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Obama Launches Change.gov
mallumax writes "Obama has launched Change.gov. According to the site 'Change.gov provides resources to better understand the transition process and the decisions being made as part of it. It also offers an opportunity to be heard about the challenges our country faces and your ideas for tackling them. The Obama Administration will reflect an essential lesson from the success of the Obama campaign: that people united around a common purpose can achieve great things.' The site is extensive and contains Obama's agenda for economy and education among many others. They first define the problem and then lay out the plan. Everything is in simple English without a trace of Washington-speak. The site also has details about the transition. According to many sources, Obama's transition efforts started months ago. The copyright for the content is held by 'Obama-Biden Transition Project, a 501c(4) organization'."
I know this is probably gonna get me marked down from some of Obama's more, ehm, "faithful"--and I'm not excusing anything past politicians have done, in either party, oh no--but this seems too much like propaganda. "Ministry of Change", heh.
It also seems like he's unveiling things he didn't talk about that much:
The Obama Administration will call on Americans to serve in order to meet the nationâ(TM)s challenges. President-Elect Obama will expand national service programs like AmeriCorps and Peace Corps and will create a new Classroom Corps to help teachers in underserved schools, as well as a new Health Corps, Clean Energy Corps, and Veterans Corps. Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year. Obama will encourage retiring Americans to serve by improving programs available for individuals over age 55, while at the same time promoting youth programs such as Youth Build and Head Start.
Mandatory community service? Great, let's send a bunch of unmotivated kids to do stupid work. Hell, that kind of shit would have been a nightmare for me at that age when I had massive social anxiety and was extremely uncomfortable in such situations.
Of course, people will come out of the woodwork to say how because it's something that people "should" do (because helping people IS nice, after all...) that Obama should MAKE you do it. Please, someone explain to me how you justify that leap.
How the hell did they get a .gov domain considering that they aren't even in power yet? And even if they were, is this the kind of stuff .gov was created for?
This is the first installment of the government run media machine and how they will humor your requests http://www.change.gov/page/s/yourvision
"A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers." Hayek
...now we'll see if we can get him to change his policy on Nuclear Power (a necessity for cleaner power), pay more attention to what the AMA has to say on insurance, convince him not to raise taxes in the middle of an economic crisis*, and plead with him to leave Griffin as head of NASA and keep him properly funded. Anything I'm missing?
While I'm being a little bit snarky, I think it's great that Obama has this outlet to let our voices be heard. I look forward to seeing if he listens. :-)
* The $250,000 bit doesn't matter. What's more concerning is when Bush's existing tax breaks expire. When Hoover raised taxes in 1932, it caused a complete economic collapse of an already precarious situation.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I've been a proponent for blogs for our elected offices for a while now. I don't think forums would work this term, though. Given how racist and irrational a large percentage of our population is, it will take about 2 seconds for such a forum for Obama to devolve into uselessness, even with heavy moderation. (And then, once you throw moderation into things, you have to deal with charges that you're biasing the comments.)
I already liked the guy, but I'm honestly impressed by this. Any information from the government can be suspected as 'propaganda'. At least this site puts forth their agenda in an easy to navigate, plain English fashion.
As for the 'submit your own idea' functionality, I think it's a great move. Even if they ignore most/all of the suggestions, isn't that the same results as not asking for them in the first place? At worst this is a waste of time and at best it's a huge step forward in citizen understanding of and participation in government.
story summary: obama and team put up website communicating their efforts
take home message, pro obama: all the good i feel about an obama administration is taking effect
take home message, anti obama: all the bad i feel about an obama administration is taking effect
its just a communication tool folks. last i checked, communicating what you actually intend to do is never a bad thing
for those of you who don't like obama, think of it as your enemy telegraphing his punches, allowing you to prepare your rebutal, or providing a convenient record for you to accuse him of not doing what he promised to do. see? its good all around
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Unlike claims by McCain, I've never heard Obama say he was against nuclear power. At some point, he might have said he was against some specific form of power plant design or something, but never against the concept. McCain must have lept on that statement and blew it up to make it sound like Obama was against all forms of nuclear power.
