Let me just start by saying that don’t have anything personally against Kanye West. I couldn’t name one song of his without Googling because that’s not really my style of music, but the guy has a great voice and he’s an extremely accomplished businessman who has found his way to the American dream through his own hard work. But if there’s anything that annoys me about him, it’s the fact that I seem to periodically wind up having to write about him when he dips a toe in the political pool.

Take today’s news for example. Kanye declared on the 4th of July that he was once again interested in running for President for reasons known only to him. That story lasted for a few news cycles, but then I’m almost positive that I recall being told that he’d given up on his quixotic dream and would be going back to what he knows best. In fact, I think I heard it from Ed Morrissey, who I generally regard as a fully reliable source. So if that’s the case, why is Kanye still trying to get on the ballot in three different states, including New Jersey? (NY Post)

Kanye West has filed to appear on the New Jersey ballot in November’s presidential election, state documents show.

The 43-year-old rapper collected 1,327 signatures — surpassing the 800 required by the deadline Monday for independent presidential candidates.

West similarly submitted paperwork Monday to appear on Missouri’s ballot and is eyeing to do the same in New York. He’ll need 30,000 signatures by Thursday’s deadline in the Empire State.

West has also paid the associated fees and filed to get on the ballot in Oklahoma. The linked article covers some of his recent history in dabbling in the presidential race without answering the one glaring question I’m sure is on all of our minds. Why, Kanye? Why?

We’re not offered any sort of solid answer to that question, but it’s not difficult to speculate. For starters, we can eliminate the idea that Kanye West actually believes he’s going to be the President and Kim Kardashian will be First Lady. (Assuming they’re still married by the time he would be sworn in.) The man may be many things, but stupid isn’t one of them. He doesn’t really believe he could be elected.

So why dump all of this money into filing fees and paying people to do the legwork for a fantasy election run? Well, he’s a billionaire. You get to have expensive hobbies like this when you’ve amassed that much money.

Also, it keeps his name in the news while he’s still putting out new material and projects. Hell’s bells, Martha… we’re writing about him at Hot Air! Everyone is talking about him and in Kanye’s world, that’s very good for business indeed.

Or, as Ed Morrissey pointed out in the article I linked above, it might have been a manifestation of his bi-polar disorder. One week he’s gunning for the office, two weeks later he’s dropping out. Almost two weeks after that he’s back trying to get on the ballot. I suppose the case could be made by armchair shrinks that his performance sort of fits the bill. But by all accounts, he was doing it out of an honest desire to serve his country and make things better. And we can’t really complain too much about that.

With so many other questions left unanswered, it’s some small comfort to note that I did learn at least one thing today. Looking at the relatively meager number of tabs I had to open while researching this article and the short amount of time it took to find the information, I have reached one conclusion. Because of the amount of time I have to spend browsing the news for my job, I now know at least 5000% more about Kanye West and Kim Kardashian than I ever in my life thought I would or wanted to.