Job reponsibilities include keeping USA safe and military ready for wars overseas, have many contries friends as possible thru the marketing team (state department),ensure corporation's budget is balanced and keep the overall economy of USA kicking.

Despite clearly mentioned responsibilities measuring the performance is difficult it can be explained away,core group of shareholders and board of directors will support the CEO under any circumstance.

Shareholder and board of directors come from two groups the blue group or the red group. Red and blue groups have a core set of beliefs, blue group will go for wars over oil and starve the poor, red group will operate a welfare state and make the rich poor.

Whatever the group the president comes from it is easier to make the country's position worse than better, then the question one asks is why one needs the job. Only thing I can think of perks of the job great housing and retreat, specail planes and helicopters, expense account to host parties to heads of states and large contingent of personal staff, that will make a president feel like a emperor rather than a democratic head

Also in India it marked continuation of optimisim that began with independence of India and gained momentum as more countries gained independence. In India we were still worshipping leaders who worked for India's independence, as more contries gained independence they were added to this list. When Rhodesia gained functional independence to become Zimbabwe we celebrated. Some of my friends fathers travelled to setup basic infrastructure like the railways and the central banking system. We even began equating Mugabe to Mahatma Gandhi

But within few years lot of things unravelled, rot in the Indian system became apparent, independence leaders of many countries became despots or deposed in a coup.

What is happening in Zimbabawe is a pattern that happened post colonial era across the world. Only this time in front of the camera

Ted Koppel with his semi documentray style covered wide ranging issues,made the viewers learn more about the topics covered (I think many people will remember the series about the slow degradation of a professor afflicted with ALS).

Peter Jennings was a master in delivery an evening was incomplete without a dose of Peter Jennings, with his voice and perfect modulation was a sultan among news anchors.

Tim Russert with his technique depending on probing and research made the guests realize there is no free pass in a democracy.

Russert and Jennings went away, without long good byes typical of this business. Koppel must have felt that he should not overstay his welcome.

The point to be noted as each every day passes the replacements of Jennings, Koppel and lately Russert remind me how great these three were.

Charles Gibson looks like an intern with promise in front of Jennings.

Yesterday Brian Williams ran the Meet the Press for Tim Russert my reaction was, thank god, he won't come back.

Terry Moran , Cynthia and Martin look like well behaving frat boys compared to Koppel in Nightline

Over the last two weeks I was involved in process of completion of academic year at the GED progarm at Lakewood Schools where I am a volunteer teaching math. The activities were 1)sorting student files into two piles. One pile for students who passed GED during the year, a green sticker was placed on those files and carted away for storage and other pile for students who didn't pass GED , a red sticker was placed on them and kept on active status.

Today (6/18/2008), there was small recognition ceremony for those who graduated during the just concluded academic year, there was no music, no robes, no ceremonical procesion, no robes( infact they were in all types of dresses and bandanas) and no commencement speaker, except for some school district officials. GED graduates will now try to escape minimum wage job, go to community college,probably go to suprevisory level in their current jobs and become islands in their inner city existence.

The difference between CASE and GED Lakewood commencement is very stark, so is the difference in thea chievement of the CASE students and GED students. CASE students were brought up with high expectations, proctected from difficulties of life.Whereas GED students are products of school of hard knocks each of them overcame troubled past, beat low expectation and poverty to manage their first significant acheivement of their life.

Having been thru the commencement and end of the term I am not sure what needs to be applauded

Class of 2006 will have the honor of having a president with them for theit entire stay here. While the class happily graduated, sadly Dr. Hundert will be confused about his achievement here in Cleveland.

Dr. Hundert will be confused over his achievements at Cleveland, he has a long list of achievements and some mistakes. Achievements include sorting out the mess between UHC and Case School of Medicine, unleashing a good master plan, integrating CASE with community and renewing focus on undergraduate program. His failings will be making some of the worst recruitment decisions for his senior level positions, pushing the CASE identity (which could have waited, I am saying this with the benefit of hindsight) and underestimating the Case Institute of Technology graduates feel for their, seperate distinct alma mater.

