I was watching a Youtube video by a France television station on forced labor in Xinjiang, China.  I wanted to see what new evidence they came up with.  The presentation was so bad that I wondered if this is a parody on Western media.  But I don't think it is and I think that most people in France who watched this will think that forced labor is real.

During the entire presentation from this "journalist" based in Beijing had a video in the background showing cotton being picked in Xinjiang with large machines.  The only humans were the drivers of these machines.  So are the drivers forced to drive?  Are the machines being forced to work?  There was not one single person bending over to pick cotton.  If they don't have videos of forced labor, then don't run anything in the background.  This just boost China's claim that they bought lots of machines from Deere and this was much more efficient than forcing people to pick cotton by hand.

The "journalist" also said he had no first hand information about forced labor but that from "reliable, independent sources" he said that more people than in the past working in the fields are Uyghurs from Xinjiang as opposed to people from other provinces.  Well, if there are people in California who needs jobs, would you bring in people from New York to pick strawberries?

By the way, there was only one "reliable and independent source" he quoted.  That was the Global Center for Cooperative Security.  It is easy to look up this organization and see how "independent" it is.  According its own site, 95% of funding are from governments.  The dozen or so governments listed are all Western countries except for Japan.  Ironically, France is not one of the nations mentioned although the European Union is.  If an organization is 95% funded by China and Russia, would you believe it is independent in reporting forced labor in the U.S.?

Despite these shortcomings, I think most people in France and elsewhere in the Western world will believe that this video is strong evidence of force labor in Xinjiang.  I would not be surprised that like articles in other Western media on this subject, it will be quoted elsewhere in the future as evidence.  It is like Trump retweet something absurd and next thing you know, millions believe it is true.  That is how propaganda works.

 On the Stephen Colbert show last night, it made fun of the Chicago Bulls running out of players due to COVID and had to bring people from the stands to fill in.  This reminds me of a dream I had a few years ago.

I dreamed that I was watching the Pistons play the Boston Celtics at the old Boston Garden.  Due to injuries and foul disqualifications, the Pistons were down to 4 players.  So this announcement was made:   Anyone from Detroit in the stands?  I rushed onto the court and was given an uniform.  

I realized that I could not possibly defend against any of the Celtics players.  So I would just wander on the periphery with my hands up.  As the shot went up, I didn't think about boxing out for the rebound, I just took off down court.  To my surprise, Bill Lambeer would frequently get the rebound and fired it down court where I was all alone.  I made several layups that way to keep the game close.

Then with a few seconds to go and the Pistons down by one, I got the pass and sprinted down the court with the ball.  As I drove to put up the layup that would win the game, I felt a severe cramp on one of my calf.  As a result of the pain, I was not able to jump and the shot came up short off the front of the rim.  I yelled in frustration.  Then I woke up.

As I woke up screaming, I realized that I actually did have a bad cramp on my calf.  It took several minutes for the cramp to ease for me to go back to sleep.  I vowed that I would start practicing so that I would be in better shape the next time I face Larry Bird and company.

So the parody on the Colbert Show last night confirms that dreams can come true.  I am going to start getting into shape, just in case the Pistons need me again!

 So the U.S.,  as expected, declared a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games.   The athletes will go but no politician will represent the U.S.  The main purpose of this boycott is to cement in the minds of Americans that China is evil.  So if we declare sanctions, blockades or even war against China in the future, it will seem justified to most Americans.  After all, most Americans will believe what the government and the media tell them and do not look to see what the truth is.  

Hong Kong, Tibet and Xinjiang are the three areas the U.S. point to human rights abuses to such a degree that warrant the boycott.  I know the most about Hong Kong as I am from there.  I think there is at least as much if not more democracy in Hong Kong now than under British rule.  There was no democratic election for leader of Hong Kong under British rule.  There was no killing by the police during the recent riot.  China did not send in troops.  Contrast that with the riots in the 1960s when the police killed many Hong Kong people, the anti-British newspaper were shut down, and the British army was used in controlling the riots.  Why didn't the U.S. boycott the World Cup in 1966 when England hosted it?

Tibet has not been on the radar until now because it has been calm there.  The Dali Lama has said that he does not favor independence.   How many Americans know that he said that?  Most think that Tibet is still fighting China.  Well, the only time this was serious was in the 60s when the U.S. was training Tibet fighters in the U.S.  There may very well still be some who want to fight China but I don't think outside of the U.S., anybody believe that this is a serious topic.

Xinjiang is the new area of propaganda for the U.S.  But where is the evidence of genocide that the U.S. is claiming?  There are satellites showing 100,000 Russian troops on the border with Ukraine right away.  But there is no satellite showing a million Uyghurs are in interment camps.  If there is genocide, wouldn't there be refugees streaming out of Xinjiang?  Xinjiang borders 8 countries, 5 of them are Muslim majority.  Yet none of these countries report a single refugee all these years.  No Muslim country has agreed with the Western countries that there is genocide in Xinjiang.

China can careless about the U.S. and other Western countries not sending any politicians to the Games.  They don't need people coming from countries with high incident of COVID.  I think Biden should send Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley to represent the U.S.  After all, they were the ones who went to Hong Kong to cheer on the protesters.  Will see if they are brave enough to go to China.  If they are, Biden will get rid of them for three weeks at least due to the quarantine in China.

But seriously, if politicians in both parties are going with the narrative that China is evil in an attempt to get people behind them, it will be dangerous for Asian Americans in this country.  Remember what happened to the Japanese in WWII and during the auto war in 1970s and 80s?  Racism,  scapegoating and extreme nationalism are all alive and well in this country today.

 Finally justice prevailed as the murderers of Ahmaoud Arbery are found guilty today.  If there was no conviction in this case, I think there would have been riots again in American cities.  At least this will keep things quiet for this Thanksgiving and give hope that racial vigilantism will not be tolerated in the future.

Of course, this case had overwhelming evidence including videotape from one of the perpetrators.  So this may not stop this type of killings in the future.  Still, it is a victory because in the past even a videotape was not enough, starting with the Rodney King case.  It is also a good sign that an eleven White and one Black jury in the South convicted three White men in this case.  It will be a better sign in the future if this type of conviction is not news.  It will be the best sign if this type of crime does not occur in our country.  We can hope, can't we?

 So this is American justice.  Just as in the Trevon Martin case, a vigilante can kill without consequences.  Rittenhouse is found not guilty on all three charges.  I can understand to a certain degree about the three homicide charges.  But the two regarding endangering safety?  You take a machine gun, crosses state lines, confront protesters who are unarmed, you kill two people and wounded a third, and you are not guilty of endangering safety?  If Rittenhouse had killed in hand to hand combat, maybe he was innocent.  But people like him would not go into a possible dangerous situation without weapons to kill, would they?

Although the victims in this case were white, race, I believe play a part in this verdict.  If a Black guy shows up at a KKK rally with an AK47, argues with the people at the rally and then shoots a few of them, would a jury believe this all self defense.  Certainly a Black man among racists can claim he is fearful for his safety.  But would a white jury clear him in that case?  I don’t think so.  Vigilante privilege is only for certain people in this country.

 Now that the democrats have lost the governor’s race in Virginia, it looks like a big hill to climb for the midterm next year and even 2024.  I am not sure how the democrats are going to reverse this.  I can understand that the country is not happy with Biden’s performance so far.  But the idea that you vote for someone who doesn’t denounce Trump strikes me as crazy.  You can’t do a worse job than letting 700,000 Americans die under your watch when most of them could have been avoided.  How can you vote for a party that endorse attacking our Capitol?

The exit poll on Tuesday show that a big majority of republicans believe that the election that night will have fraud and that the results may not be accurate.  Now that they have won, will the GOP call for investigation into the fraud that they believed would occur?

 Colin Powell has died.  I think he is an example of a man who had done some great things but had also made big mistakes.  He had risen to the top of American military and political hierarchy.  He could have been the first Black American president.  There were polls that showed he would have beaten Clinton in 1992 if he had run.  But think he was too loyal to challenge his boss, George H W Bush.

But his loyalty probably caused him more than the presidency.  It caused him his reputation.  He is ultimately a soldier and a company man.  That is why, despite reservations, he became the point man in selling the Iraq war with his fake vial of WMD at the UN.  I give him a pass because I think he is way less guilty than warmongers and draft dodgers like Cheney and Bolton.

But this one mistake caused him standing among the left even though plenty of them supported the Iraq war themselves.  He lost support on the right with his moderate stances and his endorsement of Obama.  So at the end he was not popular on both sides.  This is too bad because we all make mistakes and overall I think he was a good man.

