I’m inclined to think so.

Living in America’s second largest Mormon stronghold for many years, including two years in a predominantly Mormon office, I was treated to a bird’s eye view of the squarest, looniest cult in America. And I mean loony. They have every right to practice as they please and believe in whatever they choose to. It’s when they decide to meddle in the law and legislate discrimination that my feelings go from distaste (with just a dash of revulsion) to feeling the need to speak out.

It’s now the time to speak out, as those interviewed in the article make clear. And I don’t care how “icky” some may think the idea of gay marriage it. That’s not the issue. The issue is passing a proposition that is a pure, undisguised act of discrimination, wrapped in the canard of “the sanctity of marriage.” If that were so important to these hypocrites, they would have put all that cash behind a proposition banning divorce.

There’s a delicious irony to seeing all this moral indignation over the sanctity of marriage coming from the not-so-long-ago polygamous Mormons, whose sects in my own state still have multiple wives including child-brides.

Update: Good perspective here as well.

For some background perspective, just yesterday “Dr. Doom” Roubini said China is on the verge of “falling apart.” That’s a pay site, but here is a chunk, thanks to another site:

[T]he risk of a hard landing in China is sharply rising; a deceleration in the Chinese growth rate to 7% in 2009 – just a notch above a 6% hard landing – is highly likely and an even worse outcome cannot be ruled out at this point. The global economy is already headed towards a global recession as advanced economies are all in a recession and the U.S. contraction is now dramatically accelerating. The first engine of global growth – the U.S. on the consumption side – has now already shut down. The second engine of global growth – China on the production side – is also on its way to stalling.

Thus, with the two main engines of global growth now in serious trouble a global hard landing is now almost a certainty. And a hard landing in China will have severe effects on growth in emerging market economies in Asia, Africa and Latin America as Chinese demand for raw materials and intermediate inputs has been a major source of economic growth for emerging markets and commodity exporters. The sharp recent fall in commodity prices and the near collapse of the Baltic Freight index are clear signals that Chinese and global demand for commodities and industrial inputs is sharply falling. Thus, global growth – at market prices – will be close to zero in Q3 of 2008, likely negative in Q4 of 2009 and well into negative territory in 2009. So brace yourself for an ugly and protracted global economic contraction in 2009.

John Pomfret of the Washington Post wholeheartedly agrees with the doomsters (and Roubini’s track record is spectacular, there’s no denying that). He also specifically takes issues with the NYT editorial board for its somewhat rosy belief that China can spend its way – and the world’s – out of a recession.

There’s been a lot of talk in recent weeks about how China could ride to the rescue of a global recession, using the latent power of 1.3 billion consumers to power global GDP. Who would have thought that we’d be calling on China to save our bacon? Witness a New York Times editorial on Oct. 26 with the remarkable headline: “As China Goes, So Goes….” What the Times called for, and what others have seconded, is for China to unleash domestic demand, ramp up imports, thereby keeping the global economy afloat.

First, before we get into why this probably won’t happen, let’s pause for a second to reflect on just how amazing it is that we’re asking China to prop us up. Yes, yes, China did yeoman’s work during the Asian financial crisis of 1997. But that was a pretty localized mess. What the Times — and others — are asking China to do is not just be a responsible player in its region (which at the time simply meant not devaluing the yuan). No, what the Times and others want China to do is to step forward and in a flash take over the United States’ position as the engine of global growth. That’s a pretty big demand for a country with a per capita GDP that’s in 109th place on the International Monetary Fund’s World Economic Outlook Database, squarely between Swaziland and Morocco.

As to whether China will take up the challenge: I think not. China would have to restructure its economy if it wanted to significantly grow its domestic demand. But right now China’s economy is facing real problems.

You have to read Pomfret’s entire post to see why he so strongly agrees with Roubini, and why he believes the crisis will make the CCP only more reactionary (as opposed to enlightened, as the NYT editors optimistically hope). After looking over the dismal situation, he comes back to his central thesis, first discussed here back in 2004, i.e., that as long as China’s pig-headed reactionary government is in charge, they will keep blocking their own path to superpower status and will probably never arrive there.

Unlike Pomfret, I’ve predicted China would have yet another soft landing. I’m willing to consider that I may be wrong, unlikely as that may be. The Roubini-Pomfret scenario is too frightening to imagine. If they are right, we are talking about the possibility of civil war. If there were a true financial collapse in China, either that or anarchy are not inconceivable. China’s situation is so, so tenuous, despite the amazing strides it’s made. That’s why so much here is subsidized and the iron rice bowl is still an important crutch, and why the government is going to be the candyman for the unemployed, either simply handing out money or setting up massive infrastruture projects to keep people employed and, most important, pacified.

