Sunday, February 23, 2020

American intelligence has found that Russia is trying to meddle in the U.S. presidential election coming up.  Not surprisingly, it has found that Russia is trying to help Trump win.  What is interesting is that it also found that Russia is trying to help Bernie Sanders win.  So why would they try to help two people at the opposite end of the political spectrum?

Putin is again trying to help Trump because he is very happy with the result of his meddling four years ago.  Obviously, he figured that Trump would not be as tough on him as Clinton would have been.  He has been right.  Time and again, Trump has turned his back on his own intelligence and claim that Russia has not try to meddle.  You can almost say that Trump admires Putin, as well as other dictators.  In fact, based on what he has been doing,  it looks as Trump wants to be a dictator himself.

So why does Putin want to help Sanders?  I don't think it is because he thinks Sanders will turn the country into communist as Trump argues.  I think he wants Sanders to win the Democratic nomination because he thinks that Sanders will be the weakest opponent for Trump.  He is not rooting for the socialist to win he is rooting for the socialist to lose the general election.  I can guarantee that if Sanders is the nominee, Putin will stop helping him against Trump.

I saw Sanders on 60 Minutes tonight.  He added a new social program on his agenda.  Free universal childcare till age of 4.  Add this to his other programs: Medicare for all, free college tuition, forgiving student debt etc,  While most people may say that healthcare is a right, I don't think most people think that college or childcare is a right.  Also he doesn't tell you how much each of these programs will cost.  To pay for this program, he says the same thing he says about the other programs:  tax the billionaires.  Most Americans are not going to want to go to the same well for everything.  Pretty soon most Americans will be on the side of billionaires against Sanders.

There is an old saying:  the enemy of my enemy is my friend.  In the case of Trump and less so with Sanders, I think a friend of our enemy (Putin) is our enemy!

Monday, February 17, 2020

As I had expected, the coronavirus crisis in China has led to discrimination against Chinese in this country.  Kids have been bullied in school.  People have been turned away from motels because they are ethnic Chinese.  Even here in ethnic diverse southern California, we have experienced this.  Our county Chinese association is holding a Chinese new year festival on Feb. 29.  We have been asked by our local newspaper if this was going to be canceled.  Apparently some people have expressed concern about a large congregation of Chinese may spread the disease!

I wonder if this is racism or ignorance.  Maybe a bit of both.  One would be more likely to catch an infection at a Lakers game or at work than at a Chinese festival.  If one catches an infection anywhere, it will be thousands times more likely that it would be the seasonal flu than coronavirus.  In any case, unless you work at a hospital, you will be hard pressed to see more doctors at our festival than anywhere else. 

Some positive notes for Asians:  Parasites won the Oscars, the first non-English film to do so!  For the third season in a row, Asians have won America Got Talent.  Shin Lim won 2 seasons ago, Kodi Lee won last time and tonight an Indian group won.  We will continue to achieve.  We must continue to speak out against racism and ignorance.

Friday, February 07, 2020

Today I heard the sad news of the passing of Dr. Li Wenliang.  Dr. Li was the one who first told the world about the possibility of a virus, that is similar to the SARS virus, infecting people in Wuhan.  Unfortunately, his plea for public response was censored by the local government.  Not only that, Dr. Li was forced to admitting that he was passing false rumor.  Eventually Dr. Li himself was diagnosed with the virus and died.

Rightfully, Dr. Li is hailed as a hero today for both alerting the world of a possible epidemic and also for dying from taking care of his patients.  It is unfortunate that the government attacked Dr. Li instead of listening to what he said.  I understand that false rumors spreading through highly populated cities in China can cause panics.  But given that Dr. Li is a trained physician who was at the front line taking care of patients, the Wuhan government should not have silenced Dr. Li's alert.  If the investigations had started when Dr. Li alerted the authorities, at least some of the lives lost could have been prevented.  Maybe even Dr, Li's life.

I think the Chinese national government has done better this time than during the SARS epidemic.  But there are rooms for improvement, especially at the local level where the first response have to occur quickly.  Hopefully, Dr. Li has not died in vain.  Hopefully his legacy will be that when the next epidemic hits, China will do better.  Given the dense population of China, there will be a next epidemic.  Rest in peace, Dr. Li Wenliang.

Tuesday, February 04, 2020

Things are looking grim for our political system.  I didn't watch the State of the Union nor the Democratic rebuttal.   I saw that Trump refused to shake Pelosi's hand and then she ripped up his printed speech.  This is our leaders behaving like children!

Then there is the Iowa caucus.   The results, more than 24 hours later, is still not completely available.  I don't understand the technology of apps, which is what the Democratic party was blaming last night.  But if every precinct simply call in the results or fax the results, wouldn't we have gotten the final count after a few hours delay?  I mean, I saw that in these caucuses, everyone just line up behind their candidates' signs and then they count the heads.  There is no paper ballot even.  So it seems to me they count, write it on paper, send it to a centralized location and then add it all up.  How hard can this be?

With about 70% counted by midnight Wednesday on the eastern time, it looks like Pete is ahead on delegates won and Sanders ahead on the popular vote.  Biden did worse than expected, even though he was not expected to win.  Will Pete be the standard bearer for the moderates instead of Biden or Klobuchar?  Too early to tell, but it must be a boost for Pete and a big warning for Biden.

Besides the snafu on caucus night, I don't think that Iowa is necessary as important as some other years.  The population is way too white compare to the democratic electorate of most of the country.  Pete has a big problem with the black vote so what happens when the campaign goes to states with big black population?  More importantly, can he or anyone else bring out the black vote during the general election.  If whoever is nominated cannot get blacks to be enthusiastic near the level of when Obama was running, the Democrats are in big trouble.

On a light note from the last blog, Rick Barry was not on the Warrior team with Wilt.  The Warriors drafted Nate Thurmond and then traded Wilt before Barry joined the team.  Barry went to the ABA for a few seasons when the Warriors didn't want to pay him what he wanted.  If Barry and Wilt were on the same team, they would have had the distinction of two underhanded free throw shooters.  They would also have one of the best and one of the worst free throw shooter in NBA history on the same team!