Sufism vs. New York

There are some issues that are not real controversies at all, but cultural flashpoints of conflict, where even discussing them does nothing but feed the drama-spiral.

I try to avoid these non-issues as much as possible…remember the hilarious flap and political capital burned over the ultimately private family issue of poor Terry Schiavo?

I’ve said time after time that one of the weaknesses of the political True Believer is the inability to pick their battles. In the interests of being bipartisan, this also includes a few big bugaboos of the left, too: for instance, the attempts to jail Auguste Pinochet when he was well into his eighties. There’s a certain point where so much energy has been invested that something becomes less about justice and more about petty, private emotional satisfaction.

Obviously the “mosque built near ground zero” is another example of a flashpoint emotional issue for culture warriors. The reason I’m saying anything at all is because the conflict is reported in a way that activates the rage-gland and several facts need to be taken into account. Yeah, I know, I’m feeding the drama fire and maybe that makes me a hypocrite…but nonetheless the entire conversation is disingenuous.

While I am a firm believer that every religion has to acknowledge and take responsibility for their extremists, the people building the Mosque/Community Center are Sufis, not any of the Sunni Wahabists responsible for the September 11th attacks! There have been entire articles in the press that fail to mention the denominational affiliation of the community center, which is laziness shocking for even reporters. The fact that the people building the community center are totally different than the attackers on September 11th has not been mentioned, and it is a crucial factor that should be a part of the discussion! Sufis are a totally different sect with distinct teachings and different practices…including the very famous and colorful “Whirling Dervishes.”

The conversation on whether it is appropriate for Muslims should build a “mosque” near the trade center remains totally misses the point…because the Sufis were not responsible for September 11th! This is an occasion where the question itself requires swallowing an outrageously untrue premise, like “do you still beat your wife?” In Edward Said’s crucial book Orientalism, he argued that the identity of “the Orient” and “the Middle East” is a totally artificial one imposed by Europeans on a diverse stew of cultures that don’t have a lot in common.

This reminds me a little of one of the most frightening moments in recent political memory…a moment that can be pointed to as the very moment that things went wrong in Iraq: according to Bob Woodward’s book “Plan of Attack,” it had to be explained to George W. Bush that there is more than one kind of Muslim.

Also, some perspective is called for on the location. The mental image is of the empty lot/nuclear impact crater from the September 11th Attacks, when the area is not what it was even in 2004, a developed area with plans. Indeed, the place is but is instead 3-4 blocks away, and in New York a “block,” even an uptown-downtown block, is much more than say, in Tarpon Springs, FL.

Finally, I’m alarmed at the obvious emotional manipulativeness of the issue and its shameless and totally transparent purpose of base-galvanization. It is virtually impossible to argue that this isn’t a manufactured controversy to sway far-right voters in the upcoming election. Here’s the thing about being manipulated: people that are dead sure they can’t be manipulated are the ideal mark for manipulators because they don't think all that closely about how such a thing could happen. For instance, the permits and permissions to build the mosque and community center were filed over a year ago. The fact that this is only an issue NOW is a question of timing…especially for the upcoming midterm elections. This is a political prop. If I were a Republican, I would not be comfortable or okay with gonzo issue handlers and their attempts to amp up my rage-glands to vote their way.

An inconvenient historical truth

Have a look at this absolutely, er, fascinating column at Townhall, where the following claim is made:

"Ok who's ready for a new federal law? How 'bout this: "No one may run for President of the United States after previously only being elected to a state legislature and U.S. Senate with no chief executive experience."

How a federal law will change the Constitution I don't know, but that law would have disqualified Washington, Adams (both John and John Quincy), Jefferson, Madison, Monroe...and even in modern times: Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and George W. Bush.

Okay, we get it, Republicans: you don't like Barry. But this petty temper tantrum against American history has to stop.

