So we have finally found out who Big Brother is: Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York. This relatively small man does not look intimidating but he is Big Brother. Look what he has done since becoming mayor. He banned smoking indoors, he made trans fat illegal in restaurants, he made restaurants post the calories on menu items, he installed cameras all over city streets. Now he is banning soft drinks greater than 16 ounces. I know he means well but somewhere along the line we have to say, enough is enough. Next thing you know, it will be no cups of coffee bigger that 2 ounces; without cream and sugar. Then it is no ice cream bigger that 1 ounce cup. No pizza with extra cheese etc. Anyways, I don't think any of these measures are going to make a big dent in the obesity epidemics.

If Mayor Bloomberg wants to play Big Brother and get better result then he should regulate Wall Street and the banks. No more credit default swaps, no more inside trading, no more dangerous derivatives. Impossible to regulate even by Big Brother? You are probably right since these entities are bigger than even Big Brother. But Big Brother cannot regulate waist lines either since those are also bigger than Big Brother.

On the news at the same time was that we are selling a lot of stuff to rich middle east countries like Qater and Unite Arab Emirates. Among our exports are fast foods and sinful food items like cheesecake from Chicago. So we think these stuff are so bad for us but perfectly good to sell to rest of the world. And you say American world leadership is dead!

I see that people are already filing lawsuits regarding the Facebook IPO. Frankly I am surprised that this has not happened a lot more. The average investor does not have a chance with these IPOs. If they are hot, they are all grabbed by the big institutions. Now it comes out that Morgan Stanley told big investors information about Facebook that was not made public. I think this is not first time it has happened. The thing is, I think the public are more cynical about Wall Street than ever before since the Great Depression. Having seen recently JP Morgan Chase making risky bet just couple of weeks ago and seeing Facebook stock plummeted quickly in two days, people are going to be suspicious. You know, the market is all about confidence and believe that everything is straight. If these confidence and beliefs are shaken, then we will have bigger problems than we have now. Stronger regulation and enforcement must be in place, otherwise people are going to hide their money under the mattress.

Even though I think Katherine Jenkins should have won, I can see why Donald Driver did. I think of all nine dances during the two night of competition, his country dance was the best. It was original and full of risks and he executed it. I thought he passed Levy during the final even though Levy was way better during the season. Levy's dances all looked similar and I agree with Len that his free style dance was not up to par. Jenkins was still the best overall but for some reason football players have a big following. I would not expect that people who are big fans of football would be fans of ballroom dancing. Also why are football players so good compare with basketball players? Now if Jeremy Lin can do well on this show, then Linsanity would be returning because the surprise would not be an Asian can dance, but a basketball player can!

I agree with LBOAYM that it was probably worse for Romney to claim that he forgot about the bullying incident when he was in high school than to admit that he did something stupid. Who advised him to say that he forgot? I would have come up with better answers than that.

1. Claim that the guy deserved it because he said Romney's favorite shoes are flip flops.

2. The guy claimed that Romney, as junior class president had made an individual mandate that everyone had to buy the year book. Romney had said that the senior president was wrong to make everyone in the school buy the year book. He said it should be up to individual classes.

3. The guy claim that Romney was against bail out for the chess team. Eventually the chess team was bailed out and won the state championship and now Romney claimed that the bankruptcy he advocated led to the chess team's success.

See, the guy deserved this so Romney was justified to beating him up. He should just have said so.

Who came up with the gay president bit? Clinton was called the first Black president. Obama said that he would not call him that until he can see if Clinton can dance. I think we should wait and see if Obama can win "Project Runway" before we call him the first gay president.

Speaking of dancing and tv shows. Maria did get rob on DWTS. I think Donald Driver should have been out. It is a very close competition this season and all four could have beaten Donnie Osmond for sure.

