A few days ago Trump greeted the three Korean Americans released by North Korea as their plane landed.  It made for a great photo and tv op for Trump.  He even said that is the all time high rating for 3 a.m.  He maybe right about that.  At least one of the man required an interpreter when answering questions from the media and talking with Trump.  I think Trump is thinking:  I thought the prisoners were Americans!  It didn't matter, he will take any victory at this point.

This shows that Kim, like most dictators, are rational and cunning.  He did not change from a man who killed his uncle and brother and many of his countryman to a man who releases prisoners because he is compassionate.  He knows that Trump likes to be praised and get big ratings, so he gave him those.  Noticed the support Trump gave Saudi Arabia after he was lavished with praise when visiting there.  Kim, rightly believes, that he will get a better deal if he makes Trump look good.   He will promise to get rid of the nuclear program in exchange for rid of sanctions and get economic help.  But he will never really give up his nukes.

Kim won't give up his nukes because it is his only assurance for survival.  No country has ever given nuclear weapons after it has fully developed them.  After Trump backed out of the Iran deal, Kim will never trust the U.S. on any deal.  He will try to get as much as possible and may stop the nuclear program for awhile, but he will never give it up.  There maybe a deal between the U.S. and North Korea after Trump and Kim meet.  But the deal will not be as good as the Iran deal.  But Trump will claim victory no matter what.

An U.S. trade delegation led by Treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin just returned from China.  There was apparently no agreement which was expected given the American side made demands as if China was a small nation under the American thumb.  For example, the U.S. demand that China unilaterally cut the trade surplus with the U.S. by $200 billion which is more than half of the surplus.  There was demand that China stopped its support of Xi Jinping's Made in China 2025 industry policy.  The U.S. also demanded that China cannot retaliate or sue the U.S. for slapping tariffs or investment restrictions on China.  Those are all absurd demands that no nation would kowtow to.  Given the history of Chinese humiliation at the hands of western nations with unequal treaties and the rise of China to big power status now, China would consider these demands to be insults if not something to be laughed at. 

I think this is just typical of Trump playing to his base.  Just like saying Mexico will pay for the wall when no nation would do that.  But is his base calling him out on that?  He also promised to label China a currency manipulator as soon as he took office.  But he did not and his base did not call him out on it.  So these demands will not be met by China and the base will not call him out on it.  The risk here is that we will go to a trade war with China.  I think Trump will pull back from the blink, at least his advisors will tell him to.  But if he doesn't, and a trade war happens, his base will call him out on THAT because they will be hurt in the pocket for sure.

The attendees at the NRA convention speech by Trump were not allowed to carry guns into the hall.  I thought Trump and the NRA believe that the more people carry guns, the safer it is?  The NRA respond to this irony by saying that it is the Secret Service who made the rules of no guns.  You mean Trump could not tell the Secret Service to allow guns?  You mean the Secret Service believe it is safer that everyone do not carry guns, contrary to Trump and the NRA?   Doesn't the NRA always rail against government interference on their Second Amendment rights?  How come there is no massive protests against the Secret Service at the convention?

Watched the documentary "Abacus" on Netflix last night.  I am surprised that I didn't learn about it sooner, given that it was nominated for an Oscar.  It is the real story of a small Chinese owned bank in Chinatown New York being the only bank charged with fraud in connection to the mortgage collapse of 2008.  It was a well made movie and I would recommend it strongly.

Without spoiling the movie for anyone who wishes to see it, I will just make a few points of interest.  First, given all the banks that are much larger and obviously committed fraud during the mortgage crisis, I am amazed that the government chose to prosecute a small bank which was thriving and had one of the lowest loan default rate in the country!  The DA had claimed that Abacus bank had defraud Fannie Mae with false applications,  When it was pointed out that Fannie Mae actually made tons of money from Abacus loans, the DA said that if you took $5 from me and then gave it back later, you still committed larceny.  Well, it you took $5 and gave back $5 plus interest later, that is the definition of a good loan, not larceny in my book!

I was shocked that the government had arrested all the executives of the bank at the same time, even the ones that already turned themselves in earlier.  They were all handcuffed in a chain gang formation to parade through the court house!  I don't remember any Wall Street or large bank executives even got arrested, never mind being chain ganged. Well, first of all none of them, despite causing great harm to the financial system, was ever charged.  But even if they were charged, they would have just turned themselves in without being chain ganged.  Are all these Chinese people a threat to the arresting officers?

There are some lessons to be learned here.  One is that  the way Chinese communities, for that matter any immigrant community, do business may cause trouble for them in dealing with mainstream Americans.  What is considered fraud by mainstream America and the government, is not considered fraud by immigrant communities.  These "frauds" had no detrimental effect on loans.  It is not fraud when compared to the real crimes committed by mainstream banks.  Those are the banks that caused the financial crisis, not Abacus or other immigrant run banks.

