When Mitt Romney becomes president.... *FLUX THREAD!*

[Jason]

At least Romney TRIED...... Even standing there lying counts as doing SOMETHING as opposed to Obama!

How about we get Brian to moderate the next debate??  

"We would like to debate under an atmosphere of calmness. You're grass and I'm a power mower. Now let's get ready and WHACK OFF!"

[Pinder's Gone To Kokomo And Back Again]

And then Manson can moderate the final debate!

I'd pay top $$$ just to watch him call both guys "Chief" over and over!

[Dunderhead]

It is less than 1% than the Federal Budget. It's a pointless cut, and I'm really not sure why he mentioned it.


I just brought it up to laugh at Santorum saying he kills things he likes!

So we can't cut the entitlement programs that make up like 50% of the budget or else we're cruel. We can't cut defense spending or else we're weak. And we can't cut discretionary spending because it's negligible. So what do we cut exactly? It seems like the first thing we're going to end up cutting is interest payments, and that will happen when we go bankrupt after not being able to cut anything else. I like NPR, I really do, but I don't see why we *have* to have it. Sure it may not cost much, sure it's sort of a nice thing to have around, but why does Romney come off so badly by just saying we should cut it? We don't have any money, we have to cut something, why should NPR be immune? The American public is like a bratty child who's told he can only have one toy and then tries to weasel his way into getting them all, it's just embarrassing.

I just don't understand why Democrats love to espouse this rhetoric of compromise when they just aren't willing to compromise in any way shape or form. It's just "we should cut your thing instead of mine, it's only fair", compromise would be "you're right, I'll cut this if you cut that". Our government has 0 regard for money, we just spend it and when we run out we print more. That's what's destroyed our economy, "I'll just have another $100,000,000, I deserve it, I was good today, it's only a little bit", it's an addiction. Most of this money is just going down a black hole, and it's gotten so bad I don't think anyone could even figure out at this point how much money we're actually spending or where it's exactly it's all going. I say cut it, cut everything that can be cut.

[Dunderhead]

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/mencken1.html

[Mahalo]

Most of this money is just going down a black hole, and it's gotten so bad I don't think anyone could even figure out at this point how much money we're actually spending or where it's exactly it's all going. I say cut it, cut everything that can be cut.

Thank you Klingsor... I wish liberals could at the very most understand the spending predicament we are in...

[Jason]

If government welfare is such a good thing and is supposed to help people, how come 70% of it (first link) goes not to the people who may need it, but to bureaucrats, people who most likely DON'T need it? Sorry, but when 70% of your budget goes towards administrative costs, I think it's safe to say that it is a broken system and once which the government wants to ensure REMAINS broken.

Let's use the one piece of data provided from Statistic Brain (second link). $131.9 billion spent annually on welfare not counting food stamps or unemployment. 70% of that is $92.33 billion. $92.33 billion that goes into the welfare pool just ends up in the pockets of corporate welfare whores and bureaucrats? You mean to tell me that's NOT a broken system? That is a system to be defended? IT DEFINES BROKEN. IT SCREAMS BROKEN.

Love the Mencken article, Fish.

http://www.softwaremetrics.com/Economics/Private%20Charity%20versus%20Government%20Entitlements.pdf
http://www.statisticbrain.com/welfare-statistics/

[Pinder's Gone To Kokomo And Back Again]

You guys don't gert it! First off, you assume anyone who doesn't share your opinions is a liberal (as if that stupid word even means anything anymore) and secondly, no one's arguing the system isn't broken or imperfect, that's a fact. It's when you spit and spew merda about people feeling "entitled" and so forth, that others take offense. You can hide behind numbers all you want, but if you're preaching  swollen fantasies of "personal responsibility" and markets over humanity while you sit there enjoying your freedoms which others worked, sweated, suffered and died for, you are approaching the definition of simple smug and dismissive evil... And this is from an athiest!

The world needs more futurists and less economists!

[Dunderhead]

You guys don't gert it! First off, you assume anyone who doesn't share your opinions is a liberal (as if that stupid word even means anything anymore) and secondly, no one's arguing the system isn't broken or imperfect, that's a fact. It's when you spit and spew merda about people feeling "entitled" and so forth, that others take offense. You can hide behind numbers all you want, but if you're preaching  swollen fantasies of "personal responsibility" and markets over humanity while you sit there enjoying your freedoms which others worked, sweated, suffered and died for, you are approaching the definition of simple smug and dismissive evil... And this is from an athiest!

