Generation X of American Politics

[TheKassi]

Yes, you did.

Your implication is that people will skip advertisements.

In the real world, while some people do, most don't and those ads reach ALOT of people.

Cry TIVO all you want, it's not happening.

No Shryke. My implication was that people can skip over advertisements with one of a long list of methods currently in practice by many people today, which runs counter to your "Watch our message or watch nothing” post.

a) Some people do skip ads with great ease.

b ) All people can skip ads with similar ease.

c) Many people will skip over the bulk of the ads in question.

d) Many people will not.

The difference between groups C and D is choice. That means "Watch our message or watch nothing" is a chicken little dramatization.

Strawman all you want, that will not change.

[Max the Mostly Mediocre]

But this is exactly the point.

More information just means more disinformation. And people know this. Marketing is all about cognitive science.

Gotcha.

Incidentally, I saw an article in the WSJ the other day in which it was reported that Campbell's soup had conducted a, I think, two year study on things like heart rate and skin temperature to determine what images should be on its soups.

[Shryke]

Gotcha.

Incidentally, I saw an article in the WSJ the other day in which it was reported that Campbell's soup had conducted a, I think, two year study on things like heart rate and skin temperature to determine what images should be on its soups.

Pfft, I've read about companies doing CAT scans and such on children to determine what combinations of images in ads set off what sections of the brain.

Or hell, just the old blink/stare tests where they see how often the children blink while watching the commercial and how much they look away from the TV.

[Shryke]

No Shryke. My implication was that people can skip over advertisements with one of a long list of methods currently in practice by many people today, which runs counter to your "Watch our message or watch nothing” post.

a) Some people do skip ads with great ease.

b ) All people can skip ads with similar ease.

c) Many people will skip over the bulk of the ads in question.

d) Many people will not.

The difference between groups C and D is choice. That means "Watch our message or watch nothing" is a chicken little dramatization.

Strawman all you want, that will not change.

Except they don't. Sorry, you can say it all you want it doesn't fucking happen.

People watch ads. Period.

Beyond that, there is a limited amount of ad space. So yes, it's actually not that uncommon to get "watch our ads or watch nothing" type situations since ad space is not unlimited.

[Shryke]

More good news:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/02/reid_democrats_will_use_reconc.html

Harry Reid says that Senate Democrats will use the reconciliation process to finish the bill within the next 60 days.

I've noticed some confusion about what this means, so some quick context: Reid is not talking about rewriting the bill or passing the whole thing through reconciliation. He's talking about passing a small package of fixes through reconciliation so that the House and Senate bills come into alignment.

This is actually the sort of situation reconciliation was designed to address, as Brookings' Henry Aaron explains here (pdf). Budget reconciliation is called "reconciliation" because it's supposed to speed the, well, reconciliation of the differences between two budget bills. That's exactly what's left to do with the health-care reform bills, which were indeed part of the 2010 budget and whose passage is expected in the 2011 budget.

Because this is what the process is actually meant to do, it doesn't present the manifold problems of using reconciliation for the entire bill. Things like the insurance market reforms have passed with 60 votes in the Senate and 220 in the House. They're done. What's left are some tweaks to the way the bill spends and raises money (that is to say, tweaks to its budget implications) that are needed to, yes, reconcile the two bills. Reconciliation works for this because reconciliation was designed to do this.

[Watcher]

No Shryke. My implication was that people can skip over advertisements with one of a long list of methods currently in practice by many people today, which runs counter to your "Watch our message or watch nothing” post.

a) Some people do skip ads with great ease.

b ) All people can skip ads with similar ease.

c) Many people will skip over the bulk of the ads in question.

d) Many people will not.

The difference between groups C and D is choice. That means "Watch our message or watch nothing" is a chicken little dramatization.

Strawman all you want, that will not change.

Except, of course, people don't work that way. It is naive to simply suggest that people can not watch an ad or their TV and not be expose to the message a dedicated group wishes to spread, especially if they are predisposed to believe that message. People get their information from multiple sources. A lot comes from family, friends and co-workers and corrections to the story often don't get to them.

The "birther" movement is a great example of how people pick up and process information. By all rational measures it should've been still born, but a very small and vocal group kept pushing the issue and it got a lot of coverage. At one point a lot of people wanted it to be "investigated" despite the fact all the needed information was already available and there wasn't anything new to be relieved. There is still a significant percentage of the population that believes he hasn't shown his birth certificate.