 Watched a program by Lisa Ling on CNN Sunday night about hate crimes against Asian Americans.  The Vincent Chin case was reviewed along with some of the more recent hate crimes against mostly the elderly during the pandemic.  It was a good program.  Interestingly, it also talked about the Chinese company BYD opening up a factory in Lancaster California.  

The main business of BYD is electrical vehicles.  In Lancaster, BYD is making electric buses.  The buses are well made and price is very competitive.  It also brings in many good paying jobs to an area of California that is suffering economically.  By making buses here, BYD is expanding its market.  Seems like a win win for everybody.

But the U.S. government is making rules against companies that are part of the Chinese government.  So BYD may not be able to sell their buses to U.S. cities and states soon.  That would mean the factory in Lancaster probably has to close and jobs lost.  The thing is, the company is listed in the Hong Kong stock exchange and 60% of the stocks is owned by American investors.  So I don't know why the U.S. thinks that it is Chinese government owned.  

Some Congressmen also said that the buses may be used to spy on people.  Who the heck is going to spy on people riding on a metro bus?  I don't think any Congressmen ride the D.C. Metro to work.  BYD also makes batteries for EV.  Tesla may buy from them in the future because its batteries are innovative.  Even now, Tesla buys its batteries from CATL, a Chinese company, for the EV Tesla makes in China.  So are we going to ban Tesla vehicles in the future because there are parts made in China so it maybe used to spy on us?

Vincent Chin was killed because Asians were scapegoated in the 1980s.  Scapegoating is also the reason that many of the elderly and women of Asian descent were killed or injured recently.  Sure, individual criminals did the harming of innocents.  But it is the demonizing of Asians by those with power that increase the scope of the hate.  In Vincent's case, it was the UAW and the Automakers who set the tone.  During the pandemic it was the politicians like Donald Trump who made hating Asians easy.  I don't really care if BYD is excluded from the American market.  But by banning a Chinese company which is competing fairly and is actually helping Americans send a message that all thing Chinese are bad.  This type of propaganda is dangerous for all Asian Americans.

 Dr. Sanjay Gupta is one of my heroes.  He is a neurosurgeon, a journalist and an author.  I have just about finished his book on the brain and found out yesterday he is already having another book out next week.  Does this guy ever sleep?  His new book is about COVID called World War C.  I am sure it will be good but I am not sure I want to read it since I have been reading about this disease and the pandemic a lot lately.  As he is making his round promoting his book on CNN and other places, I do have something I disagree with him.

Gupta was asked whether he thinks COVID was leaked from the Wuhan Lab.  He said as a scientist he believes that most likely it was from nature and not leaked from a lab.  But he went on and said that it bothers him that if it is not leaked, why doesn't China make it transparent to the rest of the world?  He pointed out that a small pox outbreak had happened in a UK lab and they admitted to it at that time.  I agree with transparency, but how do you prove a negative?

China let the WHO into the lab.  They did not find any evidence.  But could they have hidden any evidence or erased them?  Yes, of course they could have.  But if there was no leak, how do they prove that there was no leak?  It is like if I accuse you of murder but you must prove to me that you did not commit it.  You may have an alibi but if I don't believe your alibi, what can you do?  In this case, what evidence can China come up with that show there was no leak?  Even if they have evidence, the Western media would not buy it anyway.

That is why China tries to deflect by calling on the U.S. to be transparent about the shutting down of Fort Detrick lab in the U.S. during 2019.  What was leaked there, China wanted to know.  Of course, the U.S. is not going to allow WHO to go into Fort Detrick to investigate due to national security concerns.  So China said that they have national security concerns as well.  So there is no apparent resolution in this and that is why when Biden asked the CIA to come up with the answer in a few weeks, it was laughable.

On a lighter note, the Dodgers finished with the second best record in baseball but has to play a wild card game against a surging Cardinals team.  If they win, they get the Giants who has the best record. So one of the top two teams in baseball will be out after the division round.  Does not seem fair, but it is what it is.  They had an abundance of starting pitchers before the season but with all the injuries, I am sure how far they can go anyways.  Kershaw is out again so Urias with have to start and can't be used in big relief situations like last year.  So will see.  The Giants earned the division title though.  They just played great, way above expectations.

 Josh Mandel, a Ohio Senate candidate, is anti-Afghan refugees despite the fact that his grandparents came to this country as refugees.  He calls the Afghan refugees "alligators".  I guess that means if you take them in, eventually they will eat you.  He said there are terrorists among them, that they will bring COVID here, and there will be many child brides.  As if we don't have domestic terrorists, lots of COVID cases and many teenage single moms ourselves.  He said there should be zero refugees allowed in.

When confronted with the fact that his grandparents came as refugees on a military ship in 1949, his campaign doubles down and say that it is "nonsense" and "degrading" comparing Holocaust refugees to the refugees of today.   Well, yes, in 1949 the Nazis were out of power and couldn't kill the Jews anymore.  The Afghan refugees, many of whom worked for the U.S., are in grave danger if left behind because the Taliban is in power today.  We defeated the Nazis but we lost Afghanistan back to the Taliban.  So I think it is degrading for Mandel to call these refugees terrorists and want to leave them in Afghanistan to die.

All of us in this country are either immigrants or have ancestors who are immigrants.  So to be anti-immigrant or anti-refugees is to be anti-American.  I think Mandel's grandparents would be turning over in their graves if they know their grandson's stand.  But Mandel is far from the outlier, there are many in this country who think like him.  But prejudice is not confined to any race.  I know of Asians and Latinos who are anti-immigrants.  Shame on those people.

 Woke up this morning with the news that the Dow is down more than 600 points.  The main reason being that the Chinese giant real estate company Evergrande maybe defaulting on its debts.  This sends shock waves through the financial world.  But I don't think this will trigger a 2008 like financial crisis in China and spread to the rest of the world.

Real estate companies like Evergrande have been rising in China for couple of decades.  With a rising middle class and constant stream of people moving from rural to urban areas to work, building of houses and apartments were going at neck breaking pace in China.  With money to invest but not a great deal of confidence in the Chinese stock market, the people were putting their money in real estate.  Some people were buying two or three apartments, putting down money before the apartments were built.  Sometimes their life savings were invested in buildings that were still on the drawing board.

Evergrande was doing great in real estate but was branching out to other businesses.  They own the biggest soccer team in the country, building the biggest soccer stadium, investing in pig farms, bottled water, solar energy etc.  They accumulated a lot of debt.  The real estate surge in china has slowed.  Most people who were going to move to urban areas have already done so.  There is a very low birth rate in China which may not change in the future.  So the confidence of people and the banks on Evergrande has decreased.  

Evergrande, which is listed in the Hong Kong Exchange, has seen its price gone down almost 90% in recent months.  This has the effect of bringing down other real estates companies in China.  This in turn affect foreign investors who have positions in these companies.  The idea that a large Chinese company would default scares the rest of the world.  They have always said that when America sneezes, the rest of world gets a cold.  This applies to China today as well.

I think ultimately Evergrande won't go out of business completely.  It has property assets it can sell.  China will help in some way although not necessary a direct bailout.  It may push banks to lower the interests that Evergrande is due to pay.  Evergrande, like many U.S. companies in 2008, may be too big to fail.  China has been wheeling in some companies who have made big money but were taking more risks.  This will make China put on brakes on some capitalistic practices that have made money for China.  Regulations are sure to follow.  The regulations will be much more strict than those the U.S. put in after 2008.  They will be even more restrict than Elizabeth Warren wanted!

 In the three days I was in Portland, I observed a few things.  While it is much smaller than LA and much less diverse (there were very few minorities that I came across), the homeless population and the graffiti reminds me of LA or New York.  There were also a lot of businesses in downtown that were boarded up.  I was told it was due to the protests and the vandalism in the past year.  

It is interesting that with a relatively small minority population, Portland was the site of many and lengthy protests and counter protests.  The left and the right squared off in this city.  I have not study this so I won't have much to comment.  But I do sense that there are a lots of liberals around the city and a lot of conservatives in the rural parts of the state who don't like anything going on in the city.

Unlike LA where it takes a good half hour or more to get out to the suburbs, it takes only a few minutes to leave Portland.  But in those few minutes, the world changes dramatically.  I find out that the price of homes been surging in the suburbs.  I wonder if the people who live in these nice homes think about the homeless problems of the city.  Here in Southern California, the city of LA seems like very far away.  But in Portland, the distance is not that far but is the reality closer to the minds of the suburbanites?  In either case, when is the gap between the haves and have nots explode in our faces?

