Biden's Running Mate Kamala Harris

Finally, Joe Biden announced his running mate (for VP) - Kamala Harris.

This is really not a big surprise as she has been the front runner for the VP role.  Indians can be happy because her mother is from Chennai, Tamil Nadu. Kamala spent a lot of vacation time during her childhood in Besant Nagar, Chennai. Her mother and grandfather taught her carnatic music and bharathnatayam.

    Top Left to Right: Kamala Harris, Her grandma Rajam Gopaln, Her grandpa

    P.V. Gopalan, Her sister Maya Harris.  The kids: Maya's daughter and a cousin

Here are some pros and cons regarding Kamala Harris.

Pros

She is highly educated.

She has held a solid number of public jobs - District Attorney in San Francisco, Attorney General for the State of California, U.S. Senator from California.

She is a great debater.

She comes across very well in front of the camera and on television.

She is also loved by the black community in America.

 

Cons

She is very ambitious.  A little too ambitious and opportunistic.

She knows that Biden will be a one term president only (four years) and it's highly possible that he won’t even finish his one term due to his advanced age and mental capacity. Therefore, she will have her own agenda instead of implementing Biden’s agenda.

She implemented the 1994 Crime Bill to the fullest. The bill was written by Joe Biden and approved by President Bill Clinton. It resulted in mass incarceration and innocent people were put in prison..

She has a "sugar daddy", Willie Brown, Speaker of the California Assembly. He made sure she was moving up the political ladder but in return what did Kamala was doing the forbidden dance with Slick Willie.

She is a big proponent for medicare for all. Many Americans aren't supportive.

 

So what do I think of Biden's pick for VP?

I don't think Harris is a bad pick at all.  However, I do not think she was the best choice.

I believe Susan Rice would have been a better running mate (also minority female).  She was the National Security Advisor for Barrack Obama.  Rice was also U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.  Rice is also highly educated and she graduated from Stanford University and Oxford.

 

Can Biden/Harris defeat Trump/Pence in November?

I'm not an R, or a D. I'm an I - for Independent.

When Biden became the candidate for the Democratic Party, I put his chance of winning at 70%. Now with Kamala Harris as his running mate, I put his chance of winning at 55%.

PS: The blog post when I put it here came funny.  I don't know how to fix it.

Ditka in the News

Mike Ditka is in the news again.   He was the most popular American Football  Coach for the team Chicago Bears.

He said yesterday athletes who kneel during the national anthem to “get the hell out of this country”.  Quite a few athletes are planning to kneel during the playing of national anthem in support of Black Lives Matter.

“If you can’t respect our national anthem, get the hell out of the country. That’s the way I feel. Of course, I’m old-fashioned. So, I’m only going to say what I feel,” Ditka said.

He was also in the big news in 2004.

Barrack Obama, virtually unknown at that time, ran for the U.S. Senate. He had slim chance of winning.  His Republican challenger was leading.   A month before the election, he was caught  in some scandal.   So he had to withdraw.  The Republican Party  asked Mike Ditka to run against  Obama.  The party even begged him.

Ditka refused because he wanted to concentrate on Football. Ditka was more popular in Chicago and the State  of Illinois than Sachin Tendulkar in Mumbai and Maharashtra.  Had he  accepted to  run for the Senate, Obama would  have lost his deposit (to  use an Indian term).  And that would have been the  end of his political career.

See how fate plays in everyone’s life.

PS: Blogger.com has made some changes.  I don't even know how to create a new post. I had a post that was in draft stage and wrote on that.  May be I am not tech savvy.

A Dog Story

This is not a story. This really happened. 

A couple went to the pound and picked up a cute dog. They named him John. The couple trained John in all the dog stuff like listening to command, potty training, etc. But the one problem was the dog will stand near the couple’s bedroom silently all night, looking at them until they wake up in the morning. He won’t bark.He won’t make any noise. Even when the lights are off, he will stand in the dark quietly looking at the couple thru darkness. This happened every night for 3 months. 

The couple was annoyed. They fixed a video camera to find out what the dog does when they are asleep. In the morning when the couple played the video, the dog was standing outside their bedroom and stood all night looking at them. 

They then decided to close the bedroom door. They saw, by playing the video camera, the dog stood outside the door looking at the closed door all night. 

They took him to a few veterinarians. They could not find any answer. But one veterinarian suggested inquiring about the previous owner at the dog pound if the dog did the same thing to them. 

They go to the pound and told the problem with the dog. Then the story came out from the pound people. 

The previous couple who owned the dog was having their first baby and therefore they did not want to have a dog in the house. So they left the dog in the pound. But what they did was in the middle of the night they took the sleeping dog and left them in the pound. The dog went to sleep in his cozy bed and when he woke up in the morning he was in a pound with strange people and strange dogs. This was a big shock for the dog. 

So it was explained that the dog kept awake all night outside the master’s bedroom so that this does not happen to him again. 

Then they slowly trained the dog differently. They made the dog sleep between them for a while until he was able to sleep in his own bed. 

Sad story but a happy ending.

PS:  Read this in some paper but forgot now where I read.