Who will be the next leader of the free world, part two

Readers thought that part one was hilarious, although I was trying to be very serious. Hmmmm, must be losing my touch.

McCain plods on, trying very hard to lose this election. Conventional wisdom says he will still win. I am just trying to fool the gods. I was thinking about something which has been articulated by a lot of people since then, about Obama being a Muslim. Why should his religion matter? I guess it could be because Bush's evangelical Christianity hasn't gone down too well with people (keep dreaming). Or the fact that being a Muslim in these times isn't a sure thing to win a popularity contest. I have always been fascinated by the whole "Muslim Name" thing. The misconception that there is such a thing, although historically people who converted in the times of Mohammad and later would generally take on a new name. Most Arabic, Hebrew and Persian names, that have been around before Islam, had nothing to do with a person's faith. And the evangelical Muslims have always insisted that a convert change their name, Muhammad Ali and Yousuf Islam being two famous examples. I wonder if most Muslims know that these cultural titles have more to do with linguistics rather than anything else. But I digress.

I would like Obama to win, it will prove me wrong. It would tell me that the Americans still have some sense left. The fact that nothing will change notwithstanding. I would like Sarah Palin to be forgotten as I wish to forget the veiled Al-Huda ladies. But I am just a dreamer, and will wake up to reality soon.

The New Old Genre

Living in a country where you can only watch very few blockbuster type movies in theatres and the only other choice being bad pirated copies of some movies, availability depending on the whims of the dvd suppliers, I have come up with a solution that works really well for me.

Go to apple.com, downloads, and watch the trailers in HD. Even the terrible ones seem to be very good. So I propose that a new genre of movies should be universally acknowledged, which is the two minute movie. They should have awards like the oscars for them in various categories, although the voice over seems to be done by the same guy. I am sure it will be very exciting.

Enjoy!

Who will be the next leader of the free world?

We already know Mr. Zardari is our President, I am referring to the US elections that are happening in 20 days, unfortunately the leader of the free world is a misnomer, but sometimes these things stick for no reason.

I have been following the build up to the elections in one way or another, sometimes willingly, and at other times, forced to by the media coverage. So we have seen a long drawn out democratic nomination battle between Ms. Clinton and Mr. Obama, and the lackluster republication candidate Mr. McCain. So here is what I think.

The republican candidates for president and vp are straight of out the medieval world. Ms. Palin would put our Jamia Hafsa ladies to shame, with her views on most everything. She thinks that the polar bears will start living on land once the ice melts after they drill the arctic for oil. Just for that, I love her. Thanks to her unwavering belief in god, if it is his will, the polar bears might learn to fly or swim to the Antarctica. She is the product of the neocons age, only god can help US (both the United States and us) when she becomes the President (the actuarial chances of Mr. McCain surviving the next few years being pretty low). As for him, he belongs to the old boys club, who will make sure that the rich get more and bigger tax breaks and everyone and everything else can go to hell.

The democratic candidate Mr. Obama seems a bit more interesting. He is not the typical African American, because he was born to a Kenyan student and American mother. Spent his early childhood in Indonesia with an Indonesian step father, came back to live with his grandparents and went to Harvard Law School. So he is not a brother from the streets of South Chicago. His nomination as the black presidential candidate is a first in the history of US, so its a small but significant step. Mr. Obama is trying very hard to shake off his dubious middle name of Hussein.

With the economy meltdown and Bush and the congress bailing out the financial market, a lot of Americans are very unhappy with the republicans and this shows in the recent opinion polls with Obama leading ten points ahead. The question is whether this will show in the actual polls.

My prediction is that it will not, and the republicans will have another four years in the white house. This is because of the dumbing down of the American society, thanks in part to two terms of Bush and born again Christians and Muslims in America and the rest of the world. My only worry is whether Ms. Palin can become the next President or not because I fear for Alaska and polar bears.