Obama and America.

I was one of those people who believed that Obama was the change America and the World so wanted. I believed that this Harvard educated man had the right credentials to turn around America’s fortunes and restore it to its lost glory.I believed his strategy would be based on facts and rationales and that he would act with absolute conviction. Suffice to say, I’m deeply disappointed with a man mildly content with just sitting on the fence on issues such as Afghanistan.
So Afghanistan’s terrain isn’t quite a flat piece of land. So Russia had its rear end handed to it during the Soviet-Afghan war. To make matters worse, Taliban and Al Qaieda have become all the more formidable- what with all the support of the locals.  I don’t understand why America wouldn’t commit all it can to put an end to this money pit called Afghanistan. Yes, it means spending more American tax dollars at a time when America’s economy is pretty sick but prolonging this so called war with half-hearted measures will only result in more casualties with really nothing achieved.  If Gen. David Petraeus requested 60,000 troops, send in a 100,000.  The money spent in sending these additional troops will aid in eliminating the militia faster and maybe, even put enough pressure on them to sit at the table for negotiations, if thats what the Americans want. Send in a 100,000, guard the border with Pakistan – well, do your best to guard it.  Keep Taliban inside Afghanistan and then, either negotiate or eliminate.
This 30,000 troops surge is like a few morsels of food given to a hungry man. Yeah, sure it’ll help but hes gonna be hungry again real soon. Feed him generously and then, teach him to hunt, or grow, or fish or whatever…and you’ve just given him independence. 30,000 feels like a half-hearted attempt aimed at pleasing everyone. The military wants troops, they get some. The congress will likely be content with the fact that we aren’t emptying wisconsin or Iowa to send all the troops requested. Everyones mildly happy and nothing has been achieved. This is politics just as usual. I suspect the nobel peace prize that Obama is slated to pick up this month during his visit to Copenhagen has something to do with this.
Obama. I don’t get you and not that it matters, but you are slowly but surely dashing the hopes of millions of people worldwide.
The troubling part of all this is the notion that if this is the best a Harvard educated man can do, what hope can America have? Even as Obama loses brownie points as a result of such actions, people such a Sarah Palin, with IQs in the vicinity of 0, are gaining ground. I think I’m moving to New Zealand.

p.s : Neither am I a Dem, nor am I a Rep., I just think Sarah Palin isn’t very smart.

Ajay Bhatt on the Tonight Show

here

A Foggy Night in Rightville

P1i – Gmail Settings

On subscribing AT&T’s mediaNet service, I scoured the web for a list of settings to set up my gmail account on my P1i. After unsuccessful attempts to have a working setup using the settings posted on several sites, I eventually worked them out. For the benefit of the P1i owners, here’s the list of settings that works….

connection type: IMAP
Push email: Check
Incoming server address: imap.gmail.com
username:
password:
download restrictions: just headers

outgoing server address: smtp.gmail.com
use SMTP authentication: check
use inbox login details: check

Advanced:

Incoming
Secure connection: SSL
Incoming mail port: 993

Outgoing
Secure connection: TLS
Outgoing mail port: 25

Use MIME encoding: Check

The Lost Symbol – A review

Before doling out cash to buy Dan Brown’s latest novel “The lost symbol”, I figured I’d give the reviews a glance. So, I looked it up on Amazon and after reading a handful of reviews, I came across this review……

“Dear Dan Brown:
Six years of waiting for this? Really! Here’s what I think happened…you had a contract to get a new novel out this year but you spent the last 5 1/2 years enjoying yourself with all the money you made…okay, you earned it…enjoy! But wait, now you have to hustle and get a novel to the publisher. No problem, you think as you take out the outline for the previous books. Instead of the grail, you’ll make it some “Lost Symbol” mainly because you’re at a loss as to how you’re going to meet that deadline. For the female role, you’ll turn her into a scientist in some unknown field. Just so you can have another female star in the movie, you’ll throw in a CIA agent. Instead of the crazy priest, you’ll make that role just a plain psycho that another Hollywood hunk can play. You’ll go through the motions but this time Langford won’t be as sharp as before which makes sense because you aren’t either. Instead of the Catholic church, you’ll use the Masons because you can Google Masons and get all kinds of alleged secrets and mysteries as you sit by the pool and sip on some expensive scotch. You’ll use Washington DC because, like the Masons, it’s easy to Google and maybe you’ve seen National Treasure. Okay, that takes care of the first 2/3 of the book. You’re almost there and you can see the money rolling in so you just wrap up the whole package with your optimism and hope that you can pull it off. Well, congratulations. It worked and I was amoung the million that were suckered on the 15th. I give you one star for the book and one star for the balls. I hope you enjoy my money but, Mr. Brown, please know that I don’t believe you earned it and I don’t think even you do. Really.
Signed,
Disappointed”

Despite such reviews, I intend to read this darned book but instead of looking for it in the book store, I’ll be watching for it in the local library.