The northlondonhippy

I don’t think any­one is going to be sur­prised that I’m hop­ing (and wish­ing and pray­ing) that Barack Hus­sein Obama will be elected as the next Pres­i­dent of the United States.

If the New York Times can endorse some­body, why can’t I? Here on the inter­net, we’re all equal, though I don’t make you reg­is­ter to get to the good content.

If you’re sur­prised by my endorse­ment, then you don’t really know me very well. I’m extremely lib­eral and not ashamed of it.

Being lib­eral is a good thing, it means you are open to pro­gres­sive ideas and new ways of look­ing at things. Being lib­eral means I’m more inter­ested in the hap­pi­ness of peo­ple, then main­tain­ing the sta­tus quo for the sake of it.

Many lib­er­als have become afraid of the word and now call them­selves pro­gres­sives. You say tomato…

If gays can take back own­er­ship of the word “queer”, then why can’t we reclaim the word “lib­eral”? Like gays, lib­er­als have noth­ing to fear or be ashamed of and we should all come out of the brainy closet.

I’m lib­eral because I am smart. Smart peo­ple are liberal.

All you need to do is spend 10 min­utes watch­ing FoxNews and you will see what I mean. They don’t allow many peo­ple with lib­eral views on-air, they stick to their con­ser­v­a­tive agenda all the time. The over­whelm­ing amount of stu­pid­ity that spews from the mouths of their pre­sen­ters, guests and pun­dits will be more than enough to prove my point.

I watch FoxNews strictly for com­edy value and if you added some canned laugh­ter, you’d think you were watch­ing a bad sit­com for dimwits.

Being lib­eral means not fear­ing change. “Change” can be a good thing and if Amer­ica needs one good thing right now, it would be change. “Change we can believe in”, if you will.

Obama offers that change. As one of the most lib­eral mem­bers of the US sen­ate, which is demon­strated by his vot­ing record, Obama is offer­ing Amer­ica the chance to right the myr­iad of wrongs from the last 8 years.

Yes, I am talk­ing to you George W. (for What­ever hap­pens next week, he’s still his­tory come Jan­u­ary) Bush.

Obama has the ideas, intel­li­gence and charisma to be a real game-changer. He can help restore Amer­ica back to its for­mer glory.

Maybe you’re not old enough to remem­ber way back when, but peo­ple actu­ally used to like Amer­ica and I don’t just mean the shop­ping and the enor­mous por­tions in restaurants.

It’s kind of amaz­ing if you con­sider how much real dam­age Georgie Bush junior has done to America’s rep­u­ta­tion and stand­ing in the world. Com­pared to Bush the lesser, even Richard M. Nixon seem like a decent guy.

Think back to 8 years ago, when Big Bill Clin­ton was run­ning the show. The econ­omy was in great shape, the fed­eral gov­ern­ment was debt free and had a huge sur­plus of cash, Amer­ica was at war with nearly no one and Amer­i­cans abroad didn’t have to pre­tend to be Cana­dian. These are all good things.

Eight years of the Repub­li­cans not only undid all the good that came from Clin­ton, they thought of loads of bad shit of their own to do, to drag Amer­ica down even further.

Before you start think­ing, “what does some twat in Lon­don know about Amer­ica?”, I should, in the inter­est of full dis­clo­sure let you know that I spent around half of my life liv­ing in Amer­ica, so I am in a posi­tion to jus­ti­fi­ably com­ment on all things Amer­i­can. I con­tinue to con­sume a lot of Amer­i­can media and I am always across every­thing in the news — it’s an occu­pa­tional hazard/bonus (delete as appropriate).

I also get loads of Amer­i­can vis­i­tors to my site, obvi­ously far more than from any other coun­try, includ­ing the UK. On the inter­net, Amer­i­cans out­num­ber everyone!

I like Amer­i­cans and I actu­ally like Amer­ica too. At its heart Amer­ica is good, kind and just coun­try, pop­u­lated by good, kind and just peo­ple. They can’t help it that their elected lead­ers are mas­ters at manip­u­lat­ing the media by spoon­feed­ing them crap that the media is too stooopid to question.

In the after­math of 9/11, your media failed you. Your gov­ern­ment wrapped every press release in the stars and stripes and ques­tioned the patri­o­tism of any jour­nal­ist who dared to ques­tion the offi­cial ver­sion of events. That’s espe­cially true about the “war” in Iraq.

