A few people have asked me to comment on the Virginia Tech shooting. I don't think I have much of interest to say about this tragedy. In the future I would write something about growing up as an Asian American male. This would seem to be easy since I am an Asian American male, but to me it is not so easy. It would be difficult for me to be objective and my experience may not reflect other Asian males. So I am going to wait for the right opportunity, with the right type of lead in. To me the VT tragedy is about one mad man and not reflective of an ethnic group's experience. Anyways, there are a few points I want to make:

My wife was all worried when the killer was identified as Asian. She said that she hope that he is not Chinese. I can understand her feelings. The paper next day interviewed Korean leaders in LA who apologized for the killing by a Korean. I can understand that also. But I think we should set these feelings aside. There is no need to apologize. White people didn't have to apologize for Tim McVeigh and Jeffrey Dahlmer. Just because some people think that I should know all the Chinese doctors in town, it doesn't mean I should. Nobody is responsible for this killer's action except for him, so nobody else should apologize.

Now that doesn't mean that there are not some racists out there who would take advantage of this. Remember the time an American spy plane went down in China? Some Chinese restaurants were threatened or vandalized. After 9/11 the yoga studio my wife goes to was graffitied with the words "go back to where you came from". This happened even though the studio was owned by a white female and there are no Arab members. Fortunately there were not too many of these incidences. Majority of Americans are fair-minded. We should not let a few crazies intimidate us. There is no reason feel shame of being Asian over this.

I am a gun control advocate. I don't see the reason to have any guns except rifles for hunting. All automatic weapons should be banned. Forget about the so-called constitutional rights to bear arms. There has to be a line drawn because if not then someone can claim his right to own an atomic bomb. Some people say that to protect one against criminals, one needs to be armed. Some even suggest that if someone had a gun in VT then the killer may have been stopped. Well, I don't think the average person is carrying automatic weapons and if he has just a hand gun, then he would be no match against the bad guys. I would bet the number of times an armed innocent person save the day is way smaller than the number of accidents caused by guns. People, not guns, are ultimately responsible for killing people. But I have yet to see a person kill thirty people at a time with a knife or a baseball bat.

All this nonsense about privacy of mental illness has to change. Psychology is not an exact science. But a person with a history of psychological illness should not be allowed to purchase guns. People who have seizure disorders are not allowed to drive and a doctor has to notify the state. This is obviously a right law because a person may have a seizure and kill others with a car. So why should people with mental illness be allowed to operate a gun and be able to kill others? People with mental illness can also refuse treatment unless they are imminently dangerous to himself or others. Since their judgments are impaired, why do we have to wait to the danger point or maybe beyond that to force treatment?

I think these issues are the more important lesson to be learned from this case. It is not a case of ethnic or racial problems. It is a case of mental illness and our violent world in which guns play a major role.

It has been awhile since I have had a chance to write. A lot has happened that I want to comment on. So will start with the old news. Don Imus got what he deserved. It was not the first time he says something of poor taste. I don't have much respect for someone to say outrageous things to get ratings. I say the same about Howard Stern. Since he brings in advertising dollars he can thumb his nose at his critics. This is the capitalist system. But it is also the capitalist system that dumped him. CBS was not acting on moral grounds when it fired him. CBS waited to see what the sponsors would do. When they pulled out, it got rid of Imus. So I don't feel bad for him. I think what he said was worse than what Michael Richard said. Richard said it in the heat of anger to someone giving him a hard time. The Rutgers women were not bothering Imus and he had no reason to insult them. It was a vicious verbal attack on some innocent victims.

Having said good riddane to Imus, I am bothered by the actions of Sharpton and Jackson. Why do we even care what these people say? Jackson called New York "Hymie town" a few years ago and he is still in the lime light today. The Rutgers women don't need these guys defending them. If Imus is a total bigot, getting rid of him still would not help black people at all. There are stiil thousands of bigots out there. Why is it that Sharpton and Jackson don't try to go after the hip hop people who are saying things worse than Imus? Why are they not being called out for using these words? The people with so-called street cred are telling the black kids to never snitch, in other words never cooperate with the police. As a result assaults and murders are almost never solve in black neighborhoods despite witnesses being present in many cases. These types of things are more hurtful to the black community as a whole than what Imus said.

