another dose of politics for you

Lawrence Lessig, most well known for founding Creative Commons, and writing about free culture, has endorsed Obama, with a very well made and convincing video, here.

Also rocking my socks this week is a music video taken from the original source material of Obama speaking in New Hampshire on the night of the primaries.

If you haven't watched that speech, I highly recommend it, if it doesn't quicken your heartbeat a bit, I think you're probably dead inside.

I'm going to quote a bit of it here, that really stuck with me:

"We've been asked to pause for a reality check. We've been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope. But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.

For when we have faced down impossible odds, when we've been told we're not ready or that we shouldn't try or that we can't, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can.

It was the call of workers who organized, women who reached for the ballot, a president who chose the moon as our new frontier... Yes, we can, to opportunity and prosperity. Yes, we can heal this nation. Yes, we can repair this world. Yes, we can."

That's been a rallying call of mine, throughout my life, and to hear it repeated in such a positive and powerful way by a politician, it really gives me hope. As long as people have told me I can't do things, I've always responded that "Yes, I can." And it turns out that quite often, just believing that makes it possible. It's a truly American credo, one of belligerence and hope combined, one of confidence and exuberance and forward thinking. That was a damn fine speech.