Thanksgiving day holidays

In the United States,thanksgiving holiday is a one day affair that falls on the fourth Thursday in the month of November.It is the beginning of what is referred to as the "holiday season" which runs through new years day.The first one that I celebrated was while I was living in the Clemson University area.We were invited Agbor's research advisers resident.We spend the whole day at his place drinking beer, while the guy prepared some burgers on his grill.I believed we also had turkey that his wife prepared.It is worth noting,that there can be no real thanksgiving celebration without your traditional turkey.As a matter of fact, thanksgiving day is usually referred to as "turkey day".
By the year 1987, I had moved to the Washington DC metro area and we started a long period of celebrating turkey day at William Tabots residence.Agbor will drive from out of town, at first from Clemson and later on from Winston-Salem,North Carolina and he will pick me up for the ride to Virgina.At this time,Mary,Mr.Tabot's wife had already graduated as a pharmacist from Howard University and was working around the area.The place was always full with different family friends and relatives of Mr.Tabot.Willie,as we all called Mr.Tabot is a bon vivant and he loved having family members and friends around,especially Agbor and I.Since we both were single at the time,we always knew that we had a place to spend the thanksgivings holiday.We will normally arrive at his resident around 12pm to 1pm,while the cooking was still going on.The early arrival allowed us to catch up on what has been going on in each person,s life since the last time we met.Staying abroad at times is so stressful, at times it is even difficult to pick up the phone and talk to your loved ones.Even when we where out of touch with Willie for some time, we knew we could always get in touch with him during the holidays and we were immediately invited over.There was a constant supply of beer.
Everybody loves to drink Heineken and you could have as many as you wanted.There were periods that I will go almost year round without a drop of liquor.That all changes on turkey day.This was a day to indulge yourself.We normally spend the night over at his place.There were lots of free rooms.We did not have to worry about drinking and driving which is a no-no in the US.Dinner time usually starts around 4pm and the table will be full of all variety of foodstuffs.A stuffed turkey bird is usually the main attraction and everybody gets a piece of the bird with some.
Thanksgiving day is also known for the traditional football games that the National Football League(NFL)organises for the day.There are normally two football games,an earlier game at 12.30pm involving the Detroit Lions and a later game involving the Dallas Cowboys.The Dallas Cowboys are referred to as"America's team"because of the large fan base that follows the team.They are also noted for putting up a good show for thanksgiving day.Even on the years that the Cowboys are having a down year, you can always count on them to compete.There have been some thrillers on thanksgiving day,I remember Dallas Cowboy's quarterback Danny White rallying the cowboys down from two touchdowns, to push the game against the Minnesota Vikings into extra-time.The Vikings ended up winning a 44-38 thriller in sudden death over-time, with the vikings defense intercepting a Danny White pass and running it back for the final score of the game.That was on thanksgiving's day November 26,1987.
On November 26,1998 the same Minnesota Vikings defeated the Cowboys in Dallas 46-36.Rookie wide receiver from Minnesota,Randy Moss caught only three passes against the cowboys,but all were for touchdowns as he finished the day with 163 receiving yards.
November 28,2002 the Dallas Cowboys defeated their arch rivals, Washington Redskins 27-20.Down 20-10,the cowboys came back to post their 10 consecutive victory over the Redskins,with Dallas running back Emmitt Smith rushing for 144 yards,becoming the only playing in history to eclipse the 17,000 career rush-mark yard.
Who can forget the 16-14 Miami dolphins win over the Cowboys in a heartbreaking defeat in what is considered to be the most memorable thanksgiving day football game ever.The cowboys had blocked a potential game winning Dolphins field goal with 15 seconds remaining for a seemingly sealed victory, when Leon Lett came slipping and sliding on the snow, reviving a dead ball that was recovered by the dolphins on the cowboys seven yard line.Pete Stoyanovich then kicked a 20 yard field goal to seal the victory.The Cowboys will go on to win the Super bowl that season but the snowy thanksgiving day game will be remembered for a long time.

