That is, it doesn’t actually care about the well-being of the Palestinian people. After all, in a region of intense historical conflict along sect and ethnicity, why would a Persian, Shiite Iran care about an Arab, predominantly Sunni Palestine? The only possible reason is for utilitarian purposes, as feigning concern for Palestinian nationhood establishes credibility among Muslims. Still, it would not be enough motivation for Iran to make a nuclear bomb (as there are plenty of existing incentives - security, power, prestige - independent of the Palestinians). Nor would some kind of fairy-tale ending to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict be the key to defusing Iran. Thomas Barnett gets it right:

Possibly, for a brief moment. But here’s the dirty secret that any observant outsider who travels the region quickly discovers: Your average Arab can’t stand Palestinians. They consider them their civilization’s version of idiot, hillbilly low-lifes; the tension runs deep in bigotry and history alike. Obama’s comparison of the Palestinian struggle to the Civil Rights Movement may, then, actually have been apt, but he’s kidding himself if he really thinks a two-state solution will alter the ideological landscape much.

Why? Because the big fight in the region today is what it’s always been: Sunni on Shia. It’s just that now the Shia are clearly ascendant, and nothing scares Sunni dictators more. So please, swallow Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Jew-baiting propaganda if you must, but Israel’s strictly the whipping boy on this one, because the real struggle here is over who dominates the region going forward, and it’s a struggle between two complex powers: Persian Iran and Saudi Arabia.

So if the two-state solution won’t solve everything, and we’re not as directly important in dissolving the discord as we’d like to believe, are Americans to simply dismiss all of Obama’s soothing rhetoric as a husband does an Oprah monologue (that is, well intended, actually correct, but completely useless when directed at deaf ears)?

Thus, the Obama team has constructed a false triangle of relations between Iran’s bomb, Israel, and the Palestinioans. It seems to believe that if you can deal with one successfully ie. Israel’s settlements, then a peace deal will be more viable and Iran will scrap the bomb. In reality, it needs to separate the two, as there is no tangible relation between the Palestinians and the Iranians (other than their backing of Hamas). On the one hand, Israel needs to dismantle its settlements so that a peace deal can be hammered out in the future. On the other, Iran’s bomb needs to be taken care of, either removed militarily or managed and contained. Even if you do believe that solving one will make the others more likely, it would seem that Obama should be applying pressure more on Ahmadinejad than Netanyahu, rather than other way around. Afterall, if Iran’s bomb is defused, then Israel’s existential threat is removed and it can be more assured of its security to take gambles on withdrawing from the West Bank. So long as the specter of Iran’s bomb haunts Israel, no politician will have the credibility nor the peace of mind to genuinely work towards a peace deal.

I was at a lunch and was told about all the exceptions to China’s one-child policy. Given the absence of a strong social welfare system since the reforms, most Chinese consider themselves lucky if they can have another child to act as a provider in their old age. Apparently:

- If you are from the country, you may have two kids. This applies if your wife or mother is from the country as well.

- If you belong to an ethnic minority, you may have two kids.

The former didn’t make sense at first, considering the urban-rural income disparities and the greater earning potential in the cities. If you’re going to encourage more children, why not do it in the cities, where they’ll have a better chance of becoming part of the middle class? But then the policy makes sense if the government is more worried about concentrated pockets of unrest, which is more of an urban phenomenon. Larger urban populations = greater chance of urban instability.

1. You would think, with 115-100 male to female ratio ie. a looming demographic and social crisis, that the Chinese authorities are providing every safe outlet possible for their men to release their sexual frustrations. Not so - pornography is heavily censored. Yes, I checked.

2. Who said the Chinese weren’t entreprenurial? I was in E-City, the electronics mega-center in Beijing, and let me tell you: walk in, and a salesperson from every booth in the store swarms you. Perfectly competitive free markets in the heartland of communism.

3. Apparently, before civil wars and Japanese occupation, the Chinese had a penchant for public bathing. Bath have been popular for quite some time now - I visited one five years ago. Of course, I don’t think lots of genitalia soaking in the same water can be very hygienic.

4. I was at a dinner with some family friends and the conversation turned to the Korean nuclear crisis. Most people here are genuinely worried about Kim Jong Il’s sanity and recognize the distinction between rational actors such as China and the U.S. wielding nukes and a mad man playing with them.

5. Also, ask any Chinese person and the country they are most fascinated in is the U.S, because it’s the country many want China to emulate (and it’s arguably the only country more powerful).

