It’s been an amazing ride, I’m sure both sides would agree. I’ve been watching this since early this year! Obama wins and McCain pledges to help Obama lead. Fantastic!
McCain pledges to help Obama lead
Sen. John McCain on Tuesday urged all Americans to join him in congratulating Sen. Barack Obama on his projected victory in the presidential election.
“I pledge to him tonight to do all in my power to help him lead us through the many challenges we face,” McCain said before his supporters in Phoenix, Arizona.
McCain’s running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, was standing with him, but she did not speak.
With his projected win, Obama will become the nation’s 44th president.
Obama will address the country from a rally in Chicago, Illinois, later Tuesday night.
The Illinois senator will become the first African-American to win the presidency.
Supporters in Chicago cheering, “Yes, we can” were met with cries of “Yes, we did.” (Source: CNN)
This is a brilliant ad by the Obama campaign. For those of you who ain’t familiar with what’s going on, American politics is really interesting. McCain-Palin (Republicans) brought in phrases into American newspapers such as “hockey moms”, “Joe Six Pack” and “Joe the plumber”. These phrases are used to stereotype the typical American.
The thing that got me interested in politics is not the results the politicians are going to deliver. After all, staying thousands of miles away from the USA makes little difference on who’s elected anyway. What made me look at politics is the speeches, or more precisely, the ingenious use of the English language to reach people emotionally.
Introducing characters is just one way of doing so. As stupid as these phrases sound, people actually remember them. You can laugh at time but as long as you talk about it (even in a negative way), you are spreading the point of the politicians indirectly.
I think of these characters as stock characters (in the theater arts way) as they’re recycled time and again for every election. And politicians would just rebrand them in some little ways to make them sound new again.
McCain-Palin campaign has numerous such characters. I’m sick of them but I still laugh at them (alone, since no one bothers about US in Singapore). Anyway, here’s one endorsed by the Obama campaign:
Obama campaign introduces Al the shoesalesman
Find out your tax cut under Barack’s plan at http://taxcut.barackobama.com whether you’re single or married with children.
Previously John McCain repeated mentioned Joe the Plumber during his speeches, claiming he is a concern citizen who prefers the McCain tax plans.
Just to digress
For those people who knows the location of my other blog, it’s a tough decision if I want to put this post in this blog or that which is rather US. In the end I figured I should put it here since I want this blog to have more of my opinion. The other blog is visited by McCain supporters and they blast me even when I post a video that’s pro-Obama. That’s freedom of expression for me I guess.
And speaking of “plumber”, Uzyn corrected me on my pronunciation. I had always been pronouncing it as “plumb-ber”. Read it wrong for many years. “Plum-er,” he corrected me.
It’s funny that after Colin Powell endorses Barack Obama, Powell is less talked about as a war criminal. He played a key role in the invasion of Iraq after all. His endorsement of Barack Obama appeared to have gained him some karma points or something. The internet loves him again.
To the question whether Obama is a Muslim, Powell stressed that Obama is not, but highlighted the real answer to the question is - so what if he is. Powell then publically endorsing Obama and expresses discontent toward the Republican party, that is his Republican party.
It is courageous of him to be able to stand up for what he believes in (and that meant the opposition). Unfortunately much of these were not shown back then when he presented the case for the invasion of Iraq. Powell later claims he spent 2 hours convincing Bush not to invade Iraq but what’s done been done.
I’ll create a GUI interface using Visual Basic, see if I can track an IP address:
A GUI interface to track IP address? CSI, being CSI, of course have to program a software with visualization just to track IP addresses. And an awkward Visual Basic plug too. (more…)
Almost a month has passed since school reopen. I’ve been spending time on things that probably didn’t matter to me that much. It saddens me a little when I look back on how I allocated my time.
To claim that school is busy, work is busy, is perhaps just a lie. I’m obsessed with reading US election news lately and it got the better of my time. I spend about 1.5 hours a day reading on something that would affect me little. This sucked.
Also I have a stack of books I can’t complete. Books that were purchased, perhaps, 2 years ago even. I aim to complete it last year, half a year ago and a month ago. I’m still bookmarking (pretty much the same) the third quarter of the book.
I read four books at the same time. I just realized how horrible an idea that was.
Haa! Just realized that Humuhumunukunukuāpua’a is the state fish of Hawaii. It’s reef triggerfish.
On April 17, 2006, bill HB1982 was presented to the Governor of Hawai’i which permanently reinstated the reef triggerfish (humuhumunukunukuapua’a) as the state fish of Hawai’i. The bill passed into law on May 2, 2006 and was effective upon its approval. (Source: Hawaii)