Kolkata is overcrowded, filthy, and, sometimes, mighty smelly. It is loud, bustling with life, oddly complacent about its poverty, yet showing a heightened sense of entrepreneurial spirit at that lowest rung. And my first days, after being driven from the airport, were spent in impressive luxury--all of the rest of Kolkata was distant noise beyond the gates and walls.

The Kolkata Hyatt Regency is simply one of the nicest hotels I’ve ever enjoyed. The rooms are beautiful, the food often magnificent, the service irritatingly impeccable.

“Irritatingly?” you might ask. Indeed. While there is something nice about being treated well, I am, at heart, a regular guy. I like my bartenders funny and boisterous, in particular. The bar staff at the KHR were competent, the selection of fine alcohols was admirable, but it took a while to get them to let down a little. The first night was, “What would sir enjoy this evening?” The second night was, “Since sir enjoys vodkas, may I suggest Ciroc?” Which, incidentally, made me happy; I keep a bottle at home and it’s a remarkably smooth little drink. By the end of the second night, though, I had them explaining cricket, drawing me diagrams to punctuate their lessons, and then shocking me with their passion for the soap opera drama of US pro wrestling.

If I make the trip again, I’ll lobby to stay at the Hyatt again. It was a little like heaven, to be honest, even if it hardly conveyed the flavor of Kolkata. I’m not one to wallow in unrelenting trash and poverty, though; for those folks, other accommodations would be in order.

Clicking on the pictures will take you to Picasa. You can see the larger versions there.

...The Bailout Fairy will save them.

Do you believe in fairies?

Janella Spears isn’t a sucker. Nope, not at all.

n Oregon woman who is out $400,000 after falling for a well-known Internet scam says she wasn’t a sucker or an easy mark.

Janella Spears of Sweet Home says she simply became curious when she received an e-mail promising her $20.5 million if she would only help out a long-lost relative identified as J.B. Spears with a little money up front.

Spears told KATU-TV about the scammers’ ability to identify her relative by name was persuasive.

“That’s what got me to believe it,” She said. “So, why wouldn’t you send over $100?”

Okay, even if I assumed that sending the $100 through the untraceable wire account to help some unknown relative sounded like a good idea--which, no, it doesn’t--that doesn’t go far in explaining the rest of the $400,000 that she gave away.

Idiot.

Even worse, the reason I keep getting those damned spam emails on a daily basis from someone telling me that I’ve won a lottery I’ve never entered, am going to reap millions for helping some poor widow smuggle money out of Zimbabwe, or that a long, lost relative left me untold wealth in his will is because it works. I’ll only stop getting those emails when greedy idiots like Janella Spears stop sending their money to con men.

Nearly half a million dollars pissed away and she can still say, with a straight face, that she wasn’t a sucker or an easy target.

Idiot.

And for the record, it wasn’t any desire to help that long-lost relative that caught her; it was the $20.5 million bucks that she was promised. Any pretense to the contrary is a lie.

Read the story.

After thinking I had dodged any bacterial or parasitic bullets that might be found in the tremendously clean and hygienic streets of Kolkata, I found that I was wrong. Wrong in a way that I have never been wrong before. Wrong in a way that, were I a smarter man, might have required hospitalization. Wrong in a way that felt a bit like a low grade nuclear weapon exploding in my small intestines and leaving me a mass of strange and disgusting expulsions of bits of me that I never knew existed. Or, at least, would never have guessed at their native colors.

At the peak of pain--perhaps six hours starting late Saturday and ending early Sunday morning--the nearly hourly expulsions from both entry and exit points left me exhausted and with a vivid sense of pain. My joints, eyeballs, stomach, and noggin were begging me for Advil--which I’ve been informed I’m not supposed to have.

The body is a strange and mysterious and brutally vulnerable thing, isn’t it?

After spending all of Friday and Saturday effectively dehydrating myself, I’ve spent the last two days trying to put some sogginess back in my body. With sadly mixed results.

On my last day of taking Zithromax, I’m hoping that I’ve killed off whatever it was that gut punched me over the last four days. If not then I killed off all sorts of good bacteria in a useless effort to make myself feel better.

You probably wanted a point, didn’t you? Here’s the point: sorry for the absence, but if I weren’t weakened from the illness, I would be weary from the lack of sleep. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to go more than three hours without an urgent need overcoming me--and then I find sleep a hard task.

I’ll be back soon with thoughts of India, America’s obtuse energy policy, and how much I look forward to our new Democrat overlords.

…just not for a few more years.

Despite Bill Clinton’s assertions to the contrary, Barack Obama is the first black President of the United States of America. Barack Obama deserves a national holiday. I have served eight years in the United States military and I will, without hesitation, fight anyone who says otherwise. Period. All I ask is that we hold off for a few years and let him be President first.

He deserves at least that much. 

