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Open For Questions, or: Can Obama Has Cheeseburger
Gosling
Looking Up Soccer In Mongolia Right Now, ProbablyWatertown, WIRegistered User regular
Looking Up Soccer In Mongolia Right Now, ProbablyWatertown, WIRegistered User regular
So change.gov, Obama's transition website, has given us something called Open For Questions. The premise is, you go here and ask any question you want. Visitors will vote the questions up or down, and after a few days Obama takes the high scorers and answers those questions. Then the slate is wiped clean for the next round (we're currently in the second go-around).
And before you ask, in the first round someone did attempt to ask if Obama would give us up, let us down, run around and desert us.
For the record, here's what's made it through in previous rounds.
Round 1
Round 2
Note your own questions, note other good questions, laugh at bad ones, debate the effectiveness of the exercise, etc.
UPDATE: There seems to be a trick to how to increase the odds that your question gets responded to. That is... get in first. The system they're using gives a hell of a boost to whatever questions are in the very first batch. So what we're going to do is compile a communal pool of questions and then the next time Open For Questions pops up, the first person that sees it comes here, grabs all the questions and fires them off on behalf of the group.
If you're that person, here's the pool:
In the event that Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, for whatever reason, would have to leave their leadership positions in Congress, who would you favor as their replacements?
How, if at all, did Tom Perrelli's stance on Net Neutrality affect your decision to appoint him to associate Attorney General, and do you expect his stance to affect related cases?
And before you ask, in the first round someone did attempt to ask if Obama would give us up, let us down, run around and desert us.
For the record, here's what's made it through in previous rounds.
Round 1
Round 2
Note your own questions, note other good questions, laugh at bad ones, debate the effectiveness of the exercise, etc.
UPDATE: There seems to be a trick to how to increase the odds that your question gets responded to. That is... get in first. The system they're using gives a hell of a boost to whatever questions are in the very first batch. So what we're going to do is compile a communal pool of questions and then the next time Open For Questions pops up, the first person that sees it comes here, grabs all the questions and fires them off on behalf of the group.
If you're that person, here's the pool:
In the event that Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, for whatever reason, would have to leave their leadership positions in Congress, who would you favor as their replacements?
How, if at all, did Tom Perrelli's stance on Net Neutrality affect your decision to appoint him to associate Attorney General, and do you expect his stance to affect related cases?
I have a new soccer blog The Minnow Tank. Reading it psychically kicks Sepp Blatter in the bean bag.
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It is apparently a question about the economy.
Shocked.
Where's Squirminator?
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Also:
Edit: I don't really see why anybody would expect anything different.
If you look through the list of questions in 'Additional Issues', you will see two things brought up over and over:
*Pressing Obama for details on the marijuana thing
*Raking him over the coals for the Rick Warren thing
And as you make your way towards the back of the list, you start to see things like telling the truth about aliens, abolishing the penny, and bitching that Obama doesn't REALLY want questions because there's a 250 character limit. And of course:
At the very, very back, in dead last:
Here I am!
Now let's have a look at thi--... oh. Oh God.
I doubt he has the votes in congress, he doubts he has the votes in congress. If nothing gets rammed through the first 90 days, I would not worry about it unless there is a major "incident" that could be twisted to move public opinion.
I would not be surprised if the rumors of a ban were leaked to stimulate the economy through a bit of panic buying.
Is Obama anti gun? Yes. Is he Anti CCW? Yes. Would he vote to disarm American citizens? Yes.
It would also end up being political suicide for the party, the Democrats know it. He has bigger issues to deal with honestly. As such it is not surprising a question about guns is on the bottom, everyone should know his position by now.
I honestly don't expect Obama to do much of anything with guns now that the Supreme Court has clarified the individual right issue. There simply isn't much to do on the federal level. I guess he could go back and try and reinstate the asinine AWB but he strikes me as too practical to suck the far left's cock like that.
Agreed. He has bigger things to deal with.