The world needs more futurists and less economists!

Futurism is just immortality repackaged for consumption by the modern enlightened dandy. It's fashionable nonsense and little else, science fiction utopias and dystopias are science fiction all the same. We've replaced heaven with some technocratic, post-scarcity, post-human, post-singularity paradise, and likewise replaced hell with leather clad cannibals and zombie apocalypses. If by "futurism" you just mean "planning ahead", then I apologize because I do believe taking the long view is important. We should realize that though transitioning away from the entitlement state will go hand in hand with some immediate discomfort, it is still necessary.

Markets are human, price is a signal of importance. Do you really believe that anyone person or organization should have the ability to determine the value of things? That's what central planning is. The market is a living organism where prices reflect the relative importance of goods and services. In the free market prices are a balance, they ensure that money and time and resources go where they're most needed. When the government steps in things get distorted and prices no longer reflect what the economy really needs but what industries most heavily lobby the congress. I wish people would stop with this whole immature characterization of capitalism, capitalism isn't the stock market, it isn't corporations, capitalism is nothing. The law of supply and demand is the law of evolution or gravity for economics, it describes a completely natural phenomenon that happens regardless of whether or not it's articulated in a scientific law. Creationists and anti-Capitalists suffer from the same species of misunderstanding and ignorance.

[Pinder's Gone To Kokomo And Back Again]

Thank you, Klingsor. While I don't agree with your opinion on futurism, I am a sucker for a well reasoned argument, and you've certainly presented one here. If we could only do away with the name calling and putting people in boxes, you'd find a lot less hysterical resistance to your views. To call anyone an anti capitasist who enjoys our freedoms in this country is somewhat laughable when you think about it. And a lot of potentially enlightening conversations go immediatly off the rails when the word "liberals" is tossed onto someone and is completely taken for granted as being accuratly descriptive.

[hypehat]

It is less than 1% than the Federal Budget. It's a pointless cut, and I'm really not sure why he mentioned it.


I just brought it up to laugh at Santorum saying he kills things he likes!

So we can't cut the entitlement programs that make up like 50% of the budget or else we're cruel. We can't cut defense spending or else we're weak. And we can't cut discretionary spending because it's negligible. So what do we cut exactly? It seems like the first thing we're going to end up cutting is interest payments, and that will happen when we go bankrupt after not being able to cut anything else. I like NPR, I really do, but I don't see why we *have* to have it. Sure it may not cost much, sure it's sort of a nice thing to have around, but why does Romney come off so badly by just saying we should cut it? We don't have any money, we have to cut something, why should NPR be immune? The American public is like a bratty child who's told he can only have one toy and then tries to weasel his way into getting them all, it's just embarrassing.

I just don't understand why Democrats love to espouse this rhetoric of compromise when they just aren't willing to compromise in any way shape or form. It's just "we should cut your thing instead of mine, it's only fair", compromise would be "you're right, I'll cut this if you cut that". Our government has 0 regard for money, we just spend it and when we run out we print more. That's what's destroyed our economy, "I'll just have another $100,000,000, I deserve it, I was good today, it's only a little bit", it's an addiction. Most of this money is just going down a black hole, and it's gotten so bad I don't think anyone could even figure out at this point how much money we're actually spending or where it's exactly it's all going. I say cut it, cut everything that can be cut.

Dude, I literally just wanted to laugh at Santorum saying he kills the things he likes. That's why I posted the link laughing at Santorum. Saying he kills the things he likes. Then, when people started questioning the nature of PBS funding (which don't mean sh*t to me because I'm British), I said my only horse in this rodeo was the mockery of Rick Santorum, a man who should deservedly be mocked for saying that he kills things and still likes them in reference to Big Bird (I mean.... Big Bird!) on the record.

Have I dragged this joke to the ground far enough or is there a particular nuance you would like to explore with regards to Rick Santorum killing the things he likes?

