
Obama's Victory Speech - chengmi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqoFwZUp5vc
======
Alex3917
The thirty second summary:

"We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure
ideology. Our unification is a more powerful weapon than any fleet or army on
Earth. We are one people. With one will. One resolve. One cause. We shall
prevail!"

edit: My point is that the speech was complete demagoguery. It didn't contain
a single concrete idea, just hollow bromides and feel-good bullshit.

~~~
dcurtis
What would you say in a victory speech? He was basically just thanking Iowa;
there's not much more to say.

It's not like he was expected to describe his policies or anything.

~~~
gojomo
Which is why it's barely news-worthy, much less 'Hacker'-news-worthy.

And for people who enjoy the news of early-primary-results, and the rhetoric
of candidates, the mass media is already inundated with it. Does it add value
here? Can't YC-News specialize and focus where it has an advantage?

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jimbokun
I see a lot of complaints about "platitudes" here, but I think this glosses
over the impact of the Obama campaign.

There is not really much disagreement about what the important issues are. Get
out of Iraq. Stop using fossil fuels. Get everyone affordable health
insurance. Inflation and stagnant wages. There is a general consensus now that
these are the U.S.'s big problems and we need pragmatic solutions to them.
(The other consensus is that the Republican party has collapsed and needs to
be removed from power as soon as possible.)

What Obama is offering is a way out of the broken record of baby boomer
liberal vs. conservative rhetoric. If Hillary wins, we're in for 4 to 8 more
years of the same old partisan story line that has played out since her
husband was elected. Many Americans are more than sick of that and that is
what Obama is appealing to and that is why he won.

And I think his attitude is basically right. More than specific policy
proposals at this moment, Americans need a new mindset.

~~~
Alex3917
Obama isn't mouthing platitudes because he thinks America needs a new mindset,
he's doing it because by hiding his agenda he leaves us with nothing to
disagree with. This is exactly the problem America is facing right now: the
idea that ordinary people are too stupid to govern themselves and that we
can't be trusted to know what's really going on. "Let the government take care
of it, everything will be alright."

Well it's not alright.

These are the politics that got us the Iraq war. These are the politics that
got us illegal wiretapping. These are the politics that make it legal for the
government to kidnap you in the middle of the night and torture you until
you're nothing but a shell of a man.

This isn't truth, it isn't change, it's bullshit demagoguery and it's more of
the same.

~~~
robg
The wonderful thing about the interpipes is that you can educate yourself if
you choose to. Go to any of the campaign websites and they spell out what they
stand for. In my opinion, a decent place to start, since we're conversing
here, is: <http://www.barackobama.com/issues/technology/>

~~~
Alex3917
Where is the section on civil liberties?

~~~
robg
Now this really is becoming a politics thread...

He has a town hall meeting on Sunday in Exeter,NH. Ask him yourself. Failing
that, wait for him to come to your state. All else fails, assume he doesn't
care. :)

I understand him that in pushing more transparency in government,
accountability becomes more obvious. The real problem with the wiretapping is
that no one was accountable because no one knew it was happening. As soon as
it became public there was an extensive push to correct things.

Any case, I was simply responding to the claims that a candidate is "hiding
their agenda". There are promises being made. The extent to which any
politician gains or loses trust is the extent to which they're consistent with
their promises - previously and in the future. All these things should
absolutely influence your vote. But I think folks lose the right to complain
if they don't participate in the process.

~~~
Alex3917
What bothers me though is this: According to his website, Obama wants (among
other things) more fiscal responsibility and better education. The thing is,
we ALL want more fiscal responsibility and better education.

I don't have a problem with most of Obama's opinions, but I realize that
that's mostly what they are. Opinions. Not plans.

The section on fiscal responsibility basically says increase taxes on the
wealthy and reduce wasteful spending. That's not a plan, it's a talking point.
It tells me next to nothing about whether he even wants to balance the budget
and pay off the debt, let alone how he is going to accomplish it.

Even the detailed PDFs available in some sections are rather tenuous. I just
read through the one on education. It talks a lot about making improvements in
certain areas and increasing funding in certain programs, but it doesn't
really go into what those improvements would be or what that funding would
buy. It seems to be strongly influenced by the KIP program for educating low-
income minorities, but other than that I'm having trouble picking out any
specific pedagogy.

