I am writing this blog on my new ipad, given to me by my kids for Chrismas. I am now almost up to date with the technological world!  I predict that they will avoid the fiscal cliff by kicking the can down the road further.

My predictions for the Big Ten stay intact with MSU's come back victory.  A good win for them after all those close losses this year.

Happy new year!

When is it going to be enough?  How many more innocent lives have to be lost before we ban all assault weapons and magazines that carry more than 10 bullets at a time.  What are these weapons for except to attack other people?  This is a national security issue.  This is domestic terrorism.  I don't think the freedom to own these assault weapons trumps our freedom from being wire-tapped.  Yet after 9/11 the government can wire-tap citizens.  We kill 4 times more of our fellow citizen each year than 9/11 but we can't give up the freedom of owning assault weapons?

The argument that if good guys can't buy weapons then they can't protect themselves from bad guys is absurd.  It is much more likely that guns owned by ordinary citizen will kill someone innocent, kill someone during an argument, or kill someone accidentally than to have stopped a criminal.  Certainly the guy in Florida who shot the black kid in a struggle would not have even approached the kid if he did not have a gun.  He would have simply called and waited for the police to show up. 

I think we should ban all manufacturing of assault weapons except for those to be purchased by the military and law enforcement.  It is not a right to make these weapons.  After all, I am sure one cannot legally build an atomic bomb.   The line has to be drawn now.

It is time for my yearly Big Ten bowl predictions.  There are 7 teams from the Big Ten in bowl games this year.  It would have been 9 if Penn State and Ohio State were eligible.  Since those two beat Wisconsin, the Big Ten champs, this means everyone plays a higher bowl than they would have otherwise.  So it is not likely the Big Ten will do very well.  This explains why Big Ten teams are all underdogs in their games.  I am going to predict that Michigan State, Michigan and Northwestern are going to win, for a total of 3 victories for the conference.  These three are from 2-4 points underdogs but I think they can come through.  The others have no chance at all will possibly exception of Wisconsin which showed some life against Nebraska.  Still I don't think they can beat Stanford.

Four weeks to go before the fiscal cliff occurs.  I believe that a last second deal will be made to avoid the cliff because both sides are scared of the consequences.  Frankly I don't know why people are afraid of this so called cliff.  I say bring it on.  I think we will survive it and will gain some knowledge of how the economy really works.

The predictions are that if the tax increases and spending cuts occur as scheduled on Jan. 2, 2013, we will lose about 4% of GDP, putting us back into recession.  I am no economist so I don't have any idea if these calculations are accurate.  But this law was passed so that if the so called super committee can't find a way to reduce the deficit then the tax increases and spending cut to be implemented will reduce our deficit by 1.2 trillion dollars.  Now throughout the last few years all I have heard is that we have to reduce the deficit as if not doing so will be the death of our economy.  So now with less than a month we are saying that by reducing the deficit we are going to kill our economy?  So I say let us go over the cliff.  If we go into recession, then I guess reducing the deficit is not the cure all that we heard about in recent years.  But if we don't go into recession then may be we will be more brave about cutting more of our deficit in the future.

The extreme right wants to reduce the deficit by cutting spending only.  The extreme left wants to cut the deficit by raising taxes only.  But most people think that both need to be done.  This cliff forces us to do both just as most people want.  I think initially the stock market will be spooked.  There will also be less spending by consumers.  But after a while maybe we will see that we don't need to spend more money on our military as the next ten nations combined.  Maybe we see that a little cut on medicare do not lead to deaths to our seniors.  Maybe our millionaires will see that losing a few thousand dollars a year in tax should not change their strategy in expanding their businesses.  But if the recession lasts longer than I think it will, well, then maybe we won't be so vocal about drastically reducing the deficits next time.

It is time for Obama to name John Kerry the next secretary of state.  The Susan Rice situation is too distracting.  With the fiscal cliff negotiation going on, Obama should not waste energy on this.  Maybe he feels that Rice got a raw deal and that he should stand by his long time friend.  But I think most people would agree that Kerry is a more qualified choice to begin with.  Kerry would also sail through the confirmation hearings whereas Rice will be dragged through the mud and keep the disaster in Libya on the front page.  I also understand that the Republicans are hypocritical by saying that she gave false info to the nation.  Remember another Rice gave false info about WMD in Iraq.  She became secretary of state.  But this is a fight not worth fighting for Obama.

On  lighter note, I am surprised that neither Apolo Anton Ohno or Emmitt Smith made it to the DWTS final.  But I think Melissa Rycroft was the right champion even though I thought another athlete, Shawn Johnson would win due to her popularity.

With the fiscal cliff looming and the economy is still weak, it would seem that domestic issues will be most dangerous for Obama's second term.  However, I believe that there will be more difficult challenges from foreign affairs in the next 4 years.  I am cautiously optimistic that the economy will be better in the next 2-3 years.  But as the conflict between Israel and Hamas over the last few days show, the outside world will produce predictable and unpredictable headaches.  Besides the middle east, another area of likely conflict is in Asia between China and Japan over some small islands.  In both middle east and Asia, Obama should try to stay as low as possible unless there is a chance to help broker a long lasting peace.

There is really nothing much the U.S. can do about Israel and Hamas other than pressure Egypt to broker a cease fire.  This conflict has been going on for decades and rhetoric about supporting Israel, spoken by Obama and Hilary Clinton, does nothing except for political consumption back home.  I think everybody understands that if one lives in Israel and rockets are attacking them from Hamas, it is human nature to retaliate.  But that would never lead to peace.  As Gandhi said "an eye for an eye only leads to the whole world being blind."  Since there has not been any attacks from PLO controlled West Bank, the U.S. should convince Israel to recognize the government of West Bank as a legitimate state.  The U.S. and Israel should help the new Palestine state to thrive economically.  Eventually support for Hamas in Gaza will drop when the people see that a thriving Palestinian state is possible.  If Obama is bold, that is what he should try to do.  Sending a war ship to the area to show support for Israel will only anger the Arabs, it does nothing to help Israel.

As far as the situation between China and Japan, it can escalate if the U.S. interfere.  I am sure they will not go to war over these islands but the bad blood between them already have an economic impact in Asia.  Again by sending a war ship over there only gets China angry.  The government will use that to rev up nationalism against both Japan and the U.S.  The economic impact will then even be worse.  I say stay low and hope things cool down on their own.  It is really none of our business.  Interesting enough, Taiwan agrees with China about the history of these islands.  This is because China claimed that historically the islands are part of the Taiwan province, which is part of China.  Taiwan, which is closer to these islands than mainland China and Japan, also claims them for itself.  So Taiwan agrees that the islands are part of Taiwan, only that Taiwan is NOT part of China!

Mitt Romney said that Obama won because he gave gifts to Hispanics, college students, gays, and single women.  Of course that would be like saying that the incumbent should always win because he is always able to use policies to buy votes.  In this case Obama was doing what he had promised.  If one believes that college students should not get financial aid or be covered under their parents' health insurance, they can vote against him.  It is like the Republicans promise tax breaks.  Every time the government gives a tax exemption to a corporation, it is just like writing a welfare check. Is that a gift to buy votes?  Why do you think the wealthy are willing to back the Republicans?  It is why defense contractors back the Congressmen on defense budget committee.  I don't think that Romney really understands the country and that is the main reason he and the Republicans lost.

With the economy not recovering fast enough, Romney and the Republicans should have won big.  But instead of focusing on the slowness of the recovery, they blamed immigrants and unions etc. for the problems of the country.  They also focused on social issues such as abortion and gay rights, issues that they cannot win overall.  Regardless of whether you believe that illegal immigrants are a net gain or net loss to the economy, you cannot say that they had ANYTHING to do do with the financial market collapse. But Romney moved way to the right on immigration during the primary and even though he tried to come back to the middle, it was too late.  It also seems insincere.  With the demographic changing, if Romney and the Republicans don't learn from this, it would be difficult for them to win in the future.

Well, it is 2 days left.  Time for my forecast.  It is no secret that there are only a few states that are up for grabs.  They are:  Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Virginia, Colorado, Florida, Ohio, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Iowa.  Out of these I will say that Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are going to go to Obama.  This will leave Obama with 247 votes needing 23 more.  I will give Florida and Virginia to Romney giving him 248.  So this leaves Ohio with 18, Colorado with 9 Nevada and Iowa with 6 each and New Hampshire with 4.  I predict that Obama will sweep these states and finish with 290.  So it is possible for Obama to win without winning Florida or Ohio (although not very likely).  But Romney must sweep these two and add New Hampshire to his column to win. Does my math look correct?  What is your prediction?

I think Obama again defeated Romney in today's debate.  I think this was Romney's weakest debate of the three.  He basically agreed with Obama on most of his foreign policies.  In an attempt to move more to the middle he now tries to paint himself as a peace maker!  He now agrees with the sanction on Iran, with military action only a last resort.  He agrees that we should be out of Afghanistan by 2014.  One commentator actually said that McGovern has come back to life in the form of Romney.  Obama rightly points out that Romney kept changing his mind.  I think the Republican conservative base must be shocked by what Romney said tonight.

