Obama Plans Gone From Transition Web Site

CNET: Detailed Policy Agendas For Iraq, Heath Care And More Vanish From Change.Gov Transition Site

(CNET)  This story was written by CNET's Declan McCullagh.

---

Last week, President-elect Barack Obama launched a Web site with detailed information about his plans for technology, Iraq, and health care policies.

Now they're gone.

The "agenda" Web pages on Change.gov seem to have mysteriously disappeared on Sunday. By Monday morning, they were replaced with a vague statement saying that Obama and running mate Joe Biden have a "comprehensive and detailed agenda" that will "bring about the kind of change America needs," with the individual pages deleted entirely.

A version of the now-deleted homeland security agenda recovered from the cache feature of Microsoft's Live Search is far more detailed, promising to convene a nuclear terrorism summit, declare the Internet "a strategic asset," and establish a $2 billion fund to "counter al-Qaeda propaganda." Those happen to be identical to the promises that candidate Obama made earlier this year; they have not been deleted from the campaign Web site.

I've posted mirror images of the vanished homeland security section, the technology section, and the newsroom section listing the different topics on the right side of the page.

Dan Pfeiffer, Obama's transition communications director, would not say what was going on or whether the deletion meant that some of the campaign promises would be dropped. He sent CNET News a one-line e-mail message saying: "That section of the Web site is being retooled."

This isn't the first time that vanishing or altered documents on a presidential Web site have been noticed: President Bush got some unwelcome attention for this last year. The White House's Web team also rewrote the May 2003 caption showing Bush on the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier after the Iraq occupation proved more problematic than expected (see before and after).

The ephemeral nature of Web publishing does raise some serious issues: if a president-elect circulates a physical press release promising to do something, and then changes his mind, there's a paper trail. That doesn't exist when files are added to a Web site and then quietly removed over a weekend.

The Library of Congress and other institutions, including the California Digital Library and the Government Printing Office, are trying to remedy this by doing an "end of term" crawl. That means they're regularly crawling and archiving all .gov domains that are considered "government sites," including Change.gov. The crawl started in September and will continue through February 2009.

The project has a varying crawl schedule, so it may not have collected the agenda pages on Change.gov, Abbie Grotke, a digital media project coordinator on the Web capture team in the Library of Congress' office of strategic initiatives, said on Monday.

The Change.gov site has been added to the list of sites to be crawled as part of the Library's Election Archives project--a separate effort. Gina Jones, also part of the Library's office of strategic initiatives, said that since it's a new site, it hasn't been collected yet.

CNET News' Stephanie Condon contributed to this report.

---

[violets4me]

No big surprise here to me. He can''t do what he promised to the people who voted for him because even being president doesn''t give him that kind of power. I know he has more Democrats in the Congress and Assembly but he still doesn''t have the power he thought he did. Like I said "Six months from now how many of you who voted for Obama are going to deny that you did?" Not me as I voted Republican and think McCain was still the right choice!!!

[raskal_2]

Yeah right, you really elected a real person of change, this clown is just as phoney as they get. And he rode on the backs of all those that died and fought for freedom and equality. What a cowardly putz. excuse me Mr.President Elect if I accidently spit on you

[b0ludo]

I hope someone kept a copy... You''ll need it to reflect back on how easily you took the hook, line and sinker.

[incog-nito]

In other news, Fox News reported that a copy of the Communist Manifesto briefly appeared for a few seconds on Obama''s web site, although they have no physical evidence of it. Commentator Bill O''Reilly reportedly was the one who made the discovery when surfing the web site looking for material for his next talk show.

[joule18]

Posted by IwasHungry68 at 04:07 PM : Nov 11, 2008

I guess you overlook all the news articles about the missles in Poland, the muslims attitude about Rahm Emmanuel, etc., because you are still on here trying to prop up your prophet from any criticism. Broaden your horizons to other subjects.

[joule18]

I guess they HOPE we have short memories so they can CHANGE their promises and we will forget.

[averagerepub]

If he folds it will be fine with me. I don''t believe half of what he told America. I think alot of people are going to be disappointed when he can''t come through with his promises. But if You burn MY flag... We could have a problem.

[averagerepub]

Alright enough of the Republicans being the evil scourge that the posters here think they are. Dems and repubs both have their faults. WAKE UP!!! If blame is to be laid, it must be laid on both sides of the fence. If you cant bring something intelligent to the table, then don''t bother showing up. I am a middle class repub who like everyone else here is an AMERICAN. WHO are you to question my love for MY COUNTRY. We have differences, that is always going to be the case. Now, with that said.... Lets all see what happens in the coming months after Obama takes office. Judge not...Lest ye be judged!!! But enough of the blanket LABELS being put on ALL republicans.

