President Obama chose the social news site Reddit for his latest direct-to-voters online town hall Wednesday afternoon…The Reddit forum, or subreddit, went live at four minutes after the hour–and within 15 minutes had more than 2000 comments…
The site struggled to keep up with the sudden deluge of traffic, with the forum alternately crashing and being placed under read-only constraints.
Once things got going, Obama answered questions about internet freedom, an issue unsurprisingly close to the hearts of Redditors.
“We will fight hard to make sure that the internet remains the open forum for everybody – from those who are expressing an idea to those to want to start a business…”
He railed against dark money and anonymous election donations:
“Money has always been a factor in politics, but we are seeing something new in the no-holds barred flow of seven and eight figure checks, most undisclosed, into super-PACs; they fundamentally threaten to overwhelm the political process over the long run and drown out the voices of ordinary citizens. We need to start with passing the Disclose Act that is already written and been sponsored in Congress – to at least force disclosure of who is giving to who. We should also pass legislation prohibiting the bundling of campaign contributions from lobbyists.”
“Over the longer term, I think we need to seriously consider mobilizing a constitutional amendment process to overturn Citizens United (assuming the Supreme Court doesn’t revisit it). Even if the amendment process falls short, it can shine a spotlight on the super-PAC phenomenon and help apply pressure for change.”
I heard about this about 15 minutes before it started and knew damned well he’d crash the servers.
Read through the whole article and draw your own conclusions.
He’s fantastically popular with his technically savvy supporters.
Teapublican camp is rumored to be setting up shop at a Western Union.
Yeah, they’re all idiots like you
Can anyone tell me why there isn’t a report button around here? Pedro what makes you think comments like this are okay?
Because it goes to the point, that’s why. You have to be new, otherwise you wouldn’t have made that question,
Calling someone an idiot only makes a statement about yourself.
You’re right. I should find a PC version for idiot.
Is IQ & reality challenged ok with you?
You could always talk about ideas rather than make personal attacks.
Way past that with Dullass. You know why? because he’s an idiot and idiots can’t understand ideas. Have you ever read a dictionary?
id·i·ot/ˈidēət/
Noun:
1. A stupid person.
2. A mentally handicapped person
Maybe you should start a campaign to ban such awful, non PC words from the dictionary. Nowadays you have a pretty good chance of succeeding.
Money has always been a factor in politics, but we are seeing something new in the no-holds barred flow of seven and eight figure checks, most undisclosed, into super-PACs; they fundamentally threaten to overwhelm the political process over the long run and drown out the voices of ordinary citizens.
I am not sure what an ordinary citizen is exactly, but I agree that undisclosed contributions from corporate persons is a corruption of the political process. The Supreme Court has long recognized that the rights of metaphysical corporate persons supersede the rights of individuals, a direct abrogation of Constitutional principles.
I would rather see a Constitutional amendment that declares human beings as individuals are the only constituents of human rights as defined by the Constitution.
Crap, he accepted millions of overseas donations under fraudulant names…opted out of campaign finance constraints in 2008 because it was to his benefit…doesn’t care if unions run pacs, only non union corporations.
Corporations are people, Apple Corporation is people cooperating to build computers….not a non human entity.
Take people out of corporations and they die.
Obama wants the disclose act passed so he can threaten all his political enemies with the IRS…which he already is doing when the donors are known.
We won’t have a free country if this Manchurian candidate wins re-election.
A corporation is a business entity that is operated by people.
A corporation is not a person. You fail to understand the distinction.
The preamble of the Constitution begins with “We The People,” not “We The Corporations” or We The Special Interests.”
So organized people don’t have rights….what are unions?
When a corporation is fined, all the people who own it pay….and those directly involved may go to jail…
The Supreme Court is right, corporations are people….
Except when you want to subvert the right of people to freely associate and co-operate to accomplish an end….
When you are a demoncrat, which like its father the Devil, slanders people and their rights, to suppress them…
Evil f*cks.