This is why, honest-to-goodness, I'm not actually worried about 2012 in the least. The best they've got is the recycling of an old line from the 2008 McCain campaign. After all, the only thing that McCain really had going for him over Barack Obama was that he had a resume.

Broken Windows: Errors in Logic in Arizona's SB1070

As a Floridian, it's so nice to hear that some other state is now the national embarrassment. Thanks, guys...you're making us look like the "good child" again.

Arizona's Immigration Law SB1070 is igniting a national controversy, and the first time I realized the sentiment dredged up by this reactionary piece of political theater is when there were actually protests against SB1070 at a Marlins-Diamondbacks game. This is nothing short of astonishing since in this infuriatingly candy-ass, fair-weather sports town, it's nice to actually see somebody care about something at a baseball game...alas, it wasn't baseball, though.

I am amused by people that claim that the law won't lead to racial profiling. Deeply amused, because racial profiling, and the codification of racial profiling, is the whole point of the law. SB 1070 allows for local police to stop and determine immigration status if they have "reasonable suspicion" that a person has a vague immigration status during a "lawful stop or detention." In other words, the entire purpose of the law is to increase the ability of police to hassle people and demand papers aggressively. There are a few token prohibitions in HB 2162, the follow-up law, of course, that officers should not take into account "race, color or national origin" in its enforcement, but that's a laugh: does Arizona share a border with the lily-white Ruritania from the Prisoner of Zenda? No - the race and national origin of people stopped for papers is the overwhelming factor at work in the decision to enforce the law.

I have friends that often say absolutely outrageous things about other races and religions, who then follow their statements with "...but I'm not a racist!" Actually, there's no more racist group on the planet than college educated, liberal whites, because they have the attitude that because of who they are, nothing they say can be viewed as racist, so they say absolutely terrible things. There's a point at which something can't reasonably be denied to be racist. When you have a law that increases the ability to detain, stop and question people and require them to carry specialized papers constantly or face prison, and its enforcement is specifically directed against a single racial/ethnic group to the exclusion of others...how is this not racist?

Now, as everybody knows, I'm really hard when it comes to enforcing the law on violent lawbreakers. But not everyone that is an illegal immigrant is a lawbreaker. There is a distinction between people in the United States illegally to pick tomatoes (or because they were brought as children and know no other life) and violent and aggressive gangsters that border-cross.

There's a theory in criminal justice called "broken windows." In other words, tolerance for one type of crime (broken windows in a neighborhood) will lead to tolerance for other types of crimes (muggings). So, in order to reduce violent crime in an area, there has to be intolerance for broken windows. This is an error in logic related to the "lawn fallacy." Think of it like this: there was (seriously) a theory floated around in education that the key to the success of children in schools is a well-groomed lawn, because it was found that most high achieving students had well groomed lawns. Unfortunately, correlation is not causation and to suggest otherwise is a lapse in logic. The reason that broken windows are found in high-crime areas isn't because tolerance of one leads to another, but because similar causes result in both: poverty, neglect, and so on.

Likewise, intolerance of one type of illegal immigrant (migrant laborers) will not necessarily result in reduction of another (violent gangsters). Obviously violent Mexican gangsters should be deported and their privileges revoked, no questions asked...but that only applies when they have actually committed a crime - and guess what? That's how it worked before the new laws! (What a concept, eh? Deporting people in the U.S. illegally that have actually committed a crime!) Defenders of the SB1070 law frequently make a big deal about how SB1070 is only enforcing standard laws instead of changing them...but if the laws are currently acceptable, where's the necessity for this anyway?

The belief that all illegal immigrants are fundamentally lawbreakers is in fact, a racist belief that does not understand the Mexican experience, considering an entire economy exists that migration makes possible: if every illegal migrant worker were to leave tomorrow, most Americans would starve and the food shortage would be downright crippling. Also, the law is anti-humanitarian: a "no illegals, no amnesty" hard line doesn't make much of small children that were raised in the United States, that speak only English, that call America home.

