Posts Tagged ‘obamarama’

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The Summer That Was…2008 Edition

Thursday, August 28th, 2008
Since we just had Getting Glenergized’s season premiere earlier this week, I figure it is a great chance to rehash a post I did a little over a year ago, as I look back on a busy summer and provide a series of mini-blogs for things that I would have put otherwise.

McCain Goes for Blood, Obama Stumbles

The summer has surprisingly been a tough one for my American-Political-Man-Crush, as John McCain has slowly widdled away on Obama’s once large lead. Of course, while the Democratic National Convention takes place this week, Obama is getting a much needed boost. However, it remains to be seen if such a bump McCain will get next week during the Republican National Convention.

Personally, I still have the utmost faith that my boy Barrack will pull this one out. In the past few days Obama has addressed his perceived inexperience, by getting Joe Biden as his running mate, and tackled those crazy Clinton supporters by having both Bill and Hilary give him a rousing endorsement at the convention. Hopefully those two things will help sway those independents, women, and just plain nuts into voting for him as opposed to joining the dark side. No matter, I fully believe that Obama can redraw the political map just enough to not only beat McCain, but beat him well enough. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Obama tops 300 electoral votes, for a pretty handy victory.

New Homes for Hossa, Campbell, and Boyle, Sundin still Golfing

I plan on doing a more in depth analysis of the NHL Free Agency later on, but it certainly was busy summer in hockey with Detroit, Chicago and San Jose making the boldest moves. However, Mats Sundin still waits on the sidelines while all sorts of teams have been throwing money in his general direction, and yet he is still in Sweden. I think that he will play at some point this season, perhaps not until Christmas or so, and it will be for Montreal if anyone.

Radiohead Changes My Life

I had the distinct pleasure of seeing Radiohead on August 15th in Toronto. Not much to say other than they are phenomenal live, and if you ever have a chance to see them, take it.

Until then, enjoy my personal favourite track from In Rainbows, “All I Need”.

PUNK WINS!!!! PUNK WINS!!!!!!

Imagine my shock when one of my favourite wrestlers pulls out the ultimate surprise and wins the World Title by defeating Edge on an episode of RAW? After winning the Money in the Bank Match at Wrestlemania 24 CM Punk proceeded to loose to just about everyone on the roster, and then on June 30th, he does the unthinkable and cashes in on an opportunity against the Ultimate Opportunist Edge.

Missed it? Well have yourself a gander at a truly memorable wrestling moment.

Great eh?

Olympic Ordeals

The 29th Olympiad really is one that people will remember for a long time. From the partial faking of the broadcast of the opening ceremony, to China completely dominating, to the huge crowds of predominantly local people, the impact of these games really can’t be understated.

For a country like China, to have spent most of its history closed to outsiders to welcome the entire world in for a very big event, is a monumental thing. And for a country that was once very poor to be able to afford something so grand really is a testament to this country’s amazing development.
Granted, as a Canadian, I was a little disappointed with some of the results, as I really expected us to get more medals. But that’s ok, we always have the winter games on our home turf.

Speaking of China…

I moved there a week ago today, liking it so far. Keep coming back here for any zany stories that are sure to follow.

Until next time,

G

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Finally…

Wednesday, June 4th, 2008

After months of debates, mud flinging, cries of elitism, disenfranchisement in Florida and Michigan, a Wrightmare, eerie assassination talk, re-enfranchisement in Florida and Michigan, and a host of other twists and turns, I can finally say something that I have wanted to for so very long.

Obama wins.

That’s right, after having an insurmountable lead since February, the numbers have finally caught up to reality, as Barack Obama has passed the magic numbers of 2,024 and 2,118 delegates after South Dakota and Montana held the last primaries of the season.

In case you missed it last night, here is his amazing speech…


As anyone who follows this blog will know, I love Barrack Obama, so needless to say I am completely overjoyed at this moment. I think, hope and pray, that the United States may just be heading in the right direction. While I live North of the Border, I still could not be any happier, as Canadian Politics has always experienced an “echo” effect to American ones (They vote in Kennedy in 1960, we go for Trudeau in 1969, they get Regan in 1980, we go for Mulroney in 1984, Bush down there in 2000, Harper up here in 2006, to name a few). Meaning, that in some way, shape or form, Change is coming to Canada and I, for one couldn’t be happier.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me focus on the near future instead, and where exactly the three major Presidential Candidates will be going from here.

John McCain – Having clinched the nomination way back in February, McCain has been pretty quiet. After all, he didn’t really need to go on the offensive against Obama, since Clinton had been doing a lot of that. He has been able to bide his time, and let those two go after one another.

