The right-wingers went ape-shit during the last GOP debate because of the reasons Ron Paul said he believes Muslim Terrorists are attacking the US. Paul had the audacity to deviate from the standard "they hate us for our freedoms" talking point. He said they're "over here [attacking us] because we're over there." Why would Ron Paul have the audacity to say such a thing? To imply that we might bear some responsibility for the terrorist's motives? Well, perhaps he has removed his head from his ass unlike the majority of other Republicans and started to truly question things the administration is saying. In fact, all one needs to do is listen to the terrorists. They've said why they're over here. Osama bin Laden said it was because the US troops were on the sacred soil of Saudi Arabia. He said it was because US bombing and sanctions against Iraq. Of course, he also added in the US backing of Israel. Not to mention the fact that the US has a tendency to create proxy dictators to do our bidding and then slaughtering them when they stop dancing at the end of our puppet strings. So let's review. Our dimwitted cowboy President says the terrorists hate us because of our freedoms. The leader of the terrorist group that actually attacked the us on 9/11 says it's because of our foreign policy. I think I'll go with answer "B. US Foreign Policy." While it is obvious to any person with a functioning intellect that our foreign policy is a major factor behind what drives terrorists, that's too hard to explain to the US populace before they hit the button on their TV Remotes to get to the next channel. In depth understand of current issues is not in vogue these days. Only the elitist liberals engage in that America-hating kind of thing. The Role of Religion There is more to this than just our foreign policy. In fact, I am starting to believe our foreign policy is not the root cause but rather just the thing that exacerbates the problem. Recently I've been reading Sam Harris' book The End of Faith. For those of you unfamiliar with Sam Harris or this book, it is a treatise about how religion is really the root of all evil. More on that later in other posts I promise. The chapter I just finished is entitled "The Problem with Islam." Harris makes a very compelling case that the real root cause of the terrorism is the fundamental beliefs of the Muslims. Before you crank up your e-mail client and send me nasty-grams about how I'm being a bigot stop and hear me out. I'm not going to let Christianity off the hook in this either. Religion Sanctioned Violence Islam is a relatively new religion. It's about 600 years behind Christianity. Scholars note that all religions have a violent period as part of their early history. Certainly Christianity is a poster-child for violence. The Old Testament is full of violence brought on behalf of or by God. More recent history of Christianity includes the Crusades, the Inquisitions and the forced conversions of the natives in the Americas. Don't forget the Dark Ages were dark because of the Catholic Church. Christo-Facists are alive and well in the US today. They don't get much airtime on the news though because they're white and useful to the neo-cons. Just think about the people who are killing doctors because they perform abortions. They are certainly violent fundamentalists. Why Religious Faith is Especially Dangerous Now Harris points out that liberals tend to take the position that US foreign policy is entirely to blame for terrorism and the hatred of the US in the Middle East. Being a true liberal I have held that position. While that is a factor the real problem is the Islamic Faith. Early Christianity brags of its martyrs and was happy to kill anyone who would not convert or subjugate themselves to the church. Contemporay Islam has created suicide bombers to be its martyrs. Muslims celebrate the suicide bombers and their families. Gifts and social status are bestowed upon the families. The person who has blown himself up goes straight to heaven and all the rewards there. Here we have a faith that is so different from how Christians believe. The Christian tenet that forbids the mass murder of innocents does not exist in contemporary Islam. Contemporary Islam insists that non-believers convert to Islam, be subjugated to Muslims or be killed. So the Muslims have their martyrs in the suicide bombers. What will they do that approximates the Crusades or the forced conversions of the Americas? It's hard to say, but we should be assured they will have no issue with detonating a nuclear bomb or dirty bomb to kill the infidels. Even if that means they will be killed too. The cold war concept of mutually assured destruction that kept the US and the USSR from launching missiles does not apply here. If the Muslims launch missiles or detonate bombs in the US they have no fear of retaliation. They would become martyrs and go straight to heaven. I really hated reading that chapter in Harris' book. It started making me, this lefty, liberal, think that Bush and Rumsfeld might be right to be so concerned about Iran. Just not for the reasons they've said.

