A Tale of Two Messiahs

As a warning: the first half of this post is devoted to me rambling about politics, for those interested only in me mocking crazy people, you should skip the next seven paragraphs or so.

As you should all know by now, I'm a political wonk, and I am therefore loving every minute of the build-up to the 2008 presidential election. Well, the end of March marked the end of the first financial quarter of the election season, meaning candidates filed their reports. At first, there were few surprises, Hillary banked, pulling in $26 million, Edwards trailed far behind. McCain's getting his ass kicked money-wise, but he was slow to start this time around (although you might be surprised to learn Mitt Romney is outpacing Giuliani at the moment, personally I wasn't). All pretty hum-drum at first, except that Obama wasn't reporting. And then he still wasn't reporting, and yesterday he still hadn't reported and the buzz grew. Well today he dropped the bomb.

In the first quarter Obama pulled in $25 million, leaving him just $1 million shy of Senator Clinton. Now, your initial reaction might be to say, "You gave us all that build-up to tell us he's in second? What the fuck?" But politics is ALL about expectations, and NOBODY expected Obama to raise this much.

I can thing of plenty of negative things to say about Senator Clinton, but I can't deny that the Clintons make the political machine move like nobody else. They eat up donations. They're barely human. So that Obama, as new to the scene as he is, is pacing Hillary is HUGE news.

Here are some other interesting facts:

Obama had over 100,000 individual donors, compared to Hillary's 50,000.
90% of Obama's donations were under $100
50% were from the internet
Obama claims to have received no money from registered lobbyists OR Politcal Action Committees

Now, many of you may not find that last fact to be all that interesting, but trust me, it is. PACs are those groups named things like "We Love Cute Bunnies and Hate Pollution" formed by corporations like MassChemical Pollutants Co. They are limited to $10,000 in donations, but a single company can make as many PACs as it likes (and to be fair many PACs are NGOs and other special interests). So basically they can fund people without limit. Taking no money from PACs means a pretty big hit to you figures.

So what does all this add up to? Well, a little bit of hope I guess. You've all heard me champion Obama on this blog before (a bit too frequently these days I admit), but it has been with the acceptance that, in all likelihood, he simply isn't a viable candidate yet (because he's black...shhh, don't tell anybody).

But these figures really do suggest a grassroots movement behind the guy that's larger than even I had expected. I'm starting to wonder now if maybe it is possible for him to win. Which excites me partially because I like him, but much more so because it makes the race waaaay more interesting.

RIGHT HERE! This is where I start making fun of crazy people, if you're in the "skip Devin sucking Obama's dick again" camp. Apparently, there is a man named Jose Luis De Jesus Miranda who claims to be the second coming of Jesus Christ.

He's been in the news recently because a few dozen of his followers got '666' tattoos in defiance of Revelations prophecy (for those who aren't up on their Armaggedon, 666 is supposedly the number of the beast and people will receive the mark of the beast during the rise of the Antichrist). According to them, Christ killed the Devil when he was crucified, and both the numbers 666 and the Antichrist himself are misinterpreted.

In fact, De Jesus Miranda claims to BE the Antichrist as well as being Jesus (which, if I remember my Star Trek correctly, means he would explode if he came into contact with himself...that has to be awkward). Anyway, he also claims that there is no Devil or sin, and his followers are incapable of doing wrong in God's eyes.

First off, I think if I was a tattoo artist I'd probably refuse to give people 666 tattoos. I mean, I don't really go for the whole Revelations Prophecy thing, but I try to stay on the safe side. So I have sort of a "no-bringing-on-the-rise-of-the-Antichrist" policy. I don't give people the mark of the beast, I try to avoid breeding pale horses, and if I kidnap people I try to keep it under 144,000. Just as a precaution.

Secondly, De Jesus Miranda drives a BMW and has three diamond encrusted Rolexes. Because, as it is written in Usher 4:13, "And Lo, Jesus did love his bling. And verily did he floss his ice to the multitudes."

Oh, by the way, Miranda is an ex-heroin addict. I'm sure you all remember the parable of the pearl and the eight-ball of smack. And this guy has over 10,000 followers.

Incidentally, Jesus isn't so good at HTML coding apparently. Check out his website http://www.cegenglish.com/ and its many broken links. Oh, and Jesus isn't great with his grammar or punctuation either, as evidenced by the following message on pages still being built: "You are blessed !, this is the best day of your life. This page is temporary under construction."

Still, Jesus does link to free email service, so that's nice of him.

But I bet Obama would do the same.

Dikembe Mutumbo? Dikembe Mutumbo?

