Watch Obama’s 100 Days address (courtesy of Hulu):

Straight from Politico:

CHICAGO — Retired Army Gen. Eric Shinseki will be named as Barack Obama’s Secretary of Veterans’ Affairs Sunday afternoon in Chicago.

The surprise pick adds yet another heavyweight to the Obama cabinet, and also takes a not-so-subtle slap at President Bush’s original national security team.

Shinseki served as Chief of Staff of the Army and retired a four-star general in 2003. Like Obama a native of Hawaii, Shinseki served two combat tours in Vietnam, where he earned a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. Shinseki, who is of Japanese ancestry, becomes the first Asian-American [sic] in the new Cabinet.

Well, there you go. One of the earliest major voices against the war gets a cabinet position of great importance in dealing with our veterans as they return from Iraq and Afghanistan. Those of you who have been impatient for a real Cabinet position for an Asian American have finally been listened to by Obama. Unlike Elaine Chao’s position at Department of Labor, I seriously doubt Obama will denigrate Shinseki’s new role the way Bush routinely used Elaine Chao to hobble the Department of Labor’s oversight role over labor relations.

Obama in an MSNBC segment from Meet the Press tomorrow took some time to discuss Shinseki’s status as a fellow Hawaiian as well:

What’s interesting is that Obama points out that it’s a day of remembrance tomorrow for the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor. It’s an interesting turn of events when a Japanese American is asked to run the very department that takes care of American soldiers during an event that commemorates the World War II conflict with Japan. Japanese Americans, you’ve come a long way, baby!

This should also help to quiet the ridiculous assertions by some of the critics on this blog that we should somehow start to band together against a President-elect who hasn’t passed a secret Asian American litmus test. Let’s hope that our fellow Asian Americans won’t be stupid and try to start a campaign against Obama’ secret anti-Asian agenda.

Tons of people have been trying to get to know more about the process of getting a job within the Administration. You may be happy to know that there are Asian organizations dedicated to getting Asian Americans into positions within the Federal Government. The hunt is on!

APIAVote held a great informational session on the 18th of November via phone conference with two former Clinton Administration staffers, Maria Haley and Bob Nash. The one thing I came away with is that it’s a full-time job looking for a full-time job in the Administration. Here are some quick points:

• You will have to summon up all your moxie to put yourself on the line for an appointment within the administration.
• Ok, there’s more than one thing. You need to get yourself immediately to the Plum Book. It’s the book that lists all the potential jobs that the Obama Administration has to fill during its tenure in the White House. Don’t worry, they’re almost never entirely filled. If you can’t get in on this round, you might just find the position opening up in two years or so.
• Learn about the kind of positions that the Obama Administration can appoint you to. Don’t try to get a position that is reserved for a career bureaucrat.
• Use all the connections you gathered during your time with the campaign.

Your participation in the campaign also plays a role in who gets selected to a position. Basically, you’re rewarded for your support of Obama during his campaign. Yeah, it’s not a meritocracy. It’s a nearly 200 year old political tradition, “to the victor goes the spoils“.

There’s a ton of information and I’m going to leave it to you to listen to the MP3 file that APIAVote posted shortly after this talk containing the phone conference.

Here’s a short little photoessay of my canvassing experience in Annandale, VA. It was a wonderfully warm day. We were quite upbeat in the morning and stayed that way all day. There were four of us, myself, my wife, my wife’s co-worker, and Nick Chang, our volunteer PHP programmer for Asian Americans for Obama. My wife and wife’s co-worker can’t really be in the pics or be named because of where they work unfortunately but they had just as much fun as we did.

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My wife and I filled out absentee ballots today here in Brooklyn.

That’s my wife’s pic first and me up second. I’m incredibly proud of this moment despite the terrible upheavals the United States is going through recently. I’ve been volunteering to help elect Obama for more than a month now and it’s been a pretty crazy ride through it all from the McCain convention bounce to the Palin nomination to her resulting drop in the polls to the stock market crashes and to Obama’s current peak. There’s just a little bit over 15 days left until the election, so who knows what will happen between now and then? All I know is that I’ve voted and my wife has voted. We’re just little people starting a chain reaction that we hope can spread through the rest of the country…

However, my wife and I are doubling down and going to Virginia to do whatever needs to be done the weekend before the election. That’s been the amazing narrative behind the campaign, the little people like us who have been doing what they can for the election. I just hope that those of you reading this will do the same thing and be those folks who are part of that same chain reaction. This isn’t the time to be complacent. Sometimes, the Web is great and makes you feel like you’re actually doing something but let’s face it, reading fivethirtyeight.com is not going to get Obama elected. I really urge you to find an office in a nearby battleground state and take the time to go out there and volunteer in the next 15 days.

So get out there! When your grandkids ask you what you did for Obama’s campaign, don’t just say that you read some Web sites and dropped some cash off at his Web site, say that you stood up for yourself and those around you and that you too were part of the great chain reaction that set off a change for the better in America. History only comes around once…

Crossposted from Kelly Hu’s website!

Got to attend the democratic national convention last week. I’m so glad I did it! I almost didn’t make it because I was in Hawaii on Monday and Tuesday shooting a trailer for the Hawaii International Film Festival. But I thought I’d make the effort since it was promising to be such a historic event. Arrived Wednesday morning on the red eye and hit the ground running. Unfortunately, I was running the whole day in my high heels. Silly me, thinking I would try to look cute at all those interviews and appearances. Scored a floor pass thanks to my friend in the campaign, but the floor filled up so quickly that I wasn’t able to get down there at first. They closed the floor just as I was getting checked in. But figuring it was a once in a life time opportunity I decided I was going to sneak in anyway. I reverted back to my high school days of sneaking into clubs and concerts and made it just in time to see Bill Clinton speak. Got caught and sent away about half way through though, because I couldn’t find a place to sit. So then I managed to sneak into the club lounge where they had food. Got a bit of nourishment and rested my burning high heeled feet while I figured out another tactic. When I snuck back onto the floor the third time I found the Hawaii delegation. Not hard to spot wearing lei’s, aloha shorts and waving shredded ti leaves. So I hung out with them throughout Kerry and Biden’s speeches.
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