Empathy is a crucial tool when relating to others. When that happens, ask yourself this question: did your great grandparents have their papers in order?

One of the ugliest aspects of America is the degree to which Mexicans -a group that has been in the United States in significant numbers longer than either the Irish or Italians - are permanent outsiders, a pain that the racial profiling SB1070 emphasizes. Americanism is, like it or not, determined by race. Long-dead pop star Selena's family came to the United States 150 years before and will forever be a "Latin Star," yet Rene Zellweiger has a German father and is the "All-American Girl."

Finally, I can't punish the Republican Party and Arizona any more than they will inevitably be punished in the coming years. The effects are immediate: Arizona is reeling from a big body blow, the loss of more than $90 million in conventions and other organizations that are moving away from the state. In the public mind, Arizona is now associated with reactionary racism and Mexiphobic sentiment. And finally, the dream of the Republican Party bringing in Hispanics to create a permanent majority in America are gone for the next foreseeable generation. The short-term energizing of the base that this piece of political theater creates, is nothing compared to the long-term political consequences.

It Came...From the Internet!

WARNING: this article requires a finely calibrated sense of satire. A good rule is, if you can't tell that Ed Anger and Steven Colbert are not really conservatives but are in fact goofing on conservatism, you probably won't get the joke here. And thus, become a part of the joke.

There are several writers of the blog "Calvinists 4 Conservatism." One of them is, by all appearances, a pretty normal and earnest guy that doesn't care for atheism and tries to use religion to make sense of disasters in the world in a way that shows real thought. I don't agree with him at times, but he's obviously the real deal.

The other one is a guy so laughably over the top that it's obvious that he's a liberal that's totally infiltrated this webpage, by the name of "Objective Scrutator." The fact that nobody on that website has figured it out is the best thing ever.

He amps the rhetoric up to such insane levels that it's funny and somehow perverse that there are actually people that find themselves agreeing with him. For instance, he defends Uganda's insane laws that punish anyone knowing someone is a homosexual and not reporting it with seven years in prison. Cheering on this obviously inhuman law is a direct satirical attack on conservatives' heartlessness and lack of concern about global savagery toward homos.

And what's more, his posts are a thing of beauty. Under "Turmoil in the Toybox," he's got this to say:

"There are other wicked cartoons, too. For starters, The Care Bears will indoctrinate your children into Hinduism and sodomy."

"The Big Bang goes against the 6000 year doctrine that has been repeatedly proven time and time again as Darwin, a man who had carnal relationships with Galapagos Tortoises, is continually revived by atheists and anti-Americans, so as to provide the antiChrist with legions of soldiers."

"I was seriously worried that I may grow lax on children’s cartoons, and perhaps allow my young children to expose themselves to the left-wing demons of pornography, the occult, and other Helioleftist Eratosthenian rubbish. "

The question here is, did the blog start as a joke and they just looped in some earnest but thickheaded guy into it, like Jolt from the Thunderbolts, who actually thinks they are heroes instead of criminals pretending to be superheroes in a scheme?

What is a hate crime?

One of the more interesting arguments against hate crime legislation is that hate crimes are problematic because they criminalize intent as opposed to action and behavior.

To that, I respond this way:

Hate crimes do not have a higher penalty because of intent. Hate crimes have a higher penalty because of their practical, real-world effect: they intimidate, silence and terrify an entire community. The reason that there are greater penalties beyond just that of the initial act itself (murder, rape, violent assault, etc.) is that a hate crime makes the community of the victim (particularly vulnerable minority communities, especially blacks) frightened and intimidated. The effect of events like lynching has, historically and presently, been to frighten and silence black people (and other groups).

Crimes have effects that transcend just that of their victim. Crime lowers property values because people feel more anxious and less safe. Crimes create an atmosphere of fear that go beyond one individual action. This is why terrorism should have higher penalties associated with it (although I don't agree with the legal action that a crime somehow transcends traditional law enforcement because of its nature).