The news that JP Morgan Chase lost $2 billion and possibly more in derivative trading is shocking. Not that I did not expect this type of news to occur, but so soon after the financial crisis started four years ago? Really? While Wall Street is trying to kill or soften the Volcker Rule which was suppose to regulate such risky "investments"? This is like seeing your drug addict friends died and you go ahead to take the drugs yourself. We never did learn from the Savings and Loans debacle in the 1980's. But at least almost 30 years gone by before another big disaster hit. Now Chase is trying to do it again in 4 years, really?

I have said it before, derivatives are just legalized gambling. They are not investments. Hedge funds have made a lot of money but some have gone belly up also. Some of these are run or consulted by Nobel winning economists. But economists are not better at gambling than anyone of us. Otherwise they would be all going to Las Vegas. So pass the Volcker Rule without any loopholes please. Wall Street cannot police itself. As I have always said, capitalism is the best system but capitalism without regulations would be just greed and chaos.

Interesting election results over the weekend. First, France elected a new president and Greece defeated the top two parties in power. Both of these results mean the rejection of austerity measures enacted since the economic downturn in Europe. The austerity measures demanded by Germany has been hugely unpopular in Europe. It has not help the budget deficits and the economy of Europe is doing worse than that of the U.S. In England, which is not part of the euro, a 20% across the board cut has made things worse so far. In this country, Obama may well lose the election because a lot of people think that his government spending is socialistic and is holding the country's economic recovery back. Well, I am no economist and people can believe what they want but the success of the bailout of GM, Chrysler and AIG, among others, make me glad that I am here and not in Europe!

The ouster of Richard Lugar by the Tea Party is another big loss in bipartianship. Lugar was one of those people who reached across the aisle to get things done. He was also a great foreign policy expert. With his departure and that of Olympia Snowe, extremism will be worse than ever in Congress.

The Knicks are eliminated today. Jeremy Lin did not play in the series as expected. Stephen A. Smith asked the other day: "Can't he give the team 15-20 minutes? Not that I am saying that he does not want to play?'' Of course the last statement means he is questioning whether Lin is not playing because he is afraid that a poor performance will hurt his value in free agency this summer. This is absurd. If Lin could have played, he would have. A bad performance will not hurt him. Everybody can play poorly against Miami, not to mention someone coming off knee surgery and has not played in 5 weeks. The truth is the Knicks should not want him to play even if he could. They were not going to win anyway. He will be the point guard next season now that Baron Davis is out for a whole year. Why rush him back and potentially ruin his career and the Knicks chances in the future? Brandon Roy came back too early and his career eventually ended and so was Portland's chances. Rest up, Jeremy. Hope you get a call to play on the squad that scrimmages with the U.S. Olympic team. Playing against Deron Williams, Chris Paul etc. will be a great experience and improve his play next season.

Observations about couple of current events. First the back and forth the last few days between Obama and Romney regarding the anniversary of the killing of bin Laden. This was a great victory for Obama and in this election year it is no surprise that he is going to bring this to the front. He pointed out that Romney had said in the past that not so much resources should be spent in hunting down bin Laden. Romney hit back by saying that even Carter would have ordered the raid. To me, this is not much of an issue. I don't think that Obama will gain too much by talking a lot about this between now and November. Certainly his secret trip to Afghanistan yesterday does appear to be spiking the football in the end zone. The truth is that Obama was lucky. Sure Carter would have ordered the raid. He did that against Iran, remember? That didn't turn out too good and Carter was humiliated. Neither president went on the raids himself and had little to do with the outcome. But the lucky one became a hero and the unlucky one became the goat.

To me the raid was not reason why I think Obama would be better on foreign policy. I think he is much more measured in using force. When people were telling him to enter Libya or stay out, he did the right thing by getting NATO to do the job with our support. No American lives were lost with the success there. While both talk about the support for Israel, it is obvious to me that Romney (and almost any other Republican) would be more likely to preemptively strike Iran. It is this war hawk mentality that I think is very dangerous to our country. Anyone can order the most powerful force in the world to attack. It takes much more leadership to use force only when necessary. I think Obama would have gone into Afghanistan in 2001 but he would not have gone into Iraq and cost us thousands of lives and a trillion dollars.