6. And not surprisingly, Kobe is more popular here than Lebron. Sorry LBJ, but the mandarin is not enough.

Like my colleague Luke Savage, I am disappointed that the Harper Government not too long ago barred George Galloway from entering Canada. I say this not because I share Galloway’s views (they are reprehensible and misguided) or find him to be an admirable person (he is a pathetic and disgusting human being), but because I believe in the right to free speech and movement. Yes, there are limits to both - I endorse restrictions on incitements to violence and persons with criminal records entering the country. But a brief reading of Galloway’s profile does not put him in either of those cases. Of course, I am open to further investigation if prompted by the right facts.

In fact, I think it’s necessary that people like Galloway enter the country, or people like Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn top best seller’s lists. Their very existence and fame disproves their claims that capitalist, western societies are undemocratic and systematically repressive. The free market seems to provide plenty of attention to critiques that undermine its very raison d’etre.

My only problem with Mr. Savage’s article is the insinuation here:

Despite the Immigration Ministry’s assertions that it was not directly responsible for the ban, it’s likely that the move was motivated by a request from the Jewish Defence League. A pro-Israel organization, the League wrote an open letter to the government requesting that it “keep this hater out of the country.” The director of the organization’s Canadian chapter, Meir Weinstein, participated in a joint interview with Galloway for Britain’s Channel 4 News on March 20th (widely available on YouTube), in which he stated: “We are determined to uncover any proxy agents of Hamas and Hezbollah, and we’ve been successful with regards to Mr. Galloway […] we will be looking into these organizations in Canada that have invited him […] their links to terror groups as well.” Galloway responded by promising that if the ban was not overturned, he would speak using “other means,” possibly via video conference. Weinstein replied, “If he uses those other means we will see to it that the Canadian government will be monitoring every individual and organization that has anything to do with it.”

I am not here to disprove this claim, because I have no facts to go either way. But the evidence in the article itself doesn’t seem sufficient: 1) Harper is pro-Israel 2) the JDL is intrasigently pro-Israel and 3) the JDL promised to have Galloway barred from entering the country. But there is no reason to believe for the claim that the JDL has the influence within Conservative circles to pull off such a move. My own experiences suggest that it is not even influential enough among Canadian Jews (though I may be wrong) and certainly doesn’t speak for all Israel supporters. I say this with concern because speculations of Jewish influence peddling don’t play well in the realm of public opinion. I’m a little late to the debate in the comments section, but I would suggest (and request) more facts.

A great read. But professional sports will never behave like the free market.

Back to your point about arrogance and sports leagues: Please tell me you’re following the current officiating debacle. The two most-watched regular-season games (both Celtics-Lakers games) were ruined by officials. Game 7 of a classic Boston-Chicago series was ruined by officials. The Mavs’ season was ruined by officials. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to flagrant fouls and how they are called, just that the ongoing indecision has compromised the quality of the games. Bill Kennedy had such a heated incident with Doc Rivers in March that both were fined; somehow, Kennedy worked two Boston playoff games (both must-wins on the road). Dallas went 1-14 in its past 15 playoffs games that Danny Crawford officiated; somehow he worked one of their 2009 playoff games (inevitably, a loss for Dallas). Joey Crawford got suspended two years ago for baiting Tim Duncan, then blew last season’s season-ending Spurs call … and somehow, he worked a must-win San Antonio playoff game in 2009. And the number of competent refs is so bad that Violet Palmer worked a Round 2 game last week. For a league that vowed to clean things up post-Donaghy, why haven’t we seen any real results yet?

And how can you explain a system that relies on officials in their 50s and 60s — well past their physical peak, with undeniable deterioration (however slight) in motor reactions and eyesight — to successfully perform in a profession that hinges solely on motor reactions and eyesight? Shouldn’t this job be performed by people in their 20s, 30s and 40s? You’re telling me Dick Bavetta (69), Bennett Salvatore (59) or Joey Crawford (57) can run around for 150 minutes, then remain at peak physical capacity to make a game-changing call on a split-second reaction? My father is two years older than Salvatore and we won’t let him push a baby stroller for three blocks. I don’t get it. How would you revamp this moronic system? A little birdie told me the NBA’s crew chiefs (the lead official for each game) consist of referees who were hired at least 10 years ago. In other words, the league hasn’t hired an official competent enough to run a game in more than a decade. How is this possible? You grew up in a country that figured out health care; figure out the NBA’s officiating crisis for us.

