A competition held once a week, Barack Idol will narrow the field of contenders until the grand finale in front of thousands at the Democratic National Convention and millions watching from home. In every episode the potential nominees will give a ten-minute speech on a policy issue, participate in an impromptu press conference, and have the opportunity to ask each other challenging questions. The last event will be a free-style round where the contestants can do whatever they want to impress the audience. Each show will end with Barack Obama giving a fist jab to the contestants advancing to the next part of the contest.
But that’s not all, America! Our cameras will follow the VPs as they live together and campaign in a different swing state every week. Watch them pander and flip-flop as they try to become Obama’s No. 2.
The best part is that for the first time in history, America, you get to vote for the actual candidates (unless you are from Michigan or Florida). After each show you can text your choice to (866) 675-2008 or e-mail the campaign here. Not only will a contestant be voted off every week, there is an undercover Republican in the midst, and it will be up to you to eliminate him on time. The final choice will be sent to you via text message or e-mail as soon it is available if you sign up on the Obama ’08 website.
Can Hillary Clinton make a comeback? Will John Edwards show the result of his paternity test live on air? Is Joe Lieberman the secret Republican?* Find out on Barack Idol, the show where YOU get to vote (but not for Ron Paul).
*Yes.
Today is Barack Obama’s 47th birthday. Happy Birthday, Barack Obama! [Obama HQ Blogger]
P.S. To make the picture we downloaded the “Obama Logo Suite” from the campaign’s Downloads page and got a .zip file with a “__MACOSX” folder and shitloads of “.DS_Store” files. Tomorrow morning, we’re getting in line at the Obamapple Store for a Barackintosh.
This brings up a question: If Obama is President, will we still use White Macs?
As I was looking at the new updates for Windows Vista, I came across this Microsoft patch. This is the problem it fixes:
In Windows Vista and in Windows Server 2008, when you check the spelling of English language text in an application that uses the English dictionary, all the following words cannot be recognized and are flagged as being misspelled:
• Friendster • Klum • Nazr • Obama • Racicot
OBAMA.
How could Microsoft not recognize Obama for so long? I decided to check if this was true by writing one of kitsch-posh’s regular e-mails using Windows Mail.
Before the patch:
Replace Obama with Osama? That’s not change we can believe in. Microsoft also does not recognize the term “Wahabi” and thinks it’s a Japanese spice. At least they should have suggested “Wahhabi,” the well-known version of the word.
But worst of all…
Microsoft suggests changing “Wahabism” to “Arabism.” Oh boy.
The patch only resolved the Obama-Osama problem. I had to manually add the other words to Mail’s database; these included Wahabi, Wahabism, Barack (suggestion Barrack), Soetoro, and some of the cities.
And while Microsoft suggests that Barack should be Barrack, Google disagrees:
It’s said that Barack (Barrack?) is the first to successfully bring the Internet into politics. But perhaps what he’s really done is to bring politics into the Internet; even he can’t transcend the Google vs. Microsoft War.
Via Der Spiegel:
Are the Germans training their own Barack Obama?
The New York Times: A Cast of 300 Advises Obama on Foreign Policy
My first impression when I saw the headline was “Wow, Obama really has some nuts. No wonder Jesse wants to cut them off.” Then I read the article and realized that Obama doesn’t actually take advice from Leonidas on how to run the world and make our enemies cower in fear. Yea, I know. Sucks.
But what if Senator Obama hired the cast of 300 as his advisers? Better yet, what if he became Leonidas? Our foreign policy would then look something like this:
Barack Leonidas rules.