Category Archives: Politics

Phil Jackson Was Right About Terrorism in 1991

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From The Jordan Rules, by Sam Smith in 1991:

Who wants the troops to go into Baghdad and go after Hussein?” he asked.

The hands of most of the younger players went up. Jordan, Pippen,, and Grant particularly said the troops should go in and get Hussein.

In the corner, Hodges could barely contain his anger. Jackson, in a way, agreed.

Do you understand, he explained that these are people who will never forget, the people who lose their father or a brother or a relative? They or their children or even their children’s children. Do you want to see, Jackson wondered, your son killed someday in an airplane explosion because we’ve made Iraq a terrorist nation from what we’ve done? A guy with a bomb can just drive into the London Tunnel or walk into the Sears Tower and kill thousands. Is this what you want to see and have it affect your children or their children?

Jackson wanted them to think a little more about the consequences of war. Everyone did.

I am about 2/3 of the way through the book and I cannot figure out how the Bulls are going to put everything together and win a championship.

I do know, however, that Michael Jordan is a total a**hole, but Scottie, at least in this contract year, wasn’t much better. (I knew about Jordan but had heard Scottie was a great teammate)

Vietnam’s Independence Day celebrated by Google

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I think it’s great, but I can imagine what the Vietnamese expat community would say if they saw this:

Vietnam Independence Day by Google

Photo courtesy of my friend Tuan.

(edit: was corrected by my cousin Nam, I forgot this was for Independence Day, not Liberation Day, which is of course on April 30)

The Washington Post’s 5 Myths Series

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I really enjoy and learn from The Washington Post’s 5 Myths Series. Every couple of weeks, there’s a new argument about a much-argued and often emotional subject for many, taking a look at what people often believe about that subject. Here are snippets from 5 Myths about gun control:

This helps explain why, even though the United States has overall rates of violent crime in line with rates in other developed nations, our homicide rate is, relatively speaking, off the charts. (1. Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.)

Data from 2008 in Chicago show that 81 percent of homicides were committed with guns and that 91 percent of homicide offenders had a prior arrest record. (2. Gun laws affect only law-abiding citizens.)

Our research suggests that as many as 500,000 guns are stolen each year in the United States, going directly into the hands of people who are, by definition, criminals.

The data show that a net increase in household gun ownership would mean more homicides and perhaps more burglaries as well. Guns can be sold quickly, and at good prices, on the underground market. (3. When more households have guns for self-defense, crime goes down.)

I personally believe all handguns should be banned in the US. In Vietnam they are, and though I’m sure guns do exist in the country (there are gangs and gangsters here, after all), I have always felt secure that I would never be shot, no matter where I was or what time at night. Maybe it’s all mental? Maybe. Nonetheless, most things are all in our minds.

Some other recent articles from the Post:

5 Myths about California politics (By Bruce E. Cain, June 6, 2010)

5 Myths about working mothers (By Naomi Cahn and June Carbone, May 30, 2010)

5 Myths about who gets into college (By Richard D. Kahlenberg, May 23, 2010)

5 myths about Supreme Court confirmations (By Kashmir Hill and David Lat, May 10, 2010)

5 Myths about the European debt crisis (By Carmen M. Reinhart and Vincent R. Reinhart, May 9, 2010)

5 Myths about immigration (By Doris Meissner, May 2, 2010)

5 Myths about green energy (By Robert Bryce, April 25, 2010)

5 Myths about the Catholic abuse scandal (By David Gibson, April 18, 2010)

5 Myths about China’s economic power (By Arthur Kroeber, April 11, 2010)

5 Myths about your taxes (By Roberton Williams and Rosanne Altshuler, April 4, 2010)

Human Rights Ads in Vietnam (Witnessorg)

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HumanRights

While accidentally searching for “Twitter” the other day, I saw a human rights advertisement (it won’t always come up, you may have to reload the page a few times to see it) on Google at the top. This might not seem like a big deal, just an ad for a Twitter account, but this is Vietnam, where talking about this stuff is very sensitive. For example, it would not be a good idea for me to start a blog site to talk about human rights.

When you advertise with Google, you can target your ads by location, so it’s guaranteed Witnessorg wanted this advertisement seen by Vietnamese (You can tell I’m on google.com.vn by the way) or expats here. If you look at their Twitter site (image below), their bio says: “WITNESS (www.witness.org) uses video to open the eyes of the world to human rights violations.” This is basically an ad to tell people in Vietnam to document violations on video and share.

Yikes. Like I said, sensitive stuff.

HumanRights002

CNN, What Professionalism [FAIL]

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CNNBooBoo

“Obamas juggle inaugural balls” – come on, CNN! (From the CNN homepage)

They might as well say “Obamas enjoy big balls”

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/01/20/scenes-from-the-inauguration-first-couple-shares-a-first-dance/

CNNBooBoo002

Looks at the first sentence of the article- where’s the spell check? They do this for a living! Come on!