If I were god, I would devise a motion-detector and pair it with a computer system to replace human officiating. But I’m not, and so we are stuck with David Stern’s NBA. The simple reason why the NBA, or any sports league for the matter, will never function like a normal market is because the demand for its goods is so inelastic. If fans are displeased with the conduct of officials or the policies of the commissioner, they can, at the margin, watch and attend less games. But the NBA will always be the dominant supplier of professional basketball in America, and arguably the world. It will stay that way so long as all the best players - the Lebrons and Kobes - stay in the NBA. That’s the way dominant sports leagues are - they attract the best, who attract fans, who bring in the cash, and in turn that cash attracts future stars and talent. It’s a positive feedback mechanism. No alternative basketball league can compete because they don’t have the combination of talent and market exposure, and arguably never will, unless something major happens ie. Kobe plays in Italy for 80 million (now, in his prime… not when’s 37). No alternative sport can compete because 1) no one sport can completely provide the entertainment and idiosyncrasies of any other sport and 2) the devoted fans of that particular sport are stubborn.

The lack of a better alternative and the exceptionally (and really, almost all NBA players are athletic exceptions to the human gene pool) high barriers to entry mean that the league will never be held accountable by its fans in the way any other competitive industry will be kept in check by consumers. Our best example? Baseball fans sticking to the MLB in the steroids era.

Megan McArdle:

Yet while the stimulus package will provide some modest boost to aggregate demand, it in no way addresses the central problems the Obama administration faces. The Medicare and Social Security systems are about to start draining the budget, rather than contributing to it. The “stress tests” are starting to tell us what we already knew: Large parts of the banking sector need more capital, which won’t be easy to raise in the current economic environment. The recession, and especially the decline of Wall Street, is badly undercutting Federal tax revenues. All of these problems are just revealing themselves. And they will get worse before they get better.

Up until now, Obama has largely done the fun part of governing: promising people free stuff. To be sure, even some of that is fairly unpopular, but the auto bailouts have undoubtedly pleased the UAW more than they have angered the rest of the population, and most of the bank spending has occurred under programs originated in the Bush administration. Now, however, the bill for Obama’s central proposals is about to come due. Unless Obama thinks he can borrow something like a trillion dollars a year indefinitely, he is going to have to ask Americans to make sacrifices to pay for the goodies.

Question: while Obama is doing all this spending, what’s going to happen in China? Is it farfetched to think that by 2016, the CCP will have reoriented his economic policy from largely export-dependent growth to consumption-dependent growth? Is it possible that the Chinese will have realized that they can’t always rely on America for their economic success for fear that another recession will occur? And then what happens? If by that time the Chinese have broken free of their symbiotic relationship with U.S. demand, they will have little use for their 1.4 trillion dollars in U.S. reserves (that is if they haven’t spent it all on domestic stimulus). They will stop buying T-Bills because they no longer need to prop up US consumption and depress Chinese export prices. They can let the Yuan rise. And worst of all, they can let the effects of debt finally express themselves: through soaring inflation. 

Seriously, are we fucked? 

There are two ways to grade Obama. You can use the media’s metrics and essentially assign all the weight to one issue: the recession. Or, you can evaluate his presidency holistically, and look at the long-term consequences of his policies. 

If we use the media’s metrics, then Obama’s performance has been nothing short of heroic. He is hailed as courageous because he can produce spending bills of enormous proportions really quickly. The media stands in awe (and shock) at his spending blitz. If we use real metrics, then Obama’s first hundred days have been deeply troubling. This is so not because they forecast America’s “socialist” demise. Instead, they are worrying because the high levels of spending now surely are unsustainable for the future. Yes, I know - Bush and the Republicans presided over a huge deficit. But that does not give Obama license, even in tough times, to add insult to injury. Those of us who have criticized out of control spending from the get go do not need to cave to this cheap liberal talking point. The fact that our fiscal future has been mortgaged for present recovery would be more reassuring if we at least had a spending bill to be confident in. But despite the speed with which the stimulus bill was produced, the actual spending itself will not take place for the most part until next year. If a stimulus is supposed to be large and speedy, then this one surely isn’t characterized by the latter. 

