MetaTalk posts tagged with politics

Putting some money where are tears are.

Theta States — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 07:45:06 -0800

Fundraising in the wake of the NY gay marriage vote There was much outrage and hurt feelings in the wake of gay marriage being voted down in New York yesterday. Many of us were asking for a place to donate money to purchase advertising. It might not be much, but I think a lot of us just wanted to do something. No one stepped up to act as treasurer, so I figured I would volunteer. The service ChipIn was mentioned in the thread, and that seems like decent service to use, as there are no fees, and the donation totals are visisble. If people feel it is a good idea, and there is still interest, I will set an account up there. In regards to accountability, I mostly just have my reputation to offer. I run a non-profit LGBTTQ movies series up in Canada (and other projects). Given the scope of our resources, I imagine that Google advertisements might be a worthwhile investment, but I will leave that up to the hivemind here to decide. I am only offering to act as treasurer. As someone who is quite removed from the districts, nay state, nay country at hand, I feel the specific decisions should come from those more directly affected.

Elevating the level of discourse

Autarky — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:41:18 -0800

Why are comments like this and this not deemed totally unacceptable?

Also On: PoliticalFilter

homunculus — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 11:39:54 -0800

Could PoliticalFilter be added to the list of "Also On:" services on the profile page?

Exciting Canadian politics? Did I hear that right?

rhinny — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 19:46:14 -0800

Vancouver NDP-Liberal coalition rally meetup? (Thursday Dec 4, 6pm, Canada Place) I'm wondering if any mefites want to join me at the pro-coalition rally on Thursday. Maybe beers afterwards as well?

Let's give this another go, Denver!

lonefrontranger — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 05:31:52 -0800

Last-Minute Denver meetup?! 7(ish) PM tonight, Baker District. Hi, a friend and I are planning to watch election returns at the Hornet Restaurant - 76 Broadway in Denver. Any MeFites available on short notice are welcome to join us! Basically it was so awesome watching the acceptance speech at the DNC here, we figured it might make a good place to also watch the returns. Hopefully it won't be packed, realistically it probably will... Look for a silver fixed gear parked outside and a short chick in a black hoodie and pigtails parked (hopefully somewhere near a TV) inside. Please feel free to email me at lonefrontranger [at] gmail [dot] com, if you have questions or need directions. (sorry can't use memail, work blocks it during the day).

mathowie on the vote!

dr. moot — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 08:07:05 -0800

mathowie's opinion on the nerd vote has been posted over at boingboing.fyi.

The First Great Canadian Biennial Metafilter Election Contest

angrybeaver — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 10:43:21 -0800

There is an election happening in the Great White North too. Post your election predictions here in this thread. Maximum Score: 308 points Deadline: When the first polls close in Newfoundland. ========== Date of prediction: 50 points 5 points per day prior to election. eg, Oct 13 = 5 points, Oct 4 = 50 points The day ends at midnight Pacific Standard Time. You may make as many predictions as you want, but only the latest one will be used. ========== 1. What will be the result of the 40th General Election? (50 points) Conservative Majority Conservative Minority Liberal Minority Liberal Majority Other ========== 2. Predict the order the 5 parties will finish, by popular vote (%). (5 points per correct line, 25 points total) 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. ========== 3. Predict the order the 5 parties will finish, by number of seats. (5 points per correct line, 25 points total) 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. ========== 4. How many seats will each party get? (start with 50 points, and lose one point for each seat incorrect) Bloc: Conservative: Green: Liberal: NDP: ========== 5. Will the following people win their riding? (10 points each, 50 points total) Elizabeth May, Green, Central Nova Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Papineau Donna Cadman, Conservative, Surrey North Garth Turner, Liberal, Halton David Orchard, Liberal, Desnethé-Missinippi-Churchill River ========== 6. Each question is worth 5 points, for a total of 50 points. A. What party will win the most seats in British Columbia? B. Will the Conservatives win every seat in Alberta? C. Who will win more seats in Saskatchewan, the NDP or the Liberals? D. Who will win more seats in Manitoba, the NDP or the Liberals? E. What party will win the most seats in Ontario? F. What party will win the most seats in Quebec? G. What party will win the most seats in New Brunswick? H. What party will win the most seats in Nova Scotia? I. What party will win the most seats in Prince Edward Island? J. Will the Conservatives be shut out of Newfoundland? ========== 7. Will the Greens win any seats? (8 points) ========== The prize will be a printed intaglio portrait of Sir Wilfred Laurier.

