I have watched 2008 elections very closely. After witnessing the 2004 elections first hand in the US I was convinced that the Democrats will not be able to make it. I have a very rough understanding of US politics and most of it was because of my roommate in University of Nebraska who had interned for a congressman. I also had formed the opinion that Democrats were not as organized but in Lewis Black’s own words “Democrats are the party of no ideas and Republicans are a party of bad ideas”
I was also weary of the fact that Obama had called openly to attack Pakistan if there was reliable intelligence that a high value terrorist was in reach and Pakistan won’t corporate. But I was not aware of the full transcripts as I never looked them up and Pakistani media some how did not project his views correctly, most likely because of Pakistani’s associated more with Hillary Clinton (she has alot of Pakistani businessmen in her constituency). But it seems that Obama’s policy towards Pakistan would be in coherence with his ideals of freedom, equality and justice. He co-sponsored a bill with his running mate which is very sensible to the needs of Pakistanis and not Pakistani government. I also found an article which details about other connections of Obama to Pakistan
Overall I must admit that I am still weary of Obama. He is not very experienced and these are desperate times. Some times it takes a non idealistic prick to run the office and Obama seems like a nice guy who may end up in a mess. But I did like few things about all of this. Obama’s campaign heavily relied on the Internet and he himslef realizes the importance of modern communications as mentioned in his victory speech. He is reasonably young man to make bold choices which people of the Age of Mcain would probably not
Finally a shout out to BBC. I watched some of the election coverage on my linux box with firefox and flash installed. I am not sure which streaming technology they use but it was really awesome. Perhaps CNN should also abandon Windows based streaming and come to flash one. The webpage was even updating results with AJAX. Here is a screen shot of the page