Faculty who campaigned against him will have to realize that it is not the job of president alone to bring bacon home. I know of one faculty who actively campaigned against Dr. Hundert, has center with no activity and no serious effort to raise funds to fund the center which is attached to his department. Faculty will have to realize that there is no indefinite supply of college presidents (at any price) to be recruited and voted against. Trustees will have to bring in a institution builder not somebody to solve a specific problem. All problem will Case Institute of Technology Alumni have to be solved before the next president comes in, not a part of laundry list for next president.

Dr. Hundert. thanks for spending sometime at CASE, whatever your next assignment please look forward. So long, Dr. Hundert.

NBA has amended the game rules, to make it friendly to the NBA TV audience. THe game has strayed from the mainstream basketball. Too many NFL words have netered the basketball lexicon for American basketball to remain mainstream basketball, plays, possession and what not.

When I played baketball, there were no strategic timeouts to sfift the placement of the ball. and no strategic fouls (And Pistons fans no foul language). The new rules might appeal to audience retain interest in the game, the question whether the are doing more damage to the game will be redirected to the US Olympic Committee.

Some people said, the supply said is messed up, but the Saudi oil minister was in town last week, telling anybody who bothered to hear him that anything above $ 50 /Barrel of oil is harmful to world economy. He doesn't want a penny more than $40-50/barrel. The monster is definitely NOT on the supply side.

The six year trend of consumption shows that US consumption has incresaed by 6 million barrels a day, where as the consumption by China and India increased by .75 million barrel/day and .5 million barrel/day, so much for oil sucking growth of the new developing countries.

The supply-demand analysis, leaves out the role of mercantile exchange. Mercantile exchange is like a stock market. always in search of information to distort the market, this week's Time magazine estimates the informatiom distortion premium is about $15 /barrel. This is the cumulative value the traders at Mercantile exchange have added to the price of barrel by listening to the irresponsible statements that come out of the adminsitration regarding Iran, Venezula and now Russia.

The analysis and solutions, thrown around might not make any impact on the oil prices.

Solution 1: Send a check, this is outrightly rejected.

Solution 2: Windfall tax, this will lead to a response form the companies, not to invest. The oil companies haven't invested in refining capacity in the last 25 years. The govt. can set aside some amount of the windfall profits for refining capacity expansion and drilling. Might have some impact on long term prices.

Solution 3: Oligopolistic nature of oil industry in USA and needs some attention. This analysis has some merit, despite the fact that opponents argue thatcompanies like SABIC are much bigger and have tremendous economies of scale while drilling. SABIC example can't be applied to ExomMobil, or anybody else, because SABIC doesn't have customer contact and drilling activity of Exon Mobil is very limited. Bulk of US oil companies'profit come from refining imported crude oil. So, it will definitely help customers if refiners-marketers are made to compete with each other.

Solution 4: Drill ANWAR, proven reserves of ANWAR are so low, it may not be worthwhile drilling that area, unless the crude price can be maintained at $75+.

The issue of doing something about the price brings us to Galbraith, a brilliant economist who passed away this week. He was the last official price fixer (Office of Price Administration) during World War II. Many of his writings were influenced by this experience, he wrote, one should always look for elements in a system that get automatically incorporated and destructs the system.

The current elements that are destructive in the oil pricing syatem are:

1)Growing American demand, much more than any other nation.

2)Growing Illegal population making demand predications go awary.

3) Inept handling of foreign policy in middle east and other oil producing regions providing oil traders fodder to jack the price. Dick Cheney was ridiculing Russia this week, so Russia's support for any resolution on Iran goes thru the window. Russis still has a score to settle with USA, over Afghanistan. Imagine the chaos that will be unleashed if Russia sends anti low flying aircraft missiles to Iraq.( This is the strategy used by the current US ambassador to Iraq to win the Afghan war 1 )

4)Strong Oligopoly in the oil market, focussed on profits and not on investing the profits.

