In this political season I expected to be bombarded with political advertising.  This is true, but unexpectedly I am also getting political advertising both for and against China.  Every couple of weeks or so, a supplement called China Watch is placed inside the Sunday edition of the LA Times.  Also every couple of weeks or so, I get a copy of the Epoch Times in the mail.  With our own election going on, I have not read either one much.  I am not sure if either publication believe it can influence the minds of Americans.  But obviously, they are trying hard to do so.

China Watch is published by the Chinese newspaper China Daily and it said so on the front of the paper.  So it is obvious to readers that it is a publication from China.  It tends to show China in a positive light, including in minority areas such as Tibet and Xinjiang.  I think most Americans will see through this and take the articles with a grain of salt.  There maybe truths in these articles but I bet most Americans who read the LA Times, a liberal publication, will be skeptical of the paper.

The Epoch Times is a media arm of the religious group Falun Gong.  It claims to be a multi-national publication.  Falun Gong claims to be oppressed by the Chinese government.  So it is no wonder that Epoch Times is fervently anti-Chinese government.  So to many Americans, it may very be a fair reporting of the bad things happening in China, especially when it comes to putting down dissent.  

What is not obvious to the casual reader is that the Epoch Times back far right politicians in Europe and Donald Trump in the U.S.  It has association with Steve Bannon who has called for the overthrow of China.  The Epoch Times has also spread conspiracy theories such as QAnon and anti-vaccine propaganda.  

I don't know how successful China Watch and Epoch Times are in influencing Americans with their free papers.  But I would bet that few Americans, either left or right leaning, will suddenly think that everything is great in Tibet and Xinjiang after reading China Watch.  On the other hand, some Americans who lean right, may find the Epoch Times stories to be believable.  So I think the misinformation from the Epoch Times may be more dangerous than those from China Watch.

 Didn't watch much of the debate tonight.  Did watch the analysis afterward.  It was pretty much what I expected.  I am comparing this year's debates to a soccer playoff of 2 games.  In the first game, Trump scores bunch of own goals and so needs a big game tonight.  Biden just needs to not collapse.  So the final score tonight was nil nil.  Biden wins the overall debates.  Kristen Welker was a much better referee than Wallace was in the first debate.  But there were less fighting this time and Walker could hand out yellow cards (muting) this time.  So this was a much easier game to officiate.

So it looks like Biden is in good shape.  But who knows if a James Comey thing from 2016 will happen this year.  Trump and his people are trying to use Hunter Biden to change the narrative like Comey's announcement about Clinton's email last time.  But I think Biden is more liked and trusted by people than Clinton was.  So they are less likely to believe a Biden scandal.  So hopefully Trump will fail to change the narrative this time.

The World Series is getting serious!  I thought that the Dodgers were in good shape with better pitching.  But the young guys are not doing as well as they did in the regular season.  Buehler is the ace and is scheduled for game 3.  That would seem a good situation until I realize the Rays have Morton who beat the Dodgers in 2017 game 7, beat the Astros twice this year, including game 7.  He and Buehler are matched up for games 3 and possibly 7.  So this will be interesting!

 Didn't watch any of the townhalls yesterday.  Figured the baseball game was better.  It didn't turn out that way as the Dodgers got clobbered.  The townhalls went about as expected, according to the pundits, with Trump fighting the moderator and Biden being too boring with details.  But there were a few surprises.

I had expected that Trump will get the better ratings since he is bombastic and try to make absurd claims all the time.  Being a reality tv guy, I would think he knows how to get better ratings.  People hate to admit it but they watch car races awaiting for an accident to occur.  If it is just cars going around in circles, fewer people would watch for sure.  But the preliminary ratings had ABC with Biden beating the combine ratings of NBC, MSNBC and CNBC with Trump.  One of Trump's aides had said that Biden's townhall looks like Mister Rogers Neighborhood.  So I guess Mr. Rogers beats train wreck this time!

Trump, having feasted of softballs from Fox all the time, had trouble answering hard balls from Guthrie.  He basically admits not having tested himself before the first debate, admitted that he only paid a small sum of taxes, admitted that he owes $400 million.  He also refused to condemn the conspiracy theories put out by QAnon.  You would think that without an opponent to attack, he would have to answer questions from the moderator and the audience.  Yet he had no good answers.  Well, maybe there are no good answers possible.

Chris Christie is discharged, which is good.  He also admits he has been wrong.  At least his bout with the virus changed his outlook.  That is unlike Trump who did not see the light but instead doubled down.  He will never change.

