jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:1316 here

so is this race about deflecting a "bad day" or is it about issues?

if it was suppose to deflect obama's bad performance, its only highlighting the amateur nature of the campaign. they think they can dumb it down to this level to make people forget?

Are you new to American politics? No election in the US is about the issues. What do you remember about Al Gore? That he invented the Internet (something he never said) or he needed to wear earth tones? The fact that he sighed during the debate? How about John Kerry? What do you remember about his campaign? Swift boating is probably the only thing. Or, maybe jet skiing.

Right now the campaigns are trying to reach a small number of people whose interest in politics is so limited that they can't decide between the two candidates. That group of people could not tell you the difference between a Keynesian and an Austrian if their life depended on it. Trying to reach them on the issues is a lost cause. I can guarantee that they have heard of Big Bird though. I have no idea if they care about Big Birds' funding or not, but they have heard of him.

I don't think that this is true. I've been undecided because I am socially liberal, fiscally conservative, and weighing the options. Honestly, I'm finding these Sesame Street ads idiotic and clearly being used to distract from the facts.

PBS should have been defunded a long time ago. There are 800 tv stations.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I suppose it is about as effective as the idea of cutting NPR funding to fix the deficit.

One reflects a vision of the proper role of the federal government that many share. The other reflects the proper role of SNL digital shorts that many share.

Is Voice of America also on the chopping block?

I don't know but it obviously serves a potentially international function (part of the role of the federal government) and, as I understand it, could not be expected to be commerically profitable or suppported sufficiently by donations in many locations, unlike PBS.

I don;t really care about the ad one way or another. I am an Obama supporter, however I do think that while "defunding" PBS is a bad idea and will of course have absolutely no effect on the deficit, it does represent a valid, conservative point of view, and it is worth debating on principle.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I suppose it is about as effective as the idea of cutting NPR funding to fix the deficit.

One reflects a vision of the proper role of the federal government that many share. The other reflects the proper role of SNL digital shorts that many share.

Is Voice of America also on the chopping block?

Anonymous wrote:I suppose it is about as effective as the idea of cutting NPR funding to fix the deficit.

One reflects a vision of the proper role of the federal government that many share. The other reflects the proper role of SNL digital shorts that many share.

I suppose it is about as effective as the idea of cutting NPR funding to fix the deficit.

a) I love the clip but
b) I think Dana Milbank of the WaPo has it exactly right (see link below) - it's playing into Romney's hands. PBS funding is a drop in the bucket but Romney has made it look like he told us what he was actually going to cut. If we all argue about PBS, we're not going to push him to tell us what else he's going to cut. Because he needs to cut a whole friggin' lot if he's going to pay for his enormous tax cuts.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-forget-about-big-bird/2012/10/09/5f9a411c-1258-11e2-ba83-a7a396e6b2a7_story.html

Anonymous wrote:shoot sorry I was trying to link to it. my bad. I can never figure that out!

Try it this way:

Anonymous wrote:It also showed the Obama campaign is not so good at following the laws, otherwise they wouldn't have been told to stop running it.

Sesame Street didn't accuse the Obama campaign of not following the laws. It simply asked that the ad be dropped because Sesame Street is non-partisan and non-political. When an Obama ad showed an MSNBC clip of Andrea Mitchell, she also complained because she doesn't want to appear partisan. This sort of thing is not illegal and it is not unusual. I could come up with a list as long as my arm of bands and singers who have asked Romney to stop playing their songs at his events. Assuming he has licensed the music, he has the legal right to do it, but those artists don't want their work used to promote him.

jsteele wrote:Depends on what the goal of the ad was. It helped take attention away from Obama's poor debate performance. If that was the goal, it's succeeded.

I don't think the debate was even over before someone posted this thread:

http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/264725.page

Titled "the only debate meme that matters" that was about Romney's commitment to defund PBS. Whoever started that thread could have a future in politics if he/she doesn't already.

It also showed the Obama campaign is not so good at following the laws, otherwise they wouldn't have been told to stop running it.

I'm pretty liberal and I think that ad was stupid. I get the message they were trying to make, but really?

Anonymous wrote:
something can still be stupid as all hell regardless of its desired outcome. im not such a sycophant to obama or to democrats that i make every attempt to justify even the most absurd of all premises.

i notice you tend to do that a lot and thats all fine and dandy. your whole tactic though of speaking down to someone or acting as if you are more read than the next person in response is a tired technique.

Why don't you and I compare posts we've made that are critical of Obama? If mine are not more numerous and far harsher, you can speak down to me from now on.

A lot of my left-leaning friends love this ad so I think it's at least helped lift their spirits

The ad was hilarious. I actually "LOL", and I never do.