Seems pretty plain to me. Joss didn't say vote for Obama, he's just having some fun with Romney. Free country, he's allowed to have an opinion and if that turns off a few of his fans, then I don't think he's going to lose sleep over it. He wrote the fucking Avengers script! I think he'll survive somehow.

That said, the election system in this country sucks, and changing it is going to require a monumental effort on the part of a hell of a lot of people. Congress will fight tooth and nail to preserve the status quo, because it serves them best. Until we get a system that isn't designed to result in a 2-party system, we will always have this situation of choosing between Asshole #1 and Asshole #2.

It's kind of sad that the one thing that Congress will show true bipartisan support on is saving their own asses.

The problem is that proving corruption and bribe/favor-taking by politicians is very very difficult to do legally. Look at the William Jefferson case. The guy was ridiculously crooked, but only gets 13 years. 13 years for this kind of corruption? That's pathetic. When getting caught (already hard) and convicted on 11 counts (much much harder), you'd think that the penalty should be a bit stiffer. You can get more than that for simple burglary! This guy took half a million bucks and stood to gain a LOT more if he had not been caught, not to mention his abuse of power and betrayal of his constituents. We need better investigative powers (and measures to ensure they're not abused) and MUCH stiffer sentences for corruption. Good luck getting Congress to write laws that would be tougher on themselves though, especially without adding a bunch of loopholes.

As for this free speech issue, I don't think corporations should have "free speech" rights. People have those rights. People can donate money for political reasons. Corporations are created for commercial purposes and have interests and priorities that are geared to commerce and profit above all, not justice, ethics, morality or anything else that individuals are concerned with. Giving them the right to fund political campaigns and messages is crazy. We're essentially giving organizations geared almost entirely toward extracting as much money as possible from people a HUGE influence in who gets elected and who makes the laws that will regulate those organizations. Anyone else not seeing the problem with this?