Paid healthcare.gov site advertisement (sometimes) when googling obamacare

[Vette73]

Ok so they aren't paying google then?

To altar searches no. They may have bought AD space from googles ad vendor.


One of the biggest complaints we have from the public is we don’t inform them enough or make the information easy to find. I have no problem buying legal AD space in the public. Now if they were paying to altar search info then yes that would be wrong.
When it came out Bush’s white house was spending money at first I did not have a problem, till I found out it was buying opinions not AD space.
My group spent several thousand on job listing Ads with a newspaper in the last month. We did not altar any search or info, just bought what anybody else can.

 

[spidey07]

After the whole flag@whitehouse.gov fiasco is anybody surprised this administration is on an all out misinformation campaign and intends to use all it's power to silence or detract dissenters? It's the Alinsky way.

I'll prefer to let him keep doing it. "Never stop your enemy when he is making a mistake."

 

[soundforbjt]

Faux outrage by "The Weakly Standard Water Carrier", who'd thunk it?

 

[spidey07]

Faux outrage by "The Weakly Standard Water Carrier", who'd thunk it?

The outrage at this president is VERY real and only growing.

 

[soundforbjt]

The outrage at this president is VERY real and only growing.

Is that what the "voices" are telling you? People are angry at the economy, the wingers are directing that rage @ Obama, yet they ignore the last administration's contributions to it's downturn. Just good ole fashion propaganda, Goebbles would be proud.

 

[piasabird]

Just sit back and relax while we brainwash you.

 

[boomerang]

Is that what the "voices" are telling you? People are angry at the economy, the wingers are directing that rage @ Obama, yet they ignore the last administration's contributions to it's downturn. Just good ole fashion propaganda, Goebbles would be proud.

This simple-mindedness sometimes becomes very tiring. We can't do anything about what previous administrations have done it's all in the past. We can only try to change the present. It has to be directed towards the current administration. Bush can't change anything at this point.

Hopefully this isn't too difficult a concept to get your head wrapped around.

 

[soulcougher73]

Oh no. How dare the 1st link be to the actual sourse. Blasphamy. As another said. It they paid for the removal of all other links and only the one link showed up then i can see outrage. Its not like there are not a million more links to click on right below the actual one.

Faux Outrage at its finest.

 

[CitizenKain]

Odd, when I searched for it I got a Wikipedia link. Guess the rightwingers are outright lying again, as usual.

 

[theeedude]

Good, people are searching for information to plan ahead, it should be on top.

 

[ElFenix]

i just searched for a couple of terms and the only one that brought up the hhs website was 'obamacare' and it wasn't first. wikipedia was.

 

[Hacp]

More government waste. They should spend that money to cut taxes. Instead they increase spending. I heard Obama was taking another vacation in hawaii. How much money is being wasted on his security? He is wasting other people's money left and right and the posters here don't care! If you don't like your money, you can send any extra cash you have lying around to me. I will gladly spend your money for you.

Also this invites potential for abuse. A terrorist network could easily organize a mass clicking of the advertisement, costing the government hundreds of millions of dollars in fees.

 

[jackstar7]

They should spend that money to cut taxes.

That right there is priceless.

 

[CitizenKain]

More government waste. They should spend that money to cut taxes. Instead they increase spending. I heard Obama was taking another vacation in hawaii. How much money is being wasted on his security? He is wasting other people's money left and right and the posters here don't care! If you don't like your money, you can send any extra cash you have lying around to me. I will gladly spend your money for you.

Also this invites potential for abuse. A terrorist network could easily organize a mass clicking of the advertisement, costing the government hundreds of millions of dollars in fees.

You seriously need to go outside more.

This may confuse you, but people who actually work take vacations.

 

[Pulsar]

This simple-mindedness sometimes becomes very tiring. We can't do anything about what previous administrations have done it's all in the past. We can only try to change the present. It has to be directed towards the current administration. Bush can't change anything at this point.

Hopefully this isn't too difficult a concept to get your head wrapped around.

While I agree with you that we shouldn't dwell in the past, it's pretty clear that (as usual) the same usual suspects from both sides are jumping in to the argument about this issue without rhyme or reason.

The government has a bully pulpit. Are you going to whine that they bought Ad space on google when Obama can go on TV ANY TIME he wants, and all the major networks will carry it? Really guys? Can't you see the difference between buying Ad space and actually corrupting the search results? Because there's a pretty major difference.

If you want to argue that our government shouldn't be spending money buying online ad space, I might agree with you. I might. But so far I haven't seen anyone here even attempt to make that rational argument, though I admit to having skipped a decent amount of the moronic blather that's being bandied about by both sides.

Jumping Jesus on a Pogo stick. Can't we actually talk about real issues rather than this crap?