Which brings me to my last half-baked point. I was speaking with a friend today who is involved with one of those gigantic Chinese manufacturing companies; this one makes concrete. When I expressed my worry that concrete makers would feel the pinch when overseas orders drop off and Chinese businesses stop expanding and building new structures, he said that scenario is simply wrong. “China is about to pour billions and billions of dollars into infrastructure projects to keep the economy going,” my friend reminded me. “This company is planning on a huge expansion of business.” So again, can China spend and build its way out of this? Stranger things have happened, no?

So many tectonic plates rubbing against one another, so many ways this whole thing can go, not just for China but for the world. For now, perhaps out of willful ignorance, I stick with my prediction: a relatively soft landing for China. Pomfret’s one of my heroes and I’ve agreed with him on just about everything in the past. Same with Roubini. But this time, they both had better be wrong. Otherwise, we are all in a lot more trouble than we ever imagined. It won’t be at all pretty, no matter how much we may dislike the CCP and hope for its demise.

No time to add brilliant commentary. I just want to say this reminds me of the fen qing throwing eggs at Japanese cars and businesses back in 2005. What a great way to further your cause.

Hundreds of Taiwanese protesters surrounded a hotel Wednesday where a Chinese envoy was attending a dinner banquet, tossing eggs, burning Chinese flags and trapping him inside into the early morning hours.

Chen Yunlin, the highest-ranking Communist Chinese official to ever visit Taiwan, has drawn daily protests since his five-day trip began Monday.

He was able to leave at 2:15 a.m. after police with riot shields and clubs began shoving the protesters away from the front of the Grand Formosa Regent Taipei hotel. Some demonstrators had to be dragged or carried away

The Chinese official came to sign a trade agreement with Taiwan that many believe will greatly ease tensions between the rivals. But many of the protesters distrust Beijing and oppose closer ties with the island’s biggest security threat….

Many of the approximately 800 protesters Wednesday night supported permanent independence, and some chanted ”Communist bandit get out.” They tossed eggs and pounded on cars that tried to leave the Grand Formosa Regent Taipei hotel.

Brave heroes or crazed idiots? Your call.

[I just posted this as a comment to the thread below, and then decided it merited a post of its own. Let this be my way of saying goodnight on this great day for America, and the world.]

This is richard, burnt out after a long day. Thanks for all the comments. What we saw today was a tectonic shift, an entire new paradigm (pardon the cliché) of what America is, what it stands for and all that is possible when you give people freedom and democracy. I have a lot more to say, and will try to put up a post tomorrow summarizing all that I believe this election means. Simply put, the notion that America is a wonderful place, unlike any other on the planet in terms of hope and opportunity, has been restored.

I saw the great Chris Patten speak last weekend at the Foreign Correspondents Club of China, and he confessed that despite his reputation as a conservative, he was a proud “Obamamaniac” (he actually used that term). He explained it very simply: “Obama has made American politics respectable again.”

I want that to seep in. Something happened under Bush that we hadn’t seen before, something terrible and ugly. It wasn’t new or unique to Bush; indeed, it was Richard Nixon who first sowed the seeds, but it was under Bush that it blossomed and fully reared its head. And that is the tactic of not just pointing out where you and your enemies disagree, but to question the essence of their character, and to tie them to the most anti-American of forces. Nixon’s smearing of “the pink lady” Helen Gahagan Douglas was the first ominous sign of a whole new type of smear: claiming that your opponent is a Communist; in recent months, it was a terrorist-sympathizer, a sleeper-cell Muslim, a socialist-communist-Marxist. This evil technique lay dormant for some time after Watergate, but it never was abandoned. It relied on a fantasy, a big lie, but it worked wonders. Ronald Reagan’s stories of “welfare queens” (who did not exist) who were living high off the hog thanks to welfare, was an offshoot of this tactic of creating imaginary enemies and tying them to your opponent. Willie Horton was another example, playing on unspoken racist fears and creating an association of the opponent with madman black rapists and murderers.

It was only under Bush and Karl Rove and, inexplicably, the once-honorable McCain that this tactic reached its zenith. Just as with Willie Horton, the GOP spin-monsters created a psychological association between Obama and Muslim terrorists, marxists, vote fraudsters and even white terrorists or yesteryear. Just as with “the pink lady,” this was all nonsense, a total lie, and the Rove machine knew it. No matter; it worked wonders before with the Swift Boat Veterans and, irony of ironies, with the smearing of McCain himself in 2000.

