Presedential Pick-Me-Up: Part 1

Happy Leap Day! Or is it Leap Year Day? Whatever.

In case you live in a cave or forest, and your hobby of choice is poking yourself in the eyes and ears with rocks, you know (as the existence of February 29th indicates) it's an election year. And if you know me, you know I am a Kucinich person, in a big way. Please see my livejournal icon to your right. I'm devoted, y'all.

So, I was understandably disheartened by- well- I was going to say "Dennis dropping out", but also Dennis being excluded before he dropped out, the array of Dennis-bashing before he dropped out, and so on. I am frankly disenchanted with both Hillary and Barack, and while I always considered McCain the least evil of the republicans, I realize more and more how fucking crazy he is and (considering the past few elections) how much more electable that makes him. I've said it during election years before, and I'll said it again: we're doomed!

So it's nice, during these dark times, to remember that while whoever is going to end up in the White House isn't going to be exactly ideal, at least there are some people who are totally never going to end up in the White House. People who, say, want to reinstate stoning for gays and loose women, or think their cosmic destiny as president of the universe is written in the stars- the same stars that they wish to bomb as president. Vote-smart dot org has a list of just such people, and it's called the "Other" party list of presidential candidates. Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking all third-party candidates, and I did pull a few bizarre candidates from the Republican and Democrat lists, too, but that Other list lets you get straight to the crazy. That's because on the Other list, people make up their own parties. I don't want to spoil any of the surprises, so I present for you, the first installment of a list of people whose asses Dennis Kucinich could- and, really, has thoroughly kicked in a presidential election:

Da Vid
The Light Party
You are going to notice a theme of the religion category being a source of confusion with these candidates, as apparently strange people running for president are really into strange religions, or using way too many words to explain their religion. Vid- or should I call him Da? I'm really postulating that his name is David and he either thought his last name wasn't interesting enough or he was too paranoid to post it on Vote-Smart. Anyway, Vid lists his religion as Rosicrucian, Hermetic Qabalist. I looked these words up on Wikipedia, and as far as I can tell it's New Age for history majors. They're very into stars and mysticism and really dense concepts that I'm sure all have some ancient basis that I don't understand. Also, this thing:


And here we're think a Mormon would be hard to market.
Anyway, now that I've ripped on the poor guy's religion, let me say honestly, his organizations list is kind of astounding. Vid has been part no less than 36 nice-sounding groups, including Green Peace and Doctors Without Borders. I'm really interested in the Worldwide Forgiveness Alliance. What kind of work exactly would that entail? Forgiving people, or pressuring people to forgive other people? Forgiveness conventions?
His three presidential priorities are what really seals the deal on never becoming president for him. The first is disarming all nukes, which is admirable enough. The second is "Project Health", which appears to be universal health care with some "eco-agriculture" thrown in, nothing really extreme there. His third priority, however, is "Project Light, the catchy tag line being "All The Power That Ever Was Or Will Be Is Here Now." Got a ring to it, eh? Project Light basically aims for "a sustainable global solar hydrogen/hemp based economy". How will we acheive this? Why, "The Gaia/Solaris Consortium", of course. If this vote-smart survey was graded, the professor would write a big red please explain your answer next to this one.

Gene Amondson
Prohibition Party
Seriously, guy? You're running on prohibition? You do know how that went over the last time, right? He's not totally out of touch with the youth, though: he has a myspace. And two whole friends. Maybe he'd attract more if he had any information on the page besides his name, age, marital status and astrological sign. Why those last two specifically? Possibly... for the ladies?

Terry Lee "Tee" Barkdull
The America Party
As a blogger, I have to say about this guy: JACKPOT. The first two were easy to find, but I took a chance on this guy, as he was only listed as "Unknown". However, if you follow the trail to his website, you will see quite clearly that Tee here belongs to THE AMERICA PARTY. You will also see clearly that he loves FREEDOM, CAPSLOCK, FORMATTING and "PICTURES OF EAGLES". Can you guess what the mascot of the America Party is? Hint: It's a motherfucking eagle!
I seriously don't know where to begin with this guy- I suppose the easiest jab is at the layout- eagles, soldiers and America flags fuckin' abound. He's also a big fan of weird, unnecessary formating choices and "QUOTATIONS", even in places where they make his "argument" seem "meaningless". For example, instead of promising what he'd do as your President, he tells you what he'll do AS YOUR "PRESIDENT". Don't be fooled by the seeming lack of intelligence he displays with constant misused commas ("We, can win together!"), his complete misunderstanding of how things like disability benefits, immigration and racism (holy shit is this guy swamped in privilege- did you know the very existence of BET is racist?) work, and his typos ("I am sick of Politically Correction") that result in saying something completely different ("No free bees for immigrants!"- I'm with him on this, I mean, we are short on bees). He considers himself to be a very "INTELLIGENT" individual.
Tee is very big on speaking English. Did you know over 2/3 of the world's native language is English? Tee does. He also thinks being given the option of pressing 1 for English or 2 for Spanish is discrimination. That's right- the fact that you are even offering a language besides English is impeding Tee's rights.
He wants sex, along with race, age, and eye color to be eliminated from job applications (goodness knows how sick I am of writing out my eye color every time I apply for a job). However, the Boy Scouts are for boys, the Girl Scouts are for girls- "The way it should be!". Also, he apparently feels that "homosexuality is WRONG! It's not a phobia, it's my OPINION!!! I have the right to 'NOT' to be tolerant of others because they are different, wired or they just PISS ME OFF!!" Sure, you have the right to be intolerant- unless, whoops, you're the fucking president. I'm pretty sure he meant weird instead of wired, but it wouldn't be a big stretch to see this guy going on a tirade against cyborgs.
Man, I could go on for days about this guy. He surely spent at least a few days on his website- besides the insane amount of formatting variations, he has at least a dozen rants that just go on and fucking on. The sheer volume of his angry babblings would be commendable, if only they weren't so ignorant, repetitious and completely lacking in self-awareness. The motto that sits atop his front page, "WE THE PEOPLE. THAT MEANS ALL AMERICANS", seems to be looking down at the rest of his ranting in scorn.
Let me just end with one more quote:
"TO MANY PEOPLE DIE ON OUR NATIONS HIGHWAYS AND FREEWAYS BECAUSE OF THE AGGRESSIVE DRIVER THAT THINK THEY OWN THE ROADS, AND THE LAW DOESN'T APPLY TO THEM.
AS A NATION, THIS MUST STOP NOW. I WANT THIS CHANGE ALSO, IT'S TOO BAD, CONGRESS IS TOO PRE-OCCUPIED WITH THESE 'DEADLY SAMURAI SWORDS'"
He makes no other reference to samurai swords anywhere on the page. Tee: What "THE FUCK" are you talking about?


If people like Tee- or heck, if people like Da Vid- get you riled up, just take a deep breath now, and remember that the chance of them fulfilling their dream of becoming President is about the same as the chance of Tee knowing what "sesquipedalian" means.
Hopefully this has restored your faith in our mainstream presidential candidates as much as it did mine. I'll have two more installments, on Sunday and Tuesday- and who knows, if more people announce their candidacy, this could go on until November.