Been away this week and so have not been keeping up with the news.  So I have not read carefully about Trump Jr. and his meeting with the Russians.  But my initial reaction is that with so much happened already and the Trump core supporters are still supporting him, this will not affect anything.  We are just going to have to wait for Robert Mueller's investigation to be completed and see where this goes.

But I am struck that Trump Jr. was so willingly to meet with the Russians to gain an advantage over Clinton.  As a business man doesn't he know that if someone gives you something, he expects something in return now or in the future.  Russia is an arch enemy of the U.S. so even to listen to a deal from Russia strikes me as naive at least.  But I would say that he is taking his father's interest over that of the country.  If someone disagree with this, consider what would happen if a Chinese American was running for political office and he accepts invitation from China to discuss aid from that country.  I am sure there will be people calling him a traitor.  And I don't buy that Trump Sr. did not know this meeting took place.  As I said before, if this whole thing with the Russians is nothing, why would he fire Comey?

Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong going back to China.  The last time I went back to Hk, 10 years ago, things were stable.  The territory continued to grow.   The infrastructure and business climate were amazing.  While the government answered to China, the press was free and people went about their lives as if nothing much had changed in 10 years.

I do not have time to go back this year but I understand there has been lot of changes.  Obviously there has been protests about losing freedom in HK.  They were mostly political protests.  But there are also anxiety in HK about the economy.  On the surface, HK is still growing.  Its vibrant climate is still the envy of most of the world.  But there are signs of problems.  Shanghai's port is way bigger than that of HK now.  More of world finances are going to Shanghai, Beijing and other cities in China.  In 1997, China, with a much bigger population, had a GDP that was only 7 times that of HK.  Today it is 35 times larger.  Whereas most developed countries invested in China through HK 20 and even 10 years ago, most of them have direct lines into China now.  China used to depend on HK investment, now mainland Chinese are buying up properties and companies on HK. 

China's investment in Hk is a double edged sword.  It keeps the economy humming but the prices of properties in HK is so high from China's money that ordinary HK people can't afford decent housing anymore.  All these have led to anger over China.  But unlike Taiwan, which has its own military force, HK is at the mercy of the big bear from the north.  Hong Kong people are resilient.   In the past, despite brain drain to U.S. and Canada while under British rule, the colony prospered to where its per capita income exceeded those of its British master.  But it is hard to imagine HK can shake the grasp of China unless China itself becomes democratic.  So I have a feeling if China tighten its grip on freedom of HK, there will be more brain drain out of the territory.

I was stunned by the decision of the Pacquiao fight last night.  I had not watched the Pacman's fights in the past because I was too cheap to buy pay for view.  So I was happy that ESPN was televising the fight.  It is a good move for boxing to get some future stars on free tv.  Otherwise it is losing the next generation to MMA.  By getting Pacman on, it should have helped promote future fights on the network.   But boxing shot itself in the foot last night.  The Pacman won by 4 rounds on my card and that of the ESPN analyst.  But the judges all voted for Horn.  One guy had Horn winning by 6 rounds!  Horn fought a good fight and the two fighters made an enjoyable fight.  But ridiculous decisions like this will further hurt boxing.

The loss of the Democratic candidate in the special Georgia election last week is important not only in that the Democrats failed to pick up any of the four seats vacated by Republicans who went to work for Trump.  It seems now that just tying GOP candidates to the unpopular Trump is not enough to win in 2018.  Beyond that there are couple more things that are related to this loss.

If the Democrats had prevailed last week, it is likely that the GOP health bill in the senate will fail.  Centrist Republicans will be afraid to vote for it.  There would also be Republicans in the House who might think of retiring rather than to fight a difficult fight.  Now I think the Republicans are more emboldened.  I think there is greater than 50% chance that the health bill will pass.

I think it is time for Nancy Pelosi to step down as minority leader.  Democrats use Trump against the GOP but the Republicans use Pelosi against the Democrats.  Her name is just as toxic as that of Trump.  Whereas the GOP cannot get rid of Trump, the Democrats should get rid of Pelosi as leader.  It is time for fresh leadership anyway. 

The health bill, if passed and reconciled with the House bill, will help the Democrats greatly in future elections.  Instead of the GOP complaining about Obamacare, which is gaining popularity, the Democrats can complain about Trumpcare, which Trump himself has declared "mean".  By decreasing Medicaid funding and insurance subsidies, the eventual GOP plan will hurt the poor white people who voted for Trump more than other groups.   Right now no matter what Trump does, there are 36% of people who would support him.  I think when some of them lose their Medicaid or insurance subsidy, then we will see his core support erode significantly.

Lastly, no tape?   What a shock!  Given his claim of Obama's birth, should anyone believe Trump when he hinted there were tapes?  As is many cases with him, the emperor has no clothes.

