is that I don't get to see any political ads, unless I watch into a show (like Rachel Maddow) that occasionally shows me one. I do watch a reasonalbe amnount of commercial TV shows, just not over commercial TV or cable or satellite.

Four years ago the only political ads I saw in my internet TV watching were some for a man running for the U.S. House of Representatives but not in my district.

To point out to those who do, that 'paid' speech is not the same as 'free' speech. That those who are talking, are like the band hired to sing a song at a wedding, and are restricted by that.

Many people expect television and radio to inform them on politics as they believe they inform them on traffic reports, the weather, etc. I don't see any sign of those folks not voting or leaving their daily fix.

spent on his entire campaign, and she lost. If you step outside the political for a moment, and think about how ads work in general, and realize that many heavily marketed products and services fail to get business, you would see that ads are not the magic thing some would like us to believe they are. In fact, too many ads is worse than not enough. So 'just buy more' does not work in and of itself. It just doesn't. If buying more ads equaled success, no film would fail, they'd just run more ads. No product would fail, and they fail weekly.

We tend to believe things that we hear repeatedly and that everyone else around us believes, especially if it reinforces a prejudice. That's how all propaganda has worked throughout time. Raw intelligence plays only a small roll in susceptibility compared to, say, education, which can have an inoculating effect against particular memes.

If you can figure out a way to short circuit that, you'll save humanity.