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The Living Room Candidate
Karin Ponce writes "I represent the American Museum of the Moving Image , and I wanted to write to you about the Museum's latest online exhibition, The Living Room Candidate. The exhibition maintains a comprehensive and detailed collection of over 300 commercials from the past fourteen elections (1954-2000). As the presidential race heats up, I think this is a very timely exhibition that will equip your readers with insight on the development of the campaign messages crafted by our presidential candidates over the years and provide historical context for the 2004 campaign as the race unfolds. Its convenience (all commercials are available online in the Living Room Candidate website) make this exhibit a must-see for voters and non-voters."
In every presidential election covered by television, the candidate with the most campaign money has become President.
This looks like a good way to see if past presidents have fulfilled their election promises by looking at their agenda in commercials. One thing that sticks out in my mind is the "Rats" commercial in 2000, which was about Bush's prescription drug benefit plan. How did that work out, seeing how some have resorted to getting pharmaceuticals from Canada and elsewhere?
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
I have an idea. Rather than watching campaign commercials, read each candidates Wikipedia page.
John Kerry
George Bush
That way you get unbiased info untainted by either party, with all the nitty gritty details. Try it with friends, see if they switch allegiances after seeing the truth.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
While this is cool, the streams will kill their bandwidth shortly. Still, this is a cool idea, and I for one would like to see how many ads by outside groups have had the affect that it has this year. Yes, I'm talking about the 527 groups like swiftboatveterans and moveon. While I appreciate more viewpoints, it seems that these just get too radical and whomever has the most money gets the most influence.
Oh wait, even with the campain finance reform, NOTHING HAS REALLY CHANGED! - am yelling b/c I'm mad.
Please vote this year, everyone!
CB
free ipod and free gmail!
this is team sports speaking in your post, and you are apparently filling out the roster
most noticeably, you grimace in horror when i point out the negative attack potential of the democrats, but you are conveniently in alzheimer's mode about your own team's attack dogs hard at work right now (rah rah rah! go team!)
so rather than bang up against your blind spot, i am going to go with realpolitik: politics is not philosophical debate society, it's flesh and blood sports, as your one-sided shock and perplexed understanding of the relative sins and virtues of republicans and democrats attest to: you're a fully indoctrinated one-sided team player
i won't buy into the whole "can't we all just get along" road some seem to insist that will make negative ads go away in politics
politics is politics is politics. it's ugly stuff. you will never turn politics into something else unless you change human nature itself.
therefore, my observations about kerry needing to go full press attack mode still makes sense, from an objective, neutral, third-party pov, as if watching two football teams go at it midgame and commenting on what strategy one or the other should take to win the game... of course, if you are one of the teams and hear me commenting on the way the other team should win, your reaction fits in perfectly
i live in the real world of human nature in all of its good, bad, and ugly qualities and without your rah rah go home team one-sided blind spot attitude towards the virtuousness of the repulican party
want to argue virtue? you're in the wrong world buddy
when you're ready to talk about reality and realism and what plain works in american politics as it is, not as it wouldashouldacoulda be in science fiction, get back to me
until then, the attack ad proposition stands as sound
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
you are conveniently forgetting that the "intelligent thing to do" would be to have kept family members of the man who staged the bloodiest assault on us soil in easy reach
;-P
;-)
what kind of world do you live in where the safety of some rich bastards whose money was used to stage an attack which killed thousands of your fellow americans is a more pressing matter than getting to the bottom of what happened?
the "intelligent thing to do" in your world apparently comes form the same logic of the world where marie antoinette said "let them eat cake"
also, you seem to be out of touch with the concepts of leadership and accountability
as a leader, you don't defer blame on important matters, you take responsibilty for them. that's why higher ups get fired when their lowly henchmen fuck up royally. it's called accountability. if something really awful happens, heads high up roll, as proof of their leadership and acceptance of responsibility.
so are you saying that george bush isn't accountable for sensitive things the us govt does?
well, you are right in the sense that a man of gwb's dim intellectual faculties is clearly not accountable for much of anything, but i don't think that's the point you wanted to make
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I don't think you will find any party putting up a fight over air the ads. If they did anything like that, they would look pretty foolish. It would only serve to draw attention to what they didn't want you to see or better yet cause people to think that they really had something bad to hide. Free use or not, nobody is going to stop them.
If you really don't think, it is possible to become wealthy by honest means, we have nothing to talk about.
I think that it was possible at one time- but now these twin methods of Industry and Frugality will be destroyed by parasites if you let them. The method of Frugality is an obvious one- by allowing inheritance and unlimited wealth creation, inflation is allowed- and if you're not already wealthy, inflation will destroy your savings eventually. If you are already wealthy, a number of inflation shelters, known as investments, are available to you- but one cannot take advantage of those unless one is willing to be a parasite on your second value of Induatry. Industry is no longer a method of wealth creation because the patent process has become closed to the people; you can patent something, but it will cost you a lot to do so, and to defend that patent in court costs a lot more before you see even one red dime of profit. You can avoid this by going to the Venture Capitalists- but if you do, plan on them taking at least 99% of your profit despite the fact that they never had an idea worth being industrious for in their entire lives.
The superwealthy are not those who are industrious or frugal- they are the ones who earn money off of those who are industrious and frugal. The two richest men in the nation are Bill Gates and William Bennet- Bill Gates hasn't been involved in developing a software program himself since Altair Basic, he buys all of his programs, repackages them, and resells them, a perfect example of making money off of other people's industriousness. William Bennet made all of his money off of stocks and other investments- playing with other people's money, a perfect example of making money off of other people's frugality and self sacrifice.
Do you still believe it is possible to become truly wealthy by honest means?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.