Color me unmoved by the latest accusation of police state thuggery by the White House. The passage in question being from a White House web site:
There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.
Knowing that 99% of politics is trying to put just the right amount of polish on the turd, I can’t exactly claim to be surprised or outraged the right would make try to make hay out of this. But this looks to me like White House public relations people looking for information on what arguments the other side is using so they can come up with talking points. Also an act of polishing up the turd.
The way it’s being painted on some right leaning blogs, you’d think the White House is collecting a list of people, so they can send out the ambulance driving secret police to gurney the opposition into sufficiently socialized hospitals, where they’ll give them continuously lousy and insufficient care until they expire, or go mad. Sorry, not buying it.
Not that I have any love for Obama’s health care plans, and I certainly have no desire to help the White House come up with talking points to try to sell the public tickets on this health care Titanic, but this is far from an “all good Nazis turn in the enemies of the state” kind of thing, and it’s not serious to suggest that’s the case.
Is partisan politics really the proper use of the whitehouse.gov domain?
I don’t see the problem with it. The President is allowed to have an agenda, and use the bully pulpit to push it. I don’t see any reason why the White House web site can’t be part of the bully pulpit.
Call me “crazy” if you will, but I think an email address like flag@whitehouse.gov should be used to request an American flag that was actually flown over the White House, not for reporting citizens who disagree with the political agenda of the President.
I don’t think it’s crazy to think it’s an inappropriate use of the e-mail address, or even that it’s inappropriate for the White House to do things this way, but the implication is that it’s fascist, which I think it isn’t.
It’s not just the use of the email address that’s inappropriate, it’s the reporting of citizens for expressing opinions contrary to the talking points of the White House.
It might not be fascism, but fascist regimes have employed these sorts of procedures. But then again, we’ve seen similar measures in the US with the Alien & Sedition Acts.
How quickly we’ve come from “dissent is the highest form of patriotism” to ‘dissent will not be tolerated.’
The Dear Leader must think we’re all as dumb as the people that voted for him, as he feels free to change his story at will and flip-flop on every issue- then when you ask any questions about the constantly morphing narrative, you’re a “far-right” extremist or a “hater”- please.
This is like how all news videos show Obama pumping and stumping for Blago in 2003- then when he gets arrested, Obama says he had “nothing” to do with him. Same with Rezko.
Americans are quickly waking up to the fact that this president is habitually dishonest- can you imagine the towering arrogance of Obama, implying there’s something wrong with US for not swallowing all his self-serving BS as fast as he can shovel it on your plate? What a jerk-
I’ve already seen plenty enough to keep me from ever believing a word that comes out of the guy’s mouth… and that goes 2x for slimy Emanuel and Axelrod- all three of these crooks are used to getting away with murder in the Chicago Machine’s racketeering embrace, and they freak out and initiate vicious Alinskyite counter-attacks when they’re finally confronted.
Three-and-a-half years left of this debacle?
(puke sounds here)
Reporting for what? It’s not like they are going to come for you during the night. I could care less if Obama knows I oppose his health care plan. In fact, I’d be pleased if someday the White House felt the need to do damage control based on things I’m saying.
To bet upset by this, you have to assume ulterior motives, which I just don’t think are there. It’s not illegal to disagree with the President in our system. So who cares if the White House is looking for opposition viewpoints? I would be surprised if they weren’t doing it.
Ask Joe the Plumber what happens to you when you dare to question Dear Leader.
You get a sweet book deal?
And you’re targeted by the gentle loving hand of “opposition research.”
I don’t believe the government is incapable of mis-using that sort of information.
The administration has closed privately owned businesses based on politics. I’m not real interested to find out what else they can do to private citizens based on politics.
Maybe there needs to be more tinfoil in my hat than there is (namely, none), but I hardly consider it “crazy” to be concerned over a government asking its citizens to effectively “report” each other to the authorities. Ulterior motives are not required to assume malcious intent – this is a government we are talking about after all, and historical precedent concerning governments asking for citizens to inform on each other is not encouraging.