That was a long way of describing why Patten’s words were so stirring. America has finally rejected big-lie smears. The most wonderful thing about this entire election has been that Obama turned the tables on the liars and rumor mongers, not by fighting fire with fire but by simply taking the high road. He never shouted or lost his temper, he never let the inane stories faze him. Instead he stuck to the issues and showed for the first time in years that a politician can speak to the public without invoking bogeymen or scare tactics, that he could communicate with the people at their level, about the real things that matter to them, not straw-man issues and murky allegations. He made politics respectable again. He changed the face of American politics and showed the world we are not a nation of self-deluded automatons who can be swayed to insanity by the snake-oil salesmen. And that leaves American politics in a very different place than it was just a few months ago. We can already feel it – America longs to be a kinder, gentler nation once again, to be respected by the world as a leader and a role model, not as a bully and a torturer.

I am not in America now, of course, but I urge you to see this post to get a feeling for just how palpable America’s joy and relief are. A great burden, an agony, has been lifted. We can breathe again, we can see light and we can have hope. As most of you know, Obama wasn’t my first choice, but I have seen what he can do and I am impressed. A shame that he now has to face the staggering mess Bush leaves in his wake, but I think most of us realize he can’t work miracles. He is not a messiah and no one except the right ever said, sneeringly, that he was. Let’s savor the victory for now, and then brace ourselves for a lot of hard, painful work that will need to be done to complete America’s transformation into a real country again, a country in which we can disagree with others without calling them terrorists or traitors, and in which we face the fact that we are all in this together. “God bless America,” as the somewhat hackneyed and overused expression goes. Somehow tonight, despite its inherent mawkishness, it seems appropriate.

Mission accomplished.

Update: Looks like Pennsylvania, so key to any hopes McCain may have had for an upset, has gone to Obama. It also looks like we’re going to have our landslide, both in the presidential and congressional races. You can watch the projections of popular and electoral vote tallies for each state here. Excellent site. Looks like it will soon be time to gloat.

Update 2: Apparently Obama has just won Ohio. We can now invoke the L word. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s a landslide.

Update 3: Malkin, Rush and their henchmen are going ape-shit over the latest Ashley Judd-style hoax, namely that armed “Black Panthers” are intimidating voters in Philadelphia. The story is nicely debunked here. Listen to the Rush clip. Look at the clip Malkin posted. And the photos she’s posted of menacing black guards. It is pure race baiting, stoking fears of black thugs running the country if Obama wins.

One security guard holding a billy club, and it’s instantly turned into a metaphor for the black police state to come, blasted through the pipes of the wingnutosphere. Just like Ashley Judd, beaten and scarred by an out-of-control, pro-Obama nigro. Fear and racism, the only cards in their pitiful deck.

——————————
I’ll keep this up at the top until Obama’s ascension is official. Meanwhile, I can feel a heavy yoke being lifted off of America’s shoulders already. Eight years of madness are coming to an end. (And for anyone who harbors any doubts as to whether it was madness, please go here for an eloquent review of what we’ve been through, penned by a former Bush fanatic apologist admirer.) It’s time. We’re actually there. 20 or so hours.

Talk about anything – but only after you vote for Obama.

The natives are restless, and as predicted, the CCP will try to keep them pacified with the only thing in China that talks. And we all know what that is.

When Chong Yik Toy Co. went bankrupt, the bosses fled without meeting their payroll and angry workers took to the streets in protest. Less than 72 hours later, the local government came to the rescue.

Armed with bags full of cash totaling half a million dollars, accountants began distributing the money so the 900 former employees would have something to get by on. The Chinese officials who made the emergency payments on Oct. 21 called it an “advance,” part of a “back-pay insurance fund.”

But the reality was obvious to everyone: It was a government bailout.

It’s a scary article. Even though China’s economy is soaring, especially compared to the competition, a drop from 10 percent to 8 or 9 percent is still catastrophic. The plans to spread the wealth to workers in floundering manufacturing businesses are widespread and dramatic. The cash is already being doled out, and the government is doing everything it possibly can – like relaxing anti-pollution regultions – to keep the factories up and running. The big question is, can China make the switch from an export-driven economy to one fueled by domestic spending? Personally, I think they can, but not without a lot of pain in the process. They have the cash on hand to make it happen.

