The northlondonhippy

Archive for the ‘media’ Category

Seven days into the brand spankin’ new year and I am already filled with opti­mism and hope. And by opti­mism and hope, I really mean depres­sion and despair.

All my tv wants to show me is that nasty shit going on in the mideast. Why do they keep mak­ing sequels to that movie? I’ve seen it all before. That said, there’s some­thing more upset­ting about it this time. Its whole­sale slaugh­ter at an indus­trial scale and it sick­ens me.

I just wish I could change the chan­nel but I really wanna see how it all turns out. Maybe some­one could tip me off just before Rambo arrives and illus­trates the point­less­ness rather than glory of war­fare. And by Rambo, of course I mean Gandhi.

I’m bored to the point of dis­gust at see­ing chil­dren mur­dered and maimed. I can’t be the only one who has seen more than enough of this shit. Why don’t they all just stop?

Closer to home, or rather right here at home, north Lon­don has been sub­merged in sub-zero tem­per­a­tures for what seems like a few weeks now, with each suc­ces­sive night pro­vid­ing another record-breaking low. Brrrrrrrrrrrr!

The ther­mome­ter in my car hit a rather chilly –2 yes­ter­day, which was an all time record low for me and it hasn’t gone above +1 in over a week.

We’re not used to this sort of cold here in Lon­don and its bring­ing every­one down, espe­cially with no respite in sight. All we need is some snow to com­plete this win­tery hell and trust me, I’m not wish­ing for it.

And the econ­omy is so far into the toi­let it can taste the salt in the ocean.

Weed is going be returned to Class B from its present posi­tion in the more appro­pri­ate and rec­om­mended by gov’t advi­sors, Class C. That really sucks.

Things are indeed look­ing dis­tinctly bleak as 2009 begins.

Even Apple let me down yes­ter­day, with a Mac­World keynote devoid of any new toys for me to pur­chase. My credit card was revved up and ready, but it had nowhere to go.

Remem­ber, if it weren’t for cool con­sumer elec­tron­ics and soft drugs, I would have no joy in my life.

And its my birth­day in a cou­ple weeks, I could really do with­out that.

Oh moan, moan, moan, moan, moan!

There’s was an avalanche of media bull­shit this week over a doc­u­men­tary aired on SKY REAL LIVES which showed a man with motor neu­rone dis­ease tak­ing his own life at a Swiss clinic in 2006.

Switzer­land is cur­rently the only coun­try in the world which allows for­eign­ers to visit and par­take in a spot of assisted sui­cide. Go Switzerland!

I say the media was full of bull­shit because most out­lets con­cen­trated on the issue of whether or not you should show the “moment of death” on tele­vi­sion, for fear of “glam­ouris­ing death”.

WTF?

I haven’t seen the entire doc­u­men­tary, but I have seen some clips and how could show­ing a man with an absolutely hor­ri­ble dis­ease end­ing his life in any way glam­ourise death? There were no Hol­ly­wood films stars or strip­pers cheer­ing him on, the room he did it in wasn’t kit­ted out in fur rugs and leather sofas and they didn’t even have a live band.

There was no glam­our at all, but then there was absolutely noth­ing glam­ourous about it.

Tak­ing your own life is a seri­ous deci­sion, cer­tainly the most seri­ous deci­sion any indi­vid­ual can take and it was clear this poor man delib­er­ated for a very long time before mak­ing this final decision.

The debate should not have been about whether or not they should have shown this on tele­vi­sion, but why more coun­tries don’t have sys­tems like they do in Switzerland.

Why is it against the law to pro­vide the ulti­mate relief and end the suf­fer­ing of another human being? We do it for dogs and cats and horses — do they mat­ter more than people?

There are some rather hor­ri­ble mal­adies and afflic­tions out there which are hor­ren­dous and could cause immea­sur­able suf­fer­ing and pain to the per­son affected.

A slow, pro­tracted death is one of my big­ger fears, but that fear is expo­nen­tially exac­er­bated by the fact that I know if I wanted to choose to end the suf­fer­ing, it would not be pos­si­ble because of our archaic view of euthanasia.

The peo­ple most unsur­pris­ingly opposed to euthana­sia tend to be reli­gious nuts who believe only god’s will can decide when your life ends.

What a fuck­ing bunch of fuck­ing bull­shit. If that’s true, then any­one with a gun is god, because they can choose to end anyone’s life with rel­a­tive ease.

I have a real prob­lem tak­ing any­one seri­ously who is deeply reli­gious to the point of it cloud­ing their every thought and opin­ion, espe­cially when those mis­guided views increase the suf­fer­ing and pain of others.

That’s one of religion’s spe­cial­ity though, caus­ing oth­ers to need­lessly suffer.