Swivel Hips Sue was new in town. In fact, most of the men in Kelly’s Bar had never seen her before. Dressed in tiny Levi shorts and a tight white cotton blouse covered with a print of luscious strawberries, she slowly strutted into the establishment. The music stopped. The men gaped, transfixed. Tongues hit the floor with a wet “thud!” Sound like a familiar scenario? But why do men respond to this? What, for example, is the universal appeal of high cheek bones and large eyes? Large eyes have nothing to do with sexual attraction, yet men are mesmerized by them. Why? Why not small squinty eyes? Why does it have to be large eyes? No one knows. The response to the Swivel Hips Sues of the world rushes up with a wolf whistle or “Hmmm!” of approval from some dark but powerful corner beneath consciousness. A man spies a supple young lady and thinks to himself, “Nice!” But that’s not the whole picture. How does he know she’s ‘nice’? What’s the mechanism that makes this judgment call? In the back of the mind of every man is a large room filled with the memories of curves and pleasing appearances of women, both from experience and the media. The door to this room has various labels, depending on the man, from “Lovely Women Room” to “T&A Room.” The point is, when man sees woman, quick as a blink he enters his comparison room and looks around. The trick is that it’s very fast, automatic, and subconscious. The admired girl is measured against a set of perimeters, a sort of sizing up by instantaneous comparison. So why am I going to all the trouble of delicately explaining this? Because homosexuals are locked out of their T&A rooms. They look at a woman’s breasts and see two lumps of fat slapped on a thin chest. The large eyes look like those of a nocturnal animal, such as a lemur, blankly staring into the light, blinking slowly. Homosexuals are denied the male response to the curves and allure of feminine beauty. There is no rush of adrenaline, no warm response, no slow smile. The room is locked. The sign says “No Entry.” A part of them is shut down for some psychological reason. They claim to love women, but it isn’t true. They love other men and their mother. Period. They live a life devoid of a real appreciation of women and all they have to offer: as lovers, companions, advisors, and comforters. Fortunately, homosexuality is curable. It isn’t all that difficult to wake up the inner feminine, to unlock the door, and on the net there are groups that have helped homosexuals to become utterly heterosexual, not just suppressed, but cured. I don’t understand why ‘gays’ have ganged together, especially in San Francisco, and raised such a fuss. Maybe homosexuality exists because of ignorance or by choice. Perhaps the successful, such as Elton John and Michael Jackson, are afraid of losing their sweet life by plunging themselves into the darkness of inner reality. Does being homosexual serve them like a sick man who doesn’t want to get better because he’ll lose his govt. assistance check? Homosexuality can be eradicated and is an unnecessary burden for people to carry. Each of us has our dark demons, and one of our life challenges is to take the inner road and discover what really motivates us, discover why the various doors are locked, so to speak, and to gently but firmly open them and begin living with renewed purpose and deeper life direction. Grimgold

