One thing I immediately noticed when I got back to America from Asia was the difference between Chinese and American physiques. Most of the Chinese I knew and met were relatively slender, while America seems to be a sea of fat people (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

But alas, it seems it’s now China’s turn to pay the price of progress and capitalism as its people steadily put on the pounds.

The number of obese people in China doubled to 60 million people in the 10 years to 2002 with diseases related to an unhealthy diet and lifestyle also on the rise, the government said.

China’s first comprehensive national survey on diet, nutrition and diseases found that 7.1 percent of Chinese adults were obese and 22.8 percent were overweight, Wang Longde, China’s vice minister of health told a news conference.

An estimated 200 million of China’s population of around 1.3 billion were overweight, Wang said.

“Compared with the nutrition survey results of 1992, the prevalence of being overweight has increased 39 percent and the prevalence of obesity increased 97 percent,” Wang said, warning the problem will get worse.

The good news of the survey is that fewer people in China are hungry, and malnutrition rates have dropped. The obesity problem, not surprisingly, is most severe in China’s urban areas where people are eating more fat and fewer vegetables. Thanks, MacDonalds.

This new report from a leading Israeli thinktank doesn’t tell us anything we enlightened Democrats don’t know already — but it’s good to see it receiving validation from such respectable sources.

The war in Iraq did not damage international terror groups, but instead distracted the United States from confronting other hotbeds of Islamic militancy and actually “created momentum” for many terrorists, a top Israeli security think tank said in a report released Monday.

President Bush has called the war in Iraq an integral part of the war on terrorism, saying that deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein hoped to develop unconventional weapons and could have given them to Islamic militants across the world.

But the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University said that instead of striking a blow against Islamic extremists, the Iraq war “has created momentum for many terrorist elements, but chiefly al-Qaida and its affiliates.”

Jaffee Center director Shai Feldman said the vast amount of money and effort the United States has poured into Iraq has deflected attention and assets from other centers of terrorism, such as Afghanistan.

It’s soothing to fantasize that this awful war in Iraq may have been worthwhile for its value in drawing in and then eliminating terrorist groups. Only problem is, it just isn’t so. In fact, it only let the truly deadly groups flourish, multiply and diversify. Oh well. Any other excuses that might justify the war in Iraq?

I want everyone to read this post about how enlightened sages on the far-right heap scorn and mockery on Christopher Reeve and express joy in his plight and in his death, and for good reason — he was pro-Kerry. This is some of the most disgraceful stuff I’ve ever seen, and I read it in a mild state of shock.

We all know by now that Sinclair Broadcasting, the same jolly fellows who a few months ago refused to air the Nightline program in which the names of our soldiers killed in Iraq were recited, will force its 62 stations to pre-empt regular programming a few days before the election to broadcast a Swift Boat-type 90-minute anti-Kerry propaganda piece produced by a major fan of Reverend Moon.

Called “Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal,” the documentary features Vietnam veterans who say their Vietnamese captors used Mr. Kerry’s 1971 Senate testimony, in which he recounted stories of American atrocities, prolonging their torture and betraying and demoralizing them. Similar claims were made by prisoners of war in a commercial that ran during the summer from an anti-Kerry veterans group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

Two of the former prisoners who appeared in the Swift Boat advertisement were interviewed for the movie, including Ken Cordier, who had to resign as a volunteer in the Bush campaign after the advertisement came out.

Sinclair’s plan to show the documentary was first made public by The Los Angeles Times on Saturday.

Mark Hyman, Sinclair’s vice president for corporate relations, who doubles as a conservative commentator on its news stations, said the film would be shown because Sinclair deemed it newsworthy.

“Clearly John Kerry has made his Vietnam service the foundation of his presidential run; this is an issue that is certainly topical,” he said. Asked what defined something as newsworthy, Mr. Hyman said, “In that it hasn’t been out in the marketplace, and the news marketplace.”

Because Sinclair is defining the documentary – which will run commercial free – as news, it is unclear if it will be required by federal regulations to provide Mr. Kerry’s campaign with equal time to respond.

But acknowledging that news standards call for fairness, Mr. Hyman said an invitation has been extended to Mr. Kerry to respond after the documentary is shown. “There are certainly serious allegations that are leveled; we would very much like to get his response,” he said.