I’ve recently been in touch with a dis­tant rela­tion of mine, who was in charge of dis­pens­ing a small stipend to myself and all my cousins fol­low­ing the pass­ing of a beloved aunt of mine.

When she wrote to me, her let­ter was pep­pered with all sorts of reli­gious ref­er­ences. I half expected her clos­ing salu­ta­tion to be “Yours in Christ” and was relieved that it wasn’t.

I had to really reign myself in when I replied to her, by keep­ing my sec­u­lar human­ist views at bay, though I couldn’t resist wish­ing her a “happy hol­i­days” in response to her “merry xmas”. Of course, she wrote out the entire word and cap­i­talised it.

I have noth­ing against my dis­tant rel­a­tive, the fact is I don’t really know her, hav­ing maybe met her twice before the age of 13, but its the way in which reli­gious peo­ple think every­one else should be equally reli­gious, and not just that but we should fol­low their reli­gion, because the other ones, even vari­a­tions on Chris­tian­ity, will send you straight to hell.

There is no hell. Hell is other people.

No, hell is being forced to live with a debil­i­tat­ing and ter­mi­nal con­di­tion, need­less suf­fer­ing a long, drawn out death because the law won’t let one be the archi­tect of one’s own fate.

The law is an ass. Or is that asshole?

The idea of my mind, my per­son­al­ity, the inter­nal bits of my brain con­tin­u­ing to func­tion as they do now, while being trapped in my body, wracked with pain, or worse paral­y­sis is a fate worse than death. Com­pared to any of that, death would be a trip to Disneyland.

And for all you reli­gious nuts out there, let me ask you this: If heaven is so god­damn great, why can’t we let the sick peo­ple arrive a lit­tle ear­lier than expected? Surely a just and lov­ing god would wel­come them with open arms.

If there were a god, he wouldn’t make us suffer.

If there were a god, he wouldn’t let us die.

If there were a god, there would be no need for heaven, because heaven would be here on earth and we would all already be angels.

If there were a god, he wouldn’t give a rat’s ass if some­one chose to end their life because of an intol­er­a­ble existence.

If there were a god, I wouldn’t get to post all of this on the inter­net and he’d have a stern word or two for me.

There is no god.

Why not be your own god? Why not deter­mine your own fate?

They say you make your own luck and I believe that’s true. I believe in self-actualisation and the power of an indi­vid­ual to over­come obsta­cles and suc­ceed in anything.

If the obsta­cle you’re encoun­ter­ing is insur­mount­able, then the only path to suc­cess is retreat.

If you’re dying a hor­ri­ble death, the only way to min­imise death’s vic­tory over you is to limit the amount of time you spend dying.

I thought about this a lot when I was ill last sum­mer, espe­cially when I could hardly walk and spent over a week try­ing to sleep sit­ting up on my sofa.

I imag­ined quite vividly that my con­di­tion could have been per­ma­nent and degen­er­a­tive, and what I would do in that situation.

I think you can work out the answer.

They may have been an hour behind me, but the Amer­i­can net­works have now called the elec­tion in favour of Barack Obama.

That’s right, I beat every­one else.

This is a his­toric moment. I never thought in my life time I would ever see a black man elected pres­i­dent of the United States.

It’s an amaz­ing achieve­ment for Mr. Obama, and an amaz­ing achieve­ment for the Amer­i­can people.

No mat­ter who you are, or where you are in the world, you can’t deny the sig­nif­i­cance of this moment in time.

Or as Bob Dylan said a long time ago, “The times they are a changing”.

the northlon­don­hippy
0410gmt — 5th Novem­ber 2008

I can’t wait for the net­works to call the win­ner of this elec­tion, so I am doing it myself.

It’s 10pm east­ern time, 0300gmt here in north Lon­don and I hearby declare Barack Hus­sein Obama the win­ner of the 2008 pres­i­den­tial election.

Based on every­thing I’ve absorbed in the last half hour, there’s no way McCain could reach the magic 270 elec­toral votes.

Remem­ber, you read it here first, fuckers!

the northlon­don­hippy
0301gmt — 5th Novem­ber 2008

Some­thing I noticed today, there were no pic­tures of Bush or Cheney voting.

Usu­ally, the incum­bent is seen cast­ing his bal­lot. Usu­ally, the incum­bent also speaks after vot­ing, offer­ing a strong endorse­ment of his party’s candidate.

This year is not usual in this regard as the incum­bent is so wildly unpopular.

It’s no won­der we haven’t seen much of him recently, and though he may not be cur­rently in anyone’s field of vision, he’s cer­tainly on their minds.

If any­one is respon­si­ble for the abysmal per­for­mance of the Repub­li­can party this year, its George W. (for What were they think­ing when they elected him twice?) Bush.

