I think you're arguing for the sake of arguing, so I won't spend much time going back and forth. But I'm sure someone somewhere is thinking really hard about making an iPhone game that takes advantage of this development (e.g. "Angry CIA").
[no that's not what I was thinking about; one of mine is along the line of American psyche as defined by the event, the pivot (optimism), and the potential impact on customer behavior]
There are lots of things that fascinate me but are not the type of thing I would expect to see on HN. This is one of them. It seems pretty damn clear to me that this is off-topic here, but whatever, the people have spoken and they decided they want to discuss it anyway so who am I to say anything.
But I will say that your attempts at justifying it seem rather flimsy.
Thought experiment: Could your argument also be applied to just about any other clearly-off-topic news story? Say, the Grizzlies beating the Spurs in the NBA playoffs?
Interesting? yep.
Someone making an iPhone game out of it? probably already done
Satisfies some hacker's intellectual curiosity? Sure. I'm still trying to figure out how they've put their team together and are gelling at the right time.
Belongs on HN? Nope.