[Dunderhead]

A few things,

1. Your post consisted of two parts,

It is less than 1% than the Federal Budget. It's a pointless cut, and I'm really not sure why he mentioned it.

and

I just brought it up to laugh at Santorum saying he kills things he likes!

I responded to the first part, disagreeing with you about it being a "pointless cut", but because of the second part I should just take the first part as self evident? You're muddying things, you made a contentious point and I responded, and now you're trying to undermine the argument by insisting that because the link was just supposed to be a joke, any reply I make to you is just me being dense. I'm not arguing against the second part. Jeeze.


2. I guess I just don't see what's so humorous about Santorum's quote. So Romney said he was going to defund PBS, then the media jumped on him by introducing the whole wanting to "kill" Big Bird metaphor, and then when Santorum attempts to reframe Romney`s message in the context of that metaphor he`s worthy of mockery and contempt. Why exactly?

A. "I want to defund PBS."
B. "DID YOU HEAR THAT!? MITT ROMNEY WANTS TO KILL BIG BIRD!"
C. "Well sometimes you have to kill what you love when it`s for the greater good."
D. "DID YOU HEAR THAT!? RICK SANTORUM WANTS TO KILL THE THINGS HE LOVES!"

You know, I`m not a republican, I would never in a million years vote for either Romney or Santorum, I`m just disgusted by the underhanded, histrionic way that the media and liberal leaning internet users try and play every other Mitt Romney soundbite off as being out of touch with reality and laughably ludicrous. Neither Romney nor Santorum said anything unreasonable here, everyone is just overreacting and making fools out of themselves, but are so out of touch themselves that they lack the perspective to see how obnoxious and self righteous they`re being.

You think PBS is essential, you think cutting it is a bad idea? Then argue that point like a mature adult (not you specifically hypehat, democrats in general).

[hypehat]

To have a swing at arguing about it maturely (why do we do this to ourselves, Fishmonk, it never ends well  ) my early wondering still stands - of all the things federal expenditure you could possibly cut, why something so meagre? I don't expect Mittbot to turn around and say 'I'm cutting the entire space program' and drop the mic, but he could have chosen SOMETHING. Why that? Specifically, why did  Mitt say that?

I just found the quote hilarious. The whole thing. I do like boiling it down to 'Rick Santorum kills the things he likes' because, hey, that's my sense of humour. I wanted to post it in a politics thread. I'm not interested in getting into a huge debate about X, tbh. I'd actually quite like to just discuss the election and the little things that crop up. But every time we discuss anything in a politics thread it becomes grand political science on both sides and that isn't worth the energy.

[Dunderhead]

I just don't get civilization anymore, it depresses me to no end. I went out on a date a few days ago, and this girl just seemed like the personification of cultural decay. She launched into this bizarre analysis of My Little Pony and how it promoted lesbianism or something, and then dismissed Goethe by telling me that he was just "too white".

I don't mean for there to be any animosity between us, you know that I've always enjoyed your posts. American youth culture today though is just...sad. I hope that one day I'll be able to vote for a Democratic president, but the party today, the narrative it advances in the media, the characteristics it claims for itself, is, unfortunately, ethically bankrupt.

I find it difficult to even associate with members of my own generation anymore, which is not to say that I think my peers are "bad" or that I'm somehow especially "good" compared to them. It's the whole thoughtlessly atheist, pretentiously ignorant, science worshipping neo-liberal theory weened worldview that honestly gets me down.

All I'm really after is objectivity. So many people I know have started taking good ideas for granted, and all I've wanted to do in this thread is point out the hypocrisies, misunderstandings, and prejudices inherent to the left-leaning worldview. If democrats actually want to win the debate they need to start taking their own values seriously. Considering the lip service paid to science and logic and objectivity and facts, I can't help but feel down when I come across someone who, despite her avowal of open-mindedness and enlightenment, openly mocks Goethe and the things he stands for as being "too white".

There's something very wrong going on here. I don't mean to take out my personal frustrations on others, or make excessive generalizations about the state of the world, only to stand up for honesty. The truth needs advocates right now, and I think even well intentioned people, when they've lost sight of morality, need to be kicked in the butt by somebody. I don't want to see the Democrats lose, and I'm not particularly interested in seeing them win, I mostly want them to be honest with themselves and live up to some of the very admirable standards that they set for their opponents. "Let me be as honest as Nestor" is my motto.

