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The Valley, despite the pretensions of some tech bloggers, has no influence on national politics. Candidates swing by, mutter "network neutrality" and other shibboleths, collect buckets of cash, and return to Washington richer but otherwise unchanged. This sad reality explains why we indulge ourselves in fantasies that we're run by aliens or robots. Those are politicians we could actually relate to. That's right: If Ron Paul supporters believed Obama was a Borg drone, they'd be more likely to vote for him.

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Blogger Todd Lappin's theory is all the more entertaining for having a grain of truth. Barack Obama won his Senate seat in Illinois after Jack Ryan, the incumbent, withdrew from the race. Ryan suffered from disclosures that he had asked ex-wife Jeri Ryan "to perform sexual acts with him in public, and in adult clubs in New York, New Orleans, and Paris." Jeri Ryan played Seven of Nine, an escaped drone from the android-alien hybrid Borg, on Star Trek: Voyager. Did one Borg make way for another? Only in the fevered fantasies of bored Valley residents. But it its a little disturbing how readily Obama assimilates new supporters.