It seems that with each passing season I find less and less good programs on tv. There are a lot more channels than ever before but that only means there are more junks on than before. I am especially annoyed by all these reality shows. The Real Housewives of _______ are all terrible. I don't want to know anything about the Kardashians. How many singing competitions are there on now a days? American Idol was very good in the beginning but I don't see how one can watch so many of these copycat shows. I used to like Dancing with the Stars but this season I just can't into it. There were always annoying people on like Kate Gosselin and Floyd Mayweather, but this season there seems to be more of them. And what was that Carrie Ann crying over Chas Bono's performance? It was terrible! And Nancy Grace had the gall to say that she deserved 8s! Let's get some originality in programming!

If the above rant doesn't make me sound old then consider that I like couple of the shows that are from the 60's. Mad Men and Pan Am. Now you know I am old. To me these shows bring back memories of how I saw America when I was a young boy and an immigrant. I am sure a lot people like these shows because of nostalgia. It was a time when America was #1 in almost everything and was still rising. Everybody likes American products and want to travel in luxurious jets like Americans. But to me these shows are a reminder for those who want to go back to the good old days: it wasn't as great as you remember them to be. Everybody was smoking and drinking nonstop on Mad Men which meant that people from that era died much sooner and suffered more health problems earlier. There were not much opportunities for women or minorities. Witness the people in power were all white males then. Even for most white men life was not necessary better than today. The main character in Mad Men was very high in the corporate ladder. Yet his home would be about middle class level today. Add to the fact that there was worry about the Russians attacking us, you can see that the good old days were not as good as we think. Of course I think most people today would be correct if they rather be traveling on Pan Am with the characters from Mad Men than be on Spirit Airline with cast of Jersey Shores!

With the announcement of Christie and Palin that they will not run, the race to be the Republican nominee will be down to Perry and Romney. There is no time left for anyone else to get in the race and raise money and get an organization going, what with the first primaries and caucuses being pushed earlier and earlier. A few weeks ago I predicted that either Romney or Perry will win with Bachmann and Paul hanging on for few more months. This looks to be correct. However, I had no idea that Herman Cain would be among the top three at this time. I thought he would have been eliminated. Still there is no chance that he will win. The Republicans are just frustrated with the performance of Perry and Bachmann and they don't really like Paul and Romney. All the conservative talk by Cain, delivered much better than Perry, have gotten him this far. But now that people are noticing him, there will be more scrutiny and he will fall out soon enough.

The conservatives had pushed Perry into the race. Then they found out they don't really like his stand on immigration and the HPV vaccine! Plus they found he couldn't debate well. I still think that he has a decent chance because most Republicans still don't like Romney. But again I think if the country stays the same next fall, Romney will have even chance against Obama, while Perry would lose to Obama. Perry can win, of course, if the economy gets even worse or if there is a terrorist attack. Perry can also win if he gets Christie to be vp. But after declining so many times, I don't think Christie will accept vp either. I think if the Republicans lose to Obama again, and Christie loses 50 lbs, I will guarantee that he will run in 2016.

Couple of days ago the Republican club of UC Berkeley put on a bake sale which has the following price structure: Whites $2.oo, Asians $1.50, Latinos $1.00 Blacks $.75, Native Americans $.25. Women are given a $.25 discount. This is an attempt at satire of the liberals in California who are trying to pass a bill that would allow the UC to consider race and gender in admission as long as no preference are given. This is basically a way to bring back affirmative action which had been outlawed by a proposition a few year back. Now I don't understand this bill since logically if you do not given preference to a gender or a race, then why do you consider gender or race? The liberals respond to the sale by lying on the ground nearby in protest. It seems to me that neither side are too bright. Let me explain why.

It is obvious that the Republicans think that the group most discriminated against if there was affirmative action would be white males because they would have to pay more than anyone else. It seems to me either these Republicans have not done their research or they are mostly white males. At Berkeley there are more Asians than whites and more females than males. It is also true that Asian applicants, especially the females, have the highest GPA. So if there is less emphasis on grades and SAT, then the group that would lose out the most will be Asian females. So to say that Asians and especially Asian females have an advantage over white males is absurd.