CAN 2008

The female talent will be lining up starting tommorrow in Equatorial Guinea for the start of the 6th edition of the female African Cup of Nations competition.This would be the first time that I would have the chance to know some of the top female stars in the continent of Africa.There are a total of eight teams that would be competing for the trophy, which has been won the seven previous times by the Nigeria soccer female national team.They have thus totally dominated the competition here in Africa to say the least.
There would be eight teams divided into two groups of four.Group A would consist of the Republic of Cameroon,Congo,Mali and host nation Equatorial Guinea.The favorite in this group would be the Republic of Cameroon.The host nation is always a threat in major competitions,so I would be looking out to see how Equatorial Guinea performs.
Group B should be considered the group of death,with favorite Nigeria lining up with the queens of Ghana,the Republic of South Africa and the lone participant from the malgreb countries,Tunisia.Nigeria is definately the favorite in this group and the overall favorite to pick up their eighth continental trophy in a row.If there is going to be any challenge for the flying female eagles of Nigeria,it would be coming from Ghana and the Republic of Cameroon.

Bankruptcy Filing

I got the news about retail giant Circuit City,filing for bankruptcy protection on the 11 of November and it was not a real surprise considering all the problems that the company had been facing of late.The problems included stiff competition from main rivals Best Buy and WalMart and other minor retail electronic companies that are now all over the place.
I worked for Circuit City for a period of five years,starting from January 1994 through December 1998.Prior to joining Circuit City,I had been working for Radio Shack in the Langley Park Location.I had to apply to work for Circuit City for a number of times before I was finally given the opportunity to work for them.I had applied to work in the location at Wheaton Plaza in Wheaton,Maryland about twice but I got a postcard note for them claiming that my services were not needed at the time.I got my break through a former co-worker of mind,who had left Radio Shack and was employed at the Circuit City Store in Beltsville,Maryland.I had always wanted to join Circuit City and I went to the location in Beltsville during the early days of January 1994 and talked to Doug Polsenberg.He introduced me to the store manager at the time,a guy named Joe Via.With my prior retail experience and a good word from Doug,I was given the paper work that kick started the hiring process.I fill out the application and left,heading to the Radio Shack Store,this time at the one in Beltway Plaza.I had requested to be moved to that location after getting tired of working at the Langley Park Location.
I got a call from the Manager at the Beltsville store saying that everything went okay and that I can report to the store for work.By everything being okay,it means that they have done a background check on you in the retail sector to make sure that you have not been involved in any shady dealings in your prior retail working life.I then had to leave Radio Shack right away.What rival retail outlets do,is if you leave to join one of their competitors,they let you go on the spot.No need for the required two weeks notification.I left for the Circuit City store in Beltsville,MD and the first thing that they did was get the managers at the various departments to personally interview you.Based on the interview,you would be placed in one of their departments.I ended up in the Ace Department.The Ace department is like the beginners department in the Store.That is where I was placed.You mainly get to sell items like walk-mans,headphones,portable CD players,boom-boxes,a lot of accessories,Cordless phones and land-line phones and lastly Walkie-talkies.Later on,the cellphones would be moved from the Car Stereo department to the Ace department.
The first two weeks,I spend in the store going through training.This is training for the whole store.They give you books to read and fill out answers to questions at the end of the reading.If you do not know something after reading the training manuals,you go to the floor and talk to somebody that already works in that department and they help you with the answers.This is how you get to meet the other employees that you are going to be working with.The two weeks came and went and the next step is to head for Richmond for the final training session before you could be placed on the sales floor.
Richmond,located in the state of Virginia is were Circuit City has their Headquarters.I must say that I was impressed by the manner in which Circuit City was been run at the time,even before heading for Richmond.Coming from Radio Shack,where we were paid peanuts to work,Circuit City was a major move in terms of potential earnings and total improvement in working conditions.The sales persons that I met all seem to have their product knowledge down to an art form.This was all around the store,from the Video,Audio,Soho(the computer department)Road Shop,Car Stereo,Major Appliances,Ace,and Front Desk help,everything was running smoothly.The Stores were extremely well kept and organized.The Managers of the various departments were very knowledgeable also.They had to be,employees working under you turned to you for answers and solutions,each time that they encounter a problem.So you have to have your stuff together as they say.