[halblaineisgood]

Reading this thread has been a pleasure. Way to go, Klingsor!

[Dunderhead]

I don't think I deserve any praise for just doing what every rational person *should* do, especially because I'm so far from the intelligence and maturity of the men whom I truly admire. I'm just worried that this generation is going to waste, yeah the world is in a bad state, but that doesn't excuse anyone from the standards of morality. You can't change what's in people's hearts with revolutions, resentment, and violence, you can't improve the world and forever banish bigotry and greed with good intentions alone. The only thing any of us can control is ourselves, and if you want things to be better the best place to start is within.

Prejudice is dangerous in all it's forms because it blinds us to the perspectives and feelings of others. Contemporary ideals have lost their grounding, great minds lived and died for those ideals, and what those ideals are really about is something that's unceremoniously slipping away more and more with each passing day. Objectivity, intellectual freedom, religious and personal tolerance are all ideas that need to be fought for, whatever the battleground may be, but I feel like too many of us are quitting the fight at the first sign of inconvenience. You can't just give yourself, or your group, or your party a free pass, as soon as the inner sanctum of your mind is surrendered, as soon as you let prejudice and contempt in through the backdoor, the whole cause is lost in an instant.

Becoming enlightened, becoming a real vigorous spirit that values beauty and justice for their own sakes is the task that falls to every free person, and I devote myself as much as I'm able to fulfilling the promise of a better world within myself. That's the utopia that we should all strive for, not the heavenly city or technocratic paradise, but the maturity and self consciousness that comes with knowledge and reflection. The ideal of freedom is never fully attainable, not for me and not for anyone, but if we all apply ourselves and open up our minds to the wisdom and virtue of great men, the world *will* be a better place.

[hypehat]

I do feel where you're coming from on all this. Not that I have much to add. Elizabeth Barrett Browning springs to mind (see, I've read a few books  ), and this quote runs around my head quite a lot, but 'Ay, but every age appears to souls who live in it most unheroic.....  That's wrong thinking, to my mind, and wrong thoughts make poor poems. Every age, through being beheld too close, is ill-discerned by those who have not lived past it.' I wonder what history will make of our youth. Is that up to us?

The thing that troubles me most about modernity is the internet (funny place to raise such a concern, I know). I know people who take it much more seriously than I, whereas I see it as an opt-in thing. Maybe it's heading towards a technocratic paradise. What the hell is a technocratic paradise? I'm more of a person who appreciates tactile relationships and interaction, and the more I see of people basing entire relationships and cultures off staring into a screen (and don't get me started on the anonymous side of things) it does worry me.

As an aside, anyone even mentioning fucking My Little Pony in my presence tends to be subject to derisive laughter or abuse from me. My nerd friends all got into it at the same time and if you need a kids cartoon to tell you that Friendship Is Magic (tm) in your twenties I am severely worried about you. At one level it's just a cartoon but the level of devotion is.... eek. Did she say it was lesbian propaganda in a.... good way? (Upon no consideration at all to the facts of the matter, I once responded to someone saying something like that by outlining how it was actually a depiction of the horrors of Communism, on the whole 'sometimes a crappy kids cartoon with a disturbing fanbase is just a crappy kids cartoon' tack - it was a very long train journey and no, I'm not proud  ) But I've digressed. I think it sums up everything I hate about the internet, though.

....Barrett Browing and MLP in the same post. Maybe culture is going down the drain 

[Dunderhead]

The internet has undermined communication unfortunately. I don't get the impression that people really go on the internet to communicate. It seems that they log on to connect with some anonymous hivemind, it's just really weird. That's why SS is my favorite website, because we all sort of know one another to such a degree that we can have conversations as individuals.

That whole thing about my blind date was just an anecdote, certainly not evidence by itself of some cultural decline, I just see more and more people like her and I worry that my generation is destined to be another "lost" generation. This girl was praising MLP for expressing pro-gay opinions. I find stuff like that really disheartening, you're absolutely right hypehat, I worry about 20 year olds who look up cartoon ponies as role models. I don't mean to be presumptuous, because I don't really know what the gay community needs, but I can't help but feel that when you prop up a movement on intellectually childish things like MLP you end up delegitimizing it in the long run. When there are real geniuses out there like Peter Pears and Benjamin Britten to teach both gay and straight people alike what it means to be human, I guess I have a hard time swallowing a line of children's toys as a source of intellectual strength and beauty.

