Tag Archive for 'president'

Election 2008: It’s Obama for the win

After so long, it’s finally over. Barack Obama has won the presidency. I can’t express how happy I am. It’ll still be up to Obama to prove to America that he’s got what it takes, but at least Americans are willing to give him a chance.

Obama a Muslim? The horror!

It’ll never cease to amaze me how many people want to believe Barack Obama is some kind of secret Muslim. I mean, first off, what will it take to get people to finally believe him when he says he isn’t a Muslim? And second, what exactly is wrong with Muslims? I happened to be reading the Constitution the other day and I didn’t see anything in there that said, “Muslims cannot be president and if one does become president, that’s a sign of the apocalypse and the United States will turn into a nation of gay abortion-lovers who rape children.” Seriously.

The latest weapon of the “HAY GAIZ, OSAMA IS A MUSLIM” campaign is the fact that Obama used to go by the name Barry Soetoro when he lived in Indonesia. This is hardly surprising considering that his mom married a guy with the last name Soetoro. Oh wait! That’s apparently bad, too! Why? Because Obama didn’t make it public. No, I’m serious. Apparently, presidential candidates are supposed to be up front about everything in their lives, regardless of how important it is to the job they’re pursuing. And this isn’t that important. From what little I’ve been able to dig up on the whole Barry Soetoro thing (seriously, search for the name on Google and you’ll get pretty much all anti-Obama links), it wasn’t a legal name change, which means it has absolutely no impact on anything. Just like McCain’s five years as a POW. It’s irrelevant to the presidency.

The argument goes that if Obama used to go by a different name, he could be a different religion (?) or even have a dual citizenship (?!). There’s scant evidence to this effect, and a dual citizenship wouldn’t necessarily bar Obama from the presidency. The requirements, listed in the Constitution, say that a person must be a natural-born citizen of the United States, be 35 years old, and have lived in the U.S. for at least 14 years. There’s nothing in there about dual citizenships, but, to be fair, dual citizenships didn’t exactly exist when the Constitution was written. It’s a rather weak attack on Obama, but that’s nothing new. After all, the secret Muslim accusation has been flying around forever and we still have yet to hear what’s wrong with being a Muslim…

The uproar surrounding this election is proof the world has gone insane. Rationality flew out the window a long time ago and it depresses me. I really can’t wait until November so this can all finally be over. Of course, I’m being optimistic. Even if Obama was to win in a landslide, the anti-Obama crowd would claim he stole the election (kind of like how the anti-McCain crowd will claim McCain stole the election if he wins) or whine about how the country will go downhill now that a Muslim is president. I don’t think I’ll ever escape from the madness.

Final showdown

So it would appear that Barack Obama has all but clinched the Democratic presidential nomination. According to the Associated Press, Obama has the most delegates, putting him far enough in front of Hilary Clinton that she will probably concede the nomination sometime soon.

Now it’s Obama versus McCain for the presidency, assuming Ralph Nader doesn’t make a surprise comeback and ruin everything. Again. However, I’ve heard that a strong third party candidate would be more injurious to McCain than to Obama. I guess that remains to be seen.

As to who I’ll be voting for…I’ve decided that in November, I will be voting for Obama. Yes, I know how often I go on about third parties and how I’m not, in fact, throwing my vote away. But when I look at what’s available, I have to say that Obama is a better choice than any of the third party candidates I’ve looked at. The Libertarian Party candidate, Bob Barr, is anything but a libertarian (well, not the kind I am, at least; he even wanted to ban Wicca from the armed forces), Ron Paul is still crazy, and I have yet to hear about any good independents. My favorite candidates (like Mike Gravel) have vanished back into pre-presidential anonymity, so I’m left with a bunch of candidates I can only half-heartedly support.

Therefore, I’d rather put my vote in for Obama. I hate to buy into the “vote for the guy who’s most likely to win” mentality, but he’s the best choice I’ve got.

No more Colbert for President

Can anyone say “conspiracy”? Steven Colbert’s presidential run has been smashed to pieces by the humorless Democratic executive council of South Carolina, which voted 13-3 to deny his application to be put on the ballot as a Democrat. As Waring Howe, a member of the council, put it Colbert “serves to detract from the serious candidates on the ballot.” But Dennis Kucinich, the guy who sees UFOs, is allowed on? Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Not all the members of the council lacked a sense of humor. State Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter (who I think outranks Mr. Missed-the-Point Howe, there) chided the people who voted against Colbert’s name being put on the ballot as taking things a little too seriously. I happen to agree. Yes, Colbert’s run was a stunt aimed at publicizing his show. But he could have brought a lot of publicity to South Carolina through it. It’s not every day you get a favorite son with a much-loved faux-news show. I mean, how many times has Bill O’Reilly extolled his home state? Or Anderson Cooper? Pshaw.

Unfortunately, Colbert can’t run as a Republican, either, since he missed the filing deadline to apply for a spot on the ballot. I can’t blame him, though. Whereas the fee for the Democrat Party was only $2,500 (fully refunded after his denial), the fee for the Republicans was a whopping $35,000. Um, okay. Either the Democrats have really low standards or the Republicans think too highly of themselves…wait…right, I forgot: both are true.

Anyways, I was so looking forward to those Colbert for President bumper stickers…guess I’ll have to stick with the Picard-Riker one for now. Also, if you’re interested, I came across a very handy replacement for Wikipedia. Guaranteed to have more truthiness than Wikipedia will ever have.

May 2013
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