I made the trip to Richmond with an old but reliable car of mine.The drive was fine.I was given proper driving directions from the store.There was one other person that attended training at the same time that I did.The individual was from Texas and was hired to work in the Soho department,selling computers and accessories to go.Lodging was provided to us at a Holiday inn located close to the Circuit City headquarters in Richmond.This was paid for in advance.You got one meal,I believe super at the Holiday Inn,the breakfast and lunch were provided for in the training facility.The cost for your driving to and from Richmond was paid back to you in a future paycheck after providing the company with your mileage.This is an estimate and the company took your word for it and paid you the requested amount.It was a trust based system.
While at Richmond I got to do some other things like driving around the town when training was over to take a look at the city.Richmond is a lay back city and a little bit old fashion, but it is not a bad place to live at all.Things are relatively cheap there and you get to see some historical sites.I did get the breaks of my car fixed while at training.The cost was 200 dollars US and the mechanics did a pretty good break job.
The one week of training went very well.The training person himself had worked as a sales person for Circuit City,making it all the way to a whole floor sales person before going the route of trainer.As a whole floor sales person,you get to sell in every department that you choice to.You are not restricted like the rest of the other employees.For example,I was hired to work in the Ace department, if I venture to sell out of my department,it would be like taking money out to the pockets of those working in that department.
You are giving in training,all the technical knowledge that you are going to need in the sales floor.You get to know the history behind the different products.The different companies that sell these products.Terms like Spread Spectrum,high fidelity,super bass,mega bass,digital signal,analog signal are all broken down to you in the one week of training.At the end of the week, there is a quiz that everybody passes.The company did a very good job in the week of training and you had to be a total dummy not to come out of the training ready for sales.
A few things that were exciting about the stay in Richmond included some nice stories from co-workers from the different regions.If you plan on getting your music listen to by a music producer,never record it in a a high grade audio tape.The producer would just take a look at the tape and put it for his personal use.
Circuit city at this time had began branching into car sales and the company had a used car sales complex in Richmond called Car-Max.Car-Max took used car sales to a different level.We did not get to visit the complex while at Richmond,but Car-Max turned out to be a winner for Circuit City,at least up to the period that I was with the Company.Car-Max expanded and the latest information that I had from the venture was when they had five locations,one of them being in Laurel, Maryland.The use of computer was put into play to make Car-Max a success.Information that I got from training at the time is that you can go to one of the car sales location and they would input your information on the computer and let you know what type of car you can afford.
There were a few rowdy characters in the training,a few of them from the New Jersey and Boston area.The Richmond training covered persons from the East coast of the US.Training was over and I drove back to the Store.There is something called I-95 bypass,this is if you plan on driving in the capital Beltway and you do not want to be border with traffic.You take the back roads and this would lead you all the way from Richmond to the Washington DC area.The traffic is way less,although the route seems to be longer from my personal experience.
The first paycheck that I received from Circuit City was for about 960US dollar.This was definitely a big jump for two weeks of work done.Training in the store and training in Richmond;including reimbursement for mileage traveled to and from Richmond.
The pay structure at Circuit City is commissioned driven.If you are not getting paid by commission you get a rate of about $6.75 an hour at the time,but nobody wanted to make that amount of money.The company would not keep you around if you were making that hourly rate.The way the commission system works is that you get a volume commission,that is for everything that you sell in the store, at the time you get paid one percent commission.Then there is the "spiff",this is where the money is.You could go on computer terminals and check out what the spiff is for each product or you could read if off the sales tags on the floor.This is not apparent to the customers,but we the sales persons knew what products were paying the most and that is what you try to push out of the store.Then there was the Extended Service Protection Plan.ESP is what it is generally called in the store and the company pushes this to death.The sales person also makes a lot of money selling ESP, but it is a very had sell to the customers for must of the products.ESP is an extended service protection plan that you buy for your product and it covers it for a period ranging from three to five years during which the product would be repaired free of charge.If the product could not be repaired then you get if replaced for free.The extended service protection plans are not cheap at all.For example,there are some products that you purchased for say $350 and you are required to spend an additional $150 to protect it for five years.A lot of sales person did sell it though and the top sales persons in every Circuit City Store sold extended service protection plans.You sell extended service plans and you can see your income hit the $40,0000 a year mark,which is pretty decent money for somebody working in a retail outlet.
