Big Day – 20th January 2009

It’s a day some of us have been anticipating for several years now.

In 2004, the following was said:

The president, is never black, female or gay, and until that day, you’ve got nothing to say to me, America.

And it was said by Morrissey, in a song on his You Are the Quarry album called “America is not the world”. Here’s the marvellous, miserable, blue-balled, Manc wanker in action:

Anyway, I’m expecting him to make some kind of proclamation next week when Fuzzy Barry gets the big office. Perhaps a national address of some kind – akin to the Queen’s speech. Followed by Morrissey’s ‘Big Conversation’ tour.

Or perhaps not….

Moz calls Obama a terrorist, supports him for President

Last month (in the interview above) Morrissey was asked “Do you have any idea who could be the best possible president of the U.S.?” Moz‘s reply:

“If you’re drawn to becoming the president, or to be a world leader. And leaders always mean bullies. They don’t ever mean world poet… You have to be a terrorist in order to be a president. The people who are attracted to politics are never good people; they’re always people who are potentially terrorists. And you can see it in all the people who lead our countries throughout the world. They’re never nice people. So it doesn’t really matter in a way who wins the election… because I think the results are always the same.”

It was all going so well….

Then earlier this week he wore this shirt:

I wonder which way he would have gone if Barry was actually black.

AJ

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Political Odds Shorten on Glenrothes and US Presidency

Further to my earlier musing on political betting odds (courtesy of the Political Betting Blog), it now seems that the odds against Labour taking the Glenrothes by-election on Nov 6th have shortened considerably, from 7/4 to 5/6 – level pegging with SNP whose odds have lengthened accordingly. Only Betfair seem to be offering a different take.

More intriguing is the betting on McCain, on whom I put a pony last weekend at 17/2 against. Centrebet, who offered 17/2 are now offering 5/1, while only Ladbrokes are still offering anything like a decent price on McCain.

 

Fingers crossed. Come on Grandad Chip.

I didn’t put any money on Labour to take Glenrothes, back when 7/4 was on the cards. Even though it would have been sweet to make some money out of those bastards, I couldn’t even stand the thought of cheering were they to succeed.

AJ

Robert Mugabe to Drive for McClaren, Run for President in 2012

As the week begins, whose end could see the first coloured Formula 1 champion and the first coloured US president, warnings rang out around the world that this is just the thin end of the slippery slope.

Nervous commentators have been keen to point out that that this is ‘blacking up by stealth’. Divisive columnist Richard Littlejob, writing for the tabloid YellowSkyGod newspaper, said, “Neither man is actually black (each having a white momma who liked a bit of brown sugar), but one thing always leads to another.”

These alarmist warnings appeared to ring true last night as it came to light that a bidding war has now broken out for the services of up & coming F1 driver Robert Mugabe.

Ron Dennis courts Robert Mugabe, yesterday.

Meanwhile, senior members of the US Democratic Party have approached Mr Mugabe as a possible candidate for the 2012 presidential race, after President Obama is assassinated and Joe Boredom winds up in the Oval Office, plunging the US population into a persistent vegetative state during his first and only State of the Union address in 2011.

 
President Mugabe to be sworn into office 21st January 2013.

In other news, Strictly Come Dancing is to be hosted next year by a CGI Idi Amin.

AJ

Money where mouth is time…

Further to this post, where I pondered upon how reflective the polls and odds truly are in the McCain/Obama contest, I’ve had another look at the polling and put a bet on.

While PaddyPower are now giving 11/2 against McCain, Centrebet are giving 17/2 against, so I put £25 on McCain.

So, on 5th November, I’ll either be drinking corporation pop and eating beans-on-toast, or it’ll be a bottle of Bollinger and a caviar pizza. Which I think neatly analogises our likely futures with these potential world leaders.

5th of November will, coincidentally, be the day of Old Holborn’s little stroll around Westminster. Must tune into the webcam.