I don't like to use one issue to decide on a candidate but Romney said something that show how much understanding he lacks on foreign affairs.  He said that Iran is our greatest national security threat. This is totally absurd.  If and when Iran actually gets nuclear weapons, it will still has lot less bombs than about 8 other countries in the world.  In truth no nation will attack the U.S. because it know it will be destroyed.  Russia is the only one that can destroy us but even they will die as a result.  So no nation will try to use nuclear weapons against us.  Even if you are trying to pander to Israel, it is still irresponsible to say Iran is our greatest risk.  I am surprised that no commentator on CNN called him out on it.  Obama said terrorism is our biggest threat.  It is a much better answer but still not right in my opinion.  I think cyber attack is the greatest unless you consider that a type of terrorism.  Cyber attack does not require a strong nation or lots of people.  Cyber attack can stop our traffic, communications, electric grid, financial system, even our water supply.  So I think greater resources need to be spent on preventing this.

Overall grades for the 3 debates:  Romney:  B+ B C+   Obama:  C- A- A-

Tomorrow is the big debate.  Due to the closeness of the race, it can have an effect on the outcome of the election.  But I don't think there will be a big swing like it did with first debate.  The first one established Romney as a solid candidate and unless he really bombs in the second, he will still be in better shape than 3 weeks ago.  Obama must stop the bleeding but I doubt he can regain the lead he had even if he beats Romney this time.  Obama already has 4 years of record so most people have already made up their mind about him.  So I think this debate can move the polls only 1 or 2 points either way, not 5or 6 points like last time.  Given the closeness of the race though, 1 or 2 points maybe significant come November.

Romney is obviously trying to be more centrist as the election gets near.  But one thing Obama can point out is that there are several advisers from the Bush era that Romney is using in foreign policies.  Among them are neocons that advised Bush in nation building and spreading "democracy".  While I don't think Romney is agreeing with these people and would get us into war like in Iraq, the fact that he is listening to them is dangerous enough.  This should be pointed out by Obama.  One can argue about which economic policy is better, but the bottom line is Iraq cost us thousands of lives and one trillion dollars.  These neocons are the people we certainly should not listen to.

I have not been writing because I have been away, not because of the Obama debate debacle.  So today we have the vp debate.  I think it was a draw.  Both Biden and Ryan did what they were supposed to do:  Biden attacking and Ryan showing that he is much more capable than Palin four years ago.  The vp debates rarely have any significance on the election and given the draw today, this one certainly would not make any difference.  How Obama responds in the next two debates will go a long way in determining who wins this close race.

I think it is easier to be the challenger in these debates because one can always attack the policies of the incumbent.  Like the Middle East policies.  The region is a mess and nobody can possibly make things look good out there.  The challenger can say things like being tougher on Iran.  But there is nothing tougher that can be done short of waging war.  When pressed about what would be his criteria to go to war, Ryan says only if the security risks of the country is a stake.  Well, I don't see how Iran having nuclear weapons is of security risks to the U.S.  Anyone who thinks that Iran will wage nuclear war against the U.S. is crazy.  I think that if Romney/Ryan are elected, there will be a greater chance that we will preemptively attack Iran and I think that will be a grave error.

The opening skit on Saturday Night Live made fun of the presidential election. Mainly it is about Obama feeling confident despite the fact that he should be in big trouble. His secret weapon is Mitt Romney who keeps getting himself into trouble. This actually is close to real life. There were great opportunities for Romney to gain ground this past week. The spat between Obama and Netanyahu, the crisis in the Middle East and the Chicago teachers strike are all gold mines that Romney should have exploited. Instead he makes a stupid statement about the crisis, and failed to attack more vigorously on the other two. Now he is caught on camera disparaging 47% of the population saying that they don't pay taxes and are dependent on government hand outs. Obviously this will be used by the Obama team to show that Romney is only for rich people and that he despises half of the population. Even if this does not hurt Romney directly, it will put him on the defense for a while and make it again difficult to attack Obama where he is most vulnerable, the economy.

Romney's attack on Obama as the violence unfold in Egypt and Libya is totally wrong. The statement put out by the U.S. embassy in Egypt was before the violence started. It was meant to defuse a dangerous situation. Romney claimed that the statement was made after the attack started and it showed U.S. weakness. The timeline put out by CNN showed that was not the case but Romney refused to back down. Regardless, it shows lack of understanding of the world. It is like a hostage situation. The police can say all they want about how powerful they are but that will not stop the violence or save the hostages. It is better to try to defuse the situation. This is not weakness but intelligence. Remember Bush apologized for the spy plane incident in China. Would it have done any good if the U.S. had threatened China? Would Romney have criticized Bush for being weak?

There will always be bad guys. How many ordinary people will follow the extremists will depend on how many openings we give them. A film making fun of Mohammad is just perfect for the bad guys. The film has been around for a couple of months but nobody paid attention until right before 9/11 when an Egypt extremist brought it up and it goes viral. Obviously this was an opportunity for them to cause trouble on 9/11. Just like the preacher who threatened to burn the koran awhile back, the makers of this film are just helping the enemy recruit more followers.

Just finished watching Obama's speech. It was great delivery as usual but short on substance. There was talk that he will be more specific after the Republican had nothing specific to say last week. This is a little disappointment for me and independent voters on the fence. I think both sides are afraid that anything specific will immediately be attacked by the other side. It is interesting to me that both sides gave a nod to Bowles-Simpson in their conventions but both sides had rejected it earlier. I think Obama should have promised to enact Bowles-Simpson which is very popular among independents. I think that is one thing specific about taxes, entitlements and deficits that would not become an instant target for the other side to shoot at.

The Democrats made a mess of their platform with God and Jerusalem. I thought that the Republican had the more vulnerable platform particularly with the extreme view on abortion. But leave it to the Democrats to not be able to copy the previous platform and cannot do a voice vote correctly.

I think Ann Romney and Michelle Obama fought to a draw. Biden, I thought was slightly better than Ryan. Also Castro is a rising star and his youthful and fit look trump Chris Christie. I know looks are unfair but Obama rode his keynote speech to eventual presidential nomination. Castro can well do the same in about 12 years. Obama beats Romney because of better deliverance but not in substance. So overall in head to head the Democrats win slightly in my opinion but if someone calls it a draw I will not argue.

Of course the Democrats had a trump card the Republicans did not have: Bill Clinton. Is there any more doubt that Clinton is the best American politician since Kennedy? He is one guy who can make deep political analysis enjoyable to listen to for nearly an hour. I don't think that the Democrats and Obama can possibly ask a better speech from Clinton or anyone else. If Obama gets reelected, he owes Bill a great deal. If Biden and Hillary run against each other in 2016, Obama may have to back Hillary because his debt to Bill.

So what is the result of these two weeks. As I said before, there are only 6-7% undecided and it would take a lot to move the needle. Certainly the Democrats did not lose ground in these two weeks. I think if the job report is bad tomorrow, then it is even. If the job report is better than expected tomorrow then the Democrats get 2 point bump, mostly due to Clinton's effort. This may not sound significant and may not even show up due to margin of error of polls but it would be a couple of points that Romney would have to make up with the debates. But even in this best scenario for the Democrats, it will still go down to the wire.

So the Republican convention is now over. I have not seen any new polls out yet, so it is hard to say what effect the convention had on the voters. Most of the time a convention gives its candidate a boost for a short period of time. I would expect that to be the case of here and then after the Democratic convention we will probably be at the same level again. This is going down to the wire for sure!

I think Ann Romney did her job the best among the speakers. She was supposed to make Mitt more likeable and I think she did that. Chris Christie fired away as expected but I don't think he did a good job for Romney. First of all he spent most of the first half of his speech talking about himself as if he is angling for 2016 already. After Ann had talked about love, Christie went on about wanting respect rather that love. This kind of cancel each other on Tuesday. Paul Ryan fired up the base and acted as the pit bull as expected. He had lots of inaccuracies as pointed out by neutral pundits such as Medicare cut backs and unemployment rate. So overall I think he was only B or B+ as best. Romney did all right but did not hit a home run as the Republicans claimed. He had nothing specific to say and I think he wasted time in the beginning introducing himself which others, especially Ann, had done for him already. He also started late and ran late thanks to Clint Eastwood.

Speaking of Eastwood, how did he aged so fast? This can't be the Dirty Harry we used to love! His effort of being a comedian was as successful as Jackie Chan would have trying to do romance. Was it not 6 months or so ago that Republicans were complaining that Eastwood was doing a commercial for Obama on the Super Bowl? Now we can see how paranoid they are given Eastwood is such a staunch conservative. On the other hand, if you are a conspiracy theorist, you may say that Eastwood did it on purpose to screw up Romney's big night. In that case, you would also have to say that the Romney campaign was not very good in not screening Eastwood to make sure he is not Dirty!

Now about minorities in the party. They did wheel out Rubio and Rice. I missed their speeches. I will assume they did well. But Rubio can only help with the Cuban vote which Romney already has. As I said before, he would not help with other Latinos, especially Mexicans who are different politically than Cubans. Before Rice spoke, a Republican analyst on CNN said that Rice proves to the country that the Republicans are not all white country club people. Well, Rice just got into Augusta, her expertise is Russian history, she played tennis and the piano, she was also a figure skater. I don't know if you can get any more white country club than her!