The other event is about Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng. I think this whole thing was planned to embarrass China at the worst moment: the arrival of Hilary Clinton and Tim Geithner in China. Chen was supposedly under house arrest. I am sure that China has been monitoring his computer, cell phone etc. But if he was truly under house arrest, I find it hard to believe that he could have escaped and went all the way from Shandong to the U.S. embassy in Beijing without being apprehended. The guy is blind, he had to climb a fence! How did they know the guards are not going to be watching and they can get by them. After that they had to traveled hundreds of miles to Beijing. If he was under house arrest, how long before the guards realized he was not there anymore? Once they found him missing, I am sure they figured that he is going to a western embassy. Policemen would have been there and arrest him before he gets in. So I don't think that he was monitored that closely by China.

Chen has young children and a wife. What did he think would happened to them if he escaped? This does not sound like a guy who wanted asylum to get out of the country, unless he is very selfish. Throughout his stay in the embassy he had told the Americans he wanted to stay in China but just want better conditions. Then once the deal was made and he got into a hospital he said that the Americans had left him and that his family was threatened. He then wanted to leave the country with his family. Well, he knew darn well that that was not possible once he is in Chinese hands again. I think with all the world watching, Chen and other human rights activists know that any mistreatment to him and his family would be more eggs on China's face. Even if China keeps its bargain and do not harm them, I think the activists will complain about mistreatment anyway. To me this was all planned out just to embarrass China, nothing was going to be accomplished in the name of human rights.

But of course, this one man's action had big consequences. There were a lot on the table with Clinton's trip. North Korea, Iran, Syria, world trades are all important topics that will affect the lives of millions of people. Now China is mad and the Obama administration is going to be accused by the Republicans that it mishandled the situation by giving Chen back to China. No important work will now come out of this scheduled high level meeting. I think this planned show of escape is rather selfish on the part of Chen. I don't think he helped the cause of human rights in China and may hurt millions in other parts of the world. Not to mention he put his family at great risk with nothing to show for it.

I heard the sad news that a founding member of the band The Band died. I must admit I don't know the band The Band. I am no expert on music but I would think that if your band is named The Band, then you better be so good that everybody knows who you are. I mean a band that represents a city, state or the whole country should be quite famous. America, Chicago, Boston and Alabama, for example, are all well known bands. Young people hearing John Denver singing "Rockey Mountain high" must think that Denver represented Colorado, even though he was not from there until late in life. So when you hear the band The Band, it has to be the band of all bands.

Of course there are examples of total arrogance. I see many French restaurants named Le Cafe. They can't all be THE Cafe! Are they telling us their cafe is better than all others? They can't all be right. Then there is Le Petit Cafe near my house. Talk about lack of self-esteem. Can't they think of a better original name than to be someone elses' smaller version? Standford has the gall to call themselves The Cardinal, not cardinals. THE Cardinal usually mean the Pope. Does Stanford think they are the most powerful school of the NCAA? Then there was that movie called "The Doctor". Come on, there are thousands of us who are quite good, nobody can't be the ONE. Why not just call it "The Movie"?

OK, enough ranting for no reason. I forgot to rank college hockey last time. I would rate it just below world class soccer. I agree that a lot depends if I have a team to root for so those are rankings based on no particular team I am rooting for. I did not know George Takei has same birthday as Hitler!

No major story to get excited about for me lately. So I will just rant about a few things.

Romney accuses Obama of anti-women because the great majority of jobs lost during the past 3 years were held by women. Of course Romney discounts the fact that the first jobs lost during the recession were in manufacturing and construction which were jobs mostly held by men. Since then, due to the deficit, lot of government jobs in teaching, clerical and nursing were lost. Those jobs were overwhelmingly held by women. Now I thought Romney and the Republicans want to cut government jobs. So they were rooting for more women to lose their jobs? Also a lot of blacks lost government jobs and the unemployment rate is much worse for them. Is Romney going to say that Obama is anti-black now?

