We had quite a few e-mails during the weekend from people asking for bumper stickers, buttons and T-shirts to help us spread the word. We hesitated for a while but after e-mail number ten we decided to give it a go.

We’ve made a small CafePress.com store in which we’re currently selling some shirts, mugs, magnets and stickers. We’re not giving stuff away, but because we’re not in this for the money either (we have a long way to go to break-even ;-)), we’re donating at least 10% of all the profits to HIV/AIDS charities, even if we’re still in the red. We’ll up the percentage at the point of break-even!

We’ve also made some free pdf templates people can use to print out their own posters and flyers. Thanks to Jeff Taylor for the great idea!

The last few days have been a BMW-ride for us, and we’re spending quite some time reading and replying to e-mails from our visitors. We started working on a FAQ today and will hopefully be adding it to the website in the week to come.

One kind of e-mail deserves some special attention though. Loads of people send us e-mails about Microsoft products (most of the time people are referring to malfunctioning operating systems or browsers), with a closing paragraph saying: “that’s why it’s so obvious Bill Gates would make a shitty president. We call it the “Windows-Gates-Transfer (WGT)”-syndrome and it appears to be a serious problem amongst the members of certain anti-Microsoft subcultures. They’re all very passionate about their arguments (that’s a good thing, by the way), but I can’t say I really see their point. Here’s a very nice example of WGT:

Alright, it’s great to see people taking their own initiatives to help spread our ideas. Thanks to Vail Gold there’s now a Facebook group dedicated to the “Bill Gates for President!” movement. Time for you to represent! (You can also put a bumper sticker on your Volvo too, hé!)

Anyway, I created a group on Facebook.com called “Bill Gates for President!” that any member of the site can join. I think that this group can help spread the popularity of the idea exponentially throughout the undergraduate students of colleges across the country to say the least. I made it because I read the Slashdot article about your site, and I was interested, and I saw that no one had created a Facebook group yet. If you have any more questions, feel free to ask.

We receive so many “At first I was like, euh… But now that I think about it…”-remarks! It’s amazing to see that a lot of people are giving these ideas a chance, debating whether or not they could support Bill Gates as a presidential candidate. That’s great! We would like to thank all of you for sending in your own ideas, beliefs and thoughts.

Time for a short selection of comments from the BB’s (Bill-Believers):

In outsourcing to India, he made Microsoft more productive economically and more profitable. If he had these same goals as president, our country might be in much better shape. Now all we need is a legislative branch that doesn’t put party affiliation before logic. ~Joyce B.

By posting these remarks we received in our mailbox we just earned the right to add a provocative title. Anyway, some of the comments and e-mails we receive make interesting points against our case, most of them don’t. We’ve filtered out the “Bill Gates can’t be a good President because Microsoft is *xxx*” and the “Bill Gates is not a successful business man because Microsoft is *xxx*” crap, and decided feature these arguments:

This is an interesting idea, but completely unrealistic and a little idealistic. If Big Business’s influence in politics is bad, then the biggest man in Big Business who influences not only US politics, but world politics as well, should be just as bad. Politics is not Viral Marketing. ~Susan Adams