Theory has sort of tried to strip art of its' ability to improve humanity and instill virtue in the heart of the individual unfortunately.

[guitarfool2002]

I like these threads best when they look at topics rather than overreaching philosophies and theories. Topics can be debated and analyzed, philosophies...not so easily done.

Having said that, the whole "Big Bird" topic/issue continues to burn, and I wasn't going to say much on it until seeing that the Big Bird issue is now going to appear in an Obama campaign advertisement.

I have two main points on the whole deal, approaching one per post at a time:

Consider the funding issue and relate it to how much revenue is generated by "Childrens Television Workshop (CTW)", the parent company/organization for Sesame Street, the licensing and sales of the various Sesame Street characters like Elmo, Big Bird, Oscar, Grover, etc., and the profits generated by whatever products are sold with the image of one or more of those characters.

I grew up in the 70's, I remember as a kid having several Sesame Street items such as an Ernie puppet, a Big Bird radio, the Sesame Street album (released on Columbia, if I recall), and various other items, beyond watching the show.

Let's remember this - with kids, Sesame Street is a very short-lived deal in the big picture of life. At the most, a toddler and young kid will be into Elmo, Big Bird, and the rest for a period of about 2-5 years, then it's on to more mature shows, games, and obsessions which similarly last about 2-4 years at a time.

So let's reality-check this a bit: As important as Sesame Street is and was to those pre-school age groups, it is ultimately a passing fad in life. A very important and beloved fad, but is it really any more important or vital to a child's life than whatever later loves and obsessions throughout childhood really are? Among kids age 12-15 *right now*, is that "Tickle Me Elmo" doll they wanted at age 5 doing anything in that kid's life besides sitting with dead batteries in a closet or old toy box in the attic somewhere? Or has it even been sold off or given away?

These things are fleeting, as they should be. I think putting "Big Bird" into the context of national politics and elections is beyond silly and a total distraction from the heart of the issues at hand, but that's for my other point.

Back to CTW and Sesame Street: Can any of us in America walk into a mall, grocery store, or even a restaurant on a regular basis and not see a pre-school age child or a toddler with an "Elmo" product of some kind? It is ubiquitous among that age group to own something with Elmo.

Ask this one question: If millions and millions of sales, royalties, license fees, and other profits are generated through the consumer sales of just this one Sesame Street character out of a handful, how and why could we justify allotting even a fraction of taxpayer dollars to the organization which owns and showcases that money-making character?

This is just Sesame Street, remember, one specific show that happens to have all of the attention right now in politics...there are other PBS shows with similar sponsorships and revenue streams, but by far Sesame Street is the juggernaut of making profits through sales and licensing of their characters.

Someone please justify giving money - involuntarily through taxation - to any part of Sesame Street when the show's own marketing and sales are on par with any similar successful company in the free market? In fact, "Elmo" alone in the toy business is exceeding those characters developed and sold in the commercial market and not even on public television. Consumers are choosing to buy Elmo, they are choosing to watch Sesame Street and watch Elmo's videos...why mandate that even a cent of federal money go to this organization when quite frankly Elmo's people are kicking the collective asses of their competitors in the toy and children's entertainment markets?

I had to laugh about the entire "Big Bird" flap this week because, like many other strategies coming from the DNC...listen close to this...

***It's Been Done!"***

Keep in mind the history of the political scene in the 90's. The GOP had taken control of the House and Senate in the '94 elections. Bill Clinton was president. Among the issues on the GOP's agenda was looking at cutting federal funding to PBS. There were specific items and issues mentioned, but the DNC in their media campaign chose to focus on "killing" Big Bird, and the media ran with it because it was a hot-button issue. Simple psychology at work: Threaten to "take away" something from your kids, and you'll get a stream of tears and crying fits when they see on TV that someone wants to "kill" Big Bird.

As ridiculous as that notion is and was, it stuck, and you had prominent politicians taking to the podium insisting they were not out to kill Big Bird, or The Count, or whoever. This was *fiction*, they were fictional characters, and you saw politicians rushing to say they were not targeting Big Bird.