Zepp Jamison, May 20, 2007 The other day, Paul Krugman wrote a column called “Don’t Blame Bush.” Drastically boiled down and rendered into varnish, his point was that while Putsch may look and sound like a demented moron, it wasn’t entirely his fault, because the whole fershluggeneh GOP was demented. The eleven lawn jockeys at the Faux/GOP debate promised nothing but More of the Same (with the exception of Ron Paul, who the GOP wants to ban from future debates). Krugman pointed to the candidates’ debate as an example, in which 10 of the 11 candidates applauded the gulag at Guatanamo. (Guiliani even said he would “double” it, leading an ecstatic Jon Stewart to shout, “He landed the double Guantanamo! No one’s ever done that before!”). Stewart watched the debate and saw the same thing that Krugman apparently did: that some or all of the eleven clones standing there must have forgotten to pay their brain bills or something, because they all sounded like drooling idiots. This all came out on the same day that Al Gore’s new book, “The Assault on Reason” came out. It deals with the ignorance and stupidity – often willful – that has become so prevalent in US politics. Gore’s book reminds us all that the powers of viciousness and stupidity overcame the will of the American people in 2000, and installed a man who can’t even read a book, let alone write one. Gore also notes that far too many people are complacently happy to be led by people who think evolution is a secular hoax, or that scientists have a political agenda but that politicians don’t. Having GOP candidates sound like drooling idiots isn’t exactly new. They wouldn’t be where they are today if they didn’t sound like drooling idiots. Look at the White House. Would Present Occupant be there if he hadn’t managed to convince a lot of drooling idiots that he was the kind of guy they would like to sit down and have a beer with? Nothing at all like that guy Gore, with his correct English and ability to name the capitals of foreign countries like Canada and New Mexico! So we got a president that the drooling idiots feel at home with, and unsurprisingly, it turns out that he really is a drooling idiot. But, as Krugman says, “Don’t Blame Bush.” It wasn’t his idea to form a confederacy of dunces. Nor is he the reason the GOP is still trying to lead a confederacy of dunces. The root cause goes back to the aftermath of the 1964 presidential election. The Republicans were keenly aware that their policies that favored bosses over workers, whites over blacks, wealthy over working class, and Wall Street over Main Street were, of necessity, unpopular, and that in an honest democracy, they were doomed to be the minority party forever. But there were an awful lot of disgruntled people running loose in America. They tended to be poor, uneducated, and white. They were the segregationists, simmering over the injustice of black children attending school with white children. They were the non-union workers who resented the higher wages and job security union workers enjoyed. They were low-end workers, willing to believe that if they were loyal to the wealthy, they would be rewarded. They were the foot-washing southern Christians, angry about what they saw as libertine licentiousness and paganism. I’m sure, back in the 60s and 70s, there were people in the GOP who looked at these people, people who coalesced around banners of ignorance and resentment, and realized that the GOP was playing with fire. But since these were still comparatively rational party operatives, they probably also realized that these bitter and marginal groups could be easily neutralized simply by setting them against one another. The details of how, beginning with Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy,” the GOP pandered to the haters, the dispossessed, the religious nuts and the sellouts are well known. It isn’t the first time a party has set out to cultivate a base from the vilest instincts of people. The Know Nothings pandered to racism and xenophobia. The antebellum Democrats pandered to slavers, and clear up into the Sixties, Democrats in the south ran on segregationist, anti-black issues. George Wallace, defeated in his first race when he ran as a liberal, vowed that “nobody is going to out-nigger me again.” After that he ran as a virulent racist, and won every time until someone shot him. But a curious thing happened on the way to a majority party that got a boost from a bunch of docile, easily manipulated blocs; the blocs formed a confederacy, coalesced into an organized force, and took over the GOP. The result was on show at the debate this week. Along with the double Guantanamos from skunks who advocate torture in order to get votes, and one after another condemning what among more normal people are known as constitutional rights and freedoms, there were three prepared to throw evolution out of the schools because it wasn’t god-ordained science. The main problem the people now leading the GOP is, in a way, the opposite of their predecessors. The predecessors were trying to motivate an apathetic and apolitical set of blocs, some of whom (fundamentalist Christians) believed voting was a waste of time and even a little improper. The leaders who arose from those same ranks face a different challenge. Their followers are still stone ignorant, pig-stupid, and proud of it, but now they want to be entertained as well. They’ve learned that politics can be a good excuse to pound one’s chest and yell “boo-yah!” and howl for the deaths of America’s enemies – who are whoever their leaders say they are. But the big problem with showmanship is that in order to keep your audience engaged, each act has to be bigger and more exciting than the last. Once, being against communism would do it. Now that’s considered tame and old hat. Then being against Iran would do it. Then it was necessary to declare war on the French. Similarly, they went from “stop coddling criminals” to “tough on crime” to “torture anyone who could be a threat.” They went from “cut taxes” to “eliminate taxes,” with no mention of how this could be paid for. They went from “allow prayer in school” to “stop teaching anything that disagrees with the looniest religious doctrine we can find.” At this point, the GOP has no recourse. They need to keep stroking these groups, knowing it’s political suicide but also knowing that they’ve irrevocably lost the mainstream for a generation or more. The only thing that can save them is a quick big implosion in the next election, hopefully before the scandals consume all of them. So when you see the once-respectable John McCain advocating torture, or Guilliani talking about a “double Guantanamo,” or some of the really weird ones agreeing that abortion should be treated as murder, you know where it came from. But it was fun watching that fatuous idiot Newt Gingrich orating at Liberty University today. Understand that the opportunistic and hypocritical Newt probably isn’t any more religious than I am. He was there to sing the praises, at commencement, of Lib-Ewe’s vulgar and buffoonish but now-quite-dead founder, Jerry Falwell. He did quite a good job of it, and I’m sure in quite a few southern trailer parks, people too stupid to understand what causes rain were dabbing their eyes and wondering why they hadn’t noticed what a fine, upstanding young boy that Newt was. And if it was just about anyone other than Newt, the commencement speaker would have spent 45 minutes after the speech just washing his hands. -- http://www.zeppscommentaries.com For news feed, http://yahoogroups/subscribe/zepps_news For essays (please contribute!) http:yahoogroups/subscribe/zepps_essays

