Records

Karl Ninh on the floor of the Republican National Convention, August 2004 in New York

You do not think Americans are affected by Palestinian terrorists, check this list.

I am half way through the book Rebel-in-chief : inside the bold and controversial presidency of George W. Bush, very interesting and full of insights.

Celebrating Memorial Day, here is a picture of the commander-in-chief. I have a special burden in my heart to pray everyday for those who are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom. Pray for protection, deliverance, guidance and above all that each of these brave men and women would come to know Christ and His love personally. I specifically claim the promise in Psalm 68:5 for the families of our armed services men and women.

We had a baptism for 3 people today at our church.

Nhatnam graduated from James Bowie high school today. I and my brother went to the graduation at the Nokia Live Theater before headed up to Richardson for a highschool reunion of sort at my high school math teacher's house. He was stationed in Germany and served as an artillery captain with the US 3rd Army Division before becoming a math teacher. Yes, we do keep in touch after all these years. I chatted with him about school, education, funding, .... He confirmed the problem, that we do not need more dollars for education, but we do need more education for our dollars as Peggy Venable of the American for Prosperity has been saying for years. Corruption at the DISD headquarters is the biggest problem. Then we need strong principle at each of the school. We need to give them the power to do their job but then hold each accountable. However, I discover that the problem is much bigger than just the education system. The problem is more with the culture. Thank God for Bill Cosby and we need more people like him, both in the African-American community and the Hispanic community.

Karl Ninh at the famous Carnegie deli in New York city.

Karl Ninh with parents and brother at the inaugural ball January 20th of 2005:

Let's spice things up with a photo. Here was Karl Ninh with former Attorney General John Ashcroft and his wife Janet at the Inaugural Ball 2005 January 20th.



or two, three ..., here was Karl Ninh on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange

Got this from a friend in Vietnam.

Question: What is the most accurate definition of globalization? Answer: the death of princess Diana. Question: Why such an answer? Answer: A British princess, with an Egyptian boyfriend, had a crash in a French tunnel. They were driven by a Belgian driver in a German car with Dutch engine, who drank Scotch whisky. They were pursued by a mob of Italian paparazzi on Japanese motocycles. They were treated by American doctors using Brazilian drugs. This was IM'ed from a person in Vietnam, using the technology of Bill Gates, and in all likelihood you are reading these lines on a computer that has a Taiwanese mainboard.

I am unhappy that more than 30% of my cash bonus is going down the federal black hole.

Back to my Krav Maga class after almost two weeks out, since my gun defense class.

I spoke with a group of folks at the Southwest regional office of the USDA Food and Nutrition Services, telling them how VPS Dallas partnered with various organizations and agencies such as the University of Texas at Arlington, Texas Instruments, the Dallas County Community College District, ... to better our community with our many projects throughout the year.

Vuong & Van threw a birthday party for Emily tonight at the Strikz Entertainment Center in Frisco. We had so much fun bowling and just hanging out.

I got a ride with Jane and Bill down to Austin for a lunch briefing with the governor's staff and then dessert and coffee with the governor at the mansion. Chief of staff Deidre Delisi briefed us a a varieties of issues. Then it was opened up for question. We could ask anything we like. The majority of the governor's staff were there, from Phil Wilson, the deputy chief of staff and economic development director, to Steve McCraw, Director of the Office of Homeland Security, Mike Morrissey, the Budget Director, Teresa Spears, the Campaign Operation gal, Luis Saenz, Campaign Manager, to his education policy, press, .... Steve McCrew really assured us on the issue of homeland security by securing the border, assessing the threat that the state of Texas is facing. He's very competent, let me assure those of you out there who are concerned. I think the governor has the best guy taking care of that area.

Got to see Michael Wolfe, who was a fellow delegate at the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York. He is the Republican nominee for the Harris County School Trustee in this November election.

On the way back, we stopped by the Little Czech bakery in a little town named West on interstate 35, exit 353 to be exact.

How have president Bush's and the Republican majority Congress helped to reduce your tax burden, take a look at your effective federal income tax rate for 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006.

Stayed in a room at church to work on my little speech for this coming Tuesday before headed over to Nam's graduation party. We had fun playing scrabble.

Spent the day with the Fair Tax folks, Genie and Jason, and a whole bunch of people who are passionate about the issue. Then went shopping at Costco before I came home, got ready for Joe & Rachel's wedding reception tonight. Saw a whole bunch of my old highschool buddies at the reception in Arlington.

