Thursday, April 12, 2012

Republicans and Racism

From TNR's Timothy Noah's article, some highlights:
  • The Republican party's small-government philosophy has limited federal interference with discriminatory practices at the state and local level, and with racial bigotry generally. 
  • The Republican majority on the Supreme Court will likely soon abolish affirmative action altogether. 
  • The Republican party's tax policies favor rich "job creators," who tend disproportionately to be white, and its opposition to the welfare state--initially to cash transfers, then to non-cash assistance like food stamps, and finally even to unemployment benefits--tends to harm lower-income people, who tend disproportionately to be black. 
  • The Republican party's criminal justice policies have put an appallingly high proportion of black men in jail, often for petty drug offenses. 
  • Republicans tend to favor the death penalty, which leads to execution of a disproportionate number of blacks.

Monday, January 2, 2012

What Obama is doing Wrong

Glenn Greewald lists all the things Obama is doing that are against Progressive/Liberal world view
The fallacy in this reasoning is glaring. The candidate supported by progressives — President Obama — himself holds heinous views on a slew of critical issues and himself has done heinous things with the power he has been vested. He has slaughtered civilians — Muslim children by the dozens — not once or twice, but continuously in numerous nations withdronescluster bombs and other forms of attack. He has sought to overturn a global ban on cluster bombs. He has institutionalized the power of Presidents — in secret and with no checks — to target American citizens for assassination-by-CIA, far from any battlefield. He has waged an unprecedented war against whistleblowers, the protection of which was once a liberal shibboleth. He rendered permanently irrelevant the War Powers Resolution, a crown jewel in the list of post-Vietnam liberal accomplishments, and thus enshrined the power of Presidents to wage war even in the face of aCongressional vote against it. His obsession with secrecy is so extreme that it has become darkly laughable in its manifestations, and he even worked to amend the Freedom of Information Act (another crown jewel of liberal legislative successes) when compliance became inconvenient.
He has entrenched for a generation the once-reviled, once-radical Bush/Cheney Terrorism powers of indefinite detention, military commissions, and the state secret privilege as a weapon to immunize political leaders from the rule of law. He has shielded Bush era criminals from every last form of accountability. He has vigorously prosecuted the cruel and supremelyracist War on Drugs, including those parts he vowed during the campaign to relinquish — a war which devastates minority communities and encages and converts into felons huge numbers of minority youth for no good reason. He has empowered thieving bankers through the Wall Street bailout, Fed secrecy, efforts to shield mortgage defrauders from prosecution, and the appointment of an endless roster of former Goldman, Sachs executives and lobbyists. He’s brought the nation to a full-on Cold War and a covert hot war with Iran, on the brink of far greater hostilities. He has made the U.S. as subservient as ever to the destructive agenda of the right-wing Israeli government. His support for some of the Arab world’s most repressive regimes is as strong as ever.
Most of all, America’s National Security State, its Surveillance State, and its posture of endless war is more robust than ever before. The nation suffers from what National Journal‘s Michael Hirsh just christened “Obama’s Romance with the CIA.” He has created what The Washington Post just dubbed “a vast drone/killing operation”, all behind an impenetrable wall of secrecy and without a shred of oversight. Obama’s steadfast devotion to what Dana Priest and William Arkin called “Top Secret America” has severe domestic repercussions as well, building up vast debt and deficits in the name of militarism that create the pretext for the “austerity” measures which the Washington class (including Obama) is plotting to impose on America’s middle and lower classes.

Friday, December 30, 2011

Getting Started with iPhone 4S


  • List of useful apps to get you started


  • Flipboard, Facebook, Instagram, Dropbox, Foursquare more here and here 

  • Top 100 Free Apps 

  • Quixey - Search for an app by what you want to do

  • Gizmodo Best iPhone app list

  • Time Magazine - 50 Best iPhone Apps of 2011

  • iPhone Home screens of Top Techies


  • How to check your iPhone's Data usage


  • First, head to your iPhone's settings app. Scroll down to "General," then click on "usage." You'll see your minute breakdown, but at the very bottom you'll see your data usage (sending and receiving) over AT&T's cellular network. If you've never reset your stats, you'll find that this number will be fairly high. (source: geeksugar)

  • You can also call *DATA# and AT&T will send you a text message with your data usage this billing cycle. 


  • Organize your ever increasing apps into folders


  • Steve Jobs presented the new folder feature as easy as dropping one app on top of another to create a new folder. Yes, that’s easy to do, but if you have several hundred apps on your iPhone, that process is a lot more tedious than most will like. Read more here


  •  Keep up-to-date on iPhone happenings using these popular blogs' iPhone tags


  • All Things Digital

  • TechCrunch

  • lifehacker


  • How to restart an iPhone

  • To restart iPhone, first turn iPhone off by pressing and holding the Sleep/Wake button until a red slider appears. Slide your finger across the slider and iPhone will turn off after a few moments. Next, turn iPhone on by pressing and holding the Sleep/Wake button until the Apple logo appears.

    Friday, December 2, 2011

    Indian Cricketers with Most frequent Man of the Match Awards

    Sachin is the undisputed king. He has a Man of the Match for every 7 ODI inns. The following is a list of Indian cricketers with atleast 5 Mom Awards. Surprising omission Harbhajan Singh. He has only 4 MoM awards till date. Kohli is raising fast in the ranks




    IPL Players - Where are they from?