Solutions I suggest are

Short Term:

Silence the likes of Rice, John Bolton and Dick Cheney. There should be a moratorium on the use of word Iran in the state department. If US is concerned about proliferation, the nation to be taken to task is China, which generously gave away missile and nuclear technologies to North Korea, Iran and Pakistan.

Many oil producing countries have said they would like to see oil price to be settle at $50/Barrel. Enter into long term contracts at 55 Dollar level with these countries ( Some body suggested going to WTO to coax more oil out of OPEC, unfortunately WTO deals with cross border trade amd unfair subsidies, and cannot force countries to produce what the world wants.

3)Reduce internal shocks to oil demand like unregulated population growth, so the illegal population has to be reduced.

Medium amd Long term:

1)Alternate fuels (Ethanol and Hydrogen)

2)Public Transport.

3)Fuel Efficient Vehicles.

I went thru the so called original author's version an example given below:

"He smelled sweet and woodsy, like cedar"

I don't think there is anything original in this, millions of people would have used the sentence without receiving a penny for it. The many passages claimed to be original, are so cliched that only a person out of his or her mind, will dare to call it original.

Here is another example of the so called original:

"Bridget is my age and lives across the street. For the first twelve years of my life, these qualifications were all I needed in a best friend. But that was before Bridget’s braces came off and her boyfriend Burke got on, before Hope and I met in our seventh-grade honors classes"

I think this phrase would have been said by almost all the teenagers under the sun. I think we have reached a stage where all the possibilities of combining the words have been exhausted and anybody indulging in creative writing, claiming to be really original must be living in fools paradise

I think in this era of instant heros and instant villans, the young author has been made a cannon fodder for News Media, a period of hype followed by a period of character assassination. People who claimed to have spent time discovering similar phrases, probably could have used their time in a better fashion

Never in my life, I ever thought I will sit down and try to figure out difference between the words mentioned in the title. They seemed so close to me for the duration of my familiarity with english language, I didn't even bother to see them as different words. Now I came across a situation where I am forced to understand the fine difference between each of them.

The recent firing of a senior CIA analyst for revealing the secret prison, started my thinking on these words.

First CIA was correct in firing the employee, because she violated the terms of her contract. Any person who violates the terms of his/her employment deserves to be fired, there can be no two ways about it.

But the question that arises is it illegal , former Chief Justice once observed from the bench "just because it is legal doesn't make it correct", my opinion is just because the CIA made a correct decision, I don't think the employee has done anything illegal as defined by law. The law says it is illegal (therefore a crime ) if the employee had helped an enemy, which is not the case here (despite the claims by the government that it has affected the war on terror), she just made something public to American public, which means if she is tried for a crime, only her conduct will be tested by a jury. The instruction to the jury will be whether the conduct of the analyst fails to meet the standards of the society. I think no jury will convict her for this conduct.

The fact that a Pulitzer prize was awarded for this story means that there is a large section of the society, which feels that the action of the analyst is right in making the information about the secret prisons public.

American concept of freedom, liberty, due process under law and human rights, doesn't go along with the operation of GULAGS, despicable Soviet concept, of holding people in secret location, so anybody with a knowledge that such an amoral activity, had a duty to blow the whistle.

So my analysis of the CIA analyst firing is bit complex, while acton of the CIA is correct, analyst's action is moral, her decision is right according to a large section of society and I doubt whether her action can be proved to be illlegal

Cleveland the majorty minority city, the minority hasn't realized that it is in majority and taken up the responsibilities of being in the majority.

Being in the majority means treating everybody including minority with fairness. There is no excuse for playing victim card while being in the majority.

Imagine the reaction that we would have seen, if a white mayor had replaced a performing black airport director with a white.