The convention is not just speeches. One of the most important thing that is done is voting for a party platform. This seems to be hidden out of sight. Nobody talked about it on tv. A reporter from the local paper (not LA Times) wrote about some of it. I don't have time to check if all of these are true but some are obviously true. Like against abortion without exception even in case of rape or save the life of the mother, same stand as Todd Akin. Some members have proudly call this the most conservative platform in history. It is so out of touch with majority of Americans that the Republican national chairman had to say that this is the party platform, not Romney's platform. This makes it important to ask: what parts of the platform is Romney against? Voters have the right to know? This should be asked by the Democrats next week. Also should be asked: Having said what he did not like about Obama's policies, what policies of Bush does Romney like or dislike?

Now it is the Democrats' turn. I am sure I will find things to criticize next week. On thing I can predict: that they will not send out an aging Hollywood star to speak without an approved script.

Tomorrow is the start of the Republican convention. So I like to talk about one big issue the democrats and republicans are fighting over. Taxes. To me the American tax system is terrible. The tax code is thousands of pages long and is criticized by both sides. Yet nobody really want to make it simple because it is the tax laws, loopholes and exceptions to the tax laws that give politicians the power. By making and amending laws and creating loopholes, powerful politicians can help the people who support them. These complicated laws also keep big accounting firms and tax law attorneys in business. So if I am king I would make the following tax codes.

I would propose a flat tax maybe similar to the 16% Hong Kong has. There would be a line below which those people would not have to pay. Anything above that line everybody pays the same percentage. In order for this to work there can't be any deductions and nobody can write into law new deductions. There will be higher taxes on alcohol and tobacco. Th flat tax usually favors higher income earner. To offset that there should be no sales tax for "normal" priced products. For example a chair priced at $50 will not be taxed. But a $5000 couch would be taxed. Cars will be taxed according its mileage per gallon and sales price. A $20000 first car for a family will be taxed free. A gas guzzler or a Rolls Royce will be highly taxed. Putting money into the Cayman Islands or Swiss banks will be highly taxed as well. Sorry Mitt!

There are kinks that need to be worked out but you get the idea. Since I am not really the king, there is also 0% chance of something like this ever passing.

Yesterday CNN had an article which says that Hong Kong women have the longest life expectancy in the world, 86.7 years. They have surpassed Japanese women who had lived the longest for the last 25 years. Hong Kong men comes in at 80 years, not too shabby. My take on this is that obviously Asian men sacrifice themselves in taking care of their spouses. OK, I will admit there may be other factors involved. One thing is that Asian cities tend to be very crowded so it is difficult to drive. Most people walk to a lot everyday. Tai chi which is very popular helps elderly people with balance and thus avoid hip fractures which can lead to high mortality. The Asian food is less fattening than western diet which decrease heart diseases and breast cancer in women. But there are also disadvantages living in Hong Kong and elsewhere in Asia. Air pollution is worse and infectious disease tend to spread more quickly in crowded places. So given all these pluses and minuses, does Hong Kong's health system make a difference?

I think the Hong Kong system does make a difference. How much I don't know. The basic system is modeled after the British system. There are public hospitals and clinics one can go for free or very cheap. There are long waits in some specialties just like in Britain. These long waits are always pointed out by opponents of socialize medicine. Unlike the British, however, Hong Kong allows and encourages private hospitals and clinics where if you can pay, you can bypass the long wait. Unlike many countries with socialized medicine, paying to get to the front of the line is not frowned upon in Hong Kong. So emergencies and regular primary care are given to anybody quickly by doctors who are among the best trained in the world. But if want a new knee or hip or lasik surgery, you wait couple of years if you are poor or pay to get them right away if you are rich. The British and Canadians make the latter difficult for the rich. The end result is that some end up going to the U.S. for treatment. Is Hong Kong better? It is a matter of opinion but I think you can't always be completely fair and the Hong Kong system seems good to me.

This is my post Olympic review. First I would like to say that I did not like the closing ceremony. It felt like an Emmy award show. I understand that the British gave us a lot of excellent rock music but to base the entire show on that seems not to do right by the Olympic games. After all we can see the Emmy every year, not to mention the American and World music awards etc. And there were very few great British stars in person. I know Freddy Mercury can't be there but a woman taking his place? Who are the people pretending to be the Who? David Bowie didn't show up. Annie Lennox and George Michael did not sing their most famous songs. I know they are not rockers but if music is the only thing they are going to give us, at least bring on Katherine Jenkins and Susan Boyle. Given that London is maybe the most diverse city in the world, what happens to ethnic group participation? Maybe the Brits don't want to remind others of their colonial days?

They are still talking about the badminton scandal in the papers. But nobody noticed that Spain, after losing to Russia in group play, managed to lose the Brazil thus ensuring that they finish 3rd in the group. This way they would be in a different bracket as the U.S. in the knock out round. If they were 2nd they would have played the U.S. in the semi-finals. This way they don't play the U.S. until the finals. Sort of like the 76ers lost the last regular season game so they play the #1 seed Bulls who are without Rose instead of the full strength Miami Heat. The badminton players were doing the same thing as Spain and the 76ers did. It is just easier to hide it in team sports.

I noticed that South Korea gives exemptions to athletes who win Olympic medals from serving their mandatory military service. I don't know if it is a good idea to deprive your military the fastest and strongest people of your country. How about the shooters? Wouldn't they be useful. I bet they could have use their archers even though we don't fight with bow and arrow anymore. By the way West Point finished 3rd in a recent NCAA shooting championship. I think they should draft all the members of #1 and 2.

The U.S. women did much better than the men. The women won 29 golds vs 17 for the men. In fact the men were tied by Britain and China in gold medals. I think there is a more even playing field among the men in world competition. Even in basketball the world competition is getting closer. With all the stars from the NBA the U.S. had couple of scares including the final. The women, on the other hand, have benefited by Title IX. Compare to women in other countries the U.S. women have great advantages. The women's basketball team is much farther ahead of other countries than the men' team. The volleyball and water polo team did way better than the men's teams. The men's soccer and field hockey teams did not even qualify. In all these sports there are way more scholarships for women than men. UCLA used to be a power house in men's gymnastics but it does not even have a program now. Football takes up much of the scholarships for men but football is not in the Olympics. So if things do not change pretty soon we will depend on the women alone to fend off challenges from China.

There are arguments about whether Usain Bolt or Michael Phelps is the greater Olympian. If you are talking about life time achievement then there is no argument, Phelps win easily at this point. If Bolt 3 peats in 2016 then we can open the discussion. If you are talking about this Olympic I would say Bolt since he went undefeated in a more glamorous sport. In fact I don't think Phelps is the best male swimmer this year. I would pick Sun Yang of China who won the 1500 and 400 free plus silver in 200 free. He also anchored China's 4x200 relay to a bronze medal. All of those had never been done by Chinese men before. In individual events Phelps won 2 gold and a silver also. But he also finished 4th in one event. He got 3 medals in relays but the U.S. would have won those without him. China would not get the bronze without Sun. Sun also broke his own world record in the 1500 and beat Ryan Lochte in the 200. There is a big difference between the distances of 200 and 1500 and I don't think anyone had done that well in such different distances.

Did anyone notice that when the Japanese gymnastic coach went to the judges to protest the score that put Japan in 4th place in the competition, he was holding some American money in his hand? Since he is Japanese and is in England why would he be holding American money? I guess the greenback is still the international money of trade or bribe.

I predict that Brazil's economy will shrink in the next 4 years due to China decreasing its demand for soybean and raw materials. This will lead to speculation and worry that Brazil will not be ready by 2016. Eventually Brazil will pull it off and everybody will have a great time. I will have learned the samba by then.

In regard to the last comment on the last blog: No, the complain about Obama changing the welfare law is unfounded. He was just giving the states more flexibility to administer the work laws. This was requested in the past by GOP governors. It is another example of taking things out of context which both sides are guilty of.

Mitt Romney has picked Paul Ryan to be his running mate. By making the choice now ahead of the convention, Romney appears to be changing strategy. He has decided that he can no longer just point the finger at Obama's record and win. By selecting Ryan, who has made extensive proposals on social security, medicare and medicaid reforms, he will have to put out specific ideas to the voters. If your running mate has put out specific proposals, you can't just say things like "I am going to create a million jobs and cut the deficit" without telling us how you are going to do it.

The Democrats like the Ryan choice because now they have something specific to attack. It is hard to know how this will play out. I think in most states, the vp choice will not make much difference. Ryan can energize the Republican base and the Tea party people to be more enthusiastic for Romney. I think that Ryan will only make a difference in two states: Wisconsin where Ryan would help Romney and Florida where he would hurt him because the large number of seniors who don't want big changes in their social security and medicare. Since Florida has 29 votes to 10 for Wisconsin, I think Ryan will be a negative for Romney overall. A better choice, politically, would be Rob Portman of Ohio since that is a toss up state with more votes than Wisconsin and Portman would not alienate the seniors in Florida.

This is my special Olympic blog. Four years ago I wrote how I would help the Chinese Olympic team achieve success by being a "special consultant". It obviously worked as China won the most gold medals and finished second in total medals. Having seen the controversy over the U.S. uniforms being made in China, I decided not to be a consultant for China this Olympic for fear of backlash. If Harry Reid wants to burn the U.S. uniforms made in China, he may want to burn me at stake! The whole thing is ridiculous. Unless Reid and others have no clothes made from another country, they should shut up. The USOC needs sponsor money and gets some from Ralph Lauren. Ralph Lauren needs to make a profit so they send the work overseas. This is the capitalist system. Unless you want government sponsor Olympic teams and state owned enterprises, this is the way it is. It is not the fault of the USOC or Ralph Lauren. By the way, China makes its own uniforms but the wool is purchased from Australia because it is the best deal. If the U.S. can make it cheaper I am sure Chinese athletes will be wearing "Made in USA".

