’s household (he’s a renter, not an owner) and his hobbies (he’s not a soccer coach), the tacit insinuation that Madia must be gay is made easier to politely ignore. But it appears to be the real payload behind GOP efforts to point out Madia’s purported, um, difference from the stolid homesteaders of the 3rd District.
“Gutter politics are a gross insult to the good people of our district,” Rep. Jim Ramstad said Tuesday while praising Republican candidate Erik Paulsen for upholding of the “proud tradition of clean politics and ethical campaigns.” But as history demonstrates, there is a long and unadmirable record of flogging a political opponent’s unmarried status as a genteel means of throwing the race into the gutter. And since no accusation is ever actually made, the implication is not really susceptible to rebuttal. It just hangs out there with a wink. [link]
Got that? Not only is Paulsen’s campaign implying that he is “the wrong demographic” (ethnically) but now they are hinting that because he is ~30 and single he might be gay. Geez, and you thought desi parents were the ones putting on the marriage pressure! Now for some good news. SurveyUSA and DNCC internal polling shows that Madia may actually be up on Paulsen. The expected high Democratic turnout may further boost Madia via the coattail effect:
SurveyUSA (10/6-7, likely voters, 8/26-28 in parens):
Ashwin Madia (D): 46 (41) Erik Paulsen (R): 43 (44) David Dillon (IP): 8 (MoE: ±4%)
These numbers aren’t far off from a recent DCCC internal poll showing Madia leading by 44-39. SUSA still seems to have a questionably GOP-tilted sample of young voters (they break for Paulsen by a 51-40 margin in this poll), but that might be offset by a possibly-skewed 53-38 Madia lead among 50-to-64 year-olds. [Link]
I recently came across some music on LA’s KCRW by Nicholas Giacomini who goes by the name “MC Yogi.” He’s got an eclectic backstory:
Inspired by artists like the Beastie Boys and Run DMC, he began writing and performing his own raps for friends at house parties. He spent most of his high school years at a group home for at-risk youth, and Hip hop culture provided both a soundtrack and a creative outlet during those turbulent teenage years. Then at age 18 he discovered yoga.
On a whim, he joined his father for a yoga and meditation intensive with a famous spiritual teacher from India. Deeply moved by this powerful experience, MC YOGI devoted himself to learning everything he could about the ancient discipline. He began studying the physical forms of yoga, as well as meditation, philosophy, and devotional chanting.
It was at a yoga teacher training program in San Francisco that he met and fell in love with his wife, Amanda. After there first trip to India, they opened Yoga Toes Studio in Point Reyes, California, where they currently reside.
By combining his knowledge of yoga with his love for hip hop music, MC YOGI creates an exciting new sound that brings the wisdom of yoga to a whole new generation of modern mystics and urban yogis. [Link]
I’m digging this. Given some of his subject matter it has the potential to come across as really cheesy but the dude rhymes with heart and without a hint of being self-conscious. Here MC Yogi raps about Gandhi to some kids (at a Yoga camp I think):
White House pool reporter Goyal asked Dana Perino a question in today’s regular press briefing (I guess a few reporters still bother to show up to hear what the Bush administration has to say):
Go ahead, Goyal.
Q Two quick questions — thank you, Dana. One, as far as this deal to be signed by the President this afternoon, what you think this deal will do in the future as far as U.S.-India relations are concerned? You think this deal will strengthen —
MS. PERINO: You know what I think I’ll do? In about an hour and a half, you can hear the President himself, and he’ll say it better than I will, so I’ll refer you to him. [Link]
And with that I believe Goyal wet himself. The President himself would appear to take THAT question.
Was the Secret Service really that ok with him being surrounded by this many brown folks at once? I’m just saying.
The President signed in to law today H.R. 7081, the United States-India Nuclear Cooperation Approval and Nonproliferation Enhancement Act. The deal was passed by Congress just last week.
Continue reading →
Last week Nina Shen Rastogi at Slate asked the question, “If we’re in the midst of a financial collapse, why aren’t executives jumping out of office buildings?”