The price structure of the bake sale shows that the Republicans are not very good business people. If a Native American female comes by, she can "buy" all the bake goods for nothing. Now the liberals are not so smart either since they could have used this tactic and make the Republicans bankrupt right away. But instead they make fools of themselves by lying on the ground. So I am thinking maybe Berkeley people are not all that smart. Weren't the hikers that wandered into Iran from Berkeley? Talk about no common sense!

The Palestinians are applying to the UN for recognition as an independent country. This is another headache that Obama does not need. If the Palestinians get 9 votes in the security council then the U.S. has vowed to veto it. I don't understand why the U.S. has to be the one sticking out its neck. Why can't Britain or France veto it? Is it because their leaders don't have to worry so much about the Israel lobby back home? Obama can't afford to lose the Jewish vote but of course if he has to veto then the Muslim extremists will say that the U.S. is the only country that stand in the way of an Arab country from forming. That will go a long way to recruiting terrorists!

Of course everyone knows that this is only a symbolic gesture on the part of the Palestinians. They would not get a country by a UN resolution. This can only happen with a peace settlement. Now Congress is threatening to cut off aid to the Palestinians because of this action. Yeah, that will really discourage the recruitment of terrorists! I just hope that they don't get enough votes to force Obama to veto.

I didn't get to watch most of the Republican debate tonight. I guess there was not anything earth shocking that occurred. The only thing that caught my attention was that Romney attacked Perry of saying social security is a ponzi scheme. Perry did not back away from that statement and reiterated it. I agree with Romney that this a major blunder that would be a big issue in the general election. Add to the fact that Perry at least did not refute the idea of Texas seceding from the Union, I think this certainly make Romney the more electable Republican candidate. I had thought that with Perry in the race, Romney would have to move more to the right to win the nomination but I think Romney realizes that he cannot out-right Perry and would instead show that Perry is too extreme. If this works, Romney will be a more formidable candidate against Obama next year.

Tomorrow is Obama's speech. I wonder if anybody will be watching with the start of the NFL! I don't have high expectations for this either. As I said before, there is not much any president can do to ensure the economy will improve. Otherwise they will all have done it and we would never be in a recession! As good of a speaker Obama is, he has not galvanize the country to his side so far so there is no reason this will be any different. Anyways, the Republican will go against whatever he says. Obviously he will use that against the Republicans but he doesn't have to announce that he will use that against the Republicans BEFORE he even spoke! This strikes as just a political ploy. So I will watch the speech but pay more attention to the football game as will most of the country.

Michelle Bachman won the Iowa straw poll today but the big news for the Republicans is that Rick Perry is now officially in. I see Bachman, Perry, Romney and Paul to be still in the race in the next 8 months or so. Everybody else will have dropped out and I don't think Sarah Palin will throw her hat in the ring. If Perry doesn't make any big errors, he will be the choice of the conservatives because they don't think that Palin and Bachman are electable. I like Paul the best among the Republicans but there is no chance for him to be the nominee although he will stay in because of his followers are passionate. So ultimately it will be Romney vs Perry for the nomination at the end.

It is a good possibility that if Perry is a good campaigner, he will beat Romney. I don't think Republicans are sold on Romney. They think he is a flip-flop and will be more liberal if he gets elected. In a general election, I think Romney has a much greater chance to beat Obama than Perry. Let's face it there are certain states, mostly in the south, that if Charles Manson is the Republican nominee he would carry them. So it does not matter if Romney or Perry is the nominee in those states. But Romney is sure to put Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Michigan into play. These were Obama's states that can very well go to Romney but not likely to Perry. Perry will win by a bigger margin in southern states than Romney but that does not matter to the total electoral votes.

So I think the Obama camp is still worrying about Romney the most right now. But I think they are glad that the road to the nomination just got harder for Romney. He will have to lean more right to hold off Perry and that will make him more difficult to win over independents in the general election.

Once again I wrote a comment on the previous blog and again it got erased. So I am starting a new blog by commenting on the last one. First I want to say that even though I think the Republicans won the debt ceiling round, I don't agree with some people who say that Obama and the Democrats caved. When negotiating each side has to decide what would be the outcome if a deal fails. In the case of the Democrats failure to make a deal is a catastrophe. For some Republicans, it is what they want secretly or not so secretly. So it was the Democrats who were more desperate and thus have to give more. There are no new revenues as Obama wanted but given the polls show that most people want both cuts and raise revenue, I think it would be difficult for the Republicans to argue against letting the Bush tax cut expired at end of next year.

