Top 10 Secrets They Don't Want You to Know About the Debates

[Catt03]

Top 10 Secrets They Don't Want You to Know About the Debates
by Connie Rice (Not Condilezza)

(10.) They aren't debates!

(9.) The debates were hijacked from the truly independent League of Women Voters in 1986.

8.) The "independent and non-partisan" Commission on Presidential Debates is neither independent nor non-partisan.

(7.) The secretly negotiated debate contract bars Kerry and Bush from any and all other debates for the entire campaign.

(6.) The debate contract effectively excludes all other serious presidential candidates from participating in the debates.

(5.) All members of the studio audience must be certified as "soft" supporters of Bush and Kerry, under selection procedures they approve

(4.) These "soft" audience members must "observe in silence."

(3.) The "extended discussion" portion of the debate cannot exceed 30 seconds.

(2.) Important issues are locked out by the CPD debate rules and party control.

(1.) Fortune 100 corporations are the main funders of the CPD-sponsored debates, and the CPD's co-chairs are corporate lobbyists.

The CPD is run by Frank Fahrenkopf, a pharmaceutical industry lobbyist, and Paul Kirk, a top gambling lobbyist," Rice says. "And the biggest muliti-national corporations write the checks that fund the CPD -- Phillip Morris, Anheuser-Busch and dozens more. The audience may have to be silent and motionless, but the corporate sponsors can have banners, beer tents, Budweiser girls handing out pamphlets protesting beer taxes -- a corporate-sponsored circus to go along with the Kabuki Debates. Could we get a more fitting description of our democracy?"

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4052162

"We need a new criminal law for reckless endangerment of democracy."

[michaelwb]

1. Agreed - with rant

The debate process has been a joke since the League of Women Voters stopped running them.

Of course, what's the point of watching these debates. No matter what actually happens the media will spin in the way they want until the meme becomes truth.

Oh, like the 2000 debates - which the media quickly started spin the meme that Bush won and now it seems to be the collective memory when in fact those watching, and the polls right after the debate, said Gore won.

If the media spins things the way they want and they no longer even do basic fact checking of politicians - why not just have the different parties press secretaries and PR people handle the news and eliminate the middlemen.

Grrrrr!

[Bread and Circus]

2. It's stuff like this that makes me mad as hell.

The Democrats and the Republicans have conspired to ruin this country. A pox on both their houses.

[MISSDem]

3. It's the best thing that we have so make the most of it.

Listen and form your own opinion and don't listen to the "analysis" afterwards if you will let them influence what you think happened.