Electicker 2008

January 22, 2008 11:51 AM

Electicker 2008 [via mefi projects]

"Single-page aggregator that gathers news, opinion, etc. concerning the 2008 US presidential election from a variety of sources."

Comprehensive, nonpartisan, up to date, and useful as all hell for all of us US election junkies.

Reposted as everybody knows no one actually reads Projects.

posted by Item (20 comments total)

Headlines: Thompson quits presidential race
Blogs: I saw a dead skunk on the freeway

Yeah, that sounds about right.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 12:00 PM on January 22 [1 favorite]

Hey, stop hogging all the projects!
posted by hermitosis at 12:07 PM on January 22

What does this have to do with the election, and does anyone care about its apparent irrelevance?
posted by desjardins at 12:09 PM on January 22

Hey, stop hogging all the projects!

Glass house + stones = THIS MEANS WAR
posted by Item at 12:10 PM on January 22

desjardins, those are Obama girls, donchaknow.
posted by hermitosis at 12:11 PM on January 22

Like++, but where's the MetaFilter [vote for it] on the page?
posted by acro at 12:18 PM on January 22

Wow, that's ridiculous. Thanks for the awesome.
posted by poppo at 12:18 PM on January 22

/Is it possible to use the vote for it button offsite?
posted by acro at 12:19 PM on January 22

Well done on the "moonbats" and "wingnuts" breakdown towards the bottom. I got this thing bookmarked.

And I really should go to projects more often . . .
posted by thecaddy at 12:41 PM on January 22

Eideteker 2008? OKAY!
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 12:56 PM on January 22 [1 favorite]

Nice work - I've been alternately sickened by Google News's fairly permissive aggregation strategy and totally lost in CNN's layer upon layer of terrible navigation choices.

This is good.
posted by abulafa at 4:09 PM on January 22

As I wrote in the Projects post, I kind of started this purely to entertain my (overseas) election-junkie self, but it kind of merrily got out of hand.

I'm still ironing out all kinds of things: there's so much internet duct tape on this thing (read: Pipes and other services) that little things still tend to fall apart every other day. For instance, desjardins raises a valid point: as most of this is basic keyword matching, completely unrelated stuff tagged like "flower pretty yellow tulip vote obama already dammit" does tend to slip through.

I'm trying to allay this somewhat by being more restrictive on some fronts, for example on the video feed I've carved a separate path for the Google Video keyword dicfeed for "Ron Paul" with a limited # of items - of course I want stuff tagged as such in there, but the incessant clamour of the RP Army makes it difficult not to let the feed get top-heavy on their side. So as you see it's certainly a work in progress.

Also, as most of this is of course auto-generated content culled from elsewhere, and I'd really if there were some modicum of human input on the site: if anyone wants to contribute hand-picked stuff to the "Recommended" pane on the 2nd row centre, feel free to drop me an email. It's basically supposed to be just diverse, interesting stuff without too big an emphasis on a specific candidate or party, and it'd be nice to have more people involved.

And technical feedback, constructive criticism and content suggestions are welcome as ever. Keep 'em coming, in-thread or via email.

Thanks for posting this, item!
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 6:28 PM on January 22

Google Video keyword dicfeed
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 6:45 PM on January 22

[this is awesome]

Nice work, gnfti!
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 8:16 PM on January 22

Very cool, though I don't quite care enough to be this into it yet. But soon! Bookmarked.
posted by blacklite at 11:50 PM on January 22

Thanks, and very disturbing. I don't see how Obama or anyone running for a Democratic nomination can praise Republicans and Reagan (and by implication, the era of jingoistic deficit splurging) and expect people to remain quiet or even spin it Obama's way. As I watched him try to steer the last debate towards his piety and faith without being asked, I fully realized for myself what a fraud he was.
posted by Brian B. at 6:18 AM on January 23

Okay, I'll bite.

As I read it, Obama was attempting to introduce some sort of (much-needed) historical perspective to this race, along the way invoking Reagan's influence and broad appeal. In my opinion, it takes a considerable amount of disingenuous chutzpah to mischaracterise that as praise for Reagan's actual policies. Worse, doing so tends to lower the level of discourse to cheap potshots, which - as this latest "ha ha you like a Republican" spat illustrates - seems to be Clinton's exact intent. Great Communicator, indeed.

No, if you want to see some industrial-strength Reagan brown-nosing, you should tune into the CA GOP debate next week. I heard it's at a library.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 7:59 AM on January 23

My name is Future President Eideteker, and I approved this message.
posted by Eideteker at 9:14 PM on January 23

Earth to the insane. Reagan was a GE speech giver they made president, who canned the flying wing bomber (later to be ordered) for an obsolete junker with GE engines and parts. 200 billion dollars later and the Iran-arms scandal for good measure, they still sponsor his image, maybe because they are grateful, or maybe because it was a PR success. If Obama thinks that budding neocons were forward thinkers, during an election, he gets what he deserves.
posted by Brian B. at 9:45 PM on January 23

Thanks to wackybrit kindly helping me out with some code, the page should load much faster now.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 8:21 PM on January 25