We found out the Lyft driver who took us to Portland airport is from Afghanistan.  He has been in the U.S. for five years but has family that is still in Afghanistan.  Obviously he is worried about their safety.  He said he is making a decent living and is happy to be in the U.S.  But he thinks it was a mistake for the U.S. to go into Afghanistan.  He understands about going after the terrorists after 9/11 but he believes that the military actions of the U.S. have caused more deaths and sufferings in the Middle East than the Muslim extremists like the Taliban.  I would like a woman's perspective on the Taliban.  But I would agree with this driver that you don't advance democracy with guns and bombs.  You just cause more suffering and help the extremists recruit more fighters.

One last thing.  We saw many homeless people in downtown as mentioned.  Many of them had long hair, were unshaved and uncleaned.  Then from a distance a clean cut man with glasses riding a bike was coming toward us.  A "normal" guy, I thought.  But as he passed us, we noticed that he was totally naked!  Well. we hardly saw any police in the area.  I supposed that they didn't want to deal with the homeless.  So I guess this guy didn't think there would be any police stopping him either.

 Just took a trip to Portland.  More on the trip later.  Today I am just going to write about driving to and from the airport.  Trying to avoid going to LAX, which means a terrible drive through the 405, we decided to book a flight from Santa Barbara airport.  The distance is about the same but generally it is about half hour shorter than going to LAX, about an hour normally.  It is also a more pleasant drive passing the Pacific Ocean.

But now there is construction along a big stretch of the 101.  With the Labor Day weekend traveling and a couple of minor accidents, the drive took 3 hours and almost caused us to miss the flight.  On the way back, with multiple construction going on at night and the lane closures and lights shinning in your eyes, it was a very difficult and slow drive.

This makes me think about the infrastructure that we are trying to improve with the new spending bill.  It is a large amount but is not enough and the money is poorly spent.  This stretch of the 101 is going to cost at least 600 million and not all the money is spoken for.  It is supposed to finish in 2026 even though it has been going on for at least 3 years.  The same with freeway 60 near my in-laws house.  All these constructions which I doubt will make a big difference in our traffic situations will cost about a billion and take more than half a decade to complete.

I am think, most of the time the lanes are cut off in these construction zones but there is no work being done except at night where old drivers like me are practically blinded by their lights.  We are talking about a billion dollars for the two projects which will enlarge the two freeways somewhat but I don't see the benefit because the bottleneck areas are not going to be better.  I think they would be better off spending money on fixing bridges which may collapse soon and improving public transportation.

The cost of these works are not justified.  After the Northridge earthquake a big freeway collapsed and the estimate of the repair was several years.  The government agreed to give a bonus of tens of millions if it can be done in a year.  Well, it was done and the company got the bonus.  I think the government overpaid in the first place.  I think in China it would have been done in a couple of months without a bonus.  Or heads would roll, literally perhaps.  While I don't condone execution, I wonder if the mafia runs construction companies.  And is the mafia contributing to the election of public officials?

 Came across a Youtube video by an Australian who used to live in China.  He said that in the past he has seen western media false reporting and commentary on China.  But he never understood why his Chinese friends were so upset about such reporting or commentary.  He told them to just ignore these western media, they have nothing to do with your life.  Why get your blood boil over these idiots?

Now this guy is back in Australia.  Recently Tucker Carlson trashed talk Australia about its lockdown over the Delta variant.  He said things like churchgoers are being called selfish and ignorant, that Australians are back where they started:  a prison colony.  This made the blood of this Australian guy boiled.  Now he understands why his Chinese friends get so upset about people like Carlson.  If people liked Carlson can spread false information about Australia, a friendly country to the U.S., what kind of false reporting and commentary would they say about China?

Our blood should be boiled over people like Carlson.  They are partly responsible for so many deaths in this country.  While he is making fun of Australia, Australia is reopening again.  Their death rates from the virus is miniscule compare to the U.S.  Is Australia becoming a dictatorship like Carlson said?  Or are the Australian leaders more competent than ours?

 I seems just a couple of weeks ago that the U.S. began withdrawal of troops out of Afghanistan.  Then last week, the Taliban took over several cities.  Then Biden decided to evacuate the civilians from the embassy by sending in troops.  They said that maybe in weeks the Taliban will take Kabul.  Well, the take over was much faster than expected.  The Americans barely got out and who knows how many Afghans who helped us are stranded.  This makes the fall of Saigon seem like slow motion.

I think most people, including me, find it hard to believe that after twenty years of training by the American military and given weapons, the Afghan soldiers could not hold against the Taliban forces for even a few weeks.  Upon reflection, I think the major reason for this failure is that the Taliban was fighting for their religion, at least the extreme version of it, and against the infidels who invaded their land.  The government forces were fighting for a paycheck.  Most of the soldiers do not believe in their own government.  This is the same dynamics when the Soviets tried to help the communists who ran the country against the Mujahedin.  The Mujahedin were fighting for their religion and saw the Soviets as invaders.  They were much willing to sacrifice to win.

The Soviets got into the quagmire in Afghanistan.  The U.S. was too happy for that during the Cold War.  In fact they supported the Mujahedin.  What we didn't realize is that after the Mujahedin would give rise to al Qaeda and ISIS.  With the Taliban victory who knows what terrorists groups will be emboldened.  I don't have problem with going into Afghanistan to go after al Qaeda after 9/11.  But veering off to Iraq and did not finish the job led to the mess with have today.  The Russians are probably laughing at us today.

The most important lesson is that we can never listen to war hawks like Rumsfeld, Cheney and Wolfowitz again.  They made up lies about WMDs to get us into Iraq.  I will have more in the future about these war hawks and what are they up to today.  Another lesson is that we have not won a war since WWII.  We have spent trillions, lost thousands of lives and what have we got to show for it?  It is not our military might that is the problem.  It is the leadership that lead us into stupid wars that is the problem.  Our foreign policies need to change.  Otherwise we will keep getting humiliated despite spending tons of money and losing lives overseas.

Even though Bush and Cheney started this mess and Trump had declared the withdrawal before he was voted out, Biden is going to get a lot of the blame here.  His team failed to see how quickly Kabul was going to be lost.  We almost didn't get our people out.  Almost 40 years after Saigon, we are desperately evacuating.  This is going to be hammered by the GOP.  Biden can blame Trump but he is going to look bad just as Nixon did.  Add to the COVID surge which is mostly the fault of the anti-vaxxers who are mostly Trump supporters, Biden is going to have a tough few months ahead.

 The Tokyo Olympic games are over.  I have to give credit to the Japanese for hosting these games under terrible situation.  There were many who felt that the games should not be played.   I was borderline on that.  But Japan pulled it off and even though there were some increased in COVID cases, no great surge occurred.  For that we can all breathe a sigh of relief.  Now for some random thoughts on the games.

I was wrong about the women's soccer team and the men's basketball team.  I didn't think that the women would lose after that first game debacle.  Over the years they have been so much better than other teams and they have the best players available, unlike the men's basketball team which had some non all stars on the team.  But age may be catching up with the women.  Rest of the world may be also.

I was at least right about Kevin Durant needing to play better.  And did he ever!  He was the obvious MVP and the reason the U.S. won the gold medal.  He may be the GOAT of U.S. Olympic basketball.  I was also right about the lack of big men almost cost them.  Gobert dominated inside against them.  If he was a better scorer, we would have been in trouble.  What if we have to face someone like Jokic next time?  We have the best athletes by far but we still need some big men.

I was almost right about Doncic dominating.  He kind of ran out of gas the last two games after shouldering too much of the load to get Slovenia into the semifinals.  If he had taken the last shot against France instead of passing off, they could very well have been in the finals.

Good stories about couple of Asian Americans.  Everybody knows about Sunisa Lee who won the all around in gymnastics after Simone Biles dropped out.  There must have been great pressure on her going from number two to number one all of a sudden.  She is Hmong from the Twin cities.  My daughter went to college there and I remember seeing a lot of Hmong and Somalia refugees who settled there.  Minnesota has a history of taking in people from other countries.  Good to see spotlight on them.

Another Asian American is Jordan Windle who placed 6th in platform diving.  He was a Cambodia orphan who was adopted by a single gay man.  Jordan's father was rejected many times trying to adopt because of his status.  He turned out to be a great father as Jordan recalled how his father supported him all these years and saved him when he was only 16 lbs at two years old!

Simone Biles have put mental health at the front of the conversation which is great.  But the demonstrations expected at the games was practically non existent.  I guess given the pandemic hanging over everybody, nobody feel like protesting.