One of the advantages of being a centrist is you’re not often bound by political dogma. Sure, a centrist can be loyal to any given political party and subscribe to common points of view with that party, but we’re also able to weigh evidence and opposing opinions to arrive at a political stance. We’re not beholden to the liberal or conservative ideology. Consequently, we’re not often confined by “truthiness,” a term coined by Stephen Colbert in reference to the quality by which a person claims to know something intuitively, instinctively, or “from the gut” without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or actual facts. Colbert uses the term specifically when he critiques conservative/Republican politicians, but anyone who has ever had a discussion of a political nature with someone on the far left has probably encountered the use of “truthiness” themselves. They’re just not as organized with it as the Right. A recent phenomenon coming from “progressives,” ripe with truthiness, was ripped from the conservative’s playbook. The belief that somehow Ross Perot caused George H.W. Bush re-election in 1992, thereby propelling Bill Clinton into the presidency, is a textbook example of the term. The Left’s recent embrace of this political myth is further indication of their disdain for President Clinton which often rivals in terms of vitriol with the Right’s. The truth, though (not “truthiness”) lies in the actual statistical analysis of the ‘92 election. This is where it gets complicated. If number crunching makes your eyes glaze over, just skip to the end. Ready? Joshua Leinsdorf of the Institution of Election Analysis provides the breakdown and ultimate conclusion: Almost every analysis or reference to the 1992 presidential race claims that Perot's presence on the ballot cost Bush the election. No facts are cited, it is merely asserted. But in fact, Perot did NOT throw the election to Bill Clinton. Leinsdorf write that in 1992, Perot got 19,660,450 votes. The total turnout for the Presidential election was more than 13 million higher than in 1988. So even thought Perot’s vote tally was impressive, 13 million of the voters didn’t even vote in 1988. Bill Clinton garnered 3.1 million votes more than Michael Dukakis did in 1988, but George H.W. Bush received 9.7 million fewer votes than he did in 1988. Finally, the two party vote fell by 7 million in 1992. So Ross Perot only took 7 million votes from Clinton and Bush. If Perot had not been in the race, would those 7 million Perot voters who voted for Bush and Dukakis in 1988 have voted for Bush by a sufficient margin for him to overcome Clinton’s 3.1 million vote lead? Those 7 million Perot voters would have had to favor Bush over Clinton by 5 to 2. Or, even if all 19.6 million Perot voters had voted for one of the major party candidates, they would have had to favor Bush by a 58% to 42% margin to overcome clinton’s lead and tie the race. Was this likely in view of the fact that the other 84 million voters were favoring Clinton by 7%, 53.5% to Bush’s 46.5%? Usually, the presidential candidate runs far ahead of the rest of the ticket. Perot’s presence in the presidential race combined with an absence of running mates for lesser offices meant that Clinton and Bush ran behind their respective party’s nominees for Governor, Senator and the House. Consequently, it was easy to follow Perot’s voters as they voted for other offices. They voted for Democratic and Republican Governor, Senator and House of Representative candidates in sufficient numbers to give them higher vote totals than Clinton and Bush. This assumes that all Clinton’s supporters voted for the other Democratic candidates and all Bush’s supporters voted for the Republican candidates for Governor, Senator and the House. Since Republican candidates for other offices received more votes than Bush, and Democratic candidates for other offices received more votes than Clinton, this is a statistically valid assumption. The higher vote totals for the non-presidential candidates had to come from Perot’s voters. In the Governor’s races, Perot’s voters cast 18% of their ballots for the Republican candidates; 56% of their ballots for Democratic candidates, 17% for independent candidates, and 8% did not bother to vote for Governor. If Perot’s voters had voted for Bush and Clinton in the same proportion that the voted for the Republican and Democratic candidates for Governor, Clinton’s lead would have increased by 7.5 million votes. In the Senate races, Perot’s supporters voted 27% for the Republican candidates, 24% for the Democratic candidates, 23% for the independent candidates, and 24% skipped the Senate races entirely. (This does not include states that did not have Senate races.) In the House races, Perot’s voters cast 22% of their ballots for Republican candidates, 19% for Democratic candidates, 18% for independent candidates, and 40% did not vote in House races. Perot’s voters voted overwhelmingly for Democratic Governor candidates, and only marginally in favor of the Republican candidates for the House and Senate. Perot’s voters favored Republican Senate candidates by 2.28%, and Republican House candidates by 2.69%. Because Perot’s voters were only 1/5th of the total, that translates into about another 500,000 votes or 0.5% for bush if they had voted in a two way presidential race the same way they voted for the Senate and House. That is about 1/7th of the margin by which Bush lost. source So, from a popular vote perspective, Perot clearly did not influence the outcome. He took votes away from both Clinton and Bush. But elections aren’t won on the popular vote (as we were painfully reminded of in 2000.) How did Perot’s performance effect the electoral college results? SwingStateProject has the answer.

