6 ms·

Obama's Victory Speech

50 points by chengmi 19y ago

politech 19y 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.
DXL 19y ago
This is Hacker News. We come here for hacker news. If we want political news, we go to reddit.
- nkohari 19y 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!
  - run4yourlives 19y ago
    Every site has a focus.
    - nkohari 19y ago
      I'm not suggesting we become the politics subreddit. Just saying that it's important to know what's going on IRL too. :)
      - run4yourlives 19y ago
        You can visit other sites you know. I'm pretty sure Paul won't mind. :-)
  - davidw 19y 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.
    - nkohari 19y ago
      Thanks for the support. I guess I didn't realize that this was an opinion-free zone. Honestly I think it's ridiculous that I would get down-voted for supporting an article that's now at number one. Clearly people care about the topic, and it's not like I contributed "less" to the discussion than the original comment I replied to, which was up-voted like wildfire. It's not like I'm on here spouting support for Ron Paul or linking to leftist blogs.
      - Xichekolas 19y ago
        I too disagreed with you, but voted you up (from -8 to -7) because I think it's ridiculous that you can bury someone that much. If you think about it, the only people that deserve to be buried are true trolls posting viagra ads and those terrible scat porn stories on slashdot... and those people don't care about their karma anyway, so you might as well just delete their accounts. Why don't we just have some kind of floor on comments. Really -1 is enough to say "this comment is crap" without resulting in a situation where someone is dogpiled.
    - andreyf 19y ago
      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 19y ago
        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.
  - initself 19y ago
    How did this get negative points? I can only upvote!
    - Xichekolas 19y ago
      You need a certain level of karma to downvote.
- chengmi 19y 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.
  - inovica 19y 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
    - chengmi 19y ago
      Point taken.
      - inovica 19y ago
        Anyway, its sparked debate :) We've a great community on here, so whats good is we can do so intelligently. I'm not from the US, so not only was this off-topic (for me) but also not even politics I'm interested in :P
    - andreyf 19y ago
      having to go through loads of stuff I'm not interested in Anyone interested in making an open version of reddit? One where people can write their own "favorites" algorithm, and/or one where user's votes are available via API?
- inovica 19y 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 19y ago
  Really? You're interested in Ron Paul and George W. Bush alarmism?
- vlad 19y 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.
- andreyf 19y 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/ http://rhetoric.berkeley.edu/), I think political rhetoric like this speech is very interesting for hackers, especially so from mass psychology and CogSci perspectives.
  - robg 19y 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?
    - pg 19y ago
      I think there's some reflexive downvoting going on here, because people are terrified of what happened to reddit happening here. But we won't let that happen.
electric 19y ago
Obama is a 1337 h4x0r.
pg 19y 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.
- run4yourlives 19y 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. :-)
  - davidw 19y 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.
  - Tichy 19y 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).
    - run4yourlives 19y ago
      My point is that a plane crash (killing hundreds) would be a top story around the world, even if it happened on the day Obama wins the Iowa primary, hence, Obama isn't plan crash important. If he won the presidency, that would possibly be plane crash important.
carpal 19y 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 19y 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 19y ago
    haha, democracy isn't always pretty. Meanwhile I accidentally hit the down arrow on your comment.. sorry
  - brlewis 19y 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.
    - BrandonM 19y ago
      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 :-)
- deleted 19y ago
  [deleted]
- mikesabat 19y 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".
mynameishere 19y ago
Standard platitudes. He's a decent speaker though. I hope the latter isn't confusing the former.
Alex3917 19y 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.
- run4yourlives 19y 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 19y ago
    Okay, we'll change it. O-ba-ma! O-ba-ma! ;)
  - jimbokun 19y 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.
dpapathanasiou 19y 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-parses-the-iowa-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.'"
- Xichekolas 19y 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.
  - dpapathanasiou 19y 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.
    - Xichekolas 19y ago
      As I read it (here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22445078/ 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.
gscott 19y 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.
- run4yourlives 19y 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.
  - mynameishere 19y ago
    Umm, "The secret"?
  - gscott 19y 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'.
jimbokun 19y 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.
- Alex3917 19y 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.
  - robg 19y 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/ http://www.barackobama.com/issues/technology/
robg 19y 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/ 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 19y 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.
  - deleted 19y ago
    [deleted]
awt 19y ago
I'm really really sad to see this story here.
- deleted 19y ago
  [deleted]
andreyf 19y ago
Personally, I like Edward's rhetoric better: http://www.johnedwards.com/media/video/iowa-caucuses-thank-you/ 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.

