Seriously, you think a gay president will happen before a human-animal hybrid president?
Can't we rule out foreign born right off the bat? And Becks has slighted robots, for some reason.
Is America ready to spend four years without a president?
3. Robots would be assembled in Korea, and therefore foreign born.
I, President Robot. Sweet. "I can't feel your pain, exactly, but I can act in functionally identical ways."
Is America ready for a Chinese Governor General?
President Executron is merely playing to his "kill all humans" base.
Is America ready to spend four years without a president?
FUCK YES.
I'd bet that we've already had a gay president. It's the first out president that we're waiting for. For sure we've had a gay first lady, right (E. Roosevelt)? What are the chances that could happen today? This is what happens when the press shares things with the rabble.
John McCain was born in Panama, so a foreign-born president might not be far off. It's worth remembering that to be president you have to be a natural-born citizen. You don't have to be born in the United States.
Is America ready for a Chinese Governor General?
He will retain the formal title of Ambassador out of courtesy, like the British Ambassador to Egypt in the early 20th century. In fact, he's probably already in post.
I'd bet that we've already had a gay president.
Lincoln!
Also J. Buchanan was quite possibly gay, although obviously closeted if so.
My research on intercrural intercourse certainly dug up a lot on Abraham "I'll keep the Union and my thighs tightly united" Lincoln.
I included foreign-born because I wouldn't be surprised to see a Constitutional amendment to get rid of that requirement in my lifetime.
Is America ready for a Zombie Nixon presiBRAINNZZZZ
I'd bet that we've already had a gay president.
Buchanan and Lincoln have both generated much speculation.
Is America ready for a human-animal hybrid president?
Si! Se! Puede!
Four! Legs! Good!
Si! Se! Puede!
Two! Legs! Bad!
But would the first gay president have to be a top or a bear or something? I think so.
As for the human-animal hybrid it all, quite obviously, depends on what sort of animals are involved. If it's tough, cool animals like a couger or maybe an aligator than I'm sure most of the people will go for it. If it's a small bird or maybe a stolt people will think it's too wussy.
re: 18
The so-called "Schwarzenegger Amendment".
We need a woman president who is both a cougar and a cougar.
Fuck you, Matt. I want my parrot president.
But would the first gay president have to be a top
You just know that'd come up in the debates.
Is America ready for an (out) vampire president?
32. Only if it's a black ribboner.
28
Would the amendment also include 3, or just robots from the future?
We've had a semi-closeted vampire veep for seven years now.
re: 30
The State of the Union would be great.
"Who's a pretty boy then! Who's a pretty boy then! Polly wanna hegemon."
You just know that'd come up in the debates.
"My opponent claims to be receptive to all points of view, but I believe he would go down on -- (cough) excuse me, that is, in the face of -- strong Republican opposition.
Is America ready for a good president?
My predictions for the ordering of these events:
1. Black president
2. Woman president
3. Jewish president
4. Out gay president
5. Atheist president
6. Test-tube president
Out gay president I don't expect to see in my lifetime. (But, then, I don't expect to see a Black president in my lifetime, and I didn't expect to see an African-American who could mount a credible threat to become President. I was wrong on the latter and can now imagine being proven wrong on the former.)
I wonder if an openly atheist president is more likely than the conventional wisdom suggests. Don't the religious identification numbers change a lot by age group? Give it 20 years and the Harris/Hitchens/Dawkins line becomes a familiar part of the landscape.
"test-tube" = IVF? Or actually some sort of genetically modified lab-grown president?
I see Atheist has already been mentioned. Other milestones:
An obese president? (Sure, we had Taft, but in the modern era, fat is arguably not electable.)
A single president?
An Asian or Latino president?
A tattooed or pierced president.
genetically modified lab-grown president. Bred for the office.
A president not from one of the major parties?
Visibly handicapped (and people know about it?)
Just the other day I was thinking what an interesting historical accident it is that the first serious woman candidate and the first serious African-American candidate are both running at the same time.
Given that most of us here have a good 30-40 years or more left, I'm betting we see most of those--manimals not necessarily excepted--before we check out.
In other news, the UK navy quits blowing goats.
re:44
Teddy Roosevelt had a tattoo of his family crest.
1) Clearly shrub-boy is some manner of repressed gay. (And it surely involves bald heads ... one of things that makes me wonder more about the Jeff Gannon episode. But that is old news)
2) First steroid-using president (during campaigning & in office, prior use does not count.)
3) per 42, I think genetically-enhanced will come up at some pont.
4) And further beyond that some manner of cyborg/computer-enhanced/genetically-enhanced combo will be debated.