I can list a number of subjects that despite overwhelming evidence people still hang on to their preconceptions:

Evolution denial works the same way. It doesn't matter that the evolution has overwhelming facts and science behind it. Almost half the people in America don't accept it as valid science. Because it doesn't fit their world view and there is a dedicated group spilling out disinformation that people what to believe instead.

Global Warming - the science is overwhelming it's happening due to human activity are causing it.

Chiropractor has no rational method of curing people and studies have shown it's almost completely useless

Vaccines work and there are very few negative side-effects, which can be serious on the rare occasions it happens.

The point is that adverting works to get the message the sponsors want to get out even if a person isn't directly exposed to it.

Corporation doesn't have to post an ad to be effective. It could instead pledge X amount of money to a "get out the vote" drive. Allowing the national party to spend that much more money on the candidate's campaign instead.

[Shryke]

Don't forget that once someone has taken in information and believed it, it's extremely difficult to get them to unbelieve it. And, in fact, the more evidence you show that what they believe is false, the more they believe it.

[awesome possum]

Or the fact that these ads won't be strictly related to television. Imagine the sidebars and pop ups while on the web; the billboards and posters out in public spaces; the pamphlets and flyers you'll receive. But I suppose you can just choose not to surf the internet or go outside or check your mail.

:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

[Tormund Ukrainesbane]

can list a number of subjects that despite overwhelming evidence people still hang on to their preconceptions:

Evolution denial works the same way. It doesn't matter that the evolution has overwhelming facts and science behind it. Almost half the people in America don't accept it as valid science. Because it doesn't fit their world view and there is a dedicated group spilling out disinformation that people what to believe instead.

Global Warming - the science is overwhelming it's happening due to human activity are causing it.

Chiropractor has no rational method of curing people and studies have shown it's almost completely useless

Vaccines work and there are very few negative side-effects, which can be serious on the rare occasions it happens.

The point is that adverting works to get the message the sponsors want to get out even if a person isn't directly exposed to it.

None of these are advertised on television that I have seen. The only exception would be chiropractic and the only ads I've seen for them are "Hi, we're a chiropractor, do you have back pain? Come see us."

[Watcher]

None of these are advertised on television that I have seen. The only exception would be chiropractic and the only ads I've seen for them are "Hi, we're a chiropractor, do you have back pain? Come see us."

Exactly, the average person has some knowledge of all of those examples with little or no TV time. Also despite overwhelming evidence against those points people still cling to their false beliefs. I'm simply pointing out that the people who think that simply shutting off a commercial is a simplistic viewpoint, at best.

[mcbigski]

Don't forget that once someone has taken in information and believed it, it's extremely difficult to get them to unbelieve it. And, in fact, the more evidence you show that what they believe is false, the more they believe it.

Which neatly explains the all too common and entirely contradictory beliefs that Bush was both an incompetent idiot and a diabolical existential threat to democracy in the US. When in fact he was a slightly smarter than average moderate righty.

[Shryke]

Which neatly explains the all too common and entirely contradictory beliefs that Bush was both an incompetent idiot and a diabolical existential threat to democracy in the US. When in fact he was a slightly smarter than average moderate righty.

Those aren't contradictory. Bush was a terminally incurious monkey in a suit who surrounded himself with people with terrible ideas that were a threat to the US.

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

Gosh, my own (sort of) thread. I'm touched. I owe a few folks some responses.

TrackerNeil, yes, I know Raidne is a lawyer, but that still doesn't make her "guarantee" as to what the Constitution says particularly persuasive to me. After all, suppose -- hypothetically speaking of course -- that another lawyer had a different opinion, and gave a different "guarantee"? Do we have matter and anti-matter guarantees colliding, the universe ending, or what? Anyway, the reality is that a message board forum is a pretty lousy place to debate the legal merits of that kind of case. There's a reason the decision was so long.

Raidne:

What I mean by that is "I dare you to find one sentence in the Constitution that states that it does." In fact, I dare you to find the word "corporation" in the U.S. Constitution.

The First Amendment states that "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech...." It doesn't contain any qualifiers or exceptions to that prohibition on Congressional action. And by its plain terms, a law stating that corporations can't speak out on political issues is a limitation on the freedom of speech. You are interpretating that clause as if it actually read "Congress shall make no law...abridging [an individual's right to] the freedom of speech...." It just doesn't read that way.