There were some new games to increase the interests of young people.  So skateboarding, surfing and sports climbing were added.  These all seem like sports for rich westerners.  I think we should find some sports that people in Africa, Southeast Asia and South America are playing.  I doubt that would happen because the people in charge want to increase the medal counts of rich countries and increase the tv ratings in rich countries as well.

I am sure I will think of something else to rant about but I am sure others can also.  On a lighter note, I wonder if people looking at the medal standings are thinking that Taiwan won a lot more medals than expected.  That is because Taiwan calls itself the Republic of China or ROC.  I see ROC has won a lot of medals.  But turns out it is the Russian Olympic Committee, not Taiwan.  This is all stupid if the Russia is banned but their athletes can compete under ROC,  Wasn't the ROC complicit in the cheating in the first place?  Did they sing the ROC anthem when an athlete win the gold or did they sing the Russian national anthem?  

 June 15 was the date that California reopened completely.  That was only one and half month ago.  I wrote a blog which said that we were not out of the woods yet.  So in a little over 6 weeks, things are looking bad again.  The cases are increasing rapidly here in California as is in most states.  I am sure the death rates will climb as well.  The delta variant is proven to be more infectious and dangerous than previous variants.  We are advised to wear masks indoors even if we are fully vaccinated.  

I never did stop wearing masks indoors when I go to public places.  But I can see others who have been vaccinated and thought we were back to normal getting frustrated.  The overwhelming majority of the people who get infected and get seriously ill or die are the unvaccinated.  But by telling the vaccinated that they have to wear masks seem to give the message to the unvaccinated that the vaccines don't protect us.  Those unvaccinated either do not understand or purposely don't care the fact they are not getting the vaccine is allowing this pandemic to continue.  I believe all the incentives in the world are not going to get them to do their part of simply getting a couple of jabs in order to save their lives and those of others.

I think it is time to have a national mandate for the vaccines.  Freedom?  I think the first freedom is not to die because there is no freedom after you die.  We have seat belt laws, we have laws against taking drugs, you can't drive 100 miles an hour etc.  This is a war and in time of war, freedom is going to be curtailed.  We used to have a draft.  You didn't have a choice of not going into the military if you were drafted.  There was no freedom then.  The country took away the freedom of hundreds of thousands of young men and tens of thousands of them died in Vietnam for an unworthy cause.  It is time to take away the freedom of not getting the vaccine in order to save hundreds of thousands of lives.

 Today is the first day of LA county restarting mask mandate for indoors even for vaccinated people.  The CDC has not make the change in recommendation yet but LA is jumping ahead because of cases increase.  There are many states that doing worse than California but LA had been the hardest hit area in California so it is not surprising that it is making this move.  The question is will others follow suit and will it be effective in stopping the variant surge?

I think if things continue this way, California as a whole will follow LA in mandating masks indoors again.  Some states may follow but others will not, at least not until things are much worse.  Florida is having 20% of the cases in the country now and I doubt that DeSantis will add restrictions anytime soon.  Even here in LA, the sheriff has said that he will not enforce the mandate.  I think the people who has not been vaccinated and not been wearing masks are certainly not going to follow the mandate.  So I am pessimistic that this will work.  I think there will be a surge in the fall unless we can get at least 20% more of the population fully vaccinated before cold weather hits.

In sports I noticed that Nick Saban, the football coach at Alabama, announced that his sophomore quarterback has already rack up a million dollars of endorsement.  Saban noted that Bryce Young has yet been named the starter.  It maybe his way to say that it is easy money if you come to Alabama!  So the rich will get richer or continue to be rich, but in a legal manner now!

 After watching the NBA finals this week and the European soccer championships, I will not be surprised to see upsurge in COVID cases in Wisconsin, Arizona, Italy and the UK in the next few weeks.  Given the ease of restrictions in the U.S. and the UK recently, i am not surprised that there were fans in the arenas and stadiums for these championship games.  But I was disappointed to see fans were allowed to watch the games on large tv screens outside of stadiums where the games took place and also at venues of the visiting teams.

So if the game was in Phoenix, there were also thousands of fans in Milwaukee watching the game together.  Same in Phoenix when the Suns were playing in Milwaukee.  Venues in England outside of Wembley were fill with spectators as were those in many Italian cities.  Even cities in the U.S. where there are lots of Italian or English fans, there were crowds gathered to watch the game today.

Most spectators in whatever venue were not masked and they were closer together than those in the stadiums.  After big plays or at the end of the games, people were hugging each other.  I think these gatherings were probably more dangerous than the those inside the stadiums.  Also people will gather at bars and other crowded places after the games.  Given the variants in both the  U.S. and Europe, I will not be surprised that there will be an upsurge in the next two to three weeks. 

 When people ask me where I came from.  I would say Detroit.  Then they give me a puzzle look, obviously not satisfied with the answer.  Then I would say Hong Kong.  Then they usually say one of two things.  The first is that they will say that I am Chinese since I am from Hong Kong.  The second is that they feel sorry for the people of Hong Kong because they are being abused by the Chinese.  So that gets me thinking.  Are people of Hong Kong Chinese?

Ethnically 95% of the Hong Kong people are Chinese.  But there is a big division among the people of Hong Kong of whether they are Chinese or not.  Age of a person will likely shape his view but even within an age group, the views are not homogenous.  

Take people who are older than me, in their seventies and over.  Many had escaped from China when the country was doing badly and they may have been persecuted by the CPC.  Most of these people are wary of the communists.  They maybe less likely to identify as Chinese so as not been associated with Communist China.

The people who are in the forties to sixties and were born in Hong Kong during British rule would be more likely to realize that Hong Kong was not a paradise under British rule.  These folks may have heard about the failure of Mao and the CPC during the fifties and sixties but they did not live in China during that time.  But they have seen the rise of China and how that has helped Hong Kong becoming an economic powerhouse as well.  During their adult years, their standard of living had risen many folds and became greater than that of the UK.  So while they may not want to move to China, they are more likely to think of themselves as Chinese.

Then we have the young people who were born after the return of Hong Kong to China.  They never lived under colonialism.  They believe that Hong Kong always had democracy.  I think they believe that they are superior to the mainlanders.  At the same time, the economy of Hong Kong has not grown like before so that the young people's standard of living is worse than those of their parents.  The big problem is land prices are so high that it is virtually impossible for a college grad to buy a flat now a days.  As a result, it is easy to believe that they are more British than Chinese and that it is worse under Chinese rule.

There are exceptions to every group that I mentioned, of course.  Ultimately, it may not matter if individuals in Hong Kong believe they are Chinese.  Hong Kong will be part of China and Hong Kong's future depends on China and not the UK or Western countries.  Hong Kong is still a big asset for China and China will try to keep it happy.  Despite tough talks from the U.S. and the UK, Hong Kong's survival depends on China. 

 The withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan that started under Trump is more than half way completed.  Biden has said that it will be finished by Sept. 11, 2021.  It would be 20 years since the attack on our soil.  What have we accomplished during that time with all the deaths and other casualties of war? Not much.  There are pictures of Afghan soldiers putting down their weapons to the Taliban in various parts of the country already.  It is predicted that within 6 months after the withdrawal is completed, the Taliban will take over Kabul.

Could things have been different?  I think so.  I think there was overwhelming support of going after bin Laden and the Taliban which had supported him.  But before we finished the job, we changed direction and attacked Iraq under the false pretenses of WMD.  In reality it was another attempt of the U.S. to change regime in an effort to build democracy in another country.  Efforts like this have failed every time since Vietnam.  We got rid of Gaddafi in Libya.  But what was maybe the most vibrant country in Africa is today a big mess.  We have failed the Kurds who fought for us in Iraq and Syria.  Now there are countless Afghans who sided with us who will probably be killed once the Taliban take over again.

Do you think we have much credibility around the world today about building democracy in other countries?  Do you think that people will follow us given what happens to the South Vietnamese, the Kurds, the Libyans, the Iraqis and the Afghans who sided with us?  Do other people still think that American democracy is so great after January 6th?  We need to concentrated on our own democracy, our domestic terrorism and the divides we have here before we try any more misguided foreign adventures.

 Today, June 15 marks the reopening of the state of California!  California has done well in the past few months with one of the highest vaccinated rates in the nation and one of the lowest cases per capita in the nation.  So there was already confidence before this official date arriving.  

But I don't think California or any other state is out of the woods yet.  This loosening of restrictions may still have come too soon.  Hopefully not like last year when California was doing so well but once the restriction was lifted, the big surge occurred.  I think it won't be so bad this time because about half of the population in the state has been fully vaccinated.  But we are nowhere near herd immunity and the vaccinated rates is dropping despite the prize gimmicks.  