The article is an important reminder, however, that we haven’t even seen the start of this crisis yet. Wall Street soared back recently and there’s a sense that the bailout has put everything back in place, and the worst is over. All I can say is watch the earnings reports in the days and months ahead, and we’ll all see just how deep and cruel this recession is. It’s so easy to forget all about it as we get swept up in the joy of seeing the Republicans dethroned. But Obama is inheriting a headache beyond comprehension, and once the confetti’s swept up and the empty champagne bottles dumped in the trash, we’re all going to have to deal with a new world order, namely, an emasculated America, an eagle with seriously clipped wings. And a China that’s still rising, if not as robustly as in recent years.

As Chinese diplomats prepare for their first meeting ever with Taiwan on the colony’s own soil, John Pomfret slams Taiwan’s “sclerotic” pro-independence activists and makes the case for improving ties to China as soon as possible for the good of Taiwan’s citizenry. He also slams the CCP for the usual reasos when it comes to their stance on Taiwan: they’re dogmatic and they’re stupid. Even the issue of calling Ma “president” becomes a huge deal.

The reason that I am not that optimistic that the Chinese will act like good guests and call Ma ‘president,’ is because in general the PRC is a lousy winner. Right now, its position — its military, its economy and its geopolitical heft — dwarfs that of Taiwan. So why not give a little? Call Ma ‘president.’ The reason is that China is run by a group of nine guys — on the standing committee of the Politburo. If any of these characters suggested that China back off of its global full-court press to limit Taiwan’s influence by addressing Ma Ying-jeou as ‘president,’ that official — and all the thousands of people who work for him and rely on him for patronage — would be weakened. China’s leadership is run by men (and they are 99.99 male) who are paranoid of being seen as too conciliatory. They basically don’t understand that in order to improve ties with Taiwan, China will need to woo not just Taiwan’s business class but its people. China’s failure to see this limits the Communists’ wiggle room on issues like these. The Chinese government will justify its failure to break any ground with Taiwan by cloaking itself in its “principled” stand. And Chen will return to Beijing with a few new deals but nothing else.

Now for the Taiwanese independence activists. Since Ma was inaugurated, there have been a number of protests against Ma and his moderate stand on China. Most recently on Oct. 25, 600,000 turned out against Ma. In late October, a Taiwanese legislator and six associates helped beat up a Chinese official, Zhang Mingqing, who was holding initial talks in Taiwan about Chen’s visit…[I]f you look at Taiwan’s situation honestly, the only way actually to ensure its continued existence as a government separate from China, is to improve ties with China. That’s what Ma is trying to do. Why would Tsai and her people want to stop it? The only reason I can determine is that they want to create a crisis because only in a crisis do their politics have any traction among most of Taiwan’s people.

I became disillusioned with Taiwan’s green movement a long time ago (sorry Michael, nothing personal) for very similar reasons. Just because the PRC is dogmatic and reactionary and obsessive doesn’t mean the ROC has to be as well.

Pomfret says the meeting is as significant as the US elections, but based on his own argument I’d have to disagree: at least the US elections will have a meaningful (and probably dramatic) conclusion. If it goes according to Pomfret’s scenario this will just be more of the same.

On a somewhat irrelevant note, I wish Pomfret would stop stringing a bunch of questions together, a habit he continues in today’s post. A commenter here once delivered some classic snark on this annoying tendency.

I’ve never seen anything quite like this before. Stunning. Wonderful.

Can you imagine Bush doing something like that?

Update: Mormons have spent $20 million on this effort to legalize discrimination. Watch this scary video for some perspective.

Every once in a while my work puts me in the presence of greatness. It did so yesterday when I had the pleasure and privilege of working with South African Justice Edwin Cameron, the only public official in all of Africa to publicly state that he has AIDS. He is probably also the only openly gay official on the continent. Oxford-educated and a Rhodes Scholar, Justice Cameron’s contributions to human rights and AIDS awareness, and his personal courage, cannot be exaggerated.

Yesterday he spoke with reporters in Beijing about a recent Renmin University-UNAIDS survey [pdf file] on the attitudes of Chinese people in six cities – Kunming, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Wuhan, Zhengzhou and Beijing – toward AIDS and AIDS sufferers. The survey sampled four groups, migrant workers, blue collar workers, white collar workers and youth, and it provides some depressing if not especially surprising findings:

– More than 48% of respondents thought they could contract HIV from a mosquito bite, and over 18% by having an HIV positive person sneeze or cough on them.

– Around 83% of interviewees had never searched for information on HIV/AIDS.

– Nearly 30 % did not know how to use a condom correctly.

