After a huge amount of chatter, most of it uninformed guesswork, Barack Obama has finally announced his running mate :) Senator Joe Biden, will hopefully be moving into the vice presidential quarters on January 2009, which is one thing that is confusing me, by taking up the presidency and vice-presidency cause the american equivalent of a by-election...? Either way I'm looking forward to McCain and McCheney Junior getting run out of town when people finally realise they are peddling finely prepared BS...
I know i'm a bit late on this, mainly because i only watched the countdown podcast this evening. I've tried to maintain an interest in US politics, but its difficult to do when you are on the other side of the ocean. After coming here i've tried to make up for lost time, but even then my first real exposure to John McCain was in the Iowa debate. I saw someone who made my skin crawl, he honestly struck me as someone "scary beyond all reason", and when he finally rose to the republican leadership i found my inital gut reaction confirmed time and again. But i didn't have the historical depth to know enough about his history, beyond his status as a Viet-Cong prisoner of war and his rather slimy entry into US politics. Comments like a hundred years in iraq, and lack of any knowledge about the world outside his bedroom, his attitudes to people who disagree with him, all helped confirmed my feeling that this is the president we were warned about. The one that would be so insane as to press the button. Then came the "its not important" comment, and after all the attempts to defend the indefensible, Keith Olbermann delivered this commentary. Part 2 Honestly, countdown can at best be called infotainment, it would not be considered news anywhere in Europe, but Keith Olbermann does sometimes channel the person he attempts to emulate. He may not be Edward R. Munrrow, and the republican party is far more calculating and intelligent than Joe McCarthy, but if enough people listen to him, they might start thinking again.
I wish i could be one of those standing in the path of the torch in London. Failing that, i'm hoping that either an impromptu drizzle puts out the flame, or some brave soul manages to use a fire extinguisher to put it out. We should not be offering support or help to China, if the flame is meant to make it through London, then let it do without the police protection.
I think its time for a paranoid, racist, sexist, homophobic nutjob with all the intellectual capacity of a small concussed bee to be replaced by a man who might actually shake up the dead political landscape of this country. Stephen Colbert, even in his Colbért state would make a better president that the one at the moment. But either way if Barack Obama doesn't get the Democratic Nomination, i think its time to say goodnight to the Democratic party. Admittedly as an undesirable alien, i don't get to vote (yet), however i can see how the intelligent educated masses of America (all you out there stop hiding) are fed up with the Democrats, and would rather declare affiliation with Ron Paul (someone less qualified to be President than Bush...) than vote for a Republican. So i think a joke candidate with some integrity would actually have a chance of taking a significant portion of the vote, even if he almost certainly wouldn't win, maybe it'll be enough to put a decent stake in the heart of the democratic party.
Apparently, according the the Reg we are about to get a new section of nobility. Those people participating in the terribly corrupt disaster of 2012 (also known as the Olympic Tragedy, the waste of space, ken's downfall, and our greatest gift to france) will be the only people able to use their cars in the area. Special lanes for the non athletes who are considered important will exist. I despise the olympics, and all who take part in it, because contrary to the image it presents, its a quagmire of corporate sponsorship deals and corruption. Suffice it to say, i find it illegal to the nature of my country that these lanes will exist, so should they be on my route, i will be using them. How dare this government suggest we are yet more inconvenienced by their further stupidity. I don't want the games messing up london and the rest of the UK, so why should i have to put up with it? If fact the only good thing about the games coming to London, is the fact that it doesn't ruin Paris...
For those of you who don't know about the situation of women in Saudi Arabia, shame on you for being ignorant. For those of you who do, congratulations on being a passable attempt of a world citizen. For those women in Saudi Arabia, don't take no for an answer, its time to take to the open road, they don't have enough police to stop all of you at once!