Obama's Victory Speech

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqoFwZUp5vc

by chengmi • 19 years ago

50 86 19 years ago

DXL• 19 years ago

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

nkohari3• 19 years ago

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!

run4yourlives6• 19 years ago

Every site has a focus.

davidw3• 19 years ago

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.

initself• 19 years ago

How did this get negative points? I can only upvote!

chengmi2• 19 years ago

I've been hacking since last night, and I found this interesting. My point is, news doesn't have to be about technology, business, or startups to be interesting to hackers.

inovica3• 19 years ago

Of course it doesn't, however once this site starts getting diluted with information that I consider to be off-topic then I leave and so will others. The GREAT thing about Hacker News is that it covers startup and programming news and is a wonderful resource without me having to go through loads of stuff I'm not interested in, or (more importantly) that I can find elsewhere

inovica3• 19 years ago

Personally, I agree. If I want news like this then I go to other websites. I come to Hacker news because its focused

henning• 19 years ago

Really? You're interested in Ron Paul and George W. Bush alarmism?

vlad• 19 years ago

He should be able to submit whatever he wants. People who vote this stuff up should lose karma. Call it a "user obviously doesn't grasp the point of the site" penalty.

andreyf8• 19 years ago

We come here for hacker news. If we want political news, we go to reddit.

I come here for intelligent analysis of news which I take notice of. Although I'm very curious about software, I still take notice of political current events in the US... as, I think, do most intelligent people.

Although it's questionable that some universities have departments dedicated to it (http://rhetoric.berkeley.edu/), I think political rhetoric like this speech is very interesting for hackers, especially so from mass psychology and CogSci perspectives.

robg5• 19 years ago

I don't understand why this comment got down-voted as it has. Steve Jobs is a closer example of the charisma and rhetoric needed to lead, but the example linked to here is another fine data point. If you aspire to leading a company, don't you want to inspire as well as perspire?

electric• 19 years ago

Obama is a 1337 h4x0r.

pg2• 19 years ago

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.

run4yourlives6• 19 years ago

But let's remember that Obama hasn't won anything. It's important when the US elects a president, or one dies, etc.

Obama winning a primary is only important (outside of political circles) if a plane doesn't crash on the same day.

I think every non-hacker story should be evaluated by the "plane crash beating" quality. :-)

davidw3• 19 years ago

I would vote -1 on it too. There are 50 primaries and winners from both parties in each one, for a total of 100 victories. Sure, of course this one is more important, but still, you have to put it perspective (Bhutto's assassination wasn't mentioned here, for instance, and that was a pretty important event). I'm very wary of politics rearing their ugly head on this site. I'm sure we all have an interest and opinion in them, but I think that discussions about politics are only likely to damage this community.

Tichy2• 19 years ago

I really don't care for news about crashing planes, unless they crash on my city. I hope to never read a plane crashing story on news.yc (which also implies I hope that there will never crash a plane on my city).

Zak• 19 years ago

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• 19 years ago

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.

jimbokun7• 19 years ago

"The only thing remotely interesting here is the color of the candidate's skin, which shows we still have a problem with racism."

The fact that a black presidential candidate won with a substantial margin in an almost entirely white state shows that "we still have a problem with racism"?

imp• 19 years ago

It's also a great example of public speaking. If it had been any other candidate most people would have found the speech boring.

nickb• 19 years ago

Politics is so polarizing and so destructive for a community (since it involves hard divisions into camps) so I think that this is a wrong forum to consume and promote stories such as this.

I do agree that political theory/philosophy articles are pertinent and good reads... if they offer some insight. But this video is blatant demagogy. Is that really worth wasting your time on?

PS: This is exactly the type of stuff that caused reddit to degenerate so quickly.

andreyf8• 19 years ago

Politics is so polarizing and so destructive for a community

That really depends on the community. I hate sounding un-democratic, but I sense there is a very clear division between people consumed by nationalism or screaming over rhetoric, and the people who want to understand the political process with the same motivation as understanding any complex system.

I have a sense news.YC has much more of the latter.

carpal• 19 years ago

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• 19 years ago

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.

nikolaj• 19 years ago

haha, democracy isn't always pretty. Meanwhile I accidentally hit the down arrow on your comment.. sorry

brlewis• 19 years ago

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.

mikesabat• 19 years ago

Carpal, agreed. I don't like to see politics on YC, but you'd have to agree that this community generally feels the same and does a good job "policing".

andreyf8• 19 years ago

Did he remind anyone else of Martin Luther King?

mynameishere2• 19 years ago

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

Alex39174• 19 years ago

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.

run4yourlives6• 19 years ago

U.S.A! U.S.A!

