I have been an advocate for immigrants for a long time. I don't think that illegal immigrants should be treated as criminals because I think everyone of us who are ambitious would do the same if we are put in the same situation. So I am more with the liberals on this one. But sometimes I think the liberals have no common sense. The situation in San Francisco is a case in point. SF has called itself a santuary city as it does not cooperate with the Feds in catching illegals. It also would not turn over juveniles who have committed crimes to be deported. Instead it has sheltered them is places like San Bernadino, which is in southern California. This was not known to San Bernardion authorities! Of course nobody was watching these juveniles and they escaped! I am sure this will help mayor Newsom run for governor someday!

Now another story out of SF. An illegal who had been convicted of crimes twice shot and killed 3 people in what appears to be road rage. I have stated many times that factoring in economic status, I believe that immigrants, legal and illegal, commit less crimes than Americans in general. I will stand by that claim. But it makes no sense to excuse people who do commit crimes, whatever their status. Illegals who committed crime should serve their sentences and/or deported. There is no reason to be more lenient to them than Americans. They ARE criminals in these cases. What are the leaders in SF thinking?

It is election year and the economy is in the tank. So the government is putting out economic stimulus checks, bailouts to financial firms and now the mortgage bailout. Both McCain and Obama are for this latest bailout. Only a few Republicans who are in safe districts have come out against the bill. As I said before, didn't we learned from the S@L of the 80's? It is unfair for taxpayers to bailout irresponsible people. If the government is tied to Freddy Mac and Fannie Mae, then why are they private companies with CEOs making money like private CEOs? They even have lobbyists like private companies. So taxpayer money is used to lobby the government to spend more taxypayer's money? Are we still a capitalist society?

Obama is now on his trip to show that he will be a capable president on foreign policies. It can help him because of the extensive coverage he is getting. It also helps him now that Maliki is agreeing with his plan for withdrawl from Iraq. Of course, a trip of this length means there is a great chance of making a major mistake. So I think he will be very cautious and not make any big announcements and just talk in general terms. For example while in Afghanistan yesterday he just say he wants to add couple of brigades to Afghanistan but no real strategy. McCain says that he will add 3 brigades before realizing that to do that he would have to take troops out of Iraq which is what Obama wants to do. But neither one has any great strategy at this point.

Of course the problem with Afghanistan was that all momentum was lost when we switched the focus to Iraq. Now the Taliban and al qeada have regrouped and with the help of Pakistan are causing big problems. Additional troops will help a little but force alone won't do it and besides our troops are exhasted. In fact if we put in a large force it will seem like we are invading again. The Afghans may understand the attack the first time but now they will ask why we abandoned them and now come back again? They may believe the Talibans who say that we are like the Soviets who attacked them over 20 years ago. The large Soviet army got into a big mess and we don't want to do that now. We have to regain the trust of the people because we had left them holding the bag 5 years ago.

We have to help rebuild the economy and infrastructure in Afghanistan as fast as possible. While Kabul is doing ok, the rural areas are in big trouble. Most of the income is from opium. With any drug trade there is corruption and lawlessness. But what do you expect poor peple to do? If opium is the only way to make money you can't blame them for growing it. Unless you can help people make money from something else, you can never have stability. In Iraq it was not just the surge that calm violence. American troops started paying the locals to help them. The troops also listened to the people's problems and tried to help them. Eventually the locals find that the foreign insurgents were the troublemakes. People who used to shoot Americans are now helping them because they trust our troops more than they trust foreign insurgents. We need to establish that trust in various provinces of Afghanistan as soon as possible. Building roads, bridges, schools and hospitals will be more cost effective than bringing in large number of troops. I like to see what ideas that the two candidates can come up with other than putting more troops in.

When things are going well, everybody wants the capitalist system to run with as little regulation as possible. Now that things are falling apart, some people are demanding regulations. I am not an economist but shouldn't government have been regulating the mortgage business before all this collapsed? Now the government is boosting Freddy Mac and Fannie Mae to keep them out of trouble. My question is: Are they private or government companies? They are traded as a private companies on the stock exchange but yet the government (and thus taxpayers) are responsible for their financial health? When these two companies control half of the mortgage in the country, wouldn't the backing of the government cause brokers and buyers to be less careful?

The capitalist system is the best system in the history of the world's economy. But it cannot work without regulation. The law of supply and demand is not enough. Without regulations and their enforcement, it would be chaos as people will try to cheat which will lead to the collapse of the system. The SEC is now trying to regulate the shorting of stocks. This is where someone who believe that a stock will fall would then borrow shares from a brokerage firm, sell the shares, betting that he can buy them back at a lower price later. Some people bypass the borrowing part and sell shares that they don't control. This is important because if many people do that then many people can be selling the large numbers of stocks at a lower price and thus drive the price dramatically lower, even though no shares really changed hands. Not only that, large firms who short a certain stock may produce false rumors and thus drive the prices lower. This is obviously illegal but the SEC had not crack down on it. They are now trying to crack down on shorting of financial stocks but is far from able to regulate this market.