On the previous blog there were 2 questions directed back to me. One was what I thought about Guliani. Well, he is my choice among the Republicans who have announced so far. Which is not saying much. He is already backing down on some of his liberal views to please the conservatives. While he did do a decent job of cleaning up New York and provided leadership during 9/11, he did support the war. Since I think Obama is too inexperience, I would have to say that Guliani is also too inexperience, especially in term of foreign policy. As I said before, I have no favorite in either party right now and will see how things play out.

The other question was what I thought about the new "holistic" admission policy of UCLA. Well I don't really have to comment. The facts speak for themselves. With this admission process, blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans increased their number of admission this year. White admission, amazingly enough, stayed the same. The only group that saw its admission decreased was Asians. First of all to believe that the readers of the application cannot tell the race of the applicant most of the time is nonsense. To believe that in taking into accout hardships, Asians actually did worse than whites is unbelievable. There are a lot more Asians who are from immigrant families with non-English speaking parents than whites. So to think that whites did not lose spots while Asians did---I don't need to comment further. I will place a bet on this. In four years the number of Asian graduates in engineering, computer science, chemistry and math from this class will not be less than previous classes. I don't think the "holistic" admits will take any of those places from Asians.

It is still 10 months before the first primaries and the campaign is already well underway. I have no favorite at this time and probably won't have for a long time. One person I don't think I can vote for is John McCain. He was my favorite in 2000 and I thought he was a victim of dirty politics from the supporters of Bush then. I still consider him an American hero for what he went through during Vietnam and all the work he did for bipartisanship. But I think he is not thinking clearly anymore. Maybe it is his age (70), although he still seems very vigorous. It is not just his kissing up to the conservatives, I understand his need to get support for the nomination. It is not just his idea of sending massive number of troops to Iraq, I have written in the past that it may be a sound political strategy, if not a good military one. It is his recent trip to Iraq that has made me feel that he may have gone over the edge.

He went to Baghdad to try to show that the surge is working and that the city is safer. After touring through Baghdad, he claimed that he felt safe to walk the street there. Of course he was wearing a bullet-proof jacket and was escorted by soldiers. There were snipers on roofs and helicopters overhead to protect him. He rode in an armored hummer. Those are not the advantages offered to the average Iraqi. McCain's proclamation that the city is safe now is similar to all those claims made by Cheney and Rumsfeld. If McCain credibility is similar to those two, how can he be consider a viable candidate?

As you know I have been against the war from the beginning and have advocated getting out as soon as possible. However, I feel angry about the bill the Democrats just passed through the House. The bill would continue to fund the war as Bush requested but added artificial deadlines that supposedly obligate the troops be pulled out by certain days depending if any progresses are made in Iraq. I understand that if you don't fund the war, you will be accused of not supporting the troops. But by funding the war more soldiers will die and it would not make a difference in the war on terrorism. If Bush does not veto and follows the timetable, the Republicans can say that the failure was due to the constraint the Democrats placed on the generals. In fact that is what they are saying about this bill right now.

The other thing I am angry about this bill is that in order to get it passed, Pelosi allowed attachments to the bill that are not related to the war at all. Most of these are porks that would have no merit of being passed on their own. Among them were spinach, shrimp and peanut subsidies. The Democrats had promised reform when they took over Congress. They had promised to make it transparent about who would give their votes for pork. They have broke these promises by putting these spending attachments to this bill and not revealing which Congressmen were behind them. It is unconscienable that in this crisis of war the politicians put their interests ahead of those of the nation. It just goes to show you, you can't trust either party.

The Supreme Court is hearing a case this week about a high school student who was suspended for 15 days for holding up a sign that said "Bong hits 4 Jesus" at a parade. This was supposedly an important case because it may have implication of a student's free speech rights versus the authority of a school. I don't see that at all. The kid had put up a sign at a parade, not on school grounds so I don't see why the principal had the right to get involved at all. If he had put up the sign in the school, then certainly the principal had a right to hand out punishment if the kid did not remove the sign right away. Since it was outside the school the principal should have called the parent and let them handle it.