McCain needs to figure out a game plan from here. What will his issues be? Will he keep trying to distance himself from Bush, or try and cozy up to him? Will he go on the offensive and start attack Obama, in typical Republican fashion? Judging by his poorly timed, and even more poorly executed speech last night, the answers will be: Iraq, distance, and yes.

Don’t believe me? Well here is the speech I am referencing, I loved the part where it gets cut away to declare Obama the nominee…

When contrasting it to Obama’s speech (shown earlier), it really makes McCain look second rate. Like it or not, speaking and looks matter in an election, and McCain looses out on both of those big time compared to Obama. McCain needs to really step up his speaking abilities in the next few months, or he will be severely outclassed by Obama in the fall debates.

In retrospect, McCain probably should have waited from giving a speech on that night, and given it tonight, or in a few days. He needs to try and downplay the negatives of his campaign, and having people get to watch his speech first, followed by Clinton’s, followed by Obama’s, really made Barrack seem like the Main Event of the evening, which only hurt McCain.

McCain will need to spend the next few months trying to figure out a running mate, with Tim Pawlenty being the apparent front-runner. However, if McCain wants to downplay the historical aspect of Obama running as an African-American, he should consider Condoleezza Rice, to appeal to both the woman and black vote.

Barrack Obama – STRAIGHT TO THE WHITE HOUSE BABY!!!!111

Sorry, I had to get the fanboyness out of my system.

After last night, Obama is sitting in a great position. All three made a speech, and his was clearly the best. Instead of focusing on himself (like Hillary did), or on his opponent (as McCain did) he focused on America. This combined with his amazing line directed at McCain saying “I respect his many accomplishments, even if he chooses to deny mine” really makes him seem like the bigger person, and not giving into “Politics as usual” like the others appeared to have.

Combine this with the fact that the GOP’s image seems to be fading fast, and things look great for Barrack. However, he does have some interesting choices as to who to pick as his running mate. Sure everyone is talking about Hillary but that can’t happen (for reasons I will get to in a moment) with names like Bill Richardson, Michael Bloomberg, Chris Dodd, Kahtleen Sebelius, and Evan Bayh, bound to receive a lot of talk in the coming months.

In the interest of prognosticating, I am going to go with Richardson here, he would really bring in Latino voters, and could bring New Mexico and maybe even Texas onto the Blue sides of things in November, and that sure would change things.

Between now and November, I expect Obama to concentrate a great deal on his grassroots fund raising, which has been spectacular thus far, and to continue his “Nice Guy” image, against the sure fire attacks bound to be coming from the Republican side of things.

Hillary Clinton – Now here is the real wild card of this whole thing.

While she was mathematically eliminating last night, she still refused to quit. While I do have some respect for her tenacity, I really am sick of her now. While I have been very critical of her a few times before on this very blog, so it may be a bit of a challenge for me to examine this objectively.

Last night should have been about Obama and she tried to make it about her. Don’t believe me? Well her is her speech last night…

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Now, I forget which one, but one of the CNN talking heads referred to Clinton’s speech as showing “Deranged Narcissism”, and I don’t know if there is a more apt term than that. She (falsely) claimed that she won the popular vote, which only happens when you don’t take into account any of the caucus states and/or the “Uncommitted” votes in Michigan, which is odd since Hillary repeatedly preached that she wanted “Every vote to count”.

With her talking about how many votes she got, she really sounds like she is trying to bully Obama into naming her as his running mate. My lord can this ever not happen.

Obama needs to set himself up as a Change Candidate, and someone who has already lived in the White House for 8 years does not represent change at all. Plus, if she can’t let Obama have his night when he mathematically wins, can she really let him have four years to Be the Man? Somehow I doubt it…also, there is that little shadow called Bill who would be standing behind the two of them. A good VP needs to be sure to give the limelight to the person at the top of the ticket, and that really is Obama.

I think that the best option for Clinton, would be for her to support Obama, campaign for him, and get a high profile spot in his cabinet. Either way, I really hope that she heeds my advice from my last post on her…“SHUT UP”

One way or another, I am glad that this is finally over, and more importantly, the good guy won. It should be a very interesting five months for the US, and for all of us watching.

Before I send off let me make yet another prediction. In November it will be Obama winning, with the popular vote going 56-44.

Until next time,

G

Until next time,

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Why I Love Barack Obama

Saturday, April 5th, 2008


I find it fitting that I go from dedicating 8 straight posts about professional wrestling to talking about U.S. Politics. At the end of the day, the two are really not all that different. Both have very compelling storylines, interesting characters, major players provide stunning turns at the most opportune of moments, and are masked with “smoke and mirror” techniques aimed at guarding the truth.