On 6th November, however, I’ll be poised with the ice bucket for the result of the Glenrothes by-election, where Labour are expected to be paggered. (SNP 2/5, LAB 7/4 but shortening).

AJ

McCain’s mental fitness to lead

Fred Reed propounds an interesting and insightful venture into John McCain’s mental capacity to lead the US.

http://www.fredoneverything.net/McCain.shtml

I frankly don’t believe John McCain’s medical records, or at any rate the portions released to the New York Times. The man was held in solitary for years, tortured until bones fractured, until he confessed to war crimes, until he tried to hang himself.

That he broke can’t be held against him: Almost anyone would have. (In my view GIs should be told to confess to anything whatever right from the start.) But the assertion that he came through unscathed, warm and humorous and psychically sound, just isn’t plausible. It doesn’t happen that way.

…

With PTSD, or whatever you want to call it, the anger is the giveaway. These vets carry a load of subterranean fury that you don’t want to look at. As they would say, I shit you not one pound. I know a lot of these guys. A buddy of mine—two tours in bad places, killed a whole lot of people up close– now has no tolerance for frustration,. He’s ready to spread your teeth over a wide radius if you even seem to think about getting in his face. Admirable? No. But don’t make the experiment.

Sounds like McCain. His explosiveness is notorious.

…

For what he went through in Vietnamese jails he deserves sympathy and admiration. It isn’t qualification for the presidency.

Yessss. Ve’y Interesssting, Mr Bont.

But, I suppose it wouldn’t be the first time a mentler held the office.

About a year ago (Jan 2006) an excellent article which studied biographical source material in 37 presidents from 1776 to 1974 was published in The Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases on the topic of Mental Illness in U.S. Presidents… and concluded that 18 presidents (49%) met criteria suggesting psychiatric diagnoses and in 10 instances (27%)”a disorder was evident during presidential office, which in most cases probably impaired job performance”. Thankfully the authors concluded that no national calamities appeared to have occurred due to presidential mental illness. Here is the abstract for the article. (Sorry folks you must cough up some bucks for a full reprint)

AJ

The polls and the odds call it for Obama. I’m not sure…

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen this written about, but with McCain seemingly losing his grip, I wonder what the truth will turn out to be on November 4th. Personally, I think McCain is worth a punt at 5/1 (he was 2/1 not so many weeks ago).

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/ben_macintyre/article4950484.ece

There is probably only one person now standing between Barack Obama and the presidency. His name is Tom Bradley; he is the black, Democratic former Mayor of Los Angeles, and he has been dead for ten years.

In 1982 Bradley ran for the governorship of California, and was expected to win by a wide margin. In the run-up to the election, polls gave the African-American candidate a lead of between 9 and 22 percentage points over his white opponent. On election day the first exit polls also predicted that he would win, and one newspaper even declared him the victor on its front page.

Bradley lost by more than 100,000 votes.

The conventional wisdom is that he was the victim of a hidden racial reaction. Many white voters told pollsters that they would vote for the black candidate but, in the anonymity of the voting booth, they did not. The impetus for the deception was not simple racism, but social pressure – white voters, it seems, did not want to appear racist by admitting that they would be voting for the white candidate rather than the black one.

At its simplest, the so-called “Bradley Effect” (which some dispute) holds that polls overestimate support for an African-American candidate because, when race is involved, voters misrepresent their intentions.

My suspicion is that America isn’t ready for a black president. Let alone a commie windbag called Hussein. Perhaps the Bradley Effect is about to be supplanted by the Obama effect.

I honestly couldn’t tell you which one of these planks will be the least worst option for America and the world. So I’ll settle for deciding on the basis of who I’d most like to see defeated and that’s the righteous and sanctimonious, big-government left.

While I relish musing upon the outrage that a McCain win would bring from the European and American left, the recriminations could make the fallout from the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry and the Rodney King beatings seem utterly trivial. Anyone for an affirmative action recruitment to the Oval Office?

Let’s see what happens in a couple of weeks time. Either way, the world will look very different on Nov 5th.

AJ