Not only that, but hate crimes create racial distrust, disharmony and tension that is really destructive to communities in ways beyond just any individual action.

Finally, crimes are penalized not just because of the act itself, but because of what the crime acknowledges and says about the perpetrator, that they've shown traits that forfeit their right to be considered human. Racism - in the vicious form that motivates and makes a hate crime possible - is one such characteristic. All of these things are taken into account in the highly interpretive process of sentencing. For instance, the more helpless the victim, the higher the sentence. Robbing a child or a grandmother usually gets a higher sentence because the savagery and sadism of that crime against a more helpless victim, shows far less humanity. In many cases the law acknowledges this, and something like higher penalties for a hate crime isn't new.

The only way that liberals can refute the idea that we're soft on crime is to not be soft on crime. I never thought that I would ever say the same to conservatives - that they're the ones that are making excuses and apologizing for human slime. Hate crimes cannot be tolerated, and racism in society is not acceptable. Period.

Yeah, I saw that episode of "In Search Of..." too!

Anti-science climate-change deniers have a wonderful habit of interpreting out of context discussion within science itself. The fact that science isn't monolithic and explores various possibilities, to them, is a sign of weakness instead of a function of the process of science, where for entirely career oriented concerns, scientists in the peer review process jump down each other's throats to tear one another down.

In the 1970s, there was a theory that earth was going into a new Ice Age, a theory so dubious, sensationalistic and borderline fringe that it qualified for an "In Search Of..." episode, a series that dealt with serious scientific discussion about major issues of the day...like Pyramid Power, the curse of the pharaohs, and whether or not the Mayans had the secret of space travel.

I mean, sure, "In Search Of" is the greatest show ever, but I wouldn't exactly look to it to determine the latest trends in science.

To exaggerate an "In Search Of" topic into something that was a real consensus of real science is a slimy interpretation of scientific history. Those nutty climate scientists - why can't they make up their minds, huh? Is it going to be an Ice Age or not?

This video responds to the claims that "climate scientists in the 1970s thought we were headed to an Ice Age" pretty well.

Some things just transcend the realm of politics. Politics is about changing value judgments into a course of action for society. This is different from science, which analyzes and describes the physical world around us. While we can disagree on courses of action as well as on value judgments as thinking human beings, physical reality is non-negotiable.

Just because something is inconvenient does not make it untrue.

Places Where Liberals Are Wrong

Though I make no secret of the way I vote, there are some places where the Left is in the wrong.

Israel

Israel is a Western-style democracy with no official religion (check the constitution, it's there) populated by the most persecuted minority in human history, who finally have a homeland to protect themselves from future genocides. Israel is absolutely morally superior to the theocratic oligarchies that perpetuate themselves and distract from domestic problems by creating a scapegoat in Israel. There isn't a moral equivalency between Israel and its Arab foes.

One of the great flaws in thinking is the "Moderator Fallacy." That is, marriage counselors often operate from the assumption that if a couple is having a disagreement, both must be at least to blame and the truth is somewhere in the middle. In reality, with most personal disagreements and disputes, usually one person is 80% to 100% responsible.

Israel is one of the great success stories in human history. They quite literally made the desert bloom. To be fair, Israel is not a perfect society by any means...the power over which non-secular authorities have powers in specific, limited spheres is shocking, for example, the way clerics have power over a social function like marriage. Likewise, Israel's Arab minority are often discriminated against and used for cheap labor. But these social problems do not legitimize the right of Israel to exist any more than the US's social problems delegitimize us.

Gun Control

Obviously the United States is a violent society, but the truth is, guns aren't the problem and removing guns won't cure the problem.

The problem with the United States is that we are a society of fear and anxiety. I am offended by violent crime as much as anyone else, and by terrorism and random shootings, but the idea we are living in an exaggerated state of danger that requires firearms or at least a pair of trusty Nunchaku constantly is just insane. Why do people feel the need to own or carry firearms? As someone that worked for the public High Schools for at least a year as a math instructor in what could be considered a lower socioeconomic area, I never was robbed or stabbed. And frankly, if nobody wants to stab a math teacher...things are probably pretty safe for everyone else! Americans - especially suburban white Americans - are just not aware of the reality of this experience.

