#F#O#T#I 👄👐👐

All celebrities have their fair share of fakes & bots as followers but the total percentage seldom crosses 50%. Narendra Modi's Twitter account shows a high of 63% fake followers which is unusually high but still a significant improvement from the early days of the account when a similar audit showed fakes, bots & total passives to be nearly 80% of the total followers shown. #t #f

First attempt at stuffed pumpkin.

I didn't follow a recipe, but I still think it'll be scrumptious.
It has ground beef, onions, peppers and tons of cheese.. Yum!

Too bad ya'll are too far to come for a taste.

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#t #pumpkin #holidays #receipes

As constitutional democracies around the world are rocked by a series of new developments, China is beginning to challenge the constitutions of the world with its own constitution.

This transition structure represented a new, distinctively Chinese Communist answer to the greatest single problem confronting any polity: how to transfer power peacefully and stably. Monarchy usually does it by a system of identifiable heirs. Democracy does it by elections. Autocracies struggle mightily, often experiencing coups as transition looms.

The Chinese transitional structure has been an extraordinary success, measured by the standards of authoritarian governments. During the period covered by the post-Deng governments, now a bit more than 25 years, depending on how you count, China has experienced spectacular, unprecedented economic growth. That the party has smoothly maintained power during such an era of societal transformation is a fact of historical importance.

Xi has been signaling for years that he is in the process of changing how power transitions in China, and the new amendment is simply the most formal recognition of that change. From a power-sharing, consensus-driven approach, the Communist Party under Xi is circling back to the model of single-leader dominance that characterized it under Mao and Deng. #t #f

A friend has just shared a report in the 'Ahmedabad Mirror' with me and the table below is contained in that report. The full report can be read by taking the jump to the link just below:
https://goo.gl/JcEWfA

Now going by this table and the numbers visible there from the last assembly election, AAP could certainly play the role of a major spoiler for the INC there for at least 5 of these 11 seats that apparently it has already decided to contest.

Here's a flash analysis: Of the 11 seats, 5 of them viz., Bapunagar, Danilimda, Lathi, Chhota Udepur, Padra & Karjan are fairly marginal cases. Two of these were won by the INC with fairly low margins and the balance 3 by the BJP with equally slim margins. In a revival scenario the Congress could hope to wrest these 3 seats from the BJP in a best-case scenario (for these 5 seats). However with the entry of AAP and a worst-case scenario where they affect the INC adversely in all cases, the INC could end up losing all these 5 marginal seats. A negative swing of 10 in a closely fought election over a small sample size of 11 seats even could be 'decisive'.

I have no idea of which other seats the AAP may be wanting to contest in that state and what the past profile and margin of victory of those seats may be like. However, looking at this small sample, the AAP's entry into the forthcoming Gujarat assembly elections could well be 'not-so-good' news for the INC and conversely 'not-so-bad' news for the BJP. #t #f

Modi Sarkar: All announcement, No Action.

'Jaitley had a few announcements to make, but naturally that was lost in a long dissertation that we have heard about a hundred times about how this government's management of the economy has been simply awesome, how everything is OK, how the government has launched big bang reform and also how it is about to launch big bang reform (no contradiction there, right?), how we are simultaneously the fastest-growing economy in the world and poised for a recovery to high growth (no contradiction there either, right?), and of course how everything that's wrong more than three years into the tenure of this government is the fault of the last guys.' #t #f

Vyapam now goes international and is killing it in Washington D.C. these days. #t #f

The ultimate 'desi' servile journo has infiltrated the White House too!

The story behind the expression, “Goyaling the briefing”

'Several Presidents and more press secretaries have come and gone in the last four decades, but Raghubir Goyal is still going strong in the White House briefing room, his hands never tired of being in the raised position always. His questions invariably start with a brief history of South Asia, which could go on until the briefer demands, “So, what is the question?”' #t #f

There was a ruling by the SCI sometime back about not carrying the photos of politicians for every project & every scheme launched. Unexpectedly, it left out the PM & the CM.

Things have descended to such a sorry pass presently that a PM, who is on a perpetual leave of absence on account of ongoing campaigns in various states and on account of foreign tours to every nook & corner of the world, is now inaugurating with a vengeance every little scheme & project in his home state going to the polls and suddenly laying foundation stones for thousands of crores of new schemes, most of which would never even see the light of day. Ads in national dailies, like the one attached, taken out at a total cost of well over 100 crores, keep the nation informed about the latest marvels in Gujarat, many of which have been there in myriad states like Assam, Orissa, Kerala, W.Bengal and others for decades now.

Meanwhile his handpicked CEC, who is a babu from the state IAS cadre, keeps delaying the announcement of polls on one pretext or another which appear patently farcical & absurd. Reasons for the delay range from everything from the weather to the marriage season in that state. To lend weight to his prevarications, the PM, who is now spending most of his time regularly in his home state, thunders in some public meeting that the opposition has no right to question the Election Commission, leading prominent members of the Opposition to wonder whether they should start praying to the Election Commission instead.

By virtue of the fact that polls are held at regular intervals for various states and for the Parliament of India, India continues to be defined as a democracy. #t