Absurd. Yet, look at the news this past week, and wait for the Obama ads to hit. With everything going on, with all of the issues out there, we are again reduced in the political discourse of the 2012 election, to debating which candidate will be declaring open season on Big Bird.

We see tactics which are about 15 years old and have been used in previous political schlock-fest media campaigns being dusted off and trotted out again in 2012. Do we deserve more than that?

Takeaway part one: Research the numbers, and focus on what the profit totals have been through sales and licensing of Sesame Street characters, then ask why they would need additional federal money when consumers for decades have been choosing to purchase and support these groups in the free market. Elmo has consistently been one of the biggest in-demand Christmas-list items...do they need more funding than what already exists?

[hypehat]

IIRC they've said that, whilst of course Sesame Street makes money, PBS doesn't fund the production of the show (or at least to an extent that is negligible) and they use it for distribution and would like to keep it that way.

[SMiLE Brian]

The cutting of funding for PBS seems more like a symbolic cut, than a real one(foreign Aid, defense, welfare, etc).

[guitarfool2002]

It is a tad symbolic, obviously politically loaded on both sides of the political spectrum, but at some point the reality of the situation should be highlighted instead of rhetoric and scare-language designed to get children crying over someone "killing" Big Bird.

It's classic PR nonsense. If you appeal to kids, you get parents' attention, no matter the issue.

There was a comedian and TV host named Soupy Sales (father of Hunt and Tony Sales from Bowie's 'Tin Machine', BTW). Decades ago, he had a silly children's show on TV which had a big following in the days before cable and 1,200 digital channels. One time, on his broadcast, he asked all the kids watching his Soupy Sales show to go to their parents pockets, purses, wallets, whatever, and take out the funny green paper that they had folded in there, and he gave an address for the kids to mail the "green papers" the kids found to Soupy.

It was a scandal, because many, many impressionable young kids did actually take their parents' money in some way, obviously they weren't that smart to be able to address and stamp a letter, but it angered parents so much that something happened to Soupy, he was either fired or suspended...I can't remember.

Point is, what you're seeing with the "Kill Big Bird" mock-hysteria is another case of Soupy asking kids to steal money from dad's wallet and mail it in.

They do it precisely because *KIDS* are the target...and which parent wants a kid crying and asking them if Big Bird is going to be killed?

Consider - would any of this have the same effect if it were Bill Moyers, Charlie Rose, the home-renovation guys, the actors from Downton Abbey or Masterpiece Theatre offered as something which would be "cut" if federal funding were eliminated? Of course not! Most people, not just kids, would say "who the f*** is Bill Moyers?" , or "so what?" whereas Big Bird is that emotional, sentimental icon that they trot out whenever political points are needed against the cutting of federal funds to PBS.

It's tough to find figures for sales and profits related to Sesame Street products and licensing. Let's just say that the average going back about 7 years was a yearly profit in excess of 50 million dollars, not counting a yearly salary for the head of the group that runs Sesame Street totaling around $900,000 per year.

Seriously, does a company clearing that much profit every year need a federal tax subsidy in any amount? If the DNC makes "corporate welfare" in the terms of tax breaks for oil companies and the like a key issue in 2012, how is giving a company  making multi-millions in profits and sales and the group's leader clearing close to a million each year in salary alone any kind of taxpayer funding any less of an outrage?

[guitarfool2002]

BTW, news just broke that the people who run Sesame Street have asked the Obama campaign and the DNC to not run their planned campaign ads featuring not only the Big Bird issue but imagery of Big Bird himself.

They don't wish to see the show or the character politicized or seen as taking a side in a political debate.

Funny that they didn't seem to mind having Big Bird chat with Seth Myers on "Weekend Update" this Saturday...

[hypehat]

It is a tad symbolic, obviously politically loaded on both sides of the political spectrum, but at some point the reality of the situation should be highlighted instead of rhetoric and scare-language desinged to get children crying over someone "killing" Big Bird.

It's classic PR nonsense. If you appeal to kids, you get parents' attention, no matter the issue.