 

[thraashman]

While I agree with you that we shouldn't dwell in the past, it's pretty clear that (as usual) the same usual suspects from both sides are jumping in to the argument about this issue without rhyme or reason.

The government has a bully pulpit. Are you going to whine that they bought Ad space on google when Obama can go on TV ANY TIME he wants, and all the major networks will carry it? Really guys? Can't you see the difference between buying Ad space and actually corrupting the search results? Because there's a pretty major difference.

If you want to argue that our government shouldn't be spending money buying online ad space, I might agree with you. I might. But so far I haven't seen anyone here even attempt to make that rational argument, though I admit to having skipped a decent amount of the moronic blather that's being bandied about by both sides.

Jumping Jesus on a Pogo stick. Can't we actually talk about real issues rather than this crap?

Some places sure. On this forum, not bloody likely. Especially not in a thread started by boomerang.

 

[William Gaatjes]

I did type "obamacare" and "Obamacare" but i get these results :

Or it is changed again or it is not true.

 

[cyclohexane]

Tried and it didn't work. the op is full of shit.

 

[Rainsford]

So...the premise of this thread is a flat out lie, or at the very best an incredibly silly twisting of the truth. Yet the discussion continues with almost no pause at all from people like the original poster...

I swear, political discussion has made us all stupid, or at least it's made some of us stupid. When you're proven wrong, just yell louder!

 

[boomerang]

So...the premise of this thread is a flat out lie, or at the very best an incredibly silly twisting of the truth. Yet the discussion continues with almost no pause at all from people like the original poster...

I swear, political discussion has made us all stupid, or at least it's made some of us stupid. When you're proven wrong, just yell louder!

Hey, hold on there. First off, I've got five posts in this thread - six counting this one.

Second, and I shouldn't have to explain this to you, this is P&N. The N stands for News. I found an article and I posted it using the title of same article. This article is also political in nature so it fits the bill for P&N. It took a number of replies before someone actually checked out the premise of the article. It appears to have been at least partially false. Regardless, the discussion continues. There is a quote in the article from an official at HHS stating the steps they took with Google and the reasons they took them. So this can't all be bunk.

These forums are an avenue for social interaction. People are "interacting". It happens here all the time.

 

[werepossum]

i just searched for a couple of terms and the only one that brought up the hhs website was 'obamacare' and it wasn't first. wikipedia was.

For me too. I don't actually care either way - I don't really think it's something on which tax money should be spent, but I do realize that many of Obama's faithful are far too stupid to find such information on their own. So an advert linking to the government site, with the understanding that such a site will inevitably showcase the good and ignore the bad, arguably isn't such a bad investment. At the least the undecided can see the good parts of Obamacare.

 

[spidey07]

It's VERY possible that the Obama admin got wind of this and stopped it once they learned how badly it would be received by The People who see right through it. They've done plenty of shit like this before so it's not out of character.

Considering this was reported yesterday it's highly likely.

 

[werepossum]

It's VERY possible that the Obama admin got wind of this and stopped it once they learned how badly it would be received by The People who see right through it. They've done plenty of shit like this before so it's not out of character.

Considering this was reported yesterday it's highly likely.

Bingo. From the original article:

UPDATE II: (January 4, 4:00 PM EST) Interestingly, the Obama administration now appears to have pulled its ad on Google -- or perhaps Google made the decision to quit running it. But the administration's paid entry still comes up first if you search for "Obamacare" through Bing, and it also comes up first (after "Stories") if you search through Yahoo! (On Yahoo!, "Obamacare and elderly," "Obamacare and abortion," and the like, also show up as paid entries.) In fact, when the playing field is evened -- that is, when the administration isn't using taxpayers' money to channel people to its site -- then www.healthcare.gov doesn't even crack the first 50 pages of Google's listings for "Obamacare."

Kudos to Boomerang for changing the title, but apparently the article was accurate when first reported and the Obama administration either didn't like what Sebelius was doing, or more probably wasn't aware of it, and either way didn't want the bad press. Meh either way. As evil (and wasteful spending) goes, this is a hair on a wart, not that big a deal. (Haven't personally verified Bing and Yahoo! as I don't particularly care either way.)

 

[boomerang]

Bingo. From the original article:


Kudos to Boomerang for changing the title, but apparently the article was accurate when first reported and the Obama administration either didn't like what Sebelius was doing, or more probably wasn't aware of it, and either way didn't want the bad press. Meh either way. As evil (and wasteful spending) goes, this is a hair on a wart, not that big a deal. (Haven't personally verified Bing and Yahoo! as I don't particularly care either way.)

I didn't change the title, it was changed for me. If I'd been asked, I would have.

 

[spidey07]

Boomerang didn't edit the title, DrPizza did.