If John McCain was great, how was he so easily defeated as president and Trump won the presidency easily?
I’m not sure it was possible for a Republican to win that year.First, the Obama campaign machine was outstanding. Put aside your partisanship. Any political pro of either party will tell you that the Obama team wrote the book that year in 2008 on how to get free stuff/free support. They did a phenomenal job with small donors, got tons of volunteers but were able to spend the bulk of their money on advertising. Seriously—talk to any journalist who covered that campaign in depth or any GOP political consultant and ask them to critique the Obama 2008 campaign and they’ll tell you it was amazing in their efficiency, cost-savings, fund-raising with small donors. And Obama was popular. Again, put aside your partisanship. The reality is that anyone running against Obama that year was going to have their hands full.Second, the GOP was in tough shape. George W. Bush had sagged badly and wasn’t popular. At a critical part of the campaign we had a financial meltdown that might have been worse than the Great Depression (Ben Bernanke insists it was). To cope with it, the GOP had to take actions (propping up banks, subsidizing GM) that were wildly unpopular with conservatives who tended to feel that those companies should be allowed to fail. So the Bush administration got blamed in large part for the meltdown and attacked for their response. It didn’t help that in Bush’s speech to the nation justifying the unique responses, he sounded like he wished he could leave the job early and let someone else takeover. So financially, the GOP was in a touch space.And we had two very unpopular wars going on (Iraq and Afghanistan) and we were losing in Afghanistan.Last of all, don’t confuse “great” with “a successful candidate.” Someone can be a great individual and a lousy candidate. Or a great candidate but they’re running at a time where their politics or positions doom them to failure. For instance, George W. Bush was elected and re-elected to the Presidency. So was Ronald Reagan. But if both were eligible candidates in 2016 they would not have gotten the GOP nomination. Both would have been labeled RINOs by a number of Right-wingers and they would have been seen as too “soft” on immigration issues.
What are some of the best examples of "beauty with brains"?
Raghuram RajanI thought of writing an introduction myself ,but Shobha De has done an awesome job already, so I am just quoting her ."The guy's put 'sex' back into the limp Sensex. That makes him seriously hot. So hot, in fact, he has made it to the Amul hoarding (a first for a chap in his lofty position). But nobody is calling the man a Billboard Bimbo. You know why? Because this man knows his onions.And right now, onions are playing a major role in our lives. Forget our obsession with gold. We are hoarding onions now.All hail the freshly minted 23rd RBI Guv — the very dishy Raghuram Govinda Rajan — the Messiah of Markets. At 50, Rajan is young (come on, SRK at 48 is still playing lover boy), brilliant (IIT-IIM-MIT vaghera, vaghera) and on the ball (ex-IMF chief economist). That his chiselled features are as sharp as his brain, add to his current status as the Poster Boy of Banking.Funny how quickly Rajan has been slotted as a much-panted-after sex symbol (he took over from Duvvuri Subbarao on September 4). He's the guy who's got the groove. I plead guilty, too.Recklessly and happily, I went ahead and tweeted (will this woman never learn?) about his appointment, calling him the Ranbir Kapoor of Banking (note the spelling — banking, there's an 'a' in this word, not an 'o'). Why not? Rajan's sex appeal has propelled him straight into the league of movie stars. He can easily top 'India's Most Desirable' lists.Had he not been in this tricky, ultra conservative (let's be upfront here, and call it tight ass) assignment, he'd have been instantly snapped up by smart celeb managers and signed juicy endorsement deals. Sorry, Raghu. But you are stuck. Deal with it.The media has declared Raghu the latest sex symbol in the land. He should lie back and enjoy the attention. It's not often that one gets an RBI Guv who makes hearts (not just female ones) go dhak dhak each time he strides into a room. I entirely endorse the positioning. Why should only comely ladies in the rarefied world of finance get branded and walk away with all the compliments?Source -http://articles.economictimes.in...
What do people in other countries think about Donald Trump?
CanadaWe’re concerned for our poor neighbours to the south, while simultaneously amazed at this unbelievable spectacle:UpdateI was astounded and dismayed, but not really surprised, when I read the Calgary Sun (a right-wing and very conservative news daily). They had published a poll taken of their readers to find out which presidential candidate people supported. The poll showed 48% support for Trump, 27% support for Hillary and 25% undecided.These sad numbers should not be surprising because this is an oil-producing province and Trump, a climate change denier, said that he would give his blessing to a huge pipeline project to send Alberta oil (most of it from our Athabasca “tar-sands”, a very polluting and expensive source) to the US Gulf Coast.A presidential endorsement of this “Keystone XL Pipeline” (Barack Obama already said, “No”) is something that Alberta oil barons would dearly love to see and so Trump is their man; environment and world peace be damned I suppose, as long as the oil companies keep making money. :^(Trump’s approval rating will be much lower and Hillary’s much higher in more liberal-minded parts of Canada, such as British Columbia and Ontario (maybe in Quebec, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia too). Saskatchewan and Manitoba, prairie-land in the middle of Canada, are a mystery to me.