I watched Jeremiah Wright on CNN on Sunday. For the most part I was impressed. He was charismatic and I can see why he had so many followers including Obama. He spoke in different accents. He sang and danced. I agreed with some of the things he said. Only two things I had trouble with. One is that he quoted a Wayne State professor's findings that whites and blacks learn differently. Whites use the left brain and thus more logical whereas blacks use the right brain and thus more creative. I have never seen such a scientific conclusion. But let's say the research show this to be true, would a white person come out and say this without getting into trouble? When people comment that blacks and whites are different physiologically and thus explain blacks superiority in running and jumping, that was considered to be racist because critics say that would imply that blacks are not as smart. I never understood why that is the case. But now a black professor say that blacks and whites think differently, there is no implications of the races not being equal? Wouldn't racists use that excuse and segregate blacks and whites into different classrooms if not schools? Differences in learning have been used as a reason for female only schools. But of course when one proposes possibility that male and female are different in science and math, that would be sexist.

The other problem with Wright on Sunday was that he was throwing Obama under the bus by keep talking about changes, which was Obama's campaign theme. This cause more people to associate the two of them even more. Then he said that Obama's denunciation of him was political. This after Obama showed loyality toward him by not denouncing him but only his words.

I did not hear all of Wright's speech at the National Press Club. I understand from the excerpts that it was much worse than Sunday. This led Obama to severe all ties with him which is the right thing to do but may be late. It seems to me Wright is purposely trying to take Obama down. If Obama is elected then the highest glass ceiling in the land would have been shattered. No longer can people like Wright or Sharpton use victimhood for their causes. It would still be an unfair world but Obama would have shown that even a black man who once used drugs can become president. It really would not matter if he got this far using his right or left brain!

I have not had much nice to say about McCain lately. So I am giving him credit for being a straight talker this week. He told the people in poor areas what he really thinks. As he had done in Mich. during the primaries he said that most of the blue-collar jobs that had left will not come back. He said that dismantling free trade agreements will not help to bring these jobs back either. This is unlike the Obama and Clinton who told people in the Midwest that they oppose NAFTA and that they can bring jobs back. I think McCain is more honest than the Democrats on this issue. If the wages in other countries is one tenth of the wages here, unskill work will never come back, free trade agreements or not. No president will be able to do anything about that. Displaced workers will have to learn new skills and young people will have to become better educated to compete in the global economy. Government can't do the learning for anyone. But the government can and should encourage changes in people's attitude about learning and make it easier for them to obtain higher levels of skills and education.

The problem I have with McCain is that while I agree with him that government is not always the answer, government is not always the problem either. If there is no government there will still be corruption and crime. If there are no rules or referees there will still be fouls but the cheaters will win. Rules and referees are there to make a level playing field. Laws and governments are there for the same reason. Government cannot change the economy by itself but it should make laws that are equitable. For example, McCain was against the Bush tax cut but now he is for it. As much as I like to lower my taxes, this tax cut was wrong. It helped wealthy people and has not and will not stimulate the economy. We are in a war that causes billions daily and we are cutting taxes? The deficit will just be passed on to future generations. McCain was right to be against it before but now in trying to get the conservative vote he has flip-flopped. So while I applaud him for his straight talk to the poor I think he is intimated by the wealthy people in his party.

It goes without saying that when we get news from a network or newspaper controlled by a communist country we should take it with a grain of salt. The coverage of the Tibet situation is obviously biased in the Chinese media. It showed the violence started by rioters but not the police violence against peaceful protestors. It showed Chinese being injured by Tibetans but not the real number of Tibetans that were killed or injured. But even the media here have shown bias. Chinese business that were trashed were not shown here. CNN has been accused by the Chinese of only showing the police against the protesters but not the damage caused by them. I have not seen CNN try to defend itself. The protest in Paris turned ugly when protesters attack a Chinese disabled athlete carrying the torch in a wheelchair. That did not get mention here until it caused a big storm in China. By not being even-handed the western media only causes nationalism in autocratic countries and hurt democratic movements.