In fact, I think the "no more nukes" people have become such a small base that it would be politically safe to revisit nuclear power. Do you know anybody who is really against it? Most people I know are really concerned more about how to dispose of the waste, not really concerned about the power plant itself.
But that all said, if you could develop power sources that are cheaper per megawatt then nuclear power, why bother? From what I understand, wind power is going down in price per megawatt that it is almost competitive with coal!
Actually, I do have a problem with it. One of the key force multipliers that the brass has identified is that a voluntary fighting force is many times more effective than a drafted force. One of the key issues in WWI and WWII is that our men were dying without ever firing their weapon.
It's not that they never had an opportunity, but rather that they were not professional soldiers. Being pressed into service with the fairly limited weapons training of the time did not train them to respond on instinct. They thought too much before pulling the trigger, and it got a lot of good men killed.
However, the draft was a necessity for WWI & II. It wasn't until Vietnam that the true horrors of a draft became apparent. How many good men died in a war where we never lost a battle but lost the war? How many vets came back to be spat on, beat up, and otherwise disowned by the American people? How many vets lost limbs or were crippled only to come back and find hatred rather than care?
The draft is an evil thing. Sometimes a necessary evil, but evil none the less. I can only hope that the US will never have to issue a draft again.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
No it hasn't. Bush & Co. spent years planning their assault on the constitution.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
A forum that citizens "talk back" to a presidential blog would be the largest community website on the planet. Could you imagine how many comments a single blog post would get? I bet a single blog post, especially if it was even slightly controversial, could easily generate thousands of comments. How would you design the UI to navigate 5,000 comments? How would you moderate it? How would you even design it? Nobody would interact on such a forum either, it would be one blog post and 5,000 direct replies. No threads, nobody talking to each other, nothing. Just 5,000 comments that all sound the same.
You can already see how this works by visiting the comments pages of any major national newspaper. Nobody reads other comments, and everybody replies directly to the article. You basically get pages of comments all talking to nobody.
Personally, I dont think it is possible to allow comments on a presidential blog. I dont even know if it would be productive. It would just be a mess.
i'm not a big fan of the bipartisan system--personally, i'm a Nader supporter--and i'm not too excited about having a former drug Czar as a VP. but how is this not news for nerds?
the president-elect has launched a website to lay out his plans for government reform (letting us know what we should expect in the coming term) in an accessible online format, and also to solicit thoughts and opinions about policy issues from ordinary citizens. AFAIK, this is the first time any U.S. president has embraced IT and the world wide web to such an extent as a means of engaging the citizenry in public discourse.
i honestly believe that the web is the key to realizing a true participatory democracy on a federal level in a country as big as the U.S., so this is certainly something to take notice of. this may be just the first small step, but at least it's a step in the right direction. along with the THOMAS system, which gives the public easy access to bills, legislation, and congressional voting records, the web is gradually increasing the level of transparency in government. perhaps in the near future online referendums can be conducted, if not for deferring policy making to the public, then at least to poll public opinion on key issues.
this kind of interactive digital democracy eliminates any ambiguity as to what the general mood of the public is, how the public feels about key issues, and what the will of the people is. it's vital for an online dialog to be opened between political officials and their constituency, especially with the growing gap/disconnect between the political elite and the daily realities of the common man. at least then politicians and can't plead ignorance.
As president, Barack Obama would repeal the Tiahrt Amendment, which restricts the ability of local law enforcement to access important gun trace information, and give police officers across the nation the tools they need to solve gun crimes and fight the illegal arms trade. Obama and Biden also favor commonsense measures that respect the Second Amendment rights of gun owners, while keeping guns away from children and from criminals who shouldn't have them. They support closing the gun show loophole and making guns in this country childproof. They also support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent, as such weapons belong on foreign battlefields and not on our streets.
Repeal the Tiahrt Amendment- This would be a very bad idea go read up on why the Tiahrt Amendment exists that information should remain unavailable to the public for privacy reasons if nothing else. Also the reasons given there are incorrect at best.
