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tapmag’s reporter finds herself in a position she never thought she would be in. [Read more]

In the US, every little district has several public positions which are filled by electing candidates. So you want to be elected Judge, County Commissioner or Sheriff in your community? Drawing from my intimate knowledge of local elections from a recent internship at the Democratic Party Office in a county in Michigan, here is what you need to know to start canvassing.

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Click here to find out who Barack Obama has chosen as his running mate, and here for some additional detail and background information. McCain is set to announce his running mate shortly, too.

For years, Muslims and Islam have been the center of some of the most heated and controversial debates in the Western world – about things as fickle as faith, democracy, and values. “Clash of Civilizations;” 9/11; the Cartoon Controversy; the veil (a symbol of oppression, or a symbol of unshakable faith); Palestine and Israel; Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran… Therefore, one could have expected Muslims to take center stage during the 2008 elections. But what happened?

To find out, www.tapmag.net (TM) asked Katrin Simon (KS) of the Free University of Berlin a few questions. Katrin Simon is a PhD student in Islamic Studies, specializing in African American Islam, who just returned from New York where she conducted fieldwork.

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Paris Hilton, that is. Reportedly, Mrs. Hilton was not too pleased that John McCain used pictures of herself and Britney Spears in a political advertisement to bash Barack Obama. The campaign commercial attempted to compare Obama’s popularity to that of perceived dim-wits such as the two, with a voiceover weighing in that “he’s the biggest celebrity of the world – but is he ready to lead?”.

McCain’s use of Paris Hilton as an example of someone famous for, well, being famous, is especially slippy as her parents, Kathy and Rick Hilton, have donated $ 4,600 to McCain’s campaign. Talk about a bad choice of image.

Now, Paris Hilton herself has responded to the events, in a rather surprising way.

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Before Barack Obama’s hugely successful tour through Europe and the Middle East, his critics assumed this was all about photo-ops, that Obama wasn’t coming for a dialogue, but for the pictures of him talking to important foreign leaders and delivering speeches in front of aroused masses of Europeans. That’s why Merkel and others denied his campaign to set up stage in front of Brandenburger Tor – it’s not a place for election talks.

And guess what, the critics were right about abusing European crowds for campaign purposes. However, it’s not Obama who is using the pictures of 200,000 Berliners on Straße des 17. Juni. Here’s the Republican National Committee’s attempt at trying to frame Obama as the King of the Eurotrash Dance Nation which apparently has its headquarters in Berlin.

Bring together 200,000 people and you will surely find a pill popping anarchist, a Paris Hilton clone, and some death metal goth heads who will gratefully deliver all the cliché-laden sound bites to use in an attack ad. Why bother and interview the 199,983 normal people from the audience?

The other way is to simply imply that giving a speech to a huge audience overseas is related to force Americans to buy foreign oil. What, you didn’t know that Germany is new on the board of OPEC? Didn’t you see the big oil pump Obama was standing in front of, that thing was huge!

To be fair, I have no idea how Americans are perceiving these ads. It’s just hard to believe that you can slap a negative message on such positive pictures. Then again, an American politician in front of clapping and cheering Europeans might still be an alienating sight to many American voters. All in all, McCain would probably be best of by finding a way to create these pictures himself.

By Kolja Langnese