Great mistakes in politics – Dan Quayle misspells potato

It’s quite reasonable to say that Dan Quayle hasn’t had the luckiest of careers as a politician. When he was elected as George Bush Sr’s running mate for the 1988 election, several anchors in the media raised questions whether he was a suitable candidate to be Vice-President of the United States. On his victory, Quayle seemed to go out his way to prove that the critics flamed upon him were right by making a series of widely mocked statements, including:

“I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy – but that could change”

“I have made good judgements in the past. I have made good judgements in the future”

“I was known as the chief graverobber of my state”
“When you take the UNCF model that, what a waste it is to lose one’s mind, or not to have a mind is being very wasteful, how true that is”

“In 1988 the question is whether we’re going forward to tomorrow or whether we’re going to go past to the back”

Among the most memorable is when he misspelled the word ‘Potato’. This incident occurred on June 15th 1992 while he was visiting a school in Trenton as part of his official duties. He participated in a spelling bee where several students had to spell out words on a blackboard. When it was twelve year old William Figueroa’s turn he had to spell the relatively simple word ‘potato’ which he duly did. At this point Quayle stepped in to point out that, “You’re close, but you left a little something off. The e on the end”. William, acceded to the Vice-President of the United States did as he was told an added the e. The media immediately jumped on his mistake and very quickly it was all over the news.

Later in his defence Quayle rightly pointed out that he was working from the cards he’d been given by the school, where potato had been spelt with an e. As you might expect the press didn’t accept this as an excuse and the gaffe became a national joke (It also became a powerful political weapon in the 1992 election for the Democrats). Even several years later, Quayle devoted an entire chapter of his autobiography to the incident in an attempt to defend himself. When so many politicians have made moral or financial mistakes it seems slightly harsh to remember a man for his spelling errors but this seems to be the case here.

Here is a video of Dan Quayle during the spelling bee:

Barack Obama Proposes $1 Billion Effort To Boost Students' Achievement In Math, Science

             Master Teacher Corps

  

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration unveiled plans Wednesday to create an elite corps of master teachers, a $1 billion effort to boost U.S. students' achievement in science, technology, engineering and math.

The program to reward high-performing teachers with salary stipends is part of a long-term effort by President Barack Obama to encourage education in high-demand areas that hold the key to future economic growth — and to close the achievement gap between American students and their international peers.

Teachers selected for the Master Teacher Corps will be paid an additional $20,000 a year and must commit to participate multiple years. The goal is to create a multiplier effect in which expert educators share their knowledge and skills with other teachers, improving the quality of education for all students.

Speaking at a rally for his re-election campaign in San Antonio on Tuesday, Obama framed his emphasis on expanded education funding as a point of contrast with Republican challenger Mitt Romney, whom he accused of prioritizing tax cuts for the wealthy over reinvestment in the nation.

"I'm running to make sure that America has the best education system on earth, from pre-K all the way to post-graduate," Obama said. "And that means hiring new teachers, especially in math and science."

The administration will make $100 million available immediately out of an existing fund to incentivize top-performing teachers. Over the longer term, the White House said it plans to launch the program with $1 billion included in Obama's budget request for fiscal year 2013.

But the House and Senate both voted down Obama's budget earlier in the year, making it far from certain that Obama will be able to get congressional approval to spend $1 billion on master teachers.

An aide to Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, noted that the federal government already has more than 80 teacher quality programs and said it would be foolish to pump money into programs that may be duplicative or unproductive.

"Republicans share the president's goal of getting better teachers in the classroom," said Kline spokeswoman Alexandra Sollberger. "However, we also value transparency and efficient use of taxpayer resources."

Education Secretary Arne Duncan said he expected the two parties to come together to support achievement in areas of high demand.

"This initiative has nothing to do with politics," Duncan said. "It's absolutely in our country's best long-term economic interest to do a much better job in this area."

A report released in February by the President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology found that the U.S. must increase by 34 percent the number of students receiving degrees in science, math and related fields to keep up with economic demand.

The program will start with 2,500 teachers divided up among 50 different sites, the White House said, but will grow to include 10,000 teachers over the next four years. Obama, in partnership with a coalition of groups including the Carnegie Corporation of New York, has set a goal of producing 100,000 additional math and science teachers over the next 10 years.

Case Registered In Pakistan For lifetime Ban On Nato Supply

A case has been registered in the SC regarding life time ban on NATO supply. 

Lawyer Zafarullah registered a request in the Supreme Court, Lahore Registry and took the position that the govt is talking to coalition partners and other political groups on US pressure to restore NATO supply route.

The case also included the view that resumption of NATO supply will boost terrorism in Pakistan so it should be prohibited for the life time.

Taliban leader admits they 'cannot win war'

This article is according to an interview published by Britain’s New Statesmanmagazine.

The identity of the Taliban leader is not revealed but the interview was conducted by Taliban expert and author Michael Semple, who has also served as a UN envoy to Afghanistan and now works with the Carr Centre for Human Rights Policy at Harvard.

“It would take some kind of divine intervention for the Taliban to win this war,” the commander, who is referred to only as Maulvi (cleric) tells Semple, according to excerpts of the interview on the magazine’s website.

“The Taliban capturing Kabul is a very distant prospect.”  

The Islamists were in power in Afghanistan from 1996 until they were ousted by a US-led invasion in 2001 for harbouring al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, and have since waged an increasingly bloody insurgency.

“At least 70 per cent of the Taliban are angry at al Qaeda,” Maulvi is quoted as saying. “Our people consider al Qaeda to be a plague that was sent down to us by the heavens.