Vietnam’s Helmet Law and Why Fashion Still Kills

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Vietnam (finally) instituted a helmet law for motorbike riders last December (2007). I’d heard that they’d tried it once a few years prior, but it just failed miserably.

Surprising, the time, it’s worked. Instantly. The day before it got enacted, people still hadn’t bought their helmets- in wait-and-see mode. But once that Friday came around, everyone had theirs own.

Cops were out everywhere, ready to enforce, helmet shops were making a killing.

A couple of months later, even I got pulled over for not wearing one (completely forgot). 150K VND (9 USD) per occurrence. Some unlucky people would get pulled over multiple times during the same day, maybe even during the same trip- luckily, there was a 3 fine maximum per day.

So, sounds like a win-win situation right? More people, less injuries.

But not quite.

If I were to guess the law would have gone something like this: Everyone on a motorbike must wear a helmet in all situations. To find the right helmet, you can go to a shop and check a helmet to make sure it has been officially approved for safety by the government, probably with some kind of sticker. Government makes some money of each approval to fund the initiative. All these ideas, as it turns out, are wrong.

Truth:

  • Children under a certain age do not need to wear helmets. In a 15mph accident, who do you think has a better chance of survival if flung into the street, a 25 year old, or a 2 year old child? Some might say claim there are no helmets for youth, but this is from lack of demand, not inability to produce helmets.
  • Helmets have stickers on them. Makes them look official and shiny. But these aren’t government stickers or official safety approvals of any kind. They’re just shiny.
  • The government law itself is loose. It’s basically, if you’re X age, wear something on your head that could be construed from far away, as a helmet. Whether it’s a helmet or not, or a safe helmet, does not matter. Your safety is in your own responsibility, even if maybe that’s what the law was made to eliminate? Force people to wear helmets, otherwise they will not?
  • Before the law, I didn’t want to wear a helmet because I figured it would me fear driving faster/more recklessly less. This is true. Not only for me, but I’ve heard that accident numbers are not so good. Maybe lower deaths, but people are driving more dangerously.

What’s happened now in the fashion of helmets here, is everyone is wearing baseball cap helmets. I was intrigued by these myself, but then Thuy told me, no way, they’re unsafe. But I said, how could they be unsafe? They have to be approved for the government right?

Wrong.

These padded baseball caps, which are guaranteed not to save your life or keep you from becoming paralyzed, are perfect acceptable under the helmet law. And since they can be stylish (like 59 50s), it’s the huge trend here.

(I was going to put a picture here, but just haven’t gotten around to it- this post has been waiting for over a month while I tried to get that picture)

This also calls into the question of how safe legitimate helmets are. How can you really be sure you’re wearing life protection, and not a padded hard hat? For me, if I have to wear a helmet, I might as well e safe instead of trying to look cool. Otherwise, what’s the point? But how do I know the helmet which I bought to save my life really will do its job? There’s no one (government group) to check and let me know! So now, even though I’m worried about safety, I might be just as poor off as those stylish people trying to do the minimum to not get fined.

Great work Vietnam. Taking a great idea, and making it useless. But at least they can write that they did it on paper. Helmet law to save lives. Check.

Budget Hero: Making America OK Again (Flash Game)

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Budget Hero is a flash game made by American Public Radio that lets you understand the current budget crisis in the USA and let you pick how you’d make changes to make sure the US survives.

The various issues are posed like how you’d seem the presented on a ballot with both sides of the argument, but much less in detail. It’s easy to play and understand. Very engrossing and can test what you really care about and what you’re willing to sacrifice to make things “better”.

Here are my results:

Budget Hero

Personally, I am big on:

  • Education. Provide opportunities, let Americans compete, stop BS’ing that we’re the best all the time when in fact we’re not. We’re getting whooped on. This is the best way to spur the economy, producing capable citizens not creating blame (India took our jobs, F India!)

    • Research
    • Opportunities for Low Income students
    • Got rid of No Child Left Behind
  • Health Care for all

    • I thought I had added Obama’s plan in here, but guess not. It wouldn’t let me add any major health care plan, said there was a conflict somewhere else but wouldn’t say where.
  • Energy Independence

    • Clean up the environment, protect the world
    • Tax bad things (oil, carbon emissions) heavily to promote, force alternatives
  • Cut the government- we really need to pay that much in taxes yet we just keep having more problems? Something isn’t right here.
  • Reducing War (the US’ military budget is more than the rest of the world combined. Plus we still have thousands of nukes- you really think someone really wants to push us to the max?)
  • Stop messing around with other countries, inspiring hatred and bitterness (see “Reducing War”)
  • Help the old.
  • F*ck the rich. Even if I become rich, which I hope I do, taking a lot of money from the rich still leaves them rich. Not the same with the poor.

When I was playing this, getting the budget right was super difficult, even after cutting a ton of military stuff. It turned out the key was Bush’s Tax Cuts:

2008-07-13_18-01-40-234

Once I repealed that, there was a ton of cash to do everything else I wanted, including helping Social Security, yet keeping things in good shape.

Agree? Disagree? Try it yourself!

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/features/budget_hero/