A fellow 2004 Republican National Convention delegate brought to my attention yesterday that the Republican Party of Texas has already made available the list of delegates that will be serving on the four committees at the upcoming Republican State Convention in San Antonio. I will be representing senate district 8 on the Temporary Organization Committee, thanks to Wayne and Mandy, SD8 committeeman and committeewoman on the State Republican Executive Committee, for the confidence and recommendation for appointment.

Had an apple for breakfast this morning instead of my regular mini muffin or waffle and honey since I have another reason to avoid sugar. It gives you quick boost but it doesn't last long and so gives you crash in the level of energy. Not only that but sugar itself doesn't trigger the body to produce insulin like carbohydrate does, and therefore more gets converted to fat.

Now I also understand why I should not be eating a big meal at night or eating too late unless I want the beer belly. Your metabolism system shuts down at night. Therefore, what you eat will not be burned as fast at night as during the day. Thus, it gets converted to fat.

Check this out. I am listening to the audiobook The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz. Like what I hear so far in the first CD.

The National Center for Policy Analysis hosted a luncheon with John Stossell today at the Belo Mansion. It's always refreshing to hear from a libertarian, who is definitely for free market and limited government except I think they go a little too far with the doctrine of free will on the moral issues. The topic is about education and the need to leave it to free market forces instead of in the hands of the government bureaucrats who have a monopolizing stranglehold on the education institutions. Government without exception never does anything better than a free market solution. The US Postal Service said they couldn't deliver things overnight until FedEx came along and proved them wrong. Attached the money, whether it's $6,800 per year per student, or $10,000, to the kid and let the school compete for that kid and his money. The bureaucrats will tell you most parents won't be able to evaluate every aspect of a school to determine which one of the schools is the best. Most people can go out and buy a car, and how many are expert on cars? In an open society, good news travel fast and bad news even faster. Right now, parents and their children are trapped in a school unless they choose to sell their house and move to a different neighborhood. That should not be. Some of the charter school now begin to have teachers available through a cell phone until 9:00 pm, where kids can call and ask questions about homework. Eventually, parents will see that and ask, why don't my kids have that? American kids are on par with kids in other developed countries until about fourth grade. By twelth grade, a kid in Belgium will score 76 on the International Test compare to 47 for a kid in an above average school in New Jersey, which is the state that is above average in these United States. Kids are not motivated to learn because learning is not being made attractive and fun to them. And that is because there aren't the best teachers in the classroom. Some school districts have more administrative personnels than teachers in the classroom.

Americans have to come up with innovative program like Perfect Attendance to keep kids in school. In Vietnam, K-12 are not compulsory, the parents have to pay tuition so there are a lot of kids whose family couldn't afford it have to drop out even though they love to learn. What a contrast!

Solar powered backpack, aren't they cool or what?

I put in about 12 hours at work today. Got off at 8:00 pm and stopped by Hoang's house for dinner with a few friends.

Katie put me in touch with Thang, who directed a short film she's just worked on. Thang will be submitting a copy for our 2nd annual VPS Film Festival later this year, September 15th and 16th to be exact. He's also going to submit a documentary he has just finished shooting as well.

The story of Julio Franco in the May 2006 issue of Best Life Magazine is a great story. I am not sure however if I want to follow as strict a diet as he does. I want a great body but I also wants to be able to have the steak and the ice cream. But I sure want to have a disciplined spiritual life that he has.

We had a pretty good BBQ picnic right on the lawn of our church. This is our very first Mother's Day celebration at the new facility. Previous years we have had to pay the city of Arlington $100 for a pavilion rental at a public park for our BBQ. We had to transport the sound system and all the food to the park and then back. Thank God that won't be necessary from now on.

Today is the first day of Dallas Habitat for Humanity one week buidling blitz. I am assigned to 4529 Burma in the historic Joppa neighborhood in South Dallas, just east of IH-45 and south of Illinois. We together raised all the walls. Once the walls were all squared up, then some folks putting up OSB while I and and many others put in the cap plate all around. After that, we were all either on the roof pulling the trusses or staying on the ground and helping with raising the trusses up to the roof level.

It was so hot. Altogether, I drank 3 bottle of gatorade, 591 mL each, and close to a gallon of water. A total of about 700 volunteers worked at our location, which has about 6 or 7 houses being built.

Saw Lauren at lunch, who was working on a different house this time. We built at the same house last time, a couple weeks ago. Also saw judge Dianne Kathryn Jones at lunch. She's also building on a different house.

