Slashdot Mirror
House Websites Jammed After Obama Debt Speech
Hugh Pickens writes "CNN reports that House switchboards have been flooded by phone calls — nearly twice the normal average — and hit with an unusual volume of constituent e-mails as voters voice their concern over the worsening debt-ceiling crisis. At least 104 of 279 congressional websites surveyed by CNN were down or had experienced slow connections on Tuesday, after President Obama's speech Monday night. In his address to the nation, Obama called on the American people to 'make your voice heard.' House Speaker John Boehner's website responded with a 'Server Too Busy' or 'Bad Request (Invalid Hostname)' message during parts of the day. His switchboard reported as many as 150-300 callers on hold, wanting to leave their thoughts for the speaker. House Chief Administrative Officer spokesman Dan Weiser said that lawmakers' websites and phone lines began to sag with the traffic on Monday night. 'Last night we had some website problems. ... There was some websites that were hosted by outside vendors that had slowness, sluggishness, people had trouble getting in. And that was rectified early this morning.'"
This is how democracy works, FYI. It isn't extortion, it is how that pesky legislative process works. Troubling, I know.
to the Republican assholes. They just don't give a fuck. They are power-hungry whores who will do anything to damage the President, including fuck up the global economy.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
The Faux News/Tea Partier "bury brigade" has been running through Slashdot lately, if you didn't notice. I just watched in the last hour as every insightful, factually supported comment that contradicted them got downmodded 2-3 points while every copypaste of their idiotic rants somehow got upmodded the same amount.
Someone's playing the modpoint lottery with a ton of fake accounts to pull this off. I counted roughly 300 points worth of modding in that short time frame. Slashdot never sees that kind of behavior in normal modding. The last time I saw this it was when the Ron Paulbots were out in force.
Genuinely unbiased (on this issue) foreigner (to US) here.
I also noticed the suspicious modding down. In my country this is normal (EU - east Europe). Everyone on public forums knows that there are paid people who promote political ideas and try to suppress the other views. Some of our newspapers introduced simplified modding options recently and they are all abused left right and center. I would be very surprised if such popular and yes, influential site as /. is not targeted by such people.
Last week I got for the first time 15 modpoints and I spent half of them trying to fix what looked like "mob-downmodding" in a couple of discussions. I hope you and I are wrong but I am not holding my breath.