Belfast Blogs.com

The election of Barack Obama marks not only the triumph of celebrity politics, but also a potentially dangerous return to leadership cults of personality.Anyone who travelled in Russia in the 20th century would be familiar with cult of personality politics - the stern statues of an exorting Lenin everywhere, his name and those of his peers scrawled across the streetnames in every town like graffiti.But today, as Putin and Medvedev offer up their own tributes to that old genocidal maniac Stalin, some personality cults are in a resurgence.In China, even today, the Mao cult remains vibrant beyond words. The days of the cultural revolution when kids would beat their elders to death with Mao's little red book while chanting his name are still in living memory.But the fact that his odious,...

Or, the US Presidential Election through the Looking Glass.It is now time, after two years of phoney war, for America to decide who gets to sit and weep on top of the smoking wreckage of the United States that Dubya leaves behind him.And what a choice it is! Will you go for TweedleDem, the charismatic young black man, or TweedleRep, the heroic old white man?Or will you, God forbid, actually decide who to vote for on the issues rather than on telegenics?Let's have one final look at the issues:If elected, Barack Obama will maintain the Federal Reserve.So will John McCain.If elected, Barack Obama will maintain the income tax levels and the commensurate level of federal spending, despite America's massive debt burden.So will John McCain.If elected, John McCain will continue the "War on...

George Hussein Obama, centre, in Huruma shanty town, Nairobi, Kenya, where he lives unaided by his somewhat wealthier brother Barack.There are serious questions about Barack Obama that aren't being answered.Questions like: was he actually born in Hawaii or was he born in Kenya, which would invalidate him from even running?Questions like: what did he actually do during his years as a community activist and why have his employment records suddenly been made classified the minute journalists started asking to look at them?But the most serious question about Barack Obama is the one about his character.What sort of a man can run for high office, the highest on Earth, promising his vision of care for all, expressing his concern that no one be left behind and that the weakest be protected, while...

There is a large proportion of the American electorate who are unconvinced by either Obama's vision thing or McCain's maverick conservatism.Reluctantly, I have finally agreed to put my name forward following a massive groundswell of appeals that I enter my candidacy in the forthcoming election:...

Or maybe even for President in four years time?It seems that John McCain has decided to go with Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential candidate.It's a superlative choice that's really going to let the Democrats know they're in a fight for the Whitehouse.She is a dream candidate for the Republicans - she's extremely photogenic (even now, as opposed to her beauty queen heyday, right), married to an Inuit (there goes a slice of Obama's ethnic vote), the mother of a Downs' Syndrome kid, and has actual experience of governance (unlike Obama, Biden or McCain).She'll appeal to the ethnic vote, to the swing vote and to the still disgruntled Clintonista sisterhood vote.An election that ought on paper to have been a Democrat landslide is now blown wide open. They have the wrong...

Apparently it IS possible to make Brack Hussein Obama even more unelectable than he already is.Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the next never-will-be-vice-president of the United States, Joe Biden.Okay, he's an aged white man, just like the Obamaniacs wanted (though one wonders why.)But he's also one of the wettest eco-liberals in US politics. Not exactly the sort of person to mitigate and soften Obama's own hyper-lefty tendencies so much as exaggerate and amplify them.Biden's pro-environment, pro-choice, anti-tax cuts, pro-gun control and pro-gay civil unions. Whatever the merits of any of those individual positions, they certainly won't endear the Obama ticket to the MOR Republican-lite voters and undecideds that they need to get over the line in November. If anything, the opposite.He...

I'm a contrary so-and-so at the best of times. So forgive me for not joining in the Obamania currently sweeping Germany and other parts of the world (like Ireland) that don't have a say in the US Presidential election.Much has been made of Obama's electric speechifying since his campaign commenced. And certainly, his oratory has proved inspirational enough to get him into pole position in a two horse race for the biggest job on the planet.In fact, desperate Republicans have been trying to smear Obama for exactly that: they claim that he's all mouth and no trousers, making pretty speeches with little or no experience of governance to back up his change agenda.So what substance might there be to Obama if it were demonstrated that his inspirational public speaking was in fact as shallow as...

The overtly, embarrassingly pro-Israel Democratic party candidate is dead.Long live, erm, the other embarrassingly pro-Israel Democratic party candidate?No sooner has Zion's biggest fan, Clinton II, finally fallen as a candidate for POTUS, than the actual candidate-elect, a black sunnovaMuslim, goes and offers Israel a united Jerusalem as their capital.Now, for those whose eyes glaze over at the mere thought of the mess that is the Middle East, I'll keep this microscopically brief:East Jerusalem has been Arab, both Christian and Muslim flavours, for well over a thousand years. Israel conquered it in 1967 and won't give it back even though the whole world keeps telling them too, even America.Instead, they built a ruddy big wall around it and are building a ring of settlements around East...

From the inimitable Fred Reed comes the most succinct summary of the choice America faces in the forthcoming months about which leader to choose:We’ve got Obama, an empty suit with a good line of patter and a past few write about, and McCain, a pugnacious senile temper tantrum who can’t remember whether Al Qaeda is Sunni or Shiite.Not too promising.That leaves Clitler, a strange visitor from another planet probably and crooked as kite string in a ceiling fan, but neither stupid, ignorant, nor crazy.Needless to say, he's a Hilary supporter by default. Though given he resides in Mexico, she's unlikely to benefit from his vote.He's pretty good on current and former presidents too: Bill Clinton was said to be the first black president. W is the first kinky...

It's a little shocking to my ears, having spent my childhood in the bosom of the British NHS, to listen to how Americans are responding to Hilary Clinton's plan for universal health entitlements.She's been roundly lambasted by the Republicans for her 'Hilaryaid' proposals, which sound nothing more than the mildest, weakest version of what most Western Europeans would consider a fundamental human right.While Barack continues to witter pointlessly about bringing 'change', without ever specifying what change he's bringing (loose change, perhaps?), at least La Clinton has put an actual concrete proposal on the table for discussion.And to me, that discussion has been frightening.If you were to listen to Mitt Romney or Huckabee, you'd think that she was proposing Communist totalitarianism. The...

I made a few predictions this time last year. I'll return to see how wrong I was about 2007 in my next post.In the meantime, here is my doom-mongering for 2008.1. Pakistan becomes the no. 1 threat to world peace. By no. 1, I mean the return of the nuclear fear and five minutes to midnight.2. Bertie gets dumped at long last by Fianna Fail. When the chairman starts offering support to the manager in soccer, it's invariably followed by a sacking. So how else to read the fact that half the cabinet are sympathising with El Berto's ongoing tribunal antics?3. A Republican, possibly Romney, will be the next US President. Pace Richard Delevan, who's been proselytising for Obama for some time (which is odd as eggs for an American right-winger), I can't see the US electing a black man. If he ran as...