I left at four o'clock to go help Henry & Taylor pick up their beds and then went shopping a little bit for our church's Mother's Day picnic after the service tomorrow.

Check out this Mother's Day video clip a friend sent me.

We went to Tokyo One for lunch to celebrate Jeffrey's birthday.

A great source for congressional district map, anywhere in these United States.

If you want to have an Adult Name Change in Texas, fill this (PDF) out and file it at a civil court in your county.

Couldn't post for the last couple of days because my hosting service, iPowerWeb, upgraded their servers and had to put on more stringent security and didn't allowed ftp connection from blogger.com. I was surprised but glad to find out I was not the only one having the problem. Many people use blogger.com and have iPowerWeb as their hosting service so they identified the problem and got it fixed, thanks folks!

I was a little concerned to see the programming being interrupted last night and the
tornado warning came on. Found out it was for Collin county. Didn't think much of it until I woke up this morning and saw the devastation in the cities of Anna and Westminster. We need to pray for the folks there. As of this morning, there were only 3 deaths, one teenager and an elderly couple.

I lost a little bit of skin on my knuckles because I punched without the gloves last Saturday. I saw we were going to do hammer fist strike today so I went straight home and didn't come to the Krav Maga class after attended the Coppell city council meeting. Mayor Doug Stover presented Dr. Sunhee Hong, the president of DFW Asian American Citizens Council, the Asian Heritage Proclamation. Thanks so much to councilman Brianna Hinojosa-Flores for bringing it to the attention of Mr. Jim Witt, the city manager and the city council and to make it happened.

VPS Dallas had our general meeting tonight at Duc's place late afternoon today and then we headed to Zander's House for dinner.

I really like what the president said in his speech at the Oklahoma State University graduation ceremony yesterday: "These advances in technology will transform lives -- and they will present you with profound dilemmas. Science offers the prospect of eventual cures for terrible diseases, and temptations to manipulate life and violate human dignity. With the Internet, you can communicate instantly with someone halfway across the world -- and isolate yourself from your family and your neighbors. Your generation will have to resolve these dilemmas. My advice is, harness the promise of technology without becoming slaves to technology. My advice is, ensure that science serves the cause of humanity, and not the other way around."

We had our last session helping people signing up for medicare part D yesterday morning. Afterward, stopped by Van & Hai's place for lunch before headed to a pretty good gun defense seminar at the Krav Maga school in Allen. It was scheduled for 3 hours but John Whitman, the instructor, was kind enough to extend it for an extra 45 minutes. John is a 3rd Degree Black Belt, one of the highest ranking senior Krav Maga instructor in North American. He does a lot of training for law enforcement personnels. Back to Van and Hai's for some more crabs and crawfishes after the seminar.

Art George, senior Vice President of TI, who is managing the High Performance Analog (HPA) business unit, was the speaker at yesterday DFWAACC leadership training luncheon series. He spoke on the topic of how to successfully sell yourself at work, ie. how to communicate your results.

This is our 7th week in the 13-week EE training class at our church. We had five teams went out last night. The students really liked the on-the-job training every week. We the trainers also learned much from each of the other teams. Many families were presented with the gospel. To God be the glory!

Yesterday the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund sent out the following letter, urging people to contact Congress for the renewal of particularly section 5 & 203 of the Voting Rights Act of 1964. I oppose this because the federal government should have no business in this. My hard earned tax dollars should not be spent for this. I am a naturalized citizen myself. You are required to be sufficiently proficient in English to become a citizen. Then why do you need materials, particularly voter registration application and ballot, in another language other than English? See my April 12th entry.


May 1, 2006

The Honorable Arlen Specter
Committee on the Judiciary
United States Senate
711 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Chairman Specter:

We are writing to urge you to restore and renew the Voting Rights Act, in particular, the provisions for language assistance (Section 203) and enforcement (Section 5). Next year these provisions will expire unless Congress reauthorizes them. Our groups promote the political participation of Asian American voters.

Section 203 has given Asian Americans a real voice in the political process. Translated voter registration forms have helped more Asian Americans register to vote. Multilingual ballots have allowed voters to cast their vote independently. Election notices in Asian language media and direct communication with community groups have increased voter turnout. Section 203 ensures that almost 700,000 Asian Americans across the nation have access to the vote.