50 points by chengmi 19y 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.

DXL 19y ago

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

nkohari 19y 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!
- run4yourlives 19y ago
  Every site has a focus.
  - nkohari 19y ago
    I'm not suggesting we become the politics subreddit. Just saying that it's important to know what's going on IRL too. :)
    - run4yourlives 19y ago
      You can visit other sites you know. I'm pretty sure Paul won't mind. :-)
- davidw 19y 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.
  - nkohari 19y ago
    Thanks for the support. I guess I didn't realize that this was an opinion-free zone. Honestly I think it's ridiculous that I would get down-voted for supporting an article that's now at number one. Clearly people care about the topic, and it's not like I contributed "less" to the discussion than the original comment I replied to, which was up-voted like wildfire. It's not like I'm on here spouting support for Ron Paul or linking to leftist blogs.
    - Xichekolas 19y ago
      I too disagreed with you, but voted you up (from -8 to -7) because I think it's ridiculous that you can bury someone that much. If you think about it, the only people that deserve to be buried are true trolls posting viagra ads and those terrible scat porn stories on slashdot... and those people don't care about their karma anyway, so you might as well just delete their accounts. Why don't we just have some kind of floor on comments. Really -1 is enough to say "this comment is crap" without resulting in a situation where someone is dogpiled.
  - andreyf 19y ago
    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 19y ago
      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.
- initself 19y ago
  How did this get negative points? I can only upvote!
  - Xichekolas 19y ago
    You need a certain level of karma to downvote.
chengmi 19y 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.
- inovica 19y 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
  - chengmi 19y ago
    Point taken.
    - inovica 19y ago
      Anyway, its sparked debate :) We've a great community on here, so whats good is we can do so intelligently. I'm not from the US, so not only was this off-topic (for me) but also not even politics I'm interested in :P
  - andreyf 19y ago
    having to go through loads of stuff I'm not interested in Anyone interested in making an open version of reddit? One where people can write their own "favorites" algorithm, and/or one where user's votes are available via API?
inovica 19y 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 19y ago
Really? You're interested in Ron Paul and George W. Bush alarmism?
vlad 19y 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.
andreyf 19y 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/ http://rhetoric.berkeley.edu/), I think political rhetoric like this speech is very interesting for hackers, especially so from mass psychology and CogSci perspectives.
- robg 19y 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?
  - pg 19y ago
    I think there's some reflexive downvoting going on here, because people are terrified of what happened to reddit happening here. But we won't let that happen.

electric 19y ago

Obama is a 1337 h4x0r.

pg 19y 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.

run4yourlives 19y 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. :-)
- davidw 19y 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.
- Tichy 19y 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).
  - run4yourlives 19y ago
    My point is that a plane crash (killing hundreds) would be a top story around the world, even if it happened on the day Obama wins the Iowa primary, hence, Obama isn't plan crash important. If he won the presidency, that would possibly be plane crash important.

carpal 19y 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 19y 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 19y ago
  haha, democracy isn't always pretty. Meanwhile I accidentally hit the down arrow on your comment.. sorry
- brlewis 19y 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.
  - BrandonM 19y ago
    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 :-)
deleted 19y ago
[deleted]
mikesabat 19y 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".

mynameishere 19y ago

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

Alex3917 19y 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.

run4yourlives 19y 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 19y ago
  Okay, we'll change it. O-ba-ma! O-ba-ma! ;)
- jimbokun 19y 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.

dpapathanasiou 19y 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-parses-the-iowa-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.'"

Xichekolas 19y 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.
- dpapathanasiou 19y 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.
  - Xichekolas 19y ago
    As I read it (here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22445078/ 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.

gscott 19y 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.

run4yourlives 19y 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.
- mynameishere 19y ago
  Umm, "The secret"?
- gscott 19y 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'.

jimbokun 19y 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.

Alex3917 19y 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.
- robg 19y 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/ http://www.barackobama.com/issues/technology/

robg 19y 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/ 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 19y 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.
- deleted 19y ago
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awt 19y ago

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

deleted 19y ago
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andreyf 19y ago

Personally, I like Edward's rhetoric better: http://www.johnedwards.com/media/video/iowa-caucuses-thank-you/ 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.