Secret service agents caught taking prostitutes to their room while on the road with the president! The oldest trick in the world for spies to get info from the other side is using the seduction by women. So these knuckleheads put the president and national security in great danger. My question, besides what the hell are they thinking, is that is this an isolated incident or just happen to be the one time they are caught? I think the latter!

The GSA is caught have a "conference" in Vegas for $800,000 of taxpayers' money. My question is that is this an isolated incident or just happen to be the one time they are caught? I think the latter!

Obama proposes the Buffet rule which was dead on arrival. The same with whatever tax cuts the Republicans propose. Let's be serious, both sides. We need to get rid of the stupid tax code we have. Just have a flat tax, no deductions, no loopholes. Having benefited from deduction for my children all these years, I never understood why you get a deduction for having children. Nor do I understand why we get a deduction for our mortgages. I don't understand why $800,000 "conferences" are deductible for private businesses either. Get rid of all these. You can make a tax code on couple of sheets of paper! Do what Hong Kong did (I don't know if this is still true under China rule), a flat tax and tax the hell out of luxury items like Rolls Royces.

Hockey, to me, is the most uncivilized of the major sports. Football is violent but you are hitting during the course of action. If you fight or hit someone after the whistle, you get penalized. In hockey after the whistle the players will still hit each other. Unless they drop the gloves and fight, no penalty is called. And even when there is fighting for several minutes, nobody gets ejected. In any other sports, including football fights like that would lead to automatic ejection and suspension. Are the hockey players more temperamental? It just seems to me they are out of control as human beings and the league encourages this behavior.

I welcome any comment to these few rants and any other rants that you may have!

Rick Santorum has quit before the Pennsylvania primary. I had predicted that this may well happen because there was a good chance that he would lose Pennsylvania. If he had lost his home state, not only was he finished for this election but maybe out of any future election as well. Remember he had lost his senate reelection bid in 2006 by a wide margin. So it was not like he was popular even within his own state. That is why he surprised many people, including myself when he came in second in this nomination campaign. By dropping out now after a relative good showing, he can claim to be the torch bearer for the conservative wing of the Republicans in 2016. Like Romney, who came in second in 2008, Santorum may well get the support of the Republican establishment in 2016. This is assuming that Romeny will lose to Obama, which I am sure Santorum is counting on. So this is an expected and good move for Santorum. And if he was to lose Pennsylvania, then his career in national politics would have been over.

My question now is would conservatives hate Romney so much that they run behind Gingrich and help him win Texas? Now that would be an embarrassment for Romney and a disaster for the Republican establishment!

A few comments about recent competitions in the news. Kentucky wins men's basketball tournament. With no underdog in the final four, I didn't really care who wins. But given the number of one and out players on Kentucky this year and recently, I would say KU is my least favorite. Well, I guess the team with the best players did win this year.

Baylor wins the woman's tournament tonight. Am I the only one who thinks that Griner looks and sounds more manly than the other Baylor stars, including RG IIII? Compare to other women, Griner is a cross between Yao Ming and Dwight Howard, the tallest and most athletic center.

Mitt Romney's win in Wisconsin tonight pretty much sewed up the nomination. Rick Santorum insists that he is staying in. But if polls show that Romney passes him up in Pennsylvania, I think Santorum will quit before that primary to prevent the embarrassment of losing in his home state.

Tiger is back. I predict a Masters win for him this weekend!

My favorite sports to play when I was young were basketball and tennis. This explains my lack of dancing ability. Monica Seles, Meta World Peace and now Martina Navrotilova were all the first star to exist from the DWTS. If I had actually gone into speed skating, gymnastics or figure skating, my dance ability would be a lot better. Jack Wagner going out the second week and Missouri losing in the first round, maybe I have jinxed Tiger!