Because the current situation hasn’t had nearly as devastating an effect on people’s personal finances. The Great Crash of 1929–and, to a lesser extent, the crash of 1987–did lead some people to commit suicide. But in nearly all of those cases, the deceased had suffered a major loss when the market collapsed. Now, due in large part to those earlier experiences, investors tend to keep their portfolios far more diversified, so as to avoid having their entire fortunes wiped out when stocks take a downturn. In addition, some of the worst declines in the past week have been limited to a smaller number of companies (such as Lehman Bros., Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs), further limiting the potential damage to individual investors. [Link]
Sadly, we may be about to see people’s personal finances affected if things keep going bad. This afternoon there was tragic news out of the San Fernando Valley. An out-of-work Indian American financial advisor killed his wife, mother-in-law and three young sons before turning the gun on himself:
“We believe this to be a murder-suicide,” Moore said. “It appears [the gunman] killed his family and then took his own life.”
The bodies of the man’s 39-year-old wife, 70-year-old mother-in-law, and three sons — ages 19, 12 and 7 — were found inside the home’s various bedrooms. Authorities had earlier said that one of the victims was the gunman’s mother but now say it was his mother-in-law.
Friends and neighbors identified the couple as Karthik and Subasri Rajaram, who had lived in the neighborhood for a few years.
Moore said police believe that the gunman shot the victims sometime after 6 p.m. Saturday, and that he had left behind three letters indicating that he had carried out the killings. One letter, addressed to law enforcement, confessed to the shootings. He wrote a second letter to friends. The third letter, police said, appeared to be a will.
Moore said Rajaram had previously worked for Price Waterhouse and Sony Pictures and “had attested to some financial difficulties,” Moore said. “He had become despondent over his financial” situation…
One of the young victims, Ganesha Rajaram, 12, was a 7th grade honors student at Alfred B. Nobel in Northridge, which he had attended for the last two years, said Principal Robert Coburn. His parents were very involved in his education, frequently interacting with teachers and never showing any signs that anything was amiss, he said. [Link]
Of course it is pure speculation at this point to assume that Mr. Rajaram’s financial woes are directly related to the current bear market, but the San Fernando Valley was one of the hardest hit in the sub-prime debacle. Hopefully this remains an isolated incident and not a national trend.
With both the Obama and McCain campaigns now in their “end-game” phase we will be seeing lots of kitchen-sink campaigning in the coming weeks by both sides (anyone watch the news today?). The vast majority of YouTube ads you see released on the campaign websites, on various internet blogs, or especially reported on in the news, are never really even aired as paid advertisements on television. The campaigns rely on the free publicity provided by blogs and the media to circulate those ads. In short, more pundits and bloggers talk about or report on the ads then actually see them spontaneously. This is because television advertising is damn expensive, even for these historically wealthy campaigns. A huge chunk of advertising is actually being done “sub-rosa” via the radio and direct mailers. Here, for example, is a direct mailer being sent out by the Obama campaign [via Politico]:
“American jobs to India” reads the bottom box. Clearly the Obama campaign isn’t afraid to play the outsourcing/xenophobia card as long as it flies well under the radar in a battleground state (probably Missouri in this case). I wonder if South Asians for Obama will be in touch with the campaign about this mailer now that the desi community has shown it can bring “resources” (the buzz word I kept hearing at the Democratic National Convention) to the table and therefore has a voice at said table.
Remember last week when Anna linked to the video of the new Pakistani President Zardari kind of…sort of…innocently flirting with VP Candidate Sarah Palin? He said (to paraphrase) “he would be tempted to hug” Palin. Well the Christian Science Monitor reports on the fallout back home:
A radical Muslim prayer leader said the president shamed the nation for “indecent gestures, filthy remarks, and repeated praise of a non-Muslim lady wearing a short skirt…”
Though the fatwa, issued days after the Sept. 24 exchange, carries little weight among most Pakistanis, it’s indicative of the anger felt by Pakistan’s increasingly assertive conservatives who consider physical contact and flattery between a man and woman who aren’t married to each other distasteful. Though fatwas, or religious edicts, can range from advice on daily life to death sentences, this one does not call for any action or violence.