The media has made much in recent days about the drubbing Republicans took at the polls last week. Fair enough. Republicans took heavy losses. My issue is that a couple editorials have confused Republicans with conservatives. Republicans are not necessarily conservatives and conservatives are not necessarily Republicans. My wife and I are Reagan conservatives but, currently, we are registered Democrats (long story). Similarly, George W. Bush and John McCain are not conservatives. More importantly, they never were.

The Republican party took a heavy beating but conservatism did not.

America is still largely conservative. The problem is that the Republican party abandoned conservative principles.

If the Republican party hopes to make gains in the future it needs to regain its conservative principles. If conservatives hope to rescue this country we must figure out how to save the Republican party.

Just sayin’…

In the first few days after the historic election of Barack Obama, the US stock market tanked (links below). Tanked! Why is this important? Because the stock market always looks to the future. That’s what investors do. They constantly look to the future, try to predict it, and respond accordingly. Remember the saying “buy low, sell high”? How do investors know when a stock value is at a high or a low? They don’t. Investors make informed guesses about the future. If you closely track stock market results to major news stories this trend is easy to spot - so easy that it’s an accepted maxim. The stock market always looks to the future. Why is this important: because the stock market’s immediate response to the election of Barack Obama was to pull out faster than a sailor in a brothel. This is a very strong indication of how the world’s investor’s view the Obama Presidency. I guess the traders didn’t get the memo, either. I’m just sayin’…

Here are some stock market news links:

• U.S. Stocks Post Biggest Post-Election Drop on Economic Concern
• Outlook Of The US Stock Market After The Election
• Stocks’ two-day loss total nears 10 percent
• Market sinks on economic gloom as Cisco warns late
• U.S. stock futures trade lower after Obama victory
• Asia cheers Obama win, but Europe down

The Register has an excellent story today about a recent study that debunks the Long Tail theory that has been all the rage the past couple of years. Technology and business are much like Presidential candidates: just because something sounds good doesn’t mean it holds up to legitimate scrutiny.

In related news: I hear there is no Web 2.0 bubble.

I’m confused. The sun doesn’t seem to be shining any brighter this morning. The birds don’t seem to be chirping any louder. I haven’t noticed an increase in the number of rainbows and I still see panhandlers in the street.

Maybe God didn’t get the memo…

I didn’t vote for you but you are now my President (elect). I am not so cynical that I do not recognize the historic nature of this election. You have my sincere congratulations. I trust that you will now fully represent all of your constituents and lead this country to the best of your ability.

I’m off. For the next two weeks I shall be either playing on vacation or playing on a business trip to Kolkata. If you’re lucky, someone like Jerry will post here occasionally but, at least for the next week, I won’t have access to my computer or to my email.

I’ve voted and I’m pleased to say that I will be attending a show in India the night of the election--I will be watching with interest from afar, but glad to be spared the last minute political ads and calls that would otherwise have been bashing my brain about. In case you wondered what I had to say on the subject of voting, this post from way back in 2004 (the comments don’t work anymore, so, yeah...) is something that I still stand behind (except for typos, grammatical errors, and a slight change in the priorities).

I’ll miss you.

But whilst I’m gone, feel free to enjoy the silence.

Remember: 

NRO is pointing out that some Hillary supporters believe that Biden’s recent speech was actually a hidden reference to the draft. That simply won’t happen; whether Obama supports the idea or not, there is simply no support in Congress or in the voting public for a draft--and while I think Obama is the wrong choice for America’s continued welfare, I don’t think we need to conjure up the boogeyman of a draft to argue our case, especially with such slender evidence.

Just sayin’.

Quick aside: Apparently Biden thinks that America can bypass a crisis by voting McCain for president. I happen to agree, but it seems surprising that he would admit it.

...to prove my point.

I’m going through the old blogroll and I’ve decided that it needs updating. Aside from blogrolling’s recent outage, I have a number of dead blogs on the roll and a desperate need to see read some new voices. So, over the next few days I’ll be deciding which links to keep, I’ll be adding a few new names to the list, and then I’ll see if I can find some service that will make me forget all about the failures of Blogrolling (which seems to be, mostly, a dead product anyway).

Point being: if you have any suggestions either for a service for the blogroll or for new reads that I don’t currently have linked, please leave me your thoughts.

First up, I need to remember to link up the acerbic LibertyGirl2008. Happy fun anger!

Ugly is the only way to describe the Broncos’ loss to New England. Well, perhaps not the only way. You could also say it was inept, hideous, disappointing, and plain old bad. And there are no excuses for the Broncos who lost an ugly, but winnable game last week--a game that showed up every shortcoming that the Patriots exploited tonight.

Like turnovers. The team saw two early, promising drives end on Dante Hall fumbles, saw Jay Cutler throw a couple picks, and saw Patrick Ramsey add one of his own. For a time, the offense looked like it could work its way back into the game, but the turnovers and bad penalties stole hope away every time.