I had something of an ephiphany when I understood the difference between conservative television figureheads Bill O'Reilly and Glen Beck. O'Reilly is the sort of person that conservatives respond to when they're in power: swaggering, domaneering, authoritarian. Beck is the sort of person conservatives are when outside of power: panicky, terrified, prone to overreaction and seeing conspiracies absolutely everywhere. No wonder there are guns everywhere: the right's gone into "Glen Beck mode."

The point is, this is a problem so deep in the American psyche that restricting or legislating guns just won't solve.

Robert Novak dies; Simon Belmont and Abraham van Helsing wanted for questioning

Robert Novak died today, which I refuse to believe until I see the stake through his heart.

The Dick Cheney of the pundit class, as we know, played a big role in the outing of Valerie Plame, the sleaziest hit operation of the sleazy Bush years. Further, Novakula debased the role of political commentary for liberal and conservative alike with his insider status and beltway chumminess, and played a large role in the transformation of the political journalist into employee of political parties.

Boy, I hate looking at Novakula's mug. The best way to get it out of your head, you ask? Why, yes, I do happen to have some pictures of international vixen Melissa Ford on hand for this very purpose!

Some Hate for Proposition Eight

"Prop 8 - The Musical" starring Jack Black, John C. Reilly, and many more... by Jack Black

Do you believe that the government has the right to tell people who they can or can't marry?

Prop 8's the one thing that harshes my buzz about finally having a President that talks like a grownup adult (that, and the fact the Three Stooges remain in power here in Florida: I guess running Joe Garcia, a charismaless nerd technocrat, wasn't enough). Proposition Eight is an example of the ugly Karl Rove "old" school of politics the American people categorically rejected: divide the electorate with an issue and hope you end up with the bigger piece. Usually, it nearly always involves smearing a minority group (undocumented workers, homos, Ay-rabs).

This actually affects someone close to me personally, because my Mother has a "civil union" with her boyfriend that gives her hospital and visitation rights and allows them to share insurance.

Incidentally, I fully expect a lot of comments that go "Hey, if you're so tolerant, how come you're not tolerant of my intolerance?" Those just crack me up.

Barack the Vote!

I could hug a random stranger right now, that's the general feeling. I'll be back to being a bastard that hates being touched in the morning when the euphoria wears off.

It's so weird to know I'm living in a blue state. "Landslide" would be putting it mildly.

The Obama campaign was a victory of ideals: the power of hope over the power of fear. Obama spent oodles of cash on advertizements where he didn't mention his opponent once. McCain spent his campaign either duplicating what Barack was doing (even his Iraq policy!) or arousing our fears with "boogedy-boogedy SOCIALISM!!!" cries.

Hope triumphed over the politics of fear.

The success of Barack Obama was made possible (and I can't believe I'm typing this) due to minorities: latinos, African-Americans. And especially by idealistic young people, who were able to tip the vote in nearly all swing states.

It's revenge of the nerds, like those movies where a bunch of loveable slobs and geeks beat the snooty blonde jocks that run the summer camp: the disparaged underdogs of America (young people, minorities) beat out aged geezers, traditionalists, jocks and snotty cheerleaders. Come to think of it, that's why Sarah Palin seemed to have such popularity: shallow, mean and unintelligent, she was the ultimate High School "Queen Bee."

The contrast couldn't have been more different than the crowd shots of both rallies. McCain's rallies all had reaction shots of depressed looking blonde Scandinavians and other assorted corn-fed douches. The reaction shots of Obama's rallies looked like real Americans.