Section 203 requires language access to the vote. Under the current test for coverage, or "trigger," Section 203 covers jurisdictions that have 5% or more than 10,000 voting age citizens who speak the same language, are limited English proficient, and, as a group, have a higher illiteracy rate than the national illiteracy rate. Section 203 now requires language assistance in Chinese, Korean, Filipino, Japanese, and Vietnamese in 16 counties in 7 states.

In many places, however, the Asian American population is growing but still too small to meet Section 203's current test for coverage. Congress should lower the numeric trigger to 5,000 so that more Americans can exercise their right to vote.

Lowering the trigger to 5,000 would add language assistance in Khmer (Cambodian), Thai, and Asian Indian languages. This increases the Asian languages covered from 5 to 8. The number of jurisdictions would increase from 16 to 21. Counties in two new states, Virginia and Maryland , would be covered under this change.

Lowering the trigger to 5,000 will also directly benefit Latinos. Under the current trigger, 217 jurisdictions are covered for Spanish language assistance. Lowering the trigger to 5,000 adds 29 new Spanish jurisdictions, for a total of 246 jurisdictions covered.

Additionally, Section 203 coverage should be determined more frequently. Coverage is determined only once every ten years, following the decennial census. Yet population changes can be much more rapid. Testing for Section 203 coverage should occur every 5 years. This would be consistent with the Census Bureau's new initiative to provide more frequent data through the American Community Survey (ACS). Through these recommendations, we hope you will support expanding Section 203 to ensure more limited English proficient Americans can fully enjoy the right to vote.

It is important to note that despite the successes of Section 203, there have also been shortcomings in compliance. For example, voting materials have been mistranslated, interpreters spoke the wrong language or dialect, interpreter shortages led to voters being turned away because no one could assist them, and poll workers did not post translated signs. The U.S. Department of Justice has brought lawsuits against counties in California , Texas , and Massachusetts to ensure compliance. The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund recently brought a similar lawsuit against New York City . Vigorous enforcement of Section 203 is still needed.

Finally, in addition to Section 203, we also urge you to support strengthening the enforcement provision (Section 5) of the Voting Rights Act by addressing recent decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court. Section 5 ensures that cities and states with a history of voting discrimination against African American, Latino, Native American, Asian American, and language minority voters, will be deterred from implementing voting changes that will weaken the ability of minority voters to participate in the political process. We hope you will support restoring Section 5's retrogression analysis that was significantly curtailed by the U.S. Supreme Court in its Bossier II decision.

We hope that you will support the reauthorization and expansion of Sections 203 and 5 of the federal Voting Rights Act, and will also urge your colleagues on the Judiciary Committee to join you in defending the right to vote.

Sincerely,

I am glad to have listened to the audio book Texas Wisewomen Speak. Two people faced discrimination: one, Barbara Jacket, had faith in God and was able to grow through the circumstance, remaining positive. The other, Carmen Lomas Garza, didn't and grew bitter. I particularly love the advice that women should learn how to cook, because the ability to whip up dinner before a business meeting will be nothing short of a miracle for the dealings afterward. I loved the story of Dr. Juliet Villarreal Garcia, president of the University of Texas at Brownsville. I also wish the Democrats would have more of legislators like state senator Judith Zaffirini. The world would be a better place with more entrepreneurs like Ninfa Laurenzo. What could have been if Sarah Weddington had been pro-life?

A great article on a few cases of people trying to shutdown or retaliate bloggers.

Buddhism does not believe in a creator God so it really bugs me if one claims to be a devout buddhist and said he also believes in a god who created the universe.

The Jewish Community Relations Council and the World Affairs Council of Greater Dallas jointly hosted a luncheon with Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer at the Crescent Hotel today. He was the American Ambassador to Egypt from 1997 to 2001 and then U.S. Ambassador to Israel from 2001 to 2005.

He provided a lot of insight into the middle east politics that I have not heard before, much more factual and practical. One thing the ambassador cited repeatedly is the Arab Development Report. Tom Friedman's book was mentioned often as well. His book was translated into Arabic and the Ambassador has given many copies to the high officials of Egypt. The Arabs themselves recognized their own problems. We just need to motivate them to fix them. A couple of problems mentioned by the ambassador that particularly stuck out in my mind are:

1. School is teaching kids to accumulate facts and not to stimulate the thought process.
2. The problem of persistent conflict, that violence is a way of life. I wonder if this is the fulfillment of what was spoken in Genesis 25:13-18, particularly verse 18.

