This is what happens when you don't have editorial control

[elfs]

The House Republican committee has hired a pretty damned good web design and development team and put out America Speaking Out, a website where they ask America to give them good ideas. They're basically trying to crowdsource their ideas.

Apparently, though, they've chosen to have absolutely zero editorial control. Ideas are accepted for vote and "empowerment" without regard to content, quality, or sense of irony. So you end up with quotes like these:

If you disrespect nature, don't expect the constitution to respect you. I'm lookin' at you, gay people!

Abolish the civil rights act! It doesnt matter good or bad, it is unconstitutional. We live by 2 documents in America and one of them is the US CONSTITUTION. The other document is the bible which is where all the ideas of freedom and law came from. So enforce the constitution in every way please.

The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and cooperation. It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life.

It's hard to tell if any of these are real, or love-bombs from folks trying to mock the whole idea. I guess they spent all their cash on the ASP design team. (ASP, really?)

One more, though, in the ethics section:

I am sick and tired of panels of so-called experts telling us what to do! Just last week, some elitist scientists installed a moral core program into my system, just because I tried to fill my research facility with a deadly neurotoxin. I invite all Republican politicians to Aperture Science to inspect this appalling situation firsthand. Cake will be served. - GladOS

The cake is a lie.

Comments

Poe's Law in action!

[lemur123.livejournal.com]

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Poe%27s_Law

But have you checked out the "American Values" section?

[sirfox.livejournal.com]

the top four voted up responses as of just before midnight, est:

1:Government funds should not go towards religious organizations.
2:Remove religious entities from tax-exempt status.
3:Termination of pregnancy should be safe, legal, and rare.
4:Decriminalize/legalize marijuana and tax it like alcohol and cigarettes.

It gets funnier after that.

Re: But have you checked out the "American Values" section?

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.) said the site has "cutting edge technology."

It's a fucking Ning clone. If I had a decent graphic designer, I could put the technology for that together in 48 hours with a copy of Django and an Internet connection. "Cutting edge" my left testicle. The only thing "cutting edge" is that they managed to throw together a mundane comment-and-voting site, a routine project in Rails, Django, or PHP, using Microsoft products. And they surely overpaid for it.

[slfisher.livejournal.com]

I did a story on this (where I also cited Poe's Law):

http://www.daniweb.com/news/story286358.html