I’ve got some news for you, it was never really a war. It was an ille­gal inva­sion of a sov­er­eign nation, jus­ti­fied with bold-faced lies. We were lied to, over and over, for no good reason.

The inva­sion was brief, the occu­pa­tion seems end­less. The geniuses in charge had no con­crete plans on what to do once they arrived in Iraq. It was an unmit­i­gated dis­as­ter and con­tin­ues to be one.

I don’t know how many peo­ple died in Iraq, I’ve lost count. And for what?

Noth­ing at all. No good rea­son. No rea­son at all.

But what about the “surge”?

The surge is mean­ing­less, extra troops haven’t calmed things down, cold hard cash is what’s done it. Again, your liars, I mean lead­ers are not only nego­ti­at­ing with “ter­ror­ists”, they are brib­ing them with large sums of cash not to stage attacks any more.

It’s a bit like giv­ing the school bully your milk money in return for him not beat­ing you up that day. It doesn’t make you tough, it makes you a wimp and a wuss.

Since when does Amer­ica pay its ene­mies and groups labelled as ter­ror­ists not to attack?

Since a cou­ple of years ago.

Can you imag­ine them writ­ing a cheque to Osama Bin Laden in return for a promise not to plan another attack on Amer­ica? To me, it sounds like it would be the next log­i­cal step from their unof­fi­cial “brib­ing the enemy pol­icy” in Iraq.

The point is that the Repub­li­cans have fucked Amer­ica over every which way from here to xmas and back again. Every day, in every way, they have done some­thing to screw you all over and you’ve had to just lie there take it like a bitch.

Not any more. This time, you actu­ally have a gen­uine choice to make between to polar oppo­sites. That doesn’t hap­pen very often, maybe once in a lifetime.

Like 1960, when the choice was between Nixon and JFK and prob­a­bly not since.

You can choose between four more years of the same bull­shit, or you can elect a man who will set Amer­ica back on its true course.

Here’s another word you shouldn’t fear: Socialism.

In Amer­ica, you’re taught, or rather indoc­tri­nated into the cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem and told that social­ism is just another word for com­mu­nism and that’s just plain wrong.

The state should not exist to sup­press and exploit you, it should act in such a way as to ben­e­fit all of the peo­ple, all of the time.

The state, your gov­ern­ment should be there to pro­tect you, and not just from imag­i­nary enemies.

The state should be there to help you, as an indi­vid­ual as well as for the greater good of soci­ety. You don’t pay your taxes to be kept in your place, yet that’s what the state does, rather than encour­ag­ing you to flour­ish and realise your potential.

I’ll go with the clas­sic exam­ple and its some­thing I can com­ment on with author­ity because I’ve lived under both sys­tems, pri­vate and nation­alised health care.

You have excel­lent doc­tors and hos­pi­tals in Amer­ica, some of the best in the world, yet your life expectancy is in decline. There’s a sim­ple rea­son for that, some peo­ple are denied access to your fine doc­tors and hos­pi­tals purely on eco­nomic grounds. If you can’t pay the extor­tion­ate fees charged, then you have only one choice, to get sicker and die.

That’s wrong.

That is so wrong.

Health­care should be a basic human right pro­vided equally by the state. You shouldn’t be penalised for not hav­ing the dosh to stump up for treat­ment, if that lack of treat­ment results in your death or incapacity.

Here in the UK, where I’ve also spent around half of my life, I’ve been a patient of the NHS. The stan­dard of the health­care I’ve received has been first rate, though I’m not going to deny there have been some wait­ing times that have been longer than I’ve liked and to be fair that has improved dra­mat­i­cally of late.

I can ring my GP’s surgery, any week­day morn­ing and get an appoint­ment to see my GP that same day. My cur­rent GP, who I’ve seen for over a decade is excel­lent, I never feel rushed, he always takes the time to lis­ten to me and he doesn’t hes­i­tate to pre­scribe an expen­sive drug or test, if he thinks it is nec­es­sary. The flip­side to this is that he is often run­ning behind on his appoint­ments and I usu­ally have to wait to see him. A lit­tle bit of my time is a small (and only) price to pay for access to excel­lent health care.