~~~
robg
This problem is true of any candidate. The closer you look the less that seems
to be there. But then again, that's when you as a voter get to weight these
things as you'd like when choosing a candidate you'll support. The President
of the United States is such a unique job it's really hard to know what prior
experiences make one truly qualified. No matter how good the opinions or
plans, actual governing is a different beast.

------
pg
Hard call, but I think an occasional story related to politics may be ok if it
is about some kind of major event that transcends politics-- just as a story
about technology might occasionally appear in a magazine about politics if it
is an important enough story.

~~~
Zak
I agree, but this story doesn't transcend politics. The candidate who was
leading in the polls in Iowa won Iowa. This is his victory speech, and its
content is typical political victory speech content. The only thing remotely
interesting here is the color of the candidate's skin, which shows we still
have a problem with racism.

~~~
mrtron
Ah, so this is why YNews wants to avoid political points, the horrible
comments.

Obama's race is irrelevant, he is a very charismatic and thoughtful candidate.
He seems to have the spark of greatness to him which I think is what makes
this good enough to cross to hacker news. A lot of successful entrepreneurs
also have great charisma.

~~~
byrneseyeview
Obama's race may be irrelevant to you, but it certainly mattered to him: he
claims that his drug use was an effort to avoid thinking about race, he became
a 'community organizer' working in low-income areas (in a neighborhood that is
97.8% black), his legal career focused on "community organizers,
discrimination claims, and voting rights cases," and the subtitle of his
autobiography is _A Story of Race and Inheritance_.

If Obama matters to you, you'd better start thinking about his race, since
it's been his obsession for decades.

 _Edit: and don't forget his scary church:<http://www.tucc.org/about.htm> .
It's as bad as Romney's church was thirty years ago._

~~~
scooter53080
I think you have the makings of a good red state email forward .

~~~
byrneseyeview
I wouldn't bother sending this to any Republicans, since we already have good
reasons not to vote for Obama. But I do think it's interesting that _I_
summarize his background to correct a misconception, and suddenly it's
partisan.

~~~
scooter53080
For me, it is the tone of the comment (warning me about this information) that
makes it partisan.

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dpapathanasiou
I'm surprised to see this at No. 1, too.

"President Obama" (if that happens) is _perhaps_ a transcendent enough event
to make it here, but not a caucus victory speech.

FWIW, a better synthesis of politics & technology is Michael Bloomberg's take
on the results [http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/04/bloomberg-
parse...](http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/04/bloomberg-parses-the-
iowa-results/) particularly this comment about all the major candidates:

" _I don't want to disparage anything, but let me say this: If you have
complex problems, there probably are no simple cost-free solutions to them,
because if there were, somebody would have solved them ... You know, the
people running for office always say: 'I don't want to bring that up now. If I
do, I won't get elected. But if I don't mention it and get elected, then I can
do the difficult stuff.'_ "

~~~
Xichekolas
I love how Bloomberg is setting up his campaign ahead of time by teasing the
news about _maybe_ running. I'm really hoping he jumps in as a third candidate
after the primaries and puts his personal fortune to use.

Not sure why, I just kind of like the guy. He seems like a problem solver and
not a publicity solver.

~~~
dpapathanasiou
We'll know soon enough: by law, he has to file in February if he runs.

Based on his performance in NYC, I think he'd make a great President: he's
willing to tackle problems, and he's got a rare combination of intelligence,
pragmatism, and competence.

~~~
Xichekolas
As I read it (here: <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22445078/>), he can't even
file as an independent until March 5, when Texas starts it's independent
nomination process. He has to basically petition each state to be on the
ballot.

If that is the case, he has a whole month after Super Tuesday (Feb 5, 2008,
when 20 states have primaries and the winners will most likely become
inevitable on both sides) to decide whether to run.

Last night's victories are actually good for him. His dream situation would be
any of the top three dems vs Huckabee... since this would leave a very wide
middle ground for him to vacuum up.

------
carpal
Generally I'd be upset at an article like this being on news.yc, but this was
a really great speech that didn't focus too much on politics. It had much more
to do with hope, success and fighting for what you believe in. That's a pretty
universal message, and one that could easily be applied to startup life.