All through the Bush years, I hoped for something like this to happen: a crushing landslide made possible by the young and by people at the fringe of America. They elected someone that otherwise wouldn't be electable: a black guy with an Arab-sounding name, who was the son of a single mother, who by his own merits rose to head of the Harvard Law Review and graduated at the top of his class in an Ivy League School. He was from Hawaii, not "the heartland."

God, how I hate "the Heartland." Not the actual place, but the dishonest, manipulative concept that America is about white working class Christians from rural areas. It's always irked me that because my parents are both immigrants I'm considered "some Spanish guy" despite my loyalty and love for the United States, the country where I was born and raised...yet Rene Zellweiger, who is also the daughter of immigrants and raised in the United States, is considered the "All-American Girl."

If America was all, or even mostly "hockey Moms" and "Joe Sixpacks" like Sarah Palin famously said, she'd be vice-president elect now. America is about Pakistani-immigrant cabdrivers working to send their daughter to college. It's about homosexual half-Mexican, half-Italian electrical engineers in Brooklyn. America is Christian, but also Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu and Jewish.

That said, what is shocking is how broad the appeal of Barack Obama is: rural people, working class, whites, blacks, Latinos, urban white collar people, the elderly...heck, if McCain hadn't voted for himself, the win would probably would have been unanimous.

In other words, this election transcended just a mere victory for a single man. It was the victory of a broad, inclusive idea of America. It was a victory for youth and idealism. It was a moment where we shed our cynicism and said that government can be a part of the solution, and not the problem.

Man, I wish this election would never end

I always wished real-life sports would be as nutty and wacky as movie sports, where giraffes play soccer and the most undefeatable hockey formation is the "Flying V."

This election is like a screwball movie about an election. It's like the hilarious, Hail-Mary stunts from the McCain camp never come to an end, and never seem to stop backfiring.

First, there's Caribou Barbie herself, Sarah Palin. I've never seen the American public fall in love and fall out of love with a politician over the course of 72 hours. As we really knew nothing about her, at first, she looked like the perfect choice for Veep: she was, like Barack, an energetic political newcomer, she was a woman so she gave the campaign an Obama-esque dynamism an aging white male career politician wouldn't have, and finally, she could win over all the backwoods godfuckers in the Red States that believe the below scene actually happened, who McSame was never able to court.

FACT: the speech she prepared at the Republican convention was written before the Veep nominee was announced. I have a suspicion David Frum and the rest of the GOP speechwriters wrote the speech banking it would be Mitt Romney. It just felt like a Romney speech: the smarmy, self-congratulatory tone and false populism was all over it.

The exact moment the American public fell out of love with her would have to be the exact moment she opened her mouth without a script in front of her - something GOP mythology says would happen eventually to that style-over-substance silver-tongued phony Barry O but, one week before the election, has yet to happen.

It wasn't that Palin couldn't answer a question about what she read, though that alone is weird, because I usually read about three or four books in a week, in addition to newspapers and fun, junk stuff like comic books and internet blogs, and like most people, I am very proud of what I read. Rather, it was that Palin interpreted one of the ultimate softball questions ("What do you read?") as an assault and then hemmed and hawed like a kid trying to cover up the fact he didn't do his homework.

Another of my favorite parts of this campaign are the constant Republican attempts to smear Barry O not because of something he's done or policies he's in favor of, but because he knows somebody. Really, that's all they got? Barry knows a guy that's bad? Ayers, of course, is one, as is his preacher. What's even more incredible is the great dichotomy between how little the American public cares, and how frothed up and frustrated the GOP gets that the American people don't care. It's like Monica Lewinsky all over again.

Then we have Ashley Todd, the Demon Cutter of Fleet Street. This is, naturally, the single most overt racist "dogwhistle" move we've so far gotten in the campaign, which comes as a surprise to me: I was expecting at least one McCain staffer to slip and say a racial epithet as early as September. It was, naturally, a lie: nobody believed it except the conservative blogs and Fox News, and that was because they desperately wanted it to be true.