Just a point: they rest of the world considers that chant the most annoying one ever. Seriously, we do! :-)

flyhighplato• 19 years ago

Okay, we'll change it.

O-ba-ma! O-ba-ma! ;)

jimbokun7• 19 years ago

Uh, it wasn't directed at you.

If it was some kind of international forum with a delegate of Americans, granted, that would be pretty annoying.

The subtext here is that Republicans have obviously tried to claim that criticism of them is criticism of your country and therefore distasteful. Some liberals, progressives, have responded by taking the bait and basically, saying "Yeah, we do suck. The world should hate us. Etc."

While you in the rest of the world may think that statement is exactly correct, for some reason it has not led to electoral success.

Obama has been clever enough to side step the whole thing. He has been withering in his criticism of the current administration. At the same time, he has made a theme of not running to be president of only the "blue" parts of this country. And he has backed this up with speeches about issues that, while not changing his more or less standard Democratic positions, express respect for people who disagree with him.

So, the spontaneous "U.S.A" chants were directed at both the current administration and its supporters, and whatever parts of the opposition that have given up on this country. It was a way of saying that we can get past partisanship and actually start thinking about doing what we need to do to fix our real problems as a country.

And, I did see your smiley. But I thought an explanation of what this means to someone living in the U.S.A. (speaking only for myself, of course) might be useful.

dcurtis• 19 years ago

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• 19 years ago

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?

andreyf8• 19 years ago

...it didn't contain a single concrete idea, just hollow bromides and feel-good bullshit.

It's called rhetoric, and judging by who is getting elected, it must mean that's what someone has to do to win elections. Would it change if everyone in the country had a higher education? I doubt it. Actually, it's pretty hard to say what would have to change...

dpapathanasiou2• 19 years ago

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... 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.'"

Xichekolas4• 19 years ago

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.

dpapathanasiou2• 19 years ago

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.

gscott2• 19 years ago

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.

run4yourlives6• 19 years ago

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.

mynameishere2• 19 years ago

Umm, "The secret"?

gscott2• 19 years ago

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'.

jimbokun7• 19 years ago

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.

Alex39174• 19 years ago

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.

robg5• 19 years ago

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/

andreyf8• 19 years ago

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

It's a shame, yes, but apparently that's what wins elections. What needs to change for that not to be the case? Is better education (better funding people's access to higher education?) the solution? Although it may have some impact if people are generally more knowledgeable, I don't think it'll be a solution.

I think it's a broad enough to be safe to say that what is required is a change in our culture - but what kind of change, and how can it come about?

jimbokun7• 19 years ago

"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."

These are things about which Obama has been pretty specific about. He was, from the start, unequivocally against the Iraq war. He has said simply that the U.S. must stop torturing people. I'm honestly not sure about the exact details of his stance towards wiretapping, however.

So my point is that Obama has been very clear and forthright about a lot of things.

Another thing that impresses me is his ability to avoid pandering. There was a woman who asked him if Social Security could be expanded to cover some specific problem her brother had (sorry for not remembering more specifics) and he simply told her "No, I don't think we can afford to cover that for everyone." Sounds like a simple thing, but politicians almost never give a straight answer to that kind of question.

Furthermore, do you think more detailed policy proposals would have done anything about the current abuses of power we are seeing? Do you think torture and wiretapping would have been in a pdf somewhere if we just demanded more policy details from Bush on his website in 2000? You can give lots of specifics, and that's not bad. But it's not realistic to expect the details of a candidate's campaign proposals will be enacted intact as legislation someday. There will be negotiation and compromise along the way.

jimbokun7• 19 years ago

This also seems relevant:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01...

vitaminj• 19 years ago

For whatever reason, people (including me) find abstraction far more noble than details... which is why this kind of rhetoric is so widely employed.

How Obama turns out remains to be seen, but it's undeniable that he can sure play an audience. I thought that the "this is the moment..." part was particularly rousing, like a nod to Shakespeare's St Crispin's day speech in Henry V.

robg5• 19 years ago

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• 19 years ago

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.

awt• 19 years ago

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

andreyf8• 19 years ago

Personally, I like Edward's rhetoric better:

http://www.johnedwards.com/media/video/iowa-caucuses-thank-y...

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.

politech• 19 years ago

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.

Obama's Victory Speech

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