Today is the 35th anniversary of the beating death of Vincent Chin.  Chin got into a fight in a bar in Detroit after two layoff auto workers called him a racial slur.  The fight was broken up and things should have ended right there.   But the two men waited outside for Chin with baseball bats, chased him down the street and beat him to death.  For this they  made a deal for manslaughter and got probation.  Not a single day of jail for murder.  That is right, murder.  To me the death did not occurred in the heat of battle in the bar but after they had a chance to cool off.  It was a short premeditation, but it was premeditation.  The justice system had failed Vincent Chin.

The death of Vincent Chin did serve to galvanized Asian Americans.  While we are still under represented in government and politics, we are making progress.  We certainly are less afraid to speak out.  I read an article recently about Bill Maher using the word chink on his show.  He never apologized for that even though he apologized for using the N word recently.  I guess there are not enough Asian views for his show.  I would boycott his show except that I don't get premium channels and thus never watched his show anyway.

I think some people think that using derogatory words can't be that bad given that people in certain  ethnic groups would use the words among themselves.  I think the context is important.  For example, when someone at a NY baseball game shout Yankees, nobody is bothered by it.  But if you are an American in some foreign country and someone yells: "Yankees go home", I think  the American may get upset.  A white guy may call himself white trash to make a joke.  But if he is in the inner city and black guys call him white trash, I am sure he will feel uncomfortable at the very least.  So supposedly liberals like Maher should understand this.

I don't think the Comey hearing changed many minds.  If you believed Trump obstructed justice, the hearing reinforced it.  If you don't then Comey didn't persuade you. There has been a parade of experts who went on CNN and argued about whether Trump obstructed.  Some were quoting sections of the law and I find the language confusing.  One reason people don't like lawyers, I supposed!  But to me, whether he obstructed in terms of the law is not the important thing.  I think he acted like a third world dictator by firing Comey because he was investigating Russia.  He even said it himself.  Despite what his supporters said, Trump did not fire Comey for his performance before that because in that case he could have fired him long before he had private meetings with Comey.  If you are going to fire the guy, why would you have private meetings with him?  So you can argue that Trump has the right to fire Comey.  But it still makes him look like a dictator.

Couple of weeks ago, Trump came back from his trip declaring great things done abroad.  Well, he was seen kissing up to the Saudis and he thinks that is going to help the situation in the Middle East.  Well, this week, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain and the UAE got together and isolated Qatar.  They kicked out Qatari diplomats and not allowed transportation by air or sea into Qatar.  This is supposedly because of Qatar's support of terrorism.  Talking about the kettle calling the pot black!  Saudi Arabia and Egypt have done way more support of terrorism than Qatar.  The reason for this is because al -Jazeera which is based in Qatar has been an advocate of the Arab Spring which these countries' governments hate.  Qatar also has close ties to Iran which these countries hate.  So they are trying to give Qatar a big lesson.

Trump supports Saudi Arabia and tweeted his approval of this.  I am not sure he realizes that Qatar is home of the largest U.S. base in the area.  If Qatar is driven more toward Iran it can mean danger to our troops stationed there.  At the very least, we may lose the base.  This does not help fight terrorism but will make the area even more unstable.  Instead of trying to get the two sides to reconcile, Trump is flaming the issues with his statements.  Another example of lack of knowledge of the world that is making things more dangerous for us.

It is always about Trump even when it isn't.  Kathy Griffin gets into trouble by holding a fake severed head of Trump.  This is indefensible.  Even Al Franken and Anderson Cooper refuse to have anything to do with her after this.  She gave an apology and then made that hollow with her news conference.  She complained about getting death threats and that Trump is trying to destroy her life.  While nobody should be getting death threats, I don't know what she expected. And Trump did not cause her to lose all of her gigs.  Nobody wants to associate with her after this.  She is apparently doubling down and is saying she will continue to attack Trump.  So is this a case where I have nothing else to lose so just keeping digging?

Of course there are those on the right who say that Griffin should be investigated for threatening the life of Trump.  Come on, if the Secret Service cannot protect Trump from Griffin, we have a big problem in this country.  I would think that Ted Nugent is a more legitimate threat to Obama than Griffin to Trump.  Griffin is just being more grotesque. 

Back to Trump directly.  He is saying that to fight terrorism we have to get rid of political correctness.  So I guess that he is going against political correctness when he banned people from certain Muslim countries even though none of those on the list have killed Americans here.  Is it political incorrectness that he kiss the butt of Saudi Arabia, the country that actually produce terrorists against us and have supply much of the money for terrorists?   Is it because of fighting political correctness that he admires the likes of Putin and Xi while have not so nice things to say about our European allies?  Is it political incorrectness to scrape the Paris Accord to cede the leadership role in fighting climate change to China?  I guess there is a lot stupidity to go around this week.

In the 1970s I read an article about dominance of drivers with blue eyes in auto racing.  It asked:  Is blue eyes an advantage in auto racing?  It was not a subtle way of saying whites are better drivers.  In the years since, Italian, Brazilian, Argentine race champions make this blue eye argument absurd.  But it was not until Lewis Hamilton won the F1 championship that one can definitely say that no one race has a monopoly on driving skills.  That point was driven home again yesterday when Takuma Sato won the Indy 500.