Asked if Sinclair would consider running a documentary of similar length either lauding Mr. Kerry, responding to the charges in “Stolen Honor” or criticizing Mr. Bush, Mr. Hyman said, “We’d just have to take a look at it.”

This is, of course, just the latest example of the disintegration of politics in America, where the media can so blatantly and shamelessly take sides and actively participate in the most reckless smear campaigns. We simply never saw anything like this in US politics until the shrub dynasty. What happened?

Josh Marshall has been following this story closely and offers some keen observations.

In case you are holding out some errant hope about the accuracy or fairness of the presentation, you’ll be happy to know that the major claim-to-fame of the movie’s producer, Carlton Sherwood, is Inquisition, his 1991 expose on the US government’s alleged ‘persecution’ of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon.

Sherwood’s report was so ‘independent’ that he let Moon’s representatives pre-screen it and make changes to the text. They also reportedly agreed to buy 100,000 copies of the book for good measure.

Welcome to the world of Rove.

Rove? Is Marshall actually implying this is part of a Republican conspiracy? The very idea! I’m shocked.

Update: Josh Marshall again, in another must-read post. He is seething.

Unlike cable programming, local broadcast licenses aren’t ‘owned’ — courts have always been clear on this. The right to broadcast over a given slice of spectrum is public property on loan to the broadcaster in exchange for providing programming in the public interest. This move is but a paler version of the de-democratization we’re now seeing in Russia as the standing government asserts increasing control over a nominally independent media.

It’s not a ‘fairness’ or a free speech issue. It’s a massive and quite public case of election and campaign finance fraud.

It’s the sort of thing that, if it happens, will put the legitimacy of the entire election into doubt.

Welcome to the world of Rove.

Pre-senile dementia is the diagnosis of one doctor, and the evidence is the acute difference between the way bush communicated ten years ago compared to today. Something’s going on, and it’s not good. Watch this quicktime clip to see the dramatic contrast.

Via Kos, who has more to say about it. “Dry-drunk syndrome”? Quite thought provoking.

This article in the WaPo interviews young American Marines in Iraq and is sure to generate a lot of discussion. The stories these soldiers tell aren’t pretty.

It starts with a 20-year-old marine who quit his job as a firefighter after September 11 and joined the Marines because, he admits, he wanted to get revenge. But instead, he’s disillusioned and angry.

Sometimes I see no reason why we’re here,” Perez said. “First of all, you cannot engage as many times as we want to. Second of all, we’re looking for an enemy that’s not there. The only way to do it is go house to house until we get out of here.”

Perez is hardly alone. In a dozen interviews, Marines from a platoon known as the “81s” expressed in blunt terms their frustrations with the way the war is being conducted and, in some cases, doubts about why it is being waged. The platoon, named for the size in millimeters of its mortar rounds, is part of the 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment based in Iskandariyah, 30 miles southwest of Baghdad.

The Marines offered their opinions openly to a reporter traveling with the 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines during operations last week in Babil province, then expanded upon them during interviews over three days in their barracks at Camp Iskandariyah, their forward operating base.

The Marines’ opinions have been shaped by their participation in hundreds of hours of operations over the past two months. Their assessments differ sharply from those of the interim Iraqi government and the Bush administration, which have said that Iraq is on a certain — if bumpy — course toward peaceful democracy.

“I feel we’re going to be here for years and years and years,” said Lance Cpl. Edward Elston, 22, of Hackettstown, N.J. “I don’t think anything is going to get better; I think it’s going to get a lot worse. It’s going to be like a Palestinian-type deal. We’re going to stop being a policing presence and then start being an occupying presence. . . . We’re always going to be here. We’re never going to leave.”
….
“The reality right now is that the most dangerous opinion in the world is the opinion of a U.S. serviceman,” said Lance Cpl. Devin Kelly, 20, of Fairbanks, Alaska.

Lance Cpl. Alexander Jones, 20, of Ball Ground, Ga., agreed: “We’re basically proving out that the government is wrong,” he said. “We’re catching them in a lie.”

This is an immense article and you should read it all if you can stomach it. One last quote.