Personally,with my little electronic background upbringing,couple with the fact that I was in the department that paid the least commission,the first few years,I average just under $20,000 a year.By the time that I left Circuit City in 1998 my yearly income had moved to just under $30,000 a year.The cellphones section had been moved from the car stereo department to the Ace department and I was the most experienced sales person selling cell phones,with knowledge dating back to my days back at Radio Shack.We made most of our money during the Christmas holiday period that starts from the fourth Thursday of November through the end of the December month.
Other benefits that you get included discounted health care benefits.I did not get to use this because I was hardly sick at all.You get discounts on employee purchases also.A lot of the electronic products that I owned,I bought at a discount while working for Circuit City.Televisions set,Video cassette recorder,Speakers,blank cassette tapes,musical compact-disc and video Cassettes,a lot of accessories.The Company also had a stock purchase plan through which you could purchase company stock at a discount.I made some money buying the company stock at a discount and selling them at current price occasionally.When I left the company in 1998,the company paid me some money for having vested five years of service with them.The company at the time was using Union Bank which was based in North Carolina for the investing of pension funds.After I left the company,I got a check from Union bank which I placed in a savings account.
At Circuit City,we worked for around 40 hours a week,with managers putting in more hours.There was no overtime pay,but during the busy Christmas holiday period you could put in the extra hours and make a lot of money selling.Schedules ran from around 9am in the morning when the stores opened to about 9pm in the evening when we closed.Sundays hours were different,the store was opened, I believed from 11am to about 6pm.We had Saturday morning meetings about once a month which were mandatory whether you were scheduled to work for that day or not.Also about twice a year,the store conducts a general inventory of stock.This usually runs from very early on Saturday through around 11pm or 12midnight.Whatever is not completed is done on Sundays.The Managers pick up the rest of the reconciliation beginning on Mondays until all the stock is accounted for.
There are a number of reasons I believe brought Circuit City down to its knees.The first is competition, mainly from Best Buy at the time that I was working there.Best Buy has their headquarters in Minneapolis,Minnesota and around the mid 1990s, they embark on a plan to expand into the East Coast of the US.For the first time Circuit City was going to face some very stiff competition.Best Buy is structured a little bit different from the way that Circuit City was structured.They had the advantage of share size over Circuit City.You walk into a Best Buy location and it looks like a giant warehouse outlet.Their share size allowed them to carry more products and they could them achieve a better economic of scale.At the time that they arrived the East Coast,they opened a lot of stores in the Washington DC metropolitan area,one of which was based in Laurel,Maryland.That was the closest to our Circuit City store in Beltsville.But throughout the Region,each location that Circuit City had a store,Best Buy had one.Our Managers at the time told us not to worry at all about Best Buy.The reason is that,they do not have trained sales persons.This is true.Unlike Circuit City at the time that used commissioned sales persons to push their products out of the store,Best Buy relied on the fact that the customer would get their information on the product that they need elsewhere and come to their store and purchase the product.At the time we at Circuit City thought that was not a brilliant strategy but it turned out that they were right.
Circuit City would eventually move away from the commission based sales structure around the early 2000s, but they made the move when Best Buy had already overtaken them as the number one Consumer Electronics retailer in the US.
Another thing that did Circuit City I believe was the fact that they started to loose a lot of their trained sales staff.There are a couple of reasons why this was happening.The first is that the pay structure that Circuit City operated on was very unstable.For example I would take a top sales person working in say the Video department.You join the company the first year and lets say you make about $45000 selling.The next year you might see that income drop down to about $35,000 or $30,000.This is because the same products that you have been selling are no longer paying the high sales commission that you got on them the past year.So you basically do the same amount of work and got paid less for it.This would explain why at times when a customer walks into a Circuit City store,you would find a lot of salespersons just standing around talking to each other and completely ignoring the customer.A lot of them are looking at the money that they are going to make selling to you and it was not as much as it used to be.A way that the company fought this out was to get new store managers for the different locations.The new managers would then get hungry sales persons from the street,train and motivate them.
