Tired of election news?

[didymus]

I’ve always thought it’s ridiculous to have year and a half long campaigns for president.
Now there is an extension of Firefox, Chrome and Safari that will let you block all campaign news from your browser until Super Tuesday, the conventions or any date of your choice.
Kewl!

 

[SuperLuigi]

I really can’t argue against something like that in the marketplace----however, people also need to know the position of candidates, and there is no excuse not to in this day and age. For one, I’m getting tired of Catholics voting for politicians and platforms that go squarely and specifically against our values and then acting all shocked and surprised when they follow those ideas.

On the other hand, I just hope those politicians who represent our values aren’t going to fall for wasting time and money on dinosaur media or other stuff that no one sees.

As Mark Steyn aptly put it after 2012 “We would have been better off making three Stars Wars/Lord of the Rings movies than spending it all on TV ads”.

 

[7_Sorrows]

I agree. unless someone votes a straight one party ticket and lets other voters decide who the final candidates will be, he/she doesn’t need to know where the candidates stand. I really hope we don’t have many voters like that! To me, it is our civic duty to read about and be informed on who the candidates are and where they stand on the issues.

 

[powerofk]

I really can’t argue against something like that in the marketplace----however, people also need to know the position of candidates, and there is no excuse not to in this day and age. For one, I’m getting tired of Catholics voting for politicians and platforms that go squarely and specifically against our values and then acting all shocked and surprised when they follow those ideas.

On the other hand, I just hope those politicians who represent our values aren’t going to fall for wasting time and money on dinosaur media or other stuff that no one sees.

As Mark Steyn aptly put it after 2012 “We would have been better off making three Stars Wars/Lord of the Rings movies than spending it all on TV ads”.

Understood. The problem, though, really, is the following: most of what we get from Presidential candidates during most of the campaign season is simply platitudes. Often times, the only place anyone can get a full synopsis of a candidate’s views is by going to that candidate’s website - which may or may not be a reliable source of information. You’re certainly not going to understand the views of a candidate by watching the ads of his or her opponent. And the “debates” rarely give anything other than 90 second soundbytes - which get taken out of context. This is hardly enough time for a candidate to truly expound on his or her actual views. The back-and-forth on the Sunday shows (even though the hosts may have bias one way or the other) gives much more insight than the debates, in all honesty. This is especially true when the host of the Sunday show goes “Devil’s advocate” on the candidate - as it requires the candidate to actually back up his or her thinking.

In all seriousness, I often get more informed representations of the candidate’s views from the “Voter’s Guide” published each election cycle by the League of Women Voters (or other such publications which simply give the candidates questionaires and reprint the responses verbatim) than anywhere else. There’s a note here - often, such questionaires are the only places where down-ballot candidates such as state legislators get their views heard/seen/read, because they usually don’t have the money to finance even newspaper ads, or even a website.

 

[DaveBj]

I’ve always thought it’s ridiculous to have year and a half long campaigns for president.
Now there is an extension of Firefox, Chrome and Safari that will let you block all campaign news from your browser until Super Tuesday, the conventions or any date of your choice.
Kewl!

Unfortunately, that won’t work on the TV news programs.

 

[didymus]

I really can’t argue against something like that in the marketplace----however, people also need to know the position of candidates, and there is no excuse not to in this day and age. For one, I’m getting tired of Catholics voting for politicians and platforms that go squarely and specifically against our values and then acting all shocked and surprised when they follow those ideas.

On the other hand, I just hope those politicians who represent our values aren’t going to fall for wasting time and money on dinosaur media or other stuff that no one sees.

As Mark Steyn aptly put it after 2012 “We would have been better off making three Stars Wars/Lord of the Rings movies than spending it all on TV ads”.

I’m not planning to remain uninformed about the candidates but most of what’s going on now is just sound and fury.
I have the extension to turn campaign coverage back on Super Tuesday, six months out from the election which is still way too long.

If I had my way the primaries would start in the first Tuesday following the 4th of July.