Lawrence Lessig created a video that is circulating the net entitled "20 Minutes or So on Why I Am 4Barack".Links to Lessig video:http://digg.com/political_opinion/Lawrence_Lessig_on_Barack_Obamahttp://s3.amazonaws.com/truth/4obama.mov
I believe the paragraphs below are the best part of the Lessig video transcript.
Found at: http://blog.printf.net/articles/2008/02/05/transcript-of-lawrence-lessig-obama-video"But finally, most important is the distinction between the two candidates about what they will do. But to see this we have to think about what we expect this election to be about. The rhetoric around this election is focused on "change". But what is this idea of change? What do the candidates mean by it? Here's what Hillary Clinton said in one of the debates:
Well, let me say first, that I think we're all advocating for change; we all want to change the status quo, which is George Bush and the Republican domination of Washington for so many years.
When I heard that, I thought to myself "Is that really all we're trying to achieve in this election, to get the Republicans out of office?". Because as I heard candidates like Edwards and Obama, I heard a call for a change much more fundamental. A change in how Washington runs; a change in the power of money or corruption in how Washington runs. A change in the very core of the system that has produced the results that have slowed responses to global warming or slowed the adoption of healthcare. Edwards and Obama have evinced their support for this strong version of change by refusing to take any money from lobbyists or PACs: their target, at least as they see it, is fundamental reform of the system.
Hillary Clinton, here, is very different. Here is a speech she gave at the yearly Kos convention last summer:
"Senator Edwards has really a very straightforward question here, which is will you continue to take money from lobbyists or will you take his position..." "Yes I will. I will, because you know a lot of those lobbyists, whether you like it or not... represent real Americans."
"Senator Edwards has really a very straightforward question here, which is will you continue to take money from lobbyists or will you take his position..."
"Yes I will. I will, because you know a lot of those lobbyists, whether you like it or not... represent real Americans."
No-one doubts that the lobbyists represent real Americans; though of course they also represent lots of foreign entities as well. But the question is not who they represent, the question is whether their influence represents — mis-represents — solutions for America. Whether the effort they have and the power they have in controlling the agenda and access to members of Congress shifts the way Congress responds to the issues. But it's very clear given what she said, that when she speaks about change she speaks of a different kind of change; not the real change that Barack Obama puts at the center of his objective for a new administration. But there's a second kind of change that I think is actually much more important than this change in how Washington works. This is a change for peace.
We have to understand of course that the presidency has become something very different from an accountant or CEO of the Government. The presidency is a leader, a leader who inspires moral courage, who inspires us to be something different, to transform us, and inspires the world in how the world sees us.
Here I think there is no comparison betwen these candidates. Hillary Clinton is good enough, she's a good enough speaker, she's very powerful and responsive, she's a great debater. But in this debate, Barack Obama is just off the charts. Remember his intervention at the Democratic Convention in 2004:
"Tonight is a particular honor for me because, let's face it, my presence on this stage is pretty unlikely. My father was a foreign student, born and raised in a small village in Kenya. he grew up..."
And then, on his campaign too:
"There's no such thing as false hopes. But what I know deep in my heart is that, we cannot bring about change unless we are unified. Unless we do it together. Change does not happen from the top down, in America or anywhere else. It happens from the bottom up!"
This is a man who will inspire as he leads. He will inspire all of us, across racial lines, and gender lines, across class lines, across age. He will inspire us because he can capture, in a way that very few presidents in the last hundred years have been able to capture, the imagination of a generation.
But there's one more crucial way in which Barack Obama can inspire, distinct from how Hillary Clinton could ever hope to inspire, and that's the inspiration he would offer towards peace. We in this country need to acknowledge to the world a certain mistake that most of us understand we made. At the height of insanity, after this extraordinary and horrible bombing, of our own citizens on our own territory, we were led into war by a president who didn't care to pay attention to the facts.
This was the biggest political blunder, perhaps ever, that an American president engaged. It was extraordinarily destructive — destructive to us and to them. If we're going to find peace here, then that peace will only come if we can signal our own change. A change that they understand is a change in who we are, a change that they can see.
So I want you to shut your eyes and imagine what it will seem like to a young man in Iraq or in Iran, who wakes up on January 21st, 2009, and sees the picture of this man as the president of the United States. A man who opposed the war at the beginning, a man who worked his way up from almost nothing, a man who came from a mother and a father of mixed cultures and mixed societies, who came from a broken home to overcome all of that to become the leader in his class, at the Harvard Law Review, and an extraordinary success as a politician. How can they see us when they see us as having chosen this man as our president?
There can be no clearer way that we could say, that we could say that the United States could say, that we have changed, than by electing this man. There is no way we could more clearly move on toward peace than this. He represents the very best of who we are, the best of character, of integrity and ideals. And someone who opposed the war from the start.
I watched MSNBC and CNN commentators try to explain Obama's success in some states by saying the state had a large African American population. It bothered me because I knew there was little correlation between the states won by Obama and the size of each state's AA population.
So, I researched online at the US Census for actual stats on each state's AA population and compared them to the percentage of the vote won by Obama in each of these states.
The list below shows each state won by Obama so far, the percentage by which he won, together with each state's African American population percentage for comparison.
For example: Obama won Idaho by 80% of the vote, where the AA population is only 0.7%
You may find this list useful in future conversations with others regarding Obama's success.
Feel free to copy and post it wherever you feel it's appropriate.
Population Data found at:http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/16000.htmlState Won By AA Population
Montana 57% 0.4%
Idaho 80% 0.7%
Vermont 60% 0.7%
N. Dakota 61% 0.8%
Maine 59% 0.8%
Wyoming 61% 0.9%
Utah 57% 1.0%
Oregon 59% 1.9%
Iowa 38% 2.5%
Hawaii 76% 2.5%
Washington 68% 3.6%Alaska 74% 3.7%Colorado 67% 4.1%Nebraska 68% 4.4%Minnesota 67% 4.5%Kansas 74% 6.0%
Wisconsin 58% 6.0%
Connecticut 51% 10.2%Missouri 49% 11.5%
Illinois 64% 15.0%Virginia 64% 19.9%
Delaware 53% 20.9%
N. Carolina 57% 21.7%
Alabama 56% 26.3%S. Carolina 55% 29.0%
Maryland 60% 29.5%
Georgia 66% 29.9%Louisiana 57% 31.7%
Mississippi 61% 37.0%
Wash. DC 75% 56.5%