Making guns in this country childproof- Safe storage is a good idea, but I have yet to see a good safe storage law.
Making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent- This is very bad.
I prefer this guy because he is better than the alternative, but I knew this was coming and it concerns me.
Are you trying to tell us that the Draft (which existed in fits and starts from WW2 to Vietnam) was unconstitutional ? It may have been a good idea or a bad idea, but I do not think it was unlawful. Why ? Because involuntary national service in wartime does not count (at least to my legally untrained ears) as involuntary servitude or slavery.
And if the draft had been in place, I think this nonsense of a war in Iraq would have never started, and if it did, it would not have lasted this long. The only reason it has lasted this long is that most of the poor stiffs dying for you and me in the sands of Iraq have no career options back home (I am not talking about genuine volunteers, just the poor kids who use military service as a way to get out of the hell hole their otherwise gang and poverty infested lives are.).
In that sense, given how much we are going to need the military (Bush has after all started so many wildfires around the globe), it might not be a very bad idea to re-institute the draft - it will give us the manpower we need, and will keep future chicken hawk oil-thirsty traitors like Cheney from driving this country into wars it does not need to be involved in. It will make participation in our government also that much more personal as a matter. And boost voting percentages even more, making the government even more representative of the people than simply a few shrill interest groups (if you have done any stats, you know what I am talking about).
And yes, I could also be drafted.
The draft is slavery, period. In the case of some wars, like World War II, the evil "good" war, it's hard to argue against it because the U. S. was fighting cartoonish supervillains.
In the case of Vietnam, it caused rioting and nearly led to a revolution because people saw it for what it was.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
I had a long hard thought about this.
We have tons of fanatics anyway. So it's better they fanatically follow a reasonable man, that some religious loony.
And then we still have many reasonable people left. It's not as if there were only fanatics.
So in the end, while not perfect, it's at least a very good deal. Better than the old shit by far... :)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Except there is now an explicit Amendment to the Constitution outlawing slavery. See that is the correct way to change the law. If you want to allow the government to do things that the Constitution doesn't authorize, there is a system in place to change the Constitution.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Obama's going to take care of my Mortgage AND Gas!
These people actually voted and voted in large numbers. A black friend (no he wasn't African American. He was Jamaican) asked me what I thought about the first black president during the time they were showing all the celebrations. All I said is that anyone who voted for him (or against him) simply because of his skin color needs to be deported.
Vote for his policies, senate voting record, anything but race.
Then again I do hope that Obama gets up and gives a speech like Bill Cosby gave to the NAACP and this time people actually listen.
But then again I'm racist for thinking any of this, right?
I find it kind of shocking how a good portion of slashdotters don't care much for Obama. But what is more shocking, is that these same semi-intelligent people think they can predict the future. quit your shit talking, and wait 4 years until we know for certain how things are going to pan out. you're not fucking Nostradamus.
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
i grew up rural, and i live urban now. i shot shotguns in the swamp behind the house with my granddaddy, a mile from our nearest neighbor, at gamebird and targets. i understand the need for your own form of protection when the police are half an hour away
now, living in an urban environment, i see the other side of guns. guns are not only tools of virtue. they are frequently tools of mayhem. guns are not always in the hands of those who intend good, nor is there some magic wand which can tell who should or should not have a gun. such that in an urban environment, it makes sense to let the police be armed, and everyone else to have suppressed gun ownership, amongst common people. it simply cuts down on needless death
and, as a side issue: no, arming only the police is not a formula for fascism. in fact, it is those who appeal to visceral force, who appeal to the gun, who are more likely fodder for embryonic fascist movements, not the police. really, read your history. random guys in the country is not a protection from fascism, it is the soil in which fascism grows
back to the larger point: gon control is the approach to guns as it exists in europe. europe is mostly urban. meanwhile, the usa has mostly been rural throughout its history, but is shifting to majority urban in recent years. therefore, it is natural that attitudes towards guns will shift from a rural attitude to an urban attitude, and experience a watershed moment in the coming years against gun ownership
and its simply a rural versus urban dynamic. currently, there are people dying in urban centers for the sake of a rural legal approach to gun ownership. in the future, there will be people dying in rural areas for the sake of an urban approach to gun ownership. its the majority deciding the legal approach. and either rural, or urban folk, suffer for the benefit of the other. for those of you want to keep your guns, urban blood is on your hands. for those of you who wish to curtail guns, rural blood will be on your hands. simple as that really
personally it would be ideal if you could own a gun in the country, but not in the city. but this is nearly impossible to enforce
and finally, the second amendment referred to posses in the countryside against native americans and british and french colonial forces. its completely taken out of historical context in reference to modern gun ownership needs, really folks. i don't know why the second amendment is so depended upon as a some sort of supporter of your right to have guns. are you the minutemen? the second amendment does not support the concept you think it does
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Really, any president would have tapped the Internet too in their administration in the fashion Obama is managing.