5) And then it will be Skynet.
48: In other news, the UK navy quits blowing goats.
Good, we don't need any more of their goat-sea activities.
I wonder if an openly atheist president is more likely than the conventional wisdom suggests. Don't the religious identification numbers change a lot by age group? Give it 20 years and the Harris/Hitchens/Dawkins line becomes a familiar part of the landscape.
The US will have a long way to go before it becomes less religious than the UK, and I don't think there's ever been an openly atheist prime minister.
Fair point. Do you think that currently there *could* have been an atheist PM? Or would that rule someone out?
I don't think there's ever been an openly atheist prime minister
FWIW (not much), Callaghan was.
#52. goat-sea program-related activities.
Georgina Beyer, the world's first transgendered Member of Parliament said
"I was quoted once as saying that 'This was the stallion that became a gelding, and now she's a mayor.' I suppose I do have to say that I have now found myself to be a Member! So I have come full circle, so to speak."
54: Dunno. I expect it would be possible -- there are openly atheist cabinet ministers, and Blair's religiosity is probably not helpful to him -- but I'd still think that paying a little polite lip service to religion is the safe way to go if you want to be PM.
FWIW (not much), Callaghan was.
How openly?
I tried googling, but all I can find is Wikipedia, which says "Callaghan was, by his own admission, an atheist", but its only reference is to the "trivia" section of Callaghan's IMDB profile, which I do not find helpful.
58. From personal memory, he never raised the issue and wasn't often asked, but didn't deny it if he was. As I say, it doesn't prove anything anyway, because he never won an election as PM - he was selected by the Labour Party when Wilson retired in '76 and lost to Thatcher in '79. Michael Foot, the next leader of the Labour Party and sponsor of "the longest suicide note in history", was also an atheist, and AFAICR it was never used against him.
32 - There's been a lot of speculation about Benjamin Harrison, although, if it's true, he was probably closeted.
Non-abrahamic president?
Non college-educated president?
Native-American president?
Yesterday some dude on CNN kept pointint out Huckabee territory on the map of Missouri and then pointingto St. Louis---"but this is where the PEOPLE live." Made me wonder who was voting for Huckabee---furry aliens?
60. Benjamin Harrison was a vampire? Wow!
I'd bet that we've already had a gay president.
Similarly, I'd bet that we've already had an atheist president, just not a proclaimed atheist. I think we have one now—I know, we've had this discussion, but I think Bush's self-proclaimed Christianity is a cynical ruse that's taken in even Bush himself. Satan could call himself a Christian and win the evangelical vote.
Non college-educated president?
"but this is where the PEOPLE live." Made me wonder who was voting for Huckabee---furry aliens?
51.2: Kennedy used steroids: he took cortisone and testosterone to deal with his Addison's disease.
If Bush has been taken in by his own ruse, hasn't he become sincere?
64: Truman didn't get an (earned) degree, but he did go to a "business college" briefly and he went to law school for a while or at least read law. So was he "college-educated"?
Wow. I'm not sure whether the Bush-as-not-Christian hypothesis is insane or brilliant.
I'd guess `non college educated' was more likely in the past, than it will be in the (near) future.
67: 51.2: Kennedy used steroids: he took cortisone and testosterone to deal with his Addison's disease.
In that case I demand that the Cuban Missile Crisis be asterisked in history books.
I'm not sure whether the Bush-as-not-Christian hypothesis is insane or brilliant.
Like all great truths, it is ultimately unknowable. But I have faith in it. He may be sincere in believing that he is a Christian, but does that make him a Christian? Does he aspire to the imitation of Christ? The evidence suggests otherwise. Also, he himself is insane.
Bush is about as Christian as I am. That is to say, he's culturally Christian, having been raised in it. But the only thing I get off of him is false piety in the service of his electoral fortunes. There's a reason his first Director of Faith-Based Whatever quit in disgust.
I'm 100% certain I could out-scripture him in my sleep.
I think the interesting question is which will happen first - a Jewish President or a Jewish Pope? (The existence of Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger means that this is actually a closer race than you'd think).
some dude on CNN kept pointint out Huckabee territory on the map of Missouri and then pointingto St. Louis
That's refreshing. Usually the implication is the opposite: that the winner of "urban" vote is somehow less worthy and that the "real" people are the whites from the heartland.
Satan could call himself a Christian and win the evangelical vote.
And in those days, the Beast shall summon Ralph Reed and say "Ralph, let's do business..."
79: As goes Branson, so goes the "real" America.
I agree with 68, but that's just being pedantic.