Interestingly the kid is now in his twenties and is teaching English in China. He admits that he was a kind of troublmaker as a kid but he felt that his free speech rights were violated. I wonder what he thinks would happen if he was to hold up a sign at a Chinese parade that says "Bong hits 4 Mao"? I hope he appreciates the freedom we have here and will take some reponsibility about drugs and insulting other people's religion. On the other hand, the principal should understand that to keep this freedom, she should not get bent out of shape by a stupid sign written by a kid. There was no need to make a federal case out of this incident.

Last week Scooter Libby was convicted of obstruction of justice. I have been trying to read about this case and even though it is more clear now than a few months ago when I wrote about this, I am still confused about some issues. Ultimately, it appears that nobody is being prosecuted for committing the crime of exposing a CIA agent but that one person is guilty of a coverup. It seems to me that we always have trouble convicting people of "real crimes". In the end we justify the expenses of the prosecution by pinning something minor in comparison on somebody.

A few months ago I wondered why Robert Novak was not in jail since he is the one that put Valerie Plame's name in print and thus outing her. Why did we jail Judith Miller when she was not the one who revealed Plame? After this conviction I still wonder about this. Novak apparently told the prosecutor that it was Richard Armitage, deputy sec. of state, who told him about Plame. Armitage was not prosecuted because he claimed that he did not know that Plame's identity was classified. Karl Rove might have also talked to Novak about this. Anyways, it seems to me, that government officials should have known that an identity of a CIA agent should NEVER be disclosed. It may be that they were not intentionally trying to destroy her but they are still responsible for what happened. The same with Novak. Just because someone gives you information it doesn't absolve you of responsibility of deciding whether it is appropriate to put it in the paper.

Libby obviously lied. But why? The people he talked to never wrote about Plame before Novak did. So Libby was never responsible for outing Plame. If he did not lie, there was no problem for him. Was he covering for Cheney? It does not look like the prosecution can prove that. So why go through this whole charade? Now the best way for him to stay out of jail is getting a pardon from Bush. Ironically, Libby represented Marc Rich who was pardoned by Clinton. It was a pardon that drew lots of criticism and rightly so. Now Libby may need the same type of controversial pardon by Bush who had strongly criticized Clinton's pardon of Rich.

From Richard Nixon to Bill Clinton to now Libby, didn't anyone learn that it is not the original crime but the coverup that gets you into big trouble? Nixon would have not gotten much trouble if he didn't try to coverup. The Clintons may have done some illegal dealings with Whitewater but the prosecution could not convict and wasted tax payers money in going after the Lewinsy scandal. Clinton could have saved himself a lot of trouble by telling the truth about Lewinsky. Even Al Capone may not have gone to jail if he just paid his taxes. Real justice is usually not done. I don't think it was done here.

Some hospitals in LA are being accused of dumping homeless patients back on skidrow after they are discharged from the hospital. There is now a push for laws that will levy heavy fines for the hospitals and jail time for people who actually dump the people on the street. It is of course hard to see people being dumped on the streets but to just single out hospitals and the drivers (who are just doing what they are told to do) is unfair. It also points out the problem of our society where there is always a cry for rights to certain things but no plan as to how to pay for these things.

First of all those patients would not be dumped on the streets if they actually had a home before they came to the hospital. Sometimes they are dumped by the police in the ER after they are found to be unconscious from drinking or drug abuse on the streets. So while a hospital may seem insensitive to put someone back out on the street after they are treated, it should not be blamed for this problem in the first place. Politicians are trying to pass laws that would punish the hospitals but yet they are the ones who have not solved the homeless problems. I say city hall has more responsiblity than a hospital for this situation. Hospitals already are forced by law not to turn anyone away even if they can never get paid for providing the medical care. Is is reasonable that they paid for shelter also after treating the patient?

Been busy and lazy lately and have not written anything since the Super Bowl. Also this blog site made me sign up a google account in order to get back into it. Probably finding ways to send me more advertising. I am too old to learn many new tricks so whenever they tell me there is a new product for me if I sign here, I worry. This blog doesn't look any different to me so I am sure it is just a way to make me sign up for an account I don't need.

As you know from previous posting I am for immigrant rights, even those of illegal immigrants. From time to time though, I will point out some of the things that understandably make American citizens upset. Couple of examples come to me recently.