Upper management did not care at the time about people leaving, because you could get people of the street and train them to be making $30,000 a year and they would be very happy doing it.So the veteran sales persons,seeing their income dropping year in,year out,had to leave the company.A lot of people left this way.I would take the example of our car stereo department.When I joined the company,there were four experience sales persons there selling cellphones and car stereo.Before I left the company they had all gone to join a cell phone Company called Sprint Spectrum which had moved into the area around the 1996-1997 period.When I left the company in 1998,I was one of the top sales persons in the whole store and by far the best at selling their cellphones.I left for Sprint Spectrum,who at the time were specialized in selling cellphones and services.The departed sales persons were replaced of cause with persons making less money and with of cause less product knowledge.
Back to competition.Whatever Circuit City was selling,you could find another outlet that was selling the same products.There was retail outlets that specialize just in music,video,audio,major appliances,cell phones,car stereo sales and installation.Bell Atlantic mobile,Cingular Wireless,Com USA,Maya Ermco,Sprint Spectrum(later on Sprint PCS)Target,Radio Shack,WalMart.So the profit margins were all dropping by the day.You could go on the computer screen and check out the profit margin of a product and quite a few of them were coming up on the negative.
Circuit City's upper Management has to take a lot of blame for the Company going under.You look at the stock performance of Circuit City and it was always trailing that of Best Buy starting from around the mid 1990s.When Best Buy moved into the East Coast around the 1996 period,their stock labored at around $5 and our managers were all saying,"see their stock in going nowhere".This changed though in a hurry during the stock market boom of the nineties.The stock took off big-time and hit the 90 dollar mark in hurry.I remember Best Buy having a number of stock splits.
Circuit's City upper management reacted to change very slowly I believe, and when they reacted they did not seem to have a real strategy.They decided to stop the commission based pay scale when it was already too late.They went to an hourly based pay system and instead of sticking with it, they tempered with it by getting rid of people who they claimed were making too much money.They could not make up their mind whether they wanted to close down some stores or not.When they finally started closing down stores,it was too late.The company complained a lot about cost,but spend a lot of money redecorating their stores.This is something that I never get to understand.You walk into a Circuit City store and it already looks awesome and later on you hear that a store is being redecorated.You redecorate a store that does not need any remake and you threat store employees poorly.The poor treatment of employees was reflected on how customer service started declining in the Circuit City Stores.
They idea of filing for bankruptcy is to keep away your creditors,while you go through a process of re-organization.The plan is that you would reemerge as a stronger company in the future.Re-organization hardly works out in reality though.Right off the top of my head,I can not name a few companies that had filed for bankruptcy protection and emerged as a stronger and more efficiently ran unit.The problems that got you into bankruptcy in the first place do not go away.It is very difficult for you to get credit in terms of loans which are needed for any going entity.I just feel bad for the employees who are going to lose their jobs during this tough economic period.Hopefully though,they have learn a lesson and gain a lot of training while working at Circuit City that they could use in another company.

A Black President

Those two words in the same sentence were thought to be unthinkable not long ago,but how things have change, as yesterday Democratic Senator from Illinois,Barack Obama got enough votes to clinch the Democratic party nomination.He thus becomes the first African-American to head one of the two major political parties, heading into the 2008 elections which will decide who will become the next President of the United States.
Other black politicians,the Reverend Jesse Jackson comes to mind, had ran for the Presidency of the United States,but nobody had come this far.When Jesse Jackson ran for President of the United States,he made headlines by winning quite a handful of states on "Super Tuesday",but deep down everybody knew he was not going to be the party's nominee come decision time.Who is this guy anyway?
Senator Obama Jr. was born on the 4 of August 1961 in Honolulu,Hawaii,United States.His father,Obama Sr.is from Kenya,East Africa and his mother, Ann Dunham is from Wichita ,Kansas.His parents met at the University of Manoa,the father being an international student at the time.They were separated when Barack Hussein Obama was only aged two.His early schooling includes attending a school in Jakarta,Indonesia until age 10 and Punahou school back in Hawaii, until graduating from high school in 1979.
