Explain This to Me

Stuff about your elections are coming over here at times, and I have a few questions about you, probably very screwy, electoral system.

Firstly, why is it that the US Presidential Election is portrayed as something important in my country?

I know that you might not really be able to answer that one, but you can speculate as much as I will for this one.

If I watch the news, I would preferably like to see (in this order):

1. Important local news
2. Australian news
3. News from neighbouring countries
4. News from the rest of the world (unless I'm watching the SBS World News obviously)

Since we only get 10 minutes of news over here and 20 minutes of sport in half an hour I don't really want to spend my time learning about the Iowa Primaries when I could be finding out about how the Australian Task Force is doing in the Solomons, or our troops in Afghanistan.

Why claim that you are supposedly "electing the leader of the free world"?

If it truly is an election of the "leader of the free world" (which as far as I know has never been a job) why can't I vote? Why should I have to live under the supposed "leader of the free world" when I have been disenfranchised in favour of some stupid redneck who only votes Republican because his family has done so since the Republican Party even existed?

Surely if you are claiming to be electing the bloke who apparently has more power in my country then my own elected representatives then why can't I vote for the guy I want?

How much news time was spent on coverage for the Australian elections?

From what I could gather probably none. How many of you know who our PM is? If you don't have to sit through news of my country's elections then why should I have to sit through yours?

Finally what the hell is a Ron Paul? I go onto various fora and basically everyone has in their sig line "I love you Ron Paul" or "Vote for Ron Paul" or "Ron Paul means freedom". Why should I even care about him? What will he bring me, the foreigner? Will I be able to vote in the election of the "Leader of the Free World"? Will he give me money? I think the only positive thing that I can gather from him is that he probably has the largest base of people who are too young to vote which is completely pointless if you want to be elected this year.