I don't agree with President Obama on many things, but I am continually impressed by the innovation his administration is bringing to the online experience. George W. Bush's White House could not even back up their e-mails properly, but Barack Obama's White House is hosting an online town hall meeting where users both submit questions to the president and then vote on which ones he should address.
It may well be that we'll learn the questions actually get picked by Obama's handlers. But if this is real, it is really a great thing to try out.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
White House's "Online Town Meeting"
Posted by Nomad at 1:00 AM
Labels: digg, townhallmeeting, websites, whitehouse
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6 comments:
While the innovation is impressive the primary problem is the inherent dishonesty in the majority of his answers. So in the end it doesn't really matter what questions are picked, he's going to say what he wants anyway.
Is this fundamentally different from ANY politician? Reagan and the Bushes did their share of question dodging. You must be a WordFu master to achieve this level of political success.
The difference here is there is at least the POTENTIAL for an unscripted question to reach the top of the heap. That is something new.
He will only choose the questions he wants to answer and which will give him the opportunity to look the best.
@Optimist I did give the guy a chance, but it got buried under a 13 minute answer to a yes or no question. Sorry, but right now he's looking like the worst kind of politician to me.
I spent some time at the Obama website between the election and inauguration (when it was still change.gov). While all the shinny internet stuff and promises to take the suggestions of the people under advisement may be nice to see one thing that I noticed is that it sure did attract the wacky fringe. Some of the more popular questions during that time period dealt with legalizing marijuana and demands to disclose the truth about UFOs (as in tell us that they really exist and the bodies from Roswell are at Area 51). I ended up thinking that it was a PR stunt that had horribly as the crazy uncles grabbed the mic and tried to dominate the conversation.
Cynical? Heck yeah! It's the only safe way to be when politicians are involved.
The not-sharpest tool in the shed, that would be me, is not able to wrap my mind around how on God's green earth, does it cost $82M to CLOSE a Dick Cheney prison? 250 people there, held on no charges, owning no rights of due process, slapping the face of America's civil liberties position on the world stage. Give them tickets to whereever they were snatched from, forget about tying up the courts with the due process they were never allowed, send the attorneys that will be crawling all over them on an American General type retreat so that they will not worsen an untenable siuation. Pay the victims some money, MONEY that comes straight out of Halliburton's coffer.
I don't see 82M in this scenario. I also don't see 250 PISSED OFF people (deservedly so) to be any kind of danger to the United States of America. I'll bet if anyone truly investigated, they would find that most of these people are middle managers for companies that are a threat to Halliburton. Just a guess, but I'd almost put money on it.
Send these people home to their families. 250 people? Good grief, just assign some CIA (GHWB) pumpkins to follow them around. There must be plenty of them (the CIA agents), and they are about as useful as wet toilet paper anyway. I've read some of their reports, and those reports are similar to the script for a Three Stooges film
If I wanted to, I could cause large harm to large cities. So could a not-very-bright 10 year old, if a 5 year old helped him.
It is more important to behave with integrity, something this country hasn't been able to do for quite some time, than to remain the number one human rights violator in the world.
That is my opinion, but I think it is a valid and rational one.
The only other thing I can think of to do about it is to start a program called "Adopt a Human Abused at Guantanamo". Send these people home. I could do it for less than 18M in private planes.
Dick Cheney SHOULD do it voluntarily.
History is a tale, mostly false
About events, mostly unimportant
Brought about by rulers, mostly knaves
And soldiers, mostly fools.-Ambrose Bierce
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