I had just read in the LA Times about a program the government sponsors where anyone can wire money back to Mexico from a participating bank for $2.50 per transaction. The is called Direct O Mexico. It requires no social security number or any American IDs to do this. Some critics claim that this can be a way for terrorists to launder money. I doubt that this would be case. Terrorists probably want to bring money into the U.S. not send it to Mexico. But I wonder why the government would actually go out of its way to help someone who is being demonized by the government for being here illegally. For the rest of us I find out it costs $45 to wire money to a foreign country. Recently I went to a different branch of my own bank to wire money to my daughter in Hong Kong. I deposited some money in my business account, an amount that is larger than the amount I want to wire. The clerk, after taking my money for my business account, told me to go to the next window where the wiring of money is done. At that window, he asked me for not one but two pieces of IDs! Now he just saw me deposit a larger sum of money into my account 10 seconds earlier. If I am not me why would I deposit more money into my account, only to take out a lesser amount? An illegal immigrants can use his Mexican consular id only and wire money to Mexico for $42.50 less than me. I can sympathisize with the angry white man here.

Another article in the LA Times was about the city of Beverly Hills printing ballots in Farsi. So now in certain areas of California there are official ballots in the languages of Armenians, Hmong, Chinese, and of course Spanish and now Iranians among others. From previous posting I have complained about cities in California wanting to make rules against business signs in languages other than English. This is absurd to me because it is not the government's role to tell what language a merchant should use to entice customers. I think everyone should learn a second language and appreciate the diversity of languages in our country. However, I am against ballots in foreign languages. Afterall, in order to become a naturalized citizen, as I am, you are supposed to be able to speak and read English. So why should the government has to interpret a ballot for you! Propositions can be confusing, but they are confusing in English also. I never read the propositions in the original anyway. I try to learn about them through the newspapers and other sources. The immigrants who are weak in English can read about the propositions in their native language newspapers which are plentiful in California. Then just find the number of the proposition on the ballot and vote yes or no. It is not difficult.

The Iranians who lived in Beverly Hills generally are the rich people who settled here after the fall of the Shah in the 70's. They are well educated and hardly need help with English. This was just the ploy of immigrant rights activists. Let's appreciate our diversity and not use it to tear us apart.

Super Bowl weekend is upon us, so it is time for my AAAAA forcast. The Angry Asian American's Accurate Assessment. There is enough A's so nobody should confuse this with a certain auto insurance giant. It is also a reflection of the Asian American parents who expect their children to get 5 A's even if they are only taking 4 classes. Well, enough nonsense. Let's get to the forcasts:

1. The game will be boring. Given the history of the Super Bowl, this is a no brainer. The commercials will be more entertaining.

2. Every 5 minutes during the game the camera will be directed to some "star" of a series on CBS so as to advertise the show. It will make me less likely to watch that show.

3. Every 5 minutes, the camera will show some guys with no imagination holding up a D and a cutup of a fence. This is so pedestrian that anyone who comes to the game with these signs should be ejected. The cameraman who showed this should be fired.

4. Some guy will hold up a sign that says: John 3:16. I wonder how he knows that there will be a timeout in 3 minutes and 16 seconds so that I can go to the bathroom.

5. After every touchdown there will be someone dancing in the end zone so poorly that you may think that the majority of the players are Asian.

6. At half time the network will interview the coach who is leading by 3 touchdowns. He will say that the opposing team has an explosive offense so 3 touchdown is not much of a lead and that his team will have to play the full 60 minutes, avoid turnovers, and play smart in order to have a chance to win this game.

7. During half time there will be no Asian entertainers unless we make Prince, who is 5'1"' and 100 pounds, to be an honorary Asian. Where is William Hung?

8. At the end of the half time festivities the network will interview the losing coach. He will say that it is not over till it is over, they must play the full 60 minutes, avoid turnovers, and play smart. He had told his team it is gut check time, they must take it one play at a time and never give up.

9. An Asian will not be the MVP of the game. You may say that is obvious since there are no Asian players in the game unless you count Freddy Keiho of the Colts who is born in Fiji and grew up in Ventura. (If he had gone to UCLA they would have counted him as Asian to boost their Asian athlete count) You may have laughed at my prediction of an Asian MVP last year. But as you recalled last year's MVP was Asian as I predicted with my 20-20 hindsight. Remember Hines Ward? He has the key to Seoul.