I found out that Phelps and Lochte are only competing against each other in the 200 and 400 IMs. They are favored to win the other two they entered. So if they are on all three relays then they each can win 7 golds but both can't win 7. I predict that they would split the two IMs and win 6 each.

The U.S. women are favored to win. China is not as strong this year and Romania figures to be the top competition. Gabby Douglas is coming on real strong and that will help the team but she can very well beat Wieber for the all round title. The U.S. men are also very strong. They have that guy from M whose name I forgot how to spell. Japan is the clear favorite as China had retirements from Beijing and couple of recent injuries that knock out couple of their stars. See what happens when I am not a consultant?

Some guy in my dancing class vehemently said that ballroom dancing should NOT be added to the Olympics. Most of the class disagree with him as expected, but I agree. While I found out that dancing requires athleticism of a kind I don't have, I don't think it should be a competitive sport. It is too subjective and at the highest level it is impossible to tell who is really better. It brings too much politics into it as have figure skating and ice dancing. I don't like those sports either. Too a certain degree so are gymnastics and diving but there are more obvious errors and strength moves with these sports. And since they have been there for a long time and are popular they should stay. But to bring in new sports like ballroom dancing, I don't think so. By the way I like sports where you can play defense and mess up the other team. I would make a good defensive player in ballroom dancing if it is allowed like in most other sports!

I also don't like golf being added. It is basically a rich man sport, more so even than tennis and so a poor country has no chance in it. Luck also plays too much of a role. Witness all the different people who won majors lately. Even Tiger at his best won only about 20% of the time. So to be an Olympic winner in golf would not mean the best golfer unlike Usain Bolt is considered the fastest man in the world.

Of course I am also the guy who wonders why swimming has any strokes besides free style. I mean in a race on land, you don't have events like running backward or run like a butterfly. Race walking should also be eliminated. All those officials along the route just to make sure nobody runs? If someone is chasing you in life would you walk instead of run or use the breast stroke instead of free style to get away? So as you can see if I am king of the Olympics a lot sports may be eliminated and very few new ones would get in.

I know what Sports Illustrated's Sign of the Apocalypse for this week is going to be: Cal tech being sanctioned by the NCAA. Cal tech is cheating like the football powerhouses? They don't even have a football team. Their basketball team won a conference game for the first time in God knows how many years last year and it was big new in LA. They even had a press conference to discuss the victory. I went to one of their basketball game a few years ago because they were playing a school near my house. I just wanted to see how bad they were. They had Asians on the team that I was better than when I was in college. I was annoyed that the local school hardly subbed their starters even though they were up about 40 points. Then I found out later they actually started their scrubs and kept the regulars on the bench the whole game to keep the score down! So now I wonder if Cal Tech will have to vacate their one conference victory last year. What has the world come to?

I see that the Knicks got Raymond Felton and Stephen Smith is all over Jeremy Lin saying that the Knicks lost confidence in him when he did not play the last playoff game so they are not going to match Houston's offer. As I said before Stephen Smith is an idiot and if the Knicks feel that way then they are idiots also. The Knicks were not going to beat Miami with Lin or even Kobe Bryant so why risk a young player's career by playing him when he is not 100%? That is just so stupid! But the Knicks must have doubts about Lin because otherwise they would have offered first, say, 15 million for 3 years and then if Lin wanted to test the market then it would not be their fault if they don't match. Now I think they were not all sure that Lin would be worth a multiple year contract. So once again Lin is being slighted.

But this time he is wanted by someone. I think Houston may be a better fit. He would be the main focus there unless somehow they get Dwight Howard. In NY Carmelo Anthony and Amare are going to hog the offense anyway. I don't think that Jason Kidd would be such a good role model. He just got arrested for drunk driving and don't forget his brush with domestic violence a few years back. If Felton is good enough why did the Knicks traded him a couple years ago? He also had a bad year this past season. I think the Knicks are going to be totally dysfunctional. Houston does not have much a roster left, having lost Scola, Lowry and Camby. So I think Lin will run the offense there and the expectation will be low. So there will be less pressure. So it may be a blessing in disguise.

I thought today was the day that Jeremy Lin would sign with the Rockets and the Knicks will match the offer and end all speculation. But the day came and went without words other than a rumor that Lin was upset at the Knicks for not making the first offer. I find that absurd. If the Knicks had made an offer, it would be substantially less than the Rockets' offer. That would have forced Lin to take the offer and lose the chance to test the market or refuse the offer and look ungrateful to the Knicks who had given him a chance last year. So this was really a bad business decision for the Knicks and a lucky break for Lin. So there was no reason for Lin to be upset and he is intelligent enough to know that.

So far the offseason in the NBA can be described as the changing of the old guards. Jason Kidd went to the Knicks, Steve Nash to the Lakers and Ray Allen to the Heat. All moved to get a better chance to win the title. Obviously Allen got the best chance. He would not have to do too much, just shoot! His new team is already the defending champs and he won't have to log a lot of minutes. Nash will help the Lakers but they will still have trouble getting out of the West because OK City is only going to get better as their stars have not reached their peaks yet. Of course if the Lakers get Dwight Howard, that would change everything. But then there would be conspiracy theory as when the Lakers got Shaq and when they got Gasol. Kidd will not help the dysfunctional Knicks that much except mentoring Lin.

Debate about the 1992 Dream team vs this year's Olympic team. Obviously you can argue all day and cannot resolve anything. My view is that the Big Three from 92, Bird, Magic and Jordan were older at that stage than today's Big Three of James, Durant and Kobe. So today's team have a slight edge in terms of Super, Super Stars. But this team lacks size, Tyson Chandler cannot be compared to Patric Ewing and David Robinson. The 92 team had Malone and Barkley which today's team cannot match up. If Bird and Magic were at the prime then the 92 team wins easily.

So is today's Supreme Court ruling a victory for Obama? I think it is more of a blessing in disguise for Romney. As I wrote before, whichever side loses in this ruling will be galvanized for the November election. Romney already has seen contributions to his campaign jumped today. He now can complain about Obama care for the rest of the campaign whereas if the law was struck down it will not be an issue for him at all. He says he will repeal the law the day he takes office. Of course it won't be that easy even if Republicans win the senate also. Remember filibuster? Of course there is the little problem that Romney care was the blueprint of Obama care even to the letter of individual mandate. Now Romney says that he may keep provisions like no turning people away for preexisting conditions while doing away with individual mandate. It is obvious that won't work because of there is no individual mandate but you can get insurance even if you have preexisting conditions, then you would not get insurance until you are sick!

Obama care is not a great piece of legislation. But due to pull from both sides it was the only thing that could have passed. There was no upside politically for Obama. Most people have insurance so it is hard to get a majority of people to understand that reform of healthcare is absolutely necessary. Given the main goal of Republicans is to defeat Obama, this big legislation is certainly a target for the Republicans to shoot at. Of course if they have no ideas of their own that is politically viable so they don't even try. Witness Paul Ryan's idea of trying to reform Medicare, Democrats didn't even have to attack it. The Republicans' idea to improve the insurance situation is to let people buy insurance out of state! Yeah, that is really going to make a difference.

With all the Republican arguing about government interference in health care, did they not remember their roles in increasing government's role? It was Reagan who signed into law that mandate hospitals to treat people walking into ER even if they can't pay. You know somebody has to pay for that care or hospitals would go out of business. So hospitals charge people who have money more and try to get more out of private insurance. Government also has to subsidized hospitals with lots of uninsured patients or many would have gone out of business. This mandate for hospitals was supported by both Republicans and Democrats. George Bush also enacted the prescription drug law which caused billions of taxpayers money and which enriched the drug companies and insurance companies that run the program. So Republicans are like the old people who put up signs like "Keep the government out of my Medicare." It is laughable.

I don't know if health care if a right. After all if you have no water or food you will die quicker than if you don't have a doctor but water and food are not free. But if the majority say that health care is a right then we can't have these patch work of insurances and mandates. We have the best trained doctors and best technologies in the world but we are mediocre in life expectancy and infant mortality. So even if you have insurance right now you know the system is broke and needs major overhaul. So it is time to stop the bickering and try to improve Obama care instead.

By the way, even though John Robert's decisions was a complete surprise, LA Times had predicted that it was a possibility because one of his friends who sits on the Appeals Court in Washington had upheld the law with the same tax reasoning. That judge was also a Bush appointee.

The news from last week that Asians are the most educated and have the highest income among ethnic groups would appear to be good news. Sure, we can take pride in our accomplishments in this country. But if the economy continues to sour and competition in getting to elite universities increases, will Asians be scapegoats for these problems? Asians had been called the new Jews before. Most believe that Jews are targeted for their faith but I believe that most of the time they are targets of discrimination because of envy. Rather than applauding the Jewish people for their successes, there are many people who believe there is something sinister about what the Jews had accomplished. So far Asians are not so dominant in businesses and other areas as the Jews are in this country. But it is worth noting that in places like Southeast Asia where the Chinese are dominant in wealth, there have been many incidences of violence against them.