I think most reasonable people would agree that chances of participation rather than genetic makeup is the prime reason some groups are more dominant than other groups in certain fields.  That is why I find it interesting John Hawkins wrote "We live in the strongest, most powerful, most prosperous nation in human history and if we are being honest, white men probably deserves 95% of the credit for that."  He did also say: "That may be unfair because women and black Americans weren't given the opportunity to significantly contribute for most of our nation's history, but it is true."

I think there is truth in the first statement by itself.  But the second statement makes the first statement absurd.  It would be like saying in 1960 that the NBA is by far the best basketball league in the world and white American players are responsible for that.  That statement would be true in itself  but it would be nonsense looking at it now.  So Hawkins' statement will be nonsense 50 years from now.  The rest of the world was way behind us in basketball in 1960 so that we did not need black players to win easily.  But can we say the same today?  We need the best players to beat the likes of Spain, Serbia, Croatia etc.  The same with our nation in general.  China was a sleeping giant in 1960.  Even Japan and Germany had not fully recovered from WWII.  But we need everybody in the country, regardless of race or gender if we are going to stay on top. 





So the race of the winner of Indy 500 is not important but the racial makeup of our politicians, scientists, generals etc are important.  So it is imperative that we let everybody have the opportunity to contribute or we are not going to stay top. 

By the way, VP Pence was at the race yesterday.  I wonder what his thoughts are as a Japanese driver win in his home state.  I wonder if he is worried that an openly gay driver will win in the near future?

While the Trump administration is embroiled with Russiagate last week, China quietly took over the international stage.  China hosted a summit on its $900 billion Belt and Road Initiative.   This creates a trade and infrastructure network that pass through south and central Asia to Africa and Europe.  Part of it traces through the old Silk Road trade route.  Third world countries such as from Pakistan to Kenya may benefit from this.  Of course, China is not doing this for pure benevolent reasons.  This will help China become the top trade partner with a number of countries.  It is also a way of building soft power that will make it eventually a super power opposing the U.S.

Of course, this may not work the way China wants it to.  Already there are grumbling about Chinese workers getting the jobs the locals need and want.  It is not clear that the railroads and ports that China is building will be profitable.  And when one ethnic or national group become a dominant force in a county, there is bound to be resentment toward the group.  So instead of the term ugly Americans, there will be a term of ugly Chinese soon enough.  But as a Trump administration looks inward, a Chinese push outward is going to help China in this attempt to catch up to the U.S. in the world stage.

Just finished reading a book called "No Wall Too High".  It is the story of Xu Hongci translated into English by Erling Hoh.  Xu was a young man who joined the communist party of China and was moving up the ranks and was sent to study medicine by the party.  He had thought that Mao Zedong and the communist party had fought well against Japan and will lead the country to prosperity.  But he became disenchanted by Mao's policies and spoke out.   Of course he found out Mao and others in the party do not want to hear this.  He was sentenced to hard labor.  He was accused of spreading false rumors regarding the regime.  After many years and several escape attempts, he eventually was able to escape to Mongolia.  It is a fascinating story of survival.  But it is also a fascinating illustration of how an authoritarian person and government can make life miserable for millions of people. 

Interestingly, Mao suppressed news that shed bad light on him and his policies.  He called these "false rumors" counterrevolutionary.  Sort of like some leader today calling news that reflect badly on him "fake news".  I am, of course, referring to the president of FIFA who said that the accusations of FIFA being corrupt and nontransparent are just fake news.  That is what every dictator in third world countries say.  Yeah, those dictators and the leader of the free world.

People are comparing to Trump's firing of FBI director Comey to the Saturday Night Massacre of 1973 when Nixon fired special prosecutor Cox.  I do not agree.  I think this is worse for the country.  For one thing, Watergate was about a failed attempt to influence a presidential election by Americans.  This investigation is about a successful attempt by a foreign government to influence a presidential election.  This has far more potential disaster for our democracy than Watergate.

The second thing that makes this worse is that when Nixon decided to fire Cox, his attorney general and deputy resigned instead of taking part in the firing.  Those two Republicans put the nation ahead of their party.  Jeff Session, on the other hand, signed on to the firing even though he has supposedly recused himself from the investigation.  Also so far, other than John McCain, no other prominent Republicans has come out and say this is outrageously wrong. 

The third thing is, as I have said before, Trump is a bully.  Beyond that now, I think Trump is acting like a dictator.  Why do you think he sings the praises of Kim, Duterte, Sisi and Putin.  Just like them, if you are against him, he is going to try to get rid of you.  At least so far he has not had anyone killed yet like those dictators.  But with his firing of Comey, I am afraid that we are going down that slippy slope taking us away from our democracy.  Think about it:  the president is being investigated for colluding with the Russians and he fires the man in charge of investigating him.  His party, which runs the government refuses to acknowledge that this firing is undemocratic.  The president's best foreign friends are dictators.  So yes, I think the situation is worse for the country than Watergate.