I think I have mentioned in the past that when I was in Hong Kong last year, every time I saw a discussion of Hong Kong's 10 year under Chinese rule on tv it was predictable what was being said. On Chinese tv a western businessman would talk about how wonderful the last 10 years has been. On CNN or the BBC a Chinese dissident would say how awful China has been to Hong Kong in the last 10 years. The truth is of course in between. Hong Kong is still a great place to do business and the standard of living continues to go up. It is also true that local newspapers have to fear repurcussions if they are very critical of the government. But it is telling how each side of the media tries to manipulate opinions by the way they present the news.

The other day I was watching CNN broadcasting from U. of Penn. They brought in 3 students and asked them who they are voting for. The white male said Clinton, the white female said Obama and the black guy said McCain. If this is not manipulation by the media I don't know what is. Why can't they report reality instead of political correctness? My advice is: no matter where you get the news, just consider the source of the information before making any judgment.

Obama has caused more trouble for himself by his remarks about bitter Americans in small towns. Of course McCain and Clinton are jumping all over it by calling his remarks elitist. It was a mistake made by an inexperienced campaigner. Again I worry about his lack of experience. If someone wants to vote against him for this he can certainly do so. But who among politicians is really not an elitist? Most of the people in Congress are rich people. The Clintons have made millions of dollars in the past few years. They went to Yale law school. Obama went to Harvard. McCain went to Annapolis and was the son of an admiral. Even the most liberal of politicians like Kennedy are wealthy people. Do they really understand poor rural Americans? They may make better speeches about poor people than Obama did but do they really understand them better?

The person who broke the story is a woman name Mayhill Fowler. She writes for the Huffington Post which is a liberal website. She is getting threats which may be real or from people pretending to be Obama supporters. Obviously anyone who threatens her is crazy and should be arrested. I think that anything candidates say that is not specifically off the record is fair game and it is up to the people to decide if it is important or not. In this case a liberal site publish something potentially damaging to a Democratic candidate. This should be applauded. The only thing I have slight trouble with this is that Fowler went to this fund-raiser as a contributor to the Obama campaign. The event was close to the press. After the event she published the remarks in a site she works as a journalist. Since no press was allowed, how can she write about it as a journalist? If she had written it in a private blog then I don't have any trouble with it at all. But by writing it in the Huffington Post there may be an ethical issue. What do you think?

John McCain says that the Democrats are naive and misunderstand the history of U.S. involvement in foreign territories when they criticize him for saying that he is willing to keep troops in Iraq for a hundred years. He says that he would keep U.S. in Iraq as a peace-keeping force and that eventually no American troops will be harmed. He cites the use of American troops in Korea, Germany and Japan as examples of American troops in a post war territory for over 50 years already.

This is what I mean when I say that McCain is losing it. Does anyone believe that American troops will be a peace-keeping force and not be shot at in the future? How can Americans prevent Sunnis from fighting Shiites and various factions of Shiites fighting with each other? The fact is these religious battles have gone on for centuries and the fact that we are there only gives them an excuse to blame the Americans. There was no al Qaeda in the equation before the American invasion but there is now. Whichever side the U.S. helps will bring anger against Americans from the other side. American troops will be attacked as long as they are there. Remember our peace-keeping efforts in Lebanon in the 80's? If our forces can help bring peace in the middle east instead of adding gas to the fire, we would have put troops in Israel a long time ago. Nobody would suggest we do that.

Japan, Korea and Germany all have governments who are friendly to the U.S. They also did not have any choice when American troops first occupied there. Today German and Japanese bases are more important to Americans than the host countries. There are a lot of Germans who want the Americans out of there and the majority of Okinawans probably would want us gone. There is some sentiments among South Koreans that we should not be there even though they are facing danger from the north. But the situation is even more absurd for American troop presence in the middle east. It was the American bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait that bin Laden used as one of the big excuses to recruit terrorists. Can you imagine the recruiting posters that bin Laden can post if McCain becomes president? It is not the Democrats who are naive, it is McCain who is senile and have a lack of understanding of history and the world.