He moved to Los Angeles and attended Occidental College for two years before transferring to Columbia University in New York City.He studied Political Sciences,specializing in International relations while at Columbia University.He graduated with a BA from Columbia University in 1983 and his next University stop was at Harvard Law School were he enrolled in 1988.He will graduate from Harvard in 1991 with a JD magna cum laude.While at Harvard, the highlight of his stay there was being elected in 1990 as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review.
As for jobs that he had held,Obama worked at Business International Corporation and New York Public Interest Research Group after graduating from Columbia University until 1985 when he moved back to Chicago and took a job as a Community organizer.
He taught part-time at the University of Chicago Law School from 1993 to 2004.
He also worked as an Associate Attorney with Davis,Miner,Barnhill and Galland from 1993 to 2002.
He was first elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996,won re-election in 1998 and 2002.In the year, 2000 he made an unsuccessful bid to get into the US house of Representatives.
In 2004, he won election into to the US senate as a junior senator from Illinois.
Barack Obama has written two books,"Dreams of my father" and "Audacity of Hope".
Barack Obama is married to Michelle Obama(they married in 1992)and they have two children, daughters aged 10 and 7 years old.
Barack Obama won the Democratic party's nomination by concentrating on reaching the magic number of 2118 votes, and got there by picking up victories in small primaries and Caucasus instead of concentrating on the bigger states like his rival Hillary Clinton did.
He won Iowa despite the fact that polls leading up to the Caucasus,showed him trailing by a wide margin.
Hillary Clinton fought back though and won New Hampshire despite the momentum being on Obama's side.The back and forth race continued until Super Tuesday which ended up as a split decision.
After Super Tuesday,Senator Barack Obama build up a lead which he will not relinquish by winning eleven straight primaries and caucuses,picking up what turned out to be an insurmountable lead.
Senator Hillary Clinton, stayed in the race despite calls for her to throw in the towel,claiming she has the lead in the areas that counted the most,the super delegates.That argument crumpled when Senator Barack Obama started picking up one key super delegate endorsement after the other, until he surpassed Senator Hillary Clinton in the that category also.
Senator Hillary Clinton stayed on though until June the 3,when the primaries in South Dakota and Montana pushed Senator Barack Obama over the magic number of 2118. A 46 years one guy who spend eight years in the Illinois Senate and was elected to the US senate in 2004.
Back in February, Senator Hillary Clinton seem to have all the advantages to get the Democratic nomination;money,political connections,two terms in the United States Senate and to cap it all she had been first Lady when her husband was President of the United States.
Now after a campaign in which Senator Barack Obama raised a record amount of money, the one term Senator from Illinois is now just one step away from capturing one of the most glamorous jobs in the world.He wins in November and we have ourselves a brother living in the"White House".How is somebody like Senator Barack Obama going to change the lives of African-Americans living in the US?All the crap about a black man not being intelligent enough to play quarterback,about certain jobs being available only to Caucasians.
Now the premier job is up for grabs and African-American Senator Barack Obama will as of yesterday the 3 of June 2008 begin a journey that will lead him to the promise land.
One thing is for sure though,come 2009,if Senator Barack Obama wins, lives for African-Americans will never be the same again.There are a lot of check and balances entrenched in a Democratic society like the US,but the President of the United States still possess a lot of power around the World.
No wonder,Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton stayed in the Democratic party nomination race until the very end.Who could blame her?We are talking here about a very historic moment.She had the chance to become the first female President of the US,no small fit either.
Senator Barack Obama does have a few advantages going into the November elections;the first being the fact that President George W. Bush has created quite a mess since taking over the Presidency in 2000.The war in Iraq,a slowdown in the economy just to name a few.Also the Republicans have occupied the White House for two consecutive terms and the public, I believe is ready for a change.
Senator Barack Obama's strategy would be to tag Senator John McCain as a continuation of the Bush Presidency.
Senator Barack Obama launched his national campaign for the Presidency of the United States infront of a crowd of about 10,000 people at the Nissan Pavilion in Virginia on Thursday June the 5 of 2008.
