Obama: "Person of the Year 2008"

US President-elect Barack Obama was hailed as the "person of the year" by TIME for the year 2008. The magazine has named Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Gov. Sarah Palin and Chinese director Zhang Yimou as runners-up. Last year's winner was Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Previous individual winners have included Bono, President George W. Bush and Amazon.com CEO and founder Jeff Bezos.

According to the magazine, the way I read it, it said that "Barack Obama's campaign was notable for how it inspired people around the world to feel that they had a personal stake in his success." The issue revealed some of the most memorable scenes before, during and after the election day, including the long lost negatives of Obama pictures taken in 1980 as a college freshman posed for Lisa Jack, a fellow student; The pictures were published through the partnership of TIME and the image-sharing website flickr and presented over 14 pages of Obama-related postings. As the TIME Magazine puts it, "Americans didn't just elect a President on Nov. 4. They created an icon." and concluded that "his (Obama) genome is global, his mind is networked, and his spirit is democratic.

Impeachment bid, finally dismissed!

(this article is an update from a previous post)

click here to see previous article on impeachment

In politics, there is no permanent friend nor enemy, only permanent interests; this has been proven by former House Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. who supported his son in the filing of the impeachment charge and later testified in the House Committee on Justice, accusing President Arroyo, his husband First Gentleman Mike Arroyo and then Comelec Chairman Benjamin Abalos of having orchestrated a controversial broadband deal with ZTE, a Chinese business firm. However majority of the congressmen believed that his testimony harvests more question against JDV than President Arroyo herself and likewise they believe that the former Speaker was just sour graping, as he was removed from being the House Speaker.

Last week of November, the House Justice Committee of the 14th Philippine Congress dismissed the impeachment complaint against Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo by 42-8 votes, saying that it was "insufficient in substance". The new impeachment complaint filed against President Arroyo is based on "rehashed and recycled" impeachable offenses that were already dismissed in previous impeachment filings for the past three years, said by the vice chairman of the Justice Committee. Now, the House of Representatives acting as committee of the whole has finally junked the fourth impeachment charge against Arroyo wherein out of the 238 members of the House, a total of 183 lawmakers voted to uphold the House committee report, and 21 on the negative side, while 3 congressmen choose to abstain. The allies of the president in Congress have certainly outweigh the opposition congressmen, in which the latter were mostly party-list representatives. It is clear enough to say that, it was a numbers game again that made favorable to the president. By this, the opposition has to wait again for next year, if they still want to impeach the president by due process.

In my own perspective of the issue of impeachment against president Arroyo, well the only thing that i could say is that we must face it, whether we like it or not, there's no better person to lead this nation until 2010 than the incumbent president, I'm not being a Pro-Arroyo in a way, I have to make that thing clear. My point here is that, we must always bear in mind the possible repercussions that it will cause granting the president will be removed from office. Political Instability, among others would only pull down our thrust to move forward as a nation. Its time to heal the wounds of the past, and must now face the problems that poses real threat to our country, these are the global financial crisis that we are experiencing at present, the continuing threat of terrorism, and of course not to exclude from the list is the extensive corruption in the government.

Hillary Clinton named as the next Secretary of State

President-elect Barack Obama named his former presidential rival, Senator Hillary Clinton of New York as the next secretary of state. According to Obama, "She (Hillary Clinton) possesses an extraordinary intelligence and toughness, and a remarkable work ethic. ... She is an American of tremendous stature who will have my complete confidence, who knows many of the world's leaders, who will command respect in every capital, and who will clearly have the ability to advance our interests around the world." Hillary on the other hand said to Obama, "I am proud to join you ... and may God bless you and our great country."

Obama has settled on additional members of his Cabinet, although they have not yet been announced yet. Among them are former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle to be his secretary of health and human services and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson to be commerce secretary. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, asked about Clinton at a news conference in London, said Monday: "I think that she will bring enormous energy and intellect and skill to the position." Clinton's appointment has to be confirmed by the US Senate.