The existence of corporations was not exactly a secret to the Founding Fathers. They existed in Ancient Rome, and the British East India company had been in existence for more than 150 years. It was their tea that was dumped in Boston Harbor, as a matter of fact. And the Founders had to be familiar with the Massachusetts Bay Company, another incredibly powerful corporation. If you're trying to read an "excluding corporations" limitation into the Constitution, I think its your burden to prove that, because otherwise, the prohibition on Congress is a blanket one.

Now, I don't think the Founders were expressly thinking about corporations -- or even individuals for that matter -- when they drafted that Amendment. I think what they valued was speech itself, not necessarily the right of the individual who was speaking.

Maltaran

I understand your concern about corporate money drowning out other speech, but I don't think it holds up to the facts. First, I again want to emphasize that I only support this ruling to the extent it protects independent speech. I don't believe this ruling allows unlimited direct contributions to candidates, parties, or campaigns, but if it did, I'd oppose that.

The more substantive point is that I think you aren't giving enough weight to the speech that is already out there. Rush Limbaugh gets three hours per day. Ed Schulze is on the radio for the left. FoxNews has hours of programming every day, as does leftist MSNBC. All of those outlets and more, not to mention the bully pulpits of elected politicians themselves, are free to rant against anything they want -- Unions, corporations (that are far from being all Republican in their leanings), global warming, pollution, ACORN, etc. For hours and hours, every single day.

I can't see how giving "legal constructs" such as unions, corporations (both public and provate, including nonprofits) the right to put a couple of ads on TV to respond is going to outweigh all that stuff. Politicians are permitted to blast ACORN because it's politically convenient to do so, but ACORN has no right to buy ads in response if it chooses? Gore makes "An Inconvenient Truth", gets on every talk show in the world, gets his Peace Prize, has his stuff taught to kids in schools, and you object to some two minute spots oil companies might run in rebuttal? It doesn't look to me like you're trying to prevent corporations from dominating the airwaves -- it's like you're really trying to suppress a point of view with which you have substantive disagreements from getting out there at all.

I just want to give one example from where I live to show what can happen if the pols all get in bed together. We had this ridiculous $180M refurbishing/bus route creation thingy done to one of the main business arteries in our downtown. It took 2.5 years, during which this street was essentially shut down. The pols voted for it despite it being a bad idea because, as one city councilman told me personally "you don't turn down that kind of money from the federal government."

Now of course, the businesses along this route -- almost entirely small businesses who were allegedly going to benefit from this project -- opposed it because customers wouldn't want the headache of trying to get to them during the construction. The project eventually was completed, and sure enough, more than 30% of the businesses on that street went bellyup. We now have this pretty artery with a bunch of boarded-up businesses. Great. Oh, and I should point out that the result is still much less friendly to car traffic because it was designed to encourage more bus ridership. The increase in bus ridership didn't happen, so the businesses that survived are still feeling the pinch.

Now my point is that those businesses, either collectively as a group or as individual corporations, should have the right to buy ads or whatever opposing public projects that look stupid. Under your view, though, they have no such constitutionally protected right at all. So the reality is that we can get completely one-sided debates anytime the pols all agree on a particular pie they'd like to divide.

Uh, everyone else. I never have quite understood the viciousness of the attacks on the Swift Boat Vets for Truth. I understand why people might get upset at others who attacked Kerry regarding Vietnam, but not the SBVT. They earned their right to speak about it.

[Tormund Ukrainesbane]

Exactly, the average person has some knowledge of all of those examples with little or no TV time. Also despite overwhelming evidence against those points people still cling to their false beliefs. I'm simply pointing out that the people who think that simply shutting off a commercial is a simplistic viewpoint, at best.

This argument doesn't help your point at all. It could be take to mean either "Since television advertising has not led people to believe these things, and they believe them anyway, banning television advertising to prevent misinformation is a nonsequiter." Or "People are too dumb to know what to believe, so the flow of information to people must be tightly controlled."

Neither of these, I think, is the argument you are wanting to put forward.

[awesome possum]

It doesn't look to me like you're trying to prevent corporations from dominating the airwaves -- it's like you're really trying to prevent them from having any voice at all.

Oh yes, those poor corporations are so abused and held down in our society. They had no voice at all before this decision. You can't seriously believe that?

Uh, everyone else. I never have quite understood the viciousness of the attacks on the Swift Boat Vets for Truth. I understand why people might get upset at others who attacked Kerry regarding Vietnam, but not the SBVT. They earned their right to speak about it.