Unfortunately, I do not share the optimism of LBOAYM from the previous comment about the super committee. Dick Durbin was on Jon Stewart Thursday. Durbin was on the Simpson/Bowles commission. He said they worked for 10 months and came up with several proposals that would have helped. Durbin was also part of the Gang of Six that also came up with bipartisan proposals. The Gang of Six worked for 17 months. Neither one of these groups got anything passed in Congress. They didn't even get voted on. The super committee have 10 weeks! I am going to call them the 12 angry men. I am confident that they are men because the leaders, especially Republicans, already indicated that they are not looking for people who would compromise. Since women legislators are more likely to compromise, I don't think any woman would be selected. Given this situation, unlike the original 12 angry men who had come up with an unanimous decision at the end, I don't think these 12 angry men will come up with any consensus. And if they do, the Congress will vote it down anyways. By the way, if a woman is selected, we can call them the dirty dozen.

Now for the news from yesterday: S@P downgrade the U.S. As I have said before, these rating services are worthless and they are doing the country a disservice. S@P said they have 5 main criteria use to judge a country. I can't recall exactly how the spokesman put it, but it seems to me 4 of the 5 were subjective. The 5th has to do with debt to GDP ratio. S@P admitted, after the treasury pointed it out, that they made a 2 trillion dollar mistake in that calculation. They said it didn't make a difference. Does this make it like this whole process is scientific that the only criterium that is objective is calculated incorrectly? Given that the rating services gave the highest ratings to bankrupt companies right before their demise, nobody should have any faith in their ratings. Of course the Republicans will use this in their campaign against Obama. But it is interesting they would not mention that S@P say the whole debt debate was one reason that cause the down grade. S@P also thinks revenue should be raised. Of course the Republicans will say that S@P's opinions are flawed here!

I wrote a comment on the previous blog last night but somehow it disappeared. So instead of writing the comment again I may as well write a new blog. Regarding the question about drug companies in trouble because several patents on profitable drugs are due to expire soon and generics will be available, I agree that the drug companies will take a hit now. But don't feel too sorry for them. They have done very well recently with these drugs. If they don't have drugs in the pipeline then it is their own fault since they know this day is coming. I hope this spurs them into finding drugs for less common diseases as we have many choices now for things like diabetes and hypertension. I think it maybe better to try to corner a small market (uncommon disease) than to try to win a big share of a large market (common disease).

Having gone over the main points of the debt deal, I still think that the Republicans won this round. There are only two ways to cut a deficit: decrease spending or increase taxes. It is no compromise when one way is not considered. I don't like to pay more taxes either but it is nonsense to say increase taxes always decrease jobs. We had a tax cut during the Bush era, how well did that worked? Nobody really understands economy so I believe that if things are going bad, just do the opposite as what you are doing now. You see, economy is all about confidence. If you have inflation, increase interest rate. If you have recession, decrease interest rate. Does it work? Who knows? But the fact you did the opposite the rest of the world thinks that the U.S. knows what it is doing. When you are in a recession, you are arguing about debt limit and no tax increase when you had tax decrease at this time? That does not instill confidence in the world which means worse economy for the world and for us.

Another way you can see the Republicans won is that 68% of Republicans voted for the bill but only 50% of Democrats voted for it. Boehner and McCopnnell looked a lot happier than Reid and Pelosi! The super committee of 6 Republicans and Democrats will not work anything out. And if they did the Congress will not support it. We had the Simpson and Bowles Commission which had some very good ideas but that didn't get anywhere. They should have the courage to adopt Simpson/Bowles and we would be better off. I had said after the 2010 election that nothing is going to be done in the next two years. This debt deal is worse than nothing done. It was a crisis that was self-made. Nothing is going to be done with this super committee and nothing good will come out of this Congress next year either.

Now there are less than 3 days left before debt ceiling collapse time. I am still waiting to see what the idiotic politicians are going to do. In the mean time I will write what I think of economics and how it relates to our situation right now. This is not a scientific paper and I have nothing to back up my thoughts. So feel free to tear it apart.