Two and  a half weeks left till the election.  Will we finally get rid of this guy or will we turn into a banana republic with a dictator trying to hold on to power and total chaos erupt in the country?

 I was watching CNN last night about Melania's former aide who is promoting her book on Melania.  She had taped some of their conversations and it was not flattering to Melania.  So I was thinking that the tax thing on Trump came out last week and now this.  All seem to be timed for maximum effect before the election.  Still, neither may make any difference.  I was about to get back to watching baseball playoffs.

Then Bloomberg reported that Hope Hicks, one of Trump's closest aide tested positive for COVID.  The timeline seem to make no sense.  As reported, Hicks felt sick on Wednesday night and tested positive on Thursday morning.  She was shown going on Marine One and subsequently Air Force One with Trump and others on Wednesday morning.  None were wearing masks.  So I am thinking everybody on that staff, including Trump, had to know Hicks was sick and should have received tests at latest Thursday morning.  Even if all others were negative, they should have been quarantined.  Yet Trump left for New Jersey Thursday morning for a fund raiser.  There was also no announcement about Hicks' positive test or the results of the tests of anyone else.

Later Trump went on Fox and admitted that Hicks was sick and he got tested and was waiting for the result.  Eventually at 10 pm my time or 1 am on the east coast, Trump tweeted that he and Melania were positive.  It should not have taken the whole day for the results to come back.  He should not have gone to New Jersey even if his test initially was negative.  There was no transparency for the whole thing until Bloomberg broke the news.  The WH spokeswoman must have know about Hicks in her morning press briefing and yet she never talked about it, even though some of the journalists were traveling with Hicks the day before.

So now what?  Who knows!  Trump joins Boris Johnson and Brazilian president Bolsonaro as COVID patients.  All three were skeptical of the effect of the virus in public.  Johnson had a change of heart after spending time in the ICU.  Will Trump do the same?  Will he get sympathy vote from the public even if he is responsible for much of the spread of the virus itself due to his "leadership".  The second debate is probably off.  What would his ardent followers think?  More important, what do the independents think?

Biden, being on stage with Trump on Tuesday, will have to be tested everyday until at least Monday to be sure he didn't catch it from Trump.  God forbid, if Biden got it what kind of chaos will follow?  Trump won't be able to travel to campaign.   Biden may have to play the good competitor and don't campaign in public as well.  But it won't affect Biden as much as he has been careful and has not campaigned in large rallies.

Well, that is all for now.  But this story will dominate for the next two weeks at least.   Will the WH be more transparent?  Will Trump and the WH follow guidelines now?  Don't hold your breath?  Trump won't be able to change the subject as he has been trying.  But at least the tax thing and Melania story will be put on the back burner for now.  

 This is democracy in action?   China and Russia are laughing at us after the so called debate tonight.  It was more like a wrestling match, WWE style.  Trump was hitting below the belt, throwing chairs at Biden and punching when referee Chris Wallace was trying to break it up.  Biden was trying to stay calm and play by the rule.  I wish that he would have pull on Trump's wig and put him on a choke hold!

It was expected that Trump would come out swinging and try to drag Biden into the mud and force him to make errors.  But I think Trump overplayed his hand.  He interrupted way too much and frankly did not even give Biden a chance to make a mistake.  He went against the previously agreed rules for the debate so much that Wallace had to try to rein in many times.  Wallace was not successful (who would have?)  But Wallace, I thought, actually helped Biden by challenging Trump to answer his own questions and not interrupt Biden.  There was almost a separate debate between Wallace and Trump.  Given that this is a Fox News debate, it was better moderated for Biden than expected.

I think that Biden could have hit Trump harder.  For example, when Trump claimed that if Biden was president there would have been many more dead from COVID.  All Biden had to say was that if Trump did such a great job, why is the U.S. so much worse off than other countries?  Trump is obviously worse than the leaders of almost every country in the world.  When Trump attacked Biden's intelligence, saying he was last in his college class, Biden could have said: "I didn't need to pay someone to take my SAT.  Also my doctor did not order a dementia test for me!"  Sometimes you have to respond to a punch below the belt with a kick to the groin.

Trump once again refuses to refute white supremist groups and violence.  Instead he gave a shout out to the Proud Boys, a neo Nazi group, and told them to stand back and stand by.  The GOP can say that it is not a call to the group to get ready to battle.  But the Proud Boys are rejoicing and so you know how they interpreted that remark by Trump.  This is the exact type of chaos Russia, China and Iran like to see in our political process.

