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Change.gov Uses Google Moderator System
GMonkeyLouie writes "The website for President-elect Obama's transition team, Change.gov, has unveiled a section called Open for Questions, which lets users submit questions and vote them up or down, in an effort to let the collaborative mind produce the questions that are the most important to the American populace (or at least the web-savvy portion). The page is powered by Google Moderator. It was unveiled yesterday, and CNet reports that when they went to post last night, '159,890 had voted on 1,986 questions from 3,255 people.'"
1,986 questions from 3,255 people
Either a couple thousand people asked the exact same question or some questions are being "lost".
I skimmed through and saw _many_ duplicate questions, most involving the executive powers that have been abused.
Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
Where did you see that? All I saw was a bunch of questions posted on a website that had been community moderated.
I certainly didn't see any answers or any indication that the President Elect himself would be reading these questions. In fact, the page itself offers no indication that either Obama or Biden will even see these questions - just that the transition team will.
Plus they've been censoring any question touching on a certain Illinois governor, so it would appear that they're NOT listening to what people actually want to know about, but rather only what they want to talk about.
In other words, politics as usual, but with a Web 2.0 coat of paint. Yay.
Of course they don't:
Here. Also:
Now the cranks can see for themselves just how irrelevant they are.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Don't forget that they censored questions about Gov. Blagojevich.
Obama was of course caught lying about him ever meeting with Blagojevich.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hbJzaVo_Vcuv1HtB1U1eZDQOrQuQD94VL6S03
In that story Obama states that "I had no contact with the governor or his office, and so I was not aware of what was happening."
This story, which is only a month old and yet could only be found in the cache of yahoo says otherwise.
http://66.218.69.11/search/cache?ei=UTF-8&p=Director+of+Illinois+Dept.+of+Veterans'+Affairs+visits+Quincy&fr=yscpb&u=www.khqa.com/news/story.aspx%3Fid%3D219212&w=director+direct+illinois+il+dept+department+veterans+veteran's+affairs+affair+visits+visit+visiting+quincy&d=Ph3CN0fiR5wF&icp=1&.intl=us
From November 8.
"Obama met with Governor Rod Blagojevich earlier this week to discuss it." (refering to the open Senate seat).
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
That story you linked to says that people logging in to the site flagged the questions as inappropriate. The questions are still visible on the site.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
I believe that as part of the Presidential Transition Act of 2000 the incoming President is allowed access to the .gov TLD to set up a "transition" web portal. Calm down.
They should take a Greek political history course or something.
They don't even have to go back that far. They can simply read The Federalist Papers, specifically Number 10. The founders were nice enough, not only to give us a pretty swell constitution, but also a well thought out defense of the principals it rests upon.
But you really only need study the actual text of the constitution to find out what they thought about direct democracy: senators chosen by state legislators, the electoral college, and the conspicuous absence of a national vote on anything but amendments (and even then, only sometimes).
... and that's when the C.H.U.D.'s came at me.
Do you know why they removed the story? Because the claim was renounced yesterday by KHQA. Sorry to burst your bubble.
You need an account in order to vote, many people might just be lurking.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Both the Senate and House Democratic and Republican caucuses have .gov domains, and they are frankly partisan. There's nothing strange about it in the general case.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Some people care just like there are some people who insist the Earth is flat. The vast majority don't care about these questions because they see these people as crackpot, rightly or wrongly.
For example the questions about his birth certificate are vast and intricate. However simple facts have proven them wrong, yet with every bit of proof, the doubters come up with another assertion that proves false. But they keep trying not because there is a conspiracy to keep Obama's birth a secret, but these people will never accept that he was elected President no matter the proof.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
They should be left to be voted on. IF the people don't care about them, they don't get voted to the top.
Spelling and Grammar errors have been added to this post for your enjoyment
No, I mean affective - as in "tending to affect" (try learning to read a dictionary).
The online dictionaries, inlcuding Merriam-Webster, I just checked do not contain that meaning or anything close.
Correct me if I am wrong.
The winner-takes-all nature of the electoral college is not codified in the Constitution. What is, is that states elect electors in a manner of their choosing, and those electors then vote on the president. What makes this a winner-takes-all system is that most, if not all, states have mandated that the electors vote for the president that the people voted for.
What makes this a winner-takes-all system is that most, if not all, states have mandated that the electors vote for the president that the people voted for.
You're not wrong at all. Winner-take-all is not codified, but is an unintended consequence. The constitution only specifies that the state legislatures pick the electors. Its just tough to come up with a different system.
If the legislatures themselves picked the electors without consulting the people, we'd be in the same situation. The majority party in each state legislature would pick electors from the same party. Winner-take-all.
If the legislatures put the election of each elector to a general popular vote in each state, it would also yield the same results. As long as most people only vote for the electors who favor their preferred candidate, the entire state's slate of electors will vote as a bloc. Winner-take-all.
Just two states have implemented a non-winner-take-all approach, and that system is far from ideal. As long as the two party system is entrenched at the state level, the majority of states are unlikely to change the situation in favor of third parties. And as long as the President has to come from one of the two major parties, the state parties are unlikely to lose influence. Catch-22.
... and that's when the C.H.U.D.'s came at me.
There was a lot of debris and the hole was large. The truthers tend to show pictures that omit a large part of the debris, obscure the hole with smoke, show the field after cleanup had commenced, show awkward angles, etc. If you google around for actual pictures and testimony, you will see that there is a lot of debris strewn about, a lot of it was stuck inside the pentagon, and the hole was actually fairly large.
Like I said, truthers selectively seek evidence that seems to support their hypothesis and ignore that which does not.