Obama ignores the internet audience again

[admittedheretic]

On Wednesday, January 27, CitizenTube streamed the State of the Union address live on its YouTube site, To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. and hosted a Google Moderator series that allowed viewers to submit and vote on questions in response to President Obama’s address.
Four days... 11,697 questions... and 643,527 votes later... the results are in!
The people have spoken, and today at 1:45PM EST, Obama will respond. In anticipation of Obama’s live “interview” on CitizenTube, OhMyGov took a closer look at the top-voted questions that President Obama may (pending approval) answer. We wonder, will he address the wildly-popular topic of marijuana legalization?

Note to readers: questions are shown as they were asked, grammatical and punctuation errors and all. For those who support increased public education funding, just think of it as evidence for your cause.


Other (aka Marijuana Legalization)
2,406 questions, 195,198 votes

“Mr. President, When you asked the country to give you questions, one of the most asked was "Are you going to legalize Marijuana". When you read it, you laughed like it wasnt [sic] serious. Why is that?"
"What are your plans for cannabis legalization?"
"Why don't you legalize marijuana, it seems like a great way to gain tax money, and people should have to right to use it if they please, and it would cripple gang activity? Do you plan to?"
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An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported that President Obama chose to ignore marijuana reform questions. The questions posed to him were selected by YouTube, which decided not to present the highest ranked questions to the president. This post has been changed to correct that inaccuracy.
YouTube’s CitizenTube forum (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts./c/EB843ABAF59735FD) concluded today with questions about ending marijuana prohibition receiving the most votes, by far. Yet, the questions about marijuana prohibition were not presented to the president this afternoon.
Last year, when marijuana reform questions topped the “Open For Questions (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)” forum operated by the White House, the president did answer them — albeit without serious consideration to the issue. It’s unfortunate that YouTube would shelter the president from something that’s obviously on a lot of people’s minds.
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Ignoring it pisses me off more than joking about it like he did last time. Regardless if you care about marijuana or not, what are your thoughts on the president ignoring the most voted questions?

[Grimstad]

When it came up a year ago I was happy to see Obama retrieve the question from the trash (figuratively speaking) when the person actually asking the questions was going to pass it by.
I think the approach that it will help our financial situation by becoming a tax source is the completely wrong approach. Simply put, it's time to end prohibition. It failed the first time and it is a complete failure now. On top of that the state and federal governments are quickly becoming at odds on the issue with federal bans and state allowances. It will never gain widespread approval as a tax source alone. It needs to be recognized at the federal level as a medical treatment. We also need to recognize the immense usefulness of hemp fiber in alleviating the damage done to the environment through logging AND an industry that could put a lot of people back to work. Way too much of our lumber is converted directly to pulp. That is a major waste.

In all honesty the specific questions related to legalization are somewhat ludicrous when compared to questions on other subjects. Pot legalization will have little to no effect on gangs. In a business like that you want the most value in the smallest package such as krank or coke / crack. Pot probably has less legal risk but the overhead is much higher and the turnover is much longer.

One last thing to think about on the pro pot side. No one dies from ingesting pot. On average 2 people die every year climbing El Capitan in Yosemite park. Every time I watch ANY kind of extreme sport all I can think is.” And drugs are illegal?”

[LordCorbin]

Its sad, but not surprising, how hands off politicians like to be on this subject. Im not sure we have reached a point of sufficient public support for the politicos to risk their necks to engage in this discussion.

[Shauru]

Its sad, but not surprising, how hands off politicians like to be on this subject. Im not sure we have reached a point of sufficient public support for the politicos to risk their necks to engage in this discussion.

Unfortunately as far as politicians are concerned you need 110% public support or they won't even go so far as to agree the sky is blue.

[LaoTzu]

I may have thought differently when I smoked it... but I agree with Corbin.
This isn't a primary issue.

The sad fact (for proponents of legalization), is that the President likely laughed because he viewed the audience as mostly youths; and considers it a youth-demand. Think of it like this: Youths asking for the drinking age to be reduced... that's the frame of reference that most view the argument for legalization.


That is probably the inherent problem with legalization. The face of legalization has to be an adult. Sorry youngsters...but I've seen both angles; and this is how it's gotta go.
Adults who hear the (mostly correct) arguments from pro-legalization folks tend to see it as a bunch of kids who want to be able to imbibe. The thought is that 'those kids will eventually grow up, and let the demands go.'

Like me for example... I used to, now I don't... and now I don't care if it's made legal or not. I will fight against prison terms for users though... that shit is totalitarianism...


I will say, that the Legalization folks need to hurry up... there is a new campaign against marijuana that's begun. To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

[Synamon]

Regardless if you care about marijuana or not, what are your thoughts on the president ignoring the most voted questions?
Did you even read what you cut and pasted?
The questions posed to him were selected by YouTube, which decided not to present the highest ranked questions to the president.
They didn't ask Obama about marijuana, your issue is with youtube, not the President. The title of this thread is bullshit.

[admittedheretic]

Did you even read what you cut and pasted?