On the flip side, if you sincerely believe that every single piece of information that can be gleaned from those emails will not be stored and recorded somewhere, you are honestly fooling yourself. Do I know what that information will be used for? Nope. But that does not matter.
If the government wanted to embark on its own fact-finding mission, more power to it. If people wanted to forward emails and such, without this request from the White House, then fine. But the second a government starts asking citizens to “report” each other for exercising their rights, then we have the beginnings of a problem.
I absolutely agree with Sebastion, they’re clearly asking for people to send them the opposing side’s arguments, not asking for people to “report” people for arguing against them. It’s an entirely different thing.
I disagree, Sebastian. NOTHING this White House does is for anything other than expanding tyranny. They may not plan on putting dissenters into sufficiently socialized hospitals, but they already are launching a hate campaign against the citizens disagreeing with them, and I have no doubt that, given those citizens’ names, will terrorize them through tax audits, blackmail, and who knows what else.
Also, I hesitate to say this, since it would make me look like a kook, but with this regime you have to consider all possibilities, so here goes:
I’m not saying that Obama is planning a Tiananmen here. However, if the protests result in violence, I also suspect that Obama would not want to–in Rahm Emanuel’s words–want this crisis to go to waste. So, if an extra-rowdy protest DOES go Tiananmen, I think they probably have contingency plans to sweep up the people on this enemies’ list–at least until they’ve consolidated power, and quite possibly for good.
There, I said it. This guy has “I want to be Dear Leader” written all over him.
We were promised time to read the bills, no lobbyists, and transparency by pResident obomba.
I think that looks fishy.
300 million emails flagging his healthcare socialization czar’s video spin might be a good start.
who could have guessed you wouldn’t be shocked at censorship.
Maybe someone flags you for posting this and making folks aware of the censorship? You mind that?
I reported my 85-year old Republican mother to flag@whitehouse.gov and asked them to “straighten her out”. She said she was against euthanasia for the elderly in lieu of costly medical treatment.
“… Since we can’t keep track of them all …” logically means they are keeping of some. The camel’s nose is well inside the tent.
How is the White House “the authorities?” You mean the pimply intern they probably have sorting through e-mail in that box to separate the wheat from the chaff? The communications person who is going to look at the e-mail and come up with talking points?
And no, I don’t care if someone sends my opposition to Obama’s Health Care plan to the White House. Just as I would not mind someone sending to the Department of Interior that I really don’t like their policy on guns in national parks. In fact, I have basically done the same myself.
I just don’t see what the big deal is.
So Sebastian, what exactly would you see as a “big deal” and something finally to be concerned about? I mean, I don’t think they’re intending to track these e-mailers and random talkers down and drag them to re-education camps, but at the same time I find this sort of thing more than a bit disconcerting.
The big deal is that they will most likely use the information to create an enemies list, and will bully and harass the people on the list, and throw them in jail given the slightest excuse. That’s the most generous interpretation.
Yeah, because that’s standard operating procedure for the White House.
Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help.
For the love of Baal, people, the “them” in this sentence is the “rumors”, not the people sending them.
The White House is, quite rightly, trying to understand the opposition to its policies so that it knows how to address that opposition. That its policies are stupid and destructive is a separate issue. If we ever get a halfway decent President in office, I _hope_ he’s smart enough to ask his supporters what gun-banning propaganda they’re hearing, so that he can more effectively debunk it to Congress and to the people.
what good is reading the bill if you don’t have 2 lawyers to tell you what it means?
Can you even begin to imagine what the screams would have been if George HOLYFUCKINGSHITHESSATAN Bush has tried something like this?
Each and every one of us ALREADY has multiple ways to contact senators, representatives, AND el presidente to voice concerns and get “the facts” about this. If you don’t see that this is simply an attempt to direct the hate screechers to those websites/blogs/whatevers (even in casual conversation) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvR59BAQ9t4 to shut down the message and debate I feel sorry for you.
Look at the story about wanting to start an psychological examination to better tailor their message. They need the data to study.
propaganda!