Stewie, the obnoxious baby character at the center of the series, and Brian, a talking dog, travelled back in time to Poland during the 1939 German invasion. The characters ambush Nazi soldiers in an alley and steal their uniforms so they can travel without drawing attention. Putting on an overcoat, Stewie notices a McCain-Palin campaign button affixed to the lapel. "Huh, that's weird," Stewie remarks.In surveys conducted by the Gallup Organization in 70 countries representing nearly half the world's population, 30 percent of people said they would choose Obama as president of the United States against eight percent who said they preferred McCain.
In four close US partners in Asia -- Australia, Japan, Singapore and South Korea -- residents came out clearly in favor of Obama.
Two-thirds of Japanese and Australian respondents said they preferred Obama to McCain, who only scored about 15 percent in the two countries.
In Singapore and South Korea, meanwhile, the pro-Obama vote outpaced the pro-McCain vote by around two to one.
"McCain and Obama have each pledged to reinvigorate and strengthen partnerships with the four developed Asian countries and take a more active role in Asian regional organisations," Gallup wrote.
Nine out of 10 people polled in India and Pakistan and seven in 10 in Bangladesh said they had no opinion about whom they would prefer to see in the White House in Washington come next January.
Gallup said the disinterest among South Asians revealed "a great disconnect between many of the world's poorest inhabitants and the politics of the United States."
Latin Americans showed a similar disconnect, with 68 percent of those polled in central America and Mexico and 58 percent in South America voicing no opinion about the US election.
Middle Easterners in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon and the Palestinian Territories chose Obama over McCain by a margin of at least two to one, although three-quarters of Palestinians said they didn't think the result of the US election would change much in their country.
A majority of Europeans in 14 countries said they wanted an Obama victory, with the Dutch and Norwegians the strongest Obama supporters in Europe: nearly three-quarters in both countries said they preferred him to McCain.
In France, 64 percent chose Obama against four percent for McCain, and in Germany, where an Obama rally in Berlin gathered some 200,000 people in July, the Democratic presidential contender was supported by 62 percent of those polled compared with 10 percent for McCain.
In Africa, a median of 56 percent of poll respondents chose Obama -- meaning the percentage who chose the African American presidential contender was higher than 56 percent in half the 22 countries polled and lower than 56 percent in the other half.
A median of nine percent chose McCain, who did not beat Obama anywhere in Africa, even though the current US administration of Republican President George W. Bush has a high approval rating on the continent.
Bush in July signed legislation tripling funds to fight the killer diseases of AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis in Africa under an initiative launched under his administration in 2003.
In Kenya, where Obama's father hailed from, the Democrat was supported by nearly nine in 10 poll respondents; McCain had the support of three percent of Kenyans.
Around 1,000 people were interviewed face-to-face earlier this year in most of the countries that took part in the surveys.
Survey sizes in Kuwait, Japan, Pakistan, Mexico and India were 484, 750, 804, 873 and 2,000 people respectively.
Struggling to overcome rival Barack Obama's strong lead in the polls with just 14 days left in the epic presidential race, former fighter pilot McCain emphasized that the next president "won't have time to get used to the office."
"I sat in the cockpit on the flight deck of the USS Enterprise off of Cuba. I had a target," McCain said, referring to the 1962 Cuban Missile crisis.
"I know how close we came to a nuclear war and I will not be a president that needs to be tested. I have been tested. Senator Obama has not."
The Republican senator warned voters at a rally in Moon Township, Pennsylvania that the United States faces "many challenges here at home, and many enemies abroad in this dangerous world."
"We know Senator Obama would not have the right response," he said.
McCain, trailing Obama by seven percent in national voter surveys, according to an average by independent RealClearPolitics.com, acknowledged that he was "a few points down" in the polls and castigated the national media for writing him off.
He told supporters "nothing is inevitable" and vowed to continue to fight for hard-working Americans.
He kept up his attack on Obama's economic policies, casting the Illinois senator as a shifty, job-killing socialist bent on "redistributing wealth."
"Senator Obama's more interested in controlling who gets your piece of the pie than growing the pie," McCain said.
In Florida Obama shot back, accusing McCain of turning a blind eye to the financial crisis and offering up out-dated ideas for fixing the country's troubled economy.
"The financial crisis that states, businesses and families are facing didn't just spring up full-blown overnight," the Democratic candidate said.
"This has been a long time coming, and the warning signs have been very clear, but while President Bush and Senator McCain were ready to move heaven and earth to address the crisis on Wall Street, President Bush has failed to address the crisis on Main Street," Obama said.
McCain "has failed to fully acknowledge it. Instead of common sense solutions, month after month, they've offered little more than willful ignorance, wishful thinking, and outdated ideology."
He also accused McCain of just making "stuff" up as time runs out before election day.
He hammered McCain over the Republican's claims that he attacked "Joe the plumber," an Ohio voter who has become an emblem of the middle class tax debate.
"It was really amazing, he's decided to fabricate this notion that I've been attacking Joe the plumber," Obama said, after noting he had watched a speech by McCain earlier in the day on television.
"John McCain is still out there, just saying this stuff, just making it up."
Accompanied by Internet giant Google's chief executive Eric Schmidt and former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, Obama led a round-table talk on economic policy at a community center near Palm Beach, using the venue to push his jobs and economic recovery plans.
The talk aimed at wooing voters in a region particularly hard-hit by the US real estate and banking crash, with hopes that Obama might be able to win Florida in the November 4 election, a state earlier thought solidly in Republican hands.
As Florida voters flocked to early voting sites for a second day Tuesday, polls suggested Obama now has a slight lead over McCain in the state, which was crucial in President George W. Bush's win over Al Gore in the 2000 election.
Nationally, the latest daily tracking poll of registered voters by Gallup showed Obama expanding his lead to 11 points. The daily Rasmussen survey, however, had McCain narrowing the race to four points, trailing Obama by 46 to 50 percent of voters nationwide.
With Obama stepping out of the race on Thursday and Friday to be with his ailing grandmother in Hawaii, McCain will be able to dominate media coverage as he campaigns aggressively in battleground states.
He and will meet up with running mate Sarah Palin, who has been instrumental in rallying the Republican party's conservative base, in Ohio Wednesday following a that afternoon before flying to Florida for a Thursday rally.
(Sydney Morning Herald)
With your propensity for crashing American planes John, thank God you only sat in the cockpit!
Richard Hell - Dennis Cooper - Ishmael Houston-Jones