Asked if he was concerned that the Marines would be punished for speaking out, Autin responded: “We don’t give a crap. What are they going to do, send us to Iraq?”

Could be, since they just endorsed Kerry in the most ringing terms — and they had endorsed shrub four years ago!

.. if Bush partisans could turn aside disagreement with a brusque “elections have consequences” in 2001, it turns out today that governing has consequences, too.

One of them should be that Americans elect John Kerry president in November.

Bush’s term in office has been marked by two major failures. One is his conduct of the war in Iraq. The other is his stewardship of the nation’s fiscal health
….
We believe the White House’s policy-makers approached the war with preconceived notions about success based on what the president later called “just guessing.” They brushed aside warnings and contrary opinions. They chose ideology over expertise. This arrogance led to a series of military, political and diplomatic blunders and, we believe, resulted in the unnecessary deaths of many brave Americans.
….
In almost every area, deliberate gaps between the administration’s rhetoric and reality have become routine. Last year’s misinformation about the cost of Medicare drug coverage is just one example.
….
When George W. Bush took office in a deeply divided nation, he promised to reach out to unite the country. If anything, he has helped make the rifts deeper. That may be his real failure as president.

John Kerry can do better.

No kidding. This is from Mark Kleiman, who asks, “Does anyone know of a media outlet or commentator that supported Gore in 2000 and is supporting Bush today?” I suspect he’ll be hard pressed to find any.

In the past two days Kerry has also picked up endorsements from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, The St. Louis Post Dispatch, The Atlanta-Journal Constitution, The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Portland Press-Herald in Maine.

This is really ugly. Welcome to the age of bush Republicanism — threats, harrassment and vengeance.

We expected that perhaps a few readers might cancel subscriptions, and maybe even ads, but have been amazed at a few of the more intense communications, some of which bordered on outright personal attacks and uncalled-for harassment.

We have been told by several avid Bush supporters that the days when newspapers publish editorials without personal repercussions are over. As publishers, we have printed editorials for decades, and have endorsed candidates, both Republican and Democrat. When Bush was endorsed four years ago, the Gore supporters did not respond with threats, nor did Democrats when we endorsed Reagan twice. Republicans did not threaten us personally or our business when we endorsed Carter and Clinton for their first terms.

[…]

When you think about it, editorials are often displayed in people’s yards with campaign signs. These are endorsements by residents. Is it proper to persecute them for stating their opinions in this manner if you disagree with their choices? Should they be harassed and threatened? We don’t think so.
Unfortunately, for the Iconoclast and its publishers there have been threats — big ones including physical harm.

Too, some individuals are threatening innocent commercial concerns, claiming that if they advertise in The Iconoclast, they will be run out of business. We consider this improper in a democracy.

How did this happen? How did we let politics make us so mean and deranged? I know many papers will endorse the Republican ticket, and I won’t urge you to boycott their advertisers or threaten them with physical harm. But somehow this mentality has become routine among bush Republicans. Those who disagree are bad and they need to silenced, and then punished.

There were a couple of examples of Democrats being assholes last week, when a Republican office was ransacked. That’s equally reprehensible. But when it comes to harrassing those who disagree and reacting with thuggishness, I’m afraid the Republicans definitely take most of the prizes. For doubters, Orcinus has been chronicling examples of this all year — there is abundant evidence.

Link via Hoffmania.

…you know bush is in serious trouble!

Digby says it better than I can.

Have we ever had such an angry, privileged, snotty, immature president in the history of this country?

Bush can still not give even one example of a mistake he’s made — except appointing certain people he appointed that he won’t name. (It must be Paul O’Neill and Larry Lindsay because they are the only ones he fired.)

As he has always been, he remains, a piece of shit.

Shrub was obviously better prepared tonight and he didn’t lose it. He did infinitely better than last week. But that just means he was dreadful, not spectacularly dreadful. Kerry was amazing. He was even better than the first time, and there’s no comparison between the two men. One’s a real leader, the other’s a nobody.

Of course, bush will get high marks simply because, unlike last week, he came out alive. But just barely. Listening to him talk about his environmental achievements made me want to cover my face, it was so pitiful. And that’s just one example.

And was I imagining it, or was bush SHOUTING during the first half hour?? I thoiught he was going to lunge out and attack somebody.