This debate probably won't change the minds of many people.  But if Trump and his supporters think that this will close the gap between the two, I don't think so.  Biden was not great but he held serve and given how badly this debate was, I am sure the ratings for the other two will be lower.  So there will be less chance for Trump to make up ground.  There are no winners tonight but Biden's supporters will be relieved.  The loser, however, is American democracy.

Taking a little break from politics and discuss college football today.  Well, that actually is politics as Trump has been telling the Big Ten and Pac 12 to join the other three big conferences to play this fall.  The Big Ten has decided to play an 8 game schedule and the Pac-12 will probably announce that they will play also.  Is this the right choice?   

I was against playing college football before.  I think college basketball with much smaller rosters and less physical contact, is much more safe to play.  Given that the southeast and southwest areas of the country were still seeing high number of cases, I thought that those conferences should not have started.  There were quite a few positive cases when training started but they kept going.  I have not heard much about cases in those conferences recently.  Either things are much better now or they are hiding the truth.

The other day the LSU coach said something to the effect that a great number of his players already had been infected.  They have recovered and are able to play now, he said.  He would not say how many players were/are infected.  It seems very suspicious to me.  Sure most young people are asymptomatic or recover quickly after being infected by this virus.  But they can transmit to other people and since they are not in a lockdown like NBA players and they are young and in many cases immature, I think the transmission rate would be high.  Also many young athletes develop myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart, after being infected.  It may not lead to damage but we are not so sure about it, especially years down the line.  So I still think it is risky for them to play football now.

Having said that, I think the Big Ten and Pac-12 are in better positions than the other conferences when they start in October.  They will have daily testing.  There is the antigen test which is cheaper than the standard PCR test.  The results are available in minutes as oppose to sending the tests to labs and results may not come back for days.  If the athletes are tested daily, then the chance of a positive person transmitting the virus will be very low.  I believe the antigen test, which is not as sensitive as the PCR test but is much faster and is good enough for screening purpose, gives college football a much better chance of successfully play out the season.  If this occurs, it may be used for opening schools for in person learning throughout the country.

The playoffs spots will be even more controversial this year as teams are mostly playing within the conferences.  How do you judge teams from different conferences when there are no interconference games?  It will be even more of a beauty contest than ever before.

 It is with great sadness that I hear the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  Justice Ginsburg is certainly a great icon in American law.  A great talent, a great fighter for justice and in the past twenty years a great fighter against cancer and other health issues.  She will be greatly missed.

The possibility of her dying has been a great fear among Democrats since Trump was elected.  Certainly if Clinton had been elected, RBG would have retired.  But when Trump was elected, she did all she could to stay alive so that she would not be replaced by a Trump appointee.  She did not quite make it to January of 2021.  But maybe she stayed alive long enough to avoid the unthinkable:  McConnell being able to confirm a third Trump nominee.

Mitch McConnell is going to try to ram a nomination through before Biden becomes president.  Never mind the hypocrisy of him blocking Obama's nomination for eight months before the 2016 election.  Now with about one and half month left before the 2020 election, McConnell thinks it is legitimate for the GOP to grab another Supreme Court seat.  This just shows what kind of people McConnell and most of the GOP are today.

The GOP has 53 seats in the Senate.  With Pence being the tie breaker, the Democrats need to flip 4 votes to prevent McConnel to succeed in this travesty.  Collins of Maine and Murkowski of Alaska have indicate that they don't think it is right for this nomination to go forward.  Romney may be another vote.  Chuck Grassley and Lindsay Graham have indicated in the past that it would not be right to have a nomination late in the year of a presidential election.  These two are iffy at best though.  There is also the possibility if Kelley wins in Arizona in a special election to replace McCain, then he could be sworn in as early as November 30 instead of January.  That would make a lame duck confirmation of the appointee by Trump to be less likely.

There is also the possibility of an expansion of the number of Supreme Court justices if Democrats win the Senate and the presidency.  Chuck Schumur has threatened this if McConnell insisted on ramming this nomination through.   I don't know how legal this is and how hard politically this is.  I understand there is not a set number of justices according the constitution.  But will have to see how this shakes out.

How is this going to affect the election?   I don't know.  Is it going to pump up partisans on both sides?   I think so.  I would think that the Trump side will be more pumped up as I think they believe that they are going to lose ground in the election.  But the unfairness and hypocrisy of McConnell and the GOP may turn off some independents.  So we will see.  The other thing that I worry is that this becomes the main story each day, taking away the important discussions we need regarding the pandemic, the racial divide, foreign relations and the economy.  It is going to be a crazy month and a half.  Probably much longer because the election results maybe contested long after November 3, and a lame duck Senate may still be deciding a justice nomination into January.