I do not believe there is imminent trouble for Asian Americans yet. But last week was the 30th anniversary of the Vincent Chin case. Chin was killed by 2 lay off auto workers in Detroit because they thought he was Japanese. At that time there was fear that Japan was going to destroy the American auto industry. The question I have is: what happens if China continues to rise and Asian Americans continue to do better than the average Americans in education and wealth? I don't think America is southeast Asia or Germany. But Americans are human beings and humans have done violent acts throughout history. This is why Asian Americans should always be vigilant.

Obama announced his new policy regarding illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children. This follows his endorsing gay marriages a few weeks ago. The timing of these two things at the end of his term, just before election, makes it look like a political move. I think these announcements are going to hurt rather than help his campaign. Illegal immigration and gay marriage advocates were going to vote for him anyway. There maybe a little more enthusiasm from these two groups now and maybe more monetary contributions. But there will be some independents who will be abhorred by these events. A blue collar worker in the swing states of Ohio, for example, may have been leaning toward Obama because he now has a job might now vote for Romney instead. The funny thing is Romney probably thinks similar to Obama and would not have done anything different on this issue if he is elected.

The unions overreached in Wisconsin, failing in their effort to recall governor Scott Walker. Walker had taken away much of the bargaining rights of most public unions since he took office. The Democrats were able to recall some of the legislators who sided with Walker. But by now the people are tired of recalls and with the big money coming from out of state, Walker was able to win. I think by failing to oust Walker, the unions lost more credibility. They would have been better off and waited for the next election, when the out of staters are worried about other parts of the country. Obama would not have helped and he rightly did not want to be strongly associated with a losing cause. Now he will have to decide how much to spend on Wisconsin whereas before he could have counted it in his pocket and focused resources in other states.

In California, San Jose and San Diego voted to decrease public pensions. As I have said before, I agree with decreasing the power of public unions because they can help politicians who are in charge of the union members' compensations. There is nobody representing the tax payers in that bargaining situation. But I strongly disagree with the conservatives that overpaying public employees are the main economic problem facing America today. Certainly if salaries and benefits of public employees are not reigned in, we will eventually go bankrupt. But that will be a long time down the line and not in every place in the country. Compare to the greed and gambling tendencies of the bank and Wall Street, the public employees are relatively good guys. I mean, I can understand a guy making $50,000 a year wanting to improve to $100,000. But I don't understand somebody making $10 million wanting to use unethical means to make $100 million or more. The actions of the rich, crooked people will bring down this country a lot faster than the policemen, firemen and teachers of the nation.

So we have finally found out who Big Brother is: Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York. This relatively small man does not look intimidating but he is Big Brother. Look what he has done since becoming mayor. He banned smoking indoors, he made trans fat illegal in restaurants, he made restaurants post the calories on menu items, he installed cameras all over city streets. Now he is banning soft drinks greater than 16 ounces. I know he means well but somewhere along the line we have to say, enough is enough. Next thing you know, it will be no cups of coffee bigger that 2 ounces; without cream and sugar. Then it is no ice cream bigger that 1 ounce cup. No pizza with extra cheese etc. Anyways, I don't think any of these measures are going to make a big dent in the obesity epidemics.

If Mayor Bloomberg wants to play Big Brother and get better result then he should regulate Wall Street and the banks. No more credit default swaps, no more inside trading, no more dangerous derivatives. Impossible to regulate even by Big Brother? You are probably right since these entities are bigger than even Big Brother. But Big Brother cannot regulate waist lines either since those are also bigger than Big Brother.

On the news at the same time was that we are selling a lot of stuff to rich middle east countries like Qater and Unite Arab Emirates. Among our exports are fast foods and sinful food items like cheesecake from Chicago. So we think these stuff are so bad for us but perfectly good to sell to rest of the world. And you say American world leadership is dead!

I see that people are already filing lawsuits regarding the Facebook IPO. Frankly I am surprised that this has not happened a lot more. The average investor does not have a chance with these IPOs. If they are hot, they are all grabbed by the big institutions. Now it comes out that Morgan Stanley told big investors information about Facebook that was not made public. I think this is not first time it has happened. The thing is, I think the public are more cynical about Wall Street than ever before since the Great Depression. Having seen recently JP Morgan Chase making risky bet just couple of weeks ago and seeing Facebook stock plummeted quickly in two days, people are going to be suspicious. You know, the market is all about confidence and believe that everything is straight. If these confidence and beliefs are shaken, then we will have bigger problems than we have now. Stronger regulation and enforcement must be in place, otherwise people are going to hide their money under the mattress.

Even though I think Katherine Jenkins should have won, I can see why Donald Driver did. I think of all nine dances during the two night of competition, his country dance was the best. It was original and full of risks and he executed it. I thought he passed Levy during the final even though Levy was way better during the season. Levy's dances all looked similar and I agree with Len that his free style dance was not up to par. Jenkins was still the best overall but for some reason football players have a big following. I would not expect that people who are big fans of football would be fans of ballroom dancing. Also why are football players so good compare with basketball players? Now if Jeremy Lin can do well on this show, then Linsanity would be returning because the surprise would not be an Asian can dance, but a basketball player can!

I agree with LBOAYM that it was probably worse for Romney to claim that he forgot about the bullying incident when he was in high school than to admit that he did something stupid. Who advised him to say that he forgot? I would have come up with better answers than that.

1. Claim that the guy deserved it because he said Romney's favorite shoes are flip flops.

2. The guy claimed that Romney, as junior class president had made an individual mandate that everyone had to buy the year book. Romney had said that the senior president was wrong to make everyone in the school buy the year book. He said it should be up to individual classes.

3. The guy claim that Romney was against bail out for the chess team. Eventually the chess team was bailed out and won the state championship and now Romney claimed that the bankruptcy he advocated led to the chess team's success.

See, the guy deserved this so Romney was justified to beating him up. He should just have said so.

Who came up with the gay president bit? Clinton was called the first Black president. Obama said that he would not call him that until he can see if Clinton can dance. I think we should wait and see if Obama can win "Project Runway" before we call him the first gay president.

Speaking of dancing and tv shows. Maria did get rob on DWTS. I think Donald Driver should have been out. It is a very close competition this season and all four could have beaten Donnie Osmond for sure.

The news that JP Morgan Chase lost $2 billion and possibly more in derivative trading is shocking. Not that I did not expect this type of news to occur, but so soon after the financial crisis started four years ago? Really? While Wall Street is trying to kill or soften the Volcker Rule which was suppose to regulate such risky "investments"? This is like seeing your drug addict friends died and you go ahead to take the drugs yourself. We never did learn from the Savings and Loans debacle in the 1980's. But at least almost 30 years gone by before another big disaster hit. Now Chase is trying to do it again in 4 years, really?

I have said it before, derivatives are just legalized gambling. They are not investments. Hedge funds have made a lot of money but some have gone belly up also. Some of these are run or consulted by Nobel winning economists. But economists are not better at gambling than anyone of us. Otherwise they would be all going to Las Vegas. So pass the Volcker Rule without any loopholes please. Wall Street cannot police itself. As I have always said, capitalism is the best system but capitalism without regulations would be just greed and chaos.

Interesting election results over the weekend. First, France elected a new president and Greece defeated the top two parties in power. Both of these results mean the rejection of austerity measures enacted since the economic downturn in Europe. The austerity measures demanded by Germany has been hugely unpopular in Europe. It has not help the budget deficits and the economy of Europe is doing worse than that of the U.S. In England, which is not part of the euro, a 20% across the board cut has made things worse so far. In this country, Obama may well lose the election because a lot of people think that his government spending is socialistic and is holding the country's economic recovery back. Well, I am no economist and people can believe what they want but the success of the bailout of GM, Chrysler and AIG, among others, make me glad that I am here and not in Europe!

The ouster of Richard Lugar by the Tea Party is another big loss in bipartianship. Lugar was one of those people who reached across the aisle to get things done. He was also a great foreign policy expert. With his departure and that of Olympia Snowe, extremism will be worse than ever in Congress.

The Knicks are eliminated today. Jeremy Lin did not play in the series as expected. Stephen A. Smith asked the other day: "Can't he give the team 15-20 minutes? Not that I am saying that he does not want to play?'' Of course the last statement means he is questioning whether Lin is not playing because he is afraid that a poor performance will hurt his value in free agency this summer. This is absurd. If Lin could have played, he would have. A bad performance will not hurt him. Everybody can play poorly against Miami, not to mention someone coming off knee surgery and has not played in 5 weeks. The truth is the Knicks should not want him to play even if he could. They were not going to win anyway. He will be the point guard next season now that Baron Davis is out for a whole year. Why rush him back and potentially ruin his career and the Knicks chances in the future? Brandon Roy came back too early and his career eventually ended and so was Portland's chances. Rest up, Jeremy. Hope you get a call to play on the squad that scrimmages with the U.S. Olympic team. Playing against Deron Williams, Chris Paul etc. will be a great experience and improve his play next season.