I will lobby Obama is made an example of, every crime should be paid for…to the fullest extent of the law…because of his betrayal of our trust.
He pretended to be the exact opposite of what he is, an enemy of the state.
Again you fail to understand a simple concept.
Personhood is a legal fiction invented to create a person where none existed, whether it applies to corporations, unions, or any other collective interest.
I don’t know how to make the distinction any simpler.
A corporation (or union, or church, or any other collective interest) is not a person. I am a person.
What part of that simple statement confuses you?
So refund all the monies corporations were fined, that came out of people’s pockets.
BE consistent with your chameleon like principles, which somehow apply only when corporations want a voice, because the people making up the corporation feel threatened.
A corporation will only be a person when one of them gets shot dead in a drive-by because the city can’t afford enough police due to all the tax breaks given to that corporation.
Regardless of what Obama has done in the past or what his motivations are, campaign finance reform and more accountability would be a very good thing. If you don’t like Obama fine, but anyone who doesn’t think we need more transparency is not paying attention.
The cynic in me thinks Obama is only bringing this up because his competition has way more money than he does.
Obama has spent more so he has less money left but both he and Romney raised about the same amount of money.
http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/campaign-finance
Not that that makes it okay. They both are probably beholden to various financial backers though. But it’s good to see that Obama recognizes there is a problem.
I would be shocked if he did something about it though. :/ I am a cynic.
“I am a cynic too.” I meant.
Yawn
I thought the White House was full of techno-experts. Why didn’t they build their own system for town halls? What are we paying them for?
And why (I know why, but still) is Obama giving out free advertising to Reddit?
Stay home on election day.
Really? these are the things that seem important to you right now? Communication is a good thing any way we can accomplish it as long as that is truly the goal. We seriously need to put away the party bullshit and start demanding serious discourse rather than this high school one-upmanship that passes for politics these days. Part of me wants to believe We The People couldn’t possibly be taking this shit seriously. The other part of knows the sickening truth. Every day goes by I get more and more convinced that we deserve everything that’s coming.
I haven’t seem much to suggest the WH has any real depth of skills when it comes to things electronic. Their upgraded site suggests they are rubes easily ripped off or maybe they didn’t care that they paid several times what it should have costs. Hard to tell with this group.
Citizens United, a corporation of people who made the documentary that might very well inspire disillusioned Democrats and independents to vote Republican this year…
Hence its evil in Obama’s eyes, and the IRS must investigate and bankrupt with endless prosecution any who donated.
= His desire for the Disclose Act.
So perhaps it was his tech savvy followers that disappeared videos of minorities from NBC News? They put in Condi Rice, but no Susana Martinez, no Prez of Puerto Rico.
Evil f*ck, I called him a Manchurian candidate, actually he works for himself, implementing the dream of his anti-colonialist father of a world where America and Americans of every sort are made to pay for their alleged (by communists) crimes against the third world…
So our country is being taken down by this idiot who uncritically accepted all the marxist crap about America and its freedoms.
I will lobby we forgive none of his crimes, no pardon for Barrack Hussein Obama, mmm mmm mmm!
His father is more likely to be Frank Davis than Barack Obama Sr. He even wrote a poem called Pop about the card carrying member of the Communist Party.
Is Obama the first President whose mother’s nude pictures are available?
Are you trying to make a point? All I see is slander. If you think he is a communist then post why. Name calling without backing up what your saying destroys your credibility. No one will take you seriously.
Barack Obama was a member of the socialist New Party in the mid 90s, 35 years old at the time.
http://keywiki.org/index.php/Barack_Obama_and_the_New_Party/Progressive_Chicago
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/jamie-glazov/young-obama%E2%80%99s-dreams-of-a-communist-revolution-in-america/
No evidence in his book or anywhere else, that he has broken from this Marxist past or why. It is one thing to be a know-nothing on the outside, who is not aware of the Socialism he is signing up for. But to be a true believer, then you either are still a true believer, or you broke from it.
