Obama was right about Muslims having the right to build a mosque near ground zero. He is also right in questioning the wisdom of doing so. What was wrong is that he didn't say both of these comments at the same time. By saying one thing to a Muslim audience and another thing when people attacked him makes him look wishy-washy. It was a no win situation for him politically and he could not have kept silenced on the subject forever. So he should have just say the right things at the same time. It is absolutely true that religious freedom means that Muslims have the right to build anywhere they please as long as they follow the usual zoning laws. It is also true that given the emotional situation, it is extremely insensitive to do so. If Obama had said both of these to the Muslim audience, he may still be attacked from both sides, but he would have been right and also courageous.

I don't know why anyone would listen to an idiot like Newt Gringich. He is immoral, given his treatment of his wives. Now he comes up with statements such as a mosque near ground zero is like Nazis building next to synagogues or Japanese building at Pearl Harbor. I am quite sure there are Japanese buildings at Pearl Harbor. Every Nazi group would be a threat to Jews while most Muslims are not a threat to America. The constitution guarantees freedom of religion, but not freedom of hate groups.

Obama should have told his Muslim audience that instead of building a mosque, which they can build anywhere else in New York, they should build a center for peace at this property near ground zero. The center should denounce violence and reach out to other religions. This will help the image of Muslims immensely. He may get a negative response. But so what? It would have been the right thing to say. People say that we can't build a church at Mecca. It is true. But are we not suppose to be a better nation than Saudi Arabia? Muslims say that there would be no controversy for a church to be built at the site. It is true. But shouldn't believers of a great religion be sensitive to feelings of others and reach out to them? So why isn't there anyone taking the high road?

An article in the Illinois Statehouse news recently reported that the Asian carp, which supposedly is threatening the ecosystem of the Great Lakes, is now being caught by fisherman and to be sold to China. This is what I had advocated all along. Why were we thinking of spending millions to put electronic "fences" in rivers to prevent the carps from migrating into the Great Lakes? If these carps did come from China, I would bet the Chinese had been eating them all along. The Chinese are known to eat anything that moves. There must be a market for the carps. The only thing that I worry about is that we are too good in fishing them and they become almost extinct. Then some group will argue to put them on the endangered species list. Then what are we going to do? Right now with this deal with China we stop the carps from spreading and employ some fishermen and workers in processing plants. It is a win-win. Why wasn't this thought of before by the Illinois government?

Of course anything that is bad from nature, we seem to blame it on Asia. I mean, how did the carps get here in the first place? Are they really from Asia? Where I live, citrus agriculture is very important. Now there is a warning about an insect known as Asian citrus psyllid invading. Are we so sure that this is from Asia? How many times have we heard of a flu coming from Asia? Remember the Hong Kong flu? I don't remember anyone in Hong Kong proclaiming that we invented a flu and it is spreading to the rest of the world. Of course, it maybe that people in Hong Kong do blame themselves too much. Take athlete's feet. It is caused by fungi that are all over the world. But you know what the people of Hong Kong call it? Hong Kong feet! So I will blame my inability to dance on the disease "Hong Kong Two Left Feet".

The whole Shirley Sherrod affair may be a poor reflection of the Obama White House. Andrew Breitbart is obviously the original villain but people like him are all around. It is not unreasonable for government officials to not fall in such a lousy trap by this dishonest person. Would it took that much effort for Tom Vilsack to look at the whole video and listen to what Sherrod had to say before making up his mind to fire her? Or was the order coming directly from the White House? Either way it is not good for Obama for his administration to act so impulsively.

The NAACP doesn't look very good either. I mean they should have known about Sherrod's speech better than anyone. Why did the NACCP attack Sherrod in the first place. Is it because they feel the heat after calling the Tea Party racist? I am sure there are racists in the Tea Party, just as there are racists in the NAACP and any large organization. Andrew Breitbart looked stupid in saying that he showed the clip to show racism in the NAACP. So both sides are playing the race card without any intelligent and fair discussion about policies. It is sad that this is typical of the political divide we have today.

I think Miami has become the most hated team in the NBA, replacing either the Celtics or the Lakers. That crass ESPN show by Lebron I think will hurt his legacy unless he win 3-4 championships in a row. Even then many people will feel that he couldn't have done it without Wade who already has a ring. If somehow they don't win, which is very possible (remember the Lakers with Chamberlain, West and Baylor?), then his commercial value will plummet. I think this move to Miami just made Kobe Bryant more popular!

Having said that, Cleveland's owner Dan Gilbert's open letter was way too much. James has a right to make a business decision, just as Gilbert can get rid of any player he doesn't think is doing the job. James made a lot of money for the Cavaliers and Gilbert in the past few years. So this rant just makes Gilbert look as bad as James. Yes, I feel for the fans of Cleveland, but I don't feel for the owner.

If controversy kept people focused on the NBA in the summer, controversies made the World Cup more interesting this year. But the final was a yawner. The Netherland and Spain are two of the most artistic teams in the world. But today's game was terrible. It seems that the finals are almost always bad, just like the Super Bowl. The third place game is always better. Maybe they should tell the finalists that they are actually playing the third place game and see if that makes the game better!

Spain has become the Miami of the sports world. They just won the most important trophy in sports, they are the second best to the U.S. in basketball, Pau Gasol won two titles after somehow ended up with the Lakers, Rafael Nadal is dominating tennis, a Spaniard may well win the Tour de France. It is time to root against Spain! Well, at least they don't have a guy like Rooney or James that people like root against.