So is this a racist prosecution?   I believe it is.  While the DA was not necessary out to get a Chinese bank, I believe that his office believed that a Chinese bank is a way easier target than a mainstream bank.  I believe that the DA probably wanted to make a name for himself for being the first one to get a conviction from a bank during the mortgage crisis.  I think the DA believes that a Chinese bank would be too intimidated by the government and would plea a deal.  An easy victory, he assumed.

Turns out Abacus did not cave.  They spent millions to defend their honor.  I am glad they did.  It took courage and signal to the country that Chinese immigrants may not be the pushovers that are portrayed frequently.

Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong just bought the Los Angeles Times.  Soon-Shiong was born in South Africa of Taishanese descent.  To be more precise, his family belongs to the Hakka group.  Hakka literally means "guest family".   They are Han people as is the overwhelming majority of Chinese.  But unlike other Han people, it is not sure what region of the country Hakka people were originally from.  But they have migrated over the centuries to many parts of the country, particularly Guangdong province.  So many of them are recognized as Taishanese even though they are not from there originally.  Confused?  So am I.

In any case, as many Hakka or Taishanese people, Soon Shiong's family left the country and ended up in South Africa.  The good doctor became a surgeon in South Africa and eventually migrated to Canada and then the U.S.  He made his fortunes by developing a cancer drug and founding couple of pharmaceutical companies.  In LA he has been a philanthropist, most notably helping to save an inner city hospital when he, using a phrase from his old country, said that it is time to stop medical apartheid.

So now the doctor is trying to save an industry, or at least one major paper, from life support.  He even talked about ambitious plans of expanding the Times and be in competition with the New York Times and the Washington Post.  He said that great print journalism is a public service in a private sector and is need more than ever.  Given his charity work among the poor, there is hope that he will do what he says.  But he had met with Trump couple of times before the inauguration and we don't know what they talked about.  He says he is politically independent.  He did complain about fake news on the internet.  I hope that is his way for saying great newspaper are more important than ever, not that he is agreeing with Trump!

Paul Ryan announces that he will not seek reelection.  This means there will be a battle for the leadership of the GOP in the House.  It is hard to blame Ryan, who was reluctant to take the Speaker's job in the first place.  Having to deal with the Tea Party and Trump is too much for anyone.  If the GOP loses centrists like Ryan, McCain, Graham and Kasich, it will cease to exit as a major party.  At this rate others will follow Ryan's lead to not run for reelection and signal to the GOP to put their resources to defending the senate.

The Democrats can make sure they win the House by getting rid of Pelosi as leader.  The only strong point for a GOP candidate in a battle district is to ask:  Do you want Pelosi to be Speaker again?  Pelosi has been around too long and it is time to bring fresh blood to the leadership.

I think it is good for Ryan that he gets out now.  He is still young and has chances to run for president later.  But if he stays as speaker, he will be tied to the inability to control the Tea Party and to the toxic presidency of Trump.  Couple more years of that, it would have ended Ryan's political career anyway.  So spend time with the kids and if the tax cut turned out ok, run on that legislative achievement in 7 years.  But he may have to run as a third party candidate then as the GOP as we know it may not exist then.

More tragedy out of Syria as Assad has launched another chemical attack on civilians.  Trump responded by blaming Iran, Russia (Putin by name), and Obama.  I am pleased that he is calling out Putin after having nice things to say about him or nothing at all.  So even if he doesn't blame Putin for meddling in our election, he is at least acknowledging his support of Assad in using chemical weapons.  But did Trump also emboldened Assad by  saying that the U.S. will be pulling out of Syria soon?  Didn't he criticized Obama for letting the enemy know that we will be gone soon?

As I said before, Obama's handling of Assad's chemical weapon usage was a big blunder.  You don't draw a line in the sand if you are not prepared to act once that line is crossed.  My question was:  how far are we willing to go to back up the line.  Trump bombed Syria last year.  Did that do much?  I don't think so.  Even before this chemical attack, Assad had been tough on civilians who are not on his side or just happen to be in the way.  So big time bombing did basically nothing.  What is Trump going to do now? Are we willing to put more troops on the ground, a complete turn around from what Trump just said?  Are we prepared to confront the Russians in the sky if we impose a no fly zone?

Most presidents would age years thinking about all these poor options.  Trump usually just wings it.  Now he has John Bolton starting as national security advisor on Monday.  Bolton is one of the worst hawks in the history of this country.  He called for attacking North Korea and Iran.  He still thinks the Iraq war was a good thing!  By the way, national security advisor does not need Senate confirmation.  Which is too bad because I don't think Bolton would have been confirmed.  Now that he starts work tomorrow, when are we going to see mass attacks on Syria?

I find it absurd that the media spend so much time on Trump's extramarital affairs.  The porn star and the Playboy playmate are being interviewed all over.  Unlike victims of sexual abuse, who should be given time, these two had consensual sex with Trump.  By having sex with a married man, they are not moral people themselves.  So they shouldn't be given so much time.  If having extramarital affairs disqualify someone from political office, then we probably need to replace over half of our politicians.  (Which maybe not be so bad!)  Trump voters have already made it known that they don't care if he is a moral man, so why are we wasting our time?