Observations about couple of current events. First the back and forth the last few days between Obama and Romney regarding the anniversary of the killing of bin Laden. This was a great victory for Obama and in this election year it is no surprise that he is going to bring this to the front. He pointed out that Romney had said in the past that not so much resources should be spent in hunting down bin Laden. Romney hit back by saying that even Carter would have ordered the raid. To me, this is not much of an issue. I don't think that Obama will gain too much by talking a lot about this between now and November. Certainly his secret trip to Afghanistan yesterday does appear to be spiking the football in the end zone. The truth is that Obama was lucky. Sure Carter would have ordered the raid. He did that against Iran, remember? That didn't turn out too good and Carter was humiliated. Neither president went on the raids himself and had little to do with the outcome. But the lucky one became a hero and the unlucky one became the goat.

To me the raid was not reason why I think Obama would be better on foreign policy. I think he is much more measured in using force. When people were telling him to enter Libya or stay out, he did the right thing by getting NATO to do the job with our support. No American lives were lost with the success there. While both talk about the support for Israel, it is obvious to me that Romney (and almost any other Republican) would be more likely to preemptively strike Iran. It is this war hawk mentality that I think is very dangerous to our country. Anyone can order the most powerful force in the world to attack. It takes much more leadership to use force only when necessary. I think Obama would have gone into Afghanistan in 2001 but he would not have gone into Iraq and cost us thousands of lives and a trillion dollars.

The other event is about Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng. I think this whole thing was planned to embarrass China at the worst moment: the arrival of Hilary Clinton and Tim Geithner in China. Chen was supposedly under house arrest. I am sure that China has been monitoring his computer, cell phone etc. But if he was truly under house arrest, I find it hard to believe that he could have escaped and went all the way from Shandong to the U.S. embassy in Beijing without being apprehended. The guy is blind, he had to climb a fence! How did they know the guards are not going to be watching and they can get by them. After that they had to traveled hundreds of miles to Beijing. If he was under house arrest, how long before the guards realized he was not there anymore? Once they found him missing, I am sure they figured that he is going to a western embassy. Policemen would have been there and arrest him before he gets in. So I don't think that he was monitored that closely by China.

Chen has young children and a wife. What did he think would happened to them if he escaped? This does not sound like a guy who wanted asylum to get out of the country, unless he is very selfish. Throughout his stay in the embassy he had told the Americans he wanted to stay in China but just want better conditions. Then once the deal was made and he got into a hospital he said that the Americans had left him and that his family was threatened. He then wanted to leave the country with his family. Well, he knew darn well that that was not possible once he is in Chinese hands again. I think with all the world watching, Chen and other human rights activists know that any mistreatment to him and his family would be more eggs on China's face. Even if China keeps its bargain and do not harm them, I think the activists will complain about mistreatment anyway. To me this was all planned out just to embarrass China, nothing was going to be accomplished in the name of human rights.

But of course, this one man's action had big consequences. There were a lot on the table with Clinton's trip. North Korea, Iran, Syria, world trades are all important topics that will affect the lives of millions of people. Now China is mad and the Obama administration is going to be accused by the Republicans that it mishandled the situation by giving Chen back to China. No important work will now come out of this scheduled high level meeting. I think this planned show of escape is rather selfish on the part of Chen. I don't think he helped the cause of human rights in China and may hurt millions in other parts of the world. Not to mention he put his family at great risk with nothing to show for it.

I heard the sad news that a founding member of the band The Band died. I must admit I don't know the band The Band. I am no expert on music but I would think that if your band is named The Band, then you better be so good that everybody knows who you are. I mean a band that represents a city, state or the whole country should be quite famous. America, Chicago, Boston and Alabama, for example, are all well known bands. Young people hearing John Denver singing "Rockey Mountain high" must think that Denver represented Colorado, even though he was not from there until late in life. So when you hear the band The Band, it has to be the band of all bands.

Of course there are examples of total arrogance. I see many French restaurants named Le Cafe. They can't all be THE Cafe! Are they telling us their cafe is better than all others? They can't all be right. Then there is Le Petit Cafe near my house. Talk about lack of self-esteem. Can't they think of a better original name than to be someone elses' smaller version? Standford has the gall to call themselves The Cardinal, not cardinals. THE Cardinal usually mean the Pope. Does Stanford think they are the most powerful school of the NCAA? Then there was that movie called "The Doctor". Come on, there are thousands of us who are quite good, nobody can't be the ONE. Why not just call it "The Movie"?

OK, enough ranting for no reason. I forgot to rank college hockey last time. I would rate it just below world class soccer. I agree that a lot depends if I have a team to root for so those are rankings based on no particular team I am rooting for. I did not know George Takei has same birthday as Hitler!

No major story to get excited about for me lately. So I will just rant about a few things.

Romney accuses Obama of anti-women because the great majority of jobs lost during the past 3 years were held by women. Of course Romney discounts the fact that the first jobs lost during the recession were in manufacturing and construction which were jobs mostly held by men. Since then, due to the deficit, lot of government jobs in teaching, clerical and nursing were lost. Those jobs were overwhelmingly held by women. Now I thought Romney and the Republicans want to cut government jobs. So they were rooting for more women to lose their jobs? Also a lot of blacks lost government jobs and the unemployment rate is much worse for them. Is Romney going to say that Obama is anti-black now?

Secret service agents caught taking prostitutes to their room while on the road with the president! The oldest trick in the world for spies to get info from the other side is using the seduction by women. So these knuckleheads put the president and national security in great danger. My question, besides what the hell are they thinking, is that is this an isolated incident or just happen to be the one time they are caught? I think the latter!

The GSA is caught have a "conference" in Vegas for $800,000 of taxpayers' money. My question is that is this an isolated incident or just happen to be the one time they are caught? I think the latter!

Obama proposes the Buffet rule which was dead on arrival. The same with whatever tax cuts the Republicans propose. Let's be serious, both sides. We need to get rid of the stupid tax code we have. Just have a flat tax, no deductions, no loopholes. Having benefited from deduction for my children all these years, I never understood why you get a deduction for having children. Nor do I understand why we get a deduction for our mortgages. I don't understand why $800,000 "conferences" are deductible for private businesses either. Get rid of all these. You can make a tax code on couple of sheets of paper! Do what Hong Kong did (I don't know if this is still true under China rule), a flat tax and tax the hell out of luxury items like Rolls Royces.

Hockey, to me, is the most uncivilized of the major sports. Football is violent but you are hitting during the course of action. If you fight or hit someone after the whistle, you get penalized. In hockey after the whistle the players will still hit each other. Unless they drop the gloves and fight, no penalty is called. And even when there is fighting for several minutes, nobody gets ejected. In any other sports, including football fights like that would lead to automatic ejection and suspension. Are the hockey players more temperamental? It just seems to me they are out of control as human beings and the league encourages this behavior.

I welcome any comment to these few rants and any other rants that you may have!

Rick Santorum has quit before the Pennsylvania primary. I had predicted that this may well happen because there was a good chance that he would lose Pennsylvania. If he had lost his home state, not only was he finished for this election but maybe out of any future election as well. Remember he had lost his senate reelection bid in 2006 by a wide margin. So it was not like he was popular even within his own state. That is why he surprised many people, including myself when he came in second in this nomination campaign. By dropping out now after a relative good showing, he can claim to be the torch bearer for the conservative wing of the Republicans in 2016. Like Romney, who came in second in 2008, Santorum may well get the support of the Republican establishment in 2016. This is assuming that Romeny will lose to Obama, which I am sure Santorum is counting on. So this is an expected and good move for Santorum. And if he was to lose Pennsylvania, then his career in national politics would have been over.

My question now is would conservatives hate Romney so much that they run behind Gingrich and help him win Texas? Now that would be an embarrassment for Romney and a disaster for the Republican establishment!

A few comments about recent competitions in the news. Kentucky wins men's basketball tournament. With no underdog in the final four, I didn't really care who wins. But given the number of one and out players on Kentucky this year and recently, I would say KU is my least favorite. Well, I guess the team with the best players did win this year.

Baylor wins the woman's tournament tonight. Am I the only one who thinks that Griner looks and sounds more manly than the other Baylor stars, including RG IIII? Compare to other women, Griner is a cross between Yao Ming and Dwight Howard, the tallest and most athletic center.

Mitt Romney's win in Wisconsin tonight pretty much sewed up the nomination. Rick Santorum insists that he is staying in. But if polls show that Romney passes him up in Pennsylvania, I think Santorum will quit before that primary to prevent the embarrassment of losing in his home state.

Tiger is back. I predict a Masters win for him this weekend!

My favorite sports to play when I was young were basketball and tennis. This explains my lack of dancing ability. Monica Seles, Meta World Peace and now Martina Navrotilova were all the first star to exist from the DWTS. If I had actually gone into speed skating, gymnastics or figure skating, my dance ability would be a lot better. Jack Wagner going out the second week and Missouri losing in the first round, maybe I have jinxed Tiger!

I was outraged when Dharun Ravi was convicted in bullying Tyler Clementi, who committed suicide. Yes, it was invasion of privacy, a very stupid thing that Ravi did. But to be treated as a criminal? After watching his interview on 20/20, I am more convinced that he did not intend maliciousness toward Clementi. He never broadcast any sex tape on the internet as was alleged in the media when the case first came out. He sent an e-mail apologizing to Clementi and wanted to stay as his roommate. This does not seem like an action of an anti-gay person.

Unfortunately, Clementi probably never read the e-mail. This is an example of how new technology allowing people to communicate without talking to each other actually hurt. Both Ravi and Clementi read each other's tweets. But they hardly talked to each other, even after the incidence had occurred. If they had just talk instead of looking at tweets and sending e-mail, maybe this tragedy would have been avoided.