10. 1.2 billion Chinese do not give a damn about the outcome of the game. The other 100 million has bets on the Bears because they don't know what is an Indianopolis but they knew Chicago from the Jordan days with the Red Water Buffaloes.

11. A black guy will be the winning coach. I am the master of seeing the obvious.

12. This is about the only thing in sport more trite than the D-fence nonsense. That is at the end of the game the winning team will pour Gatorade on the coach. The first time this happened was funny. On Sunday it will be the one millonth time that this has happened. The guys that do the pouring probably had a Wonderlic score of zero. The coach who actually falls for that should be fired because it is obvious that he cannot see the obvious and thus this Super Bowl win was a pure accident.

13. At the end of the game, with confetti flying around, numerous interviews would occur on the field which consists of the following words or phrases from the players: "Like"; "You know"; "This MVP trophy belongs to the team, it was a team effort, but the car is mine"; "Thanks to the Lord"; "Praise the Lord"; "Nobody gave us a chance"; "We are the world champions";. We can turn off the sound and use last year's interviews and nobody would know the difference.

14. The talking heads in the studios at ESPN will analyze this game for the next 3 days with the conclusion that if there was no bad holding call wiping out a touchdown in the first quarter by the losing team, then the outcome of this 28 point defeat would have been much different.

13. Some angry yellow man will get sick from eating too much junk food during the game.

I was feeling sorry for my fellow angry males recently. By that I mean I can understand the frustration of the angry white males. If the number one guy representing you is George Bush you certainly deserve the sympathy from us minorities. Most of you are probably looking forward to 2008 when you can vote in a WASP that is more representative of your people's ability to run the free world. Then you realize that since everybody who is not a Republican is going to vote Democrat in 2008 you decide to see who among the Democrats will be our next president. Lo and behold, the front runners are a female whom even a sex addict like Bill Clinton doesn't like to sleep with, and a black guy with a middle name Hussein. All of a sudden the white males are underdogs in trying to win the Democratic nomination! John Edwards? The only thing he has going for him is youth and charisma; the same advantage Obama has. While Obama will carry his state in the general election, Edwards probably will not. This white guy can't even claim to have more experience than the inexperience black guy, the usual justification for the glass ceiling. My fellow angry males of the lighter persuasion may not run the free world after 2008!

Worse for the white guys than losing the presidency of the United States is the fact that they are losing something more important. I mean the Super Bowl. Both coaches in the Super Bowl this year are black. The myth of the intelligent white guy is gone. Pretty soon you are going to tell me that they are not going to dominate golf. Oops, there is that Tiger fellow. O.K. NASCAR will be forever white and male. At least until Danica Patrick decides to swith from Indy racing.

So I do feel sorry for the white male. But not too much. The yellow man still has it worse. The Oakland Raiders just hired Lane Kiffin to be their new head coach. This is a 31 year old white guy who had no previous head coaching experience at any level. He was the understudy to Norm Chow till Chow left USC. You can't tell me he is a better candidate than Chow who was taking BYU's passing game to a level that it had not seen before or since when Kiffin was in middle school. Chow was passed over to reunite with Matt Leinart at Arizona. He was passed over by Stanford a few years ago with the job going to a guy who won one game for Stanford this year. You can't tell me Chow couldn't have done better. So now Stanford has hired Jim Harbaugh who cannot hold Chow's jock strap as an offensive innovator. Stanford and the Raiders are both in the Bay area so it would not be a bad idea to hire a qualified Asian to run their teams. The Raiders has the chance to draft Brady Quinn or Jamarcus Russsel this year. Who would be the best person to develop these quarterbacks? Last year it was the consensus of every expert that while Vince Young was the better athlete, Matt Leinart was way more ready to play quarterback in the NFL right away. Yet under Chow's training, Young was by far the better quarterback of the two in their rookie year. That can't be due to athletic ability alone. So you tell me why Al Davis chose a young guy with limited experience over Chow. It probably is not racial because Davis had hired Art Shell before, twice. But if Chow was black there would be an outcry for him not being a head coach a long time ago. Davis can't justify hiring Kiffin and not even considered Chow unless he has changed the Raider's motto from "Just win, baby" to "Just win with a baby".