Can you believe a political blogger, Erick Erickson, at a “serious” right-wing Web site actually wrote this?

The National Enquirer now suggests Barack Obama had an underage, gay affair with a pedophile. Yup. That Frank Marshall Davis guy Barry says was his good friend? Turns out he was a perv of the first order and liked young boys.

This post is not intended to spread that rumor.

Let’s look at this at a few levels. First, a 10-year-old child can’t have a gay or straight love affair with an adult man. They can be the victim of that man, they may have been molested by that man, but they were not carrying on an affair with them. As if – were this story to have any plausbility at all – this would count as something to damn Obama for. As this awesome response points out:

That’s a pretty interesting way to describe what may have happened between the two. Obama met Frank Marshall Davis when Obama was ten years old. When people discuss (possible) sexual contact between ten-year-old boys who are not their political enemies and grown men, they usually refer to the “underage gay affairs” as sexual abuse. They also recognize that adults who have been abused may or may not wish to tell the whole world the details, and they respect it. Admittedly, most people are not members of the NAMBLA wing of the Republican Party, or, failing that, curdled into pure meanness. Maybe Erickson just holds with the more sweeping theories about the cultural construction of the age of consent. Whatever the reason, he’s sure that that little vixen, ten-year-old Barry Obama, was asking for it man.

On another level, do you believe the claim, made while blasting the story around the world, that the post “is not intended to spread that rumor”? I mean, can the writer truly believe we are all birdbrains?

And on another level, it just tells us how far the far-right is willing to go to make any claim no matter how looney, no matter how spurious – toss as much shit at the wall and hope some of it sticks. Where there’s smoke there’s fire, right?

There has never been an election like this one. I actually remember when elections were about issues and economics and laws and causes and people. Huge kudos to Obama for keeping calm and never responding with anything even close to the rancor or hysteria displayed by the other side. A dark, ugly day in American politics. What can they possibly do next?

I stumbled upon a site today and found this quite disarming. (And can anyone tell me what a “blandare” is?) Especially nice after the Harbin post below got me thoroughly depressed. These videos got me to smile – just a sweet thing to do.

(A friend listening with me tells me he’s definitely from Taiwan.)

Blog was liquidated shortly after I linked. Kiss of death?

Check out these exraordinary posts over at China Smack – both the video and the post. Shocking. And get a load of those comments. Some try to justify it (of course). But I don’t think there is any way to justify what the police did, even if the 22-year-old student was being a violent jerk. Nothing can justify this. Nothing.

Just rewatched the video. Unfuckingbelievable. Maybe it’s an Internet hoax? Something about it doesn’t make sense, especially the student’s sudden lunge and punch… Why?

One of my favorite bloggers has translated some materials that all of you have got to see. We thought sinister places like these were “reformed away” after the brutal murder of Sun Zhigang and that they no longer exist. They weren’t reformed and they still exist. The posts take you on a guided tour of the “Hutong Hiltons.”

I was going to give a long snip, but that’s kind of pointless. Go there and read it for yourselves. This medieval practice is taking place right here, in our lovely, prosperous, reform-oozing Beijing. He even has photos that show exactly where they are.

Hallelujah. There really is a god.

The American economist Paul R. Krugman won the Nobel economics prize on Monday for his analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity.

Mr. Krugman, 55, a professor at Princeton University in New Jersey and a columnist for The New York Times, formulated a new theory to answer questions about free trade, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.

“What are the effects of free trade and globalization? What are the driving forces behind worldwide urbanization? Paul Krugman has formulated a new theory to answer these questions,” the academy said in its citation.

“He has thereby integrated the previously disparate research fields of international trade and economic geography,” it said.

Mr. Krugman was the lone of winner of the 10 million kronor ($1.4 million) award, the latest in a string of American researchers to be honored.

This is long overdue. Krugman called all the shots on the dangers of “free trade,” which was actually unregulated connivery and mayhem. Finally, some good news.

The Democrats about to win in a landslide. Krugman winning the Nobel Prize. Is our faith in humanity actually about to be restored?

The following is a guest post from my friend Bill Stimson, one of this blog’s most frequent contributors back in the old days. Bill runs a dream workshop in Taiwan that is absolutely wonderful, which you can read about at billstimson.com. As stated in the comments folowing the post, Richard does not necessarily agree with the content, but definitely respects Bill’s opinion on this very tricky issue.

