SOCIAL - PRO CHOICE and PRO LIFE

There is a section on "Abortion Divide" in the Abortion, Guns and Trump: A Church Group Tries to Navigate America’s Divisions 12/19/20 article in the Wall Street Journal. I don't know exactly what is the abortion law in this country. So this doodle may be already the law of the land. This doodle is a proposal that the US Congress pass a law that says pregnancy is a continuum, starting from a cell in one end and a baby at the other end. On the first portion of the continuum, abortion is legal without restriction. This is fully pro-choice. On the third and last portion, abortion is illegal except for the ? of the mother. This is the pro-life position. In the second (middle) portion, abortion is legal if the woman has gone through counseling and illegal if the woman has not gone to or has not gone through the full counseling program. The counseling program purpose is to show the woman options to keep the pregancy to birth. The congressional law will leave it up to the states to define when or how the first, second, and third portions of the continuum start and end. Liberal states may have the first portion longer to stretch out the pro-choice duration, and conservative states may have the third portion longer to lengthen the pro-life duration. The states will also decide what is the contents of the counseling program. Non-controversial things like adoption options are no brainer. However things like forcing the woman to look at the ultrasound picture of the fetus will have to be voted by the people in the state.

SOCIAL - Whistleblowing On Drug Usage

On December 8, there is an article on the Wall Street Journal about "Whistleblowers Worry SEC’s Interpretation of ‘Independent Analysis’ Could Discourage Tipsters. Although the whistleblowing is on corporate frauds, I wonder if the US can combat the drug usage by focusing on the consumption side by offering tipsters rewards. The "war on drugs" has 2 sides, the production side and the consumption side. The US tackles the production side by attacking the drug cartels in their countries and by limiting the drug trafficking into the US. This doodle is about the consumption side. If there are still people using drugs, if the US can have a drug kingpin arrested, a new one will take his place, since the money is still there. If people stop taking drugs, there is no money on the table, and the smart drug dealers will find something else to do. People continue to take drugs because this activity is mostly inside homes, not in the public. The US can have a whistleblowing program for drug usage like this. Anybody of money who is captured on camera taking drugs will not go to jail, but will have to go to rehabilitation AND also be penalized with say 10% of his networth. The money will be divided into half. One half will go to the government to pay for drug rehabilitation for people with and without money. The other half will be given to the tipster. For example a movie mogul with a networth of 100 M, will have to pay 10 M, with 5 M going to the tipster. Can the mogul still trust people around him when he takes his shots, especially now that everybody has a cell phone with camera?

BUSINESS - Warner Bros. to Release All 2021 Films on HBO Max and in Theaters Simultaneously

On Dec 3, 2020, Warner Bros. studio announced that they will release their whole slate of 2021 movies simultaneously in theaters and on its HBO Max streaming service. Movie theater owners, from the biggest chain to the mom-and-pop single cinema, decried that this strategy will kill their business. Who will go out to the movies if they can watch at home?

Instead of looking at this as an existential threat, movie theater chains should look at this as an opportunity to expand the film industry into a new horizon. Let's call this strategy the Theater Only Release (TOR) / Streaming Only Release (SOR) strategy. Instead of passively waiting for the studios to give them movies, the theater chains will work with the studios to customize movies in production for theater release only. The TOR movies may have extra or different scenes; they may have extra or different secondary characters; they may even have somewhat or totally different creative endings. In other words, for each movie, the studios will release a TOR version exclusively for movie theaters, and a SOR version exclusively for streaming services. The additional cost for versioning is not exorbitant since scenes that used to get cut during editing will now have good use; and dissimilarities can be planned as part of the script to reuse the actors, crews and locations.

Fans who cannot get enough of a movie will see both versions, lessening the cannibalization effect that the chains fear. With the TOR/SOR strategy, the traditional studios will differentiate themselves from streaming-only services such as Netflix. In addition the TOR/SOR strategy will help the DVD business since it is only on DVDs that one can find both versions in the same place.

Streaming is not the death knell of movie chains. The TOR/SOR strategy will be the carillon of a bright future.

POLITICS - 2020 First Presidential Debate

A DocNgu Doodle is my raw take on an issue or event. I may come back to this doodle, especially if there are supporting or opposing comments that interest me to refine or modify my original take.

---

The first 2020 presidential debate was a contentious one, with President Trump talking over his challenger, Mr. Biden, and the moderator, Mr. Wallace. If I were in Mr. Biden's position, I would go on my own social media channels on the next day, and re-answer all of the Mr. Wallace's questions, straight to the American public, with substance and without obnoxious interruptions. For each answer, I would stay within the 2-min requirement as in the debate. I would say to the American public that the questions were important enough that they deserve substantive and measured answers.

Walking down Madison Street in downtown Chicago one day, I noticed an optical store named "For Eyes Optical". Now, that is an interesting name. Is the name emphasizing the service, or is it a play of words? I grew up wearing eyeglasses. In Vietnam, people called people who wear eyeglasses, like me, "four eyes" -- your two eyes plus the pair of glasses. "For eyes" for "four-eyes"? Now, that is an interesting play of words to emphasize your service.