They earned their right to speak. Did they earn the right to tell half-truths and outright lies not for the sake of bringing their version of the truth to light but for the political gain of the guy they supported?

Is this OK:

"I once posted with FLoW on a message board, so I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt in my mind that he's a coward, a liar and hates prematurely born babies. If FLoW had his way, all prematurely born babies would be fed to hyenas while still alive. You can trust me when I say this, because I'm a message board Council Member."

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

Oh yes, those poor corporations are so abused and held down in our society. They had no voice at all before this decision. You can't seriously believe that?

In general, no. However, I do think there are times when particular "legal constructs" may be getting a raw deal on a particular issue, and the body politic benefits if they have the opportunity to put those facts out there. I think people are forgetting that the First Amendment isn't just TV. It's radio, newspapers, etc. If you say no First Amendment rights, you're giving the states and feds the right to ban any ads, on any kind, in any media. I should point out also that under your interpretation, extremely wealthy individuals have complete freedom to run ads/fund ad campaigns under the protection of the First Amendment, but a group of small businessmen who can't buy ad time except through "legal constructs", don't.

They earned their right to speak. Did they earn the right to tell half-truths and outright lies not for the sake of bringing their version of the truth to light but for the political gain of the guy they supported?

Actually, yes. And let's face it, it is incontrovertible that Senator Kerry told some outright lies himself. Part of political debate is hearing both sides. And if he was going to wrap himself in the mantle of "Lieutenant Kerry, reporting for duty" at the Democratic Convention, I see nothing wrong with other people who served there a lot longer than he did from speaking their piece about Lt. Kerry.

I will say that I was not a fan of the "he didn't earn his medals" line of criticism. I personally wouldn't have gone there, but I can't say that guys who were there don't have the right to disagree as to what actually happened.

The stuff I think they did that was the most effective was perfectly legitimate political criticism, and that was showing clips of his testimony before the Senate after the war. And when they pointed out that he essentially bailed on his tour after getting a couple of scratches.

Is this OK:

"I once posted with FLoW on a message board, so I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt in my mind that he's a coward, a liar and hates prematurely born babies. If FLoW had his way, all prematurely born babies would be fed to hyenas while still alive. You can trust me when I say this, because I'm a message board Council Member."

Well, the way some folks here tend to demonize anyone who varies from the prevailing viewpoint, I'd say that I'm pretty used to it.

[The Progressive]

Actually, yes. And let's face it, it is incontrovertible that Senator Kerry told some outright lies himself. Part of political debate is hearing both sides. And if he was going to wrap himself in the mantle of "Lieutenant Kerry, reporting for duty" at the Democratic Convention, I see nothing wrong with other people who served there a lot longer than he did from speaking their piece about Lt. Kerry.

I will say that I was not a fan of the "he didn't earn his medals" line of criticism. I personally wouldn't have gone there, but I can't say that guys who were there don't have the right to disagree as to what actually happened.

The stuff I think they did that was the most effective was perfectly legitimate political criticism, and that was showing clips of his testimony before the Senate after the war. And when they pointed out that he essentially bailed on his tour after getting a couple of scratches.

I know it's your modus operandi to throw out statement without much substantive factual support in the hope that people who're saturated with half-truths can't be bothered to call them out, but this isn't that kind of forum.

What were the outright lies that Kerry told with regard to his tour in Vietnam? You might have selective amnesia but all the ads and written statements from the swiftboat smear campaign are still available for references. ;)

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

I know it's your modus operandi to throw out statement without much substantive factual support in the hope that people who're saturated with half-truths can't be bothered to call them out, but this isn't that kind of forum.

When the forum police come by, let me know.

What were the outright lies that Kerry told with regard to his tour in Vietnam? You might have selective amnesia but all the ads and written statements from the swiftboat smear campaign are still available for references. ;)

[The Progressive]

When the forum police come by, let me know.

What were the outright lies that Kerry told with regard to his tour in Vietnam? You might have selective amnesia but all the ads and written statements from the swiftboat smear campaign are still available for references. ;)

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

If you could dig up something substantive, let us know.

C'mon now, quit ducking! I have no problem backing up something that is genuinely in dispute. But I'm not going to go to that effort if the point is not really in dispute, and you're just yanking my chain to provide backup to something that you know is correct. So lay your cards out -- did Kerry tell any outright lies about his Vietnam tour, or not? If the point is in dispute, I'll take the burden of proof and provide the evidence. All you have to do is get off the fence.