Lack of information? I agree. It's so bad I can't even watch the debates any more. I would rather do dishes and laundry, which I did last night.

Obama and McCain are so cowed by polls and their party, they are afraid to say even one word off script. You could get two robots to repeat talking points over and over.

For a debate, I would rather listen to Dennis Kucinich, Cynthia McKinney or Ralph Nader. Sure, they have their own talking points, but they speak to me, not to some mythical independent voter who they are trying to trick a vote from.

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And I do blame the format and moderators as much as I do the candidates.

A vice-presidential candidate blowing off the media? The moderator should pounce and shove it back in her face until she answers the question, or call her out when she doesn't answer the question. That's the media's job, to get answers.

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I think these debates would be for more entertaining AND informative if they were held in a format similar to Judge Judy, The Peoples Court, or Judge Mathis. On those shows plaintiffs and dependents try and pass off some outrageous BS which is quickly shoveled away by the moderator/judge. I couldn't imagine for a second that these judges would allow any of these party talking points or incomplete statistics to stand up for a second. Would it kill the moderator to be just a little confrontational. After the candidates finish talking, couldn't he/she say, "Excuse me, you're not done, now answer the question." If I can't avoid answering a question when giving a presentation, why should they, and they're running for President of the United States!
By the way, is there any particular reason why these debates are only 90 minutes long? There's no sponsorship, so why not make it 180 minutes.

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The first step is to disband the silly commission that allows candidates to hamstring the moderator with their ridiculous demands and bans on followup questions. (Ifill was not allowed followups, as per the agreement between the candidates.)

The second step is to allow less mainstream candidates into the debates who can bring less mainstream ideas and challenge the talking points. Cynthia McKinney, Ralph Nader or Bob Barr would all be excellent in that capacity.

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as i watched i said that you could get more info from reading usa today fer chrissake. anyone with the smallest amount of curiosity would already know the positions, and what was true or not. moderators need to call them on their lies, and push for the record to be corrected.

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Lindsay is, of course, spot on correct in everything he writes. But he has also missed discussing a couple of very important elements that I think go a long way in explaining the travesty "we're" all observing.

The first is his not recognizing a factor to which Stephanie Miller and her gang regularly make referrence: the moron factor. Let's not kid ourselves, roughly 50% of the American electorate are total morons, exhausted by anything more than a 2-minute explainantion about anything and ready at the hat to buy into the first stupid idea whizzed by their empty skulls. The mess we're in on every angle proves that beyond a shadow of doubt. The degradation of the debate clearly finds much of its explanation in this factor alone.

Secondly, when Lindsay says, "We need debates that separate the leaders from those who merely play them on TV," he fails to mention the probable size of the "we" audience. This audience is shriking in size by the hour. By the time I finish this comment, it likely will be down to Lindsay, me, you and the handful of others that bother to read articles and comments about anything beyond the lastest NFL scores.

Come on, let's be brutally honest with ourselves already: we're freakin' doomed as a robust democratic nation. We just don't seem to have the muscle to pull this act off anymore.
~Revl. El
Pastor, WVCSR

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To call these duets "debates" is as ridiculous an exercise in semantics as calling professional wrestling a competitive sport. When "winning" points is discussed in terms of winks, this or that body language, or some "supposed connection" to some idealized mass "out there," the substance of this show barely could be considered anything more than a performance of shadow puppets. But then, when has American politics not been a circus for memory-challenged self-obsessed fools?

All this blather concerning Biden not attacking too harshly his opponent because she was obviously at a disadvantage in not being prepared, having no experience in national politics, and, very much like George Bush, lacked intellectual acuity or curiosity beyond her tiny bubble, is simply too real to not ignore and become extemely depressed about. Yes, it would be terrible if someone vying for a posiition in line for the Presidency of the United States would be too harshly treated and thereby cause voters to come to her side in sympathy for her pathos. The absurdity of this proposition is too enormous to contemplate, yet we hear this stuff frothing almost continuously from the mouths of the talking heads like a case of the dry heaves.

I can remember one national election in my lifetime that was a serious affair. The time was 1968 and American youth were being killed in the thousands. Lots of people in those days were not afraid to hit the streets and risk being hit themselves by police. I remember Chicago. I remember Kent State. I remember Bobby Kennedy and Martin King. One did not need body language to know where they stood. There were real leaders at that time and place. I also remember what happened to them.

The term spin had not come into vogue then. There were no polite distinctions between
reality (fact) and propaganda; truth and lies. Hubert Humphrey who had up until his vice-presidency a long and genuine career of public service and liberal empathetic politics chose to align himself with the war administration of Johnson and paid the price. The issues in 1968 were about life and death, and death won (for another twenty thousand Americans and countless Vietnamese), but it was in every sense a real fight.

The conflict over national policy was rejoined in 1972 and the forces of horror and manipulation again triumphed, only to finally be done in over relatively trivial excesses of criminality by Richard Nixon and his cronies. That the horror and dishonor of the Vietnam War did not lead to his downfall, but rather a series of petty crimes, says a lot about America.

Despite all the ballyhoo about the great American Middle Class, the American Middle Class does not give a shit about anyone but themselves as long as they are kept air-conditioned and "safe;" as long as the sons and daughters of somebody else, the sons and daughters of the poor and the working class, are doing the suffering and the dying.

That is where we are. That is the womb of the politics of the "wink and nod," the politics of criminal spin and the resistance to any thoughtfulness. It is, at heart, a resistance to contemplate insecurity. And it is insecurity that will always be maintained in any capitalist society as the major tool in a ruling arsenal of manipulation and control.

Of course, almost simultaneously in conjuction with "the Great Debate" the bailout of Wall Street was passed after a little show of congressional indignation was produced, in the spirit of another famous street, Broadway, for public consumption. Can anyone be surprised? Did anyone even remotely suspect that it would not be. And, truly, isn't that exactly what mostly everyone wanted because it was a bailout for themselves as well. If it works for everyone, though it well might not; these things never work out for the poor, but they don't figure in the calculations anyway.

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T he big criminals will get away like rats fleeing a sinking ship that they themselves gnawed through the hull, but rats with the rights to salvage, which is, to use an old cliche, sad but true. At least the passengers in steerage may have a lifeboat or two on which to cling if they know how to swim and can find them in the darkness.



Satan's Neutral Corner

satansneutralcorner@yahoo.com

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