The 2008 MetaFilter election prediction contest

gsteff — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 18:45:24 -0800

If there's one thing MeFites love more than Sarah Palin discussions, it's smug senses of superiority. Get yours in the 2008 MetaFilter election prediction contest. To enter, predict 1) Which candidate will win each of the following ten states (which are currently the ten closest contests according to pollster.com). Colorado Florida Indiana Minnesota Missouri Nevada New Hampshire North Carolina Ohio Virginia 2) The winner of the popular vote and margin of victory as a percentage of the total vote, to the nearest tenth of a percent. For example, if you expect McCain to get 24.8%, Obama to get 24.9%, and Ron Paul to get 50.3%, you would say ~~wake up, sheeple~~ Ron Paul by 25.4%. The winner will be whoever gets the most states correct, with ties broken by whoever came closest to guessing the actual popular vote gap between the McCain and Obama (measured as the absolute value of the difference between your McCain - Obama value and the actual McCain - Obama value), and further ties broken by whoever posted first. The prize will be a $50 donation to the charity of the winner's choice. Entries are due by midnight EST Sunday evening (October 5th).

Must we get all political?

Autarky — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 19:25:39 -0800

Must we have questions like this? It comes across as "We're all smart grownups here, and, of course, all smart grownups know that Bush SUCKS! Help me convince my poor, stupid, brainwashed friend that I'm right, which we all know I am." It's not like I'm trying to defend Bush--I'm not exactly a fan myself--but if I posted a question asking "how can I convince my liberal friend that the Clinton presidency was a total failure?" I would be lambasted, and rightfully so. I know Metafilter is probably 80% liberal, but I still think we can avoid stuff like this. It makes me not want to visit the site when I think my political views are going to be assaulted. [Insert smart ass comment about how I'm not wanted anyway]

MeFites for Obama

one_bean — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 19:20:44 -0800

Did you know there's a Mefites for Obama group? Over 3,500 calls made, nearly 6,000 blog posts (ah, what we do best), over $10,000 raised! If you're part of the social network that is the Barack Obama campaign, why not come on over and join this little group -- boost those stats, and whatnot. If you're an Obama supporter and haven't done anything for your candidate, why the hell not? Close the Palin thread and make a call or two (it's easy -- you can do it from the website, they give you a script). I'd link the MeFites for ~~Palin~~ McCain group as well, but such a thing doesn't appear to exist.

If you're gay and in the military you get what you deserve, huh?

orange swan — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 07:45:44 -0800

This comment in an AskMe thread posted by a gay veteran wanting suggestions for how to convince his military friends of the importance of considering gay issues in the coming election may not break the guidelines, but it's incredibly wrong-headed and I wanted to take issue with it here.

AskPolitics

Class Goat — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 13:57:11 -0800

Is it desirable for AskMe to become a surrogate form of PoliticalFilter? A disturbing trend today, with three questions all of which seem to relate to talking points from one party or the other, and at least one of them beginning to spin out of control into a general election discussion. One Two Three Each of those did seem innocent, but as they say: one is bad luck; two is coincidence; three is a trend. Or at least it could presage a trend. The Mods have been good in the last couple of days at stomping on all the attempts to do Convention posts (both conventions) and these AskMe's feel just a bit like people trying to get around that by using the other forum. (Especially the second, which is nakedly partisan.) There are all kinds of questions about politics, but maybe we don't want them asked and answered in AskMe. Do we?

pre-empting Obamaveepfilter

gauchodaspampas — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 14:37:03 -0800

Obama is expected to announce his VP choice tomorrow via text message to the masses. Dozens, or perhaps hundreds, even thousands, of mefites will be notified of the selection all at the very same instant. Several of them may want to make the first crappy post on the subject. Shall we let this happen? Up until now, the only guideline regarding crappy news/election/obit-filter is basically "take your time so if you post newsfilter, it's worthwhile". More so than with almost any news in the past, there exists the possibility for a few people all to be racing to be the first to post to metafilter all at once. Newsfilter still isn't banned, so it seems undesirable to just forbid posts on Obama's selection. Time limits before posting have been discussed in the past, and seem like a good solution at least in this case. However, for most news stories it's hard to pin down exactly when a story first breaks. Or perhaps we could come up with a clever one time solution just for this case, and continue with the status quo.

Amazed at no FPP on McCain's epic gaff

spock — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 20:37:03 -0800

You know, I get as sick as anybody over every minor story about the U.S. presidential election getting posted to the Blue, and I know the mods are trying to keep the quality of posts up, but it [i]still[/i] surprised me to go there tonight and find NO DISCUSSION of what history could very well define as THE important turning point in this election: John McCain's not knowing how many houses he owns. This on the heels of his definition of $5 million as defining "rich". Could no one draft a decent FPP about it, or has it been decided that this story isn't going on the Blue no matter what? If so, one has to wonder: why?

Mission Accomplished

Krrrlson — Sun, 18 May 2008 11:33:40 -0800

Is there a point to this other than to encourage a pissfest?