Last year, the mosque that issued the fatwa, Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in Islamabad, condemned the former tourism minister, Nilofar Bahktiar, after she was photographed being hugged by a male parachuting coach in France. [Link]
Just like I’ve been telling my friends: you can’t call this a real Presidential Race unless a fatwa gets issued somewhere along the way. Now I know that if I praise a non-Muslim lady in a short skirt I can do so only once and not “repeatedly.” Its not just the fatwa he has to worry about either. Feminists in Pakistan are upset as well:
For the feminists it’s less about cozying up to a non-Muslim woman and more about the sexist remarks by Zardari.
“As a Pakistani and as a woman, it was shameful and unacceptable. He was looking upon her merely as a woman and not as a politician in her own right,” says Tahira Abdullah, a member of the Women’s Action Forum. [Link]
I consider myself a feminist too, but with all due respect to Ms. Tahira Abudallah, I think she should watch this video before referring to Palin as a “politician in her own right.” Besides, hasn’t Zardari grieved as a widower for long enough?
The incident bears some resemblance to yet another charm offensive by a senior Pakistani politician. Marcus Mabry’s biography of Condoleezza Rice includes a passage in which he relates a meeting between former Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and Ms. Rice, in which Mr. Aziz was said to have stared deeply into the secretary of State’s eyes and to have told her he could “conquer any woman in two minutes…” [Link]
Damn, when I use that same line I just get slapped.
Late last week we received our usual dose of hate mail. It read as follows:
Question: Why aren’t you guys covering this emerging economic crisis?. Each time I eagerly come on this site to check out the latest blog, I get disappointed to see it’s about fluff…
This is a huge enough story that I know you can find some ways of relating it to the Indian or Indian-American diaspora.
Even hate-mailers need love from time to time so I thought I would oblige with a bit of an omnibus economic meltdown post that was shaded with a tinge of brown. First up, wanna-be gangsta Sudhir Venkatesh wonders, “with Wall Street tanking, who will think of the prostitutes?”
There are some people who might just benefit from the current turmoil in the financial markets. One probably won’t surprise: lawyers. The other might: sex workers…
I came across these women when I began studying New York’s sex industry at the end of the 1990s. Mayor Rudy Giuliani, in an effort to clean up Manhattan’s neighborhoods, forced sex off the streets of Times Square and other Midtown neighborhoods. In the process, his administration created a new economic sector. I’ve been following the lives of more than 300 sex workers–in New York and Chicago, in high and low ends of the income spectrum since 1999…
One thing I’ve learned is that economic downturns can be boom times for high-end sex workers. Sex workers of the past waited on street corners, outside bars, and around parks, and their transactions were fleeting and usually for a few dollars. Today’s high-end sex workers see themselves as therapists, part of a vast metropolitan wellness industry that includes private chefs and yoga teachers. Many have regular clients who visit them several times per month, paying them not only for sex but also for comfort and affirmation.
That’s probably not all Jean did for her clients. But, as I reported in Slate a few months ago, about 40 percent of high-end sex transactions do not involve a sexual service. It’s not difficult to imagine that a man’s need for positive reinforcement is amplified when a pink slip lands on his desk.[Link]
And speaking of pink slips landing on desks, along with doctors, lawyers, and engineers, the hottest desi profession in the U.S. right now is what I like to generically term: “finance guy/girl.” Many of these finance guys/girls can’t really describe to you what it is they do without using the words “hedge, asset, or capital,” and by that time you are already half asleep. In truth, they may not even know what they really do (but the little bastards make three times my salary with one third the education ). In all seriousness though, I think a disproportionate number of our community in the “white collar end” of this turmoil is an example of how the current credit crisis will affect South Asian Americans (but please stay away from the prostitutes!). What about the blue collar South Asian American?
). In all seriousness though, I think a disproportionate number of our community in the “white collar end” of this turmoil is an example of how the current credit crisis will affect South Asian Americans (but please stay away from the prostitutes!). What about the blue collar South Asian American?