When peo­ple look back at the his­toric elec­tion of 2008, Bush will take a large slice of the blame. And that brain­less bimbo, Sarah Palin, who kept the inde­pen­dent vot­ers away from the Repub­li­cans in droves, will also shoul­der a healthy por­tion of blame.

the northlon­don­hippy
02:28gmt — 5th Novem­ber 2008

Penn­syl­va­nia has gone to Obama.

Appar­ently that’s a good indi­ca­tion of where the race is going.

Also, it is look­ing good in Florida, which as you may recall has been a prob­lem­atic state for the Democ­rats in pre­vi­ous elections…especially 2000 for poor ol’ Al Gore.

Even this close to a result, I am still ner­vous and unsure.

I’m still alter­nat­ing between CNN and FoxNews, though I def­i­nitely pre­fer CNN. CNN has been high­light­ing viewer reports of var­i­ous vot­ing irreg­u­lar­i­ties across Amer­ica, with a really cool graphic map. The more orange an area is, the more they are screw­ing with people’s right to a free and fair vote.

And don’t for­get the holograms!

It’s just gone 9pm on the east coast of Amer­ica (0200gmt here in north Lon­don) and accord­ing to CNN, Obama is now lead­ing lead­ing McCain with about 3 elec­toral votes to one. That’s a pretty good mar­gin, let’s hope it holds!

the northlon­don­hippy
02:02gmt — 5th Novem­ber 2008

It’s all too slow, they are being too con­ser­v­a­tive and cau­tious in their predictions.

Tell me who’s winning!

As of now, Obama is up, up, up!

All you need to do is look at the peo­ple at the two can­di­dates “vic­tory” ral­lies. In Chicago, where as many as one mil­lion peo­ple are expected, it already looks like one hell of a party, while in Phoenix, the gath­er­ing appears to be more like a wake.

At this point, does any­one really think McCain can pull this off? Even McCain him­self looked glum as he arrived in Phoenix a short while ago.

My tv view­ing is set­tling into a rou­tine, switch­ing mainly between CNN (who I think have the edge) and FoxNews, with the occa­sional stop on the BBC. SKY seems a bit slow and looks a bit cheap and the BBC is actu­ally doing a pretty good job, but the Amer­i­can net­works have the resources and speed to do the story justice.

And what a story its going to turn out to be!

the northlon­don­hippy
01:25gmt — 5th Novem­ber 2008

It might be closer than the pre-polling sug­gests, but I am already get­ting the feel­ing that its going to be a good night for Obama and his party.

I’ve been flip­ping between:

- FoxNews
– CNN
– MS-NBC
– SKY
– BBC

They all have giant sets and really whizzy graph­ics, espe­cially the Amer­i­can net­works. They’re all being cau­tious in their pro­jec­tions, which is sen­si­ble, but not very exciting.

CNN win on the tech­nol­ogy front, Wolf Blitzer is talk­ing to actual, life-like holo­grams of peo­ple in other parts of the coun­try. Spooky!

The key states at this hour remain too close to call, but that in itself could be telling us some­thing, as the key states in pre­vi­ous elec­tions were firmly in the Repub­li­can column.

The inter­net may be my per­sonal medium of choice for doing my own thing, but at heart I am a tele­vi­sion viewer. I’m split­ting my time between my desk­top com­puter and my tv, though as this thing heats up, I’ll prob­a­bly switch to surf­ing on my iPhone while I remain on the sofa. Like you needed to know that.

- the northlon­don­hippy
– 00:25gmt — 5th Novem­ber 2008

Its around 11pm here in north Lon­don, and the elec­tion TV spe­cials are about to kick off on just about every chan­nel I receive, except for Play­boy and QVC. I’ll be up all night, mon­i­tor­ing the cov­er­age, because I am sad.

I’m also obsessed with this elec­tion and I want to remain awake until Obama deliv­ers what I hope will be his vic­tory speech.

I’m aim­ing to blog through­out the night, with occa­sional updates so I can share my obser­va­tions with you.

At this point, its look­ing good for Obama, but I am still being very cau­tious. The scum­bags on the right will do what­ever they can to try to steal this one and I can’t let go of that feel­ing. After 2000 & 2004, its a rea­son­able fear.

To me, the real story already will be the mas­sive voter turn-out. I am guess­ing it will be a record for a pres­i­den­tial election.

And if there really is a land­slide, blow-out for Barack, the story to watch will be the direc­tion con­gress takes. Please let it be be broadly Democratic!

All I can say for sure is that its going to be a long and inter­est­ing night.

- the northlon­don­hippy
23:00gmt — Tues­day 4th Novem­ber 2008

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.