This is what I don’t get about peo­ple who oppose any form of social­ism; what’s wrong with help­ing oth­ers? Why should any­one resent any­one else receiv­ing assis­tance from any­one, whether its a rel­a­tive or a com­plete stranger or the gov­ern­ment? Isn’t it a good thing to help others?

Isn’t that what Jesus would do?

When some­one else is in pain, do you not have sym­pa­thy for them? Do you not have the empa­thy to even feel their pain? Does it not touch you, even slightly?

If you could feed all the hun­gry chil­dren in the world, would you? Regard­less of the cost?

If you could cure all the sick peo­ple in the world, would you? Regard­less of the cost?

I would.

Ninety per­cent of the wealth in this world is in the hands of 1% of the people.

That’s just fucked. You can’t jus­tify that, no mat­ter how hard you might try. It’s 100% fucked. Par­don my fuck­ing French.

The redis­tri­b­u­tion of the wealth doesn’t mean the lux­ury police are going to come to your house and nick your flatscreen telly and give it to some ran­dom poor person.

The redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth doesn’t mean we’ll have to dress like Chair­man Mao, even if you think his uni­form was fashionable.

All it means is poor peo­ple pay less tax, rich peo­ple who can afford it, pay more. That doesn’t sound so bad, does it?

Rich peo­ple spend any way, because they are rich and a slightly higher tax bur­den isn’t going to effect them very much.

Poor peo­ple pay­ing less tax, means poor peo­ple (remem­ber the 99% of the rest of us) will have more money to spend. Spend­ing money fuels the econ­omy, a fuelled econ­omy can cre­ate jobs, new jobs means more peo­ple work­ing, with more money in their pock­ets to spend, which fur­ther fuels the economy.…

You get the idea.

Some­one has to redress this hor­ri­ble eco­nomic imbal­ance and that’s Barack Obama. He wants to do it, don’t you want him to do it?

As I sit here in my north Lon­don lair, exactly one week before elec­tion day, Obama is way ahead in the polls, but his vic­tory is not assured. Every reg­is­tered voter out there in inter­net­land has to vote to insure he wins and wins big. Bill Clin­ton is right, Obama needs a huge man­date to affect the kind of change he has in mind and he needs to have the Democ­rats sweep the house and the sen­ate too.

I’m also con­cerned that the bad guys will steal it from Obama, as they did to Al Gore in 2000 and prob­a­bly Kerry in 2004 as well, at least in Ohio. Those elec­tronic vot­ing machines sound dodgy and I’ve read uncon­firmed reports in the early elec­tronic vot­ing of bal­lots being “flipped” from Obama to that old guy with the forced smile and ident-i-kit wife.

If they steal it from the Democ­rats again this time, burn the place to the fuck­ing ground! Let’s hope they don’t, as I don’t want to see any coun­try in flames, but if they fuck around with this elec­tion, they deserve it. SWAT teams are allegedly already on standby for pos­si­ble unrest, so this sce­nario is possible

Barack Hus­sein Obama is America’s best hope. Don’t let your­selves down, don’t let the world down. Please vote for him.

And for those of you that still might have reser­va­tions over Mr. Obama because of his race, shame on you. Obama is a remark­ably intel­li­gent and edu­cated man and his race should not be a factor.

If you’re afraid to vote for him, because his skin colour dif­fers from yours, please look deep into your heart and soul and finally see the truth about race — like most things in this world, it’s mean­ing­less. We’re all the same on the inside, our hearts all beat, our lungs all breath the same air.

But if you really can’t look past his race, per­haps this lit­tle cam­paign jin­gle I wrote on Obama’s behalf might help.

(sung to the tune of Santogold’s “You’ll Find A Way”)

You know you wanna
You know you wanna
vote for Barack Obama
You know you wanna
You know you wanna
‘cause a white woman was his momma

It’s catchy, ain’t it?

Look, all jok­ing aside, if you are reg­is­tered to vote in the United States of Amer­ica, I don’t just urge you to get out and vote, I implore you to vote for Obama.

If I’ve man­aged to sway just one unde­cided voter with this post, then I’ll feel like I’ve done my part, but I’d like to sway even more. If you know some­one who’s waver­ing and you think I might be able to have a pos­i­tive effect on their deci­sion, please feel free to email this to them or send them a link to my site.

It’s not just Obama who’s count­ing on you, and not just your nation, but the entire world.

Please don’t let us down.

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