What Ravi did what stupid. But what 18 year old does not do stupid things? I doubt it that Clementi killed himself over this. It was reported in 20/20 that he was depressed before this. There was also a note that was found. Was it a suicide note? Would it help to understand his state of mind? That was not possible because the prosecution did not give it to the defense. That was one possible area of appeal.

What about the 30 year old that was Clementi's partner. He was shielded by the prosecution for his identity. I don't think that a 30 year old who had sex with an 18 year old should be excluded in the discussion of the suicide. Was Clementi more depressed because this older man had used him and then dumped him? I don't know but if a 30 year man had sex with an 18 year old woman and then the woman committed suicide shortly after, I am sure everybody, including the woman's parents, would find him very creepy.

I had wondered why Ravi did not take the plead deal where he would get probation and community service but no jail time. Turns out he would have to admit that he did all these because he was anti-gay. Ravi would rather take the chance with jail time than admit something that is not true. I don't know if that was a smart thing to do, but now I certainly respect his decision.

Couple of comments on the NFL. I don't understand why Denver needs to trade Tebow. Sure Manning is the starter but he is old and just came off an almost career ending injury. How can they be sure that he can even finish the next season? Sure, Tebow is not a good starting qb yet but he is young and can learn under Manning and get better. Denver got a 4th and a 6th round draft choice for Tebow. But they drafted Tebow in the FIRST round! So after starting for most of the season plus winning one playoff game, Tebow's value is much lower than 2 years ago? Plus God is not going to forgive them for this. This may be the curse of the Broncos!

The big suspension of the Saints head coach and former assistant is just one publicity stunt for the NFL. This is a league that glorifies violence. If not for that violence there would be a lot less fans who would watch the games. I think there must be some understanding among the players, coaches and league that this type of bounty hunting is tolerated to a certain degree. I mean there are a lot of switching teams among players in this league. Wouldn't something like that be common knowledge? I think once it was exposed, the league had to clear its image of caring for the safety of the players and so it had to come down hard on the Saints. My question is: Are there other teams with the same policies? And did the league knew about these type of things before this revelation? Also for the fans who criticize the Saints, are you not a little hypocritical?

I read in the LA Times that Mary Brown, who is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against Obamacare that has reached the Supreme Court, has just filed for bankruptcy. Among the debts that she and her husband owe are thousands of dollars in medical bills. She is one of three individuals that conservatives put out as Americans who belief that the health care law is unconstitutional. Whether the law is unconstitutional or not will be ruled by the Supreme Court soon. Meanwhile ironically, she is an example of why a mandate is necessary.

There are many flaws in the new law but it was the only law that could have passed two years ago. The law does not offer much control regarding skyrocketing cost of health care. The insurance companies still do not have much competition, can continue to raise prices and rake in huge profits. Sure, they are being forced to take in people with preexisting conditions, cover young adults up to 26 years old under the parents' plan and may have to pay for contraceptives. But the insurance companies will get lot more clients under the law and let face it, contraceptives will decrease pregnancies and pregnancies would cost insurance companies a lot more money than contraceptives.

The polls show that most people don't think the law is a good idea. One reason for that is that the majority of people HAVE insurance. Many of them get the insurance from their job and so they are afraid of any change. But anyone can lose their job or get a catastrophic illness and then suddenly they will feel different about the law. If you lose your job and have a preexisting condition, insurance companies will not take you. Many people can't leave jobs they hate because they or their spouses are sick and can't afford to lose the insurance. But of course in order for people with preexisting conditions be guaranteed coverage, everybody has to be in the risk pool. Otherwise, nobody would buy insurance until he is sick!

Mary Brown believes it is her right to decide whether she buys a product. But this is not a product of choice. We all are or will be consumer of health care unless we die suddenly without going to the hospital! Sixty billion dollars in health care cost were not paid by patients last year. Hospitals and doctors raise prices, when they can, on people who can paid. Thus the $10 aspirin the hospital charges. The government pays a big portion of the 60 billion now. So it is not a free lunch for taxpayers. Mary Brown will probably add to that uncompensated care amount with her bankruptcy.

One more thought on this case before the Supreme Court. I am sure the outcome will ride on Anthony Kennedy's decision. So there is a good chance the law will be overturned regardless of its merit. The other 8 judges will be split 4-4, I am sure. This is all so partisan as are so many things in our country today. The take I have is this: Whatever side wins in the Supreme Court may well lose in the presidential election. Which ever side loses will be so angry that they will come out in force to try to elect their candidate in November because they believe the Court is stacked against them and they want their presidential candidate be able to nominate the next justice.

Last week envoys from the U.S. and UK went to Israel to try to convince the Israelis not to attack Iranian nuclear facilities. I have a bad feeling that Israel will bomb Iran this year, probably in the next few months before the U.S. election. The Obama administration has said that all options are on the table, including military action. But, unlike his Republican opponents, Obama will not attack. I think bombing Iran to try to stop its nuclear weapons program will not be good in both the short and long term. But Israel does not see this and it will try to drag Obama into it during this election year, knowing that to not stick with Israel will cost him politically.

Most experts believe that even a successful bombing will only delay Iran from getting the bomb for a couple of years. The thing is you can't bomb away all the centrifuges. As long as the knowledge of how to do it is in the brain of scientists, Iran will eventually build a weapon. That is why there maybe more assassination attempts on Iranian scientists and then retaliations to Israelis by Iran. I can understand the Israelis want to delay Iran as long as possible since they are Iran's most likely target. But I don't see why Israel's worry should dictate our policy which in the long term will certainly failed. If we help Israel or even approve its action, our position of being an honest broker in the Middle East will deteriorate tremendously. Also an attack will raise nationalism in Iran and I think will allow the unpopular regime to stay in power much longer in the future. It will only serve to make Iran much more determined to get the bomb.

What about the short term? Israel will face artillery strikes from Hamas and Hezbollah for sure. Iran can't really shut down the oil lanes but will be forced to try and thus cause energy prices to skyrocket. This in turn will stop our economic recovery and perhaps lead to world economic collapse. More terrorists attacks against U.S. and Israel will certainly occur. Certainly Israel will be more isolated than ever after such an attack. I think Obama should, in no uncertain term, tell Israel that we would not support such an attack. Unfortunately, I don't think Israel will listen because it knows that once Obama is reelected, he certainly will not back an attack. So Israel will likely force his hand, probably as soon as the Republican nominee is known.

It is Feb. 16, 2041, and new President Jeremy Lin had just took office last month. He became the first Asian American president by putting an unusual coalition of minorities, Christian conservatives, college graduates of high academic standings, and independents who are tired of the partisanship that was affecting both Democratic and Republican rule since the beginning of the century. By forming the Lindenpendent Party, Lin was able to defeat the two established parties with his coalition. Now of course comes the hard part, governing. He is hoping that his expertise in economics will help him improve the pocketbooks of Americans. But he also realizes it is a smaller world now and that he must have good team work with the leaders of other countries. Thus, he has called for a summit and invited most of the major leaders of the world to attend.

First there is Yao Ming, the first freely elected leader of China. Lin realizes that achieving world peace is a tall order. So who better to consult first but Yao who has made peace with Taiwan to unify China with the help of the president of Taiwan, Yani Tseng. Lin also will depend on Gary Kasparov, the first democratically elected Russian leader, to come up with an end game to checkmate terrorist organizations who are trying to get nuclear weapons. While Lin is trying to help other countries, he will need to get assists from Steve Nash, the premier of Canada. Also expected to attend the summit are Yu Darvish, the first Japanese president of mix races, Manu Ginobili, president of Argentina, Pau Gasol, president of Spain, David Beckham, prime minister of Britain, Dikembe Mutombo, head of African Union, and of course Manny Pacquiao of the Philippines who has been the leader of that country for 30 years.

Yes, world peace was all but a dream 30 years ago. But then 30 years ago nobody would dream that an Asian American from Harvard who was not drafted would become a star in the NBA either. Ever since that became a reality, people all over the world have dared to dream bigger, until what is achieved today, Feb,. 16, 2041.

A few things I like to comment on quickly. First, I underestimated Rick Santorum. Romney is still going to win the nomination but I have to apologize to Santorum for calling him Michelle Bachmann light. Bachmann in turn was called Sarah Palin light by me. So that made Santorum really light. Instead with his 3 victories on Tuesday, I am going to call him Gingrich heavy, if it is possible to be heavier than Gingrich. But whatever, all I know is Obama is thanking Santorum secretly.

Speaking of Obama, I don't agree with his mandate on birth control coverage. Since Obamacare is not a single government payer plan, I don't see how he can tell insurance company and employer exactly what medicines to cover. I don't agree with the Catholic church's stand on contraceptives but they have their right to religious freedom. Healthcare is part of the employee's health benefit. If any part of the benefit is not acceptable, the employee can not accept the job. I know that is a difficult thing in a tight job market, but you can't always have everything. If it is up to the insurance company, I would think that they would want to cover contraceptives since pregnancy would cost them a lot more.

I don't see why Karl Rove and other Republicans are all upset about the Clint Eastwood commercial. Eastwood is a Republican, he is not trying to help Obama. Most people who watched the commercial are not going to think about the auto bailout. By bringing it up, Rove is helping Obama because now more attention is paid to the bailout. And since GM and Chrysler are doing a lot better than before, the more people paid attention to this, the more Obama likes it.