“To tell the truth, I was relieved at the death of Osama. Through his policies, he destroyed Afghanistan. If he really believed in jihad he should have gone to Saudi Arabia and done jihad there, rather than wrecking our country.”

The Taliban insurgents now face the growing forces of the Western-backed government of President Hamid Karzai, supported by some 130,000 US-led NATO troops, who are due to withdraw by the end of 2014.

“It is in the nature of war that both sides dream of victory. But the balance of power in the Afghan conflict is obvious,” says Maulvi, who is described as one of the most senior surviving Taliban commanders and a confidant of the movement’s leadership.

“Any Taliban leader expecting to be able to capture Kabul is making a grave mistake. Nevertheless, the leadership also knows that it cannot afford to acknowledge this weakness.

“To do so would undermine the morale of Taliban personnel. The leadership knows the truth — that they cannot prevail over the power they confront.”

The views presented in the interview contrast strongly with the Taliban’s belligerent public statements, but Maulvi said that “for the moment, as long as (supreme leader) Mullah Omar is alive, the Taliban will be prepared to follow him in this fight”.

'Pak willing to resolve disputes with India'

Pakistan yesterday said it is willing to go by the agreement that it had in the past with India to resolve some of the disputes like Sir Creek and Siachen.

“If you look at may be some of the disputes that we have. We have Sir Creek, we have Siachen... Pakistan has already made it clear that we are willing to go by the agreement that we had in the past,” Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar told PTI in an interview.

She said the two countries must move forward in the relationship and “moving forward would require that we all are able to sometimes show flexibility, some times we don't need to show flexibility.”

Khar is in the Cambodian capital to attend the Asean Ministerial meeting.

“As I said, for me I look at it as a lost opportunity because there were two prime ministers who got along well, who were able to set the course of a different dimension within this relationship.

“US is "ugliest" dictator regime” Iran’s president

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that the U.S. regime is the world's most totalitarian and dictatorial regime. He made this remark during his speech at the inauguration of the 1st International Conference on Women and Islamic Awakening being held in Tehran.

During his speech screened live on state TV, Ahmadinejad said that the Zionist regime (Israel) makes decisions on behalf of the United States and makes policy for them.

The US image is damaged when the nations resist against it. American politics never change, only the faces (J.W Bush with Barak Obama) change, he said.

Making an attack over the European Union members, Ahmadinejad added that European people don't believe and trust in their governments. They stage rallies and were cracked down by their governments and nobody hears them.

In a part of his speech about democracy, Ahmadinejad said that the same situation is in South America and Asia. "There is no real democracy in the world and it is time to change all political and economic measures and calculations in the world," he said.

The Iranian president said that to achieve this goal, nations should be awakened.

More than 1500 female researchers and scholars as well as political and social activists from more than 80 countries are taking part in the conference that began on Tuesday in the Iranian capital.

4 steps to pressurize Iran

The Iranian mission to the UN released to US-based nuclear experts a 10-page document on July 3^rd, detailing Tehran’s position in nuclear talks with the international community.  

Iran’s document rejects calls from the P5+1—the five permanent members of the Security Council, plus Germany—that Iran shut down its Fordow facility and transfer out of the country its 100-kilogram stock of uranium that has been enriched to 20 percent purity. 

Iran, not surprisingly, also wants the lifting of all sanctions and the recognition of its right to conduct a peaceful nuclear program. Tehran demands technical assistance from other nations for such program.

The Iranians are willing to keep their nuclear program open to international inspections, but that’s a preexisting obligation.   

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the document is Iran’s call for meetings once every three months. These sessions would be preceded by expert-level sessions. A technical session was held on July 3rd in Istanbul. The 15-hour meeting, like the higher-level talks before it, produced little in the way of progress. Both sides agreed to meet again but did not set a date for the talks.

Jim Walsh, who heard Iran’s presentation last week in New York, suggests there is room for a deal. “The oral presentation was much softer,” the MIT expert notes. For instance, he believes the Iranians are willing to stop building their heavy-water reactor at Arak and replace it with a proliferation-resistant light-water one instead. Moreover, they would be willing to accept restriction on their 20-percent enrichment activities.

So, should we talk to Iran? “So far, we have not seen a willingness by the Iranians to do anything else than talk, write letters, and gesture,” said one diplomat from a Western nation.

Walsh disagrees. “In terms of a traditional negotiation,” he tells us, “we’re really only at the beginning of this process.”

We have been talking to Iran for about a decade, but even if Walsh is correct, Iran is close—about a year away—to weaponizing the atom. This alone suggests the Iranians will be even less amenable to reaching an agreement. We saw the same intransigent behavior from the North Koreans when they were on the verge of detonating their first nuclear device, which they did in October 2006.

There is nothing wrong with talking with the “atomic ayatollahs,” even at this late stage, but we have to recognize that every day we talk is a day they are closer to possessing a nuclear arsenal. So as we negotiate we should be increasing pressure on the regime, which will give up its nuclear weapons program only when the clerics are convinced they will lose power if they continue their surreptitious efforts.

How do we pressure them? There are four things to do. First, we should retract the waiver granted to China last month from American financial sanctions because that country has been receiving surreptitious oil shipments from Iran. Second, we should announce that we will not renew any of the 19 other country waivers when they expire in December. Third, we must begin thinking about how to implement a total embargo on trade, other than imports of necessary medical supplies, with Iran. Fourth, we should supply Israel with all the military equipment and stores it needs.

These actions may sound drastic in the context of today, but they have a far better chance of working than Washington’s present course of action, which is composed of half measures that are failing to stop the Iranian weapons program. We tried the halfway approach with North Korea, and now Pyongyang has the bomb.