If we don't reach herd immunity by the fall, a surge may occur with the more contagious variant getting out of control.  But even if we achieve 80% fully vaccinated in California, other states may not reach that level and if many people travel to places like Disneyland, we still can get a surge.  So we are not out of the woods yet and those who have not been vaccinated need to do that ASAP.

 I had the honor of speaking at an anti-Asian hate rally on Memorial Day.  I spoke about the Vincent Chin case and how scapegoating of Asians in the 1980s led to his murder.  I also drew the parallel of what was happening then in Michigan to what is happening today throughout the country.  That is, once again, Asian Americans are being scapegoated and thus leading to many victims of hate crimes.

Obviously, most people do not think that the scapegoating of Asians is justified.  But inadvertently, many say or write things that help the causes of the racists.  For example, Bill Maher said that there is nothing wrong with using the term China flu since Ebola is an area in Africa but that name is used to name a disease.  He doesn't realize that no Ebola Americans have been scapegoated for that disease, unlike Asian Americans with names like China flu or kung flu?  Agreeing with Trump just help him deflect blame and give racists excuses to attack Asians.

Now an article in the Wall Street Journal claim that an unnamed intelligence source said that three staffers from the Wuhan Lab went to hospitals before the first case of COVID-19 was reported.  Three Chinese people going to the hospital during the flu season?  Not unusual given that there are few private clinics in China.  No diagnosis was given, no evidence of positive COVID test, no evidence that they were admitted let alone being in the ICU.  So what is the significance of this?

But then other media picked up this non story, even liberal media like CNN and Sixty Minutes.  They make it sound like that the virus was leaked from the lab even though this is not really evidence of anything.  But next thing you know, Biden is asking the intelligence community to investigate and come up with the answer in 90 days.  He doesn't have more information than this article?  We need to investigate the origin of this virus, of course.  But this is a scientific endeavor, not an intelligence or political one.  We have not been able to figure out how HIV started after decades, so I doubt the CIA can do this in three months.

Now for my own conspiracy theory.  The author of the WSJ article is Michael R. Gordon.  This is the same guy wo used to write for the New York Times before the invasion of Iraq.  He wrote then that unnamed intelligence source said that Hussein had WMD, the same talking point of neoconservatives who wanted to wage war on Iraq.  His sources, if he actually had any, were totally wrong.  But not only did he not lose his job but he was the only journalist embedded in the military during the war.  Thus he got great access for reporting and later wrote books about the war.  Obviously, his writing helped the hawks convince the American people the need for the war.  In return, his status of a journalist was greatly enhanced despite him being totally wrong.

Is Gordon doing the same here?  I don't know but if the U.S. wants to make China look bad, one way would be to use both the conservative and liberal media to do the job as it did in selling the Iraq war.  If this time it leads to war again, what will happens to Asian Americans in this country?

 More than 4 months after Biden had been sworn in as president, there are still many out there who thinks that Trump will be reinstated as president.  In fact some are calling for the overthrow of the government in a military coup similar to the one in Myanmar recently.  Among those who said that a coup is possible are Sidney Powell, former attorney of Trump, and Michael Flynn the retired general.

I know an ordinary citizen calling for a coup is not something you may want to prosecute.  After all, that are many people who have been seduced by the false narrative that Biden stole the election.   But a former general has to be held to a higher standard.  Flynn had taken an oath to defend the U.S. and for him to make up lies against the government and advocating a coup is borderline treason.  He tried to walk that back but it is similar to the time when Trump changed what he said to "Why wouldn't it be Russia?"

In this country, the civilian president is the Commander In Chief of the military.  So the military cannot overthrow the government.  So anyone planning a coup is committing treason.  But I guess a lot of the Trump supporter don't know or believe that.  They rather have the U.S. become a third world country where coups can overthrow the civilian government.  Maybe they should move to Myanmar!

 Three states:  Ohio, Maryland, and New York are now holding money lotteries to incentivize people to take the vaccine.  Are we that selfish that many of us won't do something that is essential for the well-being of the country without a chance of getting money?  There are many reasons for vaccine hesitancy but the bottom line is that there are many people who won't do the right thing unless they are paid or at least have a chance of hitting the jackpot.

I understand the reason for these three states using lotteries to get more people vaccinated.  We have vaccines waiting to be used as the vaccination rate is dropping.  About 20% of the people in this country say that they will refuse the vaccine.  Since 75 to 80% of all people need to be vaccinated for the U.S. to reach herd immunity, it means we have to get practically everyone on the fence to buy in for herd immunity to occurred.  So we have to get all those who does not object to getting vaccinated to get the jab.  And they need to do it as quickly as possible before variants appear that make the vaccines less effective or ineffective altogether.  

It is too bad we have to resort to these money give away in order to get some people to do what is a civic duty that also may save their lives.  We should be ashamed that we are not taking advantage of the vaccines that we have.  Many countries would love to have the vaccines that we don't use.  We don't appreciate what we have here.  Instead, look for other states to follow the lead of these three states in the coming weeks.

 Will be going on vacation in a couple of days.  But I will answer any comment tomorrow.  Today is a quick note on couple of disappointing developments here in California.

The census result came out yesterday and California will be losing a Congressional seat for the next decade.  This will also mean a loss of one electoral vote.  Overall, the states that voted for Biden loses three seats and those who voted for Trump gained three seats.  With the next presidential election expected to be a lot closer, this maybe important.  Also the Democrats hold a slim lead in the House and this can make a difference.  But who knows?  I mean North Carolina and Florida can flip blue and Michigan, Pennsylvania and Colorado can flip red.  In the long run the greatest hope for Democrats and the greatest fear for Republicans is if Texas ever flips.  Texas gained two seats this time and will probably continue to get people moving from California unless we cut way down on use of fossil fuel.

Another blow is that Newsome is being recalled.  The opposition has enough signatures for a recall election to occur.  Newsome will most likely survive as he and the Democrats will bill this as a Trump supporters attack.  But he will have to fight hard and that may mean loss of concentration for his job.  Worse, he may lean a little more to the right and cut back on COVID mandates even if there is another surge in the next few months.  There will be expenses for the state due to the special election.  There will also a big circus as all kinds of people, mostly unqualified, decide to jump into the race.  This includes Caitlin Jenner who somehow is a Republican even though that party is not exactly a friend of transgender people.  There is also a porn star in the race along with bunch of has beens.  So if Newsome loses the recall, one of these people may be our next governor!

 Finally, justice is done.  Three guilty verdicts on the Floyd case brought celebration in the streets rather than protests.  To me, it is more relief than celebration.  Relief that the jury got it right, but no celebration because it took such overwhelming evidence to get justice.  Relief that we maybe improving in our understanding of the fear and pain that Black people go through.  No celebration yet as we still have a long way to go.   Relief that there won't be violence in the streets tonight over a verdict.  No celebration because I see many potential fire in the streets over verdicts in the near future.

Another concern is that Maxine Waters may have given the defense a pathway to appeal.  Her not so subtle message for violence if the verdict was not guilty was not smart at all.  The judge, while saying the Waters' rhetoric should not affect the jury, did say it may give the defense a chance to appeal.  Well, I don't see how her words would affect the jury at this point.  I am sure that everyone on the jury has heard of all kinds of rhetoric before Waters.  They are also well aware of the probability of violence if they return a not guilty verdict.  After all there have been many post verdict protests before.  Still, Waters was not helping here.

Also the GOP saying Waters is inciting violence is hypocritical.  Did the same people called out Trump, Cruz and others for inciting the violence on the Capitol?  

 The CDC release the stats of causes of death in 2020.  COVID deaths was third most cause of death behind cardiovascular diseases and cancer.  These top two causes together was more than 3 and half times the number of deaths due to COVID.  So now some people are saying that CVD and cancer are caused mostly by people eating bad food and smoking cigarettes.   Yet we don't stop people from doing these things but we force people to wear masks and shut down the economy because of COVID.  People should be free to choose what they want to do with their health, not dictated by government or the CDC.

What these people do not recognize is that if you make bad choices, you still may live years before you get CVD or cancer.  If you don't wear your mask and you catch COVID, you may die tomorrow.  If you make wrong choices and you get CVD or cancer, only you will die.  You can't give other people these diseases.  But if you get COVID, you can pass it to someone else and kill them.  No doctor or nurse ever died of treating patients with CVD or cancer but many have died treating COVID patients.  You do not have the right to cause someone else to get sick or die.

And it is not just a choice of minimizing death or save the economy.  China shut down it economy early and not only saved lives but also had positive GDP growth last year.  We do half way effort at shut downs and rarely enforced wearing masks.   As a result, not only our deaths skyrocketed, our economy also tanked.  So for those who believe that freedom to do what you want is more important than public health,  well, you are dead wrong.