Re: atheist presidents, I might say that Deism is close enough. We've had several presidents who were openly Deist or similar. And it's only since the mid-19th century or so that there's been any scientific alternatives to creation myths, isn't it? There wouldn't even be any point in being an atheist before it offered a worldview that's inconsistent with what religion says.
So we've never had an atheist president specifically, no, but we have had presidents who were willing and able to belong to the nonreligious minority. That seems close enough. But then, this means we've regressed.
My personal belief is that Bush has only one true "principle" and that is that the fortunes of incompetent children of rich and successful parents should not be in any manner of jeopardy.
There's a reason his first Director of Faith-Based Whatever quit in disgust.
Brainerd, MN, site of the movie "Fargo", has a transgendered MTF Republican candidate for the state legislature who lives on welfare. She has remained with her wife and their four kids and thus is now a lesbian too. She gets the hormones but can't afford the operation so is probably also intersexual. No report on the poll results for that race. She's a Republican because she understands that high taxes hurt poor people like herself.
Top that, apo!
Non college-educated president?
Zachary Taylor was an enlisted soldier who rose to general, no college.
He also fits the category of "President who had never voted for anything in his life before running for president".
the first hIVF babies will be eligible to run for President around 2020. My legal challenge to the first candidate for not being a "natural born citizen" is ready to go.
re: Jewish Pope. Peter?
61: It's true though, the people really do live in St. Louis, and to a much lesser extent in Columbia and a couple other cities/towns. That's why the Obama vs. Clinton county map is so funny given that he won the state.
In the spirit of this place, how about the first pseudonymous president?
Is America ready for an (out) vampire president?
It would have to be a daywalker. You have to do some outdoor speeches just to get the right image, even nowadays.
VP, though, that's already happening right now, as mentioned earlier.
Does he aspire to the imitation of Christ?
The sheer number of people this disqualifies is awesome to consider.
In the spirit of this place, how about the first pseudonymous president?
We've had two since 1970!
First "out" wanker President? Even hardcore liberals hate wankers.
93 is ridiculous, the job attracts wankers, and they often succeed. The current occupant of the office is about as `out' a wanker as you can be.
85: Well, a Republican on welfare in Minnesota who is probably intersexual but might just be a lesbian is hard to beat top be much stranger than, but Vermont has our own Karen Kerin. She seems to be a Republican because she's a strong believer in gun rights.
re: 82
Actually, quasi-scientific creation stories go back a long way. You also get crude speculation about 'evolution' going back to the Greeks.
94 is right. In fact, 'what a fucking wanker' was just about the first phrase out of my mouth when I first saw him speak during the 2000 electoral debates.
We've had several presidents who were openly Deist or similar.
I wish the religious right could fucking comprehend this. (I honestly think it's ignorance, even with most of the leadership, unless there's evidence otherwise.) The U.S. was founded on Christianity my ass.
No, he's never come out and admitted that wanking is much more efficient and convenient than either Laura or aides.
"In 1989, Karen was diagnosed with an unusual cancer related to industrial exposures. Told that only six months of life remained, Karen returned to Vermont to be with friends and family. Medications retarded the advancement of the disease, and in June of 1992, Karen underwent surgery to remove a large cancerous tumor in the crux of the bronchial structure. Six days later when the pathology discovered that the assumed type of cancer was in error, it resulted in the removal of the left lung. Six months later, on Pearl Harbor Day, Karen underwent further surgery to remove the balance of the cancer. In the final analysis, Karen's life was changed after that, having to live as a different sex."
I feel like either an important part of that story has been left out, or I don't fully understand the role of lungs.
OT, it's so cold in my office that I am typing *with gloves on*. For mysterious reasons that the building engineers can't seem to correct, mine & the office next to mine are always frigid even as the rest of the office is at a perfectly normal temperature.
Could everyone please feel sorry for me? Thank you.
The first stoned president. Not "inhaled" as a kid, but hooka at the cabinet meetings.
The first stoned president.
Reagan's second term probably comes close.
Wankers are the last minority that it's safe to ridicule. The very accusation of wanking is tantamount to civil death. Yet the physical act of wanking is pervasive. Wanking is the Anti-Foundation of The Imaginary. When wanking is no longer scorned, we will see God face to face and the Kingdom of Heaven will be at hand.
I wish the religious right could fucking comprehend this.
A president who asked to be sworn in on the Jefferson Bible might help.
Kobe wouldn't be cold in Texas.
Character-building, Kraab. Suck it up.
Wankers are the last minority?