First of all I think that it is strange that we say that we make money when we go to work or invest. I mean none of us, except those who work at the mint actually make any money. We just get money from other people for doing work, sell a product or "let our money work for us, whatever that means". So basically money just exchange hands and if money never exchange hands, we never would "make" any money. So in order just to keep the standard of living the same, more money have to printed all the time because the population is always going up and those new babies are going to need money soon! Money is going to be destroyed or lost by wear and tear so more have to be printed. So it seems to me the government will always run a deficit even if the amount of taxes brought in cancels the amount the government pays out.

Now I assume that the "deficit" we have been talking about is only about paying out more than taxes taken in as opposed to printing money due to expanding population etc. But how come we can print more money than say Greece which is in more debt than us? There are many reasons economists give to explain why Greece cannot recover on its own. But the bottom line to me is that the rest of the world trust the U.S. economy and U.S. government. In other words the world thinks that the U.S. still have the best private companies and the most stable government (and the most powerful military). So will this change? Yes, it can but not for many years in the future. This won't change now regardless whether we default on Aug. 2nd. They will still buy U.S. bonds and the dollar will still be the currency of exchange in most of the world.

This does not mean, of course, that the debt is not important. Twenty or thirty years down the line at the rate we are going we could lose our #1 position. If we just raise the debt ceiling and start working for long term solutions we would be fine. We are hurting ourselves by giving ourselves a no confidence vote. Take Moody and other rating services. These people should be put in jail. They missed lowering the ratings of financial firms in 2008 which caused investors and American people billions of dollars and now they have the nerve to threaten to lower the rating of the U.S. bonds? Look, there are no companies and countries in the world that are safer than the U.S. right now because if the U.S. disappears there would be nothing left in the world anyway so how can the U.S. be lower than the highest grade?

The stock market has dropped the last few days. This is due to uncertainty of what may happen. If the world truly has lost confidence in the U.S. the stock market would have dropped much more. Yes, we have to deal with our deficit but this whole charade in Washington right now is doing nothing except show the rest of the world that WE have less confidence in ourselves. The government spending that gets the Tea Party people most upset are entitlements and government salaries and pensions. Yes, these need to be fixed but they are not the reason the economy went downhill in the past few years. No new entitlements have been added recently except Medicare prescription drug program put in by Republicans. Government employment and pensions have not gone up either. The real culprits are the lack of oversight of Wall Street and financial institutions and the 2 wars. Entitlements and government salaries and pensions are like small cuts that would eventually kill us but will take a long time whereas the financial criminal actions are like stabs to our chest that will kill us faster. Now this lack of confidence in ourselves by not raising the debt ceiling, while will not be fatal, will be another stab to the chest. So the Tea party, in trying to stop small cuts, are really putting a larger wound into our body.

OK enough ranting for now. We will see if Washington comes up with anything in the next 2 days. So I will probably write something in the next couple of days. It will likely be more ranting.

Obviously the blog about the debt ceiling is inevitable. But this whole thing sickens me so much that I find it hard to write about it. Eventually before Aug 2 I will have my say. You are right about the interviews which do not change anyone's mind. Everybody who has been thinking about this issue already has formed an opinion that is unchangeable. So I am just going to wait to see what happens first before putting in my 2 cents worth.

On to lighter things first. Apparently Mr. Costanza, former assistant to the traveling secretary of the Yankees, wrote in about uniforms. I don't know if he is right about cotton and polyesters but I think here in LA the Dodgers can't afford either. I suggest that they wear the uniforms of Australian rule football players. I am sure they cost less and my wife thinks that they are sexy. I think in LA here they will attract more female and gay male fans to Dodger stadium and thus reduce McCourt's deficit.

Speaking of gay, regardless of what your position on gay marriage is, you must admit that allowing gays to marry as they do in New York now will be a stimulus to the economy. I saw pictures of gay men in tuxedos and women in white brides dresses. This will help the clothing business. Now many of these newlyweds will throw a wedding party so that helps the food industry, hotels and flower shops. After they wed they are more likely to have children since they would not be illegitimate now and so that will boost the adoption business along with fertility clinics, egg and sperm donors, OB-Gyn doctors and surrogates. Being married, these people will have nagging spouses which will lead to anxiety and depression and thus more business for psychiatrists and drug companies. But the biggest industry boost will be the lawyers. Prenuptials will have to be written, wills designating spouses and children as beneficiaries will be drawn up. And if gays are like us heterosexuals, 50% will need divorce attorneys. So as you can see the economic stimuli are tremendous. I think the other 44 states better allow gay marriages before all these businesses end up in other states!