No matter what kind of effects the actual answers will have, it's at least refreshing to have a politician willing to listen to their constituents. In other words, it can only be a positive (for me, because I realize if a poorly-worded answer slips through he could be crucified).
Edit: Something that helps is that the mainstream still largely ignores and is afraid of the internet, so any accident probably won't spill around too much.
From change.gov:
If you're on the right then cheer if they use capital to pass it, if you're on the left then weep that they use capital to pass it. It is such a stupid piece of shit legislation solely designed to "feel good" about.
I almost shot him myself.
IOS Game Center ID: Isotope-X
IOS Game Center ID: Isotope-X
This is the greatest question ever. It's insightful, and it leaves a lot of room for Obama to give us an honest answer across a multitude of topics as opposed to sticking to the same tired old talking points.
A++ would read again
President Elect Barrack Obama
Not that I expect anything different given the situation or political landscape, but it's always a same to see a horrendous policy kept in place do to simple inertia and fear of looking weak on crime.
We can all be disappointed by that, however much we can understand the reasons behind the move.
that's terrible.
Namely, no matter how many questions get asked or how well-made they are, an insurmountable advantage is given to whatever gets asked first. Early on, they're the only ones up. They score quick points. As more get asked, there's a smaller chance of any one question getting voted on, and so there's a reduced chance to overtake. In addition, the top 10 per category are right there for all to see, especially the one in front, and so they get additional votes just from people seeing them, and the lead builds up and builds up and there's really no way to break the cycle. I've noticed not a single question that was leading when I first got wind of Round 2- not a one- has since fallen off the lead.
So that needs to be fixed somehow in future rounds, to give a fair chance to questions that get in later in the process.
I think the only way to fix that would be to separate the submitting and voting times.
"Well, I was hoping to answer a question about DADT or green energy investments, but apparently everyone wants me to tell them that I'm still not legalizing marijuana."
Edit: Of course, that doesn't completely solve the initial problem you mentioned but I'm sure it helps mitigate it.
STAGE 1: Ask whatever you want. Make it possible to see the questions already asked but don't allow voting. Maybe ask people to hold off on asking a particular question if they already see it asked by someone else. Still allow for a lot of nuance on particular topics, but if someone's already asked 'How could you invite Rick Warren?', you don't need to ask it again.
STAGE 2: Voting. You only get to vote on the questions that pop up for you. You can see the standings, but even if you like the one in the lead, you don't get to vote on it unless it randomly pops up for you. That keeps everyone at as equal a sample size as possible and everyone has a fair shot.
It would probably be practical in the grand scheme, but individuals would hate it because they'd want to vote for the best question in their opinion instead of making do with the questions randomly assigned to them. Of course, maybe we just need to say "QQ" to them.
"Would you be receptive to enacting California vehicle emissions standards nationwide?" sits in 19th position. 1,143 people like the question, 148 people do not.
"What is your stance on mountaintop removal, and if you are against it, how do you reconcile it with your stance on clean coal?" sits in 76th place in that category. 444 people like the question, 92 people do not.
"By 2020, by what percentage do you think America can reduce its carbon emissions?" sits in 188th position. 246 people like the question, 93 people do not.
I also asked a question about the National Interstate Popular Vote Compact, but I asked it later than the others and thus it only got 9 votes (3 likes, 6 dislikes).
No way in hell it's going to be found in the field of thousands of others. Though the tax folks in the economics section are good for a laugh. It's unconstitutional, you know.
Also, it appears that in the cases of high scorers that have already been addressed at some other time, they'll just point you to the previous answer and move on to something that hasn't been asked yet. (This means Obama's not going to be elaborating on the marijuana issue.)
The most interesting question was addressed last, it came from thaddeus in Lansing, MI:
"Is the new administration going to get rid of the 'don't ask don't tell' policy"
Gibbs: "Thaddeus, you don't hear politicians give a one word answer much... but it's 'yes'."