the most important election of your lifetime: 2012 american general election thread

i'd like to make a large bet on those bets, with all of my money

i'd like to make a large bet on those bets, with all of my your money

I bet the guy next door's house

Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign and the super PAC supporting it are outraising Obama among financial-sector donors $37.1 million to $4.8 million.

they really don't like their servants calling em names, even for show.

yep

i'd like to make a large bet on those bets, with all of my money

then have a bond rating certify it AAA!

http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenbertoni/2012/06/13/exclusive-adelsons-pro-romney-donations-will-be-limitless-could-top-100m/

George Will says (elsewhere)that this is just free speech

Does Adelson feel guilty about one American potentially steering the fate of the presidential election? “I’m against very wealthy people attempting to or influencing elections,” Adelson told me in February. “But as long as it’s doable I’m going to do it...."

After all the media burials OWS received from Dem pundits last week, watch the liberals hit the streets (for a few days) if Mittens is elected.

“I’m against very wealthy people attempting to or influencing elections,” Adelson told me in February. “But as long as it’s doable I’m going to do it...."

uh then you are not actually against it

kinda like Obama (in NYC to shake the cup again today)

I'm against murder. But as long as it's doable I'm going to do it...

no lover of shelly delly but i think shakey's wrong here. lots of wealthy left-leaners are against the low levels they're taxed at but they don't voluntarily write big checks to the feds, and that doesn't mean they actually support low tax rates.

more like "i'm against lotteries, but if you tell me i've won a couple million dollars, i'll take it."

no, he's talking about committing a specific act - not just benefitting from a situation through no fault of his own. this is different.

like it doesn't matter if you're against something you have no agency over. but he does have agency over whether or not he buys elections.

Can we ship Adelson to Macau finally?

I mean permanently

Or is this where Obama suddenly discovers that he's an enemy combattant?

no, he's talking about committing a specific act - not just benefitting from a situation through no fault of his own. this is different/

No, it isn't - it's the exact same ethics as voting for one of the two candidates who's going to win, to kick a tired horse. He believes the system is corrupt, but somebody is going to benefit from that corruption. If he abstains from being the one who corrupts it, then he gets moral high ground, but nothing changes about the corruption, so the moral high ground is useless. The corruption is in place & will be a part of the process. Declining to participate in it is foolish, if you are interested in the outcome of the election. Somebody else may do it on the other side if you don't; then you can say you stood the high ground when you could have bought the election for the greater good.

I don't follow the logic. committing an act is different from not committing an act, I don't care what you say.

so the moral high ground is useless.

morality /= utility

no, he's talking about committing a specific act - not just benefitting from a situation through no fault of his own. this is different.

i would say that to accept largesse is to "commit a specific act". my point is self interest. adelson seems to be saying, "i personally believe this sort of thing should be illegal. but since it's not illegal and seems to be in my best interest, you can bet your ass i'm gonna do it." which makes a pragmatic kind of sense.

xps: aero otm

rmde with equating morality with self-interest

Kant's categorical imperative etc

a pure election is one value, offing obama is another, he's choosing which of those he believes is the higher virtue

the ethics of sheldon adelson, an ilx exclusive.

it seems clear: let's say I have a trillion dollars. let's further posit that I believe the good of the country will be better served by a Romney presidency than an Obama one. unlimited election donations are allowed under Citizens United; I don't agree with the decision, but it's settled law. if I withhold by trillion dollars on the grounds that I don't think people should be allowed to donate that much money, I'm conceding the election to the guy who's willing to donate his money under the terms of CU, which is the law of the land. I am therefore placing a moral objection to settled law ahead of my posited belief in what will be best for the country. Who would even do that? If the moral objection were to murder, that would be one thing, but it's not.

I am therefore placing a moral objection to settled law ahead of my posited belief in what will be best for the country. Who would even do that?

pretty sure you and Morbz argue the virtues of this exact approach all the time dude

another comparison: they just changed the local (washington state) laws to allow the sale of hard liquor outside special state-run stores. i.e., you can now buy booze at the supermarket. even if i were to think this was bad policy, i'd probably still buy my booze at the supermarket. i wouldn't deprive myself of an ability simply to make a point about how i think the law should work.

pretty sure you and Morbz argue the virtues of this exact approach all the time dude

I'll take this as a concession of the point & a pathetic attempt to take it to ad-hom

nah, he's right. the inconsistency does not make your current argument problematic, but maybe worth keeping the principle in mind when you argue the opposite?

fwiw, i agree with you here

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2012/06/anger_management.php

josh marshall talking "bitch slap politics".

I was wondering if you did!

the inconsistency does not make your current argument problematic, but maybe worth keeping the principle in mind when you argue the opposite?

doubtless! interested parties will note I haven't really argued the opposite in some time

(=wondering "will Mordy say I'm correct, or wrong")

Today is the day of the dueling mega-speeches on the presidential campaign trail. And reporters waiting around the venue of President Obama’s event were greeted by a Romney campaign bus circling the venue and volubly honking its horn, something you’d expect a rival wrestling team to do to disrupt the other team’s pep talk. On its face it seems somewhere between juvenile and just weird. But this is actually a core part of the Romney camp’s election strategy.

somebody finally needs to a think piece on the blurred line between trolling and conservatism

one is not obligated to pay more tax than one legally must. and taxes are mandatory, not voluntary or charitable. that should end this discussion about "lol wealthy liberals don't cut larger checks to the IRS so they are hypocrites!!"

i think chait wrote a whole thing about this recently. lemmi check my rss feed...

i think this is it? http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/05/liberal-donors-ethical-confusion.html

I'll take this as a concession of the point & a pathetic attempt to take it to ad-hom

I wasn't trying to be ad-hom, it was just that given past arguments I figured you had an implicit understanding of placing principles above short-term practical or personal gains

being a Groucho Marxist, if you don't like my principles, I have others.

it was just that given past arguments I figured you had an implicit understanding of placing principles above short-term practical or personal gains

it depends on the principles & what's at stake, it's not an abstract principle. the one I tend to get most heated up about is the torture of prisoners, which is something I have a very, very hard time greater-gooding with other matters (health care, reproductive rights, etc) because we are talking there about actual active human evil.

are there other kinds of evil

dog evil

live evil

boll we'evil

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/2/2d/Live-movies_cruella.jpg/250px-Live-movies_cruella.jpg

I guess the thing about buying elections is that he's okay with elections being bought as long as he approves of the outcome. he's not really staking out an ethical position against buying elections, he's staking out a practical position, and its disingenuous (to say the least) for him to voice any purported moral objection.

xp

to answer your question honestly, yes: there's "evil" (a concept we can debate even down to whether there's such a thing at all in a godless universe) and evil as understood at the level of human action, i.e., detaining people without charge and torturing them, or allowing such a thing to happen when it's within your power to stop it

he's not really staking out an ethical position against buying elections, he's staking out a practical position, and its disingenuous (to say the least) for him to voice any purported moral objection.

well, we're getting into the territory of angels and pins, but i think it's acceptable for a person to express a "soft" moral objection to things that they would happily do if allowed. to accept this is simply to admit that there's tension between what we want to do ourselves and what we feel people in general should do (or should want to do, or should be allowed to do, or w/e).