Replacing a performing professional for reasons of race and not being submissive doesn't speak of leadership, which the current mayor repeated like a parrot while campaiging.

I wonder how the EEOC will react if the current airport director files a complaint

The book by Oshinsky one of the greatest contemporary historian, narrates the American struggle with Polio. While Polio doesn't mean anything to Americans anymore, recent NY Times series on world's communicable diseases highlight the struggles the world community faces to wipe out the disease.

My father was afflicted with polio, which gives me a ringside view of what that disease can do a person. By rewarding this book Pulitzer has done a great service to the world community; reminding the challenge that lays ahead for the world's public health experts.

I am awaiting for the day, when the 1000 or so Polio outbreaks per year becomes zero.

Why the wall street analysts are not being tried for aiding and abetting the scandals at Enron and Worldcom , becaue the executives there were generating numbers for the wall street.

Wall street is in the path of destroying the newspaper industry, while yahoo which posts some arbit news pulled from wire services commands ridiculous valuation. Newspapers which do indepth local coverage a basis of democracy is branded a dying industry. Everytime Pratt Whitney losses an opportunity to build an engine for a new aircraft United Technology's value goes up.

Add to this new group of investors called hedge funds who buy a minority holding and create nuisance by demanding change. I can say with confidence, the wall street may increase value of some shares for short duration by its demands but net destruction to the economy is enormous and not studied.

I am confident that if the present day wall street had existed in industrial era, human enterprise would not have made much progress.

Let me make it clear I distrust wall street where a single analyst may cover the health care industry and also the funeral home industry.

OM shanti

I don't understand why so many lawbreakers are tolerated, when a mother who forgets her child in a car, faces five years in the prison.

US may be a nation of immigrants, that only explains how the country was populated, it doesn't explain the success of the country. The success of US was due to law abiding people, philanthrophy, top quality education and many other factors. The fact that congress is tempted to legalize lawbreakers on behalf of another set of lawbreakers (business who employ them), sets the country on a slippery slope. These actions sets the country on a slow path of destruction, when the damage is realized it may be too late.

I am amused by the reason put forward by the people who advocate for illegals. I would like to answer some of the points.

Point:
Agriculture economy will collapse.
Counter Point:
Why produce strawberries in US, when it can be bought from any other country like bananas.

Point:
They mow our lawns.
Counter Point:
I thought people mowed their own lawns untill recently.

Point:
Restaurants will close.
Counter Point:
There are too many restaurants in US leading to misallocation of labor, if some restaurants are closed net impact on the economy will be zero.

Point:
Deporting 11 Million will be dificult
Counter Point:
US had a prison population of 4.5 million, which indicates handling 4.5 million is not difficult. Last year 600,000 were deported beyond the 1 million stopped at the southern border.

I don't have anything against any ethnic group but giving amnesty (By any name) is not acceptable to me, in the interest of long term stability of the society.

Cleveland reflects the characterisics of ancient river valley civilizations, therefore it begs the question "is decay inevitable"?

Probably, modern river valley civiizations will not go away , because of increased collective memory, but continue beyond their heydays with the benefit of reflected glory of their past. There is no precedent of river valley civilizations regaining the past glory, but those where the days without Tax Abatements and Economic Development Organizations. So there is a strong need to ask what is the common thread in the DNA of river valley civilizations and how it can be maipulated using modern knowledge, to return to former glory.

Any Comments ?

All I said and was acknowledeged in the above mentioned blog was the need for more access to water front.

Regarding the river front the above mentioned blog says directs us to a website to the cleveland rowing team. I thought a big city with an excellent water front will have excellent an trail along the river and some quays, where row boats can be stored and used. While people at Sherwin William river front office ave a nice park along the river front and a basketball court to play on during summer. We ordinary mortals have to pay thru our noses to sit thru shooters to get a glimpse of river front if the ben's advice taken

My single point is " River and Lake Front are natural resources that have to be made available to people and not concealed ad make peple discover"