[redeckwitch]

However, we also know Obslime-a is not REALLY the Messiah,

Posted by FromTexwLove


What is an "Obslime-a", anyway, Tex? You have absolutely NO creativity at all.

[sunbum33919]

it was magic......magic I tell ya!!! slo-bama just waved his magic wand and whooooosh..... gone! Just like what he''s gonna do with our hard earned $$$. Here today,,,, gone today. I''m gonna paint me a real pretty cardboard box......home sweet home.

[velma179]

This article is Shakespearean... drama, oh my... intrigue, oh no!

Much ado about nothing... why yes.

[penniemumm]

I often save a web page as an "archive" on my computer if it has content of interest for me, that way I can refer to it later if I need to. It is not true that there is no trail in print, the print is just in the form of archived web pages.

Pennie

[nursehope]

Websites are a fluid entity, frequently changed as the times or technology changes. Everyone reads far to much into things. Why don''t we get some Psychics to tell us what''s happening...maybe everyone will relax then...it''s getting to be a bit much....chill out

[hatesthecolt]

That website wasn''''t even up for a week, and the policies that WERE there, were nothing but "copy and paste" from barackobama.com. Don''''t take anything as ironclad until you hear it for sure.

If we can let Bush screw this country into the ground for 8 years, then the least we can do is give Obama at least ONE YEAR to clean up the mess, right?


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Posted by IwasHungry68

Absolutely; waht''s more, the last people I want to hear alleging that Obama is "hiding the ball" is anyone who voted for an administration that included *** "I''ve got a secret and I ain''t tellin''" Cheney.

[logansprings]

Strange that Obama handlers would deem it necessary to remove the undeliverable, morphing promises from his website.

In most cases, Obama positions are simply explained away by interpreting what he "really meant."

Looks like teleprompters for Obama will be in demand over the next few years -- the job growth that was promised.

[logansprings]

"They are much more reliable than the fossil fuel burning equipment, are already cheap enough to pay for themselves in a few years of use, and will be much cheaper if they are used enough to mass produce like in Germany..." Posted by RedVeg

Alternative energy is a good thing, but solar and wind both require backup systems that are basically what we have now -- coal, nuclear, and fossil fuel powered plants.

The sun does not always shine and the wind does not always blow. So, if you can do without power on cloudy days or days when the wind doesn''t blow, alternative energy can supply your needs.

For the rest of us, however, the present power infrastructure will have to be maintained and used ALONG WITH alternative energy -- not INSTEAD OF.

When you figure the cost of double sources of energy, the cost of energy begins to double and triple, in some cases, quadruple.

Storage of power produced by alternative energy sources may emergy in the next generation, or so, but it does not exist today.

The most abundant and reliable sources we have are in our natural gas reserves that can be utilized if the necessary facilities are built and conversion is mandated.

[bjcone8559]

260,000 windmills could provide electricity for our entire nation - with NO HELP from any other source.

http://www.livescience.com/en
vironment/080114-wind-energy.html


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Posted by IwasHungry68


Roughly an average of 85 windmills in each county or parrish in the country. What have we been waiting for?? Oh yeah, a president who is willing to say no to big oil.

[redveg]

"Wind and Solar are nice, but not reliable enough or cheap enough, and will never provide 100% of our power." Posted by HawkSprings

They are much more reliable than the fossil fuel burning equipment, are already cheap enough to pay for themselves in a few years of use, and will be much cheaper if they are used enough to mass produce like in Germany. Not to mention that new solar technology being tested as we speak is printed on plastic just like an ink-jet printer and will be extremely cheap when we get it to market. It could already be market ready if we had funded it instead of oil the last few years.

I was in Germany last year, and every where I looked were solar panels on the roofs of houses, and they have greatly reduced their dependence on fossil fuels.

[mt_guy]

Hmmmm... if you think for a moment that President Elect Obama does NOT have plans in each of these areas, you would be remiss in that opinion. I can see where he might need to retool depending on who''s accepting offered posts and who is not.

I''ll cut him all the slack he needs. He''s done more to restore my confidence in government in a week than Bush ever did in his entire administration... and Obama''s not even the president yet.

[debbyglee]

The original agenda on change.gov was just a "cut and paste" of the "issues" section on mybarackobama.com. While it is impressive that the Obama technical team was able to get the change.gov site up so quickly, it is unsurprising they had to use existing material to do it. While the material in the "issues" section is related to Obama''s upcoming agenda, it is not an agenda. If there''s nothing forthcoming on change.gov in a few weeks, then let''s worry about transparency.