But, Zomby, what about the injuries? That’s no excuse for such poor play and the Patriots could match the Broncos injury for injury if it came down to comparisons. Certainly, it didn’t help that Cutler injured his hand on the very first offensive play of the game--that that had nothing to do with Hall putting the ball on the ground twice early. Certainly, it hurt that both Baileys (Boss and Champ) left with injuries, but the game was out of hand well before that point. Champ Bailey’s absence only proved two things to me: that without him no one on the Broncos’ defense can be relied on to cover a good wide receiver and the Broncos defense really is as bad as advertised.

Because as much as the Broncos offense may have dropped the ball (sorry), the defense played a listless and fruitless game. Big plays, bad tackling, dumb penalties--you name it, they did it.

The Broncos used up their good luck early in the year and haven’t made their case for having earned the top spot in the AFC West. Only the weakness of the conference sees them still looking better than the uneven Chargers and woefully bad Chiefs and Raiders.

Not much in the way of happy thoughts could possibly be attached to a game this phenomenally bad.

None of which changes the fact that Obama supporters are using the accusation of racism against McCain-Palin supporters with sickening regularity and little in the way of evidence. I had thought that race problems in the US were decreasing, but the hysterics and the baseless claims of racism for the pedestrian crime of disagreeing over which candidate would better serve as the United States’ next president.

I’m not stupid. I know that there really is racism in the United States. I know a woman who won’t vote for either candidate--Obama because he is black and a liberal and McCain because he picked a woman as his running mate. Not because he picked Palin, but because he picked a woman. I know other people that aren’t convinced that Obama isn’t a secret Muslim and won’t vote for him based on that worry.

I’m not stupid. But that doesn’t mean that every slight or misunderstood word (cakewalk?) is a sign of racist intent. The repetition of the accusation without evidence speaks volumes about the bad faith of the accusers--these aren’t folks debating or having a reasonable conversation, these are folks hitting out with one of the bluntest of instruments.

False accusations of racism (similar to rape) just cheapen and deaden people to real acts of racism in our country.

I liked the GEICO cavemen. The first series of ads was creative, funny, and memorable.

Then came the TV show, which, if jumping the shark hadn’t jumped the shark, we might imagine that the entire concept had leapt well over the circling cartilaginous fish. But that isn’t the case: GEICO decided to soldier on past the disappointment, flooding us with another series of ads which have reduced the cavemen to whiny little children who make me want to push GEICO down and kick it in the butt a few times.

Cavemen roll up on their motorcycles. Hot girls waiting for them. They look up and see a GEICO billboard. Cavemen turn around and cry their way home.

Caveman goes to beach with uber-hot girlfriend who proceeds to take off her shirt. Which I enjoy. Caveman looks up and sees a plane pulling a GEICO banner. Caveman petulantly walks back to the car.

And, most confusingly, caveman is playing a tennis match with Billie Jean King. According to BJ and the scoreboard, the caveman is losing--our only indication that we might be wrong is the caveman’s confusion. Suddenly the caveman realizes that GEICO is sponsoring the event--a sudden realization that only makes us believe that cavemen really are stupid or how else did he miss the GEICO signs and sponsorship? Whatever, because the result is the same: caveman takes his ball and goes home.

Damn, cavemen aren’t only stupid, they are some whiny little babies.

Please take them off of our TVs. We’re done with the cavemen.

From Steve Green:

If (when?) Obama is elected, by my estimation there’s an at least even chance that the newly-reconstructed FCC will reverse course and attempt to apply the New Fairness Doctrine to blogs.

If (when?) it happens, I’ll break that law.

Yep, I’ll join in this little Internet insurgency should the need arise. I will willfully break a law in order to protect my constitutionally protected right to free speech--and the rights of everyone else who would otherwise be silenced. Every post will be a protest, every word will be a declaration of freedom in the face of an unreasonable government dictate.

Of course, I’m not convinced that there will be a new Fairness Doctrine or that it will be applied to us--I can’t imagine how it would pass a test of constitutionality when tested in court. And it would be tested in court. I’ve been wrong occasionally, though, by overestimating our courts and our elected officials.

Perhaps I’m not cynical enough?

Update: RS McCain, one of the more interesting guys that I met (briefly) during the DNC here in Denver, responds to Steve.

I really don’t like Obama’s answer to this question (watch the video to see what I’m talking about), although I suppose I should applaud him for being honest about his desire to help successful Americans do their patriotic duty by giving the country more money.

I don’t know about y’all, but I neither need to see any more of my wealth redistributed nor am I asking for handouts. I mean, I don’t have so much that higher taxes won’t hurt me, but my success in life isn’t hinging on the Obama-Biden plan of patriotically taxing the hell out of people who are doing better than me, either.

Taxing the wealthy isn’t the best way to help me be successful.

I could write a lot about the Broncos’ loss to the Jags today--about ball control, about ball protection, about strange play calls--but I think this is the best thing that I can say right now: today’s game was an extension of the last game, with all it’s positives and negatives, but without the happy ending.

Everything goes better with a happy ending.