Best of all, with the fake black eye, constant updates on her position via cel, and cuts that didn't break the skin and the "backwards-B" that looked like it was done in the mirror, this was one of those cases Encyclopedia Brown could have cracked:

Bugs Meany clutched his crying girlfriend in the Tigers clubhouse. "So, Brown? Are you going to get the nigger that did this to my girlfriend?"

Encyclopedia scoffed. "I'm not taking your girlfriend anywhere, Bugs. She's lying like a rug from start to finish."

HOW DID ENCYCLOPEDIA KNOW?

(For the answer, turn to page 47.)

Of all the squashed October Surprises, this one struck me as the most pitiable. There's nothing sadder than the displaced rage of a conservative young fat girl. I see them all the time around the university, carrying their iMacs, their desktop wallpaper made of shirtless pics of the captain from "Firefly."

And finally, we have Joe the Plumber. Explaining the joke would probably destroy it, but here goes: the boogedy-boogedy SOCIALISM!!!!! scare tactics about high taxes were as laughable as they were transparent considering Barry intends to lower taxes for the middle and lower class. The patronizing attempt to appeal to "Joe Sixpack?"

GOP? Might I suggest a few other populist mascots?

• George the Lockheed-Martin Executive


• Kathleen the road-rageaholic soccer Mom


• Chad the C-student son of a law partner


• And finally, Zoltan the Incredible

In the interests of fairness, it should be noted that Biden has gaffed tragically all over the hemisphere, but this is less of a big deal because really nobody cares what Biden has to say anyway. The idea that the Vice-President is the fourth branch of government is a post-Cheney Republican idea without support in the Constitution. The most righteous moment of the third Presidential debate was when Joe Biden corrected Palin: the job of the Veep is to cast the tie vote in the Senate, replace the president if necessary, and that's all.

That's one thing I'm loving about the Obama campaign: it restores the Vice-Presidential role to its former irrelevance. At first it looked like Obama messed up when he picked a predictable choice like Biden (I was saying it was going to be either Biden or Bill Richardson), but it's all a part of the plan: the executive branch isn't about the Vice, anyway.

I can't wait for election night. I'm looking forward to it like kids look forward to Christmas. With talk that Virginia (!) and Georgia (!) might turn blue, we're looking at one of the biggest landslides in American history. I'm going to Bicentennial Park to celebrate; the end of the Bush years would be like the fireworks scene in "Return of the Jedi."

Seven of Nine is responsible for Obama!

I was just thinking about this the other day: professional superbabe Jeri Ryan is responsible for the candidacy of my good buddy Barry.

Jeri Ryan filed divorce papers from her husband, Senator Jack Ryan. Part of the reasons she gave for wanting a divorce was how creeped out she was that her hubby dragged her to a swinger's club, where according to her divorce papers, Jack Ryan wanted her to have sex with him in public, and the place had plenty of whips and torture devices along the wall. During the campaign, the divorce papers came to light, causing the incumbent Senator to drop out.

It should be remembered that Jeri's husband's re-election was, basically, a sure thing. He was a well-liked incumbent, and he was running against some nobody named Barack Obama.

Who did the GOP decide to run instead? The craziest man in America, ALAN "AWESOME" KEYES, that's who! The guy that was in the GOP primary something like five times without winning a single state. Alan "No Chance" Keyes.

Of course Obama won!

Barry Obama is nothing short of the luckiest man in world history. Running against Alan Keyes is like being GIVEN a Senate seat.

Here's something else that's interesting: Republicans in general have to answer to a base of religious, family-values types. Sex scandals alienate this base, and finish GOP candidates, which is not often true for Democrats. If Bill Clinton had been a Republican, Monica Lewinsky would have finished him.

Maybe that's no longer true, though. After all the gay sex scandals (Foley, Craig, et. al.) last year when the College Young Republican chief that seduced several students, you could hear a sigh of relief from Republicans everywhere. "A straight sex scandal? Oh, thank God!"