 What is happening to this country?  While the trial of the killing George Floyd is still going on, a Minnesota policewoman shoots and kills a black man at a traffic stop.  She supposedly mistook her gun for a taser!  How is that possible?  I understand that the gun and taser are supposed to be worn on different sides of the body.  Do they look and feel the same?  Is it true that cops have trouble differentiating other objects from guns?  They have shot people and then claim that they thought the person was holding a gun when in fact that person was holding something else.  So cops have trouble identifying their own guns now?

Then you have the cop who sprayed maze on an army lieutenant wearing his uniform at another traffic stop.  The soldier was in a car without a license plate but had a temporary paper license in the back windshield.  The cops couldn't recognize the temporary license?  There must be many of those on the road everyday and once the car is stopped, they should have seen the license.  People have said that black men should not wear hoodies or gang clothing to make cops more suspicious of them.  This guy was in an army uniform!  What else can he wear to make him more of a good guy?  Yet he still was treated like a criminal!

Couple weeks ago the big stories were attacks and killings of Asians.  I am sure the attacks are still going on.   But there is no attention to that now as mass shootings and cops attacking blacks are once again taking over the news.  So many things are wrong now that the school shooting in Tennessee today will hardly be noticed among the national news tomorrow.

 Biden is calling for a two trillion dollars investment in infrastructure.  The GOP is calling this unnecessary expensive.  Of course, they are not complaining about the expensive tax cuts.  I found out recently that the cost of the new F35 fighter jets, including their lifetime operating cost is about two trillion dollars.  I think THAT is unnecessary expensive.  Our older fighter jets are still the best in the world.  The jets, while giving us superiority in the sky, will not be effective in the wars we are fighting today.  We bombed the hell out of Vietnam and the Middle East and what have we got for it?   Lots of death and destruction without achieving our goals.  More jets will not make us more competitive in the world economy either.  Infrastructure upgrade is what we need the most to be competitive.

While China is building bullet trains and railroads to accommodate them, we can't build a single one here connecting SF and LA.   While China is building bridges and highways, our roads and bridges are falling apart.  China is building new airports and LaGuardia and LAX are shameful examples we have.  So yes, I agree with Biden that we need to improve our infrastructure now as fast as we can.  

The GOP does have a point in that we have not been transparent about the cost and timing of our projects in the past.  That is on both GOP and Democrat administrations.  It cost billions to add couple of miles on an existing subway and to add three stops in New York and took many years.  Why is it so expensive and take so long?  GOP also want to have bipartisan participation in deciding what to build.  Projects should not be doled out as pork to influential Congressmen or Senators.  Of course, when the GOP want to have bipartisan involvement in deciding the projects, it is another way of them saying: we want some of the pork too!

 A CNN headline recently read:  Former head of CDC believes that the Coronavirus came from a lab in Wuhan.  Below the headline it said that he gave no clear evidence.  But the disclaimer will not be important to most people who read the headline.  Many will believe that the virus came from a Chinese lab, so more reason to hate China.  They think that the head of the CDC must be telling the truth.  But lets look at the facts here.

Robert Redfield was the CDC director under Trump.  He is supposedly a very smart virologist.  But it is also crystal clear what he said is just his opinion and not something most scientists who looked into this agree with.  Redfield has a history of giving wrong opinions and facts.  He has been known to give fake graphs in scientific presentations and as a researcher of AIDS had touted a potential vaccine as effective.  This was not opinion shared by other scientists and it turns out we have no effective vaccine for HIV even today.

I think as the case of many people in the U.S. government, Redfield is attacking China to deflect blame for his own incompetence.  This is not as bad as calling the China virus or kung flu to deflect blame.  But this is not something he would have said if he had done is job well at the CDC.  Regardless of whether you believe China was transparent in the beginning, the truth is that the U.S. got its first case at the same date as South Korea.  Yet there is no pandemic in South Korea.  Or for that matter most places in Asia.  While South Korea went into action, our CDC under Redfield came up with inaccurate test kits.  When Germany offered to sell us test kits, our CDC refused the offer.  So that delay caused many lives.

As head of CDC, Redfield should have given accurate, consistent messages and directions to the public.  Yet in the beginning the CDC said wearing masks only prevent those with the virus from spreading to others, not preventing uninfected people from catching the virus.  There were also many times last year where Trump was giving false statements and Redfield did not fire back.  So Redfield has been incompetent and is not someone we should be listening to.

One thing that strike me the most was when Redfield talked about speaking to his Chinese counterpart early during the pandemic.  He said the Chinese scientist was crying because the death rate at that time in China was 5% of those infected, a very high death percentage.  I don't remember Redfield mention that he or any American official cried when over 500,000 Americans died from the virus.  If there is no empathy for the death of so many, why would there be concern for rhetoric that would open up more hate for Asian Americans?

 Received my second dose of vaccine 2 days ago.  Felt a little more sore than after the first dose and also more fatigue.  Slept a lot yesterday.  Feeling much better today so if no further side effects, then this has not been a bad experience.  The place where I got my shots have been even more efficient the second time.  I understand that we are getting near 3 million shots done a day in the U.S. and increasing.  So things are looking up.

But I still don't think we are out of the woods.  In a related story to the Asian discrimination situation, someone on our "neighborhood watch" site wrote that he/she did not trust that the vaccine will take care of this CCP man made virus!   At least one person responded by saying "CCP?  Crazy California People?" There are over 10 states with increasing cases, many of which are new variants.  Then there is the scene in Miami Beach where the police fired pepper spray to disperse maskless people breaking the curfew.  Florida cases are going up already but the numbers in Florida won't tell the whole story as the spring break people will increase the cases in their home states when they leave Florida.

Astra-Zeneca vaccine has been suspended in some countries in Europe due to scare about blood clots.  Scientists don't believe the rate of cases  among those vaccinated are more than those not vaccinated.  Without knowing all the numbers, I believe the scientists are probably right and that the vaccine is still safe.  But while the vaccine originally was approved for emergency use in Europe, I wonder why it has not ask for emergency use in the U.S.  And if it has not been approved in the U.S., why is it being sent to Canada and Mexico?

 If Asians don't think that we have a target on our backs, the shootings in Georgia should change that thought.  For weeks now prominent Asians and activists have gone on media highlighting the increased attacks on Asians in the past year.  There have been various statistics regarding increased in verbal and physical attacks against Asians.  But whatever the percentage increases are noted, I think they are lower than the actual numbers.  In particular verbal assaults are probably not reported by most Asians.  It is only because the physical assaults are increasing that more attentions are given to discrimination against Asians.

It seems that most perpetrators against Asians are cowards.  They tend to attack elderly people and women.  The shooter in Georgia is a coward and a liar.  He goes on a shooting spree against unarmed Asian women and then claimed that it was not a racial thing.  He claimed he did this because he is a sex addict and that these massage parlors seduced him.  You mean a sex addict is only tempted by women of  one race?   Even if that is the case, it is still a hate crime since he is blaming Asian women for his addiction to such an extent that he was only targeting them.

There is a long history of discrimination against Asian women based on sexual fetish or stereotype.  They are also thought of as low in morality.  This idea goes back to 1800s when mostly Chinese men came to the U.S.  As a result human traffickers brought women from China to work on brothels to serve the lonely Chinese workers.  But white men also went to these establishments.  So Americans claimed that Chinese women were of low morality and hurt the Christian value of the county!  The Page Act of 1875 banned Chinese women from coming to this country.  This was 7 years before the Chinese Exclusion Act which banned all Chinese.

Today there are still Asian women smuggled into the U.S. for sexual labor.  My own town had a case of Chinese women trafficking a few years ago.  Lisa Ling of CNN did a documentary on massage parlors in New York Chinatown last year.  None of the customers she saw going in these establishments were Asians.  So almost 150 years later,  Chinese women are still victims of these enterprises.  Now they are even victims of a fatal hate crime.  

There are so many wrongs related to this story.  How often are the customers of these businesses get jail time?  Robert Kraft got away with it.  This is not nation of moral superiority, as many Americans claim.  They voted in a president who is a serial adulterer, who paid for sex and bragged about attacking women.  The same ex-president is still calling the China virus last night so that more hate crimes against Asians will occur.  The perpetrator of this crime should be institutionalized but yet was able to buy a gun legally.  

I am rambling because so many things anger me at this time.  I hope more people will understand that being good loyal Americans will not take the target off our back.  We must continue to call attention that many people want harm to come to us, including those who have the platform to spew hate.  But realistically there are just too many crazy, racist people out there with guns.  We will just have to be vigilant all the time and try to protect our elderly and women as much as possible.

