The Glade 4.0

What it was saying was that though the democrats as a party spent more, third party funding (aka corporations) overwhelmingly supported the republicans.

In total, Democrats collected about 25% more than Republicans did in 2010.

Your theory would have them winning.


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... stpop_read

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In time, this too shall pass.

Ideologue.

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Here's the totals

http://www.opensecrets.org/parties/index.php

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In time, this too shall pass.

Republican shill.

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I gotta tell you, the way things are these days?

You're absolutely correct, and until the Democrats attract their own "smaller government" advocates, I'll stay that way.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Baka.

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Again, you're completly ignoring third party ads Taskiss. So-called 'issue ads' where companies don't have to report their spending in the same way. Those contributions DON'T show up on party balance sheets.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/vote-201 ... d=11910807




Emphasis mine.


And no one is claiming that its the sole determiner of public opinion. Only that it can sway it.

You claimed to be able to "prove that that ad campaigns DO sway public opinion" and that "completely invalidated" opinions to the contrary.

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In time, this too shall pass.

I only see a difference there of 104 million in favor of "pro-Republican groups." Who is deciding what is pro-Republican/pro-Democrat I wonder?

Taskiss's data shows a $170 million advantage in total spending on the part of the Democrats; your $104 million Republican advantage in "issue ads" and whatever still leaves an overall advantage of $66 million for the Democrats. Yet the Democrats suffered.

In any case, it's amazing how the goalposts have subtly shifted. First, the objection was to company lobbying of politicians, now it's to companies attempting to get rregular people to vote in ways that they would prefer.

Naturally, political advertising will sway people's opinions. That's rather the point of it. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but it seems that there's an objection when corporations do it for no better reason than that they're corporations.. and therefore that this is somehow inherently a problem, evidently because they generally seem to lean Republican and basically, you don't want them convincing people to voite for things you don't like.

Of course, when closely questioned, yes, its apparently acceptable (according to Aizle, at least) at least to limit unions as well, but no mention of any other type of political advocacy group has been made, nor the question of people who are famous being able to buy themselves a platform to expound sheer nonsense from addressed.

You have yet to actually point out anything that's really a problem. As I said before, everything so far is just an implication that there's some sort of "inequality" or unfairness going on, without specifying exactly what it is or how you know it exists, or why there is anything wrong with it. Spending money in order to persuade, convince, or sway opinion is not inherently dishonest or wrong, and it does not matter that one side or the other might have an advantage in that regard, espcially since there are plenty of other ploys to do exactly the same thing, such as trotting out a popular actor carrying on about their pet social ill. Yes, when it crosses the line into back-door deals, vote-buying, or outright blatant fabrication and slander its a problem, but we already have laws to deal with such things, and they are to be dealt with as individual wrongs, not by broad "reforms" which are really just a smokescreen to neutralize the other side's political efforts, nor does normal persuasive effort somehow become vote-buying, slander, or fabrication simply because it results in something the other side disagrees with.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Corruptable representatives is one of the many fundamental flaws with representative government. Some of them may start out with good intentions' but ultimately they end up representing whoever lobbies best. Taxpayers/voters have nearly zero influence on the general direction of government.

I say we replace corruptable human representatives with robots or computer programs. Let us use technology to answer poll questions to allow them to represent our views when casting their votes.

What could possibly go wrong?

It's not "effectively having no right at all". The outcome may be the same, but the difference is that if one does acquire the ability, one will not then be stopped from doing so by others.

This is no different than the silly arguments that America thinks it has a "right" to do certain things to other nations such as kill Osama Bin Laden but that America would object if those nations did similar things here. Disregarding the fact that other nations also object, it's frequently asked "Well, does Pakistan (or whoever) have the righ to do X in the United States?" figuring that people will answer "no" and thereby reveal some inconsistency.

In point of fact, assuming that there was some sort of terrorist leader in the U.S. who is to Pakistan what OBL was to the United States and disregarding provisions of so-called international law that make U.S. action "legal" regardless, the fact remains that yes, if the U.S. were harboring someone of that nature, yes Pakistan would be more than welcome to take their shot - except that they don't have the ability, and the U.S. does.

The complaint on the left is the same either way; it really isn't about the rights of either nation, it's about the fact that the U.S. can do things other nations can't and that in some imaginary world where nations are children in a sandbox, its somehow unfair for us to utilize that ability, or if someone did do something like that here and we disagreed with their action, for us to retaliate just because they can't retaliate effectively against us.

This argument is a hazard to freedom at it's core - it's most basic premise is that any sort of practical advantage in terms of ability to complete an act means that one has "more right" to commit that act than anyone of lesser ability. It demands the complete identicalization of all people, all organizations, all nations, because people not exploring these hidden assumptions merely hear "inequality" or "more/less rights" and having been told that's bad all their lives, start to buy into this nonsense even if they sense there's something wrong with it.



Where exactly has it been shown? Taskiss has just shown us data indicating rather the opposite.



First it was lobbying, then it's "affecting" elections. So what? Why exactly is it a problem that they can "affect" the outcome? They should be able to affect the outcome; being able to persuade people to vote for ideas you agree with is the hallmark of a free electoral system. What you're really objecting to is people being persuaded of ideas you don't approve of; that's why this started off with talk about corporations and only under pressure do you start including other organizations.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

/derail on

This made me think of the recent Iranian threat to send warships to the US coast.

Fred Thompson said it quite eloquently: "Iran's navy threatens to sail to America's coast. Thanks, guys, but you don't need to do that. Already have plenty of artificial reefs."

/derail off

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

LOL, that's awesome.

The best indicator that money doesn't buy anything other than material possessions is Khross.

Supposedly he's flush enough to buy an island where he can go play king, yet for all that, he's no more powerful than someone he considers a "baka".

All that he has still doesn't get him more than one vote, and that puts him in the same boat as half the dead in Chicago's cemeteries.

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In time, this too shall pass.