America, Obama and McDonalds

Americans are proving their love for Senator Barack Obama and although recent polls show a near even race, web statistics show that Obama is leading by a wide margin when it comes to traffic. In fairness to the old guy it’s probably fair to say the Republican Party’s demographics may be somewhat older where internet usage is less common and Obama has been much more aggressive marketing online but still the statistics show a pretty wide gap.

I’m a cynic when it comes to American news and my forecast is we will continue to see polls within a couple percentage points (maybe only the margin of error will increase as to keep them close) but Obama will win by much more than a hair.  Remember, close polls makes for good TV – nobody wants to watch a landslide.

I’m simply voting for change – But this is NOT a Vote for Obama speech.Let’s face it – even the most educated of us barely know enough to make an educated vote for the leader of our country. In between presidential races how many of us:

1. Actually take the time to study each parties voting record on all the issues (not just the campaign ones – which are pretty much the same 3 or 4 every time)
2. visit your senators website to learn about what is going on in your hometown or
3. Ever question lawmakers when you read something in the paper you don’t like or understand.

We tend to sit back and ultimately trust others to make decisions for us. That’s fine – if we understand even the very basics of politics – however once again, I truly believe most don’t or more do not even care. Blind trust is what many people seem to be ok with.

If you were born in the USA or provided an American citizenship by birthright than take a moment to answer these questions:

1.  What is the supreme law of the land?
2.  The idea of self-government is in the first three words of the Constitution. What are these words?
9.  What are two rights in the Declaration of Independence?
18.  How many U.S. Senators are there?
19.  We elect a U.S. Senator for how many years?
31.  If both the President and the Vice President can no longer serve, who becomes President?
50. What are two rights only for United States citizens?

Hands down, many people will not know answers to these questions but these are questions that everybody entering this country are required to answer via the US immigration exam… and this is only 8 out of a 100 questions – the full list is here.

http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/blinstst_new.htm

Many of these questions form the foundation for which our political system is built so it’s important to know at least some of the basics and once you know the basics understand what the parties really represent and how the parties work together.  There is a lot more to voting than simply choosing a red or blue flag.

Some Web Facts

The USA has 300,000,000 people.

Both presidential candidates seem to gather traffic comparable to only a combined 2% (5,712,234) of the entire nation’s population.  Granted, all of this traffic is certainly not the same people month to month so over the last 18 months more than 2% of the country has probably gone to one site or another but still – to have total traffic to the websites of America’s next potential leaders equivalent to only 1.31% for Obama and 0.60% for McCain of the entire USA is pathetic at best.

These websites should be gathering 15-25,000,000 visitors + a month or more.

Wait a minute … news flash is in.  We have a third potential candidate closing in ….

PerezHilton.com with 1,582,229 visitors a month – almost on par with McCain

Yes, people love their gossip almost more than politics – sad but true.

Don’t get me wrong – this is not a political post in any means to favor one candidate over another.  If you like McCain that’s cool – if you like Obama even better.

All I’m saying is…

“If you are going to spend 8 hours researching a domain name to buy then why not spend at least 8 hours researching the person you will vote for in November“.

Odds are they will have a strong impact on your business one way or another so probably a good idea to make an informed decision and not just follow family tradition or vote for someone because your neighbor is.

Peace to all.

P.S. Don’t get me started on weight loss