The 5 areas of strategic importance the US has focused on in the middle east area have not changed in the past 20 years, regardless of who was in the White House and who controled Congress. The US has been successful at some and could have done better at others. Now that he is an outsider, no longer a State Department personnel, he can offer six different ways he think the US needs to change the way they handle things:

1. Foreign assistance: the Israelis themselves have told us that they no longer need economic assistance. They however do need security assistance: weapons and the likes. So we should listen to them and reconfigure our aid packages.
2. We should export the idea of democracy and not democracy itself.
3. We need a national energy policy, not that we could be independent in his opinion but we should become less dependent.
4. The Palestinians, the Arabs have been a lot of talk and seldom came through with their promised financial help. On average, only 25 cents on a dollar promised have been delivered. We should encourage the Arabs to do more for their fellow Arab brothers.
5. Iran cannot be a nuclear power, whatever it takes.
6. Eliminate the terrorists. The absence of any reformist trend within Islam is troublesome. They are in need of a similar reformation as the Protestant reformation within Christianity. We need to give the U.S. military the tools and the space they need to do their job.

A question was asked about the six generals who spoke out against secretary Rumfelds. What would be the protocol for ambassador Kurtzer as a State Department personnel to voice his differing opinions. The answer is very straightforward. You had a chance to have your say but once a presidential determination has been made, you either try to carry it out the best you can or resign.

An observation was mentioned that an NGO always does a better job solving a problem than any governmental agency. I dare to speculate the reason is that they are held accountable for how they spend the money given to them.

An interesting note is that Gamal Mubarak is going around Egypt engaging people and cultivating grassroots politics.

A question was asked about the prospect of Israel having a woman prime minister. That lady who asked the question must have forgotten that Golda Meir was the prime minister from 1969 to 1974. On the same topic, current Minister of Foreign Affairs Tzipi Livni is very capable and it would not surprise the ambassador if she turns out to be Israel prime minister sooner or later. In fact, she and the currrent interim prime minister, Ehud Olmert, were the two people that the ambassador believed are the most important players in Israel politics and told secretary Rice so right before he left his post.

I learned that the defense minister is the second most powerful post in Israel. I also learned that the reason the Likud party lost it influence because it's the only party left still believe in a bi-national state for Israel and wants to hang on to the west bank and Gaza while the rest of the country want nothing to do with the Palestinians anymore because everytime they had dealings with the Palestinians, someone got killed.

Thank God for Southwest Airlines. You can change your ticket online, cost you nothing more than the difference in the fares, not like American Airlines where you have to call and then pay the difference in fares plus an additional $50.

Carrollton mayor Becky Miller presented the Asian American Heritage Month proclamation to a group of us, members of the board of the DFW Asian American Citizens Council at the regular council meeting tonight. I had fun playing whirly ball with the Dallas YRs afterward.

G. Michael Gruber, a partner at the law firm Gruber Hurst Johansen & Hail and Mark A. Shank, a partner at the law firm of Hughes & Luce organized a luncheon for Republican candidate for Dallas County District Attorney Toby Shook at the Crescent club today. Congressman Pete Sessions was right on the mark that Vic Cunningham is such a big man, who can come together and support Toby immediately after the Republican primary for the DA race this November. I am so honored to have met judge Vic Cunningham, his wife, his parents, his brothers, and continue to learn much from this great man, who set a great example of being a man. My admiration of Pete also continues to grow all the more as I have more and more opportunities to listen to him in small group setting on various topics.

The Carrollton Library Advisory Board had a pretty informative meeting tonight. We had Nicole from Brookhaven Community College visiting for her government class' credit.

Because the price of a gallon of gasoline has risen so much so far, people are complaining. The media is not helping any by hyping the issue with people selling off their small possessions to buy gas. I am glad things are being put in perspective. To start, a gallon of gasoline is cheaper than your 16oz cup of latte at your neighborhood Starbucks. Congressman Sam Johnson cited columnist Rich Galen: "When I was in Paris a few weeks ago, I noted gasoline was 2.55 Euros per Liter.

"Tell me if I did this right:
There are 3.78 Liters per gallon
2.55 Euros equals $3.17
$3.17 x 3.78 = $11.98 per gallon.

"I am in New York as I type this, so I went to a local grocery store and bought a bottle of water. 99 cents. 16.9 fluid ounces.

"For those who slept through this in third grade, there are 128 ounces to the gallon. 99 cents for 16.9 ounces = $7.50 per gallon....FOR WATER!!!"