Obama all but clinched the nomination today whent the Democratic Rules Committee voted to give Florida and Michigan half of the votes. Even if the committee had voted to give everything Clinton wanted, Clinton would not have been able to overtake Obama in pledge delegates and as I said before there was no way that the superdelegates would have overturn the pledge delegates because that would mean losing the black vote in November. As is now, after the last primaries on Tuesday, Obama would need only about 30 of the remaining 220 or so superdelegates to win the nomination. There may even be enough of them declaring their support of Obama in the next couple of days to make the last two primaries irrelevant.

If Clinton does not bow out after Tuesday and take the fight to the Credentials Committee as Harold Ickes threatened today, her legacy in the party as well as that of her husband will be severely damaged. In the interest of unity the neutral people in the party has refrained from criticizing her. But for her to drag this out when it is mathmatically impossible for her to win is dispicable. She had agreed with the party when it decided that Florida and Michigan were not going to count. That's because she had expected to win the nomination easily. When she started losing then she wanted to count those votes even though there was no campaigning and Obama was not even on the ballot in Michigan. If there was no campaigning Obama would not have won Iowa since Clinton was much more well-known before the campaign. And for her to suggest that Obams do not get any vote in Michigan since nobody voted for him is absurd. Does anyone in his right mind would believe that a strong black candidate like Obama would not do well in Michigan if his name was on the ballot and he campaigned? Changing the rules after the fact is like calling the games exhibitions but after they were played, with one team not even showing up, declared them to count in the standings.

The Clintons are ultimately politicians. I expect her to drop out next week to save her power within the party. Afterall, Obama may lose in November and she will be the odds of favor in 2012 then. Even if Obama wins and stays 8 years, Clinton will still be only 68 years old in 2016, younger than McCain today. So I expect Clinton to act gracefully and not burn all her bridges. She will live to fight another day.

Gas price is over $4 now where I live. Unfortunately the freeways are still crowded here in Southern California. I did notice that there are not quite as many SUVs on the road. I guess we are using cars that get 20 miles per gallon instead of 10. Our government is not doing much either to change the stituation. Bush went to Saudi Arabia to beg for more production of oil. The Saudis said no and Bush had no rebuttal. Back home Congress decided to sue OPEC for holding down oil production. To this announcement OPEC said--nothing. As I wrote in the comment section of the previous blog the U.S. is becoming more irrelevent. Who cares what Bush and Congress say. They will just ignore us. I mean they must think we are bunch of morons. Sue other people for not selling to us? Only in lawsuit happy America would someone believe that filing a lawsuit would solve everything. It just makes me angry that we have such incompetent and pandering people in our government.

It is interesting to note that we sent milliom of dollars to Saudi Arabia everyday for oil. And from which country did most of the 9/11 hijackers came from? Not Iraq or Iran. Yet did we use any leverage against Saudi Arabia? No, because we don't have any. We need their oil not the other way around. So we don't express our displeasure for their citizens attacking us but we only show displeasure when they don't produce as much oil as we would like. How is it that we complain that China don't use its leverage against Sudan?

The earthquake in China is an act of nature but the tragedy is compounded by the work of humans. Obviously China is not as advance as the U.S., Japan and Europe and so the ability to react to disaster is not expected to be world class. Come to think of it, our response to Katrina was also less than world class. But some of the deaths in China certainly could and should have been avoided. The total collapse of some of the schools are inexcusable. These were buildings erected not that long ago and should have been built much better. The race to build more and to make more profits have been costly as businesses and the government cut corners. It is not just foreigners who have lack of confidence in goods made in China, even the Chinese suspect poor quality due to greed. China is like America during the Industrial Revolution where anything goes as long as profits are made. The Olympics venues will be world class but the average Chinese are still being treated as second class citizens

Add to the misery of the death of all of those children is the fact that most of them are an only child. Due to the one child policy in China most parents only have one child. Can you imagine the pain of losing a child, the only one you have? I understand the need to control the population of China but there are just too many negatives with this policy. Killing or abandoning of female infants is obviously a tragic consequence. The only child, especially a boy, becomes a child emperor. The spoiling of the only child will weaken the Chinese adults in the future. Also with greater number of boys than girls, many men will not be able to find a mate. This will possibly lead to increase in depression and alcohol and drug abuse among future men. With less children and lack of a social safety net, who will take care of the elderly in the future. These are all potential disasters as a result of the one child policy.

With my advocating for increase in gas tax, one may think that I am a tax-spend liberal. I don't think I am. I favor a flat income tax with no loopholes. Generally I vote against bonds unless I am very sure that it is of great benefit. I especially hate those bonds that are for "public safety". See, people are more likely to vote for increase police, fire and prison fundings because they feel that these are essential. But since they are essential they should come out of the general tax only. But if politicians increase the general tax they get people upset. But by using bonds or special taxes to fund things like police or roads, then they have more for other things which the taxpayers may not want to support.

Another problem I have with revenue enhancement by the government is the hidden taxes they put in things such as phone bills, both landlines and cellular. There are 911 state tax, funding to support Public Utilities Commission, Federal Universal Service fee, etc. Why do I have to support the public utilities commission with a charge on my phone bill? Who voted for that? Certainly not taxpayers. And what service did the federal governmen provided on my phone? By putting stuff like that without our knowledge politicians get away with increasing our tax without telling us.

Now there are some taxes that I am usually for. Cigarette taxes and alcohol taxes can increase for all I care. These are things that cause a lot of human misery but banning them in the past had not work. Maybe taxing them won't change behavior but so what have we got to lose? We should also increase tax on luxury items. Double the tax on gas guzzlers. Close the loophole we have in Calif. where yach buyers can dock it somewhere outside of the state for a few months and then bring the yacht back and do not have to pay sales tax here. If you can afford the million dollar yacht, you can afford the sales tax. So with my various stand on taxes and fees I am sure neither the Democrats or Republicans will ask me to run for office in their parties anytime soon.

With gas nearing $4 per gallon Clinton and McCain are calling for a suspension of the gas tax for the summer. Obama is calling this pandering and that this policy will not help the consumers. Obama is right on this as practically all economists say suspending the gas tax has no effect. Of course Obama has not put out any energy ideas either. The truth is no politician has the vison to really change our energy policy. And if one has the vison he or she will probably be defeated at the polls.

Couple of years ago when gas approached $3 and there was the call to lower the gas tax and drill in Alaska, I said that those are not policies that would do any good. I said that we should RAISE the tax so that gas is $5 per gallon and thus shocked the nation into really look for alternative energy and stop wasting. Well, I was wrong because now we are almost at $5 without increasing taxes and we have not been shocked into doing things differently. Alaska and lowering the gas tax are still the things on the table. We are still driving huge SUVs.

To see how inept our politicians are look at how they can't even do the things that are obvious. If you want people to decrease gas usage and increase the use of alternative energy, then it would be obvious that you raise the tax on gasoline and give tax credit for using alternative energy. Instead the oil companies continue to get tax subsidies of billions of dollars. At the same time the tax credits for buying hybrids and investment stimulus for wind and solar energy are allowed to expired. In Europe and Japan the gas prices are much higher and they invest more than us in alternative energy. But don't just blame our politicians. Remember when I said that we should raise the gas tax instead of lowering it, I also said that I would never get elected to office if I advocated that. American people expect pandering from the politicans. We would never accept bitter medicine until we are at deathbed. We get the politicians that we deserve.