 One year ago yesterday was the first day that I started keeping track of COVID cases and deaths in the U.S.  At that time I thought I would be finished in a few months when the situation would be under control.  But a year later, I am still tracking the numbers and looking at the rise and fall of cases and deaths.   On March 13, 2020, there were 2,000 cases and 49 deaths in the U.S. related to COVID.  A national emergency was declared and all sports were shut down.  A year later the U.S. has over 30 million cases and over 540,000 deaths.  There is now optimism that the end maybe coming but I hope we don't let our guards down.

Yes, cases and deaths are declining.  Yes, vaccinations have been increasing and we may well have herd immunity by the summer.  Grandparents who has been vaccinated may hug their grandchildren again.  Biden thinks that we may have July 4th gatherings for bar-b-que this year.  But I am afraid these good news will cause people to be less careful.  I am afraid that people will carelessly gather on Memorial Day, even before July 4.  People may go on summer vacation in large numbers since they have been cooped up for a year.  What exactly will the impact of the new variants have on our immunity?

Some states have already opened up completely.  Texas have got rid of masks mandates.  The Texas Rangers will be allowed to have full capacity at their games.  Even here in California, with Governor Newsome under the pressure of a recall, is opening things up quickly.  High school sports have resumed.  Fall sports like football is joining winter sports now.  Even though with teachers getting vaccinated and protocol put in, I think the opening of schools will not be as safe as politicians acknowledge.  Italy is in lockdown again.  Despite the progress we have made, I have to cross my finger that we don't end up like Italy.  I think I said that last spring when Italy was the worst hit country.  Shortly after that, we overtook them!

 This blog is related to the previous one.  I said that I was not for a national minimum wage of $15 since the standard of living varies greatly from one area of the country to another.  Then a couple of GOP politicians made speeches against the wage increase which serves to make me more for the increase.

Both politicians said that they worked for minimum wages while in school and it was good enough to get them to where they are today.  I understand the allure of the self-made man.  But is the situation the same today?  I am probably a little older than these guys.  But let's assume that we worked for around the same wages back when we were young and they paid for their schooling like I did with medical school.  Back then, the average minimum wage was around $2.80 and my medical school tuition was a little over $3,000 a year.  Today the tuition at my alma mater is over $35,000, more than 11 times when I went there.  So to be able work at minimum wage and save for medical school, the comparable wage would have to be over $30 per hour.  I know that inflation is not as bad in most things as in education, but you get the idea.  So those two guys are actually making a case for increasing the minimum wage.

I can understand moderate Democrats who are in red states like Joe Manchin need to look like they are  preventing the progressives from jamming the minimum wage increase down the throat of the Republicans.  But I wonder how the people in poor states like Manchin's West Virginia feel about not getting an increase?

Then there is the unemployment benefits in the stimulus package.  Manchin was holding out for $300 instead of $4oo.  He finally gave in when the Democrats agree to $300 with the first $10,000 benefits not taxed.  I didn't know that unemployment was taxable.  If you are giving money to help people out, why are you taxing that money at all?

Contrast this with the lower tax rate of dividends and capital gains vs earned income.  Since I am retired, most of my income is from dividends and capital gains.  So I am glad that these profits are taxed at a lower rate than the money I made working before.  I am sure people richer than me pushed to pass these tax laws for their benefit.  But who is looking out for the people who needed the help of unemployment benefits?

 It looks like the Democrats are going to try to pass the 1.9 trillion stimulus bill regardless whether they get any Republican support.  The few GOP senators who want to participate want a bill of 6 billion.  This is way less than economists think would do any good.  There are some who think that 1.9 trillion is still not enough.  I am no economist so I don't know how much is the right amount.  But given the dire situation of many Americans, I think you have to go big, even if it is not bipartisan like Biden wants.

When Obama took over the recession in 2009, he tried to rally Republican support.  So his bail out and stimulus plans were not as big as he wanted.  It turned out, he got no GOP support anyway.  So it is foolish to think in this post Trump era, we are going to get more bipartisan.  It turned out that the stimulus Obama put in was less than optimal in retrospect.  Despite the outcry of Republicans against the bailouts, they claimed later that the recovery was too slow because not enough was done.   So there will be no satisfying the GOP no matter what.  Even Obamacare, which is very similar to Romneycare in Mass. has been attacked ad nauseum by the Republicans.  So I think Biden and the Democrats should seize the moment and pass what they want instead of waiting for a few Republicans to join them.

I do agree that the minimum wage bill is not included in the stimulus bill.  That bill will not help the dire situation right now and we should pass what is passable right away.  I don't know if $15 is a reasonable goal and whether that is good or bad for most people.  But I don't think it should be a national law to almost double the wage over a few years.  Here in California, the minimum wage is $14 starting this year.  Given the standard of living in California, it is justified.  But that should not be the same in states where the cost of living is much lower.  In fact, I think a study should be done in a few years to compare states with minimum wages higher than $15 vs those who are less and see how it affects the workers, the small business owners and the economy in general.  Then we can see whether higher minimum wages is better or not.

 I received my first dose of the Moderna vaccine yesterday.  So far I just have a sore arm and slight fatigue.  Interestingly, I have soreness on the same spot on the both arms even though I only got the shot on one arm.  The arm that got the shot was more sore but the other one had the same type of pain.

If the Johnson and Johnson vaccine was available and I can choose, I would have chosen Johnson.  The Johnson vaccine uses old technology for which side effects from that type of shots are well known and mild.  There has not been long term side effect from that technology.  The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines use new technology so we don't know for sure if there are long term side effects.  Plus, Johnson is a one shot deal and the others are two shots.  From what I heard, the second shot has worse side effects.  But I would recommend that everyone get a vaccine whenever it is possible and not wait.  The quicker we get enough people vaccinated, the quicker we can end the pandemic.  The chances of any bad side effects are small from any of these vaccines.  

The storm across Texas and other parts of the country has affected the vaccine distribution.  In LA my in laws were not able to get their scheduled second shot at Dodger stadium when the shots did not arrive.  I was lucky my appointment in my county was not postponed.  But I am sure the delay in LA was not an isolated incident in the country.

 Ted Cruz is at it again.  He and other GOP leaders in Texas are whining about failure of wind turbines in the cold weather proves that this methods of green energy cannot be trusted in an emergency.  The emergency is that almost a quarter of Texas has lost power since the weekend due to the cold weather.  But wind turbines are only responsible for less than 10% of the energy in Texas.  The fossil fuel sources of energy, particularly those from natural gas, have been failing also due to freezing pipelines.  So it is rather hypocritical to call out wind turbines when the old fossil systems also have failed.

Besides nature, the political system of Texas also should be blamed for leaving millions of Texans without power for several days.  Texas has its own electrical grid so that it would not be under federal regulation.  There are three main grids in the U.S., the Eastern grid, the Western grid and Texas grid.  So even if other states want to, they can't help Texas.  Cruz laughed at California last year when there were power outages here.  He said the government in California could not provide for basic civilization.  For a guy who advocates Hong Kong to secede from China, who advocated for insurrection in the Capitol, it is not surprising that he made such a stupid comment and has to eat his words today.

But regardless the fact that parts of Texas want to secede from the Union or that people like Cruz and Governor Abbott are saying stupid things about energy, we need to help Texas in this dire situation.  Every part of the country can have catastrophes.  From hurricanes in Florida and other southern states, to tornados across the Plains and the Midwest, to heavy snow storms in the North, to earthquakes and wild fires in the West, we face natural disasters frequently.  We have to help each other whenever these disasters hit.  We are always in it together.

 Well, I guess Tom Brady is Superman!  I can point out that K.C. played poorly, not like the team with the best regular season record.  I can point out that K.C. committed stupid penalties on defense.  I can point out that they somehow gave up a touchdown at the half after seeing how Brady did that to GB two weeks ago.  I can point out that TB coaching staff out coached the K.C. staff.  But hey, there must be some reason that Brady has played in 10 Super Bowls and won seven.  This time at age of 43, playing on a different team and system.  There must be some reason that New England did not make the playoff this season and TB wins the championship after not making the playoffs for who knows how many years.

I guess Bill Belichick is a lot smarter when he has Brady, and not the other way around.  But at least Belichick is smart enough not to accept the Medal of Freedom from Trump.  Bruce Arians is a lot smarter this season at 68, the oldest coach to win the Super Bowl.  Given that, maybe Brady can work with others.  Maybe he can help Fauci in the battle against COVID.  After all, Brady is not just the GOAT, but he is really Superman!