Don’t believe me? Well last month Randy Orton tried to so hard to prove that he belonged in the Main Event, which appeared to be all about Triple H and John Cena, in the end, he was able to win after his two opponents beat one another up. Can we say the same about John McCain proving his worth as a legitimate contender after all of the focus has been on Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton?

Also, which do you think was closer to the truth, Floyd Mayweather getting $20 million for his match at Wrestlemania, or Hillary getting shot by snipers when she landed in Bosnia? And don’t even get me started on Clinton’s stance on the Iraq War, that was a clear attempt at her pulling off a “double turn”, but like everyone of them in wrestling since Hart-Austin, they have all failed miserably.

In wrestling there is usually a clear cut good guy, or face. The face does the right thing, no matter what the odds seem to be. Well, for the first time in my lifetime, I genuinely feel that there is a face in the political arena, Barack Obama.

It’s been a while since I have done a “Why I Love” style post, but I firmly believe that there are a number of reasons why he is the right choice, not only for America, but for the world as a whole.

1. He was Against the War from the Start — He knew from the get go the harsh realities of the Iraq War, and voted against a war that he knew would destabilize the region, build up anti-American sentiment, and lead to a long and bloody occupation. Can’t really say the same about Hillary now can we?

2. Re-branding – I read a fantastic article by Andrew Sullivan in The Atlantic, titled “Goodbye to All That“, where he talks about his love of Barack Obama. One of his points really hit home to me, he mentions Obama as someone who can change America’s “Brand” to the world. He stated the following:

“Consider this hypothetical. It’s November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man—Barack Hussein Obama—is the new face of America. In one simple image, America’s soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm. A brown-skinned man whose father was an African, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, who attended a majority-Muslim school as a boy, is now the alleged enemy. If you wanted the crudest but most effective weapon against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology, Obama’s face gets close. It proves them wrong about what America is in ways no words can.”

Simply put, Obama’s multi-cultural nature is one his best things going for him. It sure would be a lot harder for people to burn images and effigies of Barack Obama than it would be of George Bush, and that can really only help things at this point.

3. Courage – Barack Obama dumbfounds me with the amount of courage he shows. Do you think that Hillary Clinton or John McCain would have the guts to say that racism still exists in the United States and that African-Americans need to stop blaming whites for their own problems?

If you haven’t seen his “A More Perfect Union” speech, dedicate the next 37 minutes of your life to this YouTube clip.

Amazing eh?

4. He Rarely Plays the Race Card — Sure he mentions his own ethnicity when delivering the above speech, but rarely throughout the campaign has he brought up the fact that he is black. It’s refreshing, especially when compared to Clinton’s earlier stunts where she reminded everyone that she’s a woman.

5. He knows the Battle Lines –To me, this is by far the biggest pro for Barack Obama. One of his key points has been about political lobbyists and his insistence on not letting them run Washington. This my friends, marks the first major shot in the political battlefield of the 21st century. So much of the 20th century was about drawing lines and trenching in, from Democrat-Republican, liberal-conservative, Evangelical-secular, capitalist-communist, and well things are different now, and Obama is the only one who has mentioned the new line, Corporatism-Individualism.

People have spent so long debating things like abortion and same-sex marriage, they have lost sight of the new form of control and major issue taking place in the world today. Corporations have been slowly gaining an incredible amount of power thanks to bodies like the WTO, and a variety of government policies.

This rise of Corporatism has lead to mass consumption on a completely unsustainable scale, a weakening of the US Health Care System (and threating of the Canadian one), limiting access to information, and the illegal invasion of Iraq, just to name a few things. All of these things have slowly been taking place behind the backs of the public, courtesy of some very powerful political lobbyists. Even the war on Iraq had massive approval in the United States because people “didn’t know” that the claims of Weapons of Mass Destruction were fabricated, despite the knowledge being widespread throughout Europe.

I am not so naive to think that Obama can dismantle the dizzying clout that major corpotation have in a capitalist system, but he is the only major candidate (note: Ralph Nader doesn’t count as major) to even mention this issue. While everyone is well aware that the nature of war has changed, everyone seems to think that the antagonists have shifted from communists to terrorists, and that simply is not the case. As I said back in January, the new wars are going to be about The Individual vs. The Collective, and right now the Corporations are the Collective, and Barack Obama is the champion of The Individuals.

6. I Want to Believe — I’m sure Obama has his faults, but for some reason I just can’t help but get caught up in this Obama-mania, I feel that he is someone different, which is what we all need, so very, very badly.

Until next time,

G

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