On Saturday the 7 of June,speaking in Washington DC,Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton officially ended her run for the White and endorsed Obama for the November elections.
To win the White House,McCain or Obama will need 270 electoral votes and the followings states are considered to be the swing states in the forthcoming general elections.
Colorado,Florida,Iowa,Michigan,Minnesota,Missouri,Nevada,New Hamphire,New Jersey,New Mexico,North Carolina,Ohio,Oregon,Pennsylvania,Virginia and Wisconsin.
Starting from the 1992 Presidential elections,Colorado has voted Republican all four times,so has Virginia and North Carolina.
Michigan has voted all four times,92,96,2000,2004 for the Democrats,so has Pennsylvania,Oregon,New Jersey and Minnesota.
Senator Barack Obama has promised a fight in which he will go after independent voters in all 50 states.The idea is to force Senator John McCain to defend traditional Republican strongholds.He has dispatched staffers to all fifty states.Obama can afford to do this because of his ability to raise funds in record numbers.
He demonstrated this ability during his battle with Senator Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party nomination.Obama raised a lot of money from minor donors by appealing to them over the internet.
On June 18 2008, Senator Barack Obama announces that he will forgo public funding for his presidential campaign. The decision frees him to raise funds privately for the run to the White house.
Raising funds privately is something that Obama is good at, as he demonstrated during his battle with Senator Hillary Clinton for the post of Democratic Party nominee.The decision means he has to give up $85million of public money, but also allows him to be able to raise up to $300million from the list of 1.5million donors that he already has available in his data-base.
The decision is a turnaround from an earlier pledge that he would stick to public funding if the Republican Presidential nominee did likewise.But haven't just demonstrated what a fund raising money machine he can be, it was widely expected that Obama would negate on his early promise.Sticking to public funding could have been disadvantageous to his campaign.
The decision to reject $85million of public funding, will allow Senator Barack Obama to raise and spent as much money as he likes in the upcoming general election,part of his plans to expand the Electoral College playing field.
On the 27 of June 2008, Senator Barack Obama meets Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in New Hamphire as the former fierce rivals appear in public during a rally in New Hampshire.The process of national reconciliation of the Democratic party begins with Obama haven promised Hillary Clinton to help in the retirement of her $20million campaign debt.
Senator Barack Obama had promised during his primary election run to abide by a 16 month timetable for removal of combat troops from Iraq.He is due to visit Iraq soon and is now opened to consider a slower withdrawal of the troops after making an "on the spot" assessment.A switch in strategy to catch up with Senator John McCain in the field of National Security.
On July 16 2008, Senator Obama opens 20 new offices in the state of Virginia, another proof that he sees the state as one of the battleground states.
Senator Barack Obama is in Iraq today this 21 of June, meeting with military officers there to discuss strategy,days after meeting with Afghan leader Hamid Karzai to discuss the situation in Afghanistan.Before he headed home, he paid visits to Israel,France and Great Britain.
With a few days leading to the Democratic National Convention, Obama announced his choice for Vice President and it is Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware.Senator Joseph Biden himself had once ran for President of the US and is a long standing member of the Foreign Relations Committee of the US senate.I am a little bit surprise with the choice of Biden as Vice Presidential candidate but it seems as if the choice is working out pretty well.Senator Joe Biden has handled himself very well since his nomination as choice for vice President.He did very well in his debate against the Republican Vice Presidential candidate,staying clear of any personal attacks and petty criticism and he did not get in the way of Senator Barack Obama at all.
As early as a month into the voting,it seems as if Senator Barack Obama is heading for a November victory.He won all three debates handily and insiders are saying that with a month to go, he has to pick up one of three key states to get to the magic number of 270.The states in questions are Virginia,Colorado and Florida.He wins one of these states and he is in as the next President of the United States.
The Presidential Debates versus Senator McCain were not close at all with Obama winning with an average victory margin of 58 percent to 42 percent for John McCain.
With about a week to go before the actual voting begins,the prestigious New York Times has already declared that the one time Senator from the state of Illinois will become the 44 President of the United States come the 4 of November.
Congratulations President Barack Obama.