I do not think that McCain would of had a website like this. Also, I do not give excuses to Clinton or Bush for not having this. Perhaps if Bush had cared what the people had thought then he wouldn't be so reviled.
Blacks voted 88% for Kerry, it's not -that- big of a shift, and a lot of it has to do with new voter registrations, as well - new voters were pretty consistently pro-Obama.
When encryption is outlawed, ?o'AZ-,++o+i++##4AoA+-/-C++bI+/.+~
You should always vote for the best person.
People with small minds vote based on race. So do your best to put them in the minority.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Welcome to Slashdot - where everyone is an armchair economist.
no, what you really have is the desire that you don't have to help the poor at all
why should you care, right?
well, poverty is the breeding ground for ideologies which are antagonistic to freedom. they also breed unorganized threats to your freedom, such as petty crime like theft and robbery
the poor who live near you, tax you, no matter what. in direct and financial ways, or in indirect, existential ways. you can choose the nature of how they tax you (government programs with explicit policies that you have control over as a citizen of a democracy), or choose to have the poor tax you with random criminal acts and ideological movements hostile to the notion of freedom
you are taxed by the poor in your world no matter what. you do not get to choose not to be taxed, because taxes on your freedom will play out in one way or another by the poor. you simply have a choice about the nature in which the poor tax you. government programs that benefit the poor and lift them out of poverty is the best form of taxation, the CHEAPEST form of taxation (financial or otherwise) before you
choose wisely
most of us understand the value of altruism, how it actually helps us out in the end, instinctively. others, like you, have to be dragged kicking and screaming to common sense
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I see a slightly different version of that paragraph on Obama's site (quoted above) That does not bode at all well. Looks like Obama is firmly on the side of the xxAAs.
One of the interesting things about political correctness is that even racists do not want to appear racist.
Instead, they are amateur sociologists who only care about the aspects of sociology that justify racial disparity.
They are also amateur historians who only care about Nazi and Confederate history.
There are also the amateur biologists who love to discuss genetic inferiority, and how that observant the 16th century slavers must have been to have cracked the genome 500 years ago...
And now, we have amateur political scientists who specialize in the unfairness of black people getting elected.
<sarcasm>It's amazing that so many of these people are self-taught. </sarcasm>
Anyone watch the news and see all the stories of the happy people who say that they are are finally on equal ground? The people saying that now they can be anything they want to be. Why they sudden change of mind? People were not thinking that way before? Those people who were thinking that because they are of a certain race (or not a different one) they are limited to do this small list of jobs are only defeating themselves. Why couldn't they think like that before the election? It is sad, truly sad. Those people were keeping themselves down and not realizing it. All the kids saying that now that can be anything even president, they always had that choice. They, like everyone else, has to work for it. Not everyone is born into huge piles of money and has everything they want handed to them.
Barack Obama and Joe Biden will enact a windfall profits tax on excessive oil company profits to give American families an immediate $1,000 emergency energy rebate to help families pay rising bills. This relief would be a down payment on the Obama-Biden long-term plan to provide middle-class families with at least $1,000 per year in permanent tax relief.