————————————————————

“A Voice For Taiwan?”

by William R. Stimson

Invited to Helsinki, Finland to present my work with the dreams of university students in Taiwan, I took the ferry yesterday over to Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, to spend a day wandering around one of the best-preserved Medieval cities in Europe. Luckily, it turned out to be a rainy day – otherwise I wouldn’t have sought shelter in an uninteresting-looking little museum on a narrow cobblestone street where I stumbled upon an exhibit that brought tears to my eyes. Replace the People’s Republic of China for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and Taiwan for Estonia – the story is the same: a giant country tries to gobble up a tiny one on its border. Estonia has yet one more element in common with Taiwan – its people love to sing. The exhibit documented in pictures how the Estonians got the world to recognize them as a nation by singing, in what has been called “the singing revolution.” The Russians sent in tanks. The Estonians placed huge boulders on the roads to block the way. The tanks had to withdraw because the little nation captured the heart of the world with its solidarity in song. Russia relinquished its claims. The Estonians toppled Lenin’s statue. One man climbed the pedestal and raised his arms in a gesture that expressed the feeling of a nation. A photographer captured the moment for all time.

There is a big lesson in this for Taiwan. But the question is – can the 23 million Taiwanese do what the 1.5 million Estonians did? And can they do it now while there is yet time? Do the Taiwanese have what it takes? Do they feel as deeply that Taiwan really is a separate nation? Or do the people of Taiwan prefer to be swallowed up by China and digested into something that can have neither the significance nor the destiny history has thrust upon this island people? Do Taiwanese parents care more about how much money they can grab today than they do for the future of their children tomorrow? Are they that much like the late president and his family?

I raised these points because I feel now is the time in which the answers must emerge; and because, standing there in that small museum on this other side of the world, it struck me that the way the Estonians sang their nation to freedom is an option for Taiwan and could win it the sympathy of world organizations that it hasn’t been able to get by any other method. I work with the dreams of young Taiwanese college students. I have seen inside their hearts and minds. I know them to be world-class as a group, the equal of young people anywhere. Though perhaps not ethnically, linguistically, or culturally separate from the mainland Chinese – they are a larger people, even though a smaller population; and they aspire to a higher destiny, even though on a more limited scale. The world needs a Taiwan and Taiwan needs a world that can see this.

As I stood before the museum exhibit with tears in my eyes, an old Estonian man approached me. “Where are you from?” he asked.

“Taiwan.”

“Oh,” he immediately understood. “You are like us. We have Russia. You have China. The same story.”

The old man was right.

Perhaps political leaders in Taiwan have forgotten that they have a higher mission than lining their own pockets and those of their family members. This little nation is right now being entrapped in wording and behaviors that bit by bit will cause it to be engulfed by its huge neighbor next door. Our young people stand to lose their nationhood and their opportunity for freedom and self-expression unless we act now. What better way than following the Estonian example and organizing mass singing events (in English as well as Chinese, so the world, as well as China, can hear) that can enable Taiwan’s young and old alike to come together and show the world they are a people unique among peoples, with a voice all their own. If that voice can show it deserves to be heard, it will be heard. The world organizations will listen.

This doesn’t need to be restricted to Taiwan. Sizeable student and resident populations of Taiwanese all over the United States, Europe and elsewhere can join in – and carry the song of our people, and their dream of freedom and democracy, around the world. If little Estonia, with only 1.5 million people could do it, why can’t we, with over fourteen times as big a population? The only possible reason would be that we don’t care enough, and so don’t deserve any destiny other than the one China’s Communist Party deigns to allot us. The hands in our pockets then will be much bigger, much more numerous, and much more greedy.

* * *

Back to Richard. Let me just say this: I do believe Taiwan’s situation is unique and monumentally delicate. No matter what we would like to see there, the hard cold reality that isn’t going away is that the joining of China and Taiwan is going to happen, perhaps slowly, perhaps with a lot of bumps along the way, perhaps not at all fairly – but it will happen. Does that mean I want it to happen? No. I do know, however, that there has been a shift over the past four or so years. More and more Taiwanese are eager for a reconciliation and a coming together – not with Taiwan becoming another province of China, but rather a Hong Kong-like “one party, two systems” arrangement. The reasons for this are simple: No matter what we think is right or fair, China’s shadow looms across Asia the way America’s has loomed over much of Europe and the Americas. Countries that cooperate with and embrace China are thriving. Think Singapore and Malaysia and, increasingly, Japan.

I was speaking last week with a Taiwanese friend studying Traditional Chinese Medicine here at the Sino-Japanese Hospital. Like so many others I know from Taiwan, he can’t wait for Taiwan to come to a Hong Kong-like agreement. The reasons might be termed “greed” by some, but to me thay are less malevolent than that. My friend is tired of the unemployment and the shrinking opportunities Taiwan has suffered for years. In its inimitably ruthless way, China has one by one shut many of the doors leading from Taiwan to the outside world. Just as the US has done to countries it wanted to intimidate and force to comply to its will. (Cuba, anyone?) I am not talking about right or wrong here, simply about what is. And what is is that the US and China have the power to do this.