Perot clearly did not cost Bush the 1992 election. The partisan index measures the degree to which a state favors a party relative to the way the rest of the nation favors that party. This being the case, it would follow that if more typically GOP partisans had indeed swung to Perot than had typically Democratic partisans, the 1992 partisan index would reveal an anomalous pro-DNC swing due to a temporarily eroded Republican base. However, only a handful of states that Clinton won show such trends. Perot definitely seems to have caused Bush to lose Georgia, as the usually double-digit pro-GOP partisan index in that state cratered at +5.0 GOP in 1992. The same goes for Nevada, which relatively favored the GOP by 13.2 in 1988 and 7.5 in 1996, but only by 2.9 in 1992. I’ll grant that without Perot, Bush probably wins both states. Looking at the chart, however, only Colorado, Kentucky, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire and Tennessee are other possible states that Perot swung to Clinton. Still, even if Bush had won all of these states as well as Georgia and Nevada, Clinton would have won the Electoral College 315-223. Further, there is no conclusive evidence that Perot actually cost Bush any of these other six states. Of course, like I already noted, even if I am wrong about all of these states, that means Clinton would still have won 315-223. No other state shows evidence of Perot costing Bush victory. Perot did not cost Bush the 1992 election–not even close. That is one popular myth that can be put to bed.

But let’s not rely on what George W. Bush might have called “fuzzy math” had he been sober in 1992. (I’m sorry, there’s my own contribution to truthiness. Bush claims he’s been sober since 1986.) Let’s go to several newspaper headlines from 1992 concerning exit polling:

Perot Seen Not Affecting Vote Outcome DIONNE (11/8/92): Ross Perot’s presence on the 1992 presidential ballot did not change the outcome of the election, according to an analysis of the second choices of Perot supporters. The analysis, based on exit polls conducted by Voter Research & Surveys (VRS) for the major news organizations, indicated that in Perot’s absence, only Ohio would have have shifted from the Clinton column to the Bush column. This would still have left Clinton with a healthy 349-to-189 majority in the electoral college. And even in Ohio, the hypothetical Bush “margin” without Perot in the race was so small that given the normal margin of error in polls, the state still might have stuck with Clinton absent the Texas billionaire.

Also from the same author:

DIONNE (11/12/92): In House races, Perot voters split down the middle: 51 percent said they backed Republicans, 49 percent backed Democrats. In the presidential contest, 38 percent of Perot supporters said they would have supported Clinton if Perot had not been on the ballot and 37 percent said they would have supported Bush. An additional 6 percent of Perot voters said they would have sought another third-party candidate, while 14 percent said they would not have voted if Perot had not run.

And finally, the Associated Press:

Perot’s Voters Would Have Split In a Two-Way Race ASSOCIATED PRESS (11/4/92): Exit polls suggest Ross Perot hurt George Bush and Bill Clinton about equally. The Voter Research and Surveys poll, a joint project of the four major television networks, found 38 percent of Perot voters would have voted for Clinton and 37 percent would have voted for Bush if Perot had not been on the ballot. Fifteen percent said they would not have voted, and 6 percent listed other candidates.

So there you have three perspectives. Popular vote statistics, electoral vote analysis, and the results of exit polling, all indicating the Perot drew votes away from Bush and Clinton equally and, thus, did NOT throw the election to Clinton.