Hrmm, well thank you for providing some links. I am not sure these websites are very credible sources though.
I spent about 10 minutes reading up on the New Party on a few other websites and I couldn’t find anything tieing them to socialism. They did endorse Obama when he ran for senate in 1996 but he apparently did not solicit this endorsement nor was he ever a member of the party. Even if this were not the case and Obama were a member, I don’t see anything really damning. They seemed to be interested in electoral fusion (campaign reform allowing a candidate to run under multiple parties). When this didn’t catch on the party dissolved. They were not socialists.
And you cant say the president has not broken from “his Marxist past” without backing that up. Point me to something that shows Obama is/was a Marxist.
You seem to be not only new to the blog but also born yesterday. Is the only way you don’t know about Obamas’ old pals & acquaintances.
One of the problems is that the media spent more time researching the third party status of Sarah Palin’s husband than Barack Obama. They just resorted to saying that Ben Smith concluded there was nothing to it, so that’s that. Obama was a member, and it was Socialist.
http://nationalreview.com/articles/302031/obamas-third-party-history-stanley-kurtz
Obama’s socialist ties are known, but the media doesn’t want to talk about them. His own book, cowritten by William Ayers, says that “I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets.”
That article makes claims that contradict every other credible source I can find. And it doesn’t cite it’s own sources. You need something more credible than this if you want to convince me.
If you are carefully seeking out friendships with Marxist professors, then what does that say about you?
It could say a lot of things, but before we go there you need to establish that Obama sought out Marxist professors as fact. Where is the evidence for this?
>That article makes claims that contradict every other credible source I can find.
Hence the term Bensmithing.
http://breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/06/07/Art-Bensmithing-Obama-New-Party
The part of seeking out Marxist professors was a quote from Obama’s book. Now the book I believe was ghostwritten by Ayers, so it can’t be taken literally. Of course that doesn’t hurt the point I am making, as Ayers is himself a radical Weatherman.
Your link does not work.
And how about the quote your talking about from Obama’s biography?
Yup, born yesterday. You still can’t see because the light hurts your eyes.
Asking for the quote Newformatsux referred to means I was born yesterday? How does that work?
I put the quote from the book above.
The link doesn’t work because it appears to be the only site that requires the www
which breaks the link on this site.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/06/07/Art-Bensmithing-Obama-New-Party
On a side topic, Spock from the new Star Trek tweeted that Eastwood hasn’t seen The Newsroom. As you apparently watch that show, could you explain what that show has to do with Clint’s performance?
When corporations like the banks, that caused a depression and then got bailed out by Bush, start going to jail, then I will agree that they should have the same rights as people.
Who do prosecutors go after when corporations are involved in illegal activities…robots?
Corporations like Citizens United (who cooperated) to produce an anti Obama film have rights, just like Unions and other corporations whom Obama loves.
They pay him.
You fail to understand that prosecutors do not go after the officers of a corporation unless the officers as individuals are doing something illegal.
The corporation as an entity is viewed by the legal system as a “metaphysical person” which is not a human being in fact.
I would expect a simple mind to understand a simple concept.
One of the reasons to create a corporation is to shield yourself from potential liability if things go wrong.
And by shielding yourself from liability, you are not accountable for your actions like a human being type of person.
You get it.
A corporation does indeed have the same rights as people.
Corporate Personhood is easy to understand but rarely understood.
The subject deserves study by every citizen that believes the Constitution was ratified to protect the human rights of individuals, not collective interests that are viewed incorrectly as individuals.
Corporate Personhood
Have fun discovering why your rights as an individual have been usurped by collective rights that were never intended to be ensured by the Fourteenth Amendment.
There’s this thing called Amazon EC2
When you see a storm coming you provision additional servers, when you’re done you shut them down.
They’ve got enough capacity to handle thousands of “Town Halls” at the same time.