Would I love Taiwan to be independent and free to determine its own course? Absolutely. Do I think it will happen? Absolutely not – at least not the way the Blue party envisions it. China “knows” as a matter of fact that Taiwan belongs to it. And more and more Taiwanese appear willing to accept this. I think reconciliation and “reunification” are now well on the way (even if the Chinese flag never flew over Taiwanese soil, making the word “reunification” something of a misnomer).

I love Taiwan and think about it everyday with fond memories. It is the most civilized, most delightful place in Asia to live and work. It is a paradise in many ways. Let’s hope that, whatever agreement it ultimately comes to with the Mainland, Taiwan can retain its integrity and a high degree of independence, even after it is “reunited with the Motherland.”

And it’s not your everyday Chinese documentary.

I wrote a long time ago about the difficulties gays face in China (I know, a lot has changed since I wrote that in 2002) as well as the unacknowledged crisis of AIDS in China – another topic this filmmaker has focused on in her documentary The Blood of Yingzhou District. It’s good to see these topics come into the mainstream.

Update: Here is the link to the web site of Tongzhi in Love. The movie is on the short list – the nominations haven’t been announced yet. Sorry for the initial mistake.

By this poor fellow. This will be studied by communications students for semesters to come. Sometimes staying “on message” and dancing around simple questions just doesn’t work. I kind of feel sorry for the poor sucker, but then again, he gets paid by the taxpayers, and he owes the taxpayers answers.

Don’t miss the clip; it is classic. Via Yglesias.

“Appeals court blocks release of Guantanamo detainees”:

A federal appeals court temporarily blocked the release of 17 Chinese-born Muslims detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba , a day after a landmark decision required them to be freed to the U.S….

…”Seventeen men were told yesterday that they were going to be released after nearly seven years of wrongful detention,” said Emi MacLean , an attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights , which coordinates the representation of detainees including the Uighurs. “Now, they have to be told that their detention will continue to be indefinite.”

The Uighurs are among a group of more than 60 men inside the prison who’ve been cleared for release by the military but who are stuck in limbo because the U.S. government can’t find a country to ship them to. The Uighurs say they can’t return to China because they’ll be tortured as political dissidents.

Urbina’s decision marked the first time a court had ordered the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to the U.S. and could have prompted the release of others who’ve been cleared by the military.

Urbina declared the continued detention of the Uighurs to be “unlawful” and said the government could no longer detain them after conceding they weren’t enemy combatants.

However, Justice Department lawyers continued to argue that the release of the group into the U.S. could pose a security risk and warned that the decision could harm international relations with China.

In court papers, Justice Department lawyers attacked Urbina’s ruling, warning in court papers of “serious harms to the government and the public at large” if the appeals court did not intervene.

The lawyers said that Urbina’s decision “directly conflicts with the basic principle” that the executive branch, specifically the Department of Homeland Security , has sole discretion as to whether to admit foreigners into the U.S. The Justice Department also raised security concerns about releasing men they say were captured at a weapons training camp run by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The Uighurs attorneys disputed that characterization, saying the men merely were living in a small village in Afghanistan where they’d kept one weapon, but lacked ammunition.

Show of hands — who do you believe?

Maybe I’m cynical.

I won’t be shedding many tears.

Many of China’s richest people grew a bit poorer this year as stock and property markets tumbled, but the country’s wealthy are riding out the downturn better than many of their foreign counterparts, a survey showed on Tuesday.

Real estate heiress Yang Huiyan, 27, saw her estimated fortune shrink to $4.9 billion from $17.5 billion as the market value of her stake in property developer Country Garden Holdings Co plunged, according to the latest annual Hurun Report, which ranked the country’s 1,000 richest people.

That pushed Yang, who ranked as China’s richest person last year, down to number three, said the report, compiled by researcher Rupert Hoogewerf.

Xu Rongmao, owner of Shimao Property Holdings Ltd, sank to number nine from third place last year, with his estimated wealth dwindling to $3.1 billion from $7.5 billion.

China’s benchmark stock index has fallen about 65 percent from its peak last October and property prices in major Chinese cities have eased with a slowing economy.

But Hoogewerf said China’s super-rich were holding up much better than those in the West.

“Chinese are cash-rich relative to certainly Europe and America,” he told Reuters on the sidelines of an event to unveil China’s rich list for 2008. “We still have 101 billionaires, only five fewer than last year.”

This is basically why China won’t be as badly pulverized as many other countries: they save more than they spend and they don’t live eyeball-deep in debt. They’ll feel the pain but in relative terms it won’t be a calamity. The grief of the super-rich will trickle down, just as their wealth did, but it won’t stop the juggernaut, just slow it down for a while.

Via this site, which you should visit regularly.