Dinhternet

It’s been a while. Appar­ently there was some polit­i­cal fall­out in my fam­ily after the elec­tion, and I was warned not to be too… cheery. In fact, my sis­ter was informed that her Face­book sta­tus upset an aunt. But as far as I know, no older rel­a­tives check this site. And if that’s wrong… I hope those rel­a­tives real­ize, this isn’t about their mis­ery, it’s about my happiness.

And I’m really happy. Firstly, because this is the first time the pres­i­den­tial can­di­date I voted for won. (Hope­fully my aver­age will stay above 1/2 from now on.) But mostly, because I feel Amer­ica has a chance of get­ting her shit straight now. I may not agree with all of Obama’s poli­cies, but I def­i­nitely have a ton more in com­mon with him than I did with McCain. At least, the ’08 McCain.

My par­ents talked about how a lot of Viet­namese Amer­i­cans sup­ported McCain because not only was he a war hero, but after he came back to Amer­ica, he worked to allow so many Viet­namese to emi­grate here. I told my par­ents, though… I appre­ci­ate that he’s done good things for our peo­ple in the past. But if elected, he, and Palin, after he dies in office, would def­i­nitely destroy our future.

But any­way, with­out fur­ther ado, here’s the meat of my post -

That sec­ond pic­ture is par­tic­u­larly awe­some. He’s got Pac-Man eat­ing the Apple logo!

So McCain has been blast­ing Obama for a while now for push­ing for­eign pol­icy before con­sult­ing with our mil­i­tary lead­ers in Iraq and before step­ping foot in Afghanistan. Then he reveals an upcom­ing trip before it hap­pens. A cynic could won­der if he’s try­ing to make good on Clinton’s prophecy.

One could even argue that Obama has a bet­ter under­stand­ing of Iraq and Afghanistan than McCain, since (as the White House revealed) Iraqi Prime Min­is­ter Al-Maliki sup­ports Obama’s with­drawal timetable, and Obama attended more Sen­ate com­mit­tee meet­ings on Afghanistan than McCain did in the last two years.

Per­haps the most ridicu­lous crit­i­cism from McCain’s camp though, attempts to blast Bush and Obama at the same time on Iraq:

“We can­not afford to replace one admin­is­tra­tion that refused for too long to acknowl­edge fail­ure in Iraq with a can­di­date that refuses to acknowl­edge suc­cess in Iraq.”

That quote came from Randy Sche­une­mann, McCain’s for­eign pol­icy adviser, who used that line as proof that Obama would be the one more like Bush in office. I won­der if he’s going to get the same treat­ment McCain’s eco­nomic adviser Phil Gramm did after call­ing Amer­ica a “nation of whin­ers.” (By the way, McCain’s new eco­nom­ics adviser, Carly Fio­r­ina, wasn’t so hot at HP while she was CEO there.)

Any­way, I know both of the can­di­dates are out to screw us -

So I guess the ques­tion becomes, lesser of two evils, or snowball’s chance on a third-party candidate?

(That’s one of my favorite Calvin and Hobbes strips.)

Just saw Obama’s speech, as well as clips of Clinton’s and McCain’s speeches. I have to say, I’m a believer. Nick and I briefly dis­cussed going, but I’m glad I decided not to; by the time we got there, we wouldn’t have got­ten in any­way. I heard the line was so long it wrapped around the sta­dium twice and then went down the street, and that there were over ten thou­sand peo­ple stand­ing around out­side the Xcel Energy Cen­ter in St. Paul because they couldn’t get in, and despite the police telling them to go home, they wanted to watch Obama’s speech on the Jum­botron outside.

A cou­ple of notes… I find it funny that his chant is the slo­gan of a kids’ TV show. Should we start call­ing him “Barack the Builder?” As for the fact that McCain’s cam­paign sub­ti­tle is now “A Leader We Can Believe In;” for all intents and pur­poses, it’s a one word dif­fer­ence from his oppo­nent. Tele­vi­sion really is melt­ing our brains; even the sound bites are blur­ring into nothing.

Any­way, I’ll leave you with this video:

Oh, and about Clinton’s extremely taste­less com­ment… I won­der if Obama has seen the first sea­son of 24.