Since 1820 or so the US has alternated between fairly strong secularity and Great Awakenings. The most recent awakening can be dated to 1968 and was caused by heavy drug use. Once my generation dies off we'll probably return to sanity.
Unfortunately life expectancies are increasing. And I make no offer to die off myself.
Why yes, LB. Are you a wanker?
Yeah, I'd pull the lever for a wanker.
Perhaps in 2012 I'll be the symbolic wanking atheist alcoholic candidate.
re: 103
I think you are misunderstanding the British usage of 'wanker'. [Deliberately, for comic effect, I'm sure]
I know that I can count on your votes. If you don't want to be outed.
111: You could announce your candidacy here the next time you come out west.
I have been there. I believe that it's in a suburbanizing area now, but when I went there it was a pleasnt crossroads tavern, a notch better than most in somewhat the fern bar direction.
113: And you know that I was looking at you, LB. Right? Would you want your lovely kids to know?
"Wankers -- the silent majority!"
"Pull the handle for one of our own!"
"A hands-on President at last!"
58: Callaghan was, by his own admission, an atheist
Who the hell wrote that Wikipedia entry? By his own admission? Yes, and a shameful admission it was ....
I'd call it a tie between the unlikelihood of an atheist and an out gay president. With respect to the former, I'm not buying that the Hitchen/Dawkins narrative will gain traction any time soon in this country. Although, although ... (per 41) alright, once older generations begin to die off, hm, maybe.
Confusion over that is an extension (for me) of unclarity about the causes of the unprecedented rise of self-identified fundamentalists in the country. I can't take it seriously; they must be bluffing or something, or perhaps their numbers are overreported.
Okay, then, out gay president least likely, then. Gay people are atheists anyway, right?
Is America ready for a Zombie Nixon presiBRAINNZZZZ
Zombie Ronald Reagan would cruise to victory over Zombie Nixon in the Republican primaries. He'd beat McCain and Romney too.
We might already have had Zombie Reagan as president, during his second term.
#99 gets it exactly right. An old Zmag article explains the rest:
" ...Vermont Republicans have had their hands full figuring out what to make of their own candidate. Karen Karin, a fiscal conservative from South Royalton, plans to run for the Republican nomination on the issues of tax reform, anti-gun control and the creation of a petroleum reserve in the Northeast. The complication is that Karen used to be a male. After a bout with urinary cancer ten years ago entailed heavy doses of estrogen, Karen, formerly named Charles, decided to have a sex change operation. Now the GOP is wondering whether it will be able to keep a straight face while making civil unions its lead issue, especially since Karen, who has stated firm opposition to same sex unions, somehow managed to marry a woman in 1996 after becoming a she."
Yeah. She's a contender.
"Is America ready for a Jewish president?
Is America ready for a foreign-born president?
Is America ready for a gay president?
Is America ready for a human-animal hybrid president? "
Dick Cheney is running?
100: I feel sorry for you, Kraab.
No one felt sorry for me when I complained about 4 and a half hours of class and a two hour meeting (and a back ache) So I figure us winers must stick together.
121 - in a marvel of compaction, you evoke an image of yourself as both a whiner, a weiner, and a wino.
Yes, but is America ready for a winer for president?
123 /122 sounds pretty close to Bush, really.
122: Anybody know how much he drinks?
119: Karen Karin, a fiscal conservative from South Royalton,
Your quote reminded me. That's the same town where Joseph Smith was born. Coincidence? I think not.
118 - Zombie Reagan's sunny optimism would surely be more appealing to voters than Zombie Nixon's paranoia and obsession with secrecy.
62 - As to Harrison, it's all speculation. There've been a number of books pointing out oddities that would best be explained by Harrison being a vampire. The fact that he never appeared outside during the daytime, for instance. His strong aversion to garlic. The three wanton Brides of Harrison who seduced male visitors to the White House during his tenure. The fact that Vice President Levi P. Morton degenerated into a fly-eating thrall over the course of Harrison's term, making it impossible for the Party to renominate him in 1892. Grover Cleveland having to drive a wooden stake through his heart and then behead him in order to take possession of the White House. That kind of thing.
Academic historians have mostly ignored this stuff, though, saying that the question of whether he was a vampire is essentially unanswerable and largely irrelevant to an understanding of his presidency.
Zombie's Reagan and Nixon had better get moving if they want to catch up to the electoral machinery of the front runner for the zombie vote.
127: Thanks; now we've all seen the polished shaft of Joseph Smith.
119 presents an interesting issue. If someone was not a natural-born citizen of the US, but then died and was turned into a zombie on US soil, is he eligible for the presidency based on this new birth into ghouldom?