I read about some broadcasters such as Bob Costas and Cris Collinsworth who think that the new OT rule for the NFL playoff is worse than the old one. With the Super bowl being tomorrow, this is an interesting topic which I had thought about before. The old system gave the team that won the toss an enormous advantage. Three or four first downs, kick a field goal and win. Too easy, so the new system allows the other team to have a possession if the first team do not score a touchdown. Costas etc. feel that it is unfair now for the first team because the team that loses the toss can see what the first team does and basically have four downs each time to get the tying field goal or winning touchdown.

My take on this is that this new system gives more strategic thought to the game and thus I think is better than the old system. First of all, you don't have to elect to receive if you win the toss. More on that later. Sure, the second team have the advantage if the first team does not score a touchdown. But if the first team does score a touchdown, they win! Also knowing a field goal may not win it, the first team may also go for it on fourth down in the red zone. If they failed, the other team will have a long way to go to get a field goal. So there is a lot more thinking needed as opposed to the win the toss and try to get into field goal range mentality.

So what to do if you win the toss. If I am the Patriots, Packers or Saints, in other words high power offense with not so good defense, I take the ball. I am going to go for it on fourth down if I pass midfield, TD or bust. If I am a defense team, e.g., Ravens, Steelers, 49ers e.g., I play defense with the hope of stopping them and get a field goal to win. I would have done that If I coach the Bronchos, reasoning that I can't drive 80 yards, but if I am behind by a field goal, Tebow can march down the field with 4 downs at a time. It is like he had been doing most of the season in the 2 minutes offense, except now he does not have to do it in 2 minutes. Of course, you can also take the ball, throw a 80 yard TD and finish the game!

Romney wins big tonight and as I predicted from the beginning, he is going to win the nomination. But even though his speech tonight points toward the general election by calling for unity against Obama, he still has a fight on his hand. Gingrich is not going to quit. He has risen from the dead before and he is so arrogant that he thinks he can do it again. Plus he really dislikes Romney. He does not care if it causes the Republican the election, he is going to fight to the end. He has no chance to win but will force Romney to stay on the right of center.

Paul is not going to quit either. He never had a chance to win but he is not running for reelection to Congress and he wants to have a say in the Republican convention. If he is totally ignored, I think he may run as a third party. If he does and Romney is nominated, he will pull votes from the Republicans and help Obama. Maybe not as much as Ross Perot helped Clinton, but it would be important in this close race. Ironically, I think if Gingrich somehow wins the nomination, Paul would actually take votes from Obama. Of course, Gingrich cannot be Obama so in this case Paul would not make any difference. So if I was advising the Republicans, they should let Romney win now and give Paul token recognition at the convention and adopt some of his ideas. For example, they can advocte gold standard, which will never pass, and hope Paul does not go to a third party.

Well, now we have a race in the Republican nomination process! Just a week ago Romney was on the verge of winning the first 3 states, unprecedented for someone who is not a sitting president. Now in one week he loses Iowa where he was declared the winner couple of weeks ago, and he gets stomped by Gingrich in South Carolina. I am thinking that the evangelicals who voted for Gingrich must think that he is Jesus. After all he has risen from the dead! How else can you explain that people who claim that they see moral values as very important can support a man who was accused by his ex-wife for immoral behavior. Even if you think that the ex-wife is unreliable, since she did cheat with him when he was married to someone else, the fact remains that he cheated at least twice. His supporters will say that Clinton cheated. Yes, and as I said before; if you disqualified everyone who cheated, you have eliminated half of the population. But to cheat when your wife is dying, like Gingrich and John Edwards, that would be a much lower low. Now by blaming the media, Gingrich gets more support? I think I have said this before: Whenever someone claims moral value or moral authority, you have to take their words with a grain of salt.

In fact I think I might have said that above when the PSU scandal came out. I did agree with the firing of Paterno because I think as the idol of the university he should have done more when he found out about the abuse. To those who said he got the raw deal, I say that they would feel differently if their brother or son were to be abused by Sandusky after Paterno had found out. Having said this, I felt very sad to hear of Paterno's passing this morning. I think it is extremely unfortunate that his legacy will be tainted by this episode. I also think the burden of this made his illness much worse and led to a much faster death. I think for most of his life, he lived it with integrity and did a lot to help many young men. I think the situation with Sandusky was something that people of "old school" really never had to deal with. If Paterno had retired when he was 70 years old like most coaches, he would never had to deal with this scandal. Unfortunately he stayed too long and being a basically good person, this had to have tormented him to the end. May he rest in peace and hopefully history will be kind to him.

I read an article today that said that George Romney, father of Mitt, was born in Mexico. I am positive that when George ran for president in 1968, nobody made a big deal out of this. Obviously if he was elected, he could not serve since he was not born in the U.S. So why was he running and why it was not all over the news then? I would have thought that his opponents like Nixon would have pointed that out. I understand that George's maternal grandfather was a Mexican citizen. Would Mitt then be our first Hispanic president if he is elected?

Romney has been attacked by Gingrich and Perry over his previous work at Bain capital. I have mix feeling about this attack. The complaints in these ads is that Bain had to fire a lot of employees in trying to restructure companies. Well, obviously these companies were not run efficiently in the first place otherwise they would not be in such deep trouble. Any attempt to make them more efficient would require cutting employees. So in that sense the attacks are unfair. But of course Romney campaigns on the notion that his work at Bain CREATED many jobs. That is not true either. Sure some companies made it back and thus eventually hired people again. But those are not jobs created but were brought back. Also some companies eventually failed and the jobs never came back. The point is the companies that made it back had good products or business to begin with. It was just poorly managed. By involving a venture capitalist, some of the debts were forgiven and some of the pension obligations went away, allowing the company to start over. It was not Bain or Romney who created a new product or business that led to hiring of people. Overall, the jobs total at the end of the day with these type of buyouts or whatever you want to call it, is about even.

A few days ago Obama and Panetta announced that the military will be cut back. Basically the number of soldiers and marines will be cut with the resources more focused on Iran and China. I agree with the strategy although I am not sure we need to tell the world that we are most worried about Iran and China. Even though not much has been heard from the Republican candidates so far, possibly because they are busy fighting each other, I am sure they will all be attacking Obama on this. But let's look at this logically. We spend more on defense than the next 10 countries combine. Even when Britain was colonizing the world, they only spent about as much as the next two countries combine. The old idea that we need an armed force to fight two land wars at the same time is outdated. Our challenges in the future will be terrorism for which we need special forces and better intelligence and keeping the shipping lanes open for which we need a big naval force. The shipping lanes of the Middle East and South China sea are crucial for economic and national security reasons. So I think this plan is reasonable.

As I said, the Republicans will be all over this. Take Iran, for example. Every Republican candidate except for Paul and Huntsman say they will attack Iran if it makes a nuclear weapon. Why is Iran a threat to us? Frankly they are not. Israel thinks Iran is a threat to it. So we are volunteering to attack Iran because Israel feels threatened? I say let Israel's great air force take care of Israel's interest. Even if Iran gets nuclear weapons they are not going to use it against us or Israel because they know it would be the end of them if they choose to attack. The truth is Iran is way more scare than we are. They are surrounded by countries who don't like them. Their economy is falling apart. If we attack them it would just arouse nationalism and give the regime more legitimacy.

This illustrates how lack of understanding of the world Rick Perry is: He is advocating that we go back to Iraq because of the increased in violence since we pulled out. He says that Iran has become more influential in Iraq. Well, if we were worried about Iran in Iraq, then maybe we should not have got rid of Hussein. Hussein was our "friend" because he was an enemy of Iran. By the way, Hussein was a Sunni, so when we got rid of him the Shiites took over. Shiites are the main sect in Iran so that is why Iraq and Iran are getting along better now. The violence recently is by Sunnis attacking Shiites. So if we go back in we would be helping the Shiites which would be welcomed by Iran. This is how little Perry understands the world!

The Big Ten has completed its bowl season. It was a disaster. Somehow they got 10 teams into bowl games. I even missed the Purdue-Western Mich. game as I didn't think that there could be more than 9 bowl teams from this mediocre conference. My predictions were not as precise as in the past couple of years. I over optimistically predicted that the Big Ten will go 6-3. They actually went 3-6, excluding Purdue, which I would have picked. But on further analysis, I did beat LBOAYM who predicted 5-4 because I was actually 6-3 in my predictions! LBOAYM was 5-4 in his predictions. The 3 games we differed was NW, MSU and Nebraska. I was right on 2 of these. LBOAYM could have tied me if he had not worried about jinxing himself and failed to pick his own MSU team!

It was not just the win-loss records but the overall performances were poor. Illinois barely beat a terrible UCLA team. MSU and Mich. were both lucky to eked out OT wins. Only Wisconsin was respectable in defeat. This does not do anything for the reputation of the Big Ten.

Not to be discouraged, I am going to make a few predictions right now for 2012. New England to win the Super Bowl. Vancouver to win the Stanley Cup. Miami to win the NBA. The Angels to win the World Series. Despite the close race in Iowa tonight, I predict that Mitt Romney will win the Republican nomination. This one was the easiest to call. More predictions for 2012 in the near future, before Dec. 31 certainly!