– Only 19 % said they would use a condom if they had sex with a new partner.

– Nearly 11% of respondents had had sex with people who were not their spouse, girlfriend or boyfriend during the past 6 months; 42% of those respondents had not used condoms.

– 30% think HIV positive children should not be allowed to study at the same schools as uninfected children.

– Nearly 65% would be unwilling to live in same household with an HIV-infected person and 48% of interviewees would be unwilling to eat with an HIV-infected person.

In other words, we haven’t made much progress since I first started writing about this topic five years ago, at least not in terms of people’s attitudes and awareness. In terms of treatment, there has been huge progress in China, including anti-discrimination laws and free retrovirals for anyone with AIDS. The government needs to do much, more, however. Justice Cameron said, for example, that while the government provides free retrovirals for treatment of AIDS, people must still pay for medications for opportunistic infections from their own pockets, which can easily impoverish them.

I don’t really know what it is about natural leaders, the way they stand out in a crowd even when silent, and the way that they make those they’re talking with feel like they are the only person in the entire world. Edwin Cameron has those qualities, and the reporters he spoke to were visibly moved when he made an urgent appeal to them to encourage HIV sufferers in China to act as activists and to speak out the way he has. That is the only way to overcome stigma, he said., noting that what makes AIDS so insidious is that in many places it remains “a silent disease.” People suffer in silence for fear of ostracism if they tell the truth. This fear discourages Chinese people from getting tested, and those who are tested seek to hide their HIV status at all costs.

“This is a tragedy,” Justice Cameron said. “The Chinese government has a good treatment program. But there is a disturbing pattern here: 35-40,000 people in China are receiving antiviral treatment but more than double that number need treatment.” And they remain silent, and will die unnecessarily, as AIDS today is fully treatable. He pointed to activists in the US in the 1980s who generated a wave of publicity and awareness that put a human face on the disease, lessening the stigmatization in America dramatically. In China and Africa, there are few such activists. That is one of the keys to ending stimatization, he said: Africa needs a Magic Johnson to tell people they do not need to be ashamed of having AIDS.

It isn’t just a matter of fearing ostracism from friends and family, however. He said that AIDS sufferers still get turned away from health clinics in China’s provincial areas. The most poignant moment came when he described to reporters how he needed a special invitation sent from the Chinese government to its consulate in South Africa for him to be permitted entry into China. He added that when he comes to the US he must undergo an even more humiliating ordeal, being tested at the airport to determine whether his AIDS is under control (I am not sure exactly what they test for).

Hu and Wen have visited hospitals and spoken out on AIDS, he said, but efforts to educate the public remain seriously inadequate. “I beg them to do more,” Justice Cameron said.

Perhaps the most controversial topic he discussed was how markedly different the AIDS epidemic is in southern and western Africa, where the level of infection is above 11 percent. This is, he explained, “a mature epidemic, meaning that everone, gay or straight, young or old, knows someone who has died of AIDS.” This is unique; no other geography on earth has seen a massive AIDS epidemic that has spread beyond the main risk groups (injection drug users, plasma donors, “MSM” – men having sex with men – and sex trade workers). It was feared back in the time when I wrote my original post that China would be like Africa, home to a massive epidemic seeping into the mainstream, heterosexual population. It appears that will not happen. Justice Cameron said no one was sure why this phenomenon occurred only in a specific section of Africa, but said the reason could be genetic. In China, the number of people infected by shoddy plasma collection has leveled off, and the levels of infection are beginning to mirror those in other countries, with MSM and injection drug users being the most affected groups.

Working with Edwin Cameron was an inspiration. It was also inspiring to see the level of interest in this topic among the Chinese media. You can se some of the articles here and here. This was the high point of my nearly two years in China, and a day I’ll never forget.

One cannot watch this must-see-to-believe clip without a sense of wonder that someone we once thought was basically a “decent” guy has allowed his campaign to sink to the level of pure, unmasked, unashamed and deranged McCarthyism. And that is not a word to use frivolously. This is one of those times when it’s called for.

The reporter does what reporters should do, except for one thing: he allowed the unctuous spokesperson to smear an innocent scholar, labeling him an anti-Semite. The reporter should have debunked the smear and demanded evidence. At least he pointed out the fact that “John McCain served as chairman of the International Republican Institute during the 1990s which provided grants worth $500,000 to the Center for Palestine Research and Studies which Khalidi co-founded.” Bastards.

Just a few more days of the most torturous race in history. I repeat my pledge: If McCain wins, I’ll stop this blog the next day, probably forever.