Tag: politics
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Thank god it’s only once every four years…*
Today I checked off another one of the tasks on my ‘Americanization’ list (note how I used a zee there!) by voting in a presidential election – a right conferred upon only U.S. Citizens (I naturalized in 2009), and only taken away if you’re a convicted felon (which I’m not). But as noted in previous posts, they really should be a bit more selective, as there are a lot of stupid people who really shouldn’t be allowed to vote, judging by the number of slack-jawed, shoddily-dressed dimwits trying to get into the polling station through the out door despite the… Read more
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Love just ain’t enough
So the people of North Carolina have voted to ban same-sex marriage. Well bravo for bigotry. In fact, the people of North Carolina have done more than just ban it. Same-sex marriage has been illegal in North Carolina for the past 16 years; this vote just makes it that much harder to ever get it legalized. So it’s not really a case of North Carolina stopping something that was going on because they didn’t like it, but more a matter of adding insult to injury, just out of pure spite. Not that North Carolina are alone in banning same-sex marriages… Read more
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Democracy: Too important to be left to the people
There was a report in the newspaper recently on a bridge in Slovakia being named after Chuck Norris. Apparently local officials had put it to a popular vote, and (at the time of writing) 74% of people had voted to call it the Chuck Norris Bridge, outvoting a local historical figure by a huge margin. On the face of it, this is all highly amusing, but it does emphasize my point that people should not be allowed to vote – on anything – because they’ll just take the piss, or screw it up. Seriously, it happens every time you let… Read more
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They delayed the Dancing With The Stars vote for THIS?
So here’s to four years of non-specific ‘change’. After a solid 18 months of tedious, blanket media coverage, Barack Obama finally beat John McCain in the U.S. Presidential Election, and will now be the youngest and blackest president in American history. Obama has (at the time of writing) some 349 electoral votes to McCain’s 163 (and he only needed 270 to win). This looks like a good two-thirds majority, but is it really? Bear with me as we take a closer look at the statistics. (Sorry, but my eldest was reading up on citizenship for his Scouts badge, so I was… Read more
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Preaching Around The Bush
At the risk of triggering a Dixie Chicks-like backlash, I have to say that George W. Bush is an absolutely appalling public speaker. I’m not saying I necessarily agree or disagree with his policies – as a non-US Citizen (albeit a Permanent Resident) I’m fairly ambivalent to the whole U.S. politics thing – but he really cannot speak for toffee. Every time I’ve seen him on television, he has ummed, ahed, and erred (!) his way through his speech. (For a great example, see What’s Wrong With Bush?.) Despite almost always reading straight from his notes (or autocue) he delivers each speech as… Read more