This storm was well planned in advance, so there’s no reason why Reddit couldn’t handle the extra traffic.
EC2 can even be configured to kick in automatically when certain conditions are met (say traffic overload?)
“human beings are divided into the few who want to rule and the many who do not care to rule themselves but do not want to be ruled by others either. Then those who want to rule must conceal their rule from the many they rule if they wish to succeed. How can they do this? Machiavelli went about conceiving a “new mode of ruling,” a hidden government that puts the people “under a dominion they do not see.” Government is hidden when it appears not to be imposed on you from above but when it comes from you, when it is self-imposed.”
Is this a political roundup?
Should those with negative comments expect a mysterious knock at their door in the middle of the night?
There is some evidence that business people that contribute to those who oppose Obama can expect the IRS to go through their books with a fine toothed comb, etc. Did Obama personally authorize it? Maybe not but his staff is highly partisan and a lot them seem to be willing to do things I suspect they will eventually have to explain to a judge or at least they should.
Yes, please provide your address and times of availability. We can be at your house between the hours of 7:00 am and 3:00 pm Monday through Thursday. Please be presoaked and ready for electro-shock therapy. Waterboarding is optional. Your papers will be inspected for completness and accuracy. And remember, resistance is futile.
Have a wonderful day.
Obama in 2008 outspends McCain 750 million to 250 million, opts out of public financing and says Yes We Can!
In 2012, he plans to raise one billion dollars, but it doesn’t work out, still outraises Mitt Romney, but as with his governance wastes all the money he spent, finding himself with a huge deficit. So he then complains about how his rival is using big money to outspend him!
What are you talking about? He didn’t mention Romney. Someone asked him how he feels about money in politics and he said he felt like it was a corrupting influence that could cause problems in the long term.
But it wasn’t about Romney or being outspent. It’s about corruption in politics. It is about the flaws of the current system, not either candidate.
And not that it is really relevant, but it looks to me like both campaigns raised about the same amount of money.
http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/campaign-finance
He has a deficit of cash on hand. I wrote that he outraised Romney, but he was expecting to outraise him by much much more, to be able to bury him with ads.
An incumbent is always at the advantage if he limits the campaign spending of others, whether it be corporate or individual.
Can anyone explain the purpose of posts like this?
Filler material between “Caption This Photo” posts?
Never mind. The editors have edited out the posts I was responding to. Some random person comes in with broken English about how this is a wonderful post, and I like computers or something like that.
Those people almost always have hot linked names – they’re just spam. Perhaps some sort of SEO page ranking scam?
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/08/30/why-perfume-could-be-making-depressed/?intcmp=features
Interesting and not political article about something Adam used to fuss about but how we are supposed to actually take their advice in the real world is harder to see.
Nice to see all you Big Enders and Little Enders are still squabbling about which rich peckerhead to vote for. While the Republic goes down the toilet.
My favorite question posed to Obama at the town hall “meeting”:
“Would you rather fight 100 duck-sized horses or 1 horse-sized duck?”
Ha ha.
I’d have to go with the duck-horse. I would saddle it and I would ride it.
Funny, I think Obama said the same thing.
As long as Money is part of politics it will be corrupt. As much as I hate the corporate greed that pays into politics, that is part of having the system we have. Anonymity is very important!! Anonymity has always been integral in replacing whatever corrupt power structure is in place…..
If you want politics to be truly fair and open, don’t allow private donations at all. If you really want donations, treat it like tip sharing, all $ goes into one pot and all participants get an equal share. Maybe then our politicians would have to stand on their ideas/solutions/experience/ability to get things done and quit trying to win by manipulating everybody.
anti-obama-signs-ignite-controversy-somewhere-in-kenya-a-village-is-missing-its-idiot
http://theblaze.com/stories/anti-obama-signs-ignite-controversy-somewhere-in-kenya-a-village-is-missing-its-idiot/
Not surprised. Everything else he touches has crashed too.
FTW