MorGrendel wrote:Grrr. I will crush you later. Soft money bad. Companies that put together 527's bad!
Agreed, but presidential campaigns rarely take money from companies or PACs directly. In the most recent presidential campaigns the vast majority of funds come from individual contributors. What I wouldn't mind seeing are the names of the top people who gave money, but I think that would be too much for opensecrets.org to keep track of. Where you should be concerned as far as soft money is congressional campaigns. That is where the PACs come into play and where loyalty is bought and sold.
As for Dan's messages, first, I have yet to see Obama totally contradiction himself. For that matter Clinton has not changed positions during this campaign (plenty of contradictions in her past though). What I typically see from Obama is nuance, which can often be taken as contradicting himself. One of Obama's big weaknesses early on was debates. He preferred (and still prefers) to give long complicated answers, not short simple sound bites which are favored in debates.
Second, Obama has just as many concrete plans out there as McCain and Clinton. Just have a look at their websites. Just as many policies as Clinton, not to mention incredibly similar. The difference between the two candidates in not what they believe or what they would do, but how they would do it. Clinton would pursue the usual partisan approach and divide the country 51-49. Obama I believe truly wants to bring the country back together. Anyways, what I think is happening is McCain and Clinton are both attacking Obama on a similar route, so it's starting to sink in to the television media's coverage. It is actually fairly cleaver of McCain to follow Clinton's lead in attacks on Obama, as Obama as of right now looks like he could easily beat him in a national election, where Clinton and McCain run dead even against each other.
Now for a tangential rant about the television media. I swear the internet is better than these morons, despite the crazies all over the place. They're mindless lemmings. I can not physically stand to watch the 24 hour news networks. I miss the good ol' nightly news coverages. They didn't have to fill every hour of every day, so they could do real journalism. The point is, stop getting your news exclusively from CNN, Fox, or MSNBC because they all suck ass. If you want real news, mix and match multiple papers, preferably one with more conservative editorials and one with more liberal editorials. I find that the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal (both of which can be viewed online for free that day) are the best places for full view of what's going on, the Post for a more liberal point of view, the Wall Street Journal for the conservative. Both are more moderate than other national papers and are well written (I find the New York Times quite elitist and condescending and the Washington Times is just plain poorly written and edited). If you wanna get even crazier (like me) use google news. It links to thousands of papers throughout the world. It can be kinda fun to read something from India or some such every so often. If you think the New York Times is anti-American, wait until you read some of that stuff. Wow, just wow.
Anyways, back to the topic of the presidential race. Start throwing some concrete examples at me guys (or in Jeff's case look at your sources more closely). I'd love to hear them. I'm fairly hard behind Obama, but I'm always trying to keep an open mind. You could get me back to voting Colbert-Stewart '08: Truthiness and Justice for all. Then again Clinton could win the nomination, in which case that
is my vote. Dan, I staunchly believe that you should always vote. If you don't want to vote
for a candidate, I say write in someone you like, or follow my lead and do a joke write in. I refuse to vote for the lesser of two evils ever again (the one good lesson that came from John Kerry's campaign), and you shouldn't either. It's a bad system and we deserve better.
*edit*
Wow am I on a high horse of late.
*edit2*
I forgot to mention, the Voice of America, the official newscast of the State Department, is another excellent place to get information. Despite its association with the State Department, it is remarkably unbiased, although that is in part because it does not tend to be terribly detailed. If you want the raw facts in a short, sweet format, VoA is the place to go.
"Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad."
Captain Tightpants
not gona happen in 1 year unless we abandon all our equipment and run for the kuwait border like hell....... so that would be great leave all tha high tech shit for the Irainans and al quada, nice policy!
