Rishi Sunak is the new prime minister of the UK.  The first person of color tapped for this job, it is an important milestone.  There are also celebrations in India as Sunak is of Indian descent.  But as in the case of Kamala Harris, Sunak is brown on the outside and white on the inside.  Even more than Harris because he is one of the richest person in the UK and is the leader of the Conservative party.  So his policies are likely pro corporations and the wealthy.   He was the equivalent of the Secretary of Treasury under Boris Johnson and so it is unlikely that his policies will be much different those of Johnson and Truss.  Those policies have not been working so I doubt that Sunak will be able to get the UK out of the financial crisis any time soon.

I understand that the parliamentary system means that the leader of the party with the most members of parliament becomes prime minister.  But there has not been any election since Boris Johnson led his party to victory.  So basically Truss and Sunak are not elected by the majority of the people but by just members of the Conservative party.  This is democracy?

Trevor Noah showed someone calling in a show in England who said that as a white country it makes no sense that an Indian guy becomes the leader.  He said it would be like him going to Pakistan or Saudi Arabia and become their leader.  Hmm!  I think that has been done before.  But the white guys in those situations used guns and bombs to gain power.  Sunak won by voting, even if it is just by the members of the Conservative party which are mostly white.

 Trump recently made racist remarks about Elaine Chao, his former Transportation secretary.  Chao is married to Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell.  When asked about Trump's racist remarks, McConnell had no comment.  Is he so spineless that he cannot defend his wife against racism?  Interestingly, Chao also had no comment.  Is she so hateful of her Chinese ancestry that she did not think the comments were racist?  Or is she keeping quiet because she is being accused of helping her family's business while in office?  So maybe these two terrible people deserve each other!

 Just returned from a trip to Detroit.  It was a good trip for my nephew's wedding and seeing my family.  The return back to LA area was not pleasant, however.  The flight out of Detroit was supposed to be 9:45 p.m.  At around 7:30 there was an announcement that the pilot was not going to make it on time and the flight had been pushed back to 10:30.  Around 8, the gate agent brought a cart full of snacks and drinks for us.  I told my wife that it is never a good sign when they are offering snacks at the gate.  Sure enough, it was followed by announcement that the pilot had just been cleared to take off from New York.  The flight will be delayed until 11:30.  I didn't have a good feeling about that since it is not known how long the pilot had been stranded in New York and if he is in shape to fly to LA when his plane lands in Detroit.  Sure enough, just around 10:45 it was announced that the pilot does not feel he is in shape to fly to LA when he lands in Detroit.  So the flight was canceled and rescheduled to 7 a.m. next morning.

We had then stand in line to get vouchers for hotel and food.  We were among the first in line but still took 15 minutes to get the vouchers.  We then had to make reservation for the hotel and find the shuttle to that hotel.  Since the hotel did not anticipate a sudden surge in business, it had to get the shuttle out to the airport and that took about 20 minutes.  When we got to the hotel, there was one clerk who had to work the system of vouchers.  It took another 20 minutes to get our room.  So it was well past midnight when we got to bed.  We had to get up at 4:30 to catch the plane.  Thankfully we made it and the plane took off as scheduled.

When we got to LAX, we had to get an Uber or Lyft.  We were jammed into a bus to take us from the arrival area to the rideshare parking lot.  The bus was jammed with people.  The drive to the parking lot took 20 minutes even though the lot is less than a mile from LAX!  The parking lot was jammed with buses.  People were wandering off the bus to find where Uber, Lyft and taxis were located.  Massive amount of people from buses with luggage.  We looked like bunch of refugees.  Once getting in our ride, it was an hour and half through LA traffic to get home.  

So for someone who hates to travel, it was not a fun experience.  I am sure a lot of people had experienced much worse than this.  But that is my point.  The airlines had no back up plans.  The airports are horrible, although DTW is a lot better than LAX.  Traffic everywhere and no good public transportation.  LAX has been under renovation for years and I doubt it will improve much after renovation is completed.  And it will still have no train going in and out of the airport then!

I also want to rant about the gas prices here in California.  It is again over $6.  The official word is that Saudi Arabia raised the price of oil to the U.S. and that there are several refineries in California  undergoing maintenance and are offline.  Well, the refineries were being maintained a few months ago when the price surged.  Do we have such ancient refineries that we have to maintain them every few months?  The price of gas jumped almost a dollar in the one week I left LA.  The price of a barrel of oil from Saudi Arabia went up 20 cents.  Since a barrel of oil can produce about 20 gallons of gasoline, that means each gallon should only go up a penny!  Someone need to explain the math to me here!