This Tuesday saw President Bush's State of the Union address, his first to be delivered to a Democratic Congress, after having been thoroughly pasted in the midterm elections. It was a historic event, so naturally I missed it. I have however, started going through the transcript, and naturally I have a collection of comments. As usual, the President's remarks will be in italics, while my smarmy retorts follow.

We enter the year 2007 with large endeavors underway, and others that are ours to begin.

READ: Next up, Iran.

We're not the first to come here with a government divided and uncertainty in the air. Like many before us, we can work through our differences, and achieve big things for the American people. Our citizens don't much care which side of the aisle we sit on...

Just so long as it's the opposite side of the aisle as you there, Georgey boy.

We set a goal of cutting the deficit in half by 2009, and met that goal three years ahead of schedule.

And all it took was running up unbelievably massive deficits in 2001-03, thus setting the bar so low a fucking hippopotamus could have jumped over it.

Five years ago, we rose above partisan differences to pass the No Child Left Behind Act, preserving local control, raising standards, and holding those schools accountable for results.

Preserving local control... by imposing uniform national standards. That makes sense.

The No Child Left Behind Act has worked for America's children -- and I ask Congress to reauthorize this good law.

(At which point I will again fail to provide the adequate funding that was promised.)

When it comes to health care, government has an obligation to care for the elderly, the disabled, and poor children.

Ronald Regean is rolling over in his grave. This man calls himself a Republican?

To secure our border, we're doubling the size of the Border Patrol, and funding new infrastructure and technology.

The same technology that failed to protect the Chinese from Genghis Kahn.

Five years have come and gone since we saw the scenes and felt the sorrow that the terrorists can cause.

And not a day has passed that I've failed to mention it.

We've added many critical protections to guard the homeland.

For example, a totally neat color-coding system

Yet one question has surely been settled: that to win the war on terror we must take the fight to the enemy.

Right, that's why we declared war on Saudi Arabia...wait a minute.

The enemy knows that the days of comfortable sanctuary, easy movement, steady financing, and free flowing communications are long over. For the terrorists, life since 9/11 has never been the same.

Umm, with all due respect, Mr. President, what the fuck are you smoking? What sort of paradise do you think the terrorists were living in? "Comfortable sanctuary"? Every time we saw Osama he was in a fucking cave. Caves are like the opposite of comfortable. Caves are UNcomfortable.

The evil that inspired and rejoiced in 9/11 is still at work in the world.

Seriously. Those fucking Jews. (dude, you're going to get us in trouble again -ed.)

They want to overthrow moderate governments, and establish safe havens from which to plan and carry out new attacks on our country.

Wait, wait...they want to find countries in the Middle East whose governments aren't run by Islamic fundamentalists, and then overthrow those governments, leading to anarchistic breeding ground for terrorists? What sort of a psychotic bastard would do that?

Alright, that's about all the smarminess I can muster at the moment. I'd like to take the rest of this post to address why I think Senator Obama might actually make a good candidate, or at the very least why I (and I think many others) like him. This part may or may not be funny.

I think, more than anything, it's what Obama represents to people. I grant that I don't know that much about Obama's politics, because he hasn't really been around long enough to take that many stances. But that's not what I care about at the moment. I am one of many people who think that the problems with our government run deeper than partisan causes. The problems are systematic, caused by a government that's more concerned with being re-elected than with solving problems.

I think that to most of us, Obama represents some fresh blood. A different way of approaching things than the rest of Washington has. Now, I grant you that maybe this is bullshit. Maybe Obama will turn out to be the same type of politician that most of those in Washington become. But if I had to guess why I hope that he isn't, I think it's simply that I have to hope that someone isn't. There's a wonderful quote that "a second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience." I think it's something like that.

And I grant that him being black is a significant roadblock to his campaign. But if anything, that just feeds into the hope. Cause if we actually were to elect a black president, it would mean that things really had changed in the last forty years.

I don't, however, grant that his lack of experience hurts him. If anything, I think that's his best strength. Because it won't give the Republicans anything to hit him with. He won't have a significant enough voting record to actually target.

I don't know that we're capable of electing a black man at the moment, and if I had to guess I'd put my money firmly on no. And if we did elect him, I don't know that he'd be a good president. I don't know that he'd be anything like what I want him to be. But I can tell you why I hold out hope.

I had a prof once who, when I remarked I was thinking about becoming a politician, told me that we don't need any more politicians. What we need are more statesmen. I don't know which of the two Obama is, but I can certainly tell you which one I think Hillary, Edwards, Biden, Dodd and all the rest of the Democrats are.