There was a comedian and TV host named Soupy Sales (father of Hunt and Tony Sales from Bowie's 'Tin Machine', BTW). Decades ago, he had a silly children's show on TV which had a big following in the days before cable and 1,200 digital channels. One time, on his broadcast, he asked all the kids watching his Soupy Sales show to go to their parents pockets, purses, wallets, whatever, and take out the funny green paper that they had folded in there, and he gave an address for the kids to mail the "green papers" the kids found to Soupy.

It was a scandal, because many, many impressionable young kids did actually take their parents' money in some way, obviously they weren't that smart to be able to address and stamp a letter, but it angered parents so much that something happened to Soupy, he was either fired or suspended...I can't remember.

Point is, what you're seeing with the "Kill Big Bird" mock-hysteria is another case of Soupy asking kids to steal money from dad's wallet and mail it in.

They do it precisely because *KIDS* are the target...and which parent wants a kid crying and asking them if Big Bird is going to be killed?

Consider - would any of this have the same affect if it were Bill Moyers, Charlie Rose, the home-renovation guys, the actors from Downton Abbey or Masterpiece Theatre offered as something which would be "cut" if federal funding were eliminated? Of course not! Most people, not just kids, would say "who the f*** is Bill Moyers?" , or "so what?" whereas Big Bird is that emotional, sentimental icon that they trot out whenever political points are needed against the cutting of federal funds to PBS.

It's tough to find figures for sales and profits related to Sesame Street products and licensing. Let's just say that the average going back about 7 years was a yearly profit in excess of 50 million dollars, not counting a yearly salary for the head of the group that runs Sesame Street totaling around $900,000 per year.

Seriously, does a company clearing that much profit every year need a federal tax subsidy in any amount? If the DNC makes "corporate welfare" in the terms of tax breaks for oil companies and the like a key issue in 2012, how is giving a company  making multi-millions in profits and sales and the group's leader clearing close to a million each year in salary alone any kind of taxpayer funding any less of an outrage?

Reading the transcript (which I hadn't done before), it's crap campaigning from Mitt - he brought Big Bird into it when he mentioned the cut during the debate. He made it about Sesame Street. He could have said Downton Abbey, of course. Or all the other stuff on PBS. But no, he specifically singled out the one thing that would get him the most flack from the most people as part of his policy cutting PBS. He walked right into it! That's dumb politics.

[Pinder's Gone To Kokomo And Back Again]

I'd like it if this thread could get back to "When Mitt Romney Becomes President" ...

I'd like to know why anyone would want Romney as president and why they think this would be a good idea.... No sermonizing or calling everyone liberals.... Just an explanation of why Romney would be a good or logical choice.

[guitarfool2002]

This is precisely the kind of discussion on this page which relates to the debate - The reaction to the idea that federal funding of a self-sustaining and profitable TV show and merchandising enterprise might warrant a reduction or an outright "cut" for budgetary reasons is the kind of reaction that may sway voters one way or another. The way "Kill Big Bird" is now a cause celebre which was going to be featured in a campaign ad (an ad which, after hearing it, is amazingly dumb and ill-advised) may show the direction of the Obama campaign at this point in time, and it's a direction which some may find not only unnecessary but also a sign of trouble for the campaign itself.

So it's perfectly in line with the topic if the Big Bird issue became a major talking point of this week's campaign to the point of being featured in an attack ad that self-destructed before it got any traction.

As far as asking that someone provide not only who they plan to vote for but why, I think that is the beauty of a secret ballot process, where anyone can hash out the issues in public but ultimately they vote how they want to vote when the curtain is pulled shut behind them without fear of repercussions from that vote.

If someone wants to come out and say "I'm voting for candidate x and this is why...", that is their choice.

In this climate, however, read the news accounts this week of what has been happening to actress Stacey Dash after announcing her support for Mitt Romney over Barack Obama.

It is truly disgusting to have someone personally attacked for expressing not only their choice of candidate but also for their reasons why, no matter what they are.

So much for "civility" in politics, right? Don't agree with someone, don't like their choice? Attack them and try to smear them. Not good.

I think if others see this kind of reaction, they'll gladly discuss and debate individual issues like the PBS flap but may refrain from an outright endorsement in public because it's simply not worth fending off and defending against insults from a bunch of politically charged idiots for doing so.

No one should ever need to justify or announce a vote. Let's not call for it here.