Skip to main content

Advising Obama

... Don't worry- I am not about to become the billionth person to dispense advice to Barack Obama. I am here to ridicule those billion-minus-one people before me.

As an Obama supporter, I am ecstatic about his victory on November 4th and I am much more optimistic and hopeful about the future of the U.S. and the world with him in charge. What I find strange (or at least noteworthy) is how every one seems so eager to give advice to the president-elect. This is the third U.S. presidential election I am witnessing and I don't remember so many people having so much to share with the president elect. Why? Here are many possible explanations:
  1. Many people contributed to his campaign financially (3.1+ million for $600+ million as of beginning of October 2008) and they feel they have earned the right to give advice.
  2. People are really engaged because of the gravity of the country's problems. The U.S. is at a critical junction and its citizens are anxious. They are trying to come up with ideas to rescue their country.
  3. People just have more medium for dishing out, thanks to the internet. Before, you were limited to newspapers, magazines and public events.
  4. He promotes dialog and civic involvement himself. His website (www.barackobama.com)uses Web 2.0 to solicit advice, connect people, ... etc. His new transition website (www.change.gov) seeks to draw even more people and ideas.
  5. Many people just like Obama and want to help out.
  6. Obama is a blank slate and everybody is projecting their vision of which direction the U.S./world ought to go.
The answer is probably all of the above. Part of me says average Joes should stop giving out unsolicited advice, and the other half says why not.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Distribution of Wealth in the US

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. I heard this statement quite a bit lately particularly in light of the sub-prime mortgage and general housing crisis in the US. The country has enjoyed significant economic prosperity and both Clinton and Bush boasted economic growth under their reign. Unfortunately, the beneficiaries of the economic boom are not people from all economic backgrounds, but rather the top 10%. To make things worse, Bush gave tax cuts mainly targeting the top 10%. Being more of a numbers guy, I always wanted showing the validity of the-rich-get-richer-n-the-poor-get-poorer statement. Thanks to Wikipedia , I have finally found it!! Both the mean and median net worth of families for the bottom 50% of the population has remained absolutely flat while the 75th-90th percentile see a decent growth and the top 10% enjoy the most appreciation on their net worth. So, if you factor in inflation, the-rich-get-richer-n-the-poor-get-poorer probably holds true. The g...
1 comment
Read more

IPtables, SVN, and NMAP

I reviewed some material on IPtables, SVN, and NMAP just for the sake of keeping my mind busy. Here are some useful notes: IPtables - best resource found at HERE SVN - best, as in the quickest and simplest intro could be found HERE NMAP - I honestly don't see in using it for more than port-scanning in a few instances. Anyway, here are a few other options that might come in handy at some point. nmap -sT/sS/ sX/sF/...[-P0] IPADDRESS(range) == to check which ports are open nmap -sP IPADDRESS(range) == a simple ping scan for availability nmap -sO IPADDRESS(range) == check what IP protocols are available nmap -sV IPADDRESS(range) == a scan with version detection Other useful flags: -O == detects OS, part of -v (verbosity) flag as well -A == detects OS and versions -v == request high verbosity/detail -F == performs a fast scan of only a few common ports Installing Perl modules Perl modules may be installed using the CPAN module or from source. SOURCE...
Post a Comment
Read more

Reasons to Vote for Barack Obama

Not that I am eligible to vote or anything ... but if I could, I would vote for Barack Obama for the following reasons. He listens to experts . He has assembled a group of smart and practical intellectuals to advise him on all sorts of topics. Hillary has her own agenda and ambition which appears to keep her from entertaining any "elitist" agenda. He is a good manager. The way he hired very intelligent people to run a nearly flawless campaign to beat an established and seemingly unbeatable opponent in Hillary Clinton is commendable. He really knows how to surround himself with a smart group of people who can get things done and that is exactly what this country needs. Hillary hired people on the basis of their loyalty and counted on friends of the Clintons to win her the nomination. Unfortunately, all that influence and political capital could not overcome the grassroots movement Obama initiated. He is not an ideologue . That allows him to make good decisions for this...
Post a Comment
Read more