131: doubtful. After all, those who aren't natural-born citizens but who are reborn in Jesus on US soil don't qualify. (Some say that this is because the kingdom of god is not of this earth, so how could it be of any particular nation? But that won't help the zombies, whose allegiance is owed to Satan below.)
128: It may be useful to interrogate the category called "vampire" in the context of the early 1890s. After 1872, such a mythology (in Barthes' meaning of a second-order signifier) might have been imminent, but it would have still been meaningless to most readers until 1897. Too, it could be more useful to speak of "vampires" rather than "vampire", since each iteration, located at the site of the "attack", becomes Protean and ephemeral when it is interpolated. The vampires' interventions can then be understood not as the distinct imposition of "fangs" upon a unified subject, but rather as a manifestation of the spectacular in literary, or in this case, presidential, histories.
Could an umpire become president?
Watch for my forthcoming work: Vampiric Commodities, Commodified Vampires: Towards A Dialectic of Cultural Desanguination
In other news: don't inhale aerosolized hog brains
Actually the really strange thing about that story is that workers at a slaughterhouse had health problems, and the factory owners were open and co-operative with public health officials.
How would you commodify a vampire? What are they for?
You can't train them, and they wouldn't make very good pets.
131 - I don't think that being raised from the dead qualifies as a "birth" in the normal sense.
There's a further question as to whether zombies should be considered citizens at all. The dominant position has always been that zombies do not qualify for U.S. citizenship, given that they are not alive. However, in earlier periods of our history, one can see that the alive/undead distinction was not treated as a firm line in the way that it is today. In fact, in the early republic, zombies were allowed to vote in several states until the early 19th century - in New Jersey, zombie suffrage was not formally banned until 1843. But even after this period it was common enough for the undead to vote - certainly this was true in the west, where populations were so small that occasionally zombies constituted a majority of the population; but it also applied in big city machine politics, where the undead were regularly raised in order to vote in the machine's ticket. The Progressives were notable opponents of the Zombies, and the system of systematic deprivation of zombie political rights which has lasted to the present day was really a legacy of the first decades of the twentieth century.
Edge of the American West needs to settle this.
You people's demagoguery will inevitable lead to mandatory zombie testing everywhere and the complete loss of rights for suspected zombies such as Ogged and Sifu. Please do not take us down this terrible path. We should accept zombie Americans with the same warmth and generosity that we accept libertarian-Americans, hippie-Americans, annoyin- Americans, and stinky-Americans.
138 reminds me that a zombie was recently elected alderman in Chicago. Or the closest equivalent, a man about whom the public did not know whether he was dead or alive.
Schrödinger's election, so to speak. Only after the election would they find out whether they had elected him or his son. They had the choice between that, and a candidate who was known to be alive, but chose the superposition of life and death.
141: Are you referring to the John/Todd Stroger debacle?
It was actually an election for president of the county commissioners board, and the only joy is that everyone hates Todd.
136: Robert, that story is so disgusting that I grew literally nauseated when reading it. Fucking nasty! (This is proof that I am *not* a zombie.)
One of the many cynical mistakes of the Bush administration is the way zombies have become de facto enemy combatants. You raise one little army of undead who are utterly immune to the psychological or physiological effects of water-boarding and all of a sudden everybody in the executive branch is all shoot-on-sight about them.
We should accept zombie Americans with the same warmth and generosity that we accept libertarian-Americans, hippie-Americans, annoyin- Americans, and stinky-Americans.
John, someday, someday your inclusion of hippie-Americans in that sentiment will come back to haunt you.
I myself am very prejudiced against stinky-Americans. I won't even stand next to them in public places.
Fuck [adjective-]Americans. You are all so provincial! Last time I was in Canada, visiting a friend and perusing his bookshelves, I asked in all innocence, apropos of several of his volumes, "Who's [um, some woman who's a first lady of poetry in Canada, forget her name]?"
I received from my friend a withering look and the reply: "Proof that you're an American."
Damn.
I should, of course, have responded, "Yeah, well, who's Billy Collins, huh, huh?"
I find the best course of action in such situations is to stand with one's legs apart, lower one's shoulders, and snarl, belligerently, "Clever, are ya? Sprechen sie deutsche? Well, you fuckin would if we 'adn't won the war for ya," regardless of whether it makes any kind of historical sense whatsoever.
141 Recently-defeated City Councilman Len Bodack won almost exclusively on name recognition from his longtime state senator dad. Many older L'ville voters were overheard saying, "It's nice that old Len is running again." The guy was actually a half-decent councilman - serious about constituent service, at least. As opposed to some colleagues.
