I work accross the street from that hotel and have been peering down at all the activity the last few days. Being in close proximity to the president of over a billion people makes it hard to concentrate on my job. Thank God for the SLOG!

It's nice that on his first visit to the US the Chinese pres meets with Bill Gates before he meets Dub yuh.

Seeing the decadence of this country over the years, in light of the struggles of the pasts and other nations' struggles of the present and future, I knew this was coming. It's not even sad. It's just reality. Some of us will whine and cry about it, and some of us will be prepared to adapt our lifestyles and survive.

Me, I'm kind of looking forward to the Decline and Fall of America. Because the people who will be the most enraged by it are the very people who will have caused it: boneheaded Republican Red State swine.

With any luck, we'll end up like much of Europe: besides the point, past our prime, but quietly getting along with life on the margins.

For the past 24 hours or so, I've felt that a giant energy vortex was spiraling through the region, devouring the souls and vitality of everything in its path ... now I know it was the Chinese president.

I'm less convinced than most about China's coming dominance. The modern Chinese government has a long history of fudging the numbers and putting on a thin veneer of success to cover up massive failures. The dramatic progress over the past few years is just on the thin coastal envelope of the country, largely bypassing the overwhelming majority. Even this limited success has come at absolutely horrific environmental and social costs.

This is arguably the longest strech of pro-development deng-ist leadership in China since the revolution, extending from the end of the cultural revolution (c1980) to today. In the past, when the pro-development dengist have been in power, it has been followed by a catastrophic strech of rule by the maoists (great leap forward, cultural revolution). What's to say the country isn't heading right back to that same hole?

There simply are not enough accessible natural resources left to have the majority (or even a significant minority) of Chinese to live a western lifestyle. Not enough oil, not enough fresh water, not enough areable land. The more obvious it becomes that the majority of chinese (and indians and brazilians and russians) will continue to live in relatively poverty despite all the unsustainable growth in the past decade, the more likely a serious political crisis will take hold.

Going to be interesting, in the least.

I'm looking forward to America's decline. It'll be painful for most of us, including myself I'm sure. Nevertheless, I'm hoping that it will enable us to divert the billions of dollars we spend on empire building to domestic programs. It seems like the people of former colonial powers are better off now that their countries are no longer empires. They now have universal health care, good public education, and a decent minimum wage. I'd like some of that.