I would love if there was a full system of public financing. But the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled, going back to 1976,  that you can't require  candidates to use public funds. The candidates have to have the ability to go outside of the public system if they want to do so. The Court sees this as a matter of protecting free speech.

it's the best I can do to raise the issue.

What's sad is to see how many justify it.

So what is too much?  Is there a limit?  Shall we celebrate when the number reaches one million ads?

There is time to say enough is enough.  That is what the diary is about.

this part of my comment:

"Everything about thi$ country i$ about $$$$$.  Can you imagine being poor in another country and realizing that our election$ are being determined by who rai$e$ the mo$t money."

Theme: Obama's words vs. actions, in context of his discredited oil ads in PA. Obama's ad says:

"I'm Barack Obama. I don't take money from oil companies or Washington lobbyists, and I won't let them block change anymore. They'll pay a penalty on windfall profits. We'll invest in alternative energy, create jobs and free ourselves from foreign oil."

Duh!

Rooney: Obama says in his ad that he's never taken any money from oil companies. No one does, because it's illegal. Yet he has taken $213k from employees of oil companies. Two of his bundlers are top execs at oil companies. (See Newsweek on this or my earlier post.)

despite your assertion.

There cannot be relativism.  It must apply across the board.

Like why my soap provides more lather?

It is all marketing and profiteering by the media and those who run campaigns.

but that is no justification either.

Hummers?

held that separate but equal was permissible until 1954.

I suppose Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP should never have spoke up.

I find your argument that we should just accept what is wrong unpersuasive.

I think it says more about how unprincipled we are than you do.

$400 million and have placed 8 times as many ads.

I think that is way too much.

For each one of you, how many are swayed by ads that are created to manipulate people primarily using the tools of marketing, not information on issues?  These messages are aimed at segments of people to win votes.  It's a pure sales job directed at people who are mostly uniformed about the candidates and the issues.

To compare yourself to these uniformed people and how they assimilate information, then use it as the basis to dismiss what obviously is occurring here in the campaign and throughout society as a whole, represents a glaring weakness in your position to this point in the discourse.

What's even worse is is that you find the overall corruption of the system on behalf of wealth relatively acceptable.  It shows just how pervasive it has become as a norm and its antithetical to progressive values.  We talk about transformation, yet little is done or said to clean it up.  This is a not limited to one side or the other.  Politicians will not clean up the system until we demand it from ALL of them.    

To me, we head in the opposite direction from what we aspire.  Makes no sense to me.  I mean, no one even really cares enough to say a thing, let alone tell the candidates that it matters in defining ourselves as Americans.  Just do it.  Nike could not have said it better.  

And Paul Wellstone -- who was overspent by 10-1 but won election to the Senate.