Basically it is the same argument I make about the speculation of the oil market. Many people are still not convinced of this and say it is all supply and demand. Well, the demand for oil world wide increased one percent in the last year but prices doubled. As I mentioned before there are other factors such as the decline of the dollar. But there is manipulation for sure. Commodity futures are a zero sum game. Yet time after time certain large "investors" come out ahead. This is basically gambling with certain players always winning. The game is not played with an even deck. The big players can and do spread rumors which drive up or down the prices. Sure, in the long run prices of oil will go up but it should not be at such a steep curve. Now the last few days the prices have gone down because of the announcement that the fed is going to tighten interest rate to combat inflation. This move from the Fed can lead to decrease consumption. The consumption decrease had not occur yet but the price already dropped because the large "investors" already knew of the announcement ahead of time and can sell their "calls" before the ordinary investors can. Whether the prices go up or down in the near future will depend more on news and rumors than on supply and demand.

Another sign of the economy going down the hill: U.S. seizes assets of Pasadena's IndyMac bank. It is estimated that it will cost the FDIC between 4 to 8 billion dollars to takeover the bank. It is likely also that other banks are going to be in the same situation in the near future. Now there is even fear that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are going to be in trouble. So it may be that the taxpayer will be left holding the bag just as it was during the Savings and Loan crisis in the 80's. That debacle cost the taxpayers over 100 billion dollars.

The S@L crisis brings to mind McCain's involvement as part of the Keating Five. He was one of the five senators who was accused of trying to influence regulators in their dealings of Keating involved in a S@L failure. While McCain just got a reprimand, it was certainly not a good period in his political life.

Given that disaster it is strange to see McCain has Phil Gramm as one of his economic advisors. Gramm just said that we are a country of whinners when it comes to the economy. He does not think the economy is that bad. Gramm, as a senator, helped pass a bill that deregulated energy trading in 2000. This helped lead to the Enron debacle. Not only that, his wife Wendy was on the board on Enron! She had to pay a settlement for a lawsuit filed by Berkeley against Enron board members. So given McCain's experience with the S@L crisis, why would he still uses Gramm as an economic advisor?

I don't think that Obama and the Democrats have any good ideas about how to get out of this economic mess. But I am sure that McCain really have no ideas of his own at all. The Democrats are over protective of unions while the Republicans are too protective of big business. People like Gramm are always complaining about over- regulation. But it has been the lack of regulation or the enforcement of regulations that led to the S@L and Enron disasters. It appears that this lack of oversight will lead to another financial crisis. I am sure Obama will use this against McCain over the next 4 months.

Last week Chuck Hagel, a Republican senator from Nebraska, refused to endore McCain. He hinted that he would be willing to work in the Obama administration. Hagel and McCain were good friends. Hagel was also a Vietnam war hero. He was, however, strongly against the Iraq war. For him to come out against McCain must mean that he does not believe McCain has what it takes to be a good president. I don't think Hagel is a vp choice for Obama as some have suggested. But he would be willing to accept a national security post which would boost Obama's credential in that area not to mention showing bipartianship.

Some Republicans are upset at Hagel and some Democrats are upset at Lieberman for supporting McCain. I don't have problems with either one of them. This is not a matter of loyalty to a party. One should be loyal to the country and support whomever one believes is the best candidate. I won't hold it against Lieberman even though Obama had supported Lieberman in the past. I do think that Lieberman is wrong about McCain especially since he had to correct McCain a couple of times while they were on a Middle East trip together. Lieberman must know that McCain is not very knowlegible about foreign affairs. Is he trying to be the first vp candidate for both parties?

In what uncivilize place can a person shoot two people in the back without being tried? In Texas. A man name Joe Horn saw 2 people apparently robbing his neighbor, called 911 and told the operator that he was going out to shoot them. The operator repeatly told him not to go out there. Horn, citing a new law in Texas that allows a person who is being threatened to attack without first retreating, said he will shoot them because he has a right to protect himself. This is bunch of bull. If he stayed in the house the robbers wouldn't have attacked him. In fact even when he went out there they had no weapon to attack him. But as they ran away from him he shot them in the back. No civilize person would think this is self-defense. A Texas grand jury refused to indict him. Usually it does not take much to indict someone. Certainly it does not have to be beyond reasonable doubt as in convicting someone. So basically the grand jury does not even believe there is a possibility of a crime here. To me Horn is a criminal and a murderer. He was intentionally ignoring the advice of the 911 operator and he premeditated what he would do when he went outside of his house. This should have been first degree murder.

This was a racial case. On television all the protestors against Horn were black and all the supporters of Horn were white. There was at least one Confederate flag among the supporters. If people believe that people can shoot before being threatened, then all the gang killings can be called self-defense because the gang member can say that an approaching person maybe a gang member trying to kill him. So it would be justified to fire first. Does anyone believe that Horn would not be prosecuted if he was black or Latino?

I am beginning to believe that there is a cowboy culture still in Texas. Kill the Indians before they can attack you becomes kill anyone that may threaten you. Frontier justice prevails here. You can be the police, judge and jury as long as you have a gun. Combat violence with violence. Maybe that's why Texas produces a president who combats terrorism with force without strategy. Just like the Texas law does not make Texas safer, the cowboy mentality of our president does not make us safer.