 While traveling the past week, I didn't have much chance to watch sports.  But I did catch the men and women championships of the U.S. Open tennis.  They were both exciting and tension filled matches that went to the maximum number of sets.  Both champions won by coming from behind.  There were no spectators so you don't get the usual excitement and roar after great shots.  Still the telecasts showed that for a few hours sports can give relief to the problems of the world.

But the women championship did not hide the problems of the world.  Naomi Osaka had refused to play the semi-finals of the previous tournament in protest of racism.  The governing body of tennis backed down and postponed the tournament a day and she then agreed to play.  During the U.S. Open, Osaka wore a mask with the name of a victim of racial violence when she came onto the court before each match.  She also wore the mask during interviews after the matches.  This raised attention to systemic racism in the country.  While the NBA and other sports supported the protest movement, Osaka was the only top tennis player who openly supported the movement with her actions.

Osaka is now a three time major champion.  She is also at age 22, the future leader of women's tennis.  Her activism is to be applauded.  It can't be easy to be a champion on the court at the same time a champion for social issues off the court.  Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova were two names I can come up with who did the same.  But I think they were older and had been on tour longer when they became spokeswomen for their causes.  Prior to this, Osaka was seen as a young woman who laughed at herself for giving poor interviews and acceptance speeches.  It is amazing she is now an activist with  potential to be a great leader among sport stars.

 If you work for Trump you are going to have to be a liar.  The new medical advisor whom Trump is leaning on for the COVID response is Dr. Scott Atlas.  He has been shown on camera where he basically call for herd immunity to stop the virus.  Now that he is being challenged for this view, he is saying that he never advocated for herd immunity but that he is not surprised that people frame him because this is Washington!  Well, he is Washington now and he has the audacity to call people liars when what he said was recorded!  But Trump will like that he is caught with a lie because that has happened to Trump many times before and he and his base don't care.

Atlas has also questioned the effectiveness of wearing masks.  He and CDC also said that asymptomatic people don't need to be tested.  The FDA has said that a new vaccine may be fast track to market even if phase three trials are not completed.  I doubt that most scientists in the CDC and the FDA agree on these declarations.  It seems that the politicians are calling the shots in the Federal government and not the scientists.  Add to that of local and state level people like DeSantis of Florida and Kemp of Georgia, we can see that we will not be winning the fight against this virus any time soon.

When the CDC gave the new guideline that asymptomatic people don't need to be tested, Dr. Fauci was under anesthesia for surgery.  So they did not want to get the opinion of the top scientist on the epidemic before making such a decision.  In China when this pandemic started, they called on Dr. Zhong Nan Shan, their Dr. Fauci.  When he said the country needed to go into lock down mode, it was advice followed.  Here, we listen to incompetent people instead of our top scientists.  So we will continue to suffer.

 Having written about the Democratic convention each day last week, I will write about the GOP this week.  This is going to be hard to do as I get angry listening to what some of the speakers have to say.  Of course I only watch the highlights (or lowlights).  I can't possibly sit through these speeches in their entirety.  I couldn't even do that with the Democrats either.

So the first night the GOP bring out their diversity starting lineup, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott and Hershel Walker.  I would be interested who they have coming off the bench the next three days.  From what I can see, they did very good jobs.  I think Haley is eyeing for a 2024 run.  So we may very well have two Indian women competing for the presidency in 4 years!

Trump had said that the Democratic convention was dark and his will be uplifting.  Yet the picture the GOP painted if Biden wins is most very scary and dark.  It was obvious they were trying to scare white people into voting against Biden.  The St. Louis couple who pointed guns at protesters said so as much.  

Donald Jr.'s speech could have been lifted from one of his dad's.  It was full of lies and hyperbole.  The greatest economy ever?   The China virus?  Beijing Biden?  It was deflection of blame by using China just as his dad.  His eyes looked watery.  Does he have allergies or has he been crying?  His girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle made Don Jr. look soft spoken.  I think she was channeling Howard Dean.  Wasn't she used to be married to Gavin Newsome?  Talk about changing teams.  This is more like changing planets!

There was no sympathy for the COVID victims.  There was no taking responsibility for the pandemic response.  In fact they tried to change history by saying how well they have done.  I don't think any objective observer would buy this.  This was all trying to play to the base and Trump himself.  I understand Melania is speaking tonight.  Who will she copy off this time?  I am not sure I can stomach 3 more days of this but I will try.