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

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).

it's not even a "soft" moral objection - it's a transparent attempt to alleviate any potential guilt he feels from buying elections (eg "I'm doing this bad thing, but it's okay because I'm actually against it and everybody else is going to do it anyway")

sorta sad to see you guys defending this asshole's rationalizations of his loathsome behavior

eh, i object strongly to laws that allow rich people to spend lavishly in the hopes of influencing elections - and only a little to the desire of rich people to do this.

easier to just object to rich people

sorta sad to see you guys defending this asshole's rationalizations of his loathsome behavior

he's on sound ethical ground as has been established!

Yeah i don't care what you say, dude's buying elections, therefore he's a piece of shit.

I mean, selling derivatives and betting on other people's retirement money is immoral, but it's legal, right? So why not do it?

Adam has a point. Buying elections is bad. Even if the good guys do it for all the reasons stated above.

he's on sound ethical ground as has been established!

yeah I don't think so. behavior is not magically made ethical by virtue of its being legal and other people doing it. claiming to be morally against a specific behavior while deliberately engaging in said immoral behavior is just rank hypocrisy. I totally understand Adelson's argument and motivations - his spreading a thin patina of self-righteousness to abrogate his complicity in a corrupt practice only makes his election-buying slightly more nauseating imho.

Yeah i don't care what you say, dude's buying elections, therefore he's a piece of shit.

Yeah, I feel the same way. Regardless of whether or not he's on "sound ethical ground" (and I'm dubious), he's knowingly pushing toward a future where the election has turned into the 2016 Tostitoshttp://help.adobe.com/en_US/FrameMaker/8.0/images/trademark.png Soros V. Adelson Rich Guy Throwdown, complete with other rich tall guys serving as the avatars for the other rich tall guys. Yeah, we're already there anyway pretty much, but what a fucking asshole

Also, it's worth thinking about how we would be reacting if it was Soros/Democrats who were the subject of the article, instead.

What irks me isn't so much his position on rich men buying elections, though surely such a staunch republican knows the perils this engenders, it's that he's a friggin' gambling magnate.

so, um, our president's speech today was pretty good, I must say.

he's good at the speechifyin

he's a friggin' gambling magnate

p. sure you mean job creator -- in macau, anyway

while i think the citizens united ruling is bullshit, no matter how much money sheldon adelson gives him, i am not going to vote for romney.

adelson is not buying the election, he's buying the airwaves. that the two things correlate so heavily is at least as big a problem.

they don't correlate very highly when obama and romney are going to be on the airwaves 24/7 regardless

I hope they so oversaturate the airwaves they erase their names form the minds of the populace.

"Mitt who? Barak Obama? Excuse me, I think you gave me a joke ballot. I only recognize one name, and that's Rosanne Barr."

x-post -- press corps grumbles Obama's speech was too long (54 minutes)

http://politicker.com/2012/06/president-obamas-speech-gets-a-thumbs-down-from-political-press-corps/

Washington Monthly guy notes:

obviously anyone who doesn’t like Obama could easily find something to diss (several of my progressive acquaintances just completely lose it every time Obama refers to deficit reduction, ever).

so, um, our president's speech today was pretty good, I must say

waiting for the transcript of the one at sarah Jessica & Matthew's house

huh so i guess there's a more appropriate thread for this but woah: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/16/us/us-to-stop-deporting-some-illegal-immigrants.html?hp

Uh, don't read the comments on that article.

DJGDoylestown
Good, less tax dollars wasted on police harassing people. Now let's stop the police harassment for marijuana and really move into the 21st century.