Nope, not a word. :rolleyes:


They didn't ask Obama about marijuana, your issue is with youtube, not the President. The title of this thread is bullshit.

You don't think Obama knew what the real question #1 was? Anyone who has access to the internet knows, but he doesn't?

LOL. Like the president of the United States was like my hands are tied, I'll comply with whatever you say YouTube.

What if the #1 topic was about the health plan and then YouTube ignored it. You don't think Obama might have something nasty to say about YouTube?

You've been thrown a bone sucka.

[Undead Bonzi]

Nope, not a word. :rolleyes:



You don't think Obama knew what the real question #1 was? Anyone who has access to the internet knows, but he doesn't?

LOL. Like the president of the United States was like my hands are tied, I'll comply with whatever you say YouTube.

What if the #1 topic was about the health plan and then YouTube ignored it. You don't think Obama might have something nasty to say about YouTube?

You've been thrown a bone sucka.

So Obama was supposed to ignore the questions given to him by youtube reps, go off on an umentioned tangent which he surely knows is the #1 question because he has mind reading powers...so he can talk about the legalization of pot. A subject which in the grand scheme of things has little to no real significant impact in comparison to the other issues our country is facing right now.

You're pissed because he didn't talk about it. I'd be pissed if he had actually wasted time mentioning such a non-subject. People are given a chance to ask the President of the United States any question they want and what do most ask about? Pot. We are a nation of fucking retards.

[admittedheretic]

So Obama was supposed to ignore the questions given to him by youtube reps, go off on an umentioned tangent which he surely knows is the #1 question because he has mind reading powers...so he can talk about the legalization of pot. A subject which in the grand scheme of things has little to no real significant impact in comparison to the other issues our country is facing right now.

You're pissed because he didn't talk about it. I'd be pissed if he had actually wasted time mentioning such a non-subject.

Again, I don't give two fucks what you or anyone else thinks about marijuana with regard to my inquiry. What if the subject was health care and the YouTube reps ignored it, but Obama knew it was the #1 question voted?

[Pachystima]

What if the subject was health care and the YouTube reps ignored it, but Obama knew it was the #1 question voted?

But, a perfectly valid question is "what if he neither knew nor cared whether it was the #1 question?". As has been pointed out above, marijuana is largely a youth issue. Young people tend not to vote very much. Why risk angering some of those older people who do vote to make the young ones who don't feel good? Especially when he didn't need to.

[Synamon]

Again, I don't give two fucks what you or anyone else thinks about marijuana with regard to my inquiry. What if the subject was health care and the YouTube reps ignored it, but Obama knew it was the #1 question voted?

"What if" is a stupid game. You can make all the assumptions and suppositions you like, it doesn't change the facts. Youtube submitted questions, Obama answered them.

Here was the selection criteria used for the Citizentube (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.):
Only able to ask less than 0.2% of the 11,696 questions submitted, it was hard to choose the final handful. Here's how the selection process worked: we tried to cover a range of issues, minimize duplicate questions, and include both video and text submissions. First, we looked at which topics had the highest participation -- like jobs, foreign policy, health care and government reform -- to determine how many questions to ask in each category. We then took the top 5% of video and text questions and picked questions that reflected what you cared about. None of them were chosen by the White House or seen by the President before the interview.

[Undead Bonzi]

Again, I don't give two fucks what you or anyone else thinks about marijuana with regard to my inquiry. What if the subject was health care and the YouTube reps ignored it, but Obama knew it was the #1 question voted?

Can you really separate the action (or nonaction) that was taken from the topic it was in regards to?

How do we know Obama knew it was the #1 question? We don't because neither you nor I is Obama. Even if he did know and ignored it, what does it matter? Presidents often ignore or skip questions that run counter the agenda they are pushing at the moment. It is common politics yet you seem surprised by it. Legalized pot is a non-issue and in no ways intersects or is tangent to any law being passed or big button issues being debated. At the same time legalization carries a lot of negative baggage and a high political cost to mention. Why would Obama squander any political capital on a non-issue that was not even directly asked of him?

If your thread truly is about that hypothetical 'what if he knew, but his interviewer ignored the question and he allowed it' is a meaningless pondering of an unknowable. At a guess? If he cared about the issue being skipped or it was central to his goals he would find a way to slip in mention of it (that is what politicians do). If he didn't give two shits and a damn about the skipped issue then he would probably do nothing and let the interview proceed on course.

My question is 'So what?' I ignore stupid questions people ask of me all the time unless it's a Tuesday and I have some time to burn. Why should I be surprised (or care) when others do the same?

[Mader]

OK, what if it was health care or some other issue.

He is completely tone deaf to anything he is not interested, there is no room for adjusting his 'to do list'.

Why in the hell would he slam the Supreme Court during his State of the Union speech? What good did that do him, or us?
Why did he make incorrect statements about this Supreme Court decision, after all, he is a Constitutional Scholar????? Why would you say something that is factually wrong? Either you didn't know what you were talking about, or you wanted to mislead people.

President Obama has a plan. Implementing that plan will be painful. But it takes some pain to make big changes. So the people of this country are the ones who are suffering, big deal, the goal is more important than the people.