There was at least sometime given over the weekend in the news about the march against guns.  Maybe when all these young people can vote, we can defeat the NRA and have real effective gun laws.  In the meanwhile, we have to listen to stupid people like Rick Santorum who said that instead of marching, the young people should learn to do CPR!  Does he know what the success rate of CPR is if someone had been shot and the heart is not beating.  Less than 10%.  The young people are asking the politician to help them.  But Santorum thinks that people should help themselves.  It is like saying doctors should not develop vaccine but patients should learn how to treat themselves after getting the infection.  What kind of nonsense is that?

While the news is all about sex:  See 60 Minutes tonight.  We have greater problems that the media is spending way too little time.  The trade war has started and the stock market is tanking.  Trump has appointed John Bolton to be the national security advisor.  Bolton helped Bush lied about the WMD that let to the Iraq war.  He has been the advocate of regime change in Iran and North Korea.  By having him working with Trump, chances of an unnecessary war has increased several folds.  Basically, Trump has created a financial crisis with his tariffs and a military crisis by bringing in Bolton.  These are the things about Trump we should be focused on, not extramarital affairs.

Facebook lost 7% of stock value today because of revelation about user's data was used illegally after being sold by Facebook.  Supposedly data collected by a Russian professor at Cambridge was not supposed to be sold to a third party.  But it was sold to Cambridge Analytica which in turn was paid by the Trump campaign.  It is all very complicated.  It is not clear to me that Facebook could have prevented all this.  But if this prevents or restricts Facebook or other media companies from selling data, it will have a chilling effect on tech companies.  I think selling data is a very significant source of revenue for Facebook and losing it would be devastating.

It is amazing to me that we worry about our privacy when it comes to government snooping around but we let private companies look into our everyday life and even our thoughts.  Every time we go online, we are monitored by companies.  Yet we seldom complain.  I guess there is no way to keep ourselves private unless we don't ever use computers, smart phones, subscribe to Netflix etc.  But at least in this case, I did not help Trump since I am not on Facebook!  In fact I am not on any social media.  As Betty White once said when she found out what social media were:  "I think it is a big waste of time!."

I was flying to Vancouver last weekend and was elated that my boarding pass said that I have fast TSA check in.  This means I get to go through a faster line at security and do not have to take off my shoes and belt.  This shaves at least 10 minutes and rid of lot of hassle at a crazy airport like LAX.  The security line was as smooth as promised.  I put my bags on the conveyor belt and waked thru the metal check with my shoes on expecting I will be done in another 10 seconds or so.

The conveyor belt stopped!  The young lady TSA agent checking the x-rays of the bags picked up one of my bag and shouted to the young guy standing behind me: "Is this your bag, sir?"  The young man looked puzzled and said no.  I raised my hand and said this is my bag.  The agent looks at me with a relief look and asked:  "Oh, do you have an old style phone?"  I said yes, I do.  She took my flip phone out of the bag and the short line and all the TSA agents broke out in hearty laughter.  I said to the young agent and the young man:  "Yeah, my kids laugh at me all the time."  He then asked if I can text on that phone since he is not familiar with it.  Again laughter all around.

Besides the mild humiliation, I found it interesting that a flip phone would look suspiciously like some kind of dangerous device.  I guess young people don't even know what a flip phone is!  Also, if the agent look at the order of the people in line and the order of the bags, it would be most likely that the bag belonged to me.  Yet, she barked at the young man behind me in the line.  Well, not surprisingly, he is brown skin with a beard.  So there was obvious profiling here.  Once she realized that the bag belonged to me, the tension was gone, the young man was relieved, and everybody had a good laugh.  I am glad that I, as an old Asian man, am not of the demographic that is deemed dangerous.  But what of the young brown men? 

Trump is trying to act tough by slapping tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum.  The fact that he did this against his economic advisors and right before a Chinese trade representative was coming to the U.S., seems to make this a stance against Chinese imports.  The only thing is, China is not a big exporter to the U.S. of steel and aluminum.  The biggest exporter of these goods to the U.S.?  Canada.  So are we risking a trade war with Canada or China?  Either way, it is probably not a good idea.

I think China will not react strongly to this.  But if there is a trade war, Trump and whoever agrees with him in Congress will not win.  Xi Jinping is in way more firm control of China than Trump is of the U.S.  There is talk of changing the Chinese constitution so that Xi can be president for life.  So he can go through a downturn in the economy as a result of a trade war.  But that would not be the case with Trump and the GOP.  So if a trade war occurs, the U.S. will blink first.

Speaking of Xi becoming so powerful, this will set China back.  Since Deng Xiaoping, each subsequent Chinese leader has had a decrease in power compare with his predecessor.  Jiang Zemin was less powerful than Deng, Hu Jintao wielded less power behind the scene than Jiang did after his ten year term was over.  Xi, though, has greater ambition for China and himself.  He already sees China as the world's premier power in the future and he wants to have more than 10 years to navigate China into that position.  This will mean less freedom in China and more confrontation with other countries.  Xi is a capable leader.  But the way he is going about to achieve his goals will not be good in the long run for China and the world.