By the media’s metrics, Obama is the next FDR. But FDR’s armada of spending and regulation produced nearly 10 years of double-digit unemployment. He chose to favor unions over management, insider workers over outside job seekers, and America paid the price. FDR won the psychological battle against the investors by replacing Hoover’s deflationary, gold-standard regime with a reflationary one. That was a success in that it got America out of its deflationary spiral. But that was only step one. Resurrecting aggregate demand never happened until America entered the war. If the best Obama will achieve is FDR’s mixed record and long legacy of bureaucratism, then God help him. 

This is not to say that Obama hasn’t accomplished anything. He should be commended for shutting down Guantanamo Bay, but even here his haste (or hubris) has stuck him with the conundrum of deciding what to do with the detainees. His foreign policy has been rather successful. Barring future flare ups, he is right to wind down responsibly in Iraq while elevating the response in Afghanistan. If he can talk Canada and other NATO allies to extend their missions, he will have a truly impressive achievement on his resume. Still, the handshake with Huge Chavez was unnecessary and somewhat insulting, given that the man poses no security threat to America (unlike Iran or DPRK) and likely got more attention than he deserved. By sheer volume of “things done” in the first hundred days, Obama would be considered an overachiever. But this overachiever attitude hints at the fact that Obama is working on borrowed time. Let me explain: 

Before the financial crisis, Obama had probably planned to serve until 2016. That would have meant eight years for him to right Bush’s wrongs, and produce the kind of social welfare policies that he had wanted for so long. Another “Great Society,” perhaps, only this time without the Vietnam War and noxious racial conflicts. The deficit would have grown, but probably not by meteoric proportions. Most importantly, he would have departed office before any of America’s long term problems - social security, medicare, immigration, the fiscal deficit, and the national debt - would have materialized. This was the type of president Obama wanted history to remember him as. But time has now been cut short by the financial crisis. The present moment demands that Obama spend a lot of money to stimulate the economy - anything else would be political suicide - which means he is bound to tangibly enlarge the deficit in the here and now, under his watch. He can then proceed to either rectify America’s fiscal future - and thus dash his hopes of creating the society he wants - or spend more money to put his vision into reality. He has evidently chosen the latter, throwing fiscal sanity into the wind. Because he has chosen to be both the president of his own desires and the president that the present moment demands, he must legislate at an accelerated pace. He must produce all the spending and regulatory bills he can before his political capital is exhausted, as once the Republicans reorient themselves and start talking about the long-term fiscal problems, the game will be over. The Tea Parties may be a bit foolish, but they are a manifestation of genuine American concern with the nation’s finances. Obama knows that the conversation will eventually center around this, and that he will need to have gotten all he has desired to accomplish before the day Americans wake up to the ugly and sobering truth about their own future. 

The bitter irony is that America’s present dilemma can be characterized with an infatuation with instant gratification. The housing bubble and Wall Street’s magical formulas for packaging away responsibility were all examples of a country that didn’t want to think about the future. Do we now have a president with the same problem? 

Jim Cramer was prophetic. But he was prophetic in a doomed, tragic way. Like Bruce Willis in Twleve Monkeys, fruitlessly trying to warn the present of the future he has seen. Then Brad Pitt’s character - ie. David X. Li - unleashes a radical virus/risk formula and we are all doomed. And then Bruce Willis’s character dies trying to save us ie. Jim Cramer becomes Jon Stewart’s sacrificial lamb.

“You know, I wish someone would just come out and say ‘Jon Stewart is a pompous jerk’”. - Tucker Carlson.

Jon Stewart is a pompous jerk.

But more to the point, Jon Stewart is a coward. He is a coward because he relishes in asking tough questions and sanctimoniously lecturing his guests, but when they dare disagree with him he hides behind humor and brushes away their points. It’s the old routine, “You suck, but don’t you dare make a legitimate counter-argument because I’m just a comedian and this is just a show for laughs.”

He is also a hypocrite. In Stewart’s eyes, the media is supposed to provide this Habermasian forum of enlightened, emotionally disinterested discussion. It is supposed to be absent of talking points and spin and bull and out of context bushwhacking. But that is exactly what Stewart does. He attacks politicians by taking verbatim out of context - in effect, he spins the news. Yes, he is a comedian, and it his job as court jester to point out how ridiculous our leaders may sound. But given his audience is so young, I fear Stewart may be breeding a generation of individuals who think they are smarter and better than politics. I feel he will create an apathy of arrogance among the more intellectual viewing public. And that’s not a good thing.