Well, there goes my theory of South American soccer superiority over Europe. The only team left from S.A. is Uruguay. And they should have lost. Brazil and Argentina showed a lack of discipline once they got behind. Ultimately what I like about Brazil and Argentina is what cost them. They try to attack first and defend second. So on a given day with the attack stalled, they are vulnerable from counterattacks. The 3 European teams deserve to be in the semi-final but overall I still think South America outperformed Europe.

In an attempt to save face, I will predict the winners of the semi-final. The Netherlands have the best record in World Cup history without winning. And having beaten Brazil, I think they deserve to win this time. While I like the way Germany has played (except against Serbia), I will take Spain over them because I don't think the young German team can sustain 3 impressive games in a row. The Netherlands, I predict, will win the championship. Europe will get its first champion in a World Cup played outside of Europe!

Couple days ago I had a most interesting day watching sports. I am currently in Hawaii for a wedding. So on Wednesday morning when I tried to watch the U.S. soccer game, I had to get up at 4 a.m. I found that my two sons and brother in law were also up. We watched Landon Donovan scored the winning goal in stoppage time and then we jumped up, screaming in celebration. We are staying at this magnificent villa by the ocean ( the groom has a very rich friend), and we woke everybody up despite the vastness of this place.

After half hour of celebration, I went back to my room and turned on Wimbledon. I saw 4 sets of score and a score of 30-30. I figure then they are in the first game of the 5th set and are tied 30-30 in points. It took me awhile, seeing that after points were played that the score was still 30-30 that I realized that was the game score, not the point score. Thus continued a day of watch tennis till 59-59! So I was exhausted from watching sport while vacationing in paradise!

The group round of the world cup having been completed, I make the following observation. South Americans play the best soccer, by far. The European players are way overrated. They are way overpaid. Christian Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney? I think South America should get one of Europe's spots for the World Cup next time.

Have not had much time to write lately even though many things been going through my mind. Will restart with a brief commentary on the gulf oil spill. I understand that BP may have been negligent so that this disaster happened. But once it happened I don't think that there is any reason why they would not want to stop the oil flow ASAP. If they know how to do it quickly there is no advantage for them to hold back. So there is no reason to demand that BP fix this mess as the Obama administration and others are doing except to deflect any blame. And as for the government, it is liable for the lack of oversight but again once the spill started you can't blame it for not stopping the spill because I am sure that would the first thing the government wants to do.

I think the only thing that Obama could have done in the beginning, other than going to the Gulf more frequently for photo-ops, was to convene the top engineers in the country to come up with ideas how to stop the spill and clean up the mess. If he had called on brainiacs from MIT, Cal Tech, and U. of Texas (I assume there would be a petroleum engineering program there) from day 1, then I don't think you can ask for more. If those guys can't come up with the answer then why do you expect that Obama can come up with the answer?

By they way, why can't they just land a submarine on top of the gush and stop the flow until the relief well is drilled?

While the investigation of Goldman Sachs is all over front page of newspapers, in one of the back pages of LA Times today is an article about CalPERS, the California government employees pension fund, making a new deal with one of its management firm. This is hailed by lawyers as a 125 million dollar savings for the pension fund over the next 5 years. Of course the management firm was found to be paying middlemen about 125 million in recent years which of course came out of the pension fund's money. And if they saved 125 million, how much are they paying them in the first place? I think you can put all the money in a mutual fund that matches the SP500 and forget about any of these investment expenses of hundreds of millions and you would have made more money in the long run.

The SEC is, of course, trying to get some reputation back by going after Goldman Sachs after they failed to catch anyone, including Bernie Madoff. The truth is hedge funds, futures and options all should be outlawed. They are just same as gambling. They do not create value. The only people who always make money are the brokers and those with inside information or can manipulate the market. Unlike stocks which help companies expand and thus eventually enlarge the economy, hedge funds and options are zero sum games. One side makes a bet and the other side accepts the bet, and if a stock or commodity goes up, one side wins and the other sides loses. In order for hedge fund managers to make money they have to find someone who will bet with them and can afford to lose. Who are these people? Well, pension fund managers come to to mind. These people get a base percentage of assets to manage them and then gets a percentage of returns also. So since if they lose their shirts they still get a base percentage, they may as well gamble and hope to hit a homerun and get a percentage of higher profit as well. That's not managing. That is gambling with other people's money. At the end of the day, no value in the economy is added, just money exchanging hands. But in many cases the hedge funds make money and a public pension fund (ie taxpayers' money) loses money.

Tiger Woods is coming back to golf competition tomorrow at the Masters. I don't know what kind of shape he is in but I think he will be in contention. I won't be rooting for him due to his poor behavior but I won't bet against him either. Obviously he is not likely to win since even at his best he "only" wins about 20% of the time. But the pressure from the media will not affect him. If anything he is under less pressure now since he does not have to hide everything like before. In fact I think the energy drink that abandoned him made a big mistake. I mean what better advertisement than to say that due to the energy drink, he is able to run around outside the golf course and still play great inside it?

The terrorist attack in Russia shows that curtailing the rights of the people does not prevent terrorism. Since 9/11 Russia has been attacked several times by terrorists. It was only Nov. last year that a train was bombed between St. Petersburg and Moscow. What do you think the Russian government do after each attack? It takes away more democratic rights of the people for sure. You don't think they torture suspects to try to get information? Court order before wire-tapping? You got to be kidding. All these things and more that we argue about in this country are in full use in Russia. And in China too, I may add. But obviously it is not keeping the Russian people any safer. This is something we have to remember when the next time the government asks us to give up rights in order, as it says, to protect us from evil.