"Sugar Free" / "Sugar, Free"

I just submitted the following funny true story to Reader's Digest:

When I came to the United States in the 80's as a refugee from a war-torn country, I craved sweet things and did not have a lot of money. One day in the school's cafeteria, I noticed a small placard in front of cupcakes with these two magic words: "sugar" and "free". I grabbed a couple. The cashier charged me for both.

America Did Not Lose Vietnam. Vietnamese Did.

Regarding "America Lost Vietnam but Saved Southeast Asia" (by William Lloyd Stearman, WSJ Opinions, 1/28/2019), America did not lose Vietnam. The Vietnamese lost Vietnam. In 1975, with the fall of Saigon, the South Vietnamese lost South Vietnam. There was no more fighting American soldiers there for America to lose Vietnam. I am now a Vietnamese American; back then, as a South Vietnamese teenager, I had a good middle class life, was French educated, did not contribute much to the war effort, could not get out in 1975, learned what real communism really meant for four years, finally escaped in 1979 as one of the million of boat people who risked life for freedom. Over the years, I have been pondering about the "loss of Vietnam".
Winning or losing a war means that you have achieved your objective or not. The American objective in the Vietnam War was the containment of communism in Southeast Asia (the Domino Theory). Americans started to achieve that objective in 1972 with Nixon going to China. If Nixon could toast mao-tai with Mao Zedong, then communism was not so bad, in the sense that it was bad for the people living under the communist yoke, but not so bad that Americans could not make deals with those commies. By the early seventies, the domino countries of Southeast Asia such as Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, had mostly overcome communist insurgencies and could stand by their own. With that, America had achieved its strategic objective. America has won the Southeast Asia Domino Theory war. With China in the North acceptable, and ASEAN countries in the South strong enough, South Vietnam which was intended as the anti-communist buffer, lost its strategic tent pole role. What was left for Americans was to go home in muted victory, first with the withdrawal of troops via the Vietnamization effort, then the returning of POWs via the 1973 Paris Peace Agreement.
Between 1973 and 1975, the Vietnam War was truly Vietnamese, with North and South Vietnamese happily killing each other. The war material may be Soviet, Chinese or American, but the spilled blood was pure Vietnamese. The war for the South Vietnamese was now an existential war. But we, as South Vietnamese, did not know about it. We kept thinking this was still the Domino Theory war with the full support of Americans, not realizing that Americans had already won that war, inconspicuously and in full view. "Americans never abandon us" was the mantra in South Vietnam at that time.
I remembered living through the years of 1973 and 1974. The Second Arab Embargo hit South Vietnam hard. The pay of South Vietnamese ARVN soldiers could not keep up with the inflation; morale plummeted. Graft and corruption, which was endemic, now became epidemic in the army brass and all levels of government. As for the populace, the poor tried to survive, the rich tried to get richer, and the middle class tried to do both. Everybody tried to do something for himself, much less for the country. As for the nation of South Vietnam, we all waited for North Vietnam to attack, then resist a little bit and looked for Americans to come to the rescue. We heard that B52s were still at Guam and the Seventh Fleet was still somewhere in the South China Sea (which we called the East Sea).
December 13, 1974, the North Vietnamese attacked. The ARVN debacle was swift. Four months later, April 30, 1975, Saigon fell. People said that the ARVN did not stand and fight. ARVN soldiers were like any soldiers. They would stand and fight if convinced of the reason to do so, and led by leaders who believed in that reason. And that reason was the existence of South Vietnam. The crème of South Vietnam did not think that way. The elite and the rich who did well during the war, fled. Many top commanders who perfected the art of personal graft instead of war, ran. Why would the poor and poorly led ARVN soldiers stand and fight? But stand and fight, they did, just not enough of them to staunch North Vietnam's Spring Offensive. So it was us, the South Vietnamese -- for both who fought or those who skipped the fight, that lost South Vietnam. Saying it differently, like "America lost Vietnam", was a dishonor and insult to millions of ARVN soldiers who answered their duties for twenty long years, especially to over a quarter of million of them who paid the ultimate sacrifice.
Now it is the turn for the victorious North Vietnamese to lose Vietnam. Between 1975 and 1986, while the world moved forward, Vietnam moved backwards with its Marxist command economy. In 1975, South Vietnam got its military debacle; in 1986 the Communist Party of Vietnam got its economic debacle. Since the 1986 Doi Moi and subsequent market oriented reforms, Vietnam is doing economically much better, at times dramatically so. Ironically, this economy looks a lot like the pre-1975 South Vietnam economy - crony capitalism mixed with state capitalism, but now hiding under the socialist banner. Until responsible capitalism and representative democracy are prevalent in Vietnam, the full potential of Vietnam and its laborious and yearning population cannot be achieved.
How about America? After winning the communism containment Domino Theory war in 1973, America has been invited back by the Southeast Asia countries, including Vietnam, to contain another -ism from China. To be clear, the containment is not about to contain China, which deserves to become a super power on its own right, but about the policy of neo-feudalism espoused by the current Chinese leadership.
Godspeed for America and Vietnam.