Because it's so wrong to make "excessive...profits". Speaking of which, who defines "excessive"? Will companies now have to look at ways to reduce their incoming, so that they don't make "too much" money? /that's/ gonna help the economy in the long run. Oh, hey, by the way, who funds the permanent tax relief, since this is only a 'down payment'?
Everything not expressly allowed for our government to do in the constitution is forbidden. That's how it works, not the backwards interpretation people usually try to claim.
The fact is, that's not how it works, nor how it has ever worked in our government, nor the interpretation the courts have ruled. This has nothing to do with college tuition; it's just the excuse libertarian wackaloons use to claim that everything the government does is illegal. Well, good luck with that. But constitutional law disagrees with you.
"Homophobic" is newspeak. Does it ever occur to you that people who oppose adoption by gays, for example, may do so on the basis of principles they hold and not irrational fear?
I think of ancient Greece, which can hardly be considered a culture that discriminated against homosexuality, yet I know of no movement for gay marriage in ancient Greece. "Marriage" is a word that has meaning in our culture for a long time, having "gay marriage" is not giving equal rights, it is a radical redefining something that is considered one of the basic building blocks of society.
Everyone who opposes anything like this is labelled "homophobic" though. It's an attempt to eliminate discussion. "Islamaphobic" works the same way. Perhaps you would disagree with my position on adoption or gay marriage (neither of which I have given here because it isn't my point), but do you think it is possible that gay lobby groups could have a bad idea and that opposition to that idea could potentially be "sensible" rather than "homophobic".
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
"Homophobic" is newspeak. Does it ever occur to you that people who oppose adoption by gays, for example, may do so on the basis of principles they hold and not irrational fear?
Does it ever occur to you that some people's principles are what cause/create irrational fear? Or that people's irrational fears morph their principles?
Abaddon: An Xbox 360 Indie game
They've:
There's hope yet :)
-- Sig down
Where have you been? Our dear and glorious leader Eric Raymond has redefined hacker politics, and we're now all moderate-to-neoconservative. Some of us reject left-right politics altogether, like Eric. And Dr. Breen.
If you thought there was whining aplenty about how there are no conservatives here before the election, you haven't seen anything yet. Soon enough, the vast majority of comments will be complaints modded +5 about how no one's left who's brave enough to stand up against the liberal menace, and if so, they're invariably modded down.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
What the fuck are you talking about?
Allowing gays to marry does not "get rid" of marriage.
Furthermore, it was not until the revolutionary period that Marriage was predominantly about love. Prior to then it was purely political. To say that marriage hasn't changed for all of human civilization is flat out wrong.
Or do you still believe it should be illegal for blacks and whites to intermarry? Or for anyone to become divorced and remarry?
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
you are saying ignorance about computers means you are low-income? Bush was hardly low-income, and ignorant as hell. And just what did the tubes guy make a year? You sir, are the elitist prick.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
To me, being a conservative means that I want my government to adhere to the Constitution, not change it as they see fit. The people calling themselves conservatives these days are the same ones who gutted the fourth amendment, held without due process and tortured people, gave the executive branch the authority to declare martial law in case of economic emergency, and let's not get into war for oil or economic bailouts.
I wish these people would stop calling themselves conservative. I have a better name for them.
Criminals.
^..^
I'm not seeing how expanding the practice == "throwing it out".
I'm unaware of any procreative requirement for marriage. Those people don't generally have a problem with people getting married who are infertile due to age or illness, or who simply don't want children. I also fail to see how allowing homosexual couples to marry interferes with heterosexual couples carrying on as they always have.
Since there's no rational argument to support those positions, it kind of does mean that. Some of them reacting to a "yuck" factor. They think that homosexual behavior is gross, and they think that they will somehow prevent it by stigmatizing it. Others believe that their chosen religion forbids it and that they should act to stop others from doing it, regardless of whether the homosexuals in question are part of their religious group or not. The weird part is, nobody is expecting them, the gay-marriage opponents, to actually engage in this behavior, they're fixating on something other people do that they don't ever have to take part in themselves.