~~~
byteCoder
My biggest concern is the "slippery slope" and the "tragedy of the commons"
that befell reddit.

It seems that in user-submitted and -voted content, moderation (in both senses
of the word) is a problem.

~~~
brlewis
Beware of slippery-slope arguments. Once you accept one slippery-slope
argument, you have to accept them all.

The people you're worried about are all happily typing away, posting juvenile
comments on the story I submitted to politics.reddit.com yesterday. They have
no motivation to come here. I think news.yc is safe regardless of what the
editors decide about political stories.

P.S. My second sentence is a recursive joke. I didn't mean it.

~~~
BrandonM
_P.S. My second sentence is a recursive joke. I didn't mean it._

I was about to say that, myself. I'm glad you didn't actually fall into that
hypocritical trap. Nice joke, though :-)

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robg
One reason this video belongs here: President Obama would appoint the nation's
first CTO among other initiatives that are highly relevant to the things we
care about.

<http://www.barackobama.com/issues/technology/>

I'll venture to say: President Obama would be very good for hackers. It's one
reason I'll be trudging through the snow tomorrow in NH to knock on doors.

~~~
bayareaguy
_Obama will appoint the nation's first Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to
ensure that our government and all its agencies have the right infrastructure,
policies and services for the 21st century. The CTO will ensure the safety of
our networks and will lead an interagency effort, working with chief
technology and chief information officers of each of the federal agencies, to
ensure that they use best-in-class technologies and share best practices._

I nominate Bruce Schneier.

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politech
On economics, Obama will be bad for technology and start-ups. The Bush tax
cuts and the Reagan tax cuts before have freed up tremendous amounts of
venture capital that sparked economic growth. The venture capital market
didn't exist in America when the top income tax rate was 70% under Jimmy
Carter. Vote Democrat and the only way you'll be able to get funding is
through government grants, and the government will seize your income if you
are a success.

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mynameishere
Standard platitudes. He's a decent speaker though. I hope the latter isn't
confusing the former.

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andreyf
Personally, I like Edward's rhetoric better:

[http://www.johnedwards.com/media/video/iowa-caucuses-
thank-y...](http://www.johnedwards.com/media/video/iowa-caucuses-thank-you/)

Nothing like "corporate greed", "corporate democrats", and "an epic fight for
the future of the middle class". His dad worked at a mill, you know... ;)

Yum.

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awt
I'm really really sad to see this story here.

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DXL
This is Hacker News. We come here for hacker news. If we want political news,
we go to reddit.

~~~
nkohari
Yes, because the internet does not exist in the real world! Why should we care
what's happening around us? Eyes back to your monitors!

~~~
davidw
I don't agree with nkohari, but he shouldn't be voted down this much. A 0 or a
-1 is enough to say "no, we don't agree". It's not as if he said something
horribly offensive.

~~~
andreyf
I agree with davidw, but he shouldn't be voted up this much. A 3 or a 4 is
enough to say "we agree". It's not as if he said something horribly
insightful.

~~~
davidw
See how short the path is from politics to meta-meta discussions? A slippery
slope indeed;-)

I wouldn't vote me up that much either, but there is a difference between
voting up and voting someone way down.

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electric
Obama is a 1337 h4x0r.

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gscott
I believe if Obama becomes President his wife is really going to run things.
It will be her and Oprah running the White House, Obama seems fine but his
wife looks really controlling.

~~~
run4yourlives
Even though your comment is childish:

Given how well Oprah has handled her personal business, I for one would have
no problem with her running the most powerful nation on the planet.

~~~
gscott
Things go wrong even for the successful. Like Oprah's school for children,
where some of the children were sent out to do sexual favors by the 'house
mom'.