 The craziness of the GameStop buying frenzy is rocking Wall Street. I find this sticking to the big hedge funds amusing.  I am also happy that this is making some small investors rich.  But I am concern that some unsophisticated beginning investors are going to get hurt badly.  Reddit is pushing investors to go into silver now.  I think this means that stocks like GameStop are going to drop soon.  Small investors who had buy in recently will have bought high and will end up selling low and lose money.  While hedge funds may lose billions, most of them can survive the losses.  A small investors who loses a few thousands may be in much more trouble.

I think most of the hedge funds have gotten out of the positions by now.  So there won't be much more loss for the MAN.  More buying of these stocks that are way overvalued will make this a pyramid scheme now.  Those who bought early and are encouraging others to jump in now are like those at the top of the pyramid.  They will benefit but those who jump in now will be at the bottom and lose.  So my advice for anyone who is not in, don't get in.  Those who have bought in, take your profit and run now!  

I am not sure if Robinhood is being bought off by hedge fund companies or other rich people on Wall Street to limit the buying of GameStop.  But it is really doing the small guy a favor at this time.  Don't buy unless you have money to burn to make a political statement.

 The Democrats sent the article impeachment to the senate yesterday.  I think it is a waste of time as there is no way that 17 GOP senators are going to vote to convict.  Then  Trump is going to claim victory again even though this time a majority will vote against him.  The only thing that maybe accomplished is that it forces the GOP senators to vote for and against Trump.  By siding with Trump, those senators in not safe seats will lose votes.  After all, if causing insurrection is not a crime, then what is?

To show that Trump's influence is still important in the GOP, look at Oregon and Arizona, two states that voted for Biden.  The GOP in Arizona voted to censure Cindy McCain, Jeff Flake and its own GOP governor due to their not supporting Trump's effort to overthrow the election.  Given that Arizona just voted for Biden and elected two Democratic senators, it would seem the GOP is committing suicide in a state they have a chance to win back in the near future.  In Oregon, they voted to censure the Congressmen who voted to impeach Trump.  Given that Oregon is a blue state, it would seem that the GOP is trying to become totally irrelevant in Oregon.  But we now know who controls the GOP in that state.

I think that people like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley should resign or kick out of the senate.  Their support of Trump, their lies about the election and incitement of the rioters make them as guilty as Trump.  Of course, nothing will happen to them in the senate but hopefully it will cause them in the ballot box in the future.  By the way, in October 2019 two senators went to Hong Kong to egg on the demonstrators.  One was Ted Cruz.  I did not know the other guy at the time as he was new.  That guy called for independence of Hong Kong.  That senator?  It was Josh Hawley.  Hard to imagine anyone would be accused of causing insurrection against both China and the U.S. in less than a year and a quarter!

 Had no power in the house for 41 hours, starting 5 am on Tuesday to 10 pm on Wednesday.  So missed all of the inauguration.  Seems that nothing bad happened, so that was good.  If we had violence then our democracy maybe questioned.  Now the world see that we still have peaceful transfer of power.  We can still be the leader of democracy in the world.  If anyone has comment or insight on the inauguration, please write in, as I saw nothing live.

Now comes the hard part for Biden and Harris:  how to govern such a divided country.  There is one advantage for Biden.  Like when Obama started in 2009, things can't really get much worse.  The financial situation was bound to go up for Obama and the Covid-19 situation is bound to get better for Biden.  But in both cases, almost half of the country is against them and rooting for them to fail.  McConnel said that he wanted to make Obama a one term president from day one.  He has not said that about Biden but he is sure strategizing it.

Biden started right away to reverse some of the executive orders by Trump.  While I agree most of these changes, it is a problem if every 4 years we change the goals of the country.  If we keep changing courses every four years, lots of money and energy will be wasted and we are still back to square one.  What Biden and whoever follows him will need to convince the public is what our long term goals will be.  For that to happen we need bipartisanship.  I am all for getting rid of the extreme right wing politics of Trump.  But I don't want the extreme left to dominate the next four years either.  We should try to work on things that we obviously agree with.  Like improving our infrastructure.  I think we can all agree that we should not have power outage for 41 hours when there is no hurricane, tornado or earthquake!

 As I watched the events of the past week unfold, there are just too many things for me to rant about.  So I am going to write a few things down and talk about them quickly.  If any of these things you want to discuss further or something else you want to rant about, feel free to do so.

1.  The first thing to come to mind as I watched the insurrection was that it was predictable.  If a bunch of men carrying automatic weapons can storm into the capitol of Michigan to protest restrictions due to COVID, you can be sure that a march into D.C. on voting conspiracy is bound to turn dangerous.  If there is a plot against the governor of Michigan, what are the chances that lawmakers in D.C. not be threatened?

2.  The lack of preparation of this protest was shocking.  As noted above, it is predictable what may happen.  During the Black Lives Matter march, there were tremendous police presence with riot gears.  They were deployed all over, including the steps of the Lincoln Memorial where no lawmakers were in danger.  The BLM protests were peaceful and yet 300 arrests were made.  So far only 80 or so are arrested this time even though many of the perpetrators were seen on camera.

3.  Not only were preparations poor, some cops were seen letting protesters go where they want by removing barriers for them.  At least one cop took a selfie with them.  You have to wonder how much our law enforcement has been infiltrated by white supremacy groups.  I am sure that if these people were black or wore a turban instead of MAGA hats, the response from law enforcement would be quite different.

4.  In interviews, some of the Trump supporters said that they were there because they had no choice as local government and the courts are against them.  This is laughable.  In Georgia, for example, the governor and secretary of state are both Republicans.  The SCOTUS has 6 of 9 conservative justices, 3 of which were appointed by Trump.  The idea that these people got cheated is absurd.  

5.  The Trump supporters still think Trump is their savior.  Don't they realize he just want to use them.  He has no loyalty to them.  He told them to march to the capitol and he will march with them.  Where was he?  He abandoned them and after it was over, condemned them for the violence.  He abandoned all those around him, including Pence, Sessions, Barr etc.

6.  Yet his supporters still think all those abandoning Trump are traitors.  They threatened to hang Pence.  They harassed Graham at the airport.  

7.  There is no doubt that Trump incited the violence.  But what about people like Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and Rudy Giuliani?  They also got blood in their hands.  

I will stop for now but may rant more later.  One last thing, I don't think impeachment will do much good.  As with last time, it will just make Trump a victim.  Although more people, including Republicans, want to kick him out now, there are no two third majority willing to do so in the Senate.  We have too many things to do right now to invest time on this.  With the Biden administration needing to hit the ground running, we need to get his cabinet confirmed as soon as possible.  So we cannot waste time having a trial in the Senate now.

 I am pleasantly surprised that the Democrats appear to win both senate races in Georgia last night.  Both results will be contested by the GOP in the coming days with one of them going to recount for sure.  But the fact that the Democrats are likely to win both is shocking to me.

Perdue almost got the majority in November which would have meant no runoff.  Warnock was in first place in the other contest but if you add all the GOP votes vs all the Democrat votes in November, the GOP would be ahead.  Given that Democrats usually turnout less in non presidential elections and the fact that Trump is not there to pull down the GOP tickets, it would seem like the GOP would retain control of the Senate.

Things didn't look good when the exit polls showed that people over 65 turnout more than in the general election while the youngest group turnout less.  Also, due to the fact that the votes that were cast before yesterday tend to be more democrats, it was expected that the Democrats would have early leads with the GOP doing better as the night went on.  So when the GOP candidates took the lead, it looked really bad.  But some of the Democrat stronghold reported late and the tide turned as Wednesday approached.  It was a miniature version of the general election.  Another rollercoaster ride that was not good for my health.

Once again the Democrats owe the black community.  They delivered again with record turnouts and record margins for the Democrats.  Stacey Abrams will be revered for years to come in the Democratic party.  Will this lead to more power for blacks in the party?

Trump was the big loser yesterday.  Frankly, he has been the big loser period.  Those who rode his coattail must be regretting it today.  The question is, don't the Republicans see that Trump was a novelty act that is no longer appealing to the country?  He has no morality and no competence.  Why do people like Ted Cruz kiss his butt?  Cruz buys Trump's conspiracy theory.   One of Trump's conspiracy theory was that Cruz's father was involved in killing JFK.  I think this tells us more about Cruz and others like him than about Trump.

Well, more craziness is expected as the crazy people in the GOP are going to challenge the electoral college result today.  What will Pence do?  And what would Trump say about Pence afterward when it is clear that Pence can't overturn the election.  To all those who support Trump, it will be clear again that he will dump you if you don't do everything he asks you, even if it is to commit treason.