I strongly disagree. I've yet to hear any valid reasons to be against gay marriage. If you don't want to marry someone of the same sex, don't. But why stick your nose into someone else's personal life where you're not welcome or wanted?
Further, a nearly %50 divorce rate does not suggest that marriage works "extremely well". Really, a 50-50 success rate? You may as well say flipping a coin works "extremely well" as a method of predicting the future.
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
> "Homophobic" is newspeak. Does it ever occur to you that people who oppose adoption by gays, for example, may do so on the basis of principles they hold and not irrational fear?
No, I don't think fear is the biggest factor here. Your post makes it perfectly clear that you people are striving to deny equal rights to members of society that are different, out of principle. You define yourself by conjuring up an in-group that is on a perpetual mission to prevent the emergence of other social structures, acting as though the mere existence of alternative lifestyles is a threat to your way of life. And I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume this is all religiously motivated.
It's not fear, it's a combination of hate and the desire to impose authoritarian values on others in an effort to hide your own deficiencies. Maybe there is also the thought that, by making the lives of others more miserabe, you won't feel so bad about your own anymore.
> I think of ancient Greece, which can hardly be considered a culture that discriminated against homosexuality, yet I know of no movement for gay marriage in ancient Greece.
We are not ancient Greece, and that's a good thing. While ancient greek culture was certainly a milestone that represented the best knowledge about how to build a free society at the time, I'm very glad that we have evolved much further from those days. Being in a civil union with a life partner is not merely a commercially driven endeavor to procreate anymore, it is a concept based on the modern notion that two people are bound together by love.
My opinion? Maybe it's not the government's place to define or grant the status of "marriage" at all. Maybe legally, there should instead be just one concept of "civil unions", defined to be any partnership of two people who want to spend their lives together. Let the churches have that word, "marriage" and do whatever they want with it.
On a personal note, I have many homosexual friends, but even if I did not, it would still make me deeply ashamed to see that people still refuse to stand up for the rights of others. Many seem to think not having a personal stake in something makes it OK to look the other way when human beings are treated with contempt and their rights are called into question. But we need to recognize that we have to keep fighting, not only for our own personal freedoms but also for the freedoms of every single person who is treated wrongly. And that includes not letting people like you get away with pseudo-reasonable arguments of intolerance and inequality.
I recognize the right of my friends to express their lifestyle by entering into a recognized union, and I know it should make no damn difference what gender they happen to have.
I horribly disagree with everything you said, up to your last point. Why the fuck does the government give marriage licenses in the first place? Everyone who wants to marry should be given a civil union, and then do whatever ceremony they want for their marriage. If the Catholic Church doesn't allow gay marriages, well you're fucked if you are a gay Catholic because it is their right under religious freedom.
The whole concept of government marriage licenses is bad.
Apparently, you have no clue how web development works. Some of your criticism is valid, but some of it is plain inane.
1) Single pixel gifs and google-analytics are how people on a budget track website usage. You want to roll your own code - pay for it.
2) IE6 and IE7 is so different that it requires different CSS. We're hoping that people abandon IE6 ASAP so that we don't have to support that abomination anymore.
3) Commented out banner rotation is the quick way to deal with requests that say "Put this in now! But it's only temporary, so be ready to roll it back at a moments notice."
4) Lorem ipsum is the standard placeholder anytime anyone does any design work. Why? Because it is guaranteed public domain.
5) 20 errors in HTML validation? That's it? You might work flawlessly, but sometimes, flawless is what keeps you from putting out a working site on time.
6) Nothing on the page that could have been done better in HTML 3.1? Of course. Now you go develop it. Test it. Roll it out, and make sure it is easy to update in the future.
Yeah, the site ain't perfect. But it seems to me that you never developed a site that had to come in on budget and on time. The flaws you pointed out are nothing more than what is done every day in web development shops around the world. You want to fix it? I'm sure the site would love to employ a perfectionist know-it-all with zero work experience.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.