Subsite For the Election?

cell divide — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 20:15:53 -0800

election08.metafilter.com ? I'm a long time member of this site and have always been very vocally against setting up stuff like news.metafilter.com, politics.metafilter.com, etc. However now I'm changing my tune. I feel that the community has grown to the point where there are enough interested and interesting people to make a subsite just for election stuff entertaining, enriching, and enlightening. Very little of what happens during the campaign will be "best of the web" but I still want to hear what the intelligent, involved people around here think about the daily political news. I have come to rely on this site as a way of gauging opinions of people I trust, and this would be a way to keep that going during the election. Unlike a general politics or news filter, this would be timed and as of nov 4th, would cease to exist, so there would no long term damage to the Blue. I know there are always calls for subsites, and they are usually shot down; I know mathowie is not that into them, but perhaps in this one case this is a chance to enrich the community, not detract from it? Thoughts?

When is Enough Enough?

timsteil — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 19:21:58 -0800

Should I have learned a lesson from this? I posted this with no political agenda whatsoever, and it seemed to take on a lively little life of its own. I am fairly surprised it didn't get deleted when it started going off the rails. I'm just wondering if this is an example of an unintentioned, yet good place for folks to vent political, or the MeFi equivalent of tossing a stink bomb and running away.

Fears for Obama's safety not a reasonable topic?

flotson — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 09:33:06 -0800

This post which raised the issue of fears among some in the African-American electorate that Barack Obama would not be safe as president. The thread was shut down for reasons of WTF. Not exactly sure what the problem was, and I was disappointed, as I had recently heard about this and was hoping the thread would shed some light on the issue. This NYT article would be a good starting point for discussion.

Iowa!

orthogonality — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 12:04:27 -0800

Prognosticate for me, Mefites: what are your best guesses for the results of the Iowa Caucus? Easy format: for the Republicans and Democrats, predict he order, first to last, that the candidates will come in. Remember that the Democratic Party only public releases results after voters for "unviable" candidates make a second choice (or chose "Uncommitted"), and state delegates are assigned in an electoral-college like system that gives more weight to smaller, rural districts. So for the Dems, you're picking the final results in percentages of delegates won. Harder format: Give percentages or a range of percentages for each candidate. Bonus: tell us where you'll be watching the returns, and whether you expect any surpises out of Iowa.

What will the Bhutto assassination mean for the future stability of Metafilter?

Weebot — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 15:13:06 -0800

Yeah, assassinations are hard to be unemotional about, but can we start acting reasonable? It's an emotional subject, yeah, but the thread is quickly devolving into a flame-war between la ng uage h at and, uh, e v e ryone. Seems like maybe there could be a civilizing intervention from the mods? Or deleting a few of "Fuck off" comments?

Poorly constructed or blatantly inaccurate.

puke & cry — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 02:01:16 -0800

I have a problem with people making posts here that are blatantly inaccurate just for the sake of making a political point. I like to hate on neocons as much as the next guy, but this post was either poorly constructed or made to create a link to the Carlye Group that isn't there. I'd like to think this kind of misconstruction wouldn't last on here but it's been up for a while, even with apparent mod interaction.

No more Ron Paul, please

Blazecock Pileon — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 15:23:57 -0800

Policy regarding political fundraising, campaigning or other support sites for Ron Paul? I have noticed increasing numbers of posts (recent example) which are direct or indirect fundraising or stump sites for Ron Paul — it seems to be a couple a week. Above and beyond my dislike for this person and his politics (which I do not intend to start a discussion about) — and without calling into question any motivations of the original poster — I do not feel that these meet the criteria for acceptable front page posts. Assuming the community agrees, I wonder if there can be a deletion policy applied which is also used for other political-themed posts (e.g. the recent TPM post), as well as a spinning alert banner similar to that used in the past as a warning for Iraq- and Israel-themed posts. If I'm wrong about the extent of the problem, or if it is even a problem (something that the community may not agree with) then I apologize and please feel free to delete or close this post.