At the end of the day, I prefer Colbert. Yes, his entire routine is a satire of conservatives, but at least he is consistent in what he does. Stewart, on the other hand, pretends to be purely comedic but can’t keep it in his pants long enough without copping a feel or two.

Admittedly Obama is already facing much criticism for his handling of current affairs, but I think one irritating aspect of his presidency needs to be pointed out. U of T celebrity prof Mark Kingwell writes in the Walrus:

And yet you don’t buy that really, do you, even if you do think you’re the right answer for right now? That idea of the transcendental telescope, the possession of the ultimate truth. That was not the command you claimed. You were not a philosopher king, even if some people accused you of believing it, of craving that status. No, your command was over something else: a story, a narrative, a sense of possibility… You were post-partisan pragmatic, after all, and in secret moments you figured people should not be surprised when those principles extended to God as well. The truth is just what works, pragmatism says, and what works better than that as an answer to any demand for the truth? Game on.

What Kingwell means is that Obama identifies with a political humility that places pragmatism over ideology. He doesn’t pretend to know what is best. Instead, this “pragmatism” he espouses is based on empirical observation of “what works”.

This is, to be blunt, bullocks. The irritating aspect of the Obama campaign and now his presidency is this pretension of being post-ideological and politically transcendental. First, it is impossible to objectively pick and choose from the litany of what works and what doesn’t, because almost all of our conclusions and external observations about politics are ideologically informed. This is why you’ll have conservative and liberal think tanks coming out with statistics and studies that “objectively” prove the minimum wage is either employment destroying or living standard raising, respectively. This is why those same think tanks will come out with contradictory studies demonstrating both the efficacy of gun control and its horrific consequences. It is fundamentally human for people to perceive truths through the lens of their past and existent beliefs.

This humility Kingwell alludes to is then in fact pure pretense. Obama is effectively claiming that he is not limited by human perception biases. He is claiming the mantle of enlightenment that an army of PHDs in Washington DC were apparently too blind to grasp, because he is claiming to objectively know what works and what doesn’t, and that he will “humbly” act on that knowledge. If implementing a platform of “what works” were that easy and simple, we would leave governing to a computer program.

Second, politics is inherently ideological, because political ideology is simply a set of beliefs informed by a common philosophy. If you are a “moderate” and often split your votes based on the issues, you still have an ideology. It may not be as fleshed out or as rich as some of the traditional political theories, but it it is an ideology nonetheless. Perhaps it is simply basic utilitarianism - the desire to maximize utility, however you define and measure it, in society. Perhaps it is a notion of fairness combined with a notion of national honor and unity. That, even if nameless, is still an ideology. Anybody who regularly thinks about and discusses politics has one. Those who think otherwise are flattering themselves (not that an absence of ideology is particularly flattering).

Third, Obama does have an ideology - he is a bread and butter liberal. Sure, he can be open-minded and civil and at times bi-partisan, but that doesn’t erase the fact that he agrees with the Democratic Party “95% percent of the time.” And you know what? I’m okay with that. Sure, I don’t agree with Obama, but there is nothing criminal about being a liberal - it is a long-standing school of American political thought has contributed a great deal to society and progress. What I’m not okay with is Obama pretending he doesn’t have an ideology, accepting the Democratic Party’s nomination, and then scolding anybody who disagrees with him for “being ideological.” What I’m not okay with is Obama equating his policies - 95% of the Democratic Party platform -  with the word pragmatism.

This is why Obama’s “change” theme was so inane. I’ve said this multiple times, but did anybody who felt that jolt of inspiration listening to Obama talk really know what “change” meant? What kind of change were we talking about? Anybody can effect change. George W. Bush’s presidency effected many changes, albeit ones liberals disagreed with. Was change only acceptable and uplifting when liberals gushed about it?

Change again implied this sort of “objective pragmatism” that Obama somehow embodied. It implied that Obama knew what the common American needed and had empirically understood what the public interest was. It implied these were terms beyond politically debate - as if there weren’t legitimate disagreements among reasonable and intelligent people on what constituted the public interest - and that all we had to do now was transcend the dark forces of ideological differences for that public interest. Of-course we know now that Obama, like all politically minded people, has an ideology. We know now that this objectively conceived “public interest” was simply what a liberal believed to be the public interest. Those conservatives who chose to believe in Obama should be criticized not for their “transgressions” against party or movement, but for the very simple fact that they were delusional. They wanted to believe a liberal could be something he was not, and now they deserve the disappointment.