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The Presidential Debates Are Nothing But Scripted Beauty Contests
Painting by Anthony Freda: www.AnthonyFreda.com.
The "spontaneous" questions from audience members are actually pre-screened, and even the moderator is forbidden from asking follow-up questions:
Gawker's John Cook succinctly sums up the rigged debates:
Leaked Debate Agreement Shows Both Obama and Romney are Sniveling Cowards
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Both campaigns are terrified at anything even remotely spontaneous happening.
They aren't permitted to ask each other questions, propose pledges to each other, or walk outside a "predesignated area." And for the town-hall-style debate tomorrow night, the audience members posing questions aren't allowed to ask follow-ups (their mics will be cut off as soon as they get their questions out). Nor will moderator Candy Crowley.
Glenn Greenwald notes:
The moderators were selected to ensure that nothing unexpected is asked and that only the most staid and establishment views are heard. As journalism professor Jay Rosen put it when the names of the moderators were unveiled, using terms to describe those views that are acceptable in Washington media circles and those which are "fringe":
"In order to be considered as a candidate for moderator you have to be soaked in the sphere of consensus, likely to stay within the predictable inner rings of the sphere of legitimate controversy, and unlikely in the extreme to select any questions from the sphere of deviance."
Here then, within this one process of structuring the presidential debates, we have every active ingredient that typically defines, and degrades, US democracy. The two parties collude in secret. The have the same interests and goals. Everything is done to ensure that the political process is completely scripted and devoid of any spontaneity or reality.
All views that reside outside the narrow confines of the two parties are rigidly excluded. Anyone who might challenge or subvert the two-party duopoly is rendered invisible.
Lobbyists who enrich themselves by peddling their influence run everything behind the scenes. Corporations pay for the process, which they exploit and is then run to bolster rather than threaten their interests. The media's role is to keep the discourse as restrictive and unthreatening as possible while peddling the delusion that it's all vibrant and free and independent and unrestrained. And it all ends up distorting political realities far more than illuminating them while wildly exaggerating the choices available to citizens and concealing the similarities between the two parties.
To understand the US political process, one can just look to how these sham debates are organized and how they function. This is the same process that repeats itself endlessly in virtually every other political realm.
Indeed, the Republican and Democratic parties have long formed Gentlemen's agreements - through the "Presidential Debate Commission" - on what topics are "off-limits" (and which journalists can even ask questions) during presidential debates:
As this 4-minute video shows, - they both ignore the desires of their own bases:
The American people are sick of both the Republican and Democratic party, and yearn for something different. See this, this and this.
No wonder ... the mainstream Democratic and Republican parties agree on most matters which affect American lives the most directly. Here, here, here here and here.
Obama and Romney are virtually indistinguishable on most core issues. For example: jobs, freedoms and favoring fatcats instead of the little guy.
The Founding Fathers warned - at the very birth of our nation - against a two-party system as being destructive to liberty.
If we opened the debates up to third parties, it would show how similar the GOP and Democratic Party really are:
- advertisements -
And Fuckup to Obama, too.
It was patently obvious from his first debate performance that he does't want the job.
Should tell all there is to know about Shit-Mitt actually wanting it.
Fraud-free-for-all in 3 -- 2 -- 1 --
GW, some studies (unconfirmed) say that 80% of all money flowing into the elections are from Super-PACs screening 200 super-rich individuals.
A completely different, radical (and unproposale "lunatic") approach from history would be the ancient Greco-Roman method: take the richest 300 men of the country and slap them into the Senate, unelected. It's not like you would miss the current elected batch, and it would force them to show their cards better. And it might make them more accountable. Of course they would also - old style - pay from their own pockets some of the more profligate expenditures. You might laugh, but it worked fine for hundreds of polities for quite a long time...
I know, I know, unthinkable, we all prefer form and appearances over substance and truth today...
I may be wrong, but aren't the super pacs, with their obscenely large war chests, intended to simply sway public opinion in a very partial and imbalanced way......Just as the news media has presented "news" to the sheep for the past several hundred years???
In my mind, this offset has sprung forth all of the petty jealousy on the part of those who want to control the flow of information.
Hearst, Gannet, Chandlers, GE, Disney, McCormack, Och, Sulzberger... Now you've got Berkshire and also Bill Gates buying up media so they can put their personal spin on what they deem important.
Powerful people (news media) don't like a two sided argument. Hence, the "danger" of the super pacs.
One word: Awareness
Just by revealing who the lawless shadows are would put a target on their heads for harm.
"two-party duopoly"? GW, are you advocating multi-party electoral laws? (or do you hope for the return of the American Whig Party?) Or are you challenging why the US has to have such a super-hyper-powerful president at all?
edit: I do note that multi-party is a dirty word here... or is it the question about the prez?
Scripted debates, just like the scripted RNC rules vote: "And the Yeas have it": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ_ylYNbAlY
America - Fuck Yeah!
On election day, we have to ask ourselves this question:
Do we want four more years of eroding lifestyles and economic destruction, or do we want a second Obama term?
"Do we want four more years of eroding lifestyles and economic destruction, or do we want a second Obama term?"
Well, first I'd need to know exactly who this collectivist "we" is.
I can only tell you what I want.
Junked you for implying this has something to do with what puppet is in the WH.
It is MATH, not politics.
pods
Sorry, sometimes humor isn't pretty.
Sorry good Dr., I tend to be pretty liberal with the junks when I see any kind of left-right paradigm setting up.
It was MY bad to not see it as humor.
pods
and as your sentence and history demonstrate, politics is the antithesis of exponential math
Things that make Banzai7 go hmmmm?
Here is a good poster to protest voting this year:
Feel free to Copy and Post it.
More of an 'ugly' contest, with the votes counted by mysterious black boxes
I don't know, the the strange excuse for talent, anorexic economy, plastic architecture, vaseline gums, and of course the diminishing discretionary bikini budgets.....
Thursday humor for Arrested Development fans. Someone has taken AD quotes and overlaid them onto campaign photos to create...
Arrested Decision 2012.