The Australian Election Thread

Effigy2000 — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 17:12:12 -0800

Jimbob said "Yeah, keep this thread running. May it serve as an example to all the American politics nuts who insist on starting a new post every time Hillary takes a shit." And so that's just what we did. In an example of how I think Metafilter can do politics well, the Australian Politics thread, which started on October 14 (the date the election was called, which is not the first day of the campaign), ran for 30 days straight and (at time of writing) had amassed almost 600 comments. But as is the norm for an FPP after 30 days on the Blue, it's about to be closed so discussion has moved over to Thread #2, by wilful, to get us through to election day. An index of the first thread is inside, as well as kudos for those involved (because I think they deserve it). It's a big thread, so to make it easy for everyone to navigate around it, here are some quick links to each day up until the thread was closed and what the major issues of the day were. Day 1: The first day of the election proper saw the Governments promise huge tax cuts, which were the big issue for the day. Day 2: The tax cuts were still the big issue. Day 3: Still the tax cuts, but criticism of their potential effects on the economy were starting to surface. Day 4: Still tax cuts, but analysis of election ads were also a big issue this day. Day 5: The first Newspoll of the campaign and political reaction to The Chaser's 'Eulogy Song' were the big issues of the day. Day 6: The Opposition released their tax plan late on Day 5, so Day 6 was focused largely on analysis of their tax policy. Day 7: A pretty quiet day, but anticipation for the Leaders debate to be held that night was high. Day 8: The leaders debate was itself debated, especially the furore surrounding the alleged censorship of The Worm. Day 9: A new Newspoll that showed Labor surging ahead, but The Worm was still a big topic. Day 10: Howard announces $4b worth of pork for seniors, and discussion turns once again to the tax cuts of Day 1. Day 11: The release of the latest CPI figures revealed a forthcoming rates rise nightmare for the Government. Day 12: The Government was still copping flack over the potential rate rise and a new Morgan poll showed surging support for Labor. Day 13: Joe McDonald was expelled from the ALP, rates rises were still on the menu (but waning as an issue) and a new AC Nielsen poll echoed yesterday's Morgan. Day 14: It was revealed Turnbull tried to get Cabinet to ratify Kyoto and that, along with the story of how the leak occurred, was making headlines this day. Day 15: Interest rates made a small comeback, but environment issues were the focus of the day. Day 16: Another Newspoll, this time with the Government gaining ground over Labor. The Treasurers debate happened; many people yawned. Day 17: Tony Abbott's day from hell which saw him insult a dying man, turn up late for a national debate and caught swearing on camera. Day 18: Another boring day, mostly focussed on Howard's $4b worth of bribes to seniors and how they'd vote for him because of it. Day 19: At the halfway mark of the campaign, an e-mail suggests a conspiracy between the Government and the AFP against Dr. Haneef. Peter Garrett puts his foot in his mouth. Day 20: The Government went into full attack mode over Peter Garrett's gaffe and Peter Andren MP, sadly, passed away. Day 21: A second day of coverage on Garrett's gaffe, and the first time that Howard tried to paint an interest rate rise as a positive factor of his leadership. Day 22: The Garrett gaffe had all but disappeared as voters and journos digested the latest Galaxy poll and Howard's change of heart on rates. Day 23: The day of the Melbourne cup showed Howard closing the gap (by 1 point) in the latest Newspoll. FWIW, my horsie, Gallic, dropped out. Day 24: As expected, this day saw the RBA raise interest rates, pushing mortgage rates to an 11-year high of 6.75 per cent. Day 25: Interest rates, interest rates, interest rates, interest rates. Also, a debate about the environment. Did I mention interest rates? Day 26: Interest rates again, lots of talk about Howard's non-apologetic apology, and former Labor leader Mark Latham returns from beyond the political grave. Day 27: News came to light that half of all AWAs failed the Governments fairness test. Two new polls, with Morgan in particular giving Labor a massive lead. Day 28: It was revealed that Julia Gillard had once been conned by a man she loved and the PM acknowledged that home repossessions were up since being re-elected in 2004. Day 29: Today! The anniversary of the Whitlam Governments dismissal saw a new Newspoll with Labor gaining ground. The Liberals launched their campaign in Brisbane and spent up big. A big shout out to UbuRovias, Jimbob and wilful, who were the biggest and most common contributors to the thread, but kudos to everyone who popped in for the thirty days the thread ran for to keep the thread alive and more importantly contribute, debate, discuss and dissect the happenings of the campaign so far. May it last for the rest of the campaign in the new thread! Come join us (Aussies in particular!). It's the future of your democracy, people! And may these two threads serve as an example of how Metafilter can (I think) do politics well, especially when there is goodwill on all sides and a commitment from all participants to keep one thread on one political event alive, rather than starting a new thread every time a new development takes place.

True to form

four panels — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 10:46:50 -0800

True to form, this post could use a little balance. "True to form" implies there is some factual consensus to what you say, when really it's sort of an opinion for your blog. If someone said, "True to form, the frenzied pill zealots in Ask Metafilter are hysterically recommending Paxil" it would be deleted fairly quickly. I'd posit you're post is no different.

Suspicious minds

tkchrist — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 13:37:04 -0800

Maybe I'm being paranoid... But this dude has one post and an almost zero user history. And it just happens to be an anti-Hillary post? This kind of inverted stealth agit-prop is popping up all over the web. So. How do we know? Seriously. Gandledorf. Who you work for? (puts on tin foil hat)